On Desanguination

Feeling moved by the spirit of Christmas to give something to someone other than myself, I went down to the blood bank at the Health Sciences Authority today to give blood. They obviously value donors: from the very start to finish it was a charm offensive all the way. I've never had so many nurses smile at me before. I bet even when I was an infant-in-arms they scowled at me. The receptionist was unsuually cheerful, calling everyone 'dearie' and gleefully handing out forms to fill in. Of course, given the recent cases of men being charged for donating HIV-tainted blood, all this charm has a dagger behind its back should you compromise the system. And all the literature (innumerable pamphlets that would later take turns to slide off my lap when I reclined on the chair) stresses this point, while never failing to be enthusingly grateful for the volunteer's donation.

But all that aside, my other primary reason for going down was to accustom myself to the feeling of a canula into my vein in preparation for the dreaded medic course I'll have to go for next month. With respect to sharp objects poking into me and the sight of blood, I was not to be disappointed. After the medical interview (wherein I found that I had gained 5 kilograms from the last time I checked), a nurse came (or rather I went to a nurse) to do a haemoglobin test, which consisted of stapling my finger to draw a drop of blood into a capillary tube and then shaking that drop into a beaker of blue solution which already had several other drops of blood floating within. The nurse who performed this procedure was an extremely pale lady, and it didn't help her complexion that she wore a light yellow blouse with a white disposable medical gown over it. When she put on her white latex gloves she seemed almost bloodless. After conducting the test she retired again to a small, dark anteroom. One wonders.

In the donation room itself were rows of reclining chairs lined up, with a few people already giving blood. I was seated down and a few nurses, finding that it was my first time, came to fawn over me. It's okay, a senior one said, it's just like an ant bite, not pain. Yes, ant bite, said another who was ministering to the donor in the chair beside mine, elephant ant; Godzilla ant. She laughed and quickly added, no no just joking, see this man? Your first time but this he has done this 28 times already. Not pain, right? He nodded, no, not pain. I suspected conspiracy. I felt a cool prodding on the inside of my arm, could this be it? I faced away and closed my eyes. She was reassuring: don't worry just swabbing your arm with disinfectant, to kill the germs, I explain to you what I'm doing. It's okay, I replied, just don't tell me when you stick it in, if I don't know I won't feel anything. You don't want me to talk to you, she asked? No, I clarified, just don't tell me when you stick the needle in. Okay, I won't.

Some time later I looked at my arm again and saw that she was preparing a syringe, this had to be the anaesthetic. Okay I need to inject you now, local anaesthetic so you won't feel the pain, look away now. I felt a prick and the usual odd feeling of having something shot into you and very soon the area was numb. A few moments later and she seemed to be pressing a pad onto my arm; was it done yet? I looked and saw the hugeass needle waiting to be stuck inside and quickly looked away. Goodness, what have I done? Okay, done now, she said to me cheerfully and patted me on the arm. I looked. The joint between my vein and the tube was covered tastefully with a piece of gauze, so I was spared the distressing site. I was given a ball to squeeze regularly (like this, she squeezed the ball gently, not like the way you did just now, she crushed the ball) and left to ponder the consequences of my actions. My right arm occupied I couldn't do anything but ponder the post-donation pamphlet. Their hotline number was circled: if at anytime you have doubts and wish to withdraw your blood from use, please call this number. They stressed that it was anonymous. I considered the fact that of the men who were charged, surely a few had come to this same centre, seen the same jolly cheerful faces, been given the same free calendar and milo. Perhaps one of them might have even sat in the same chair. I turned back to look at the tube carrying blood from my arm to a bag quickly being filled below. Blood, in such quantity, seemed less red than purple, a thick opaque syrup being drawn out of my body by a pump somewhere behind me. I looked at the bag and wondered if I were shot or slashed how much blood would I lose? If the blood in the bag which I've donated today were taken out and splashed around, how blood-spattered would the room be? How much blood need a man lose to die? (Say if the needle got stuck, the bag were leaking, and I fell asleep.) The tube ran over my hand before looping downwards to the bag. It was curious to feel the warmth of the blood, my blood. Somehow my subconscious expected it to be cold or at room temperature, not warm, so obviously ex corpori vivo. It's warm, I told the nurse. Of course, she said, it's from your body. My arm felt cold from the air conditioning. When it was all done (I winced when she pulled out the needle but I felt no pain, only a strange soreness) she let me feel the heft of the bag of blood in my hand. See, she told me, it's warm. After pressing a piece of gauze into the puncture wound (I still hadn't seen it, only when I went home and removed the dressing would I see it was a small nondescript puncture with barely enough space for a scab.) for five minutes, it was dressed up with a bright green dinosaur compress and I was good to go. I said goodbye to the veteran on my left and looked for the exit. While having my free hot milo at the cafe just outside the door, I looked at the list of veteran donors from the '80s and '90s, on a board hung on the wall. Curiously enough, not a single female name was to be found! Hopefully times are a-changing. In the room with me were two makciks quietly going through the process, regulars I suppose from their lack of fuss. The nurse asked me if I'd be back again. Considering how painless it was, perhaps I shall. But the next time I'll do the other arm, for symmetry's sake.

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Those who are interested in donating blood can check out the HSA's website. The blood bank is located in the HSA building, opposite the road from Outram Park MRT. Closed on Mondays and public holidays.

Today's Dessert

The pasta and the salad bombed; the dessert was somewhat better received. The recipe:

Ingredients:
Vanilla ice-cream
A large, sweet pear
Cinnamon

Method:
Slice pear and arrange decoratively upon bowl, and scoop ice cream upon it. Grate a stick of cinnamon upon the setup and serve frosty.

Almost laughably simple but then it's usually over-elaboration that results in failed recipes. Like my salad. I was originally intending to use ciku fruit instead of pear, but they were out of season, so I had to settle for something similarly sandy in texture. Ciku might have worked better because it's sweeter and softer, and its unique honeyed flavour would be a worthy counterpoint to the gentle highlights of cinnamon and vanilla.

Passing the Bar

This is for Sel. (With apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson.)

Sunset and evening star
And one clear call for you!
And may there be no groaning of the bar
When you seek to join it too

But all the firms you're passing seem too full
Too full for lawyers new
When those who fresh from out the college school
Out-ward issue

Twilight and evening bell
The jobscape seems so dark!
You close your eyes to shut those fears of hell
When you embark

For tho' from out your class of Sex and Race
Your books may bear you far
You've yet to see the Real World face to face
When you have passed the bar

Marathon Day

Met a lot of people yesterday and today, hence proving what a small world it is.

At Holland Village, while waiting to meet Audrey to get the ticket for the night's Law Bash (where the ratio of boys to girls corresponded roughly to SAF doctrine, i.e. 4:1), I bumped into Ian who was there to get his haircut. We walked a few rounds around the Village and talked about what everyone from our class was doing now. It was great catching up, also because it was so unexpected. Met Adrian too, who was also meeting Audrey, and we had a long army boy talk about army stuff while waiting at Coffee Club. Audrey managed to convince Adrian to buy a ticket to the party and so we went down to Clarke Quay, though first dropping by Adrian's place. On the train at Chinatown station I saw Mr Chua who was out with his wife and youngest son, of all people. He's flying off tomorrow to Xiamen on a trip with Prof Ben Tan so it was even more unlikely that I'd bump into him. We had dinner at this pasta place at Robertson Walk; I had gnocchi done in the restaurant's proprietary way and it was quite nice, just slightly spicy. After dinner we spent a pretty long time waiting outside the bar for people to come, because Audrey was supposed to pass them their tickets. Among the surprise encounters were my 'first friend' (Eugene) and Lt. Khairil, who'd long since finished his service but still has the same loud nasal voice. Having heard it so much on Tekong, I tried to stay out of his way as much as possible. Later that night I bumped into David Pflug who was also quite alarmed to see that Khairil was around. But the biggest surprise of the night was meeting Pamela (Tham) again on the dance floor; she was with a few girl friends of hers and was, I think, quite surprised to see me too. I'd caught a glimpse of her earlier while having dinner but wasn't too sure if it was indeed her. She'll be leaving to study in Australia soon, so it's also fortunate that I saw her before she left.

I left pretty early, around one in the morning and went to Sgt Samuel's place to camp overnight before the run this morning. Changed out of my smokey clothes and slept on a mattress that he had in his room. We left around five for the start point, after a breakfast of eggs and a bun kindly provided by his mother. Surprisingly it wasn't as chaotic at the start point as I'd thought it'd be, possibly because the marathoners were separated from the half-marathoners and the 10 km runners. At any rate it was still a pretty large crowd (6500 people) and the music they were playing to psyche us up was disturbingly similar to that at the party last night. The run itself was great, though extremely painful. Somewhere along the way in Marina South I saw Sarah Ng running in the opposite direction as I looped back from the turning point; she was running the half marathon. I called out to her at the same time as another person behind me but I think she didn't notice. Other sightings include Vivian Balakrishnan, who was running 10 km with his bodyguard, and the blind half-marathoner Henry Wanyoike and his friend and guide Joseph Kibunja who were running hand in hand the whole way, stride for stride. Henry came in ahead of Joseph by only one second, and they went up to the podium to accept their medals together after the race was over. There's a short writeup on Henry in today's Straits Times for those who are curious.

By the 33rd kilometer my legs were giving way and cramping painfully, so I had to stop and stretch. Stopping was the worst thing that I could do but I felt that I had no choice. After stopping it was very hard to get running again and the temptation to simply walk the whole way back was strong. But I remembered the promise I made to myself to push all the way, and started jogging again, though it was more of a shuffle than a jog. After some time I managed to run through the cramp and open up my stride again. This lasted for about 2-3 km before the cramps came and I had to stop and walk once more. The last ten kilometers were hence an alternation between stopping and starting: stopping when the road appeared long and bleak and starting when the marshallers and pretty cheerleaders pipped up my morale. Somewhere along the Kallang River, at the stretch leading underneath the Sheares bridge I had the strongest sense of deja vu because that was exactly the place where I felt like giving up during last year's Sheares Bridge Run. But this year I can at least tell myself that my performance has improved: where last year's run was only 10 km, this year's was 42. The last two kilometers stretched out into 20 minutes of hellish battle with myself. I'd no hope remaining of finishing under 4 hours when I hit the 40 km mark at 4 hours. Likewise I'd no more energy to keep up the same pace of 1 km per five minutes that I'd been trying to keep for the whole race. In the end my average timing per km over the whole race was closer to 6:15. Eventually I managed to struggle through and by the time I hit the Esplanade, I was running again and no longer stopped to walk. I rounded the corner and for the last 200 metres, the road was straight and terminated in the endpoint gantry. Just then the Lemur song from the movie Madagascar played up and I thought well what the heck and sprinted the last stretch as fast as I could. My own hand-timed result was 4:24:28, not as good as I'd hoped but still passable for a first timer. The official result, though, would probably be longer becasue I started timing when I passed through the start gantry but the race had already begun before that; I was somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Along the route there were water points at every 2 kilometers and each point was literally strewn with empty bottles flung to the wayside by runners who'd taken their drink on the go. I tried my best to throw the bottles into dustbins or trash bags though, but sometimes I did miss the target. I took at least one or two bottles of water at each waterpoint, to cool off my head and to drink, as the day got progressively hotter, in all totalling almost 30 bottles. Aside from my own two packets of powergel I brought along for the run, I also picked up one of the free packets they were distributing at the 26 km mark, consuming three packs in all. Sgt CK also was waiting for us at the 16 / 33 km point with cans of Red Bull and I took two of those too. Hence all in all I have to admit that I had a lot of help for this race, without which I'd probably not have completed it. It was an amazing experience, though I'm not sure if I'm up to doing it again. Next year when this date comes round again (less than a week from my ORD) I hope to be more prepared. This year's training programme was useful, for certain, but somehow I felt it wasn't quite enough. It was a good run, but hopefully next year's will be even better.

Burning Libraries

Famous libraries are frequently famous because of their destruction. Consider the burning of Alexandria, the book-burning of Qin Shihuang, and the bonfires of the Spanish conquistadors of the New World. In fiction, too, libraries are frequently burned at the end of the story, cf. The Name of the Rose, The Rule of Four, Auto-da-Fe etc. Aside from the conventional symbolism of wilfully destroyed knowledge or wisdom, I think bibliographical immolations also represent attempts to control, through destruction, things that we cannot possess or understand. Fascists, for instance, are often associated with book-burning, because their political ideology brooks no opposition nor subtlety of expression.

The sheer vastness of the modern library humbles us, and reminds us of the even greater magnitude of human knowledge. The impossibility of digesting and comprehending even a portion of that quantity can be debilitating, especially when confronting the library for the first time. A scholar set loose in a library feels, at best, mild discomfort on contemplating this fact. At worst, psychosis becomes total, all-consuming. The inadequacy he first feels gradually escalates to despair, then turns on its head and becomes into jealousy, hatred, resentment. Resentment that human output could be so prodigious as to make the individual become so very small indeed. Resentment burns yet more when he realises that the great majority of the texts are doggerel, repetitions, corruptions, irrelevances. Fragments rile him, because not only does the library extend in space, it extends in time, and gradually disappears into the irretrievable past. The library is too vast to be understood, it has outgrown its purpose because its purported masters are little more than custodians who dust the shelves and shelve the books. This uselessness from sheer bulk makes the library dangerous, parasitical. To start anew, the library must burn; rid the world of its lies and half-truths, and start again. No matter, the few precious truths which burn with it will be discovered again in due time: if they should be real truths. Only fire can kill this plague.

Two Quotes

Two quotes from two scientists about two situations which are analogous:

"I often listened to my roommates--they were both seniors--studying for their theoretical physics course. One day they were working pretty hard on something that seemed prety clear to me, so I said, 'Why don't you use the Baronallai's equation?'

'What's what!' they exclaimed. 'What are you talking about!'

I explained to them what I meant and how it worked in this case, and it solved the problem. It turned out it was Bernoulli's equation that I meant, but I had read all this stuff in the encyclopedia without talking to anybody about it, so I didn't know how to pronounce anything."

-- Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman! pg. 34


"When I first started in biology all my knowledge came from reading, and for years I pronounced their name incorrectly as 'sea ani-moans.' This s till seems to me a more reasonable pronunciation."

-- JT Bonner, Life Cycles, pg. 37

Five Language Facts

1. The word 'bonfire' is derived from 'bone' and 'fire', literally a burning of bones.


2. 'Admiral' is derived from the Arabic 'emir' (prince, ruler), reflected in the following quotation from Milton "... to be the Mast/ Of some great Ammiral, were but a wand" (Paradise Lost I: 293-4).


3. Arabic and Hebrew both belong to the Semitic language family, and share many features in common. Compare, for instance, the letters 'aleph' (Heb) and 'alif' (Ar), 'koph' (Heb) and 'qaf' (Ar).


4. There is no exact equivalent of the verb 'to be' in the Malay language.


5. 'Hwaet', the first word of Beowulf, has no modern derivative in the English language.

Five Fantastic Facts

Perhaps I should re-title this blog 'Facts in Multiples of Five.' But that would limit my scope of writing, somewhat.

1. Language. The letter 'Þ' in Old English is known as the 'thorn', and is responsible for the 'th' sound. Later texts transliterated it as 'y' because they lacked the 'Þ' character in their typesets. Hence 'the' was spelt 'Þe' and printed as 'ye' so those faux-archaic signs which read 'ye olde...' should be read 'the'.


2. Botany. The term 'gynoecium', referring to the female reproductive parts of a flower, in classical Latin meant a woman's apartment.


3. Food. Termites can eat wood only because of symbiotic microorganisms in their gut which help them digest cellulose. If these are killed, the termite starves.


4. Literature. The Chinese Shi Jing (Book of Odes) has 39222 words.


5. Chemistry. Hydrofluoric acid (aqueous HF) dissolves glass but can be kept safely in polythene containers.

Five Further Facts

1. Military. The motto of the Singapore Artillery, 'In Oriente Primus' (First in the East), was originally the motto of the colonial-era Singapore Volunteer Corps (SVC). I've no idea how it ended up as the Arty motto, though.


2. Architecture. The cross atop the spire of St Andrew's Cathedral in Singapore is a cross of St Andrew, in the shape of an 'x', rather than the traditional Christian cross shaped like a 't'.


3. Names. Nike the sportswear manufacturer takes its name from Nike the Greek goddess of victory.


4. Clothing. The Singapore Chinese Girls' School uniform used to have puffy lambchop sleeves.


5. People. Factoid lifted from this website: the writer Lu Xun's "brother Zhou Jianren was a biologist and eugenicist. He made the first translation of Darwin into Chinese."

Five More Facts

Names. The poet Kahlil Gibran's name is actually spelt (rather, transliterated) Khalil; the misspelling crept in when he moved to the United States and stuck ever since.

People. T.E. Lawrence, of Lawrence of Arabia fame, (and not just an action hero. Aside from being an astute political negotiator and soldier, he had literary skill as can be seen in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a memoir of the Arab campaign) later in life joined the RAF under an assumed name, but died in a motorcycle crash soon after his term of service ended.

Geography. The Russian territory of Kaliningrad is sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, and is not connected by land to the rest of Russia. It is perhaps better known by its Prussian name of Konigsberg, being the inspiration for the mathematical problem of the Seven Bridges of Konigsberg.

Chemistry. The Scoville Scale is used to rate the hotness of chillies. The test was originally a simple taste test coupled with serial dilution (the hotter a chilli, the more dilution required for the hot principle to be rarefied beyond detection), but now makes use of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).

Nomenclature. The discover of barbiturates, von Baeyer, named them after a woman named Barbara, who might have been his mistress or lover, or more prosaically, after St Barbara, the patron saint of artillerymen (since Prussia defeated Denmark at war in the same year of his discovery).

Five Facts

Five Facts is a ripoff the BBC's Ten Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Week, which incidentally has started naming some of the sources it culls information from. It's a pity because I believe public institutions should always retain a certain patina of mystery and grandeur.

Anyway, the 5 Facts for this week are:

1. Fashion. The niggly bit of a belt buckle which fastens it to the belt strap is known as the buckle-chape. (Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men, pg. 62)


2. Words. The "O" in Irish names (e.g. "O'Flaherty") is an anglicised version of the prefix "ua-" which means "grandson of." (Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves)


3. Geography. The world's only Hindu kingdom is Nepal.


4. Music. The ACS school anthem is based on the tune to "The Maple Leaf Forever", the unofficial Canadian national anthem.


5. Biology. The piercing proboscis of a mosquito is actually made up of five different mouthparts fused together.

The Birds

The lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu has hit Romania; the disease is knocking on Europe's door. This latest piece of news should jolt developed nations in the North out of their can't-happen-to-me complacency and serve as a reminder that disease, like everything else in this shrinking world, recognises no borders.

Given that human collective memory is agonisingly short (evidenced, for instance, by how quickly the terror of WWI was forgotten by those who launched WWII, viz. within a generation) our consciousness of a global flu pandemic is nonexistent, except as mere possibility and conjecture. Horror, and its attendent lessons, is something we do not desire to live through vicariously hence we as a collective human community have no sense of scale when it comes to dealing with the 'next big one.' One can only hope that the measures taken now are adequate to avert disaster.

Another key point to recognise in combatting bird flu is that bird migratory routes become very important to the epidemiologist. Here, the naturalist and the bird watcher become important albeit unexpected partners in public health. What is usually dismissed as an arcane hobby for antisocial boffins (birdwatching) is an important contributor to our knowledge of the movement of birds, which correspondingly has something to tell us about the movement of avian disease. Even in this era of high-technology white-coated biology, simple empirical natural history has value, in this case value that can contribute to saving lives. Hence it is wise not to dismiss the work of field biologists offhand.

Singaporeans may also have cause for worry. Lethal bird flu has hit Indonesia, Indochina, China, and Russia, countries that bound the Malay Peninsula to the South and the North. Singapore itself is an important pitstop on the migratory flyway between East Asia and Australasia, hence infected birds could possibly find their way here from regions which have had outbreaks. More worryingly yet, we're now entering into the appropriate season for migratory bird sightings. Unfortunately, our knowledge of human-bird interactions, as well as of interactions between migrant populations and resident populations of birds, is not enough for us to know with much certainty to what extent a disease like bird flu can spread from a few infected migrants to the human population.

Enjoy your holidays, people.

Running

Yesterday, my company's aspiring marathoners went for a run in East Coast Park, led by our CSM. As part of our progressive training regime, this run lasted 14 km (previously we'd done 10 and 12) on flat ground (mostly concrete) with bracing scenery (the sea, ships, and skaters). Given that this is the longest distance I've run at a single go, I've newly realised several truths about running that I had only half-believed before:

1. It's possible to get hungry while running. And very hungry, too. By the time we were nearing the end, the frizzling barbeque pits by the track were proving too irresistible: I was on the verge of snitching a chicken wing and making a dash for it.
   
2. Plenty of water is necessary even on a cool drizzly evening. Because of the obscene amount of water one loses through sweat (evidenced by the ample sogginess of my singlet) and through a gaping gasping mode of breathing.
   
3. The wind is tiring to run against. It's not evident on a short run, but yesterday we struggled against an otherwise pleasantly cool and vivid wind that would've been more welcome had it blown in the opposite direction.
   
4. Distraction helps. Boredom is the enemy. Treadmills are insanity. The stretch of East Coast Park near Fort Road where there's naught besides trees is demoralising.
   

So on my next run, here are a few necessities: a radio earpiece, squeezebottle of water, a chocolate bar (or two).

True Prejudice

With all this hoo-ha about racist blogging, one wonders whether racism is alive and well in our country today. Anecdotal evidence points to the likelihood that it really is: everyone's got a story about snide remarks made (when thought to be out of earshot) by someone against someone else of another race. Sweeping prejudice under the carpet doesn't solve it, nor do endless programmes of national education that repeat the same tired stories about racial riots in the nation's early days to bored youths who've never experienced the energy of a protest, much less the terror of a lynching. The truth is that prejudice and any sort of -ism arises when we view another group of people as being less than human, as a collective other rather than as individuals. The only way to palliate this ill would be to encourage people of different races to interact more and enter each other's lives, to see the person behind the racial caricature. Russell pointed out in his Nobel Lecture that fear (and concommitantly hate) of unfamiliar groups is an important human factor in politics (politics in the broad sense also could be extended to mean human relations in general):

"I think it may be taken as the rule among primitive men, that they both fear and hate whatever is unfamiliar. ... It is this primitive mechanism which still controls our instinctive reaction to foreign nations. The completely untravelled person will view all foreigners as the savage regards a member of another herd. But the man who has travelled, or who has studied international politics, will have discovered that, if his herd is to prosper, it must, to some degree, become amalgamated with other herds."

Those fond of idioms may point out that familiarity breeds contempt, but I like to think it's a more personable kind of contempt, a jocular ribbing, that's being described.

Far more insidious than name-calling racism is latent racism and indeed latent prejudice in general. The fact is that racism (along with anti-semitism and terrorism) is one of the great political taboos in modern society. Anyone guilty of, or even say accused of, racism is open to wide condemnation and criticism, and social alienation reminiscent of the old tribal taboo penalties. In many cases the backlash is a kneejerk reaction (forgive the mixed metaphor) triggered by the word 'racist' alone. With the label applied, who bothers to find out what exactly the person had said? It must be abhorrent, it must be condemned, or so the sentiment goes. This is precisely the hypocrisy that makes political correctness such a supremely annoying phenomenon: when people judge by labels, without thinking of the meaning behind these labels. Ask anyone on the street whether he would consider himself a racist, and he would (unless of perverse psychology) certainly say no. But watch his behavior and gauge his feeling, and one can usually find traces of common race-based biases in him. Indeed the label 'racist' has become too politically charged to mean anything useful, in the same way that the terms 'Nazi' and 'fascist' have been used on any politically undesirable group, regardless of their actual inclination to the left or right. Those who gleefully take upon themselves the task of inquisitor, exposing racists to the left and the right of them should heed the call to nosce ipsum. The psychological drive to hunt and eliminate out racists is the same drive that made people hunt witches for burning and blacks for lynching, quite independent of the reason for the hunt, which may be a noble one. That is to say, we should be aware of our own motivations, which basally may not be as high-minded as we think them to be ("I could never be a racist, unlike them" etc.) Besides, the root of racism is prejudice, and while we may claim to be race-blind because racism is fashionable to hate, we are often guilty of other forms of prejudice, towards the handicapped, the aged, etc.

Singapore, the rojak-bowl rather than the melting-pot, has retained a diverse mix of cultures, but it is precisely because of this that our society is split along cultural lines. Culture, divided not only along lines of race but also between social classes, is the tool that can best ameliorate prejudice. Lorenz observed that dogs are so famously loyal because they view their owner as leaders of their pack, viewing the relationship between pet and owner not as we view it but rather as a bond between (slightly unequal) peers (hence explaining why the sentimental treat animals the kindest and the haughty commit crimes of abuse). Hence the question of a solution is reduced to this: is Singapore willing to go the whole hog and give up the rojak-bowl for a rather bland puree in the interests of racial stability (because cultural differences are the ultimate cause for prejudice, hence eliminating differences between cultures would eliminate prejudice), or can we maintain our healthy diversity and accept a mild form of latent racism? Latent racism here refers to race-biases that we do not acknowledge in public, but nonetheless are aware of and perhaps feel guilty for. Because if we accept the latter solution (as someone rightly pointed out, Utopia, be it that of Plato, More, or the modern PC kind, is a damned boring place to be) then we must also accept that latent racism comes in a continuum and some will naturally be more open about their prejudice. Likewise, some will be hypersensitive and attribute every little foible to the lurking devils of racism.

Here's an unorthodox solution to bridging gaps between our different races. Instead of that annoying juggernaut called National Education, and the fairly ineffective approach of trying to get students to experience the horrors of a racial riot vicariously, let's bring different races together through popular culture. Devote some time in the classroom (as I say this, innumerable teachers wince and remind me that there's no such thing as time in the classroom, but one can dream) to introducing (or better yet get the kids to do it) various aspects of popular culture to one another. Not only can we bridge the fourfold division (canonically: Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Others) of our racial groups, but also class and language differences, because even within a race there are differences in taste. We'd know if we've succeeded when the Malay kid can crack A R Rahman jokes, the Indian guy can do a Jay Chou impression, and the potato stops pretending he doesn't know Chinese.

Favourite Essays

In Arabic, the Thousand and One Nights is called the Quitab alif laila ua laila (in that deliciously arabesque mode of musical repetition), which led Burton to translate the title as The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. So I suppose this title would work out to mean something in binary, the decimal 3 being 11 in base 2 (and 10 being called two). This brings me naturally, albeit tangentially, to the subject of my favourite essays, via 'The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights' by Borges, quite blatantly my favourite writer.

The most illuminating (and fun) essays I've read have had a few common qualities, apart from quality of language and style. The most important, in my opinion, is the author's knowledge of purpose, of his need to write and the necessity of the reader's reading the essay. My personal introduction to forceful, lucid, and above all, clear writing was a collection of essays by Orwell. 'Politics and the English Language' remains relevant in its call to "send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting-pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin where it belongs."

Another of Orwell's essays, 'Lear, Tolstoy, and the Fool', criticises an obscure pamphlet by Tolstoy wherein the famous Russian attacked Shakespeare, singling out King Lear for his most scathing remarks. Orwell defends Shakespeare's legacy, and at the same time criticises certain aspects of Tolstoy's thinking and behavior. It was while reading this essay that I felt the strongest urge to read both Shakespeare and Tolstoy, urges that quickly dissipated when I actually encountered them, hence illustrating another quality of essays that I like: advertising other good reads. In this regard one might draw parallels to evangelical writing. Of course the master of (secular) writing scattered with references and recondite erudition is necessarily Borges. His non-fiction writing is a much larger body of work than his more famous ficciones. The same pet topics crop up in both, though: labyrinths, dreams, Gnosticism, the Kaballah, Argentinia... aside from the last these are topics which evidence a man whose life was led in books and for books. I cannot choose a favourite essay (perhaps becuase I still want to read more), but a good one to read is 'The Homeric Versions', where he discusses various translations of Homer into English. The topic of translation stayed with Borges his whole life, and he still talks about it in his Norton lectures at Harvard, recently published as This Craft of Verse. His (reassuring) opinion is consistent throughout all those decades of writing about translation and translators, that a translation should not be considered as being better or worse than another, nor should one designate any particular version as the definitive translation; they are all works in their own right, and should be considered as complementing the original version. For the translation of his own poems (my favourite being Conjectural Poem) into English in collaboration with di Giovanni, he even encouraged the poet-translators into coming up with translations that surpassed his originals.

In 'Forms of a Legend' Borges describes the many forms that the story of Buddha has taken over the years, admitting at the end of the essay that "the chronology of India is unreliable, my erudition even more so; ... it would not surprise me if my history of the legend was itself legendary, formed of substantial truth and accidental errors." (Even the master can make mistakes: cf. the notes to This Craft of Verse but they are remarkably few given his blindness and how he often quoted from memory. In his understanding of the Oriental, he also relied, by necessity, on the Orientalist canon which Said has already criticised.) This theme of multiple versions also runs through Borges's stories and poems. It is an understandable topic for a bibliophile and one-time National Librarian of Argentina: reprints, reissues, and multiple versions of the same work are a cataloger's headache, in part remedied by the concept of uniform titles and the advent of computerised catalogues.

Moving away from the purely literary (Borges perhaps, but less so Orwell) and into the political and local, my two favourite (and in this many will concur) essayists on Singaporean issues are Cherian George and Kishore Mahbubani. The former writes with the concise engagement of a journalist, while the latter is somewhat more liberal with his application of the academic apparatus (extensive quotations, diversions, references). The Mahbubani essay that I liked most was 'The Rest of the West?', not so much for its content -- five years later many of the things he speaks of are self-evident -- but for its straightforward style and his use of the dialectic analysis (hence betraying his academic background as a philosophy graduate) which is particularly suited for the issue at hand:

My thesis will be that even today, the world continues to be dominated by the West. My anti-thesis will be about the forces bringing about the end of Western domination and my synthesis will be about the Rest of the West.

That is from a perspective of power and political influence. East-West relations of course also include cultural interactions, and in this post-colonial part of the world, cultural affiliations are fraught with political subtext, blunty put in the title of his essay 'Where East Meets West, and West Beats East.' George is reassuringly blunt with the truth: "culture is of course never static and never 'pure', except in the fevered imaginations of the world's ethnic nationalists." Journalists aren't wiff-waffling pansies. Speaking on issues closer to the heart of Singaporeans (by this I mean more pressing on our psyche), his opinions are easy to relate to and quickly generate either assent or dissent. He handles a sensitive subject with forthrightness, leading to a punchy ending:

Meanwhile, newsreaders on national radio and television regard it as a mark of sophistication that they can say French names properly, but show no similar care over the pronunciation of Asian names. But since they mispronounce them the way an American would mispronounce them -- the correct mispronunciation, so to speak -- their bosses do not seem to mind.

It's a pity the collection stops short at 2000 when it was published. Since the pivotal events of Sept 11, 2001, the political landscape here has changed drastically, with security concerns being touted as a necessary impediment to our 'politics of comfort and control.' I would much like to see the publication of a next collection from George.

That said, perhaps I'll end off by suggesting a sequential paired reading of a Borges story and a Mahbubani essay, as a sort of comment on our changing ethics in general and American ethics in particular (because American ethics are famously the ethics which most affect our world's state of affairs: the Benthamites would have been alarmed): 'The Bribe' from Borges's Book of Sand is, as he describes it, "an attempt to portray... the American's obsession with ethics." Whether this is necessarily a good thing, in terms of the utilitarian principle (to cause the least suffering), is explored in Mahbubani's 'Pol Pot: the Paradox of Moral Correctness.' The 'calculus of felicity' is more complex than it seems.

Two Things (Try to spot which two)

Congratulations the IAEA on being awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. The BBC report is interesting to read for the soundbites from those who could've won or thought they should have won, in particular the comment from a Japanese activist:

The IAEA, he added, was "not an organisation that has conducted peace activities".

with its strange turn of phrase. Anyhow, anti-nuclear energy campaigners tend to get me a bit riled sometimes when they oppose nuclear energy simply because of their misplaced fear of all things to do with radiation. Countries like France and the US have been using nuclear energy safely for decades, though admittedly disposal of the spent fuel is always a contentious issue. The term nimby (not in my backyard) was invented precisely because no one likes the thought of radioactive waste in close proximity to their homes. The unfortunate side-effect of the overcrowding of this planet is that it's increasingly harder to run away from stuff (and people) we don't like.

The reasons why we don't like particular people have always fascinated me. There are times when, overwhelmed with dislike for someone, I find almost everything he or she does to be the height of irritation. Sometimes I go on to wonder if his or her personal habits are deliberately cultivated to cause annoyance. But a disinterested observer would find nothing remarkable in the behavior of my nemesis. So a lot of our hate and bile is actually some sort of self-reinforcing mantra. (Where is the lurrrrve?) I pray for eyes to see.

The molecular revolution in biology education

Introduction

The molecular revolution in biology has had a profound effect on biology education, shifting the focus away from what was oft-caricatured as 'dissecting toads' to a thoroughly modernised scheme. Taking pride of place is the study of DNA and modern genetics, as well as cell biology and biochemistry, with much emphasis upon medical and life-science applications.

This is clearly evident in the new A level subject syllabus for Biology. The subject synopsis offered by the Ministry of Education lists the 'included topics' (and hence those considered to be of prime importance) as 'Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry, DNA Science and Genomics, Genetics (including the Genetics of Viruses and Bacteria), Diversity and Evolution, and the Applications of Molecular and Cell Biology' for the H2 level, which roughly corresponds to the depth of study at the present A level. Conspicuously missing are: the physiology of whole plants and animals (as opposed to individual cells), ecology, growth and development, and reproduction. These are topics found in almost any biology textbook and considered to be part of a holistic picture of the field. Even more conspicuous is the offering at the H3 level, corresponding to the present S paper, namely its exclusive coverage of proteomics. Biology students who show promise in the subject will be, from 2006, thoroughly familiar with the minutiae of protein structure and function.

Economics and Education

That educational policy in Singapore is shaped, in part, by economic needs is a clear and undenied fact. Indeed, part of the economic boom of post-independence Singapore is unabashedly ascribed to the implementation of technical education in secondary schools for both boys and girls, as well as the establishment of technical institutes and polytechnics, to accomodate the need for skilled workers in manufacturing and industry. The present biotechnology boom has seen Singapore jump on the bandwagon with great eagerness. The benefits are undeniable: well-paying jobs, a high profile for the nation in the international scene, and smoothly humming growth in the life-sciences and pharmaceutical sectors. Major players in the industry are drawn to the pre-fab infrastructure (e.g. Biopolis), and the stream of life-science majors who have just begun to graduate from our universities. Aside from simply inviting foreign investment (a well-worn and trusty technique for laying industrial foundations and developing local expertise that dates from the nation's pioneer industrial days), local innovation is encouraged in the universities and several research institutes.

The economic demands vs. educational idealism debate is an old one. Briefly stated, the central problem is this: how does one balance the need for students (being the workers of the future) to have a grounding in what is deemed to be economically important, with the need for students to be given a broad education that adequately exposes them to the diversity of knowledge and inspires them to learning? The pragmatic answer is usually more heavily weighted towards economic than pedagogical ideals, arguing that most students would not have a use for their ivory tower knowledge, and for them to survive in the world it is best to equip them with practical skills. A broad, humanistic education is seen as a preserve of the elite, who have ample time and opportunity to explore their intellectual curiosity. I am not attempting to replay the entire debate here, but merely to highlight the fact that this present situation can be viewed as a case in a general category.

The Benefits of Integrative Biology

Pragmatic educationists, hence, would want to know exactly why and how a broad background in biology, with precious time spent on such unprofitable fields as the anatomy of plants and the diversity of excretion systems for nitrogenous waste, would be beneficial to students in terms of their role as future workers in the life-science industries. This is the most cogent way to argue our case for restoring balance to biological education, because pleading to the integrative beauty of a holistic biology, while true in principle, does not highlight any immediate benefits. Educational policy in Singapore must be seen as a product of several influences, chief among them economic and social (aside from the pedagogical component). To convince the policymakers, we must speak with their terms, with their point of view in mind.

So how exactly is integrative biology a better approach compared to detailed study of proteins and genomes? Why should our students learn about the different kinds of fruits and the ecology of forest trees? How would that benefit them?

1. Broad biological knowledge helps in understanding specific biological problems
   
   Biology is a close-knit subject. A broad-based background will help students understand their chosen specialist field and lend insight to facts which would otherwise be accepted unblinkingly. For instance, the existence of protein 'families' with similar structures and sequences, such as the globin family, can be related to the principle of common descent in evolution. The reason why these families of related molecules exist can only be understood in the context of evolution, and naturally would lead to the appreciation that not only do related organisms share similar proteins, they also share similar traits, and morphological traits are partly a result of the proteins expressed by the genome of an organism, a consequence of the central dogma of molecular biology. Another example: the proteins actin and myosin are found in muscle. The different kinds of muscle: striated, smooth, and cardiac, have different fine structures and serve different functions in the body. Additionally, the forms of actin and myosin found in smooth muscle are different from that found in striated. The means by which muscle contraction is activated also differ. Knowledge of how proteins work in muscle is good knowledge to have, but somewhat sterile if one is ignorant of the different roles that different muscle types play in the body (voluntary vs involuntary contractions, their reasons and requirements, etc.).



2. A broad background helps us formulate interesting research questions
   
   Too narrow a focus on proteins and molecules alone would put blinders on a student's outlook. Biology is interesting because the problems of biology have multiple modes of solution (in addition to the proximate/ultimate dichotomy, one can also answer questions at multiple levels of organisation, or with consideration to physico-chemical factors, or in relation to the environment, etc.). For instance, plants often use chemical substances to deter the attacks of browsers and pests. If one could isolate the active principle then one could have a substance useful in pest control. But to discover that fact in the first place requires ecological research. Systematics and biodiversity then becomes important, because one needs to identify the plants and pests in order to breed and harvest the correct compounds. Identification, in turn, requires knowledge of basic anatomy and morphology. The isolation and origin of the compound, on the other hand, needs the expertise of a biochemist. A biological generalist would be at an advantage over a strict specialist because he or she would have had some exposure to these concepts before.
   
   The triumphs of developmental biology also rest on sound facts discovered by patient observation long before the present molecular revolution. Good fortune favoured the identification of Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism to study developmental processes, while convenient traits cemented that choice. Among those traits is the determinate development of the nematode worms, a fact established by the anatomists of the 19th century, working with little other than their dissecting tools and microscopes, along with detailed and meticulous observation. Much important empirical work (i.e. observing and recording facts) had been done by the embryologists of the classical era, in their descriptions of the modes and patterns of cell division in the embryo. These provided the factual foundation upon which present theoretical work lies. The point here is: choosing the right model organism required biological insight and appreciation of its general biology. To make other similarly fruitful propositions and come up with other innovative ideas likewise requires a broad mind with a broad base of facts to draw upon.


3. 
   
   The context of the molecule is the organism
   
   Among the topics that students will learn in the new syllabus are the proteins involved in the various kinds of cell junctions. An astute student might question why are there different kinds of cell junction in the first place. The answer lies in the different functions they play in the cell and in turn the different roles these various cells play in the organism. For instance, tight junctions are found where close adhesion of cells is required to prevent substances from crossing a sheet of tissue, such as in the gut. Plasmodesmata are found in plant cells, effectively making the cytoplasmic contents of all the cells continuous with each other. This has implications for cell-cell communication, water relations, transport of substances, and so on. Likewise, it would be pointless (or distinctly cruel) to teach the structure of immunoglobulins and their use in biotechnology without some discussion of the nature of the immune response, the carriage of immune system elements in the blood, and the unusual genetics of the immunoglobulin genes. Similarly, it is odd to teach in detail the means by which cells regulate their internal environment (cellular homeostasis) without reference to the homeostasis of organisms, from which the idea of homeostasis arose. Without the prior paradigm of 'a constant internal milieu' within an organism, science would have had difficulty formulating the analogous concept for cells.
   

Conclusion

Aside from the main arguments raised above, there are a few auxiliary points: our performance in international competitions will suffer if the syllabus changes much more in this direction, the strong focus on biotechnological and life-science aspects of biology does little to distinguish the A-level course from polytechnic courses in life science (one might argue that the polytechnics would do a better job, with more hands-on experiences and better qualified specialist lecturers), and that the syllabus also prepares students poorly for medical school (a popular choice among biology students) and hence places undue demands on medical school lecturers to teach basic concepts in an already packed schedule.

As biologists, we cannot patiently observe the erosion of our discipline like we observe the erosion of biodiversity -- that is a job for anthropologists. Instead, a concerted effort must be made to turn around the present state of affairs, to achieve a more balanced spread for future students of biology. Students with talent, aptitude, and an interest in biology sensu lato might be turned off by the 'new biology' on offer, hence wasting their potential. Furthermore, molecular biology is not the only field of biology that still has active research. Other fields are still lucrative, in particular forestry and agricultural sciences (which draw heavily on plant sciences), given our convenient position in the region. It is not prudent to put all our resources into a single endeavour. Molecular biologists who might greet the present situation with glee should be reminded of the arguments above, that a broad biological vision is necessary for developing new research programmes and innovations in their field. If new recruits consistently lack vision then they would be nothing more than an army of drudge workers with little originality. The breakthroughs that do count are usually those which span several specialist fields. Overspecialisation might end up working against the interests of molecular biology.

What can be done?

Policy changes take time to be fully implemented. In this nascent time, the policymakers would be in the process of cementing the details of the new curriculum, hence feedback from people that matter: students, teachers, and practising biologists, will matter and should be fed. In addition, efforts should be made to keep interest in biology, that is, real living biology, alive through grassroots efforts such as the young scientist schemes still offered for primary school children, field trips and volunteer opportunities in our nature areas, and biology societies in schools. At a higher level, competitions such as the Biology Olympiad will ensure that at the very least there will be a core (a hard-core) of biology students with a wide outlook on the field. Given our country's competitive nature it would be against its interests to let our performance in this area slip. Hopefully the balance will return to a more harmonious position and settle biology into place as an exciting and diverse field of study for our young scientists.

Testing

Testing, testing, one, two, three (yes I know I can count).