Geneva is a nice, picturesque little city. The only thing is that it is fucking expensive. It doesn't help that I've been going out with my fellow interns who all seem better able to afford things than I can. I mean they're great people, friendly, some of them quite down-to-earth even. But I realize if I go out as often as they do, to the places where they go, I'm going to be broke sooner or later.
The sobering reality that your pockets are pretty shallow around these parts make you think. Think about the people and organization I'm working for. Think about others from lesser socio-economic backgrounds who might want to come.
The truth is, if you can't afford the air ticket, the cramped yet pricey rented room, the spoilt-for-choice yet fairly expensive groceries for you day to day subsistence or your occassional excursions to the nearby bar for a session of networking (because face it, it's all about connections, connections, connections!), this place isn't for you. I barely even feel welcome.
A recent report by the organization claimed that a person's state of health was not only directly related to their level of income, but also due to other social, political and economic circumstances. Apparently this report took two years to come to said conclusion. Most people who are living those circumstances can probably tell what the problem is in an instant when they're lying on their beds shivering from a tropical disease for which they have no money to buy medicine for, or suffering from violent diarrhea and vomiting profusely because they don't have access to clean water and had to drink from the river where their neighbor pooped in upstream.
I know it sounds cliched, but this isn't exactly rocket science.
So the point about the organization is that the people who need to come here can never afford to. And often, the people who can come often don't need to. In the end, and I had the same impression even before I got here, it seems more like an exclusive, upper-class country club than a place that's supposed to help the poor with their health problems. I don't mean everyone inside is an arrogant, superficially self-righteous snob (some are genuinely committed to the cause) but I just can't help but feel it's all a big scam.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Why?
I'm absolutely pissed at this point, but I just had to say that it's ironic that my motherland Chinese brethren treat me more as one of their own than the rest of my Malaysian brethren. Lin Dan may have beaten Lee Chong Wei, but I can't feel any animosity against the Chinese. I just can't. God damnit.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Wearing your emotions...
Love unrequitted,
Is like an ill-fitting T-shirt.
You know you can't wear it,
But you don't want to throw it away.
Is like an ill-fitting T-shirt.
You know you can't wear it,
But you don't want to throw it away.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Travelling...
I guess the reason why I like travelling is for that feeling where you don't know what to expect or what's going to happen next.
That's why I generally try to avoid the more popular destinations because everyone's been there, they've written about it and for some reason seem obliged to devulge every single little detail about a particular place. Just so anyone else who plans to go there will know exactly which bus, tram or train to take in, say [insert famous destination], before they've even gotten on the one back home to head off to the airport.
I find that it somehow dampens the charm and mystery that a place would otherwise provide were it not known by so many people. A bit paradoxical on my part perhaps.
It's for this same reason why I would like to stay longer in the truly great cities of the world - London, Paris, Vienna, just to name a few I've been to in Europe. Because if you stay only for a while, you can only see the things you're meant to see. Not the things you could see if you left your Fodor's or Lonely Planet behind and just walked around.
It's the most mundane things that people do in those cities - their daily commute, lunch at the neighbourhood diner, that give you a sense about what the city is all about. A city's soul is its people and without it there's nothing much except fabricated megaliths of monuments that don't really mean too much on its own.
I would love to go to Athens to see the Acropolis, but I would love more to see the people who built the city that surronds it.
That's why I generally try to avoid the more popular destinations because everyone's been there, they've written about it and for some reason seem obliged to devulge every single little detail about a particular place. Just so anyone else who plans to go there will know exactly which bus, tram or train to take in, say [insert famous destination], before they've even gotten on the one back home to head off to the airport.
I find that it somehow dampens the charm and mystery that a place would otherwise provide were it not known by so many people. A bit paradoxical on my part perhaps.
It's for this same reason why I would like to stay longer in the truly great cities of the world - London, Paris, Vienna, just to name a few I've been to in Europe. Because if you stay only for a while, you can only see the things you're meant to see. Not the things you could see if you left your Fodor's or Lonely Planet behind and just walked around.
It's the most mundane things that people do in those cities - their daily commute, lunch at the neighbourhood diner, that give you a sense about what the city is all about. A city's soul is its people and without it there's nothing much except fabricated megaliths of monuments that don't really mean too much on its own.
I would love to go to Athens to see the Acropolis, but I would love more to see the people who built the city that surronds it.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The beautiful people isn't just a Marilyn Manson song...
I think people who are happy are beautiful although people who are sad can be beautiful too but I'd rather make someone happy so they're beautiful because then it'd make life so beautiful and then I'd feel beautiful since everything and everybody I know everywhere would be beautiful too.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Ovens...
I know it probably sounds weird to most people, but I always fall in love with the ovens I use.
My old oven in Toronto used to be an old electric coil oven. It was roomy and could easily accommodate two loaves at once. It could probably fit three if I had a stone with enough surface area. With time, the bread and baked goods that came out of it got better and better. Once, I took a few loaves of dough to bake at the Alan Scott built wood-fired oven at Dufferin Grove Park, and my friends were teasing me that I was cheating on my 'wife'. Such was my affinity to what other people would treat as just a piece of machinery.
The one I have right now is an old gas-fired one. Lighting it can be a real pain in the ass sometimes because you have to take off the floor of the oven to light the burner underneath. And sometimes the burner doesn't stay on after you lift your hand from the nozzle that controls the strength of the burner. It can take a while sometimes to get it started because of this. Some people on the corridor have already given up lighting it because they can't keep the burner on. But I always manage, so I'm asked to help sometimes.
Despite its shortcomings, it's a really great oven. Yes, there's a hot spot in the left-hand corner, but at least I know it's there and if a loaf of bread is not browning enough I know I can move the paler side towards the hot spot and then it browns nicely. I also always peel the loaf onto that side to get more oven spring and then shift it after a while to prevent it from getting burnt later. After some time, I know the exact routine I have to follow when baking with it.
It's been a really dependable, albeit sometimes flaky, old friend.
My old oven in Toronto used to be an old electric coil oven. It was roomy and could easily accommodate two loaves at once. It could probably fit three if I had a stone with enough surface area. With time, the bread and baked goods that came out of it got better and better. Once, I took a few loaves of dough to bake at the Alan Scott built wood-fired oven at Dufferin Grove Park, and my friends were teasing me that I was cheating on my 'wife'. Such was my affinity to what other people would treat as just a piece of machinery.
The one I have right now is an old gas-fired one. Lighting it can be a real pain in the ass sometimes because you have to take off the floor of the oven to light the burner underneath. And sometimes the burner doesn't stay on after you lift your hand from the nozzle that controls the strength of the burner. It can take a while sometimes to get it started because of this. Some people on the corridor have already given up lighting it because they can't keep the burner on. But I always manage, so I'm asked to help sometimes.
Despite its shortcomings, it's a really great oven. Yes, there's a hot spot in the left-hand corner, but at least I know it's there and if a loaf of bread is not browning enough I know I can move the paler side towards the hot spot and then it browns nicely. I also always peel the loaf onto that side to get more oven spring and then shift it after a while to prevent it from getting burnt later. After some time, I know the exact routine I have to follow when baking with it.
It's been a really dependable, albeit sometimes flaky, old friend.
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