THE STORY SO FAR: There is a strong attraction flaring between Cheloi Sie and her driver, Garza Yinalña . But after their first heated kiss, Garza flees, aghast at how she has succumbed to her passion for her superior officer. Besides, it wasn’t in her mission plan to find Cheloi a sympathetic character; not the person known as the Butcher of Sab-Iqur.

In Chapter Five of War Games, we find out a little more of Cheloi’s history. And, of course, while Garza may have escaped the Colonel once before, as her driver and aide, it’s inevitable that they talk alone again. After that first embrace, who will now say what to whom?

FAVOURITE CHAPTER QUOTES:

Cheloi: “There isn’t a military structure anywhere in the universe that’s airtight. They leak news, gossip and classified orders the way an antique spacesuit leaks atmosphere.”

Cheloi & Copan:
She looked at Copan. “You’re trying to distract me, aren’t you? Getting me to think of someone else besides Rumis.”
“Is it working?”
“Yes.”
“Then, in that case, yes. I am trying to distract you.”
His face was serious, but his eyes twinkled.

Garza: Garza cleared her throat. In one hand she held the Colonel’s uniform, recently laundered. In the other, she held the late afternoon’s despatches. In both, she held her nervously beating heart.

I was waiting on confirmation of this, because there’s nothing worse than people ranting on about a dead author when s/he isn’t. But it appears that Robert Asprin is dead.

Asprin wrote the Myth (comedy fantasy) series of books, as well as the Phule (comedy military space opera, if you can believe it) series, and began the Myth books well before Terry Pratchett burst onto the scene. I think I’ve got them all. Asprin also wrote the shiniest, best EVER parody of EE ‘Doc’ Smith. I get a smile on my face even when thinking about it, and I last read that piece over a decade ago.

With his wife, he started up the Thieves’ World universe, in which various writers concoct stories within the universe. I’ll admit, I wasn’t a huge fan and much preferred his comedy work, but it was a new idea for its time and deserves recognition as such.

RIP Robert Asprin. You’ll be sorely missed.

Danger, Will Robinson! Heavy topic ahead!

No resolutions in this blog … I’m just throwing it out there.

I was about to coin a particular term — and felt pretty proud of myself for thinking of it — when I searched and found out that it’s used quite widely already, albeit in a completely different context. Allow me to explain.

A few months ago, I read Mitt Romney’s concession speech. And part of it went as follows:

We face economic competition unlike anything we have ever known before. China and Asia are emerging from centuries of poverty. Their people are plentiful, innovative, and ambitious. If we do not change course, Asia or China will pass us by as the economic superpower…

Okay, let’s forgive the “centuries of poverty” crack and the fact that China is, according to Mitt, not part of Asia, and move on to the rest of the quote. I mean, if Mitt Romney mentioned it, it must have occurred to a couple of other people as well, right?

Am I happy that Asia is emerging as a long-term super-bloc? Yes, I am. Obviously, because I’m Asian myself, it’s nice to see; I don’t make any bones about that. I also think it’ll be great to have a bit of a multi-geographic mash-up going on in the world … think of all the new foods we can eat. Haddock briyani in Selfoss? Bring it on! (Not sure about hakarl in Shanghai … though you never know!) Of course, I doubt all this will occur fully in my lifetime, but I consider it inevitable.

In tandem with the rise in these previously secondary countries is something in the apparently waning primary countries that not many people seem to be commenting about, and that’s the shrinking of the middle class. I notice this particularly in the English-speaking Western countries because, obviously, that’s the news I read. Prices are going up, affordability is going down, and the middle class is getting squeezed by a debt trap they didn’t see coming, exacerbated by the corporate tsunami of offshoring, and governments not giving a fig. These factors combine to drive down salaries — a desperate, mortgage-laden supply of workers outstripping demand in Western countries, coupled with lowball bids from highly-skilled workers in emerging, offshore markets. So that’s the first point of consideration.

If this was a level playing field, then, we would see that — indeed — Mitt baby is right, and the outcome from all this knowledge movement would be the Dawn of the High-Tech Asian Bloc Civilisations (cue scary music) and yellow and brown skins sweeping the world in an orgy of economic dominance. And, I already see that kind of stuff in the local bookshops: row upon row of glossy books with fantastic architectural edifices and glittering cranes on the covers, telling me that Asia, or one of its components, is going to be the next leader in Innovation/Creativity/Supersonic Pizza Delivery.

Not so fast, Messrs. Lee, Hitaro and Kumar. We’re forgetting about one thing — cultural subservience. Now, that term is normally used to describe the alleged kowtowing of Western civilisation to the bearded Muslim hordes (a malignant offshoot of Huntington Madness (copyright 2007, KS Augustin)), but I’d like to strip all such connotations from it and take it back to basics. In this blog, I define “cultural subservience” as merely the subservience of one type of culture (ethnic or otherwise) to another. No sub-texts. Okay?

So, we have the gutting of the middle-class in the West, the rise of the knowledge nation in the East (both of which should naturally lead to Asia’s economic dominance) … and Kaz’s definition of cultural subservience. How does it all fit? All you need to complete the line between all these points is one more tidbit: when looking for their first job in south-east Asia, Asian students with degrees from Western countries get about 20% more than Asian students with degrees from Asian countries. Why that should be, when the general educational standard of students in Asia is higher than that of their peers in Western English-speaking countries, is beyond me. (No, I’m not being elitist, just go check the various UN stats; or the TIMSS (for maths & science) tables here and here, for example.) This unamibiguous measure of ability, however, is tempered by cultural subservience.

Cultural subservience is so visceral, that we have to fight hard and consciously (and sometimes still lose) against it. Cultural subservience tells me that a female astronaut is not as good as a male astronaut, for example (and especially if you’re Charlotte Allen! * snerk *), and that an Asian engineer is not as good as a Caucasian. You could argue that what I’m describing is actually cultural bias, but I’m using the term “subservience” (which includes bias) deliberately for a reason that will become obvious soon.

All regional high-tech crowing to one side, what I see in south-east Asia (’cos that’s where I am) is another manifestation of cultural subservience. Chen must be the superior job candidate (and get a better starting salary) because (a) well, he’s male, duh! (you won’t get any argument from me that Asia is incredibly, diabolically, sexist), and (b) he studied in Dublin, Ireland, say.

Wang, on the other hand, only graduated from a Singapore university and is a woman, thus she must not be as smart. QED She will get 20% less than Chen because of the origin of her degree, and get penalised another 20-30% on top of that because she’s female.

Even worse, British-born Andrew from London will then saunter along on a corporate relocation package and trump both smirking Chen from Ang Mo Kio (via Dublin University) and unfortunate Wang from Bukit Batok (via National University of Singapore) in salary, just because he’s an orang putih (white man) with some corporate backing.

SO IF WE HAVE that cultural subservience of Asians to Westerners (and everybody likes to be coy and pretend it doesn’t exist, but it does),

PLUS the cultural subservience of the darker-skinned Asians to the lighter-skinned Asians (even within the same ethnic group),

PLUS the cultural subservience of women to men,

then — despite the money and skills flowing into the continent — how can Asia truly break free and establish itself as an economic (and, by corollary, cultural) hegemon in its own right? Well, it can’t, can it? Not while it’s openly boastful and yet secretly shamed by its own pigmented and particularly gendered brain power. I have no easy answers for this. I wonder if Asia will ever manage to rationalise itself out of this philosophical, reality-based cul-de-sac. And I’m prepared for the fact that the answer may not even come in my lifetime. But it’s something that must happen if Asia is to succeed.

ADDITIONAL: Even in Western countries, women earn approximately 75% of a man’s salary for equivalent work across the board. There are stats around to analyse if you go searching. In Asian countries, this is compounded by the Western education fallacy. Thus, a female Asian graduate from a local university will probably earn only 50% of a male Asian graduate from a Western university for the exact same position.

Let me speak plainly. Asians are, as a group, currently and overwhelmingly too short-sighted, bigoted and chauvinistic (yep, I’m calling you out, Messrs. Lee, Hitaro and Kumar) to see beyond these significant points of discrimination. And as long as we remain wilfully blind, we deserve to fail.

Wow, has it been another week already? Chapter Four of War Games is now up at my site.

THE STORY SO FAR: For the first time since Garza was assigned as Cheloi’s driver, they are to have dinner together. But there are other events to ponder in between the blazing attraction between the two women, such as the recent military exercise that showed Cheloi a side of Garza that was unexpected. As for Garza, all is not as it appears either.

Today also marks the debut release of Touch of Fire, written by my very good friend, Maria. Here’s the cover:

Isn’t it gorgeous? Follow the link to the Samhain page about Maria’s book and go buy it!

I was reading about the Olympic torch as it traverses its way across the world. It appears that Coca-Cola is the major sponsor of the Olympic torch relay and that it “donated” US100 million for the sponsorship. I put that word in quotes because there really is no such thing as selfless corporate altruism. Companies always expect some larger revenue bounce from these acts. In fact, I also think there really is no such thing as selfless personal altruism. There is always a pay-off, even in terms of feeling good afterwards. Now that I have established my cynicism credentials, I’ll move on.

We have all heard about the situation in China. And people are picketing Coca-Cola to say that corporate sponsorship of such a significant Olympic event, bearing in mind certain human rights abuses, is unconscionable. In fact, this is not the first time that Coca-Cola (a company founded in the United States) has been associated with a controversial Olympics, because it was also a major sponsor of the 1936 Olympics, held in Berlin. That’s right. Yet another American company and Nazi Germany (*). There’s enough material around on the topic to satisfy even the most curious among you. Just search on 1936, olympics, coca-cola.

Can I share one insight with you, from climbing up and tumbling down a number of corporate ladders over the decades? Companies are totalitarian. The guy at the top says something, and everyone below scurries to do his bidding, regardless of whether it makes any sense. This is not the mark of a democracy. This is how totalitarianism operates. You have some outlet for frustration through suggestion boxes, rewards for performance, cutesy competitions to win iPods, and employee bulletin boards, but that’s just whitewash. The truth of the matter is, corporations are strictly hierarchical entities that get on better with other strictly hierarchical entities … such as Nazi Germany or China. It’s like friends meeting up. Each knows, and appreciates, how the other thinks and operates. With a handful of top decision-makers in one body only needing to talk to a handful of top decision-makers in another body (without all of that democracy, rights of citizens, we-the-people nonsense), it makes communication between them easy, efficient and effective. It’s a win-win.

With all this mind, I really don’t get why the protests are happening. The pairing of Coca-Cola and China all sounds completely natural to me.

(*) Because you already know about the Nazi regime and IBM and the Ford motor company, don’t you?

POSTSCRIPT: In case anyone comes up with the observation that most companies are, in fact, at the mercy of their shareholders and thus do not have the kind of tyrannical iron grip I’m suggesting, may I suggest that you read the Annual Reports of several public companies? If you flick to the back and start reading the list of majority shareholders, you’ll find that companies are ruled by … other companies. (Mostly banks and various funds.) The cases of a group (or even one, in the case of Carl Icahn) of concerned shareholders rallying behind one cause to change company policy are few and far between.

I haven’t done one of these grab bags for a long while, so here’s what tickled my fancy this past week.

Firstly, I won second prize at agent Jenny Rappaport’s blog, celebrating the second anniversary of Lit Soup. The idea was to come up with an opening paragraph containing the following words: kerfuffle, whit, lenticular, wimple, and flabbergasted. You can read the three winning entries here. I gets books! And outside the United States, too! Thanks Ms Rappaport. Ah, a lovely start to the day.

Cracked magazine has the top 7 conspiracies that actually happened. It may be a reflection of my general knowledge / conspiracy theory-ness / political breadth / fund of questionable facts that I already know all of them, and assumed other people did too.

This YouTube offering on Hillary Clinton (beware, there’s lots of written profanity), titled “Hillary’s Downfall” is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while.

And I wonder what Romancelandia is going to make of the latest research into male and female orgasms that’s currently published in Scientific American (via Boing Boing)? Essentially, neuroscientist Gert Holstege, said that (last sentence of page 3, if you’re reading the article): “At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings.” Uh-huh. Climaxing robots. T’riffic.

Have a good weekend, all.

Shamelessly self-promotional, I know, but just wanted to let you know that Chapter Three of my free serialised novel, War Games, is up on my site.

Ahem, for anyone who’s interested …

THE STORY SO FAR: Senior Colonel Cheloi Sie is the cool, disciplined commander of Territory Nineteen, a strategic area of land that’s being held by the Perlim Empire in its bid to crush the rebels on its satellite planet of Menon IV. Her fiercest ally is her adjutant, Major Rumis Swonnessy, and her deadliest enemy is her second-in-command, Sub-Colonel Koul Grakal-Ski.

Two months after Cheloi’s driver/aide is killed in an apparent rebel attack, a replacement is found, but all it does is increase Cheloi’s suspicions, because her new driver is attractive and female … and Koul found her. Is she really who she says she is? Is she really who Koul says she is? Despite her reservations, Cheloi finds herself attracted to her aide. As is her adjutant, Rumis.

Read Chapter Three for a twist in the tale…

You remember how I described War Games as my “platypus” of fiction, because it seems to be neither one thing nor the other? Well, Good Morning Silicon Valley (of all places) had a lovely little piece on platypus research a week ago. I can’t improve on John Murrell’s always scintillating prose, so here it is, courtesy of GMSV:

The platypus (in this case named Glennie) has 18,500 genes, 82 percent of which it shares with the human, mouse, dog, opossum and chicken. The rest form a record of evolution working to sort out the differences between reptiles and mammals some 160 million years ago. From the reptile side, it has genes for laying eggs and for making the snake venom it stores in its legs. On the mammalian side, it has genes for antibacterial proteins and lactation (though it didn’t get the code for nipples; Nature does love her little jokes). And instead of having just two chromosomes involved in sex determination (like our X and Y), it has 10, and the researchers aren’t sure what the heck to make of that. In scientific terms, said Richard Wilson, director of the genome center at Washington University in St. Louis, all of this makes it ‘a wacky organism.’ ‘There is nothing quite as enigmatic as a platypus,’ said Richard Gibbs, who directs the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. ‘You have got these reptilian repeat patterns and these more recently evolved milk genes and independent evolution of the venom. It all points to how idiosyncratic evolution is.’

For the originating articles go here (full article is not free) and here. If you’re wondering how a lactating animal can feed its young without nipples (and you are, aren’t you?), be aware that the milk oozes from patches of skin on the mother’s belly. No issues with “latching” there!

I’m proud to associate War Games with such a “wacky” specimen of Earth biology.

Yes, it’s that time again! The first of two scheduled monthly podcasts at Radio Free Bliss. And this time, it’s Carol Lynne at the mic.

I have to say, Carol was a bit of a surprise. She is so down-to-earth and such a reasonable person to talk to. She describes herself as “simple”, but I prefer “uncomplicated” or “unaffected”. Maybe this is my fault because, in my mind, I was expecting a much more flamboyant character but, regardless of my initial assumptions, her passion for what she writes, and her love for her home-state of Kansas, shine through.

Please do go over to the Radio Free Bliss site and have a listen to the interview. Thanks for sharing your time with me, Carol.

There’s a small resort nestled in the curve of a sandy bay. We’re talking sandy beaches, palm trees, and tropical weather. It has a supermarket, cinema, bowling alley, some fast-food joints, a golf course and, of course, the obligatory souvenir shop. It’s a bit exclusive, but — and, let’s face it, you normally never see this word in conjunction with “exclusive” — cheap. How cheap? From what I’ve read, US$42 (SG$58 / EUR28) will rent you a self-contained apartment for the night. We’re talking several bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, and air-conditioning. It’s not in Hawaii. In fact, it’s surprisingly close to the US mainland. Interested?

The name of the resort is the “Taliban Towers”. And it’s situated in the sun-drenched curve of Guantanamo Bay. The Guantanamo Bay concentration detention camp is part of the US Navy base at the southern end of the bay, so I suppose this little pearl of holiday merry-making must be further north. If you were one of the 3,000 construction workers involved, or one of the 1.5 million servicemen and servicewomen within the US military, you can travel to Taliban Towers for a holiday with your family.

The t-shirts you can buy at the souvenir shop have slogans such as:

• The Taliban Towers at Guantanamo Bay, the Caribbean’s Newest 5-star Resort
• Greetings from paradise GTMO resort and spa fun in the Cuban sun
• The proud protectors of freedom

You can get a mug with the slogan “Honor Bound To Defend Freedom”. Here’s a selection of the souvenirs:

I understand that service personnel are humans. I understand that they need time to unwind. But I really wonder at the mentality that enables its soldiers to, not only frolic with their families, near this:

but then also emphasises it by allowing the production of tacky souvenirs with slogans of questionable taste. And by “mentality”, I’m not talking about the soldiers’ mentality, but the mentality of the senior military personnel who made the decision to allow such a thing in the first place.

The full article on this “resort” is here.

As a civilian, I am repulsed by everything Guantanamo Bay represents, and the thought that there may be families swimming in the surf, while people — against whom no charges have been laid for 6 years — are force-fed food through unlubricated and dirty plastic pipes shoved down their throats, a couple of hundred metres away, is enough to make me ill.

As someone with passing familiarity with the military, I am also repulsed by the kind of screwing-over being inflicted on the soldiers, and their families. The handling of prisoners is a very serious matter. There are rules and processes governing this kind of thing. You do not trivialise it (especially if you’re supposedly dealing with “the worst of the worst”) by producing ghoulish dust-collectors for some young child, or non-combat adult, to take home.

Unless…. Unless you don’t agree that War is a nasty business. Unless you want to demean a particular section of the human population and present them as sub-human, and thus not worthy of consideration. If you wanted to, say, start brainwashing the next generation about the superiority of your own country and citizens over everyone else in the world, then I think “Taliban Towers” is an excellent way to do it.

Personally, I don’t think the genius who okayed this decision was really that smart. I can easily imagine a number of senior officers sitting around, saying, “Hey, we could have a place for the soldiers to relax. Y’know, bring their families. Enjoy a little downtime.” And someone else suggesting flippantly, “We can have souvenirs.” The entire room erupts in laughter. “Freakin’ souvenirs! Why not?” And then the next two hours are spent brainstorming the most atrocious strings of words you can put on little dolphins, keychains and t-shirts.

The problem is, what may have started as a joke can easily turn into psychological manipulation. How do you explain the bright and shiny holiday items next to the barbed wire and shuffling, brown-skinned men? Hell, there is even barbed wire on the holiday items themselves, so it’s not like you can run away from it.

What other inference is there but that the brown-skinned men are inferior to you — cowed and beaten. They don’t “deserve” better treatment. They don’t “deserve” any vacation time at the bowling alley or catching “Iron Man” at the cinema. None of these men — lack of charges withstanding — “deserve” to be free. These spouses and children will not only be taking back photos from their holidays at Guantanamo Bay, but also a moral dilemma that they will have to rationalise one way or another. As a student of history, I know which way these rationalisations tend to sort out. And it’s Not Good.

For the kind of holiday shots you can expect from the resort, go here (ironically courtesy of a United States Army officer). And here’s the accompanying article.

I had my name day recently. As a family, we’re always on the lookout for celebratory days of one sort or another. It became a bit of a running joke at work, where my co-workers would always ask what we were celebrating that week. My reasoning was that, for the price of one $2,000 plasma TV, I could afford to buy cakes and have a celebration at home or picnic outside once every two weeks for a year and a half.

So, anyway, when the time came to decide how the family should celebrate my name day, I didn’t hesitate. In this part of the world, there is no substitute. High tea.

I adore high teas, and have missed them dreadfully as I’ve travelled away from south-east Asia. It’s an Asian twist on the English afternoon tea, with an entire buffet laid out across a range of cuisines, from savoury to sweet. The Rose Veranda is a restaurant at The Shangri-La Hotel that holds a daily high tea, with two afternoon sittings on weekends. The ambience is lovely, with comfortable armchairs, low tables and full-length glass windows looking out on, er, well, other buildings mostly. This is high-density Singapore after all.

Foodwise, there were curries (mutton, vegetable, Thai fish, chicken), briyani rice, a variety of sandwiches, curry laksa with noodles, Thai salads, western salads, Indonesian stuffed hors d’oeuvres, fresh spring rolls, sushi and salmon sashimi, fresh bread rolls, a variety of cheeses, baked potatoes, crab cakes, quiche, and a small carvery station. For dessert, we could have strawberries and marshmallows in a chocolate fondue, handmade chocolates, cookies, a couple of cheesecakes, chocolate truffle cake, bread & butter pudding with custard, filled crepes, tiramisu, scones, vodka jellies with redcurrants, and fruit tarts, as well as a couple of other choices I forget.

The idea is that you pays your money and takes your choice. For 6 hours (weekdays) / 3 hours (weekends) you fit in as much to’ing and fro’ing as you can, accompanied by a teapot of one of 100 types of tea available. It is absolutely decadent and entirely irresistible. It’s also not cheap. We got barely any change from SG$200 (US$150 / EUR95), but I figured it this way. If J and I had decided to treat ourselves to a top-flight dinner for two somewhere, we wouldn’t have been able to get away without dropping around SG$150. For only $50 more, we had a family event for three adults and two children that the kids (and J’s mum) really loved and will remember.

Because I’m such a nitpicker, I have to admit that the High Tea wasn’t perfect. The service slacked off after the first hour. (We couldn’t get a refill of our water glasses for love nor money. Later on, I read on a board that the Shangri-La was supposed to offer free-flow tea, but that wasn’t evident either.) The delicious looking chicken from the carvery was seasoned heavily with five spice powder which, while loved by Chinese, tasted more like medicine to all of us at the table. A couple of chicken choices would have gone down better. Some of the food took too long to be replenished. When the delectable Brie and smooth blue-vein was finished from the cheese platter, they were replaced by a substandard cheddar type. The quiche was tasteless. The bloodline was left on the salmon sashimi, instead of being trimmed away. The price of ‘extras’ was breathtakingly extortionate. (SG$11 for an orange juice?!!) And the idea of having hot dessert plates to hold things like chilled cheesecake and handmade chocolates was pretty stupid.

We left before the end of the session and took a walk around the hotel before waddling home. The hotel itself is very opulent and the food there is good (this is my second visit to two different restaurants at the Shangri-La), but there are unmistakable signs of tiredness in the frayed furniture, and the clumsy way many fittings have been installed. Away from the main, and impressive, foyer, the air is musty, indicating carpets that are well past their use-by date.

High Tea at the Rose Veranda, Shangri-La Hotel Singapore: 7 out of 10.