Basket.

Every time I want to make a post, I have a thousand thoughts that never add up to anything. Various phrases sound nice, but not linked together; what would be the main point? Somehow I still think any piece of writing at all needs one, although I've been forcing myself to think that's not the case.

Anyway, recent events have forced me to consider the unpredictability of it all. As yet another of the first-generation independence Old Guard passes from the mortal realm, the newspapers carry the story of a 13-year-old boy who was fine one day and condemned to perhaps never walk or talk properly again the very next. Just fine, when absolutely without warning a blood vessel bursts in his brain. It could happen to me. It could happen to you.

Not that I'm afraid. I'm extremely used to unpredictability and I specialise in nasty surprises. But it just makes me wonder. Wonder, what is the point? Of trying to stay healthy? Even if you try your best you have little more than an arbitrary chance, it seems. It looks as if it is Fate that decides whether you live hale and hearty until you're 90, or suffer something similar to a stroke when you are 13 and lose your basic faculties. Or you could be in amazing physical condition and one day just fail to look both ways enough times when crossing the street...

Or be flattened by a drunk driver even if you do.

There are so many ways to die, and we are supposed to believe there is a healthy way to live?

My family returned from England this past week, bearing an unbelievable range of goodies, chief among which were graphic novel heavyweights Maus and Watchmen, a work on the fall of the Roman Empire which looks very good indeed, one of Erik Durschmied's newer books telling the tales of our past century's forgotten "history-makers" (from the German Feldwebel who took Fort Douamont all by himself to physicist Louis Slotin - the inspiration for Alan Moore's Dr Manhattan - why? Look it up.) and an excellent copy of Paul Kennedy's sweeping The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, for future re-reading.

Speaking of which, Watchmen is still amazing the third time through. In fact, it seems to get better every time I read it, and that has to be the hallmark of an amazing work. Suffice to say that if you think our present universe is a shithole, the Watchmen universe is even more of one; it's a world where even the omnipotent are vulnerable.

To reveal more would be to move into spoiler territory, so let's stop there. But if you can ever get your hands on it, read this book. It's nothing short of brilliant.

Unfortunately, From Hell was not to be found, except for a special copy of something on Amazon that was going for something like a hundred British pounds. A quite faintly ridiculous price, even for such a great work. But I would love to read it again, because I always miss plenty of stuff when I read something the first time around.

From Hell, of course, got made into a film. So did V for Vendetta and a Watchmen is coming up. Graphic novel-to-movie adaptations never ever do justice to the original work. Not that I expect them to, because it is astonishingly difficult. How, for instance, is even the most talented filmmaker to replicate Dr William Gull's meandering, menacing journey around London with his coachman Netley? Or capture Tales of the Black Freighter in a movie? It's not possible. But that's no excuse for turning V for Vendetta into a straight fight between good and evil, and ending it with a peaceful velvet revolution. From Hell did a better job, with Johnny Depp convincing as the drug-addled Inspector Abberline; a performance so good it can be forgiven for being a liberty taken with the text. However, the ending was just as poor, and if you are ever going to watch it, this is a spoiler: Mary Kelly doesn't die. Instead, some random French girl sleeps in her bed and gets carved up by Dr William Gull. Kelly lives out her life in a peaceful country cottage surrounded by children.

What is it with happy endings, really? I just wonder how they are going to change Watchmen.

I have to find some way to inventory my ever-growing book collection. A rough list counts over forty, but I believe the real number to be higher. The magnitude of my book-buying only dawned on me recently when an acquaintance mentioned that some collection of his (I forget what) was probably over a thousand dollars in value. I expressed surprise, but he countered that I can spend fifty dollars on a book. I had no answer, and the monetary value of my book collection is probably in the high hundreds or more.

People get honestly surprised I can spend thirty, fifty dollars on a book, but in the same way I can't see how they can spend a similar amount on clothes. All I shop for are books, and I don't even have space to organise them. I just somehow know where they all are. I think.

Anyway, first week in new... scratch that, additional appointment, and it seems that everyone is looking for me, all at the same time, swarming all over my office like angry ants out of a nest, pestering for this and that, demanding this and that and of course failing to see the lack of logic so prevalent. Why do so many people go mad these days? Everyone's got depression, everyone's got some stress-related disorder and everyone is permanently on edge. Those who get highlighted are simply they who fail in self-preservation.

And so in between teaching yet another new batch of officers the various... nuances of duty, in between scurrying to answer queries and note down details on two different computers, in between trying to please those who need pleasing and snapping at those who don't deserve it, in between cleaning, washing and ironing, I find that life is all about being able to take care of yourself.

Been ages since I took one of these fancy online quizzes... and I have to agree with the conclusion reached, because some of the things I do, I find odd myself. But the voices...

"Behold the folly of the Persian, who forsook such splendour to plunder such poverty." -Spartan commander Pausanias, viewing the opulent tent of Persian general Mardonius after the Battle of Plataea, 479BC.

A quote reminiscent of the present situation, as our public transport operators, despite hundreds of millions in profits every year, seek to further loot the pockets of the poor. It is nothing short of shameful, bare-faced, criminal greed, in my opinion every bit as scandalous as the NKF revelations - and condoned by the government in the form of the PTC, which seems to think that protecting consumers means ensuring the raise in fare prices is not too great. As opposed to, uh, vetoing any raise at all?

First-class prices for first-class service, they say. That's ridiculous, because as I have already pointed out, the service is nowhere near first-class. Here's a thought: why don't you just make the fucking buses run on schedule instead of squandering all the money on luxuries like, say it with me, "the world's first pilotless underground heavy rail system" (aka the North-East Line). Or on TV sets for every bus. Well, at least make them show some decent programs. But no, we have none of that and I don't see it coming any time soon. The only thing that ever seems to be coming soon and actually arrive is fare increases. It is unjustifiable. This lust for money, the money of the poor, is inexcusable.

There, of course, is not much the lot of us can do, but watch and fume as corporate fatcats slaver over the money they have so unfairly snatched for ordinary, hardworking citizens. Just one more demonstration, I suppose, of how important the workers who built present-day, prosperous Singapore with their own bare hands are in the eyes of the powers that be.