US wants to close Guantanamo: Bush
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/214943/1/.html21 June 2006
After all the uproar that Guantanamo has created in human rightists across the globe, I think this move by Bush would create more upheaval among American citizens. Many of these convicts are there because they have been deemed particularly dangerous such that they don't need to go through a trial, and should these convicts be released, not just Americans, but the world would be more wary. First impressions die hard, and it may not be easy for people to come to terms with the idea that these people are no longer locked up.
Closing Guantanamo may not be the best solution to the problem, on the contrary it might cause more. This is just Bush's cowardly way of getting out of a problem. In my opinion the best thing to do would be to change Guantanamo by holding decent trials for every single convict there, and reconsider their sentences. Guantanamo's personnel might also want to rethink how they treat detainees there. Treatment that causes not one but three convicts to commit suicide? I think that's just too brutal, no matter what their nature is.
Japan's toilet ambassadors help Singapore scrub up
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/215409/1/.html
24 June 2006
I've often stepped into a public toilet just to back out again, holding my nose and the urge. I think this is a good initiative to fix a glaring problem that even us residents have a share in, not just tourists. Of course, it adds to the whole "clean and green" image that Singapore has strived to achieve.
I wonder why, in the ages of dirty public toilets that have passed, did we not have a more solid solution to this problem. Most people have experienced the horror of disgusting public toilets before we even step beyond our shores. Why didn't we act like this earlier? It seems like pretty common sense to improve cleaning services. Although in retrospect, not everyone wants to be a toilet cleaner.
But this will change the way that we look at this job. Even if people aren't the tidiest of creatures, we have someone to clean up after us, those people who help to give our country a good image. They are no longer the people who couldn't find a better job. They are the ones doing us a service so that we enjoy clean toilets. That is not to say that we should not care about how we use public toilets. We still should, if we don't already, try and keep our toilets as clean as possible.
Get Ahead, Learn Mandarin
Time, June 26, Pg 16
This sudden surge of people wanting to learn Chinese has prompted me to think a little more about my own education. Having been taught the language since I started school, or rather, 'force-fed' it, I harbour a rather bitter feeling against it. But if the world is doing it, what have I got to lose by working a little harder?
It's amazing what a bit of foresight can do. When all children were expected to be effectively bilingual, we never expected it to come in so handy, although this did cause a lot of parents to take their children out of local schools due to the inability to grasp the language. Even our Minister Mentor is taking up the language. After reading this however, I am rather convinced that Chinese is becoming increasingly significant in the world, and I am rather inspired to try harder in school. Of course from experience I know that it has given me an edge over the non-Chinese-speaking world in terms of handling certain situations such as finding where the toilet is and so on.
One day even foreigners will take over those Chinese people with a rudimentary understanding of the language. Chinese will stand alongside English as an international language. In order to remain competitive and be useful to society in order to get decent jobs, we should be more dilligent in studying what is our mother tongue. (For us Chinese, anyway.) And even in the event that this does not happen (who knows what the future holds?), it's always good to know more than one language. Besides, it's becoming increasingly common around the world to be bilingual. I think the next thing will be trilingualism, where one knows English, Chinese, and one European language such as Spanish or German. After most of the world has mastered Chinese (in this rush to learn the language), people will be looking for those with more edge. This whole idea of communication with common languages is becoming more important as the world is brought closer by technology. The most important thing is communication, so if we cannot get an edge by learning another language, we will definitely be losing out.
