what hurts more, words or a punch?

see i've been reading books that make such snide, or sometimes overt attacks on their fellow thinkers that i begin to wonder what is more painful - a seemingly innocuous sentence in a book in the middle of a long paragraph (always a good technique, hiding the offensive) or a punch in the eye, nose, wherever. ok cancel out the groin area but in general the body.

(why do i keep pressing crtl+s?!)

let's give some examples to buttress my point.

"the extreme theorists of globalization...are pessimists of the intellect and of the will"

and at this point i get stuck because the many other examples i wanted to give are in books that i have already read and returned. i remember reading some out to tracy though and we were laughing away at the sheer exaggeration/wry humour of the statement. a bit like the increase of indirect taxes and a caution against the slippery slope of approaching a state of welfarism as a result.

speaking of which, i find this hilarious.

"The second is a plan to spend more of the returns from investing the nation's reserves. Right now, the Government can only spend half of such returns, or 'net investment income', defined to include dividends and interest. The definition will be broadened to include realised capital gains. The move is significant, requiring an amendment to the Constitution and 'working out' details with the Elected President." - ST, 'GST will go up to 7%' 14 Nov 2006

emphasis my own. think about it.

oh the same book that i quoted from simply loves our beautiful country. seriously. our little country got mentioned about 10 times in this book, and this has to be the icing on the cake.

"the problem with the prescription of the option of transparency and careful market supervision is that it demands a level of state capacity that few developing countries can meet...in effect the model of such a financial system is Singapore. It is a tightly regulated and conformist society with a competent authoritarian regime. But authoritarianism and competence seldom go together..." 'Globalization in Question' by Hirst & Thompson

aiyoh becoming more cynical. on a different, completely arbitrary note, i cooked pineapple rice for abiel! yes poor thing has to suffer eating my cooking on his birthday some more. this is how it turned out.


tasted quite all right (to my surprise seeing it was the first time i attempted something as elaborate.) will replicate that effort on a larger scale for this weekend's xmas dinner! hopefully by the end of my time here i can be a chef, or at least a baker =)