Open your eyes please

Allow me to take a brief sojourn from my endless pile of work (off the top of my head there's one 800-word response paper, one 2000-word research paper, one thesis proposal, one test on tuesday, one midterm after the break, one temple presentation - but eh, i must admit, i've been sleeping much of this weekend) to grumble a bit about something that's really annoyed me.

I was late for church this morning, so i had to take the bus (ok, so it's only two stops). As usual my ever-present foe tv mobile was blaring away, and just as i got off the bus, i caught the headlines of the channenewsasia news - something to the effect of "a silver lining to global warming, a new passage between the Atlantic and Pacific opens". I was aghast.

So later when i got back home i flipped on the news - channelnewsasia yet again - and i was so disgusted - the whole report was about how lucrative this new route in the Canadian far north is - that thanks to the ice melts because of rising temperatures during a part of the year this previously perpetually icy route is now navigable. And it seemed that people were looking forward to the day when it all melts so that ships and what not can traverse this route all year round. Global warming was not a problem, it was an incidental providence.

Just so to not let my inherent disdain for mediacrap programming get to my head by assuming that it was just their distinctly Singaporean, pragmatically-minded programming that was the issue, i went on to check what BBC World and CNN had to say about it - couldn't find it on the tv, so i went to their websites - thankfully a bit more grounded perspectives there - the problems of global warming were not just brushed over as they were in CNA, though the boon to trade was still a major point. The Straits Times? Well - it's Singaporean, so i won't say more than that i was not surprised...

The whole nexus of greed and immediate profit is something that really disgusts and frustrates me - here we are so flippantly damaging this earth that we have been entrusted with by God, and content to do so even more, only now to be further encouraged by this ice-melt. Has this self-serving attitude really gotten so deep into our heads? Are we to just let this earth degrade even more under our charge? Does not global warming and all it's problems not hit home at all?

Well to that end, i did catch a sentence in the ST report - "it could have a negative impact on Singapore's importance as a shipping hub". Well, forgive me if this paints me as unpatriotic, for this is not the reality at all - i smiled to myself. While the very presence of that line just shoves in my face the nauseatingly pragmatic mindset of Singapore in general, (i know i'm grasping at straws here but) i'm hopeful that this may provide some sort of motivation for Singapore to do more in the interests of slowing down this process of global climate change. If the rampant damage to the environment won't do the trick, then maybe this threat to one of Singapore's main economic lifelines will...

so...

So it was that today i decided to go back early rather than stay back and do work till late.

So it was like the earliest time i've ever gone back home on a weekday at least in the past few weeks.

So it was still 8:16pm when i finally left campus.

So it is that i've no life.

alors, qu'on peut-il faire?

J'ai beaucoup de travail ce semestre.
Trop de travail, peut-être.
Alors, j'ai besoin d'une vie en dehors de l'école...
Mais, est-il possible?
Je ne le pense pas.
Sacrebleu...