Not blogging much anymore. Obviously.

Hello dear blog, ha ha.

Don't have much time to blog these days. And like many erstwhile bloggers, I'm finding FB much faster to use when I'm short of time...

Revising

For various reasons, I was recently thinking about de-Stalinization, something I've not thought about seriously for more than 20 years.

A drawing by Niyaz Karim

Revisionist thinking is really quite interesting. And a necessary part of life. It is not healthy to just blindly believe in the same old sources, or worse, the same one source. It is healthy to question and look for evidence. For there always is more evidence than you have been told there is.

While I was thinking about de-Stalinization, of course I remembered how I handed in a highly nonsensical essay on the topic. Those were the days when I was almost becoming one of the 'full-time hostelites, part-time students' in my hostel, haha. It was so bad that my tutor, Dr Agnew, got me to re-do it, and very kindly gave me a list of relevant references I could look up. As I emerged from his room feeling stupid and sheepish, and filled with well-intentioned thoughts of doing all my future essays properly, I was greeted with a real hard stare by one of his groupies who was waiting outside. I hard-stared her back and went out into the corridors with my newfound academic enthusiasm.

I just googled and found that Dr Agnew is now at George Washington Uni. I remember his giving me a second chance much better than I remember any of the topics in his course. But that's what education is all about, isn't it? Lessons on life, attitude, treating people as human beings, etc.

Tap it well

My non-expert two cents' worth on the role of the social media in this election.

First, we are so behind time. Other people, including our neighbours, were already excitingly into social media at least one election ago. I was surprised to hear a (young) candidate refer to it as 'new' media. Hello, this is 2011, not 2001?

Second, social media wouldn't have accounted for a huge number of votes either way. Of course some - or maybe many - may have been influenced but I would think that in general, people wanting to vote for the whites would have made up their minds long ago and those not wanting to vote for the whites would similarly have decided before candidates were even announced. But I think that non-white supporters were more likely to be part of the cyberspace election landscape simply because of the lack of (positive) information about the non-whites in the mainstream media.

Third, I still don't get why some people are still so disdainful of what's on cyberspace. I think it's a good thing that people can get information they want and it's a good thing that people are participating, expressing their views and so on. As in the last election, I really did not find that what was on cyberspace was full of invective and vitriol and what not. I don't know what kind of pages people are looking at online that makes them say this but I found many thoughtful, analytical and down to earth posts and comments, though, no doubt, they were mostly not pro-white. Sure, there were many personal, uncalled-for comments on this person or that but I must say that I saw such comments made about candidates and ideas of both sides. And we all know there are personal, uncalled-for comments made offline, every round, about people anyway.

Next, I think that the whites, while focusing on what must be really pressing tasks ahead, such as beefing up their policies and personnel and finding workable ways of connecting with people, also need to take a hard look at their machinery. I thought they had a huge machinery working the ground but it seemed to have failed in identifying problem areas accurately. I also thought they had a huge machinery set to work on the social media this time round but what I saw looked rather, I'm sorry to say, amateurish.

I was talking with some young people about their ideas about 'connecting with the ground' not too long before May 7. One young lady said it was a mistake to think that you can connect with the young just be being young or that you can engage netizens just by being on social media. Well said, young lady. If this not-yet-voting-age young lady could understand this, I'm surprised that the machinery did not.

Newly-sprung Facebook pages, fake Facebook numbers, non-commentable pages and so on are just not the way to go. On the other hand, many social and political commentators have been online - and connecting with audiences - for years. Some candidates have also been online for years. For example, G Giam has been blogging since 2006 and not, like, just from last month. And N Seah must have been on Facebook and Twitter since she was five. Just kidding.

The point is the machinery needs to use social media in the way it should be used. I don't think they have the option of not using it so they might as well learn from good examples, which can be found on our shores and beyond, such as this very-impressive-machinery-using-social-media-expertly.

To go back to point 2, I highly doubt social media would be a make-or-break thing, unlike things like, ahem, housing policies and so on. For example, GY, I would think, is a successful Facebooker, compared with, say, LTK, whose Facebook page is, I believe, not self-administered. And GY lost and LTK won. And Mr Chiam doesn't even need to be on Facebook (I don't know if he is) to be so well regarded. In any case, if the whites win or lose because of their good or bad social media presence, it would be a terrible thing because they should be winning or losing because of their policies and personnel. But, using the social media is a non-negotiable in this day and age and at this point, unfortunately for the whites, I think the non-whites, together with their supporters, are leading by a mile. The whites need to get their act together here, after settling all the policies and personnel business.

I'm really interested in what we'll see in five years...

Thinking of the hot buttons while cooling off

Cooling off day... ha...

I was just wondering how some of the hot buttons, the ones who are now citizens, will vote.

There would be the FTs who have been in S'pore for ages, went through our education system, perhaps even went to the army, worked here for years, then became citizens. Then, there are the newer ones who hardly speak English and hardly mix with the born-and-bred people. And then there are those who don't even live here. Are people like Gong Li and Jet Li voting?

Somehow, I can't think of really good reasons why the latter groups would vote against the status quo. Will these people be the ones who make the difference?

Kaypohs in Serangoon

Shortly after the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrived at Buckingham Palace, I finished my dinner and went off to Serangoon Stadium. But since it was way past 7pm, this was the best spot we could find.

(That, of course, is not me or anyone I know in the picture. The red t-shirt on that boy said 'Myanmar'. New citizens?)

I think political rallies should be part of National Education, for both students and new citizens. To be fair, they should be brought to rallies of both sides, or maybe even of a few parties. Just to experience the spirit of things.

I really don't mind doing this myself every few years. Only the crowds are getting bigger and bigger each time. And the traffic gets really bad.