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Dear readers, We are contemplating making it compulsory for you to register yourself with us first before you are allowed to post comments on this blog and we are seeking your views on this matter. This will inevitably make posting of comments more cumbersome as you will have to log in with your email before you are allowed to post. The email address given must be a legitimate one. We felt this is the best method to keep out trolls and clones. A few trolls has been posting here using multiple nicks to create "support" for themselves to skew the discussion in their favor and there is no way we can double check their IP addresses all the time. We welcome a diversity of views here and our writers are more than willing to defend their stance. However, we are not quite ready to expend time and energy to argue with various monikers only to find out later that they all belong to the same person. Please consider our proposition seriously and email us your thoughts at [email protected]   THE EDITORIAL TEAM  Read More →

● 杨永欣 一名新加坡朋友在广州工作一年多后决定辞职，下周回国。大伙儿决定明晚为她搞个欢送会，主题为“广州”。除了将到粤菜餐馆吃饭，大家也必须以广州人的装扮出席，不这么做的人将负责“买单”。 　　我原本不以为意：装扮成广州人？不就穿得跟平时一样？在我的印象中，周围的广州人无论在穿着、品味等都与自己没有什么差异。 　　“了解情况”后才发现，原来周围的新加坡朋友对广州人的印象很不一样，他们建议，我明晚穿得土气一点，例如：西裤配搭运动鞋，裤脚折到膝盖上，穿件颜色抢眼的上衣等，最好是耳朵上放条香烟。 　　当然，一切安排纯属好玩，毫无恶意，主要是想让欢送会更有气氛，让大家看到彼此的装扮后相互嘲讽，放松心情。 　　可是，这背后却凸显了，无论中国（广州 - Guangzhou）这些年来在社会发展或文化修养方面发生了多少变化，很多新加坡人对中国人的印象却始终停留在过去的年代里，对中国人仍存有一种优越感。 　　试想想，搞欢送会的新加坡朋友都在广州呆了至少半年以上，有机会近距离了解中国、接触中国人，但最后仍坚持着那份优越感。我不敢想象，在新加坡的一般新加坡人对中国人的看法又会如何？ 　　若直接问周围的新加坡朋友，没人会承认对中国人存有优越感，他们反而会表示，自己交了很多中国朋友，甚至连女友也是中国人。但进一步问下去，就不难找到这样的例子：虽然与中国女友交往了一段日子，却无法确定对方是结婚的对象，因为始终过不了心里的那一关——回到新加坡亲朋戚友会怎么想？ 　　不管嘴里怎么否认，优越感还是浮现了。 　　这种现象让我担忧。中国天天都在大步前进，经济发展、教育、文化、生活环境等领域都如此，尤其在大城市里。新加坡人若继续以存有优越感的心理去看待中国人，那么，与中国人的接触就只会维持在最表面的层次，不可能建立更深一层的关系和信任。 新加坡毕竟是个小国，反观中国今后将成为超级强国，长远来看，我们需要中国比中国需要我们更多。很多新加坡人都是华裔，懂得华语和各种方言，与中国人血脉相连，若能与中国人建立起关系和信任，今后在中国无论是投资、经商或进行各种交流都肯定占有一定的优势，而这个优势也很有可能是新加坡未来增长的推动力。 　　新加坡领导人也清楚地意识到这一点，国务资政吴作栋上周访问广东与该省领导人会面时，就再三强调，新加坡并未自许有什么要教广东的，访问的目的主要是交换意见，同时也想知道广东还有什么领域想与新加坡交流。感觉得到，这些不是客套话，而是发自内心的。 　　新加坡政府趁现在还有条件和实力时，多与中国接触、建立关系、争取更多无形利益。风水轮流转，今后很有可能是新加坡借助在中国的优势来取得增长。现在除了积极与中国各省份合作，建立多个双边经贸理事会，以及共同开发大型项目如天津生态城和广州知识城外，政府也应该多通过教育和宣传，引导新加坡年轻人改变对中国人的看法，尤其是优越感的心理，更必须“铲除”。 　　新加坡年轻人必须懂得如何虚心地与中国人接触，毕竟新加坡过去的成就是先辈的，今后的表现则得看我们这一代人。 　　明天出席欢送会时，我不会刻意装扮，因为广州人的穿着确实就跟我们一样。 Source: Zaobao.com  Read More →

Once again the Brotherhood Press brings you an exclusive travelogue - reported first hand by our intrepid writers of the Mercantile Interspacing Guild - as they enter into the jaws of radioactive death - in the return to hell - Chernobyl! Hold on tight, as our team takes you into this journey of lost hopes and shattered dreams which was once the brightest star than burnt in the U.S.S.R. In the infamous “Red Forest” just 30 km away from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor nothing ever survives for long not even in spring. There are no roses or sunflowers; there are no geraniums or wild mushrooms. Only an endless stretch of sickly yellowed canopy. The locals in Prypyat call the red forest - the Sakura of Russia, here everything grows at double or triple the rate - from one day to the next, the once empty fields fills up - they blossom. Then, just as quickly, they die. It’s an apt description of life in the dead zone. Biking through the red forest to the South towards “atomic city,” the once prosperous model Soviet city of almost 60,000, is a mere 15km away. We needn’t have bothered with maps the Geiger counter is already generating disconcerting crackling noises. It reads nearly 1470 micro-roentgens. A few kilometers deeper into “the zone of death” and the counter, begins to whirl off the scale. We have to proceed by foot from here, vehicles are strictly prohibited. In the distance lies the silhouette of atomic city beyond it across a barren plain the remains of the Chernobyl nuclear stack. There entombed within an enormous steel and concrete sarcophagus lies the number 4 reactor. Twenty odd years ago on April 26, 1986, the reactor core exploded. The complex simmered for fourteen days, contaminating tens of thousands of square miles in northern Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia’s Bryansk region. It was the worst nuclear accident the world has ever seen. The fallout, 400 times more radioactivity than was released at Hiroshima, drove a third of a million people from their homes and triggered an epidemic of thyroid cancer in children. Over the years, the economic losses—health and cleanup costs, compensation, lost productivity—have mounted into the hundreds of billions of dollars As we arrived at the edge of Prypyat a tall barbed wired fence cordoned off the city area. It too had seen better days like rows of rusting soviet vehicles which stood frozen leaning against each other like drunkards splayed out. We slipped through the fence. Curiously radiation levels here were lower than the red forest, but as soon as we climbed a platform, it stirred up the dust and the counter began whirling again. ‘Better get down from there,’ said Atomic Monkey. He should know, he was the science officer on this exploratory mission. I complied. We stood in a row embalmed in the eerie silence clicking away on our cameras. Like a tour through a gigantic cemetery, it’s a trip that provokes the question, “is this the end of the world?” The mood that Chernobyl imposes on the visitor is almost climatic, oppressive even. Here and there strewn all around us, remnants of the past – a ragged doll, decaying bumper cars in an abandoned carnival, a skeletal Ferris wheel squeaking against the wind – not a sign of life except for a few stray dogs. We might as well have been on the surface of Mars. In and around atomic city, creepers grow in profusion. They grow in the ruins of an old hospital and outside it stacks of medicine boxes appear to be haphazardly stacked some with even decomposing trailers of parachutes. They grow along the dilapidated town hall, beside the remains of the barracks, around the hollow shell of what used to be a nursery. They grow inside the partition of apartment blocks, built in the days when the city still believed it would continue to grow on the dream of the nuclear promised and abandoned when it became clear that the great experiment had turned into a nightmare. In the distance as the sun began to dip the clouds looked dark. The day was ending and with it the wolfs howled. “Kakh vamn nravitsa Prypyat ?” asked the guard: “How do you like our little Prypyat?” It is hard to imagine the contemporary inhabitants of the dead zone asking visitors to share their civic pride, but those who once called this wasteland home do expect praise even if they it’s a sprawling cemetery which once boasted the best facilities in the whole of the Soviet Union. For Prypyat was more than just an embodiment of a nations hopes, it was the short lived realization that Soviet man had managed to successfully conquer, tame and harness nature to produce in vast quantities a cheap source of energy. The Soviet authorities fashioned Prypyat as the model city where the forces of nuclear energy could subsist along side modernity, it was a sort of show case with its modern apartments which boasted even lifts, malls, swimming pools and schools: those who once lived, worked and played here were the brightest in the Soviet Union, they came from all over Russia, united in their goal to see the dream through - well-paid, praised, flattered and fêted these Soviet heroes of labor, patriots represented the hopes of the entire communist party and beyond that cradled the great hope to the masses throughout the Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.) Walking around ghost city, around the cemeteries, around the ruined theatre, a once proud structured, complete with Corinthian columns, Leninist portico and red emblazoned star – one cant help but feel the cost of the dream finally proved astronomically high; its enough to make one stop and ask the question; “Where did it all go so wrong?” Not that anyone else readily admits that this is what happened either. “There will always be hope,” one of the former residents of Prypyat told me a few days later. Hundreds have since returned to ghost city around the periphery of the “dead zone,” reclaiming their former life’s in the contaminated region outside and even within the zone. I soon realized the irony of it all: If your whole life has been associated with a place, it is hard to admit that the place never existed. Even if that place is widely famed for being the most radioactive spot in the world and a monument to Soviet stupidity, mismanagement and inefficient, it makes little of no difference, not to those who once called this ghost city the star of the East - it’s even harder to admit that it ought to be shut down good. “This is our home!” 67 year old Yuri bangef his fist, a touch over-dramatically, on the table. Then he proceeded to share his radioactive vodka with us and even offered a slice of radioactive wild boar meat that he hunts regularly in the red forest, to explain why recently pensioners and old couples have begun the pilgrimage back to ghost city. It offers one way of closing the chapter of sorrow in their glorious past – it helps them to move on, to even make peace with their broken dreams – as Yuri shared with us a sepia print of a young man who once lived and died here during the first few days of the Chernobyl meltdown – his only son – Vladimir an engineer, the pride in the fleet, who once worked in the fame star of the East, Chernobyl. “They will come back someday,” the old man insisted banging the table again. “They always come back. I see them sometimes, I do. There is nothing out there in the world. Nothing! Here is where it all began the dream and we will live it through again with or without the damned government.” In between swigs of vodka and sliced ham, Yuri punctuates his sentences with the words, “Etuh bolshayar problyemah?” (It’s a small problem isn’t it?) His wife Olga nods silently in one corner her eyes wide with excitement or radiation sickness we’re not sure whenever her husband talks of the glorious days. When Brezhnev and before him Stalin visited Prypyat with foreign dignitaries. He was young and strong then one of the elite who were considered the classic candidate for resettlement in atomic city. Looking out of the window I couldn’t help but feel a sense of passing of a great era – sort of lingering death. A pack of wolfs howl in the distance it cuts through the conversation. We fall all silent. As the night seeps deeper into the darkness, it begins to rain. Stepping out into the verandah I looked out across the horizon towards, the great soviet star that once showed the way for all to follow. It was so very dark. In the foreground Yuri prepared to cut his quota of radioactive firewood, his wife says – it’s a form of therapy. He has been suffering from depression lately. Turning towards us, the once proud soviet man smiled weakly. I couldn’t tell if his face was wet with rain or tears. That I am certain was how he wanted it. Annex: According to our guide the radiation dose you get from a day at Chernobyl is less than the dose an cosmonaut gets in orbit for 3 days. It’s very safe though certain places require a face mask – just keep your hands in your pocket and don’t lick anything. Two types of tours are currently conducted in Chernobyl – tourist and scientific – they have been going since December 2000. They cost between US$140 per pax which includes two non radioactive meals transport and a complimentary guide book. Please note photography and filming is strictly prohibited by order of the ministry of information. Scientific tours are free but booking ahead is a must; the KGB need time to vet you. Scientific tours are preferred as one can explore the ghost city – but bring along a Geiger counter and some Yeo Hiap Seng tin curry. The Chernobyl mission was conducted recently by a four men scientific team from the 130th and funded by the Interspacing Guild – its mission objective being to document first hand the aftermath of a radioactive fall out and its effects on the environment – the information will be used for a book which darkness is currently working on. This exclusive travelogue has been brought to you exclusively by the Intelligent Singaporean and the Brotherhood Press.               (Reported by Nacramanga, Trajan, KOHO, Atomic Monkey – Exclusive Travelogue Special Series – Chernobyl Revisited – EP 9902382 – The Brotherhood Press - trip was funded by Interspacing Mercantile Pacific Guild)    Read More →