Basket.

After partaking so much of the milk of human kindness in Thailand, I was brought rudely back down to earth today by the completely disgraceful behaviour of one of our citizens, on the bus ride home.

Well, I was on the way home this evening, and it so happened that the bus was fairly crowded. No trouble, I found a space to stand. Soon enough, two seats were vacated. A woman in her fifties took one seat, and put down what she was carrying on the other, still holding it in her hand. I decided to take the other seat; it was vacant, after all, and I thought I'll correct some rather inconsiderate behaviour while at it.

Upon trying to do the above, the lady discouraged me with her hand, still holding whatever produced she had purchased. I soon found out the cause - she was reserving the seat for her friend, who moved over from another seat.

If it had all ended there I would have no problem. Inconsiderate it was, yes, but relatively mild. But the first-mentioned woman would not let the matter rest.

I had settled into the seat her friend vacated, and she began haranguing me in a loud voice and insisting that she had been right to "chope" the seat and that everyone could see it. I turned to stare at her, hoping to discourage her awful behaviour with a cold glare, but being so thick-headed she obviously failed to get it. The bitch just would not shut the fuck up, and instead stared back like she wanted to start a fight. Laughable, of course; a woman in her fifties challenging a (relatively) healthy twenty-year-old to fisticuffs? On account of her age, I simply turned back and ignored her. Of course, she still would not shut up.

I realised it was impossible for me to remain silent. What is more, she turned out to be a fare cheat, and her friend too. Just before they got off, I went up to her. The resulting exchange (all originally in Chinese):


Me: Auntie, don't think I was just spinelessly sitting there and letting you scold me. The fact is, I don't want to quarrel with you on account of your age.

(Cunting bitch says something unintelligible, trying to interrupt me but dismally failing)

Me: Auntie, I just don't know how, being so uncouth and uncultivated, you are going to properly educate your children.

Cunting bitch: That's my own business and none of yours!

Me: If you want to be so completely unreasonable, I have nothing to say.

Cunting bitch (having got off bus): You are the one who is uncultivated. Think I'm afraid of you? Come down and let us settle this!


Ok, perhaps the good English made it a little surreal, but I am certain you can imagine all that in our peculiar brand of Chinese.

I would have taken her up on her offer, but you understand, I am constrained by certain things, such as my good upbringing and education - things which this fucking whore obviously lack. She as good as challenged me to a fight, and had I been less well brought up, or had there been no consequences to it, I would have caved her fucking skull in on the pavement. It is an incredible insult to be a fellow citizen to a cuntrag like that.

What makes things worse is the palpable contrast against what I observed in Thailand, especially on that first lonely night in Sukothai. What the fuck is wrong with our country? The future, I see and hear, is growing up apathetic, self-centred and mercenary; their elders and supposed betters have been shown to be uncouth, uncultivated and every bit as selfish. Just think, that cuntwhore from hell is someone's mother or grandmother, and she is out there setting a shining example on courtesy for her offspring, isn't she? Where the hell can we be headed with such a populace?

Also I have had it with our older generation. They keep thinking they have fucking seen it all, eaten more salt than we have rice, etc. Their tiresome self-righteous moralising is really grating. What I want to say is, look here: you do not FUCKING KNOW EVERYTHING, and sometimes you KNOW NOTHING, so I will thank you to shut the fuck up once in a fucking bloody while so I can hear myself think. The young this, the young that; why don't you bloody take a good look at yourself in the mirror once in a while? Being old does not give you the right to be an asshole, and being young does not take away my right to tell it to you in your face. And you will do well to remember: I have as much right to that bus/MRT seat as you do. I give it up to you out of the kindness of my heart and my respect for your advanced years. I am not in any way obliged to do so, and a seat on public transport is NOT you fucking entitlement.

Thankfully, the older generation are fossils, leftovers from an era long over, and with less and less influence over the way things are run. The sooner most of them go, the better. We'll have a quieter society if nothing else.

On November 14th, it was announced that the Goods and Services Tax would go up to 7%, with a consumate decrease in the corporate tax. Just over a week later, headline news for the Straits Times was that civil servants would get larger year-end bonuses. Just a couple of days or so after that, today, the headline of the Straits Times reads "CIVIL SERVICE SALARIES LIKELY TO GO UP".

It seems that the government is going for broke. Just half a year after an election win in May, such eyebrow-raising news comes through with such impeccable timing, almost as if deliberately calculated to raise the ire of the lower-middle income grouping.

The reasons outlined for such essential measures? Singapore needs the extra money for economic and social development, including aiding, ironically, the lower-middle income group that will most feel the pinch of this projected 40% increase in the government's main source of indirect taxation. As for lowering the corporate tax rate, this is being done to maintain our economic competitiveness on a global level.

But just as the government aims to bring up revenue, it seems it is aiming to spend more as well - on civil service bonuses and salaries. How do these two aims square?

Apparently, the government believes that (to quote from the Straits Times) it "must keep its wages competitive to retain and recruit talent."

"Competitive"... "maintain our competitiveness..." It's not a new government line. Far from it - it's the same old tired excuse they have been using for years. Hey, if you want to oppress the people with unreasonable finincial burdens while showing them just how much inequity there can be in society, at least be a little creative with your snivelling excuses, how about that? It'll make the news a bit more entertaining to read if nothing else.

But anyway, let us examine the spuriousness of the government's claims.

Where taxation is concerned, the Singapore government has all along stressed the importance of indirect taxes (GST), while keeping direct taxes (eg income tax) relatively low. It is true that Singapore has one of the lowest income tax rates in the world, and what is it is based on the progressive tax system. The highest marginal rate is a mere 20% of taxable income, as compared to countries like the Netherlands (52%) or Sweden (32%, thereabouts). On paper it sounds impressive - but what one must consider is that Sweden is a welfare state, with cradle-to-grave benefits for citizens. Singapore does not even have a framework of a welfare state and only a weak semblance of a welfare system in general.

That's just putting into perspective the oft-trumpeted claim, technically true, that Singapore has one of the lowest income tax rates in the world.

And so Singapore concentrates on indirect taxation. But raises in the GST are a relatively recent phenomenon. Introduced in 1994, it stayed at 3% until January 1, 2003, when it went up to 4% and then January 1, 2004, when it went up to 5%. Now, a mere three years hence, it is slated to go up to 7%. Why this spate of increases in just four years, when the rate had stayed stable for nearly a decade from its inception?

I can only hypothesize. Perhaps the government realised what a bonanza they were missing out upon, especially as per capita consumption went up and up during the 1990s and in the wake of recovery from the disastrous 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Perhaps they are now belatedly trying to make up for a "lost decade" in tax revenues, knowing that they can push GST up and up and still proclaim to the world that our income tax rates are among the lowest on the planet.

Who knows? In any case it is obvious who this is going to hit the hardest, because GST affects virtually everything you buy, from daily necessities to the rarest luxuries. To add insult to injury, it would seem, the government sonorously proclaims that it is raising GST to help the very income group the increase is going to affect the most. Really, you can't get better at screwing people over than that. But the government is, unbelievably; at the same time as they announced the GST increase, they announced that the corporate tax rate was to go down.

The corporate tax rate, one can deduce from the very sound of it, is primarily a tax on the rich, on vast multinational corporations that come and invest here. By raising GST, a tax that affects everyone but particularly the lower-middle income grouping, and lowering coporate tax, a tax primarily paid by the wealthy, is the government not effectively robbing the poor to give to the rich?

To be sure, there is sound economic justification for the government's move. Singapore faces an uncertain economic future. With no hinterland, an ageing population and increasing competition from her ever-growing and developing neighbours, it is an increasing struggle for Singapore to remain relevant in the international economy. One way, indeed, is to lower corporate taxes, to make us more attractive to foreign investors.

Yet a move such as that smacks of desperation, and the situation is not desperate. Singapore has already managed to convert much of its economy from manufacturing to services, with 39% of the labour force involved in providing services as compared to 18% involved in manufacturing. With most of our neighbours still in the economic "takeoff" stage, reliant on manufacturing industries and even primary exports (oil, gas, et al) for growth, Singapore is already partly ahead. Indeed, we may laugh at the government's "hub" efforts (biomedical hub, financial hub etc), but it is a genuine attempt to play to our strengths and ensure our continued economic viability. In any case, we still have unique advantages over our neighbours - such as an excellent geographical position, a well-established and highly-regarded port (which competitors such as Johor's Port of Tanjung Pelepas have signally failed to equal), a highly-educated workforce (at least relative to our neighbours) and an extremely low rate of official corruption. Our competitors will take years if not decades to overcome these.

But back to GST, which is far more likely to personally affect you, me and all those around us. A raise may well not be completely unjustified, but a 40% raise borders on the ridiculous - and a 40% raise just two years after the previous increment is outrageous. Our reserves need filling, they say. That's complete nonsense, because Singapore has reserves of US$119 billion, or S$197 billion. It is an enormous sum, and it is added to every year because the government has consistently refused to run budget deficits. Here's a thought: why not, instead of running vast surpluses year after year, run a deficit instead to help out the lower-middle income grouping? Or perhaps dip into our reserves, if you don't want to do that. We have more than enough. If the government was really concerned for the welfare of our less well-off, that is what they would do, instead of black-humouredly making them pay for their own Progress Package.

Even such insults and injuries, it seems, were not sufficient. The government has to pour salt onto the wounds by announcing, within two days of each other, that civil servants would receive larger bonuses this year and that their salaries would be likely to go up. The justification is, again, competitiveness. Apparently the government is afraid that it will have trouble recruiting enough of the best and brightest to run Singapore. I think, there is little chance of that happening, and anyone who reads this would be able to attest to that. The hordes clamouring for various government scholarships every year - do you think there'll ever come a time when there won't be hordes clamouring for government scholarships? The civil service is attractive enough currently - stable job, good income, good chances of promotion so long as you don't fuck up badly, or don't let anyone find out if you do. I'll like it. In fact, I'm already in it. Why do we need to push up salaries and bonuses and turn an already money-faced society yet more mercenary? Why do we have to pile up the burden on those who can already barely afford it while those who can by a street get even more assurance that they can?

Resources are limited, and every government has faced the dilemma between economic viability and social welfare. It's an ongoing battle to balance the two, but it seems that the Singapore government has decided firmly to go for the former. "Let them eat cake", our leaders seem to be telling the people. But how long will the people be content to suffer imaginary cake?

I think we know the answer, sadly.

Well, I am back at last. Final reflections.

A rich haul of cheap (relatively, of course) goods from Thailand: Eight t-shirts, six for me and two for friends; a pair of sandals; a computer game; four books; two durian cakes; a coin purse and an array of trinkets.

Another rich, or rather priceless haul of experiences, including some extremely heartwarming ones - sadly, no more in Bangkok, but there is some good left in humanity after all, it seems.

All in all, I really enjoyed the trip and Thailand has indeed been nothing short of amazing. From peaceable, virtuous, historical, fucking-hard-to-get-to Sukhothai to loud, chaotic, teeming, surprisingly-modern Bangkok to still-grand Ayutthaya, I think we have seen a good number of this country's many sides. From hiking through Tekong-esque scrub in Tekong-esque weather to so truly, deeply spiritual temple visits to enjoying shopping malls vaster and more modern than anything our prideful country has to offer, we truly experienced a clash of the primitive and the modern.

The old world of ritual, centuries-old ruins staring down at us and winding, Byzantine alleys; versus the new modernity of a fast-growing, rapidly developing nation-state existing within and interacting with our 21st century.

It's been a holistic experience, overall. And I can declare myself for once to be truly satisfied and currently content with my lot in life.

Well, last night in Thailand. I'll be back tommorrow, and looking forward to catching up with things, good or bad, back home.

As for the journal, I have all but abandoned it; rendered irrelevant by the fast and cheap Internet access I'm currently getting. Personalised pen-and-paper purists might be appalled, but surely this is one sign that we are firmly within the digital age.

So, well, everyone, see you all about from tommorrow on. It's been a great holiday and a much-needed break, but we can't vacation from life forever.

Right... typing this from downtown Sukhothai. Just want to let everyone know that Roger, Elgin and me arrived safely and are having a ball of a time down here. Since I have time now and the Internet access here is really cheap... here are my journal entries relating our experiences so far.

DAY ONE

Somewhere in the sky
15/11/06, 11.50am SGT

Well, our trip is under way at last, after all the assorted scares, difficulties and frustrations. Normal though, all part of travel, all part of life. It is around two hours to Bangkok, and I've found that flying is no longer such an awful experience. I can even take the aircraft disinfectant smell, when it used to make me gag.

It is such a pity that Zihao cannot be with us. As so often happens, the practical course of action does not square with the desired, and in this case I am forced to admit that it was better for him, and for us, that he not come along. His health has to come as top priority.

I suppose that should be all for now. It has been a cramped, but uneventful flight. More, perhaps, when we get to Thailand.

Sukhothai
16/11/06, 12.50am local time

"Amazing" Thailand. Well, our first day has indeed been an amazing one - amazingly fortunate. It did not take long for us to discover our most elementary but potentially serious error: we had counted on landing at the wrong airport. Instead of Don Mueang, we touched down at Bangkok's spanking new but not quite completed international airport - fifty whole kilometres across the city.

A reasonably-priced taxi ride fixed the problem, but left us somewhat behind schedule. What it taught me, though, is that Thais have no time for basic traffic safety; changing lanes at will, overtaking fellow motorists whenever and wherever they feel like it - and I did not see a single motorcyclist wearing a helmet. Even the traffic policemen didn't. All this, they do at speeds in excess of 120 km/h. I laughed when I saw a road sign stating "60" as the speed limit because absolutely no one - not even th heaviest trucks - was following it. Our own taxi was going at twice that speed.

Soon enough (given such speeds, literally soon enough), we got to our destination, the bus terminal. And here came our first stroke of luck/sampling of legendary Thai hospitality. Our driver, after somehow believing that he could hypnotise us into paying him the outrageous sum of four thousand baht to send us to Sukhothai, turned incredibly helpful and helped us get tickets for the 3.30 coach there instead. Otherwise, I have no idea how we could have hurdled the language barrier.

Sometimes, having lived in Singapore all our lives, we just cannot perceive how large other countries can be. It takes us maybe an hour-and-a-half to get across Singapore island. Our coach trip from Bangkok to here took seven hours, and we felt every single minute.

Eventually, we arrived: at 11pm local time, dropped off in the middle of a deserted street. Prepared in the time-honoured SAF tradition to "bash" our way to somewhere to stay using only our wits and a compass, or sleep on the streets, we were saved from such abject destiny by yet another stroke of luck/extraordinary act of kindness. A middle-aged Thai woman actually approached us to ask where we were going, and got her husband to send us there in his pick-up. When we discovered on getting there that our guesthouse of choice was full, she actually then took the time together with her equally-obliging husband to help us source for one with vacancies. When we were on the point of giving up, and asked her to send us to the exorbitant Sukhothai Orchid, she dissuaded us and insisted on trying yet more guesthouses. Eventually we found one, reasonably comfortable and priced, and amazingly conveniently near the main bus terminal to boot. Without her help, I have no idea where and how we would have spent our first night in Thailand; ghostly wanderers in an unfamiliar land. Though she will not read this, we thank her from the very bottoms of our hearts and wish her well for now and always.

And so here we are now, settled for the time being. It is late and sleep beckons; this is certainly shaping up to be quite the holiday.


DAY TWO

Sukhothai
16/11/06, 4.30pm local time

Spent the entire day so far exploring historical Sukhothai, once capital of the eponymous kingdom. The modern town of Sukhothai is a typical rural small town, with its kindly folk, countless stray mongrels and rickety buses, but the splendour of the former capital is readily appreciable from the sheer number and scale of the ruins. Sukhothai, after all, was once a major regional power until the Khmers superseded it in the 14th century. It certainly shows - and I have plenty of excellent pictures. Maybe too many, because my camera is dangerously running low on battery.

Travel in Thailand, I have found, is actually pretty easy, at least on the local level. There will always be someone around who will approach you with an offer for a taxi or bus ride. Name a price, and you're off within minutes. They don't (always) try to shaft you, either. All in all, travel has been a rather pleasant experience.

We'll be leaving later, after the sun sets so that it is less hot, to look around modern Sukhothai. It ought to offer up a few delights itself.


For my travelmates' perspectives on our trip so far, and perhaps for more detailed accounts of our trials and tribulations to date, you may visit our travel blog.

Ah, the end of the year. A traditional time for reflection, for reviving old friendships and strengthening present ones, for get-togethers and for looking to the future.

Honestly, I wonder about 2007. I'll be a civilian again, of course, but what other new experiences will this new year bring? New hopes to be dashed, new obstacles to surmount, but new sweet memories to store away forevermore? Definitely all of those - but which will dominate?

I don't think I've had a good year since 2003. Obvously back then I felt the crunch of schoolwork, but I was to realise the very next year that it was actually nothing. My days were packed, but packed with things I actually enjoyed doing; I have so many warm memories from that year that come to mind every now and then. Ironically it didn't begin so well because I never quite got along with my OG - we simply lacked things to talk about. After a while we just stopped knowing each other.

Fortunately things looked up a lot after I met my class. Here at last was a bunch of people I could relate to, and everything fell into place (that feeling you get... is amazing. Pity it is so rare). Some of us went our own ways after the first 3 months, but that was inevitable. Life had to go on and it did, even as SARS struck Singapore and the workload became noticeably heavier. We enjoyed school because we enjoyed each other's company - even the Maths lectures were tolerable most of the time, and even Project Work didn't seem so bad in the end. Nor will I ever forget all those lunches at Ghim Moh and then McDonalds', and all the dinners at various barely-affordable (for me, then impoverished) spots around the island, although they left me scrabbling for cash most of the time.

It helped that I made the right CCA choices. Although every time I tell someone new my CCA, I feel their unimpressed vibes; academic clubs and musical groups never get the glory, after all. People have the perception that all we do is shuffle papers and scores about in air-conditioned rooms, while the uniformed groups drill in the blazing sun and the rugby players fight (at times literally) for school glory. That, of course, could not be further from the truth. Who organises Singapore's largest student-run event (whether it is still, I'm not sure. Back then it was)? It's not Rugby, or NCC. It is RJC HISSOC, and I am still proud that I was a part of it.

Of course, my fellow committee members were a brilliant bunch as well. From Tse Yang, with whom I once spent an entire SAF Day lunch break discoursing about history, to Aaron, always hardworking and generous, to Mark the technical saviour; we ran the club in those long afternoons-evenings-nights in SR4, usually only barely managing to put everything together, but having so much fun in the process. I'll never forget those days, and I'll remember as one of my few so-very-right decisions the choice I made to join the club and exco.

Following all that was, what else, the Countdown. Although I never really liked the infamous club (which I need not name), those cool nights and long bus rides to and fro were really the best times I ever had for quiet lonely reflection. At the end of the day I could look with somnolent satisfaction upon the event's success, too, as a job well done. All-in-all, an overall positive experience.

But what I look back upon most fondly was the spirit of the times. The idyllic mood, especially at the long, long end-of-year period. After exams and then Open House, there was little else for me to do, aside from weekly Countdown meetings. The days stretched before me, empty and full of promise, waiting for me to fill them with whatever I wished; whatever crazy whims and fancies to enter my mind. I went to school for Project Work, and stayed unnecessarily long, just wandering about, talking to whoever I happened to meet, looking around, contentedly bored. When I was home I spent long, long nights engaged in meaningful conversations with close friends. Whenever I felt like doing something else, I read, losing myself in worlds of the past and fascination of events that never were but might have been. Now and then I went out with a few good friends, creating sweet memories for the future. It was an idyllic time, and though the future was uncertain, it was promising.

I'll never recapture that spirit, I recognise. After three much more tortuous years, I have myself changed, hardened into a cynic with a lot more steely determination and a lot less time for frivolity. On the cusp of adulthood, university, the workforce and greater responsibility, the future does not anymore seem like a snowy-blank sheet, promising and ready for me to fill with whatever I so wish. There will be difficulties ahead, obstacles which I can only depend upon myself to cross, many various and myriad frustrations which I can only myself face. It is a different world, a crueller world.

I will still look back upon those days, however, days that seemed to stretch forever, rich with possibility. Remembering those times inevitably brings a smile to my face and a warm feeling in my heart, and sometimes, just that has to suffice.

Hope.

Certainly something all of us, without exception, possess in some fibre of our being, at some point in our existence; an object we bear even now. Ever thought about what it is, and what it means?

We are always hoping for something, aren't we? Hoping to be able to obtain something we covet, or perhaps hoping that someone close will come to no harm. Hoping for a bad situation to turn better, or for good days never to come to epilogue. Hoping that our relationships stand the test of time. Hoping to get the job we want, or hoping to pass/score well/improve on tests and examinations.

The list goes on and on. Hope is undying. When you think about it, our lives are endless cycles of hope. Let us hypothesize a certain situation, where we are hoping for success. It fails; we then hope it will not fail so abjectly. It fails abjectly; we then hope that in a future similar situation, history will not repeat itself. And when that future situation arrives, the cycle begins anew. The only thing that ever changes is what one hopes for.

We live eternal projections into futurity, endlessly imagining what is to come. An immortal cycle of beginnings and endings. Billions of consciences work in concert, living forever in hope, forming a cosmic dog chasing its own tail.

To truly lose hope, then, is impossible. To lose hope is to transcend mortality. To lose hope is to be able to feast with the gods - to become truly apathetic, beyond the petty concerns of mortal flesh, blood, mind and soul. It is a goal beyond reach for any of us.

Recognise then, our own mortality, our failings, idiosyncracies, quirks, deficiencies physical and mental. Recognise and learn to laugh at such - and perhaps this exquisitely painful existence will be slightly less so.

Suitably epic but less than historical, 300 succeeds on the most basic level - it tells an enduring tale brilliantly and is an excellent read.

To recap once more the storyline, it is 480BC and Persian Shahanshah Xerxes, master of the great Achaemenid Persian Empire, invades Greece with, to quote the graphic novel, "a force so vast it shakes the earth with its march". The fractious Greek city-states put on a semblance of unity to make a stand at the Hot Gates; the pass of Thermopylae. Led by Spartan king Leonidas and his 300-strong agema (hence the novel's title), the Greek force holds off the massive Persian host heroically for two days, until the hunchback traitor Ephialtes, stung by Leonidas' rejection of his request to join the army, betrays his countrymen. Leonidas sends off his allies and, outflanked and surrounded, fights to the death with his bodyguards. The memory of the battle lives on through the ages as the very definition of a last stand.

It's a simple tale of heroism; of men who chose to stand and fight against overwhelming odds. And Frank Miller wastes little time telling this tale. It's a straightforward story with no subplots, and that is refreshing. No romantic bullshit - all Leonidas' queen says to him as he marches off to certain death is the famous line "Spartan! Come back with your shield or on it." Spartans are brought up to be professional soldiers, and the message is that they have time for little else.

Dialogue-wise, the novel is littered with the laconic phrases that Spartans are so famous for. "Earth and water? You'll find plenty of both down there," Leonidas tells the doomed Persian emissary as he kicks him down a well. (Note: the Persians demanded earth and water as tokens of submission from Sparta.) The famous exchange of "Our arrows will blot out the sun!" "Then we will fight in the shade." is also within - and so, of course is, "Come and get them.", better known perhaps as "Molon Labe."; a paraphrase of Leonidas' response to Xerxes' demand that the Spartans lay down their weapons. But dialogue is not the centrepiece of this novel. Action is.

And action is something this novel has in spades. All the brutal, bloody action of an ancient battle, befitting a true clash of civilisations. As to be expected, there are graphic scenes of violence and gore aplenty - perhaps too many, but Miller has never been known to be a subtle author. His style is over-the-top - and this is reflected even more baldly in his artwork and the style and look of the novel in general.

Stylistically-wise, Miller takes a good number of liberties with history. Perhaps the biggest change is his depiction of Xerxes. From bearded oriental despot, Xerxes becomes lithe, muscular, Nubian smoothtalker - which looks and sounds better is not difficult to imagine, but it is going a bit too far. In addition, the Spartans are depicted as fighting without armour and wearing only their ubiquitous red cloaks; unrealistic, to say the least. But again, it looks good. It looks heroic. Their opposing counterparts, the Persian Immortals, are shown wearing fearsome but impractical full-faced iron masks and all-black clothing with silver armour - yet another radical departure from classical depictions. In addition, Xerxes sends elephants against the Greeks, when in reality he brought none to Greece. Nor do I think he would have taken the surely disastrous decision to use the unwiedly beasts on a narrow coastal mountain path. But once more, it looks good - and for once I can forgive that because it does look good; very, very good indeed.

And so Leonidas and his men fight to the last breath; the story then closes fittingly at Plataea, the final confrontation of that great Greco-Persian conflict of 480-479BC. History enthusiasts will know the significance - Plataea was where the Persians were finally defeated and annihilated; it was also the battle that saw the largest-ever deployment of Spartan hoplites. It was Leonidas' dream fulfilled - a victory for the Spartan nation that he was denied at Thermopylae by the ephors.

Subsequent Greek history might not have been so glorious - petty squabbling as the glow of victory lightened, followed by ruinous civil war interspersed with continual Persian meddling. But for one shining moment of unity in 480BC, Greek heroism blotted out all else, as few stood and died against many in defence of their homeland. Remebered, deservedly, not as defeat, but as heroic sacrifice. 2500 years on, Miller decided to bring to life their time-honoured tale, and he has succeeded brilliantly.

A lucky trip to Orchard yesternight - and what did I see waiting for me on the shelves of Kinokuniya but Frank Miller's 300. I had been looking for From Hell for years before it appeared - and it is my good fortune that 300 has been found this quickly. I snapped it up today; never been known for being indecisive.

I've been drinking in its lush colours and cavernous, panoramic pages since, as the time-honoured tale of the Spartans at Thermopylae unfolds yet one more time.

I just hope the movie gets here quick and that I won't have to sneak in to watch it.

Every day I can but look on as the callously inconsiderate perform their daily routine. Just today on the bus, two old men occupied two seats - and their bags, another two. Later, on the MRT, a squat Indian fellow barged his way into the train while yakking incomprehensibly on his handphone at an unnecessarily loud volume. As usual, the middle of the carriage was deserted and no one let commuters alight in peace at the station.

This, of course, is nothing compared to my absolutely infuriating encounter last Sunday. I had got out of a crowded lift to let two people in; the lift door then refused to close, probably overcrowded. After a short while someone had the temerity to tell me that he thought I was blocking the sensor. I knew, knowing Singaporeans, that if I didn't get off we would probably all be there until Judgement Day, so I shot a backwards glance of utter contempt and stepped out without a word. Jason followed, calling the lot still obstinately in the lift "barbarians", a richly-deserved title. Especially, of course, the two beneficiaries of my kindness, who in the truly gracious society our government has been hoping for for years would undoubtedly have offered to get off instead.

What is the use of having shining First World buildings and hosting shining First World events when our social attitudes are in the fucking gutter? It's just yet another bloody illusion. As if this island didn't have enough already.

The afternoon more than compensated for such unfortunate encounters, however. A relaxed, languid lunch with Winston at Sizzler's was followed by me chasing him around various shops as he looked for, inevitably, a friend's birthday present. I can't help but think how all my metrosexual friends are so alike. Shopping at the same places, picking out the same clothes, saying all the same things. It's amusing and cute at the same time.

It's been a good start to the weekend, and if this is a foretaste of things to come, I might just get myself a better view of life for a change.

I drank a most meaningful toast this week, and it was "To better days ahead". For the calendar turned another page, and it is now November. The end is nigh for 2006, and finally for my service term. Next week will be my final week in camp.

The year I had hoped would be an improvement has not been good to me. I've never felt more wretched on more occasions than this year, and the worst part is I'm hard-pressed to explain why. My problems seemed to bear down upon me all at once, all demanding solutions, none of which were either easy or pleasant.

But I've weathered the worst, and I hope there is no more to come. To better days ahead, indeed.