Kevin Low

The thing about Pixar (and now Disney-Pixar) movies is the depth of themes that they dwell upon.The high quality animation and the background story aside, the storytelling has been consistently brilliant. The universal appeal lies in giving the young and old, the men and women something to take away from.

I watched the latest one: Raya and the Last Dragon. I’m not going to spoil it for you but all I’d say is that the film keeps up with the contemporary times where they deliberately try to stuff it with more female characters.

For those who have watched it; and I want to confess that the thought that the land of Fang represented Singapore cross my mind. “Successful” and obsessed with their own survival (to the extent they threatened the entire land of Kumandra), Fang seem to mirror elements of being Singapore even geographically: being cut off from the rest of the land by a canal and hence protected, having insufficient land to expand.

While I really enjoyed and appreciated the lesson about trust and unity, it is hard not to reflect on Southeast Asia as a region, the diversity and the differences, the difficulties if you may, of having our own “Kumandra”. And given the political climate and the global context today, we need to create more pan-Southeast Asian literature and celebrate the diversity and fushion in the region more. Perhaps, we need to start looking for dragons.

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

Matthew 7:14, KJV

“Strait” here in the bible refers to a place or space of limited capacity (cramped) – ie. Narrow. Hence most modern English translations would say “narrow” is the gate. Hence, the word then came into modern English as meaning a thin narrow strip of water body that connects 2 larger water bodies.

The idea of “dire straits” is derived from this situation of being constrained severely. Which kind of amuses me when I think about the English daily broadsheet newspaper in Singapore. It was established in 1845 and was not that profitable, kind of bumbling along until it became a joint-stock company in 1900s. For more details, you can read up here.

What tickled me was the idea of calling the daily papers “lean times” or “cramped times” in Singapore when it was still a tiny colony though no doubt having a good standing within the British empire and politically important to say the least. Perhaps it was just the intent of those literary geniuses who kept reverting to that name despite it being changed on several ocassions.

More relevant today, I think perhaps there is a role for the mainstream media to focus more and more on local community, local topics, and sharing stories on the challenging and difficult times we live in. Channel News Asia can be left to cover the more regional/global reach, and The Straits Times can then finally live up to its name.

As Singapore supposedly switch working from home to non-default this few weeks, the experience of space starts to diminish while the experience of distance came back in place. The impact on economy, is probably going to be positive in terms of the numbers on paper. There’s going to be more activities, more spending – my lunch expenses have been rising already – and that might mean more labour is needed, and more jobs.

I no longer see distance and spaces the same way again. I feel like we should have learnt the lesson over this pandemic period and working from home that we can expand spaces by getting people to be asynchronous about things: like timing to be in office; and we can shrink distance by using more of the existing technologies: emails, calls, video conferences. We can reduce interruption by creating more boundaries.

Are we learning these lessons? Is our economy being transformed because of the pandemic? For the better: to encourage people to work smarter, live healthier and be mindful-er. Because if we don’t, we wasted a crisis and that, is a terrible thing to waste. The agglomeration driven way of growth, the real estate driven growth, they all have their limits – and we better realise that sooner than later.

Went out for a trek in the late afternoon till evening and met some middle-age couple who was doing the same trek. The lady who looked really seasoned with treking was a local guide who shared that it was good seeing young people not hanging out in shopping malls.

She mentioned that when she brings the younger kids these days out on nature walks and tours, they asked if there was going to be AC out there. This unfortunately is what we are conditioning (pun intended) our younger ones to think – that development means more covered walkways, more AC spaces, less discomfort from sweat or untidy vegetation.

Think about all the new spaces we creating in Singapore and putting AC in them: underground walkways, connectors linking MRT stations to various developments. Think about how they have been transformed; the linkways for Tanjong Pagar and most of Raffles Place MRT were not air-conditioned but for newer MRTs, they increasingly are. Then there’s more shops and real estate investments there in order to make the money to justify the capital expenditure on the AC, and the cycle continues. All of these spaces running AC are basically taking out warm air and dumping it everywhere else. The more ACs there are on our island, the hotter everywhere else will be!

And because of inefficiency of our equipments, and the second law of thermodynamics, the aggregate amount of heat in the environment will eventually be more than before installation of the ACs. This is going to be an arms race until we think of a better way to organise this city.

Why don’t we start thinking of plants and nature as “air-conditioning” and use plants or dense vegetation for shade and shelter? This will take more effort to build and maintain but we might save more material and build a place that is more sustainable, and regenerative.

Deadlines are apparently lines drawn around the prison where prisoners can get shot if they pass that line. That is probably the idea of that at work- pass the line and you are dead. Honestly I often wonder who really dies if you go pass the line (what is called “missing the deadline”, which sounds strange because you don’t want to be on that line if they’re going to start shooting there!)

There is another element of the idea that I wonder is transferrable. If you pass the deadline as a prisoner and you managed to not get shot, you’re free! You run as far as possible from the prison and you find a new life.

The danger of deadlines is that when we assign one to things we want to do or have to do, we kind of feel like we must do it. At least that’s what we think, but when we pass it and we don’t actually get shot, we start becoming too relaxed with ourselves. And putting a deadline to things stops us from questioning if that needs to be done at all in the grand scheme of things. It probably isn’t that effective as the one that keeps prisoners in prison. Besides, the prison has a lot of other mechanisms and the deadline is a last resort.

Rather than having deadlines, it’s better we make something really happen pass certain times. The work is no longer accepted, or no longer relevant, something else will no longer be honoured. When we think that way, we might be able to be focused on doing things that matters and for those people who can’t hold others accountable, they’ll think twice before expecting something from others.

There is a shipping vessel stuck at Suez Canal right now. And there awaits hundreds of container vessels, ships awaiting to get through the canal – on both sides. This canal was built in 1869 precisely to prevent ships having to sail down to the Cape of Good Hope, allowing the maritime journey between Europe and Asia to cut by almost half. And of course, it became a very dominant and signficant part of the global shipping route.

There are well trodden paths and shortcuts that we can use when thinking about our lives and careers but every now and then, a disruption occurs, and the landscape changes. It might mean we have to wait, or we can take that long circuitous path people used to take.

Unless you think you’re a piece of good that finds its meaning only in reaching the destination, as a person, the actual journey might help you figure out who you are, what you’re here for, and what you should be doing, a bit better than just trying to go down the paths and shoutcuts everyone is shouting at you about.

In school we are taught a lot what to do; and we are told what good awaits us when we are right (which is about doing what the system wants). On the contrary, they don’t really tell you what happens when we are wrong. It’s the “or else…” kind of subtle threat. And that’s because we want to keep the students, the kids thumbed down, we fear the demolition of the power hierarchy in place. Or maybe it’s just pride, the pride our system teach us to have.

What if we allow ourselves, and encourage everyone to ask “or else what?” And to really clarify what happens when we are wrong? Because there is value to it. It is easier to know what to study to get better in the next test when you go over what you did wrong in the previous one (assuming the tests are cumulative in the content they cover); it is better to know the consequences or worst case scenario before you embark on a mission. You can invest with more conviction if you know what is the residual value of a business when the venture fails.

So much of our lives actually depends on us surviving through times when we are wrong but we’re never quite taught to think that way. We are taught to daydream about being right and then we are penalised by our inability to take the right risks and make the right mistakes.