How to talk about Israel on the internet.

  One issue that I've avoided a lot is Israeli politics. And yet the pendulum has swung so far against the Israelis that there seems to be a way to start knocking some sense into the Israelis who for some reason are still defending their country. 

I've realised quite a while ago that it's pretty futile to be debating them on the specific facts of their situation: they will always have some piece of information that you don't have and you will lose points on that. 

Also, it's not entirely wrong to say that they are fighting against terrorists. What they are saying is that the Palestinians are denying their right to exist. On the face of it, this is true. But if you were living under Japanese occupation during the Second World War in East Asia, you would wish that the Japanese were wiped off the face of the earth. That's a pretty natural reaction and not because you are an evil person. I don't feel that sad when they dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

What I can do instead is to appeal to their self-interest. I can remind the Israeli that I'm from East Asia, which is a place that's not directly involved in the Israeli Palestinian conflict. I can remind them that I'm a bystander, and that Israel is seriously losing their soft power and their moral high ground. 

I can highlight the progress that countries that are not at war are making, and tell them with this stupid war going on, they are being left behind and will go back to being rubble. 

And I can move away as far as I can from giving them any reason to feel smug and satisfied. Some people get an ego trip from being told that they're hated. Under no circumstances should you make them feel like they are martyrs or heroes. You have to emphasise that war is stupid, Israelis like to make war, and therefore Israelis are stupid. And I probably want to press home the point that absolutely none of them will live long enough to see the end of Israel being in conflict. 

They can't carry on feeling that they're winners. They're losers. I don't think I'm harming them like that. For them to think that the conflict can carry on just like that, for them to carry on getting the drug hit that Netanyahu and his right wing crazy people shoot up their vein, that would be the true disservice to them. So it's important to highlight the advances that people from other civilisations - the East Asians in particular - have made. Israel likes to think of itself as a bastion of civilisation in the midst of barbarians, but you can show them that the Gulf States and East Asia have leapfrogged them in terms of human development. 

Most importantly, they have to understand that by prolonging this conflict, it is they who are the losers of this conflict. It is a lose-lose situation, and Israel will eventually go down the tubes. Somebody made the point that traditional war is a bit outmoded: today's conflicts are about soft power and Israel is losing. And at the same time it's hard to see if they're going to wake up and see the light: they don't seem to ever learn from anything. 

American Beauty Redux

 Watching “American Beauty” all those years ago had enough of an impact on me that I’m still thinking about what it all meant, all these years later. Because it informed my thinking about what it meant to live a good life. 

“American Beauty” cannot be understood outside of the context, “what is the good life?” Everything in the movie is related to this question. Kevin Spacey is the middle aged geezer who feels the walls closing in on him, and feeling that his life is increasingly dull and meaningless. 

Annette Benning is the careerist wife, who is a great careerist and a go-getter, and is disappointed at her husband for allowing his career to stall. 

The younger generation – Thora Birch as the daughter, Mena Suvari as the Lolita character, Wes Bentley as the boy who develops a relationship with Thora Birch – have less developed character arcs, but they are actively negotiating and discovering their place in this world. 

One of my favourite aspects of this film – I watched it during late adolescence. Which means that I was almost 23 years old and not yet fully grown up. Some of my favourite literature has to do with people who are growing and changing. The plays I wrote for school all involved people who were facing growing pains. 

There is also the image of the rose, where there are layers and layers of petals. This is also a puzzle of a movie, whereby everything is not what it initially is, or what it initially seems to be. People either undergo change, or they are revealed to be somewhat different from your initial impression of them. 

But it was pretty crazy, looking back, that that movie was one of the most acclaimed movies of the year. I remember conversing with a college classmate about that movie, and she was a more mature person, with a more grown-up mindset. She wasn’t that impressed by it. There are a few things about that movie: first, it’s sensational, in that it delivers the element of surprise. This makes a great impact on first viewing. But in retrospect, when the element of surprise is lost, then it gets knocked down a few pegs. 

1999 was a great year for movies. It was a vintage year, one of the last vintage years. 2 years later, 9/11 would change the mood of the US, and it would be a more militaristic country. 1999 was one of the last years for Gen X to be dominating the popular culture. After that, movies would be more like marines training (how Jason Bourne movies influenced the James Bond reboot, for example). The Marvel Cinematic Universe would start to dominate. Christopher Nolan would make movies super serious and super earnest, without the sense of fun of the 90s movies. Being super preachy and super didactic would no longer be considered a vice in movie making. 

“American Beauty” asked “what is the good life”. And one of the reasons why “American Beauty” has undergone an evaluation downwards is the way they answered this question. There is the adult version of the answer: a good life is based on traditional values, being an upstanding member of your community, being successful in your career, being a pillar that other people can lean on. There is the juvenile / adolescent version of the answer, which is that the path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. That somehow, in spite of the wanton irresponsibility that is exhibited by Lester Burnham throughout this movie, he finds some kind of spiritual redemption. He quits his job, and god knows how he’s going to continue making a living. He spends the paycheck on buying the car of his dreams. He pumps iron and makes his mind and body young again. Perving over a girl who’s the same age as his daughter becomes a rejuvenation process. Masturbating over her at night somehow isn’t considered as committing adultery or rape in his own mind. Throwing tantrums at his family to express his dissatisfaction with his own life is a necessary stage to help others confront the fact that he’s in a rut. But it is hardly the model of responsibility. 

Quite obviously, “American Beauty” comes to the conclusion that the juvenile version of the good life rules OK, even though it is somewhat leavened by one aspect of the adult good life: Lester Burnham somehow gains some kind of spiritual enlightenment, and manages to lead the youngsters a little closer to what he has discovered. It is a questionable premise, in a certain way. However it can be argued that this process is a form of self-care, and you have to dig deep within yourself to find that spiritual side, to remind yourself about the beauty of everything. Still, this movie stopped short of showing how Lester Burnham was going to balance the juvenile side of the good life (which is amply represented in the movie) with the adult side of the good life (which the movie portrayed as so abhorrent – at least it was a jail that he had to break out of.) 

Next few paragraphs is a comment that I left on somebody's blog post: 

This is a film that's very rich in ideas, but with a lot of such films, it's quite easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. When it first came out, it was striking in its originality. Over the years, its originality and bravery has faded somewhat, which is why there is a downward appraisal.

So you can say this is a film about a midlife crisis, and the lolita narrative is definitely one of the striking parts of the plot. But it misses the bigger picture: Angela is on the posters because sex sells. But she's not the main character. In fact, she's by far the least developed character, which serves the real purpose. The only character development you see in her is when she and Lester are about to make out, and she suddenly admits that she's a virgin. It's meant to be jarring - oh my god, that's what she really is! No, a big clue in who she is is in her name: she's an angel, and she's the catalyst for the spiritual journey that Lester Burnham undergoes over the course of the movie. The fact that he was on the verge of consensual sex and didn't even think about seeing it through - I think it speaks volumes about what Angela was really all about.

The main narrative arc of this movie is the spiritual journey. Lester starts off being a walking dead man, but slowly, and bit by bit, he comes back to life, through being defiant towards the dead end life that held him in, through putting himself first some of the time, through channeling his lust towards Angela into rediscovering the more awesome aspects of his own youth.

And the secondary part of the film is that it poses the question, "what is the good life". This is typical of the pre-millennial films, which is why 1999 was so good: the new millennium was coming, and it was pushing quite a few filmmakers to get existential: there was “The Matrix,” “Being John Malkovich,” and "The Fight Club".

"American Beauty" answers the question in the most hippie manner possible. It's not very judgemental about Lester, but very judgemental about what it did not consider to be the good life. Having a steady job. Living in a nice suburban house. Tending to its beautiful garden. Having a great career as a real estate agent. Fine dining while listening to classical music. Listening to your wife. Being a dutiful soldier who is at the same time a repressed homosexual.

These were considered to be the good life: working out. Having a young person's mindset, and through working out, having a young person's body. Fapping away to chicks who are too young for you. Buying fancy cars. Working in jobs with low responsibility (like manning a fast food counter). Throwing asparagus at a fancy dinner. Introducing your daughter's boyfriend to pot.

Looking at the ledger, it's easy to classify what it considers to be the good life as "juvenile / adolescent", and what it does not consider to be the good life as "adulting". The movie is not entirely wrong, but it is too simplistic to do this. A lot of people who watched this movie in their youth and loved the juvenile message, would have grown into adults and have embraced the more adult aspects of their lives and start to recoil from the message of this film.

Of course, you have to end this film, and ending it with Lester Burnham dead is not necessarily a bad way to go. But it begs the question, what if he had to carry on living, how was he going to deal with the consequences of this long bout of irresponsible behaviour?

And it goes back to my own life. I’m not going to reject totally the message of “American Beauty”. But I know that I have to balance the juvenile idea of the good life with the more adult side of things. I had basically turned away from being an adult. I thought it would be temporary. But I’ve come to realise that you have to live both versions of the good life. 

I’ve come full circle. I’ve returned to the place I used to work for. I still don’t know why I left for a few years – probably 10 years – to live in “Mexico”. I don’t regret it because for me to have spent those 10 years working for the factory, that would have worn me down. Going somewhere else is refreshing, coming back is refreshing. But then I would have grown and would have to be more grownup. 

Seeing all those people after so many years will trigger some thoughts about what it means to be growing old. I’ve thought about what it means to be living a good life as an older adult. Do people get less happy? Do people indulge themselves less? Sometimes I look at one or two of the best years of my life, and those were years when I was thrust into something new, where a bright new future beckoned, where I found abilities that I never knew that I had before. But I have to make peace with the fact that past a certain age, I am no longer a growing person. And a non-growing person is either going to be consolidating what he already has, or he’s going downhill. 

People my age are no longer juveniles delighting in making new discoveries about the world. Or maybe they are, because they are negotiating new challenges and realities that are somewhat different from when they were young. But in many ways, I have not changed my circumstances by much since I was younger. The themes are the same. I will be working in tech. I will be a music lover. I will be managing my ADHD. 

I have a mind that loves change, and loves novelty. In a way, that’s good because learning new things is good for growing and becoming a more knowledgeable and intelligent person. It will be good for innovation, because I can sometimes see things that others cannot. But it is not good because older people tend to rely on old and accumulated wisdom, and a novelty seeking mind does not excel at retaining this wisdom. 

People my age are managers. We will be focusing on solving real life problems. I remember making a breakthrough, to become the person who could see things from a higher level and a higher perspective. That was nice and exciting. But after this, it means that you will be saddled with responsibilities. Going to school was fun because learning was fun. But you’re no longer learning because learning is fun: you have responsibilities and duties to solve real world problems. After a while, the joy of no longer being stupid will fade away, and what will replace it? 

When I first watched "America Beauty", what struck me was that it was very forgiving towards the "juvenile" mentality. But when I grew older, I realised that it was not sustainable. Now I'm more thinking: "it's alright, feed your inner child, and don't starve it. But don't forget that you have to be more like an adult."

So middle aged life becomes a little more complex: how do I balance the juvenile version of the good life with the adult version of it? 

End of the GEP

When the GEP ended, there was a lot of mourning for what it was, what it meant. I was at first quite critical of the fact that GEP people were shut off from the rest of the school and given our own special facilities. 

What is the meaning of the GEP? This is one of the biggest crucial questions, and a question that people avoid because answering it honestly might involve slaying a few sacred cows. There are two views of the GEP. First view is that it's to produce people of great talent and ability, and great geniuses. They are people who change the world, and the GEP is to leverage their strengths and not hold them back. The second view of the issue is that some of these guys are like Einstein - who is obviously a very capable human being, but in some other respects in his life, a complete mess who needs some help for his day to day life. 

And it was very strange that people who were gifted in one aspect of our lives were also considered handicapped in others. To add to the confusion, people in the GEP were as different from each other as they were from the people in the express, so you had to deal with 4 groups of people: people who are gifted, or people who got lucky in the entrance exam. (There won't be retarded people in there, but maybe one or two who may only have average IQ). There will be neurotypical people and neurodiverse people. 

The gifted program during my time worked because these 4 groups of people do not really have anything that will intrinsically put them in conflict with each other. You can put the smart and crazy people in the same room, and they will help each other, this is one kind of diversity that produces benefits for all kinds of people. 

So there was maybe a lack of honest discussion about which of these two things the GEP was really about. And that's because while people who are running the program are perfectly willing to do the things that are necessary to help the people who are maybe struggling and a bit behind, they aren't willing to make this facet of the GEP well known to everybody. And nobody really wants to discuss this angle, because when you are facing the public, you want to play up the angle that these guys are potential heroes, not potential losers. It's good for your ego, and it helps when you are trying to angle for more resources to be diverted into your program. Nobody wants to say, "this is for people who are already intelligent to navigate the more screwed up facets of their psyche", even though that is truly the case. 

The problem starts when the gifted program ends and people have to step into the wider society. Those first few post-gifted years were hard for me, in ways that I didn't anticipate, and my parents were ill-equipped to prepare me for. I think I'm only able to understand the true meaning of the gifted program many many years later when I make the adjustments I've had to make, and rue the opportunities that I didn't take. 

As you know, anybody who shut themselves away from a better social life when they're younger will regret it when they're older. This is one of the things which is almost always true. 

You will only know the answer to the question when you are put in a position to answer that question. There's a lot that we didn't know about life when we were schoolkids. And in many ways, some of us didn't grow up quickly enough. 

There are people who would argue that you should make the gifted program more exclusive because you should concentrate your resources more on producing the people who are truly elite. I think that is wrong. If you examine the theory of evolution closely, there's one aspect that people fail to understand. “Time and chance happen to them all”. People do not truly know how to select people for the gifted program, and you should not rely on people to have that ability. So in order to prepare for the eventuality that the wrong people are admitted into the gifted program, you should take in as many people as possible, and let them sort it out when they're in the gifted program. 

But one of the benefits was that you did put some of the smart people in the same room as each other, and that has its benefits, although it isn't an unalloyed benefit. You know what it means to grow up and live in a tight knit community. But then that community doesn't grow in a way that syncs up with what the larger Singaporean community is going to be like. So it actually handicaps students in one or two ways. I'm not going to lie. There is a temptation for the inmates to want to take over the asylum. I was one of the inmates who wanted to take over the asylum. And even for people who are less weird than myself, they talked about people outside as “the normies”. It's good to celebrate your quirks every once in a while. But when you can't tell the difference between what is normal and what is quirky, and when you start thinking that you can change the values of society just like that, then we have got a serious problem on our hands. 

It was very “Lord of the Flies”. We built a little mini-society that had rules that were slightly different from other people. But it was relatively good natured, there wasn't a lot of bullying, and it was definitely a safe space. We deserved a pat on the back for that. That said, every batch of gifted people are different, and I cannot speak for all the batches that came after us. 

My ability to integrate into the wider world was not terrible, but it's not fantastic either. After a few years, I was pretty OK. 

So the integration with the larger society is a big issue with the gifted program. The other issue is that you have a dual personality with the gifted people. There is a fundamental incoherence that you think that these guys are smart and tough on one hand, and are special people who need special help on the other hand. So does that mean you push them hard to succeed, or you coddle them? This is a very hard problem to deal with, and it may have led to one or two people remarking to me ruefully, “do you think that maybe we should have been working a bit harder?” 

But I do see the logic behind the gifted program, and it is a very similar logic to raising children in general: protect them when they're young, and hope that they'll grow stronger, so that when they become adults, they'll be ready to fend for themselves. I could moan and groan all I want about “why didn't I come our of this or that comfort zone a bit sooner” but is the gifted program really to be blame for this? You can give people opportunities, but you can't force people to grab them. 

And the big elephant in the room is the issue about privileges. And that's become something that ... it was already a big issue in the 80s and 90s, but today, I can imagine that it's even worse. A whole tuition industry has risen around getting students to game the system. Back then, we knew that we were the beneficiaries of an uneven playing field, but this was not something that was front and centre, not something that our entire existence revolved around. I can't imagine how crazy things are today, when you have Singaporean kids attending school side by side with new immigrants from other countries, or children of new immigrants. I can't imagine the level of bitchiness and resentment that could result from something like that. My own experience of the GEP is that we worked hard and played hard. But I can imagine that an elite student today will have to work hard without playing hard. And that's pretty sad.

So while I'm sufficiently distant from the GEP to have some good perspective of the general outline of what the GEP was about, I'm also too distant to know the finer details of what it's evolved into. I'm glad that more people can participate in elite education and get a leg up here or there. I certainly had a good time during my 7 years, and in some way, this is closing of a chapter. Years from now, when nobody even remembers that a GEP existed, nobody will really care about those 7 years of my life, other than the other people who went through some version of it. But at the same time, it's also quite remarkable that something like that has lasted as long as it has. So I guess there's the old cliche: don't be sad that it's over, just be glad that it happened to you. 

Hoarding - Analysis Paralysis

 Before I went to Mexico, and that was when I was young; more than 10 years ago. I had one or two good years in my career, and probably I moved from being on the lowest rung to the next lowest rung. But I felt that I was stuck, like I had nowhere to go. I saw my supervisors take on work that I was unwilling or reluctant to do: budgets, organizing, bossing people around. I met a financial advisor around this time, and for some reason, I never wanted to go and do the things that they advised me to take a look at.

The pragmatic part of my brain is underdeveloped. Some people have blind spots. Mine is that I don’t really want to have anything to do with planning or looking far ahead in life. I could overcome that, but something drastic would have to happen. If somebody held my feet to the fire in order to be better at that, I might have done it. If you want to learn a new skill in life, the best time is to do it when you are young, and your brain is at your finest.

There were times I remember: I didn’t want to take up leadership positions in my ECAs. I didn’t want to do my homework. I didn’t want to organize myself. When I went to university, I didn’t want to do the engineering modules. I didn’t want to get my act together and do projects. Maybe I opted for the easier option all of the time. I preferred to defer decisions. I preferred to open possibilities rather than to close them. Maybe I couldn’t stand that all the time that I spent doing this, I couldn’t do that at the same time.

It was the same thing in school: I refused to nail down whether I was a literary writer, a mathematician or a musician. Perhaps I was too privileged that I managed to get away with that, whereas these days a talented person would be forced to choose a direction in life a little sooner.

But time passes on, and you're forced to take sides and choose.

I remember fondly one of the days which I marked down as the beginning of my adolescence, and possibly the end of my tweens. I had 2 terrible years in my tweens. Those were growing pains, but there was one day that provided glimpses into my future and pointed me to a few happier directions: music and drama. That day, I was driving in a nearby city – call it Americano – and I saw a few adolescents dating and realized it was also another Valentine’s Day, that reminded me of that other day. But this time the message was more somber. I think that would be the day that I would mark out as the official start of my midlife crisis, or maybe my midlife. It was becoming more and more apparent that my IT career was stalling.

And I would have an epiphany. I had quite a few epiphanies when I was younger: they got rarer when I got older. I was sitting in one of the eateries that I had had visited a few years before, and it occurred to me: you are a hoarder. I was hoarding things, mainly compact disks. But I was also a hoarder of memories. I could generalize the concept of hoarding to an anti-pattern where I was getting blocked because I was biting off more than I could chew. I was buying more music than I could ever listen to. I was spending too much time on consuming music but not making it. I was opening more doors than I could walk through. There wasn’t a balance between my dreaming of things to do, and doing the actual execution whereby things could happen.

I would have to change my way of life, my way of thinking. Things would have to take on a sharper focus. The idea that really made an impression on me was that from now on, my horizons would be shrinking. It was an inversion of that earlier Valentine’s day, when it seemed that the dominant message was that my horizons would be expanding. This was about the “remains of the day” mode. About a butler squandering his life so far, but still having hope that he would make the best of what's left. That we don't have the luxury of time, or wondering if things were going to work out, but there would be a balance between trying to figure things out and making things work in practice. There would be less analysis paralysis in the future.

And this journey hasn't been smooth. If you're a reader of this blog, and I know there are very few readers, you'd know that I've been a spectacularly unfocused person. One of the biggest mistakes is not really knowing what I want. Of course there is a process of wandering around and trying to find your bearings, but after that, there has to be more focus and more doing. Closing things out... making things happen. Maybe I had the time and energy when I was younger to just indulge in doing whatever I wanted. Maybe it was just more fun to be dreaming of things, rather than to see what was actually in front of me. Maybe there was this illusion of infinite potential and infinite possibilities.

And then life becomes quite difficult, because I know that on some things, I cannot be trusting my instincts and doing the things I enjoy. It's a very hard lesson to learn, that achievement comes from the things that I do not enjoy.

A few years ago, I was staring at the abyss. Somebody commented to me once: you're running out of runway. The runway is some things that you were endowed with, to help you get your feet off the ground. But this allowance is finite. You'll make the best of that allowance to bootstrap you to get yourself off the ground. And then the people who were supposed to help you get on with it will be gone, and then you're on your own.

I don't know if I should learn to take greater happiness and pride when I get things done. I don't know if chilling out and relaxing are just too fun for me.

England in the finals of the Euros

 

So England are in the finals again... I'm now thinking about England doing well in a tournament. It happened in 2018, 2021, 2024. IT's happened with some regularity. Every time they did well in tournaments, I've had difficulties in my life. Adjusting to secondary school, adjusting to NS and life after school, having to retain my Axure job, having to fight for a permanent position, and now I have this issue. Is this going to be a regular thing, is England going to the finals often, and if that happens, am I going to have a crisis every few years?

The last England manager that everybody was happy about was Terry Venables. He shouldn't have been forced out, but he was. They were very close to getting to the final in Euro 1996, and if they did, they had a good chance against the Czech Republic. There was Glenn Hoddle, who was decent, but they went out after the second round during that match when David Beckham got red carded. He had a decent team, I don't know how well he would have done if he was given a chance to manage in Euro 2000. Then there was Kevin Keegan, who had a relatively short tenure. He wasn't smart enough to be England manager, and he got dumped out the group stage.

England got knocked out pretty early during the Sven Goran Eriksson years. The Eriksson years began well, and there was that great 5-1 defeat of Germany in Munich. It seemed like the dawn of a golden era, and very often that team was called the golden generation, but they never seemed to fulfill their potential. They were knocked out by Brazil in 2002. That is not shameful, because it was the Brazil of Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho. (And arguably the last great Brazillian side).

Then there was Euros 2004, when they had a great side, but lost to Portugal. They also lost to Portugal in the quarters in 2006. Those two tournaments were infamous, because there was a lot of talk of disunity within the squad, which was confirmed years later by the players themselves. There was an over-reliance on David Beckham, who was always picked regardless of whether he played well or if he fit into the team.

The Steve McLaren years were worse. He failed to get England into Euros 2008, and this was the last time they failed to qualify for a major tournament. Then there was Fabio Capello, who had a lot of success with club sides, but was the wrong person to help the England players deal with the stress of playing for England. Roy Hodgson wasn't any better. 2014, group stage at the World Cup. Euros 2016, knocked out by Iceland. 

And now there is Southgate. Gareth Southgate took England to the semi-finals of World Cup 2018 and the finals of Euros 2020 and Euros 2024. But you could argue that he was often the beneficiary of the knockout rounds falling kindly for him.

World Cup 2018: Colombia, Sweden. Euros 2020: Germany, Ukraine, Denmark. Euros 2024: Slovakia, Switzerland, Holland. Contrast that to the Eriksson era, when they were knocked out by Brazil and Portugal. In fact, it was quite often the case that the first time they encountered a genuine contender, they were knocked out. In 2018, they lost to Croatia. In 2020 (actually 2021) they lost to Italy. In 2022, they lost to France, who went on to lose in the final. In 2024, with all due respect to Holland, Spain is the first real contender they will face. It would be an upset victory if England wre to win against them.

But England do have some of the best players in the world, and many of them play for sides like Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Real Madrid, who are the best club sides in the world, and are tactically astute.

The Euros, though, are a tournament where it's not always clear that the favourite to reach the finals will win it. Czechoslovakia won it in 1976, Denmark 1992, Greece 2004, Portugal 2016, These wins demonstrate that it's quite possible for an underdog to win it. For the World Cup, the first 5 editions, there were quite a few upsets: Uruguay was an early powerhouse in football, so winning 2 was not surprise, but the win over Brazil in 1950 was a big shock. Italy may not have won their first 2 World Cups entirely fairly. And there was 1954, when Hungary was heavily favoured to win, but West Germany won it instead: this was before Germany became a powerhouse. After that, one struggles to pinpoint instances where dark horses triumphed and won the World Cup.

But it's not entirely surprising to see a few dark horses end up as beaten finalists in the World Cup. Countries like Czechoslovakia, Sweden and Croatia have reached the finals before. Perhaps underdogs winning the Euros is going to be more difficult in the expanded formats. So when England makes it to the finals of the Euros twice in a row, are people in the future going to see it as some kind of lucky break, or are they truly a great national team?

There's also the question of legitimacy. England won't be seen as a great side unless they win this competition at least once. The odds against them are quite daunting, as Spain have proven themselves to be a good team in this tournament. But England do have the best players, and if they do click, many of them play for very tactically well-drilled teams in Man City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Man U, Aston Villa and Real Madrid. So it only slightly favours Spain. And there's this forbidding record of Spain in Euro / European finals, where they have always beaten the non-Spanish side during the last 20 years. Either that is coming to an end, or the Spanish streak will continue. The Spanish sides which have made this list are amongst the greatest sides ever. There was Barcelona and Spain, who were the best club and Spain sides of all time during their glory years. There was Real Madrid, who had a great midfield who always figured out how to win the match no matter what. There were also teams like Sevilla, who often reached the finals of the Europa league and won it, and who could count on that experience to win it all. But there were instances where the teams were evenly matched, Spanish teams have beaten Liverpool in the Europa / UCL finals. But then there was Sevilla beating Inter Milan and a Roma team coached by Jose Mourinho. There was Villareal beating Man U. These were games that could have gone either way, and the Spanish side managed to win. 

There are sides who have gotten to the finals multiple times and failed to win. Hungary went to the World Cup finals twice and were favourites to win it at least once. Same with the Netherlands, who reached 2 successive finals in the World Cup in the 70s and lost them both. There was Benfica, victim of the infamous "Benfica Curse", who lost 8 Europa League and UCL finals. 3 of them in the 60s, 3 of them in the 80s, and 2 of them in the 2010s. 3 great sides, and nothing to show for it. People might forget the Valencia side who reached 2 consecutive champions league finals and lost them both. There was the infamous Bayer "Neverkusen" side who finished Bundesliga runner-ups 4 times in 6 years. In the league, it is quite common for sides to finish second many times. Newcastle never won the premier league, but they finished runner ups twice. Tottenham had finished second and third a few times under Pochettino. Arsenal's great sides under Wenger and Arteta have always coincided with better opposition, so they have finished second 8 times. Liverpool also have had to finish second 5 times, most times under the Manchester sides. 

So there are clubs who have finished second in competitions frequently and then gone on to break their duck. And there were clubs who just don't break their duck, and are cursed to be Neverkusens, although they finally broke their duck this season. There was the infamous Buffalo Bills, the Neverkusen of American football, who reached the Superbowl 4 times in a row, and never won it, ever. So which are England? Well, England are lucky that they are in a competition where it's quite likely that the favourite doesn't win, so in the Euros, there's no such thing as a favourite, going into the finals. 

JC Years

 I've had the opportunity recently to think through what my JC years were like. The funny thing is that I mainly remember the good parts. I did enjoy a few good albums. I had to remind myself about the bad parts too. Some of my peers have children who are already in JC. 

They were not good years when I was living them, but now I get nostalgic when looking back on them. It was basically a place where I was successful. I didn't know my job most of the time, but I made it, and I was successful, in terms of getting an “A” level result. I got into Snowy Hill.

Mainstream Singapore.

It was one of my few experiences in mainstream Singaporean society. Before that, I was in the company of the GEP kids. After that, I was in the amy, then Snowy Hill. When I was working for the "factory", half of my colleagues were foreigners. 

When I was living through it, the only thing that compared with it were the 2 best years of my life. So it felt like a letdown. It was just a blur of lecture after lecture, tardiness with homework. A lot of boredom. We were no longer in this gilded world where people worried about us being bored. We were no longer the centre of the universe. We were in the midst of these express kids who looked at us with this mixture of horrid fascination and envy.

I'm already at an age where I can no longer emotionally relate to that version o myself. Like I can imagine that 17 year old kid having a conversation with me now, and there would be a lot of awkward silence. I'd be bored to death with him, because I've already lived through his life, and he would be bored with me, because I would have to deal with a lot of crap that he wouldn't have been bothered with. Also, he might have heard about the internet, because one of the smart nerds mentioned it in passing to him, but he would not have a clue about the dominant role that it woul play for the rest of his life.

I remember that quite a few jokes I tried to tell fell flat. We went for dark, edgy, sarcastic humour. It was too British / American for the express kids to get. I felt trapped by our Confucian culture, who always made me feel like a bit of a misfit. I longed for the freedoms that the West seemed to offer. I think it was during those 2 years when I had the warmest feelings towards the West. That would change when I actually had to live in the West.

If I were to go back in time to my JC days, I would have told myself to be more accepting of society, and to see the good in people. (Actually more decent parents than mine would have done that. But mine were not very aware of things.) There was a lot of teaching us complex stuff that we would most probably never use. But it was stuff that I was good at, so I wasn't going to complain. But the school curriculum is something that resists change.

Boring

I remember being bored a lot of the time when I was there. Nobody was responsible for making things interesting for us. In secondary school, they tried to make sure that we weren't bored. But we didn't have that anymore. Of course, there were many ways of making life interesting on top of our cramming for exams, but I didn't use them. It was boring but nice.

I spent a lot of time going to Tower records. Back then, there was also Supreme records. I hovered around there, trying to decide what to buy, rather than actually buying and listening and moving on. That part wasn't good. It was diminishing returns. In a way, the mystery for me now is that JC was so similar to sec 3 and 4, but it felt so different. Maybe the newness of discovering my music hobby was wearing off. I remember playing bass at a performance with 2 of my acquaintances during a small concert, and the experience was so cringe and turn off.

I had a JC teacher who was also the creative writing teacher. She's passed away. People are starting to think that she has Asperger's or something. Our GP lessons were boring. I was the only one barely interested in talking in class and I was tired of being the only one. She wasn't terrible, but why did I have to have such a boring person?

I had a classmate who would leave her schoolbag out on the ledge before GP class. She would ask to go to the toilet halfway during class and never go back.

Year of angst, year of triumph

My time in that JC was divided into 2. The first year was me spent moping about why things had gone downhill since I had moved to JC. Social life was down, music was merely awesome and not jaw-droppingly awesome. I got involved with a disastrous drama production (OK, not merely involved, I was the principal – the director and playwright). My drama career was in tatters. I didn't have a social life. My grades were mediocre. I didn't get straight As for my “O” levels, so I was thrown into the class along with all the people who got a lot of As and a few Bs.

The second year was actually quite good, in another way. I only had one thing to do, and that was to study for my “A” levels. I was focused for the first time in years, and I went from having a C and a D in my promos to having almost straight “A”s in my prelims, and a few “S” paper distinctions. I cast out the distractions. People knew what to focus on.

I just got my head down and studied, and for the first time in a while, I started having good results. I didn't get involved in any ECA. It was calm and peaceful for the first time in a long while. It was boring but good. It was quietly awesome. I finally saw the light at the end of a tunnel: My university entrance requirements looked good, even without any proper planning other than “you have to get as good grades as possible”.

My dreams of being a mathlete were dead. My dreams of being a dramatist were dead. I had already achieved what I had achieved. There was no use brushing up your ECAs in your final year. But I still had a good set of exam results to look forward to. I mastered the material, I even aced my special papers, because I was able to go above and beyond what the average person was going to know about Maths and Physics at “A” levels. I remember working out a few first order differential equations, and then thinking to myself: damn, I'm good!!!

Maybe I was in a good mood because I had a job invigilating an exam. It was quite easy work, and I met a girl that I developed a crush on.

Also, I knew that that was the last year of K-12. I knew that life was good, I had some advantages in dealing with science and maths and they allowed me to sail through school life. I probably wasn't sure either way, but my life was about to get worse. I would struggle for the next few years after graduating from JC. In NS. In Snowy Hill. In the first few years of work.

In JC2, all I had to do was study hard, and I'd get my straight As. Actually, this was not 100% true, but I had a good shot at an almost straight A. But I really had to strive hard for it, and use all my advantages. And one of the advantages back then was that almost everybody was rooting for me. My teachers would write good things about me for my uni applications if I were to hit the marks. All I had to do was to fulfill my side of the bargain. I think that was the last time I managed to piece together a straight A semester. And later on, people would not be able to do what I did, which was to coast along with a B average all the time and push for an A in the end. People were looking at grade point averages and no longer allowing people to get away with having an idyllic life.

I had a classmate who didn't pass his promotional exams. It cast a shadow on me. He came good in the end, but I felt a little responsible for him failing because him getting involved in my drama production was probably a factor. In a way that drama production was a big push for me to carry on on the straight and narrow. I had my fun with the ECAs and it turned out to be disastrous, and it was almost a relief to do nothing more than study all the time.

That part of my life had something to teach me: the keeping your head down, being a steady person, living according to a structure, grinding away. Living on the straight and narrow. It wasn't romantic or wondrous like sec 3 and 4 were, but it was probably a good idea of what a more adult life was like. Good. Happy. Boring. I studied hard because it was a novel sensation, and I was in no way burnt out. I had been keeping up, I was just a bit behind, and I could use the home stretch to catch up. It was a big relief, after years of underperformance. I was maybe sick and tired of underperforming on my ECAs that it was a relief only having one thing to worry about.

And I was also lucky, because, as it turned out, I'm one of those guys who study better without the stress. (Some other people do better with the stress.) So during the prelims, I freaked out on one paper, and choked half an “A” levels subject. But other than that subject, for which I got a C, everything else was an A. I also got distinctions on my “S” papers. After November, there was an awful 3 month wait for the “A” levels to be graded, but I distinctly remember finding out that I got very good results, but instead of great joy, I felt mainly relief.

Crush

I put her at the back of my head for 4 years before reconnecting with her. I sometimes wonder if it was fate for me to be involved with her, because we met under rather coincidental circumstances. I didn't know that she was going to be a great source of misery. I got out of her life 12 years later, swearing never to return. So it was one whole zodiac cycle.

That's the really interesting thing: the things that seemed to be terrible were actually good for me. There was the painful adjustment to normal Singapore life. There was the disastrous drama production. There was the grind of studying. Those things turned out to be pretty good for me in the end. And there was codfish, and she turned out to be really bad, even though I have to admit that there were good times.

Manufactured Angst

There was quite a bit of self-loathing about Singapore back then. Maybe I got that from a good friend I was hanging out with. Maybe it was the elitist mentality. But that friend was gay, so I think that shaped his mindset. He was living in an unfriendly world.

Maybe the problem was that I saw myself through the eyes of the arts students and developed a self-loathing. Maybe this was the seed of me starting to hate mathematics, this love affair with mathematics turning into a love-hate affair. It would blow up when I went to Snowy Hill to do mathematics. Then I would find out that I'm not gifted in mathematics: I'm gifted in philosophy, and I actually dreaded the minutae of organising my thoughts into something worthwhile.

When I was in JC, that was the height of my love affair with the West. I was fascinated with the coverage of the OJ Simpson case. At that time it was still the era of grunge, so I bought into the Gen X narrative, that life was actually quite terrible: “my so-called life”, where everybody was pretending to be happy, and that to be more honest, you were supposed to show your true, angsty self. But I didn't have much self-awareness. Life in Singapore was actually really good, and I didn't actually know that. I was fretting over non-existent problems. There's so much of: “if only I had appreciated what I had back then!” People were complaining because they had real problems. My problems were mainly mental: I just had to learn to appreciate what I already had, to see the good things in life as they really were!

But there was a break in pop culture in the 90s: and it's only apparent when I look back on it. Grunge was a relief to me: it was a culture which acknowledged the seedy reality. It was the misfits and the outcasts briefly having their day in the sun: or at least it was about multiple subcultures having their day in the sun, having a tent large enough for everyone. But it was also about the bullies who dominated the culture being overthrown. Well – they were not bullies, but they were just people who expected everybody to be normal. Then Kurt Cobain killed himself.

So the troubled people who did grunge were cast aside from the main arena. The junkies in Alice in Chains and Stone Temple Pilots. Soundgarden, who treated their art as a form of therapy. In their place was britpop and Oasis. Noel Gallagher literally heard “I hate myself and I want to die” by Nirvana and wrote another song in response: “Live Forever”.

Grunge was itself a reaction against the masculinity of hair metal. Those guys worked hard and played hard. They were handsome and had chiselled features and always got the girls. But they were anal retentive, heteronormative, and always sang the same song over and over. Then now the pendulum swung back and alternative rock became less whiny. It was more joyous, communal, in love with itself, and with life. Public Enemy could be joyous, but it took itself too seriously. It got replaced with gangsta rap in the end, and the more cartoonish Wu Tang Clan. Beastie Boys already put out “Paul's Boutique” and “Check Your Head”. But those were ahead of its time. It's only around the time of “Ill Communication” when they got their due, and in turn they influenced Beck, who also worked with the Dust Brothers.

This new, more joyous mood was more like JC2. I listened quite a bit to Bjork's “Post”. It was weird, it wasn't entirely happy, but it wasn't completely angst ridden as well. It was the sound of a person who got her shit together, and who was enjoying life. Massive Attack's “Protection” was a reminder of what a great album “Blue Lines” was. It was like a nice, comfortable sweater, to be enjoyed by a laid back person.

There always was a bit of contempt for the lifestyle that Singapore had in store for us. Go to university, get a good job, get married, settle down, have kids. Maybe I loved the teenage lifestyle too much for that. Maybe there were certain things I could not get my head around and I never resolved that. Maybe I loved the fantasies more than the reality of using up my time on earth to do what I really wanted to do.

It was around this time when the idea was floated that maybe I could go overseas for my college. And I was very much looking forward to that, although I had no idea what to expect. Since I was more of a half empty than a half full person: being in NUS meant another few more years of a dreary existence. But going overseas meant that I would have to work so much harder to adjust to life. But it was around the time when some of the admissions officers from ivy league universities started visiting us. It's around that time when they pasted the rankings of top universities .

I remember barely knowing what to write, and knowing that I did not have enough life experience to talk about my personal statement. But on Snowy Hill's application, I did mention that I was the first person in my family to go to university, and that may have helped me.

I remember going to a reading room at somebody's house, and he had magazines from everywhere. I remember being in a room where you had all the back copies of “Financial Times”. This was before the internet, before Singapore's library branches got revamped and before Borders opened in Singapore. So to suddenly see a window upon the world was a vast eye-opener for me. I would say that JC2 was also for me the first year of hyper-globalisation, when everything would be changed. My first encounter with it was a good and happy one. That was before we knew that we were going to compete with foreigners for jobs for the rest of our lives.

In many ways I was cocooned in my comfort zone, and in other ways I was brought out of my comfort zone. It was being a fish out of water. In some ways I was just glad that ... there were 4 times that I had to deal with being a fish out of water. JC, National Service, college and work. And I'm glad that I negotiated all 4 of them.

Misfit

But one of the biggest stories was that everybody was growing up in ways that I wasn't able to. People were involved in student councils, leadership positions, representing Singapore in olympiads. My achievements were frankly quite modest compared to some of what others were up to. What my sister was up to.

I did feel very excluded from conversations. In retrospect, the failures of those years may have set me on the wrong course. It's well and good that I discovered that I excelled at academics and the arts. But in terms of living in the real world and managing things, these things barely registered with me. I would be an almighty grind for me to develop these skills that some people were more talented than me anyway. Maybe that's why it was so hard to talk to my fellow classmates at this point: people were dealing with things that barely registered on my radar, and I wasn't keeping up or keeping in. True, I had better music than most of them, but that would matter very little later on in life.

I didn't use the time to become a mathlete, or to have some music related activities. Maybe we were required to be more enterprising in order to have an interesting life, and I didn't have that yet. I remember JC orientation, and it just made me feel very disorientated. It was your introduction to high school, American style, where you had to negotiate the fragmented landscape of tribes and cultures, and adapt to another way of life that you didn't understand. It was what I would call “late adolescence”. I would still be cool in a few ways, but I think that would be the first of me being unable to navigate life well.

I'm older now, and I know more. I don't know if I can go back to being as ignorant as I was and try and make some sense of how and why I was unable to adjust. I'm more flexible, and more accommodating to changes in my life. For example, I didn't really understand or relate to the changes in mood. I didn't fully embrace the funkier version of 90s music. I was too wrapped up in my own angst. I don't know if that was my natural temperament.

I studied all the time, and maybe I didn't have anything else left over for friendship. Or I never mastered the give and take that it involved. Or I didn't know how to not be nerdy, or how to be cool. Or I couldn't step outside myself. I don't know: I was just lost in that arena.

This would also be the last time we had all our perks as children. Singapore does a great job of bringing up their children. We would be amazed at how organised everything is. All our lecture notes were printed out for us. They were literally called “handouts”. Some of them were fill in the blanks: we would go to lecture, the notes would have a few key words left out, and then we would attend the lectures and fill in the blanks. We were almost spoonfed everything. But some of us were just good at grasping concepts, and life was a breeze, we would ace everything, as long as we put in a nominal ammount of effort.

What I do know now is that I had difficulties with this “nominal amount of effort”. I made it, but I barely made it. They probably tried to create an environment where, if I failed, it would not be because I lacked executive function. And they hoped that I would pick it up later on in life. Well, I'm learning, but it's hard.

Much of my childhood was basically idyllic. I could laze away a few afternoons, owing to my failure to get my shit together to do something productive. What I do know now is that I was operating under near perfect conditions for creativity. But that wasn't it.

I'm a big believer that the school system should never take up all of a student's time. The student needs room to breathe, to grow, and to reflect. To become an individual. Since school is not one size fits all, every student is in some way a misfit, and he shouldn't be living like a misfit for all of his waking hours.

Live Through This

When I was in national service, I had a staff sergeant who was always happy to dish out advice for people who would listen. He said, “SAF stands for serve and fuck off. You come in here because you're required to do your 2.5 years. You do it, because everybody has to do it. And then you'd fuck off. And in the meantime, make sure that you leave with a clean slate. Do not go to DB and have it on your record. Do not extend your 2.5 years and serve more than what you came in here for. Do not suffer any permanent injuries or death.”

When I was in JC, I didn't have in mind that I was building a community. I had friends, and some of them were friends for a real long time. But I regarded most of my classmates as no more than fellow travellers, and I was just passing through. I didn't really keep in contact with them. That was the worst thing I did in JC. I was only at the middle of the totem pole, when I could have been nearer the top. I probably didn't understand then that it was not that hard to get more friends. Or maybe I hadn't resolved the mental blocks that would prevent me from getting down and hanging out.

So there were probably times when I could have developed executive functions. In JC, I just ignored them. In NS, I was just in a mindset where I wanted to get away with as little work as I could put in. In Snowy Hill, I was chasing down various things like I was chasing butterflies, barely thinking about how to put the big picture together. Later on in my working life, I was just happy to be a jack of all trades and a master of none. We always imagined that things would work out in the end. We always imagined that we could work hard and play hard and still come up on top.

Rise of the Middle Powers

The history of the world since 1945 is that World War 2 was the great anti-colonial war. The biggest impact of 1945, in retrospect, was that the power shifted from the imperialist to the natives. The UN was founded upon the premise that national borders were sacrosanct, and that invasion by another power, no matter how much more powerful that other power was, would be met with extremely violent pushbacks.

The major world powers that emerged after 1945 were USA and the USSR. Europe was divided between the “free world” and the communist states. In many ways, what happened in the aftermath of WW2 was that the old colonial empires collapsed. Britain, France, Netherlands, Japan and Portugal were war-wrecked states who struggled to survive, let alone hang on to their imperial acquisitions. Japan lost Taiwan and Korea. Netherlands lost Indonesia. The French lost Indochina. Britain, after the Suez canal incident, relinquished most of their overseas colonies.

The wars that did take place after the 50s and 60s showed the futility of the great powers to function as effective colonisers. The Korean war was significant, because it was a major conflict of the Cold War. It was fought to a standstill that still lasts until today. South Korea was under the influence of the West, and North Korea were allied with China and Russia. Neither the Communist bloc nor the “free world” was able to gain any significant advantage over the other. The Vietnam war was another draw: in the short run, the US-backed side, South Vietnam lost the war to the north. But the North, while nominally allied to Russia, eventually became more capitalist, in a development parallel to China's eventual embrace of capitalism. This ironically turned the North and south Vietnam towards the US side, because the US were now the protectors of Vietnam against China. China also had a border skirmish with Vietnam in 1979 and later on thought better of it.

The USSR tried to invade Afghanistan to control it better, but it got trapped in a morass where it was drained of resources, eventually breaking up and leading to the downfall of its empire. Then the US tried to invade Afghanistan, and tried to colonise it for 20 years, and eventually had to give up and leave.

Iraq and Syria were Baathist states and aligned with the Soviet Union. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and the US started encroaching on Iraq and Syria. The Syrian war represented a pushback by Russia, and was gained at considerable cost. The US managed to make Iran some kind of a client state in 1953, but the revolution in 1979 cemented its status as some kind of independent power centre. Iraq became an ally of the US after the invasion of 2003, but this was gained at considerable cost. Israel has always been a pet of the US, but this status is threatened by the Arabs in Michigan who are outraged by Biden's staunch support of Israel and are threatening to withhold their support for him until he changes tack on the Palestinian issue.

One of the triumphs of the west “winning” the Cold War is that China became a capitalist participant in the global trading system. But instead of China turning into a second Japan, who is a loyal sidekick of the West, it became a world superpower unto itself and a possible adversary of the West. Yet it has yet to exercise its military power, with the exception of “fishing boats” in the South China Sea. People are wondering just what sort of China we will see should they choose to flex their military strength. Considering the strategic position of Burma, it is very notable that they have not – to the best of my knowledge – intervened in the Myanmese civil war. Perhaps it knows that it's just better to work with whichever side wins? Perhaps it knows that the winner of any war is the party who does not participate in the conflict?

The other prize of the cold war is that the iron curtain ostensibly fell. Now, we know that it's not true that the iron curtain disappeared. We thought that the Eastern European countries would embrace liberal democracy, and that the western-most Soviet states – notably Ukraine, the Baltic states, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan would eventually try to be more like the West. But that was just a fantasy. In retrospect, the US failed to turn Russia into a more western-like country, like France or Canada. The post-communist reforms were very poorly thought out and executed. Russia became a mafia-state, a petro-state, an oligarchy. It may have had a few years of prosperity in the early Putin years, but it turned into a one man dictatorship, similar to the central Asian -stans. This fantasy completely evaporated when Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time in 2022. This sparked a lot of discussion, whereby it became apparent that the cold war vanished for a few years, only to return with a vengeance. The expansion of NATO and the EU turned out not to be the “end of history” enacting itself, but a power struggle whereby the iron curtain as nudged further and further to the east, until the Russians got fed up and decided it had had enough. There were military actions in Syria, Georgia and the Armenian – Azeri conflicts. These, in retrospect, were attempts by the Russians to re-assert itself in parts of the world where they felt like they were losing influence. But in many ways, you could see these, too, as failed attempts by Russia to claw back territory it once held, and reflective of a larger trend, which is that it's harder and harder for the powerful countries to extend their influence over the globe.

In Africa, in the 70s and 80s, the Soviets were trying to dominate Africa. Communist states were established in Angola, Ethiopia and Central Africa. This went away quickly after the USSR collapsed. I think that Zaire was a client of the west and one of the dictatorships supported by the USA. After the cold war, there were the great Congo wars, where various parties were jockeying for influence. One of the great tragedies in this was the Rwandan genocide. But there were also plenty of conflicts in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Then, more recently, there were a series of recent coups all over Francophone Africa. The one common thread through many of these conflicts is that the western powers and China were to a lesser and lesser extent in charge.

Arab Spring was another blow to the Americans' ability to shape events in the Middle East. Previously they had propped up dictators in Egypt, the Gulf States and Jordan. Now, they were relinquish Hosni Mubarak as an ally and have to deal with Egypt's experiment with democracy. Conflicts in Libya and Syria were sparked off. Turkey, The Gulf States, Russia and Iran started to try influencing events in the region. The Islamic State ruled for a few years, and eventually were defeated militarily, and then it settled into a pattern of the great powers waging war via proxy. In a way, the Houthi conflict was a proxy war between the Houthis, backed by Iran, and the Saudis. The Syrian Baathists were backed by Russia and Iran. Before 2003, the Middle East was a system where the great powers tried to influence the dictators, and the dictators ruled their countries with an iron fist. Now, it became an arena for the regional actors – Iran, Turkey, the Gulf States – to fight each other via proxy war.

The Belt and Road had always been about China creeping onto Russia's turf. After Russia collapsed, the Central Asian -stans were always ruled over by iron fisted dictators. However, after the Kasakh dictator stepped down, the legacy of his power didn't seem to be as iron-clad as it used to be. It's a bit hard to tell whether the Central Asians are going to be more allied to China or Russia in the future, and that is one of the very big questions that surround China and Russia's pronouncement that they had a relationship “without limits”. Were they drawn together due to their common interest in banding together against the West? Or is this like the Molotov-Ribbentropp pact, whereby the 2 powers pretend to shake hands, but are actually getting ready for a new situation whereby they might have to do battle with each other? Russia may not be completely happy with their incursions into Central Asia, but it finds itself fatally weakened by the continuing conflict over Ukraine, and it cannot but cede some power to India and China, who are swarming over it like vultures. In the 19^th century, we had the scramble for China and the scramble for Africa. Now we have the scramble for Russia.

There are several ways of interpreting the border conflict of the US-Mexico border. One of them is that what is going on in US is a migrant crisis. The other way of interpreting it is that the Monroe doctrine is in trouble. The US had sought to influence Latin America by establishing juntas all over the continent. The military dictatorships of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, as well as a few smaller countries in Central America were allied with the US. But it's no longer able to conduct this influence. Ross Perot's comment that all the jobs were going to Mexico (and making a “giant sucking sound”) has turned out to be quite prophetic, although it is also true that many other jobs – not all of which are good jobs – have been created to replace it. Mexico is an example of the “second world”, a place where economic development is taking place, but lacks the governance one would expect of a first world country. It's a place where things could get better, because of the prosperity and the development, and it could also get worse, because of the lawlessness and the criminal cartels moving in to cash in on the profits. The classic example of this is that infrastructure development has resulted in a place turning into a conduit for illegal drugs. Mexico has become a place where – when the US attempts to shut out a certain industry through tariffs and trade borders, other countries try to establish manufacturing facilities in Mexico, so as to bypass those trade borders.

So the US is losing its iron grip over Latin and South America. It no longer controls the military dictatorships, and the leftist governments have had their intermittent stints in power. And China is starting to encroach onto its turf. It is no longer able to establish a clear line of separation between the US mainland – which is a first world country and free of crime, and Central America, where the crime bosses and drug trade rules the roost. It is no longer able to stop Mexicans from competing with it on a few crucial industries. The US no longer commands the respect of Southern and Central American leaders. There was a conference for the Americas that was held in Los Angeles recently, and the US had some problems getting people to turn up.

Another interesting development is the expansion of the BRICS. It used to be that BRICS was dominated by China. This time, they have persuaded Egypt, Ethiopia, UAE and Iran to tag along. Argentina considered it, but they eventually decided not to join. There's not very much that unites the new members, but a few of them seem to be countries which are embroiled in some kind of conflict. I don't know if they are seeking safety in numbers or are trying to find an alternate power centre to the west. Either way, it is a very intriguing development. It's very difficult to imagine the BRICS countries moving in lockstep with China. But it's also very difficult to imagine what the Quad – US, Australia, Japan and India being a tightly knit coalition. It's entirely possible that all parties just want the economic benefits of more world trade.

The world is starting to transition. Previously, the nations outside of the great powers were weak and helpless. They were easily dominated, and they were passive and weak participants in the spheres of dominance. People had to choose sides, regarding who they wanted to ally themselves to. Now, a lot of countries have ties with both China and the US, and are unwilling to commit themselves to be firmly in anyone's camp. Duterte wanted to steer the Philippines closer to China. Marcos wants it to be closr to the US. Ma Ying-Jeou wants Taiwan to have more of a rapproachment to the mainland. Tsai Ying-wen is steeling Taiwan to stand up to China. Lai Ching-Te opposes mainland influence on Taiwan but is also trying not to get Taiwan into trouble. Israel is uncertain whether to side with US or Russia. Southeast Asia likes the security umbrella marshalled by the US, but also likes having economic ties with China.

Basically, nobody wants to be having to choose between the spheres of influence between the big powers. Perhaps spheres of influence is an outdated concept. It seems that “areas of conflict” is a more likely term of description for what's going on in the world today. The superpowers are in a dilemma: if you are too friendly with another superpower, they can turn around and hurt you. But if you engage in conflict with that superpower, then both sides will stand to lose. The smaller states are starting to realise this. They're starting to understand that the big powers can be played against each other, and that if any of the big powers want to engage in a rivalry with another one, they'll have to marshall support from the medium sized nations, who may use that as a leverage against the bigger power.