31.03.2003

<march hare>

march came and went. all 31 days of it.

the SARS was a major concern the last few days. here in beijing, life goes on. no major panic. the only reason is because, no one knows anything about it. the ministry of health has not issued official statements of precautions. the newspapers have not published any reports. primetime news tv seem to run only footages of the war or how well the chinese economy is doing. our chinese joint venture partners had a secret meeting last week when the govt finally decided to release *some* figures and the next day, the secretary walked in and simply said, if u have flu symptoms - see a doctor quickly. wat are the figures? wat are the symptoms? it's all hush-hush. some people may think that singapore is overdoing it, banning the kids from school and setting quarantine laws and everyone is talking about it. but i've come to realise that ignorance is not bliss. imagine, 10million people kept in the dark, not knowing anything abt this deadly flu. there's nothing here that encourages people to be pro active about the whole situation and look out for their own or other people's health. my chinese colleagues think that sniffing vinegar will help it go away. so now, their homes are stocked with 2 yrs supply of vinegar (if they live to use it). you would think that the non-chinese would deal with this much better, since they probably read foreign papers or their friends and families would have warned them about it. but no - when i stuck a piece of 'how do i know if i have SARS' note on the noticeboard, a couple of the non-chinese colleagues looked at it and said 'oh, no, i don't want to get involved in this drama'. i feel feverish just cycling thru a city infested with germies in the air.

then, of course, there's The War. thomas friedman had an interesting article about it yesterday in the new york times. he sees a world of disorder versus a world of order. with the united states, self-proclaiming to be the latter, to use NATO as an instrument to bring about peace to the world simply because such a massive peacebuilding process is too expensive for one single country to keep up with. hence, an 'alliance' is pulled in to make it look like a multilateral process, when in fact, united states leads the pack. friedman predicts a 'very new world' developing from here. i pretty much agree with him till that very point.

in my way of making sense of the world, i think we are going back to a very very old world. the very old world when ancient empires see sheer military power as a means to measure their strength, extend their prowess, and to shield themselves from barbarians in a world of anarchy. but the world seemingly evolved from the first 2 wars, as well as the cold war. In short - we moved into information age, where boundaries and state seems to matter less. non-state actors like the UN, EU, and other institutions have the public to believe that collective security is the way to go. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't - sure, every plan is its obstacles. the idea is that, when it comes to security-threatening situations, states do not revert back to the old-fashioned national security but count on other means and parties to resolve thru diplomacy and not war. but since the onslaught of 'terrorism'(in which i think the bush administration has defied all sense, sensibility and dictionaries in trying to (re)define that, just like how the clinton administration pull that 'oral sex is not really sex' trick) we see how a single nation (and the 'alliances' that it's managed to buy over) manage to incapacitate the idea of collective security and its main executive body, the UNSC, and revert back to the old ways of dealing with things. machiavelli would have called his work 'the mad cowboy' if he was still alive. these days, we see a very lame attempt by the UN to redeem its position thru 'humanitarian aid'. god I feel so embarrassed for them.

Beijing saw a few major bands in town. I went for the morcheeba concert. The british council organized it, among other things, to promote british culture in china. Ok - whatever. But it was certainly striking that the venue felt much more like a London club than somewhere-chinese, given that the only chinese who were there were some journalists, or girlfriends of the expats who were perhaps getting their dose of 'foreign culture' already. * snigger*

all else being said, I tried making curry at home last Friday. seems that there's a great difference between cooking from a real recipe, and cooking from my imagination.
will try an indian restaurant next time.