Individuality and collectivism

I was trying to hunt for something on Youtube tonight when I came across the following video. It's a collection of clips from the North Korean "Arirang" mass games. Watch it -- or at least part of it. The display of mass collectivism is absolutely stunning, especially the giant human-powered video wall. Apparently, schoolchildren rehearse this every day, until everything becomes perfect.



I can't decide how I feel about it. On one hand, I am the sort of person who prefers choral and orchestral music to solos. I love the harmony that is created when individuals put aside their own glory to create something more beautiful together (and yes, that's what I think heaven will be like). One of the things that I bemoan is that these performances are growing more and more scarce, as a rising standard of life seems to put more and more emphasis on individuality. Certainly, no democratic country could pull off the same display. And this is visually stunning -- no argument about that!

On the other hand, watching this sent shivers up my spine -- and not good shivers at that. It freaked me out. It was like watching an ant hill, or The Return of the Clones (or whatever that Star Wars movie is called). There was something almost unnatural about it.

How does it make you feel?

(The video below is another excerpt from the same performance, except that this one is the children's section. Look at how young this children are. Then think about how superbly disciplined they must be.)

The world is not fair (enough)

The New York Times had an interesting article today about how children in a rural Wisconsin community commute to school. This community is on an island that doesn't have a bridge to the mainland, where the school is. The water around the island is frozen for part of the year. When it is not frozen, the children commute by ferry; when it is frozen and solid enough, the children commute by school bus across an ice road. However, the problem happens when the ice is only partially frozen -- too much ice for a ferry, but not enough for a boat.

The ingenious device that they came up with is called a windsled, and is essentially a hovercraft, redesigned to float across partially-frozen ice. It runs at about 19 miles an hour, and has interior heating and seats about 20 (Slide show here). It is a marvel of engineering -- in order to stay light enough to float on top of the ice and not break it to pieces, it uses some sort of forward-backward motion to disperse its weight evenly across the base.

The cost of running this, per year, tops USD20k. The article also gave the cost of running the ferry that replaces it when the water is relatively more ice-free, USD30k. The number of children who are served: 20.

Not to begrudge those children their education, but it's clear that the world doesn't lack in resources. The lack is in equitable distribution of resources. Simply put, the world is not fair enough.

But that shouldn't be a surprise, I suppose.

Pets and Children

I have been going in and out of the vet's office these couple of days (just in case this raises alarms, everything seems to be okay so far). Aside from worrying about my cat, it has been fascinating to watch other people with their pets.

It seems that keeping pets has become much more popular in Hong Kong in recent years. People are more well off and can afford luxuries, I suppose. And from my understanding, many couples are forgoing having children, but, still needing something to love, are turning to cats and dogs instead. Certainly the amount of money spent on some of these animals (pet MRI, anyone?) exceeds what is spent on some human children!

While some people don't understand this (it's just an animal, after all!), I think that I kind of do understand this mentality. When my kitten was diagnosed with a heart defect, it did not make any sense for me, then a struggling grad student on a meager stipend, to opt for expensive ECGs and ultrasounds to pinpoint the source of the problem, and later, for expensive medications that the cat would be taking for the rest of his life. It doesn't make any sense. But somehow, we are programmed to do such things.

When I was in Gansu, we worked with children who were orphans. Sometimes, it was really true that both their parents had passed away. Other times, however, one parent (or both) had just simply disappeared, leaving their children behind with grandparents or relatives. I recently spoke with a friend who works with asylum seekers; many of them, in their flight to safety, have left behind children whom they have not heard anything about for years.

I do not believe that those parents are any less caring than we are. I cannot imagine the level of hardship that they must have gone through to push them to this point.

Art and Beauty

A good friend and I went to see the Stuttgart Ballet perform "Swan Lake" tonight. It has been a while since I saw "Swan Lake" -- I know it's been performed several times by the Hong Kong Ballet, but unfortunately (or is it fortunately?) I missed all of them. So this was the first time in a long while since I had watched a classical ballet piece. And it didn't disappoint -- the choreography was inspired, the dancers were talented and the dancing was beautiful. It was amazing to watch how the same steps, by the same dancer, could convey two different characters with two completely different sets of intentions and emotions.

In a book that I have been reading recently, "The Case for a Creator", by Lee Strobel, and one of the pieces of evidences put forward is that of the human consciousness. One of the illustrations is this: supposing we could somehow characterize every action of a bat, and build the perfect model of how a bat behaves. Then we could make a computerized bat that would act exactly like a real bat. It might even fool real bats. However, there is no way that we could ever find out from this bat, what it's like to be a bat. How bats think and feel, in other words.

In the same way, I think that the fact that we can appreciate beauty and emotion has got to be a piece of evidence for the case of an intelligent Creator. How else could this be explained, but for the fact that somehow, we were programmed to love beauty, to recognize it, and to cherish it.

As Christians, we believe that we were made in the image of God. Therefore, what we love must be a shadow of what He loves as well. And since He created us, I suppose that He must have made us to be lovable by Him. And yes, the Bible tells us that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made".

Isn't that a lovely promise to have, especially as we face a new year, and wonder what's ahead of us? When the future seems pointless, as it does sometimes, and we wonder if we are simply human hamsters running on a treadmill, going nowhere with a life that's pointless? Surely, God, who made us to love, who made us beautiful in His eyes, wouldn't do that to us?

Globalization

It's been a whirlwind tour through 3 countries and 6 cities on the cruise, and I think the thing that has left the deepest impression for me on this cruise is the issue of globalization. The countries that we visited on the cruise were very different culturally from what I have been exposed to for most of my life. And yet, I was continually struck by how similar the shops were, the brands they had, even the fashions they were carrying. About the only concession that the shops were making to being in the Middle East were that the skirts carried in them tended to be long, but that was about it.

One of the most vivid illustrations of this growing globalization came to me while seated in a Starbucks in Abu Dhabi. Sitting across the aisle from us was this Arab man, dressed in full Arab headdress, wearing dark sunglasses, reading an English newspaper and sipping a latte. As if that wasn't enough of an illustration of how the world is intermingling and growing smaller, when we got up to leave, I found a coin on the couch that I had been sitting on. Expecting it to be either a HK coin that had somehow slipped out of my pocket, or an UAE coin that somebody else had dropped, I picked it up and was astonished to see... a 5p UK coin.

Now *that*'s globalization for you.

Dubai, close up

It's nearing the end of our cruise and again, we're back in Dubai, where we boarded the ship. We have a day and a half here, and then we fly back to Hong Kong tomorrow night.

Dubai is an amazing city -- you walk through the place and you are gripped by what seems to be an endless optimism and exuberance. It's certainly a very young city -- most of the population seems to be young people (certainly a high birth rate helps), and most of the construction is new, too. Actually, the city looks very American -- wide freeways, sprawling strip malls and carparks. But of course, being much more glitzy and glam than any American city could ever claim to be.

The architecture of Dubai is also amazing -- I couldn't take pictures from the taxi, but Google for some photos and take a look at the skyscrapers. Now just having skyscrapers wouldn't be that big a deal, but the amazing thing is the way that they're building these things. Unlike Hong Kong, where the game is just to throw these things up in as cookie-cutter a shape as you can make them, it seems here that the architects are trying to outdo each other as much as they can. Most of the buildings are built in a way so that the insides of the building shows, bringing light into the deep recesses of the building. I noticed that some of the skyscrapers also have transparent lift shafts in the center of the building, and since the innards of the building is visible from the street, a passenger in the lift can see the view as he shoots up the building. And of course there are also lights. All the buildings are lit up so beautifully that they are almost like pieces of art.

Seriously, I don't think that it would be hyperbole to say that in such a city, the iconic Burj al-Arab isn't all that big a deal. Sure, it looks different, but then, all of the skyscrapers do, so what's so special about it?

(To be honest, the feeling that I get here is one of spending and consumerism gone out of control. It's almost like a "spend-it-while-you-can" mentality, and I suppose, with the price of oil so high, why not spend what you have? It's almost frightening, though also infectious at the same time. I can see why so many expats are attracted to living here. And yes, it sure is a very international and cosmopolitan city.)

The malls here are amazingly huge. I suppose that they are planning for the 5 months of boiling hot summer, when the temperatures can shoot up to 50 degrees Celsius and nobody wants to be outside. Then you really have nowhere to go but into the malls (sort of like the reverse of the Canadian winter). The malls here, though, are like megamalls -- there are malls inside malls.

Of course we couldn't resist a visit to the gigantic Mall of the Emirates, with the Ski Dubai resort inside. And gosh -- this is a feat of engineering. They have ski slopes (even a black slope), ski lifts, a snow cave, tobaggan runs, everything -- all inside a mall. And just to make sure that mall goers see what they are missing, there are windows looking into the ski area, so you could be wearing a t-shirt, drinking a soft drink, and watching people go by on a ski lift about 200 meters away!

I once swore that I would never ski again -- my last experience with skiing wasn't all that great -- but I got talked into doing it today. And finally I managed to learn enough to be able to take a ski lift and come down a blue slope, though I did fall once and had to be helped up since I couldn't get back onto my feet on my own. But it was fun and worth it. Who ever thought that I would manage to finally learn how to ski -- in Dubai?

Oil Wells, Camels and a Tree

Greetings from the tiny little state of Bahrain, which is our stop today. I was going to post a picture of, yes, oil wells, camels and a tree, but I decided not to risk the computer going bonkers on me again. So the pic will have to wait for later.

Bahrain City is quite an interesting place. The old part of the city is much more run-down -- reminds me of some of the 2nd world countries that I have been to, actually -- and also, for the first time since we have been in the Gulf, we saw beggars on the street, which was a shocker. They were ladies, too -- or at least, they were wearing a full-length burka and veil. I suppose that Bahrain City (or Manama, the old part of town) isn't quite as completely planned as some of the other cities such as Abu Dhabi. The economy in pre-oil days was built upon pearling, and they had a natural resource in abundant potable water, which made it possible for a settlement of some kind, unlike the other cities, which I suppose didn't quite exist before the discovery of oil made it feasible to even have a settled area at all.

Outside Manama, however, you see a dramatically different state. New construction is everywhere, and there are multitudes of new and in-construction residential areas. And those houses are HUGE -- they're practically villas. Our maid in Hong Kong, who has a brother working in this area, told us that it's not uncommon for one family to hire a ton of help: one person for the baking, another for the laundry, another for driving one car, yet another for gardening, etc etc.

We passed by several interesting sites in Bahrain: the old fort, which is both a tourist attraction and an archaeological site. You could wander all over the place for free, but the weird thing is that there are no signposts, nothing to tell you what's what. There were some side rooms that I wandered into, and there were random displays in cases, but no signs whatsoever. Whether they really seriously intend for this to be a tourist site is debatable: they certainly keep it very well restored, but then, why not go the extra mile and put in some information for the tourists?

The second place that we went to were burial mounds. Apparently 5% of the entire island is covered with these mounds. The biggest of these are taller than a tall man and wider than they are tall. Again, it's an archaeological site, but you can wander freely around the mounds (and for some of them, which are opened, into them), which is weird. The weirder thing was that only about 100 feet away was a new residential building. The inhabitants would get the view of the mounds every time they walk out of their front door. Maybe they don't have the superstitions that the Chinese have, or maybe the mounds are so old that they don't count as graveyards anymore.

The last place is the one that gives the title to this post. In the middle of the Bahraini desert is a tree called the "Tree of Life". No, it's probably not the Tree of Life, but it's a spreading mesquite tree which must have survived for a while, in the middle of the desert, all on its own.

The Bahraini desert -- or at least the part that we went to -- is covered with oil wells and oil pipes. Apparently we're also coming up to a festival for the locals, so there are many tents in the desert where families were vacationing. And every now and then, you'd see this dune buggy go roaring past the sand dunes.

The coolest thing was running into a shepherd with his flock of -- not sheep or goats, but camels! The shepherd, whom we think is paid to look after the flock, had herded them close to the Tree of Life for tourists to take pictures, and I suppose, also earn a few extra dollars for himself. There were about 40 camels in the entire flock, and he had hobbled some of the tamer ones. It was really cool to be able to walk right into the midst of so many camels. That was the highlight of my trip :-).

Fujairah

I was trying to mailblog from the ship yesterday, but for some reason
the ship's computer didn't like my email and ate it up, together with
the photo that I was trying to post. So here's the re-post from free
Internet access.

Yesterday we spent in Fujairah, the smallest of the Emirates. It feels
more like what Dubai and Abu Dhabi would feel like without the oil
wealth (or if it were differently distributed.) It's pretty run down
and the buildings are old. And yet, because it is the only one of the
Emirates ringed by mountains, its climate is less harsh (it was
actually raining yesterday) and the scenery is stunning. I need to
post this picture of a little mosque we visited, which was surrounded
by some of the most stupendous scenery I have yet seen in the region.

I fell in love with the desert when I visited Jordan two years ago,
and this visit has only reinforced that infatuation. Think of powdery
sand, orange and rose colored, rippling on all directions. Magnify
that tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold. I could never get tired
of it.

The definition of opulence

Hello from the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi, UAE. This thing is AD's
answer to Dubai's Burj Al-Arab, and pretty much the definition of
opulence. Everything is gold, from the wall decorations to the tables
and chairs. Crystal chandeliers illuminate the hallways, Lalique glass
insets decorate the railings.

AD looks very much like what Manhattan or Hong Kong would look like of
we had the opportunity to tear everything down and plan and build
afresh. Wide avenues meet at right angles, parks at every corner. The
overwhelming sense is that of reconstruction and money in the air.

(Please excuse the spelling errors. This is a mailblog using my iPhone
in the restaurant in the hotel, which of course has free WLAN.)

What a difference $$$ makes

Greetings from Oman! Yesterday was the beginning of our cruise -- starting from Dubai, through Oman, Bahrain and some of the other Emirates. Yesterday we did a quick self-tour of Dubai -- went through the spice souk which is my own favorite -- and today we were in Muscat, Oman.

Having come from Gansu earlier this year (actually just 3 weeks ago), I couldn't help comparing the GS landscape with the Omani landscape. Both are arid deserts. Unlike GS, however, at least there are numerous thorn bushes and the occasional mesquite tree growing around here -- the rocks are never completely devoid of life (the sand dunes are another story).

But that's outside the city. Inside the city of Muscat, the highways are lined with verdant, manicured lawns and lovely, color-coordinated flower beds. It is as if no expense has been spared towards making the city lovely, despite the harsh climate. I even saw an artificial waterfall gracing one of the overpasses!

What a difference $$$ (or oil) makes, for sure!

The above picture was taken at a wadi, or a river bed, in the middle of the desert. This river happens to be flowing at this point, and there are waterways leading the water out for irrigation purposes. It was a lovely spot -- the water was greenish-blue, there were fishes in the water, and dragonflies buzzing about. Who could have thought such a lovely spot existed in the middle of the desert?