Persistent Visions

A comic my colleague sent me:

Peer Review

A year back, a group of ang moh experimentalists indirectly accused me of not only using their coffee beans without contributing to the group coffee fund, but even of stealing money from the bin used to hold the group coffee fund. I suppose I shouldn’t feel surprised because everyone (at least every ang moh) knows that if there’s a thief it must be a yellow-skinned person. Anyway, the irony is that I’ve had tons of my things stolen from the pantry. I still don’t know who took the things. Finally, I decided that the notion of providing soap/cleaning pads/utensils in the pantry for common usage was a doomed idea. The problem is that it is not enough for one side to share said items — it is also needed that the other side do not simply make off with the items. I’m not even sure why someone would not spend 50 cents to buy their own spoon.

Recently something funny happened. Looks like when people say they are “borrowing” something when they make off with the item, they really mean it.

I had bought a knife to use for fruits and ginger pieces (used to make tea). It’s a nice knife because it came with a plastic cover for the edge. I put the knife in the kitchen, and after a few weeks, it disappeared. This was last year. Fortunately it was one of those cheap knives from a parallel import stall.

The knife has suddenly reappeared.

Well, I thought, that’s nice of that person…to finally return the knife. I picked it up and took it into my office. I wasn’t going to leave the knife out there to be kidnapped again. After a few days, I decided to cut some ginger with that knife rather than with the new one I got. It was then that I realised why the knife had been returned.

The knife is now completely blunt, and useless as a knife. It has certainly seen a lot of usage, wherever it has been.

For some reason, the whole idea was completely hilarious. Perhaps the correct reaction should be anger, but I started to laugh. Someone had stolen a knife, used it until it was blunt, then returned. Perhaps I should sharpen the blunt knife and put it back in the pantry for them to collect?

My colleague said, “what surprises me isn’t that such a thing happened. What surprises me is that such a thing happened here.”

I replied, “Because it happened here, that’s why it’s funny.”

I was walking home around 10pm when I noticed that there was a couple across the carpark doing something strange. No, get your mind out of the gutters — they looked like they were fighting. The guy was dragging and pushing the girl around. Was he hitting her? Not so sure.

Whoa, what’s this, I thought. I stopped and looked at the two of them. I wasn’t sure if they were just playing around or whether the guy was being violent. Just then, a woman passed by. Chinese, in her 30s, well-dressed and in high-heels. I tapped her on the shoulder and pointed at the couple.

Look at those two, is he attacking that girl, I asked, maybe we should go over and check it out.

No we shouldn’t, she said hastily. I turned around to look at the couple and when I turned back she had fled the scene like I was carrying the plague.

I walked towards the couple and watched them. I guessed they noticed me and they started running along the other side of the carpark, away from me (but parallel to the road). This suggested to me that they knew each other and they were just fooling around. Who knows what weird things people do. Maybe they were into BDSM. Maybe the girl liked being shoved around and hit. If the girl was really being attacked, she would run towards a concerned member of the public. Yep. I continued on my way, walking along the road, keeping an eye on the two.

Whoa, the guy had grabbed hold of the girl, and she looked like she was trying to get away. He caught hold of her and shoved her onto the ground! Now he was grabbing onto her hands while she was sitting on the ground.

What! They had moved such that a fountain and a row of bushes blocked them. I looked around me. The woman was surely gone, but three Indians were right next to me. Around my age, probably finished work, had dinner and going home. It’s just along the main road. I stopped them and pointed at the guy.

That guy seems to be attacking that girl. He shoved her onto the ground, I said. The Indians had seen the whole sequence too. How could they be unconcerned.

No, no, one guy said, we should mind our own business. His friends agreed.

They left quickly too, but in walked a young guy. I think a university student. He stopped by me and stared at the couple. The guy had squatted down besides the girl. They appeared to be talking, or at least they saw us staring at them.

Looks like they stopped, he said.

I’m still not sure what was going on but 1) they knew each other, 2) both of them collaborated to avoid people, so I guessed that they wanted to thrash it out between themselves.

Yeah, looks like they are ok, I said.

We walked off. As I walked along the road, I heard the guy shouting in a really loud, but indistinct voice.

Oh ho ho ho, another victim!

Garlic burn as self-inflicted mucosal injury–a case report and review of the literature.
Bagga S, Thomas BS, Bhat M.
Quintessence Int. 2008 Jun;39(6):491-4.

Garlic is considered a valuable herbal medicine and has been used for centuries for treatment of various ailments. Along with its benefits comes some adverse effects. The present case describes chemical burn of oral mucosa caused by crushed garlic. To relieve toothache, the patient placed crushed garlic cloves in the buccal vestibule overnight and developed garlic burn injury manifesting as slough and ulceration in that region…

So, don’t put garlic in your mouth. Don’t put garlic on your skin either. Naturally, garlic enemas are out too. I guess it’s safe to eat garlic since people have eaten garlic for thousands of years and not died horribly of it. Garlic contains amino acid alliin and enzyme allinase. When garlic is damaged, the two react to form allicin, which is an antibiotic and antifungal. Oh, and it smells like …garlic.

To be honest, I wonder how eating garlic can provide any antibiotic effect. To my experience, after your typical garlic slices have been pushed around in boiling oil in the typical cooking process, all that are left are little brown bits and not much garlic smell. (And your throat didn’t get chemical burns either.)

Garlic turned blue, taken from www.davidrusling.co.uk/

One other interesting thing about garlic is that it can turn blue when pickled. According to this website, it is because of sulfur compounds in the garlic. However, I absolute can’t make head or tails of the abstract of the source*.

* Shinsuke Imai,* Kaori Akita, Muneaki Tomotake, and Hiroshi Sawada, Identification of Two Novel Pigment Precursors and a Reddish-Purple Pigment Involved in the Blue-Green Discoloration of Onion and Garlic, J. Agric. Food Chem., 2006, 54 (3), pp 843–847

“This is not a story,” my colleague said. “This is a legend.”

(His attempt at humour may be lost when using the meaning of english word “legend”, as compared to the chinese word 传奇, which he probably refers to. These are ancient stories of bizarre and even supernatural events.)

I got chemical burns from garlic.

Garlic burns

From the picture above, you can see a number of blisters where the burn is worst, they correspond to the slices of the clove I put on the arm. The size of the blisters correspond to the size of the slice from the clove. (Four pieces/blisters, the smallest one is the tip of the clove)

So you may wonder, what am I doing, putting garlic on my arm?

I am suffering from prolonged tendinitis on a foot and a forearm, and it is quite comfortable to soak them in hot water with some ginger in it. It occurred to me to that I could also add some garlic in. I did, and the addition caused a pleasant warming sensation in the offending limb. After a few nights, I got lazy and had a brilliant idea. Why not just put the garlic itself on, say, my arm? I got a clove, sliced it up and placed the pieces on my arm. They didn’t stick, so I glued them on with some tiger balm and wrapped it up tightly with a bandage.

Whoa…warm sensation…whoa…burning sensation. It was really starting to hurt.

“Ugh,” I thought, “this really hurts. It really really hurts. But it’s just garlic. Just ignore it.”

“This is really painful. But it’s just garlic. Just ignore it.”

The pain died down after a while, but didn’t really go away.

After a few hours, I decided to remove the cloves. I found that the skin of my forearm where the garlic was had completely turned white. I washed it and went to bed. Strangely, after the garlic was removed, the pain resumed with a vengeance. AAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH!

Garlic burns on my arm, 3 days later

The strange thing is everyone finds the tale absolutely hilarious. Nobody expected garlic to have given my chemical burns. I don’t know why, but I find it hilarious too. Just the other day the argument in the lab was whether herbal remedies were healthier or safer than medicine pills. My stance was that they weren’t, but I certainly didn’t decide to experiment on myself to prove that!

I found that the area had blistered up resembled a huge burn. As time progressed, the area swelled up and the blisters grew even bigger. The skin is falling in some places to reveal…skinless flesh. This is causing some concern over infection, so I spread antibiotic ointment on it. (I could spread more garlic because garlic is antibiotic right, and natural antibiotics are better than synthesized antibiotics right? Har har no.)

Our lab has not been been swept for about a month, and the floor was getting visibly dirty.

When the janitor came by this evening, it was a new janitor. I asked her if she could come and sweep the lab since it hasn’t been cleaned for a month. She told me that she had just started the job. I know it was not her fault, I replied, could she clean the floor next week and perhaps every 1-2 weeks after?

She decided to do it right there and then, even though it was already 7pm. As she cleaned the floor, the new postdoc and I chatted with her.

She’s from China and to get to Singapore, she had to pay middlemen 40,000 RMB. She was initially promised a job at the IR but when she got here, they put her in a janitorial job. The middlemen told her that it was her choice, if she didn’t liked being a janitor, she could leave and go back to China. Since she had already paid them 40,000 RMB, she couldn’t leave. The contract was stay for two years, and her goal was to make at least 40,000 RMB in the two years to break even. Basically, she’s just held ransom by a huge amount of money that she paid up front.

Her job entails a work shift of 12 hours a day, with a day off every two weeks. As and when her superiors wanted her to do overtime, she had to do overtime. The pay is $800/mo. Shelter is provided by the middlemen but food is not.

She thought the both of us were from China. Maybe because my chinese is passable. Maybe because the postdoc told her he was from China. Or maybe even because Singaporeans don’t generally talk to the janitors. She said that her daughter was in university. Did we think it’s possible that her daughter could come to Singapore to do her doctorate? She just has to apply, said the postdoc, but she must be able to speak English. The janitor was worried; English was her daughter’s one weakness. Language is learnt slowly and through practice, the postdoc assured her.

After she left, the postdoc did an estimation and told me that at the rate of $800/mo, she would at most come out 20,000 RMB ahead in the two years. If she ate the bare minimum, didn’t travel anywhere, buy anything, or do anything. Never fall ill, never have to stop working 12 hours a day or more, with a day off every two weeks.

What I want to point out is that the large number of foreign nationales are not here because they want to steal Singaporeans’ jobs, crowd up Singapore, seduce Singaporean husbands, or any of the long list of xenophobic accusations made by Singaporeans online. Foreign nationales are here because they want a better future for their families and children, and they were told to come to Singapore to get a better life for their families and children. The same reasons the parents and grandparents of current Singaporeans came to Singapore.

The issue of crowding due large number of foreign nationales leading to social problems should be taken up with the people who implemented the policy — even if it is the policy of closing one eye — and the people who wallow in the conditions created by this policy. These are people who make money by buying and selling humans, the people who treat other human beings like meat to be sold on a market. Shit by any name smells the same; you can call it foreign talent…but how about human trafficking or simply just slavery? Yes, it is slavery in modern Singapore.

I recently found out that there is a nebula called the “Running Chicken Nebula”. Sometimes it’s not running nor chicken-like, as when I saw it, but a google of “running chicken nebula” turned up some very running chicken-like versions of the nebula.

This one is from the Wollongong Amateur Astronomy Club:

What can I say. Braaaak-brak-brak-keh!

I have decided to call the pigeon Pygmalion, so that I can call it “Pygeon”. It is a fitting name, because Pygmalion has fallen in love with human hands, and is confusing human hands with food providers (i.e. parents). Actually, I think Pygeon is a female pigeon because it doesn’t have the puffy chest male pigeons have. Or maybe it is because Pygeon isn’t fully matured yet.

The above picture shows Pygeon after two weeks. Unfortunately, I think it’s going to be a one-legged pigeon for life. Its broken leg seems to have healed crooked so it cannot fully stretch the leg out. In the photo, the wings are blurred, because when a baby pigeon sees possible sources of food, it starts vibrating its wings and goes “WEEEEEeee WEEEEEeeeee WEEEEEeee“. Sounds like a squeaky wheel. Young pigeons are known as “squeakers” for this reason.

Pygeon was unable to eat by itself for the past three weeks. My mother had to force its beak open and stuff food down its throat. When I came around for the weekend, I made a baby pigeon milk bottle for it following the instructions of this website. It worked incredibly well, but when I got back the weekend after, my mother told me that she can’t be bothered to use it. She preferred to just hold the bird down, force its beak open and stuff food down its throat. Pygeon seems to be growing thinner. Either this is how pigeons mature, or it’s not getting enough nutrition. So I’m going to give it more food when I’m around in the weekends.

By now, Pygeon has graduated to the flowerpots. It doesn’t want to stay in the shoebox anymore, and if I put it in the shoebox, it will fly to the flowerpots. However, it can’t fly very far, and it prefers to hang around our corridor. This is better than the shoebox situation because it can shit directly into the flowerpots and produce fertilizer. My mother managed to get it to drink from a flowerpot pan.

Today morning, I managed to train it to peck seeds from my hand, so finally we don’t need to stuff food down its throat anymore. The next challenge is to see if it will peck food from the ground.

I was walking along the void deck to my parents’ place when I saw a bird crouched in one of the shallow drains that lined the void deck. It was not like any kind of urban bird I’ve seen, so I went over to take a look. It looked like a chicken, but the head was wrong. The bird didn’t fly away, so I wondered if it was sick. I decided to pick it up and take it upstairs before a stray cat came along and had it for lunch.

There was something strange about the bird’s feathers. There was yellow stuff coming out between its feathers. Could it be some kind of birdly skin disease? Fungus? Parasites?

“Hey, I got a bird,” I told my parents, “I put it in a shoebox outside.”

“Birds spread diseases! It could be a sick bird,” my mother said. “what kind of bird is it? If it’s a baby bird we can keep it, but if it’s a sick bird we have to throw it away.”

“I don’t know,” I replied, “it’s not a baby bird, but I don’t know what bird it is. Looks like a chicken.”

My mother went out to take a look.

“That’s a baby pigeon,” she said. The yellow stuff in its feathers was down.

What? Are you kidding me? The “baby pigeon” was larger than an adult pigeon! Look at that thing in the picture. Does that look like a pigeon to you? My mother grew up in rural areas and used to keep pigeons. She assured me that it was indeed a pigeon.

Baby pigeons, it turns out, are big fat eating and shitting machines. Since they eat and eat and do not exercise, they get really fat. This is when they are delicious and can be cooked up as “squabs”. We decided not to make the squab feed us but to feed it instead. It currently lives in a shoebox outside the flat.

I wonder how that guy is doing. A bit strange considering that I don’t even know who he is. He asked for my handphone number but hasn’t SMS’d me like he said he would. But then, I can imagine he’s probably overworked and has a lot of things to occupy his mind.

That was last week. I was walking home from work that night, when I saw someone walking towards the same road intersection as I was. He seemed to be heading towards me, and indeed when he reached me he asked me how to get out of the maze of little roads and to a bus stop. He was looking for a certain bus to take him home. I wasn’t sure where that bus was but there was a bus-stop nearby and I showed him how to get there.

“Nearby” is probably not the type of nearby most people think of, so we had quite a bit of time to chat as we walked. It turned out that he was a security guard at the premises.

The interesting thing is, this guy was actually highly educated, and used to be lecturer at one of our educational institutions. So why is he a security guard? Because he needed money, and nobody would hire a person his age when one could hire someone younger with a lower salary. As a security guard, he works 12 hours a day and is paid $50 for it. That’s more than the janitor earns, but not by much.

Now, I ask you, do we aspire to be a developed nation, or do we want to be a 3rd world country? In a third world country, people have short life expectancies, so 60 is old. A third world economy runs on physically intensive labour, so you want fresh young bodies to run all those primary and secondary industries. 40-year-olds are behind the curve. 50-year-olds are due for retirement, and 60-year-olds are junk. In a first world country, life expectancy is high and health is better. People live longer, and are productive for longer. Service industries, management, innovation, expertise, experience are important aspects of a first world economy. This isn’t manual labour.

True transition to a developed country takes more than pumping up the GDP with more fresh young bodies (sacrifices) in the same old developing country modus operandi. Employers have to discard their third world mindset. Otherwise, they are simply throwing away their most valuable resource: expertise and work experience.