Communication recovering

Yesterday's International Herald Tribune had more detail on the disruption, leading with front page headlines "Asia communications in chaos after earthquake jolts Taiwan", "Telecom links: Fragile yet resilient" and "Asia wakes up to a life without modern technology", and pages of detail inside. A map showed dense clustering of fibre-optic cables south of Taiwan routing traffic from all over SE Asia to S. Korea, Japan, and of course the US. Asia's "painful reliance" on the US was noted.

But, I am impressed by how rapidly traffic was rerouted over remaining cables and how fast recovery ships were dispatched to haul damaged cable to the surface for repairs. There can't be that many cable-laying ships lying idle just waiting for such incidents.

It has also been raining, more-or-less continuously: last week was some of the heaviest on record in Singapore causing flooding in low-lying areas. Singapore has an advanced infra-structure and massive storm drains, but many other SE Asian countries have fared badly. As always the poor suffer most.

Communication disrupted

Yesterday's earthquake off Taiwan has disrupted communication over SE Asia. Several undersea cables have been damaged, and repairs could take some weeks. For a while there was limited connection to the outside world, but it is getting better by the hour. I imagine technicians are working round the clock to re-route traffic and stabilise the network. In a way it is good to test systems which were originally designed for resilience in the case of a nuclear attack. Now we take this connectivity for granted and use it as part of our daily lives.

It is two years since the Asian Tsunami that claimed over 250,000 lives.

Rain without end...

It started raining 36 hours ago, and has not stopped since. When I asked how long this might last, "Oh, it should be over by Chinese New Year" was the reply. Chinese New Year is in February! Welcome to the rainy season. At least it is cooler!

Disconnected?

The chief executive of Morgan Stanley, John Mack, will receive "the biggest bonus for the head of a Wall Street firm ever" being awarded "$40 million as the company headed for the best profit in its 71-year history. Mack was granted shares valued at $36.2 million as of Tuesday and about $4 million in options". $57 million in bonuses goes to seven other executives. A well-deserved and generous helping from the ladle.

Police found 55 bodies on the streets of Baghdad on Saturday, 3 American GIs were blown up by a road-side bomb. The UK press no longer mentions this daily slaughter. The BBC has "Leona crowned winner of X factor" as a "top story".

It rained a lot today, and I thought felt how purifying and life-sustaining water is. I have to hold on to some good thoughts.

Sources: International Herald Tribune, Saturday 16th December and Juan Cole, Informed Comment.

A bigger ladle?

Yesterday's International Herald Tribune reports that Goldman Sachs quarterly earnings "left jaws agape on Wall Street". Profits rose 93%, $3.15 billion on revenues of $9.41 billion. That's $9.5 billion profit for the year. Much of this is driven by "building and trading complex derivative products". Of course, they don't actually make anything. Maybe as my friend says, the world is awash with money, some have just worked out how to use a bigger ladle than others.

The air is cool in the morning - it's the rainy season. Flowers on the trees, new growth.

Ecclesiastes

I dipped into Ecclesiastes today, oddly enough for a reason of science, though I confess to often visiting that prophet simply because the words resonate, especially in the King James Version. So today I have been brooding on the following:

Ecclesiates1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

I've been chewing on this all day. It's nothing to do with mis-use of knowledge, deeper than that.

Noise and the deaf

Being asymmetrically deaf, I have a heightened sensitivity to noise, most likely because I cannot place anything or anyone in the formless noise. Traffic, crowded places, voices all wear me down, but even alone and quiet, my deaf ear has loud tinnitus and my left (and hearing ear), some tinnitus. I am reminded of all this by my upstairs neighbour who every evening drags chairs across the tiled floor, my ceiling. I have been putting off reminding them that their floor is my ceiling. Sometimes thinking about taking an action is out of all proportion to the action! Note to self: just act and let go!

Poh Ern Shih (Temple of Thanksgiving)

I had the privilege of crawling round this temple with the architect Lee Coo one evening while it was under construction, through a kind introduction from Reverend Mugo. Thinking it must be much further on from when I last saw it, I looked up the web site, and yes, an 18-day thanksgiving ceremony is planned very soon as the old ceremony hall is closed and the new one brought into use.

The picture is taken from the Poh Ern Shih website and is copyright Lee Coo Consultant Associates. I recall that light and translucency would play a major part in the design. Time to get out of my routine and get down there.

Mr Lee Coo is the architect for the very fine Hall of No-Form at Kong Meng San Phor Kark See (KMSPK) Monastery.

Offered for the troubled soul of whom Rev. Mugo wrote in today's post and for all those who suffer loneliness and despair.

Hotei

Hotei works his magic.
Many years ago I received a small Hotei from Rev. Mugo: he lost his hands somewhere in my travels but is here in Singapore. His larger intact brother pictured above is in Bright Hill temple. Thanks for your post Rev. Mugo!

Bank robbery

How I love banks and the convoluted language they use to take your money from you. First Direct announced that it will charge £10 a month on current acccounts that are "dormant" to use its terminology. Current accounts are "expensive to administer". Then to add insult to injury, tortured language about needing to concentrate on customers having a "deeper" relationship (read, more credit).

"These changes are designed to encourage people to deepen their relationship with First Direct. I want to focus our efforts on our most important customers: those who use us as their main bank or have a number of products with us."
(Source: Business Guardian 15 Nov 2006)

To avoid the charge you must pay in £1,500 per month.

Since I no longer pay into my UK account each month, my "Always giving you extra" bank has dropped the interest to more-or-less zero on the balance. The idiocy is that should I withdraw the necessary feeder amount each month and promptly pay it back in, all would be well! This is the stupidity we get into when we let computers dominate our lives and remove all decision making from people.

If I didn't like it, I could close my account was the advice from the "banking advisor".

Well, I will do just that.

Maybe there is a more civilised form of banking than this blatant greed.

Updraft

Silent lighting flickering throughout this large storm cloud this evening. I should have tried for a short video clip! Impressive, I hope the aircraft coming into Changi could avoid it.

The Moon of No-Time

Small hand-held camera. We didn't speak for 10 minutes.

Longevity in Japan

I picked up from Living in Japan that there are now over 20,000 people in Japan over 100 years old. In a way it does not surprise me, and the source article by an active 92 year old doctor has advice good for any age and time.

"Living to a Grand Elderness" is how Robert Brady puts it. A nice expression, consonant with what Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By encourages us to write.

In memory of my Uncle Jim who died earlier this year aged 92, active to the end. A great and missed Elder.

Rootkit

Microsoft's monthly software update informed me that my old laptop had a Trojan or "root-kit" and offered some choices. I selected "delete", maybe unwisely as root-kits can be troublesome to remove, hiding and re-creating themselves when you think they are gone. Assuming it was real, how it got there is a mystery, as I verge on neurotic about the internet, and no other scans had shown anything untoward. Proceed with caution.

Good prevails

I keep reminding myself that most people are good, kind and helpful. It comes to mind when a respected blogger gets childish comments, when mail boxes are spammed, and when the news is unremittingly depressing. Then I notice a tree covered in pink blossom (yes, a tree, not a shrub), another tree with clusters of tiny orange flowers growing from the trunk without the distraction of leaves, and my house gecko watching me when I open the door: "foolish man, you thought I had gone?" A dip into two more fine blogs, "Time Goes By" and "Living in Japan" and I know I'm right. People are good. The world is as it is.

Remembrance

Have we become inured to barbarity?

The BBC this morning:

"Mr Abdul Ghani also said that five bodies - all blindfolded and with their legs bound - had been recovered at different locations in eastern Baghdad early on Sunday.

All had been mutilated by torture, he added."

Some 2,800 American service men and women killed since the war began.

A Lancet study puts the lower limit on the number of Iraqis killed at 420,000.

And then there is Darfur.

Brave people.

London

Flight from Singapore landed at 04:30, the earliest planes are allowed to land at Heathrow. Temperature +1 deg. C. Brrrr. Beautiful clear blue sky, the like of which you will not see in Singapore. Bank and mobile phone company tried to ruin my day, but the Luttrell Psalter in the British Library restored my calm. Now bringing some computers up-to-date then a visit North. A busy week ahead, but glad to be back.

Recalibration

Leaving for London in a few hours: flight time 14 hours 15 minutes.

Mid-term elections

The death toll for US troops in Iraq for the month of October rose to 100. Brave men and women. Today a huge bomb killed 30 poor labourers waiting for work in Sadr City, and wounded over 60. War has rarely been this savage.

I don't think I have ever cared as much about the American mid-term elections as I do now - a desperate hope for change and extrication from a disaster. Time to re-group and re-think under better leaders, for this is a long-term struggle.

The Blind leading the Blind

I've long felt that the market wunderkind with their ever more arcane financial "instruments" run rings around their bosses — to the danger of us all. Unless trading is very simple (and it may be), I cannot understand how a man in his mid-twenties has acquired the experience to see beyond his year-end bonus and take the long view.

It seems my fears are not entirely misplaced.

From the FT (Thursday, 26th Oct.), a letter:-

"Even the Professionals don't know all hedge fund risks".

"...If competent authorities such as Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, tell us that they neither fully understand the new complex products nor have full oversight about the possible domino effects of collapses of larger sizes, how can we then be sure that bigger and more complex collapses can be carried by the regulated part of the market?
...it is questionable that professional and institutional investors know all these risks. Since they do not play with the money only of rich people, but also with the hard-earned money of pensioners and workers, we would be inclined to regulate and monitor these so-called professionals more closely, to prevent them from running after hype, and the super-profits conjured up to them."