My Review of Casino Royale

My name is P.J., I'm six years old, and when I grow up, I want to be James Bond!

Spare Change!

Oddly, the Harvard Square institution that I was most excited to see this past weekend when I was back at Harvard was not any of the buildings, but the Spare Change vendor outside Au Bon Pain. I didn't see him during the weekend, but Monday morning as I was walking by, there he was, greeting passing ladies with his usual mixture of charm and lunacy and passing gentlemen with his usual mixture of bravura chumminess. He spotted me grinning at him like an idiot as I approached, and opened his arms in a welcoming gesture, smiling beatifically. I laughed. "You're still here!"

"I'm still here," he agreed, smiling back at me.

"For four years, every time I walked by, you brightened my day," I told him.

"Why, thank you," he replied, "And where are you now?"

So I told him. I told him how life had brought me to Oxford, what I was studying, and why I had returned for a short while. He listened, smiling, and congratulated me on my successes. I bought a Spare Change from him and tipped him. He thanked me and we parted ways, both still smiling at our encounter. I doubt there is any Harvard student who doesn't know about him. It was so comfortable and reassuring to see his ray of sunshine undiminished. He's a reminder that a sunny demeanor and a little extra effort can transform the ordinary and mundane into the special and life-changing. Long may he live.

May You Live In Exciting Times

It's a dreary, cold, overcast day with a steady drizzle, and on this most quintessentially British of days, the dons of Oxford meet to decide the future of the most quintessentially British of institutions: the University of Oxford.

In a nutshell, they are meeting to decide whether to end Oxford's 900 years of self-governance, by introducing a governing council that will have a majority of external members. Oxford is currently governed by Congregation, a Parliament that comprises the Fellows of every college. Thus, decisions have to be debated and voted on by over 3000 academics in order to be passed. A new council, with around 15 members, would be able to make decisions more quickly and efficiently.

I had lunch in the Brasenose SCR, as I do twice a week, and there was only one topic of conversation around the table. Most of the fellows seemed to be against it. After lunch, I ran into a friend who is a fellow at All Souls'. He was walking over with another fellow to the Sheldonian Theatre for the meeting as well.

"Off to do battle with John Hood," he said. Hood is the Vice-Chancellor, and the reforms are identified so closely with him that is they should fail, Hood might have to resign. My friend spoke in a cheerful tone but I could see the excitement and anxiety cracking the edges of his cheerful demeanour. We walked on in the rain, quiet for a moment, feeling the weight of the occasion. As we turned the corner from Radcliffe Square onto Catte Street, a long line of Dons appeared, all dressed in their black gowns, queuing in the rain to enter the Theatre. More dons were appearing: through the Great Gate of the Bodleian, from Broad St, out of New College Lane. Normally, Congregation is a quiet affair, skipped by the Dons, who will read the minutes published in the Gazette and then vote by postal ballot, but today everyone was here. The emotion was palpable.

"It's going to be a long afternoon," I remarked, quite pointlessly.

"Yes," my friend replied quietly. I bid him farewell to join the queue and watched the long line of black stretching across the Quad for a few minutes before turning away to enter Hertford. I feel the weight of history and I feel the winds of change. The historian in me is thrilled to be standing at the turn of an age and to feel the wheels of time shifting beneath my feet, but wishes that he could be in there to, with his hand at the tiller and charting the course for the future.

Home Is Where The Heart Is

A colleague of mine- an economic historian who specialises in British Malaya and Singapore- remarked to me over tea recently that because she had spent so much time based in Singapore doing research, that "Singapore feels like home" to her.

I nearly choked on my tea in disbelief but instead caught myself and covered up by taking another sip and peering at her over the rim of the cup. She was somewhere distant, her eyes reflecting inward and a slight smile on her face, her coffee mug cupped in her hands, probably swimming in the memories of Singapore and Malaysia.

While I have no doubt she meant her remark in all sincerity, and might even have meant it as a compliment to Singapore, I doubt she realised just how that remark would touch a nerve in a Singaporean. Singapore is, without a doubt, extremely welcoming to you- if you're highly educated, foreign, and white. You're free to enjoy all the benefits of our colonial hangover without having any responsibilities as a citizen. It's not unique to Singapore, of course- I would guess that white people are treated differently from locals in most Asian and African former colonies. Whether that is deferential treatment, or visceral hatred, or just acknowledgement of difference, I think a colonialist mentality- a consciousness of the colonial subject, who creates in his or her mind a vast category of the white person as the 'Superior' and 'Other'- continues to plague our subconscious and determines how we treat them.

In Singapore, our situation as lacking in natural resources and having only location and talent to help us means that our government has chosen a path of attracting the best talent to Singapore in order to try and short-cut a path to prosperity. Think of us as Chelsea FC and our government as Roman Abramovitch. We've brought in all this 'foreign talent' at excessive prices, treated them like they were kings, and in the process made it difficult for the equivalent local to break into the first team. Then we're told we should welcome this foreign talent because it means our team is now wildly successful.

It's not the foreign talent's fault. They are doing what is best for them. They are seeking better lives for themselves, at high pay, cheap prices and in a place where they are treated well. Who can blame them? And yet I doubt that they can understand the circumstances they are in.

All this ran through my mind as I sat in the Octagon with my colleague, peering at her over my tea. I decided that she could not understand how upset many of us are over this issue and that she might never understand. I pondered what she meant by 'feels like home'. Perhaps I had misunderstood her. I watched her mind wander, and I watched her return to the present. Then I changed the subject.