Luna Park!
It is not as big or as crazy as Six Flags but it was fun nonetheless.
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A Malaysian diplomat once told me that among the neighbors of Malaysia, Thailand is our closest. He reasoned that despite stark difference in culture, Thailand has never been hostile to Malaysia, unlike Indonesia and the Philippines, which are supposedly our brothers. Thailand even helped Malaysia when the communist waged war against the federation.
And compared to Singapore, the sometimes fierce causeway rivalry is non-existent. He somehow forgot to mention Brunei but that is probably because unlike other neighbors, Brunei is not as important.
In return for Thailand’s reliable friendship, he firmly believes in the territorial integrity of Thailand. He chides Malay irredentism that exists in Malaysia and in southern Thailand.
I am unsure about Thailand being our closest friend, especially after seeing Thaksin Sinawatra in power. I remember that the Thaksin administration looked for a scapegoat in hope to divert attention away from him. He found Malaysia. A very close friend would not do that.
Nevertheless, I truly believe that a stable neighborhood is beneficial for Malaysia. That means stable and developing neighbors. As a regionalist, I believe in European-like integration for Southeast Asia. As such, I am happy that Indonesia has managed to sort its problems out after all these years. In the same vein, I am concerned with the situation in Thailand. Any effort of integration must take Thailand into account. After all, Thailand is the original six members of ASEAN.
A free and fair election is the solution for Thailand. Only a free and fair election will solve the problem of Thailand. Unless there is a free and fair election, a large section of Thai society will continue to question the legitimacy of the government of the day. And really, I find it hard to see how the current government is legitimate, even if the previous Thaksin-connected governments were unconvincing. A new mandate is required.
I was in Bangkok in 2006, just about four months before the military coup took place. I love the city and it breaks my heart to see such a beautiful city becoming a war zone. Streets that I have walked at this very moment have snipers readying to shoot. Protesters are fighting back. Smoke billows.
I do not intend to choose sides here. I do not have the appetite for such debate. In fact, the two sides of the divide do not appeal to me. All I hope all this will be resolved soon.
Here is to Thailand.
Yesterday was a good night out for me for multiple reasons. One of them is this:
This is easily my favorite photo so far this year. A friend told me that there is a better vintage point at Kirribilli however. I must go there soon.
If you observe carefully, there are something flying at the top of the picture. Those are bats. Sydney has significant number of bats. They will typically dominate the sky here at dusk.
Also, you can see Milsons Point from this photograph that I took one or two weeks ago.
Milsons Point is at the center of the second picture, where the bright light is.
Between the two photos, I like the first one better. The colors are more refined. It is more natural as well.
Also, compare the first picture with this old photo of mine:
Clearly, night photography offers a more dramatic perspective. And oh, this was taken from The Rocks, in case that you are wondering.
Elizabeth Farrelly at the Sydney Morning Herald writes that the burqa is an affront to feminism.[1] She makes feminism sounds authoritarian. Quoting a friend of mine, “all this really is another case of someone trying to shove the politics of one kind of identity ahead of another.”
I am unsure how widely this view is shared among feminists out there. BBC seems to believe that it is a standard position.[2] If it is a standard position, then I think the gulf between me and them has just grown wider.
My greatest issue with feminism up until recently is affirmative action. I cannot bring myself to support affirmative action for women and ending up living in a tokenistic system. Worse, some want more than tokenism. Through experience, radical feminists want inequality of rights in their favor rather than simple equality between genders.
The issue with burqa opens up a second front. If feminists seek to ban burqa, then it necessarily goes against the principle of liberty. If a person freely chooses to wear burqa, then to prevent her from wearing it is a violation of her individual liberty. It is a violation of liberalism. Therefore, if the burqa is an affront to feminism, then feminism has to be an affront to liberalism.
We all have our bias and some of these biases may be perverted and deserve criticism. Whatever it is, a person is free to hold whatever bias there is. But to act on the bias and impose others of one’s bias is unambiguously authoritarian. Clearly from her article, Farrelly is choosing the illiberal path.
If feminism indeed tries to push this agenda through, this is a sad development for all. Feminism can be a great ally in promoting liberty, especially in societies where women suffer from real discrimination. Liberals are fiercely in favor of equality of rights and that make liberals and feminists friends.
Sometimes however, I feel feminism simply goes to places when no liberal will follow and in fact, will oppose. This case of burqa is one of those impossible paths for liberal to tread on.
[1] — Democracy pivots on the universal franchise; the presumption for each individual of a public identity, as well as a private one. To cover someone’s face in public, to reduce them to a walking tent, is to declare them lacking such identity, destroying any possibility of their meaningful public existence. It is, literally, to efface them.
To hide the face is to hide the person. As Shada Islam, Europe correspondent for the Pakistan paper Dawn, wrote last week, most European Muslim women have little patience with the burqa or its wearers, seeing it as ”a sad process of self-isolation and self-imposed exile”.
And while you could see even exile as a personal right, it does directly contradict a public duty, the duty of public presence. The morality of identity-erasure may be (barely) acceptable, but the ethics are not. Brave little Belgium. [Let’s face facts, the burqa is an affront to feminism . Elizabeth Farrelly. Sydney Morning Herald. May 13 2010]
[2] — But the arguments against the niqab are not just based on feminism and the status of women. [Behind France’s Islamic veil. BBC News. April 8 2010]
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[2205] Of crossing the Harbour Bridge
For some reason I cannot explain, I love crossing the Harbour Bridge.
I like how the bridge disappears into the mist.