Love in a time of cholera

Well, not quite but the most visible symptoms of the swine flu non-pandemic have been paranoia and stupidity – on Wednesday (about a week after the threat level had been raised to orange) the landlord of the building where Porco works announced the commencement of screening for all tenants and visitors to the building on Friday. Yesterday, the threat level was reduced to yellow. No screening today – what a surprise. Last weekend at the public library, they took everyone’s address details but not their temperature – so they can find us if someone gets sick, but they don’t worry about preventing sick people from walking into the place, talk about pearls of wisdom before swine.

And another thing – the stuff looks treatable and apart from cases in Mexico, not many people are dying. I know there were a couple of deaths in the US but those looked like they were not getting treatment until it was too late. Is it something about the state of healthcare in Mexico? Or is it a question of – death, where is thy sting?

Porco’s brother – who has an advanced degree in epidemiology – thinks it is more about life and less about death. He thinks it’s about the way the animals we farm for food lives – pack them in and pump them full of antibiotics. Most of the time everything goes as planned and nothing happens. Once in a while, the drugs don’t work and the sickness gets to people. Like a bad case of agricultural terrorism, people need to be vigilant all the time but the pigs (or more specifically, the viruses) need only be lucky once in a while.

As the words of the Maori haka go – Ka Mate! Ka Ora!

Math and Physics

Porco has been thinking about the present financial crisis – some have blamed it on greed, others on ignorance. Porco thinks of it in terms of physics and metaphysics, plus a bit of relativity and even a little religion.

Let’s start with speed. Speed is the distance travelled over a given amount of time. The Basel Capital Accord is more than twenty years old – and a lot has happened in that twenty years in the financial markets. The central banks simply got left behind. It was a clever idea to divide assets into three – the good, the bad and the uglyPorco remembers addressing a meeting in 2001 with representatives from the G7 central banks and discussing CDO default models with them. Nothing has happened since then. 

The problem with speed is that it is also another name for velocity and that multiplied by mass gives momentum. Given enough momentum, anything – derivatives, financial instruments or space shuttles – can defy the laws of gravity or free itself from anything holding it back, even the rules of financial regulation, and launch into an orbit of indeterminate shape or duration. We are venturing into territory where no financial regulator has ever been, boldly or otherwise. Sometimes, that which has launched itself into space could come crashing back to earth, burning up upon re-entry.

Now Porco is no longer religious as he was in his youth but he is reminded about the bit in Revelation where the seven angels are given trumpets and then another angel joins them – so there were eight. The angels blow their trumpets and by the time the fifth angel sounds its trumpet, a star falls to earth and to him is given the key to the bottomless pit. Then the locusts arrive.

Singapore Biennale 2008

So its theme is “wonder” – Webster’s dictionary (I know, I know … American) defines the word:

¹won·der

Pronunciation: \ˈwən-dər\

Function: noun

Etymology:

Middle English, from Old English wundor; akin to Old High German wuntar wonder

Date:

before 12th century

a cause of astonishment or admiration, the quality of exciting amazed admiration, rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience, or a feeling of doubt or uncertainty.

Hmmm, I wonder …

Wherever I lay my head

A couple of things happened over the weekend. Small things but they made me wonder – Mrs P almost knocked a cyclist over because he was cycling against the traffic on a one way street with no lights at 8 pm. When we got to the restaurant we found none of the wait staff spoke English so our Egyptian friend was struggling a little. Then because of the earlier incident, Mrs P understandably did not want to drive home so I drove – as I pulled out of the car park, two women ran across the drive way. Now the common theme is that all these incidents involved foreign workers and tourists in one way or another – as Emerson once wrote, you can never go home again. Time to emigrate. 

Six, Twelve

2007 Hits – Panorama restaurant (Mount Cook, NZ), Xbox 360, South Africa, The Prestige, Denis Min-Kim, White Shadows.

2007 Misses – After Dark by Haruki Murakami, Supreme Commander, Whampoa Club in Beijing, Long Road out of Eden by the Eagles.  

Wine review – here

2008 Resolutions – none

2008 Wishes – lose 10 lbs, Bouchard Finlayson, Hanami, A380, Tetsuya’s

A tale of many cities

Dickens is a god. Not God but a god. If you wanted describe a year, any year for that matter, in about a hundred or so words you could you could hardly do better than this.

For Porco, this has been a year of change. A year for seeing possibilities. A new job, a new home and a new stage in life. 2007 was also a year in airplanes – of hitherto undiscovered continents, the thrill of adventure  and the unmissable relief at the prospect of returning home.

The inner life has also been stretched and taken further than it has been for a long time. New facets, old friends and re-discovered virtues exercised. Time also for some indulgences to be exorcised – for there is now less time. We are older and no wiser. We are less patient and more easily tired. We now have responsibilities where we had none. We were forty. Now add one.

Niemals ohne mein Klopapier

So Porco was tickled to see that the average German soldier in Afghanistan uses 10 rolls of toilet paper a day – Porco loves toilet paper (and in particular the brand with the puppies) and thinks it is one of the seven wonders of the modern world. As an alternative, apparently, the natives in Afghanistan use sand where water is scarce. The Bundeswehr has quickly come out to say it must be a mistake – so much for German efficiency. Which reminds Porco of his recent trip to China.

The old hutongs in Beijing are so old internal plumbing is a bit of a problem so public toilets are built at both ends of each street for the residents. Problem is you have to bring your own paper. Bigger problem is the plumbing is so bad you are not allowed to throw the paper into the loo (there are toilet police people to enforce the law) so you have to bring the used paper out to dispose in the rubbish. Which is shitty but apparently bog standard in Beijing.

Porc in translation

Porco was just having a trawl through the referring pages to this blog (yes, the masala tea searches are still out there) and came across someone who had come through a Google page in French. Imagine Porco’s surprise when he saw an entire archived page of this blog in French. It is a weird experience - but still, and even if Porco says so himself, it has a touch of élan if not a hint of je ne sai quoi.

Porc of Leisure

All too soon, Porco’s week between jobs is coming to an end although today was a really nice day (even if one gets slightly drenched in the way only walking in really heavy rain with an umbrella gets you that way). Lunch with Auntie and XPY at the Chinese restaurant in the American Club followed by an hour on the Xbox 360 with XPY then popping over to see Lewis at the wine shop.

So a week without work makes you think what work is all about. Too many people these days define themselves by what they do. Porco has two things to say about this – on your deathbed, you would not really want to regret that you spent too much time at work and secondly, you are not what you do, you are what you eat, and drink. Nunc est bibendum.

Faith – the evidence of things not seen

So Mrs P and I went to see Invisible City last night and we took away quite different things. Porco was a little disturbed by the choice to show an interview with one of the subjects a few days after he had brain surgery. Sure, it was telling it like it was but I’m not sure I would have wanted to be remembered like that. It is also clear from the talk following the screening that a lot of what the film maker wanted to achieve was possibly not quite there. Still, this is a good documentary and more than that, it is an important project. Go see it.

Last weekend, we had a double dose of Ian McKellen. First, almost four hours of King Lear on Saturday night and more than three of The Seagull was a little more than Porco can take. And at more than $1000, it had better been worth it. Hmm … not sure about that. Especially The Seagull.  For the combination of relentless ennui, the pre-Revolutionary foppery and the seductive power of the spoken word, get the DVDs of Days of Being Wild, Dangerous Liaisons and Bullets over Broadway (in that order) from HMV. $99.99 for all three. While stocks last.