They Built Their Houses with Paper and Gingerbread

If we were yet another spore in the mushrooming indie bandwagon (cheesy mixed metaphors due completely to all that Christmas cheese), we would call ourselves "The Paper Houses". Our eponymous debut album would contain the hit singles "People In Paper Houses Shouldn't Light Fires" and "Oh! My Soggy Foundations!".

Fascination with Anna Torborg's paper house templates over at Twelve22 led several happy hours singing carols while trying to deflect attention from poorly wrapped presents with tiny personalised houses.

I liked the tension in the window of the music cafe best with its black cat eyeing a platter of cupcakes, a picture of feline self-control.

The minature home-making continued with gingerbread houses that perched on the rims of mugs of hot tea (until the heat got to the icing) (cheers notmartha).

When the neighbours weren't busy being traumatised by the singing and the smell of burnt gingerbread, they might have caught snippets of podcasts from St. Matthew's Unichurch, Perth.

Thanks to Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle, Rory Shiner's exposition on Romans 6 brought to mind the image of Jesus as a flying home (interestingly The Flying House was a Christian anime series).

It is commonly said in some circles of living the Christian life that, well, the ceremonial law has been abolished but the law is still useful for holiness now that we've understood the gospel and that actually, grace and salvation are conditional on our morals and good behaviour.

But Paul says that the reason that Christians will not and cannot continue in sin because in Christ, we died to sin.

When a Christian puts his trust in Christ to save him from God's judgement on his sins, he does not sign a contract to perform services to God in exchange for salvation. But neither does he merely agree to abide by the terms of membership of the Christian club to follow Christ or be under the rule of Christ, nor is it only that the Spirit comes to live in him to enable him to live as a Christian. Far more than that, the Christian is in Christ - he is crucified with Christ, buried with Christ and raised with Christ (Romans 6:3-5); he is united with Christ.

Christ is a place and the Christian is in him. Christ is like the plane that goes from Singapore to Helsinki (SIN-HEL, haha) and if we are in that plane, we too go from Singapore to Helsinki. What happened to Jesus also happens to the Christian. The Christian participates in the full benefits of what Jesus has to offer and all his blessings, regardless of whether he is quivering in his seat or if he has taken off his shoes and started snoring even before take off.

Christians coming into Christ have, in fact and not as a metaphor, had their old selves killed and buried. Our old selves are not things that have to be beaten into submission so that they will one day; give up the ghost; they are already dead and buried.

If our old sinful selves are dusty history, then because this is true, we must live out the reality that we are dead to sin (Romans 6:11). The imperative is not to pretend for the purposes of the exercise that we are free, but, because our minds are so used to being enslaved to sin, to keep reminding ourselves that we are now, in fact, free from having to obey our sinful thoughts and desires. To return to sin would be as absurd as an emancipated slave running back to be chained to a galley with little food and water and to be ill-treated and then die a painful torturous death because "I can't help it, I just need to do it. My family background and genes compel me to do it." or "I cannot be happy and satisfied in life until I return to slavery" (Romans 6:12-23).

Organically, something has changed in the Christian. The Christian life is then about reckoning to ourselves what God has reckoned to us: freedom from the slavery of sin and freedom to fulfil our full potential as human beings - as slaves of God (Romans 6:15-23).

Monty, the cliché from 2009, says "Know the truth and the truth will set you free".

Christians as Parents

So we've been celebrating kiddie birthdays. (There are no photos of said kiddies because even though the safety car could save Fernando Alonso his Singapore Grand Prix Formula One champion's trophy, it will be able to do nothing to save your eyeballs from melting from the cuteness overload.)

The most useful thing we could think of getting them was the gift of eternal life. But that sort of thing not being generally available in the market, little presents were obtained from an uncle shop (an "uncle shop" being like a "mamak shop" but more specialized) at Peninsula Plaza, Su Ling of Pupsik Studio (who even did the wrapping for us!) and Baby Gap. Never before have I eyeballed so many powder blue and pink, stripped and polka-dotted items with a view to splashing out good money for them.

According to their parents, it seems that not only is the gift of eternal not to be found in the shops, even leading youngsters to drink from its spring is fraught with much uncertainty and toil.

Being in close proximity to the parentals, sorting through old stuff over the past few weeks, has demonstrated that the best intentions of collective groups of parents can do nothing to steer their progeny in any given way.

Apparently my dad used to go to the sorts of parties where it was fun to break out the paintbrushes and doodle on empty paper plates when things were slow. He and his close-knit group of artist friends had great hopes for their children as the future of modern Chinese art and made sure they were properly schooled in Chinese ink brush painting (though more Nanyang school than the classical sort).

Unfortunately, not only did none of their children show any sort of interest in continuing their line of passion, they demonstrated no discernable ability to have done so. As my poor beleagued teacher said, solitary tear rolling down her cheek: skinny goldfish + horticulturally-incorrect flowers = FAIL!

But for Christian parents, there is more at stake than having their children fulfilling their subjective hopes and dreams; there is the matter of their eternal life/death.

Have been picking my painful way through John Ruskin's autobiography Praeterita (his unfettered self-love being a terrible obstacle to smooth reading). Thought of by some to be the spiritual founder of the British Labour Movement and by Mohandas Gandhi to be responsible for much of his early thought on social justice, Ruskin, as a child, had been dedicated to the Lord by his evangelical mother. Thus dedicated, his childhood and adolescent years were occupied with close study of the Bible, the reading of tracts and the digestion of sermons. In grand infant apocryphal Gospel form, Ruskin tells of how he would preach:

a sermon at home over the red sofa cushions – this performance being always called for by my mother's dearest friends, as the greatest accomplishment of my childhood. The sermon was, I believe, some eleven words long; very exemplary, it seems to me, in that respect – and I still think must have been the purest gospel, for I know it began with "People, be good."

What exactly he believed, Ruskin did not care to elucidate, though he was observed by others to have "a very real awareness of the depravity of mankind". Ruskin would later turn against his earlier faith after the death of his parents.

What went wrong? And more importantly to every Christian parent, how can we prevent such a success-in-this-life-but-eternal-loser type disaster in our children's lives?

So with all things perceived to be important but whose outcome is uncertain, a whole Christian parenting industry has sprung up to address the insecurities of parents. Unfortunately, their advice has been, like that of their secular brethren, for the most part contradictory: James Dobson's Dare to Discipline vs William Sear's attachment parenting; if you pick up a brawling baby he will lack self-discipline later in life, if you leave a brawling baby to cry until he falls asleep in his own vomit he will be insecure and distant later in life; if you smack your child they will learn to do violence to others, spare the rod and spoil the child; praise your child and they will be dependent on the approval of others, neglect to praise your child and they will have low self-esteem etc.

The one thing the parenting industry agrees on though, is that if you do not follow their sagely advice, you will do untold irreversible damage to your progeny.

See:

• There's no place like home: the marvellous land of Christian parenting books by Ellen Hrebeniuk
  
• Caution: Parenting book. Read with care (Part 1)(Part 2) by Jean Williams
  

With all that cacophony out there, perhaps it's just best to knuckle down to first principles:

1. every parent is sinful. Therefore you will fail as a parent and do untold damage to your child regardless of how hard you try or what you do.
   
2. every child is sinful and will rebel against God no matter what you do.
3. however, God has instituted certain responsibilities to parents:
   
   • love your children (Ps 103:13-14, Tit 2:3-4)
   • provide for your family's/children's physical needs (1 Tim 5:4, 8, Prov 31:10-31)
   • teach your children about God's character and salvation from the Bible (Deut 6:4-9, Ps 78, 2 Tim 1:5, 3:14-5)
   • instruct and train your children in the way of righteousness and wisdom (Prov 1:8-9, 4:10-11, 22:6, Ps 34:11-14, 1 Thess 2:11-12)
   • expect your children to obey you as the authority God has placed over them (1 Tim 3:2-4, 11-12, Deut 5:16, Eph 6:1-4)
   • Discipline your children fairly and without harshness (Prov 13:24, 22:15, 29:17, Eph 6:1-4, Col 3:20-21).
   • live godly lives for your children to imitate (Prov 20:7).
     
4. but, as with any other ministry, parents are only workmen in the field, and so as with any other human, the growth is God's alone to give. Therefore pray for your children (Rom 12:12, Col 4:2, Eph 3:14-21).

Apart from these clear instructions, I guess, each parent may exercise Christian freedom and godly wisdom to do as he/she thinks is appropriate for him/her and his/her particular child at that particular time and situation. Jean Williams speaks of Philip Jensen recalling, in Chapter 7 of By God's Word, the time he spent in England staying with faithful Christian families. Some were rigid, others were laid-back; some consistent, others experimental; some formal, others casual. But when he stayed with the same families years later, all the children were happy, well-adjusted individuals and committed Christians. (And one supposes they could all have turned out the other way as well.)

See:
The duties of parents (Part 1)(Part 2) by JC Ryle
Teaching children about God by Christine Jensen
The first duty of fatherhood by Andrew Lansdown
A Christian Upbringing by Andrew Lansdown

It may be of some comfort though that children not yet of age are thought of as being part of the covenantal community of their parents and might thus have access to its salvic benefits.

See:
Children and Salvation by Glenn N. Davies


(PS: Rather poorly in the way of internet connection, loads of links, not much time to explore much further. no experience in the matter. However, reckon godly obedience and the usual need for faith and dependence on God's undeserved favour to be bottomline.)

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.

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.