Home For Christmas and Amazingly, A Round-up for 2007

Back home in Singapore for Christmas. As promised. Who else could have been entrusted with blasting the entire 141 minutes of Masaaki Suzuki's take on Handel's Messiah while laying down balls of cookie dough in infringement of the borders of their neighbours' personal space?

Living, as we all do in this life, in the present-continuous, I subscribe neither to the ritual of annual round-ups, nor, for that matter, the illogicality of new year resolutions, the baseless hope of Philip Larkin's Trees.

Still.

A polaroid of 2007 for the future self (with the usual caveats that accompany such misrepresentative snapshots).

A bit of travelling: snorkelling and diving in Tioman, two work trips to Ho Chi Minh/Saigon, surfing in Bali, mall-ing it in Dubai, dune-bashing and sandboarding in Oman, two work trips to Qatar, wandering about in total amazement in Tokyo. My frequent flyer miles pale in comparison to my colleagues' but are sufficiently foul that preliminaries in discussions with friends about meeting-up inevitably include the question "when are you flying off again?". Even less fortunately, travelling does nothing to douse the wanderlust, it just inflames it so that am currently fairly determined to do a Singapore-London road trip. With the wandering about came a fascination with the diversity of cities and theories about urban environments and urbanity.

Worldview interest of the year: crit theory. Post-modernism, post-post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-existentialism. Michel Houellebecq, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes, Slavoj Žižek. This trend is forecast to continue into the new year.

Food interest of the year: cupcakes. An interest in the variety of cake and cream combinations to be had and cream top as blank-canvas/art-space. There is no foreseeable future for this food interest.

Game of the year: Guitar Hero! I IZ RAWKSTARRRR KAME 2 RAWK UR WRLDZ! \m/ RAWR!!! *smashes guitar* uh-oh.

Work: work has been fairly decent. The boss has told many people how pleased he is with my deals and "keen mind". (Exchange rate between praise and bonus not available.) Have also gotten fairly major 'uns which have been intellectually interesting though time and patience-consuming.

Weddings, wedding photography, babies: weddings continued at a steady pace in 2007. I still refused to attend photography classes so as not to have personal idea of aesthetics (which according to current thought ought to be subjective so as not to become Consumerist) squished under the thumb of photography nazis.

I managed, with the mid-range cameras, to pin colours down almost where I wanted them. The Nikon D100 was an eye-opener. The D200 was a bit of a WB let-down. But the D300 was telling me that we could possibly make beautiful music together...if I stopped dropping it on its head. Started experimenting with angles. The new Nikkor VR 18 - 200mm lens promised to open up vistas previously denied by the prime 85mm f1.4 and 50mm f1.4. Oh, but to have a 18 -200mm f1.4. Catch up, technology, catch up!

(Re: people who complained of being made to look ugly in photos (and they were never the brides). The camera don't lie, honey.)

Became vastly more tolerant of the by-products of weddings: babies. And also of the by-products of babies: baby saliva on clothes and the smell of baby poo (totally under-rated on the stench-o-meter).

God and ministry: the most encompassing for last. The last few years have been a horrible struggle, a struggle to keep trusting in God's character and God's promises; a struggle not to let go.

I hold on to God not because of sentimentality since I eschew all things sentimental, nor for the comfort of habit because malignant wanderlust ensures a great adversion to repetition for its own sake, but because the truth of the matter was investigated a long time ago and the evidence[1] pointed to the fair certainty of the goodness and wisdom of God as Creator and Sustainer and Judge and his words as a good thing to hold on to.

Therefore the struggle was not one with the conviction of truth but rather, with over-realised eschatology (not health-and-wealth over-realisation but with wanting justice now, wanting every evil and hidden thing to be brought to light now) and with that biblical both-and of human works and divine sovereignty.

[1] "Quid est veritas?" indeed. I suppose one day I should write down the beyond-reasonable-doubt-edness of the evidence for the truth of biblical Christianity, the external evidence as well as how it is internally consistent and a comparison with other worldview claims. Probably can even dispense with ceteris paribus-type qualifications which are so, duh, cop-out when talking about ultimates.

PS. I suppose also that if God is Creator and Sustainer, then none of this is ultimately my work or effort but his. And this is possibly exacerbated in my instance since am supremely (and, to my boss and family, frustratingly) unambitious, seeing no satisfaction and meaning in the garden-variety ambitions of the world. And if God is Judge then, I think he can be trusted to know when patience is required to give people (including myself) the opportunity to repent.

Tokyo and the Half-baked Theory of Design Zeigeist as Entrenched Japanese Worldview

Tokyo, with its neon skyscraping billboards and cacophony of huge video advertisements and pre-recorded voices competing with loud disparate music and shopkeepers hailing potential passersby with megaphones, is the set of Blade Runner, but with manicured eyebrows, coiffed hair, Muji-like clothes from Uniqlo and United Arrows (and maybe even journal standard. Comme des Garçons rags age rapidly on the shelves so they go out the store and straight into the bargain bin that is Ragtag. Restir's curation probably only works for the Harajuku crowd.) and a bad case of ani-mania.

Tokyo is about Apple outselling Microsoft in a Pecha Kutcha Nights climate.

Tokyo is made for that particular generation of consumers in whose zeitgeist swirl the words "cult", "curated", "edited", "uber", "luxe", "global", "awareness", "design", "interpretative", "emerging", "relevant" and "interventive"; who regularly haunt typophile forums; who dress their kids in rags from Hakka; and, for those with new-agey hangovers, who measure everything by its "carbon footprint", print brochures not on any old recycled paper but FSC-certified paper using soya ink, and eschew Body Shop for Pangea Organics.

In Tokyo, a general goods store isn't just a Mustafa. Tokyu Hands, for instance, and Ginza Hands in particular, is stocked with stuff that people who previously read Wallpaper* and who now flip Monocle and Superfuture would rave about. Like the entire Holga range; like Yoshida's Porter bags and other luggage whose websites are Flash-run as a matter-of-course (Samsonite, even Philippe Starck for Samsonite? So 1990s.); like METAPHYS products.

Ito-ya, the stationery place, is more than Rhoda and Moleskine notebooks (which, hello, can be bought from mere convenience stores) and Freitag bags (very 2005/2006, now sold in street stalls).

hhstyle.com stocks the *yawn* usual cult furniture designs by Eames, Panton, Gehry et al (Gyre Omotesando uses them as public seating, courtesy of their MoMA Design Store tenant). Plus minus zero, sold in normal design stores everywhere, pushes more recent 2007 stuff by Fukasawa.

And because big high street brands and Bubble economy construction are so 1980s, "luxury brands" clothe themselves with street cred - the works of artisan developers (architects are very last century, ok): Chanel on Ginza wears Peter Morino, Prada in Aoyoma wears Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, Mikimoto Ginza 2 - Toyo Ito, etc. Asahi's Super Dry Hall got saddled with Philippe Starck, Tokyo being famously where has-been Western celebs come to wring out some money from their historical celebrity as celebrated by Lost In Translation (Brad Pitt-o and Cameron Diaz for Softbank...etc. Just have a look at Japan Ads.). The locals lovingly call Starck's work "the golden turd". Well, if your sewers looked like this, you'd think Starck vulgar too.

"Gourmet", another watchword of the zeitgeist, has its own fetishistic brand names, like Dean & Deluca where 12 different types of salt can be sampled. And what is gourmet food without the accompanying gourmet kitchen appliances beyond the country-bumpkin Kitchenaid and Cuisinart. Leaving nothing to chance, a gourmet fruit shop, Sun Fruits, sells gourmet fruits, like 12 very red strawberries with very good skin - Tochiotome or Hinoshizuku varieties - for 100,000 yen.

Not to be left out of this post-postmodern post-poststructuralist world, every season, chocolatiers and patissiers catwalk their couture, play-acting haute fashion houses. Pierre Hermé with cakes in precious timepiece glass showcases, Le Chocolate de H which packs little chocolate truffles like Tiffany rings, Sadaharu Aoki which...well, just listen to the hordes of Japanese ladies cooing "Oiiishiii!" at the pink tower of macaroons and slivers of matcha cake, Jean Paul Hevin etc.

Perhaps as a pre-emptive strike against any pricks of conscience apropos this conspicuous consumption, it is also consumption itself that is being marketed and sold. Marketing being never about communicating mere facts but about selling values, a lifestyle, Tokyo Midtown plays up its design-conscious image with quiet bamboo spaces, pitchblack interiors at Restir, food-as-museum-exhibits at Toraya, an enormous red cloth-hanging at Belberry, the Suntory Museum of Art and a contemporary art gallery, 21_21 design sight.

Gyre devotes shop space to an exhibition of MVRDV's other projects, complete with laptops and styrafoam models. (Check out Pig City. Book Mountain must be a sight to behold at night from beyond the glass walls.)

This meta-marketing, this marketing of consumption, is naturally rather vague. A general direction of beauty and design. A dab of the artisanal and handmade over the mass-produced. A smear of curation and editing, that historical preserve of art galleries and museum collections. And of course, a vast background watercolour wash about the environment. Take for example Gyre's (ahem) curated consumption concept, "shop and think":

The things you buy connect you to the whole world.
In this world there are many beautiful things. There are also many difficult problems.
Please be conscious of these facts behind your GYRE experience.
How do the things you buy connect you to the world?
They stimulate your imagining, polishing the way you shop.
You may choose, for example, garments you will wear for a long time, their materials brought to life by a craftsman's special skill.
You encounter designs that bring inspiration to everyday life.
You enjoy safe, delicious food from producers who care deeply about the environment.
You are moved by the richness and beauty of the seasons.
By raising your consciousness,
your shopping can have a positive impact on the world as well as yourself.

Right.

But perhaps the pre-empted pricks of conscience are but foreign imports available to the very few; the very few, if one goes with the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, who have actually mastered a Western tongue.

Perhaps Roland Barthes, opining in Empire of Signs on a Japan he was too lazy to either recreate as complete fiction or understand as fact (since, in any case, it was not in his interest to distinguish between fiction and fact), had, nonetheless, a point. Perhaps zen-soaked mindset of the Japanese has created a culture empty of internal substance; a culture in which the gift is not within the wrapping but in the elaborately-wrapped package itself; a culture steeped in a worldview where empty signs, like haiku poems, are not expected to lead to final signifieds. Perhaps postmodernism, poststructuralism, deconstructionism are concepts that are meaningless in Japan where there was never any modernism or structuralism or construct. Derrida heaven (beautifully packaged, of course).

Staying in Akasuka during the Battledore Festival was like walking out into an Edo-style Disneyland every morning, with its little shops selling kibbi-balls and warm sake, ningyoyaki just off the press and hot manju. And the locals dig this simulacra. One evening, I stopped to take a picture of 2 geishas disappearing into a restaurant and a Buddhist nun waddled up to me excitedly. "Oooowaaaaaa!" she gushed and in 3 seconds, a small crowd of handphone camera-wielding locals had formed behind me.

Entering the Imperial Palace on one of the only two days commoners are allowed into its hallowed grounds, the Emperor's birthday, was like a gander in a different part of Disneyland. The main attraction was the sight of the imperial family behind a bulletproof screen. When they appeared, the crowd yelled "banzai!" and waved their flags for a minute while like the mechanical dolls, the royals turned and waved in perfect synchronisation. Then the Emperor gave a short speech (an American in the crowd paraphrased it as "Hey everyone, thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I really do. So thanks, y'all." But he's American and therefore, not to be trusted. ;-)).

Thereafter, a minute of banzai-yelling, flag-waving and royal-clockwork-movement before the royals turned away and disappeared behind a screen, and the crowd stowed away their cameras, rolled up their flags and filed out of the square, making way for the next batch of tourists.

It is for this reason that Japan intrigues me. (The fascination with the Other?) How much satisfaction does this Other gain from an existence based on production and consumption like some late-stage capitalist nightmare (or is this a nightmare only to the Western mindset)? How accurate Jean-François Lyotard's theories about Shinto-ism as postmodern erasure of historicity? And how has this led to the Japanese view of their role in World War II (itself arguably a Western concept)? What of the animation of Hayao Miyazaki? What of the alienation and loneliness in the works of Haruki Murakami - are these felt by a majority of the Japanese population or merely a result of his being heavily influenced by Western culture? How are the successful advertising campaigns by Western celebrities explained in a culture without ultimate signifieds?

What methodologies can be used to speak the truth to a culture in which truth is, allegedly, marginal?

How many of the ideas in this post are based on Western myths of inscrutable occidentalism?

_____________________________________________________________________

A quick jot-down of information that was useful to me:
Accommodation

Claska (if you can make it before it shuts for renovations) or Granbell Hotel for design-phreaks.

Transportation from Narita Airport

The Keisei Skyliner features baggage racks and comfy seating with vending machines and toilets in the middle carriages. It costs ¥1920 from Narita Airport Terminal 2 to Ueno and requires reservations. Time to Ueno is about 51 minutes.


The Keisei Railways Limited Express is a regular train with free seating and an opportunity for your luggage to bruise the knees of strangers. No vending machines or toilets in the train. But, hey, it costs ¥1000 from Narita Airport Terminal 2 to Ueno. Time to Ueno is about 71 minutes.

Getting Around

If you intend to find a specific place that isn't on a conventional tourist map, must haves are: (1) the Tokyo City Atlas (Bilingual); (2) a Tokyo Subway Map; (3) a pen, spare paper and a ready smile.

The Tokyo City Atlas is useful because unlike the locate-by-street convention of many other places, Central Tokyo addresses are read like so: there is the name of the ward (ku). There are smaller named districts within the ward (cho). And then come the numbers: the first number is the main area (chome), the second number is the block, and the third is the specific building. None of this makes sense unless you have an atlas.

There are a number of combinations of frequent travel tickets available. They don't save that much and are quite restrictive if you're not quite sure what you'll be doing on any given day, so I went with a Pasmo card (interchangeable with the Suica) which is a contactless smart card much like the Translink card for the Singapore MRT-bus system. Saved a lot of time by cutting out all that fumbling for change.

Even Tokyoites need directions to find their way around Tokyo. Numerous maps of the environs at subway stations. And when those didn't help, everyone I approached was really friendly and willing to help even if he/she didn't speak English.

If you're staying in a ryokan or some other place with a curfew, bring along the password and keys to get back into your accommodation at night.

Food
versus
Ramen: preferred Ippudo (一風堂) to Kohmen (光麺), Hakata-style tonkotsu ramen in pork bone soup to shoyu broth. Branches everywhere.


Tonkatsu: the tenderness of Maisen's pork cutlet, a dish introduced during the Meiji period when meat-eating began to catch on in the vegetarian country, is apparently due to the fact that their pigs come from Okita Farm on Kyushu, southern Japan, where they roam about freely and munch on sweet potatoes and wheat.
Maisen
4-8-5 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku


Sushi/sashimi: Sushizenmai. Good for a morning snack after a walk around the Tsukiji Fish Market (4-10-2 Tsukiji). While you're around Tsukiji, get some grilled scallops too.



Tempura: Tenfusa (5-2-1 Tsukiji). The eel tempura was excellent. Eel was fresh and no oily heaviness in the tempura.


Okonomiyaki: Asakusa Sometaro. A traditional okonomiyaki place where shoe-removal was a necessary prelude to sitting around a hotplate on tatami mats and attempting not to burn the okonomiyaki. Apparently the best okonomiyaki in Tokyo.
Asakusa Sometaro
2-2-2 Nishi-Asakusa


An izakaya is where, sometimes, yakitori and beer/wine/sake meet for a good time. Birdland did excellent free-range chicken yakitori and Negiya Heikichi boasted leek as its speciality: roasted on the outside, creamy on the inside.
Birdland
4-2-15 Ginza

Negiya Heikichi
36-18 Udagawa, Shibuya-ku

The food halls (called "depachika" - "depa" = "department store" and "chicka" = "basement") in the basement of shopping malls are massive affairs. Good for cheap takeaways. Better than instant noodles from a convenience store. Check out Isetan Shinjuku and Tokyu Foodshow at Shibuya.


Pretty pastries: patissiers are artists in bakers' clothing in Tokyo. See, for example, Sadaharu Aoki, Hidemi Sugino, Pierre Hermé. Toraya for Japanese confections. For chocolate, see Jean-Paul Hévin and Le Chocolat de H.


Fresh fruits: everywhere. And, like Legolas, suspiciously flawless.

Shopping
Bespoke clothes and luggage and leather shoes: Aoyama, Ginza, Roppongi, upper Meiji-dori.

Street fashion: Shibuya 109, small streets off Aoyama, Harajuku, Cat Street, Meiji-dori, Laforet.


Electronics: Bic Camera, Yodobashi and Sakuraya (look for their mascot - a plump lass with pink bunny ears acting cute) are the big electronics stores around Shinjuku where you can play around with the display sets and for cameras, the various combinations of lenses. There's also Map Camera round the corner and small stores selling secondhand cameras in the area. Check prices on Clubsnap (for Singapore) and Kakaku (for Japan) beforehand. Akihabara ("Akiba") is otaku paradise with anime and maid cafes thrown in. Naturally, the real otaku have moved elsewhere. The Yodobashi in Akiba is massive-r. Remember that most electrical stuff come only with domestic warranty. If you want a tax refund on your purchases, bring along your passport. Some stores only do tax refunds on the date of purchase. (In the larger stores, playing around with the inhouse points system may get you a cheaper price than getting a tax refund.)

Japanese souvenirs: Oriental Bazaar on Omotesando.

Japanese Snacks: Ueno. Also one of the few places you can get your pocket picked in Tokyo.


Hot Japanese Snacks: mosey up the lanes leading to Sensoji in the morning.

Happenings and Events: Refer to Metropolis. Music-wise, jazz is bigger in Tokyo than it is in its hometown.

No 3G phone? Rent one at Narita Airport from Softbank.

Internet is ubiquitous but internet cafes are not.


Not feeling too well and don't speak Japanese? Easy-peasy. "Point Your Symptoms."


This is supposed to be the future. Where is my jet-pack? No jet-pack? Oh, ok. Matcha and chestnut-flavoured Pocky and Kitkat's fine too.

Youth Camp Behind Barbed Wire

St. John's Island. A grey cloudy day. A crumpling cockroach-infested bungalow behind 2 sets of barbed wire, in the shadow of a watchtower. Mozzies with bloodlust.

Not quite the ideal venue for a youth camp.

Still, the campers came. And the Word was preached, illustrated by various Lord of the Rings and soccer analogies. I suspect that we might have benefited more than the campers. What joy to hear the truth preached day in day out; morning, afternoon and night, and what joy to stay in a Christian household with the glorious freedom to talk about God and about living for Christ without censorship.

And the food and games were fab as well: curry chicken, spaghetti bolognese, banoffee pie, beef hash and fried onions and toast, the farewell barbecue, bangers and scrambled egg, real hot chocolate, the classic Chairs Game, Sleeping Queens, Saboteur, Bang!, Taboo in Mandarin (add non-Mandarin-speaking ACS boys and RGS girls for non-stop hilarity), Treasure and Traps, the befuddling dit-dit finger game and an evening of very corny jokes.

Thoroughly enjoyed that questions were being asked about the Bible, about God, about biblical history: eg. Who wrote the Bible? Is it merely a guideline for life? Why did Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Eden? Why did God send Adam and Eve out of the Garden if he was a loving God? If God was omniscient, did he plan for the Fall? Whom did Cain marry? His sister? Noah: did God make a mistake and have to reboot the world? What about dinosaurs?

Questions show that people are thinking for themselves and not just swallowing everything that's told to them lock, stock, barrel and banoffee pie. And if the Bible is God's authoritative word to us, then our answers, our formulations and worldview, should be based his revelation rather than ideas spun out of the top of our heads or what our relatives or friends or the media tell us, no matter how sincere they are. Sincerity of belief will be (has always been) a terribly useless excuse in the face of God's judgement and the fire of his wrath (see eg. 2 Thessalonians 1:7).

Disneyland in Doha and the Realness of Reality

Shortly before keeling over from the halitosis of a dromedary who happened to yawn 100km away.[1]

Reading confident articles by commentators on the Middle East, who make their khubz by writing confident articles professing insights into the mind of Johnny Dishdash. How much is fact? How much is generalisation? How much is conjecture? How much is stereotype? And how much do the locals buy these generalisations, conjectures and stereotypes of outsiders, internalise them and make them, infact, fact?

Onshore life in Doha, Qatar, appears to be lived out either on the film-set for a Lebanon war movie (before the bullet holes have been lovingly gorged into the walls by set artists), or amongst the Dubai-wannabe skyscraper skeletons vying for iconic status.

Sharq Village & Spa, a bit of Ritz-Carlton real estate, purports to recreate the mis-en-scene of a typical Qatari home. Typical, probably, in the mind of an Ah Beng Hollywood set designer.

Just as Qatar's pearl divers sought the hidden treasures of the Gulf, the village guides you through a maze of shady souk alleyways to discover precious Arabian tales...

Beyond the giant iron-studded wooden doors and sun-baked, roughly hewn walls lie cool winter courtyards, refreshing waters, ornate arches and candlelit glowing recesses. Underneath wooden ceilings from Zanzibar, the gympsum motifs, colourful mosaics and the stars above, lies a secret walled garden of magic.

Surrounding this courtyard oasis are cushioned majlis areas, wood-trestle verandas, wood-barred windows and canvas-shaded flat roofs all reflecting a generations-old home life that was designed to provide cooling refuge from the harsh Qatari sun.

As Sharq Village & Spa, each room enjoys the legacy of Qatar's Gulf trade. Omani chests, Iranian lanterns and Indian furniture surround a trader's wooden four-poster bed. Beaten copper, inlaid brass, pebbled glass, worn sandstone and carpeting kilms inform a deeply private Qatari sanctuary.

It's as if the copywriter was taking the mickey (mouse).

But the Qataris love the place. Many of Sharq's guests are Qataris who leave their palatial homes and their mobile mansions by the Khor Al Udeid to rest their bums in this Arabian Nights Disneyland, with its 400-threadcount down comforters, hypoallergenic feather pillows, very useful Nespresso machines, Penhaglion bathroom amenities and Bose® Wave® radios. (Mine was tuned to Qatar Broadcasting Station (97.5 FM) which, at 6.45am, nudged me with Summer of '69, then We Are The Champions, then Viva Forever. But it was being directly under the flight path of the incoming Doha International Airport-bound planes that finally woke me.)

At Al Dana, the seafood restaurant, knocking over your water glass will set the restaurant back QR300. So their dinners aren't quite at Qatari village prices.

At the Six Senses Spa, designed to "[give] the impression of a true Middle Eastern village that has grown organically over time", the only nod to Qatari tradition amongst the Balinese massages and "new-age" treatments is the separate entrances for men and women.

The beach - a thin strip of sand with an excellent view of a couple of naval ships.

Further down the Corniche is the Old Souk, Souk Waqif. The real Old Souk boasted un-ethnic metal shutters and air-conditioning units. This reality with its nod to modern technology was so unacceptable that it was completely demolished and the entire souk was reconstructed so as to resemble the set for the opening scene for The Porter And The Three Ladies Of Baghdad. The new Old Souk has centralised air-conditioning and if you look carefully, the firehose cabinets are set deliberately into the walls of the Souk, thanks to ST Engineering. Apparently, the project manager was a Red-Dotter too.

Yet. The Qataris adore this theme park. On Thursday nights (the rest-day being Friday), crowds turn up to smoke shisha and watch live performances by women in abayas (separate seating for men and women of course).

Men shop for dishdashes and keffiyeh and get their agals repaired. Or simply try on new ones. The black cord agal is a throwback to the nomadic camel-centric days of yore - it was used as a whip on disobedient camels as well as a device to tie up camels at night to prevent them from making off into the desert.

Early evening, shisha cafes start warming up the charcoal for the strawberry shisha-loving crowds.

Down an alley are baskets and sacks of fruits and nuts for tasting before buying.

Porters (in full costume) wait around with wheelbarrows to carry your purchases for you.

The clincher is that unlike Disneyland, you don't have to queue for the (donkey) rides.

Sharq did a pretty decent mixed mezze (the in-room dining receptionist said with great surprise:"Oh! Arabic food?") but the best meal we had was honest-to-goodness stuff down at the Turkish Central Restaurant, which did not bother to hide the fact that it was Turkish.

[1] Blokarting in the desert was cancelled because of the lack of wind and the thick fog pressing down on Doha, which, incidentally, smelled like 1,000 camels indulging in a mass yawn.

Off for an overnight camp out in the desert. So just a jot-down of swirling half-baked ideas:
It is common to assume that we can live in reality, that we pass our days aware of the state of things as they actually exist. But just how real is that which we assume is reality?

We're fairly confident that the going-ons in Disneyland aren't real. But to a child, Disneyland is a city in which illusion is reality, the archetype of the simulated city. To a child, Disneyland is a place in which the hopes and dreams of an ideal world, where there is peace and unity amongst all peoples, laughter, fun and joy, are realised. We know that the Mickey and Minnie Mouse are merely sweaty teenagers in Mickey and Minnie Mouse suits so we'd diss any one (adult or child) who believes otherwise. But Jean Baudrillard admonishes those who laugh at Disneyland. Disneyland is presented as imaginary, he says, to reassure you that your reality is infact, real.

So how real is the world we think we live in?

Virtual reality, obviously computer-simulated environments, like flight or combat simulations or Second Life represents one not-very-convincing level of reality.

On a slightly more subtle level is simulated reality: the externally-simulated reality experienced by Truman Burbank of a constructed soap opera set, or the solipsistically-simulated reality perceived by some humans in The Wachowski Brothers' The Matrix that is, in actuality, a simulated programme created by intelligent machines in order to pacify and subdue the human population. But authentic reality is easily established by being unplugged from The Matrix or escaping from The Truman Show set through the door marked "Exit"; the assumption of an objective reality.

What Baudrillard finds far more sexy is the idea that there is no such thing as objective reality. Once upon a time, children, simulation was simulation and reality was reality. But now, borrowing from Jorges Luis Borges' metaphor which itself was borrowed from Lewis Carroll, instead of representing the territory, the map has itself become the territory; the reflection in the mirror is now the real. It used to be that the map, the mirror, the representation, the imitation feigned the real but left the real intact. Now, the simulacra precedes the real so that it is now what is real: hyperreality. And in hyperreality, there is an implosion of medium and the real into a hyperreal nebula where Cartesian certainties are outlawed and truth is indecipherable.

There is no more hope for meaning. And without a doubt this is a good thing: meaning is mortal...This is where the seduction begins.

Which is all very sexy. Except for the bit about how Mr. Baudrillard appears to be conveying his ideas to us.

Past the unwashed granny bloomers, it is lovely to be reminded to examine our assumed realities. The ever-entertaining, ever-critical Slavoj Žižek asks good questions of ideologies that adduce ultimately inconsistent reasons to support the same goal of political unity, of the role of Hollywood blockbusters in elevating 9/11 to a mythical spectacle and of our lives in an insulated artificial universe. Mary Midgley writes fiercely against the myth of the objectivity and omniscience of science, of the theory of evolution as a religion, of our uncritical acceptance of the flawed research and reductivist thinking that passes of as science as the arbiter of all things.

While it is entirely possible, as time-passing thought experiments, to imagine that we are pure simulations living in a simulated world, and that the people who are simulating us are themselves simulations with recursive simulations within simulation ad infinitum, the fact is that we live our lives as if some things are objective truths. We may not believe the spiel about the sort of diets that are best for us, but we see the need to take in some food and water on a regular basis. We may not be able to express any meaning in life nor profess to any theory about the afterlife, but we still treasure our lives and feed and breathe to keep ourselves alive.

It is not surprising that documentary evidence, though able to demonstrate to a high probability the historicity of Jesus and his ministry, cannot prove without a doubt the facts recorded in the Bible. Because, simply, historical facts cannot be proved like scientific facts. And it is not surprising that scientific research, though able to discover greater and greater intricacies in our universe, cannot ascribe their marvellous design to an intelligent being, much less God. Because if there is a God, a omnipotent, omniscient being, he would be far beyond our own imagination or understanding. Unless of course, he decided to reveal himself to us:

No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. (John 1:18)

Villaggio, Doha. A mall simulating similarly-styled mall in Las Vegas simulating Venice.

Heart, Liver, Kidneys and the Christian Worldview

Nothing like a bit of prolonged travelling to realise what the heart, liver and kidneys, to use old Hebrew metaphors, truly treasure. It is strange to discover, day after day, that which remains constant in foreign cultures and different circumstances; the consistency of one's beliefs, one's worldview, one's lifestyle, one's passions.

Everybody has a set of beliefs. Beliefs not as the gullible acceptance of incredible things but basic ideas or presuppositions we have about the nature of reality.

Everyone has a worldview or a framework for perceiving reality. We have conceptual frameworks (the abstract concepts through which we "frame" and organise all our specific concepts), ideologies (sets of ideas about the nature of society and our role in it), lifestyles (practical sets of values and ways of looking at life). Worldviews are formed when our foundational beliefs or presuppositions combine with our inferred beliefs to form a network of beliefs that help us think about or act in the world. They explain life and give it meaning.

Worldviews affect things. They affect the way that we think, the way that we act, the way we make ethical decisions, the way that we relate, the way that we live and the way that we die...how much we eat, what we eat, how we spend money on...

Worldviews have particular components. They usually consist of beliefs concerning God and his/her existence and character, the nature of human beings, morality, ultimate reality (what is really real), death, and meaning to life.

Naturally, having a worldview limits the views that can be consistently held. No argument whose conclusion is obviously inconsistent with one's worldview can be rationally convincing unless the worldview itself is adjusted.

Somehow It comes as no surprise that with the Christian worldview, no editing is needed. It is as constant as the Faithful One, the Only God, whom Christianity reveals.

The Christian Worldview

• The world is not a mere cosmic accident. God created world with specific beginning and end in mind. The world is tied up with God's purposes.
  
• Human beings, too, are not cosmic accidents. They are created by God as part of his purpose for the world. That purpose is intricately tied up with human beings and involves them sharing in relationship with their creator as both dependent creatures and willing friends.
  
• God is the loving ruler of the world. He is independent from his creation and committed to it. His nature is to love his creation and to rule it in grace in justice. Our experience of life is that we can't live rightly with God, without other people and with the environment God gave us to live in other than the way God intended for us to live.
  
• Instead of acting responsibly as dependent creatures and willing friends, we behave as independent rulers and judges, passively ignoring him or actively rebelling against him. This desire for, and practice of, independence is deep seated and incurable in us.
• God will not let his purpose go. He is so committed to it that he sent his son Jesus into the world as a human being.
  
• Jesus did what no other human being had done. He lived in dependence and friendship with God. He demonstrated this in his being willing to obey his Father to the point of death on behalf of all humans.
  
• He took the punishment that was due to them for their independence and rebellion. He acted as God had always acted – with our best interests in mind. As a result of God's action in Jesus, reconciliation is possible. If we accept what Jesus has done on our behalf, God promises to treat us as though the breach in relationship had never happened. He promises to give us new life and new strength to live dependently through the gift of the Holy Spirit.
  
• This life will continue past death. On the other hand, if we continue to reject God's purpose in Christ, God promises that he will judge us for our rebellion and that we will forever live out of relationship with him, the source of all goodness, justice and love.
  
• Purpose and meaning for life is now found in two things: (1) living in close relationship with God ourselves; and (2) telling others of what God has done in Christ in order that they too might live as they were created to live.
  
• As God began the world and as he sent Jesus into the world to redeem it, so God will end the world. At that end, God will balance the books, establish justice and bring in the possibility of a new world where human beings might live in untainted relationship with him, with each other, and with the environment he places them in.
  

Andrew Reid, Apologetics

Ah Huat Bak Kut Teh
7 Keppel Road
#01-05/07
PSA Tanjong Pagar Complex