Before it all begins, here are my playoff forecasts; I’m predicting who will come up tops in the East and the West.

Eastern Conference Champs: DETROIT PISTONS
They’ve been the most “slept on” team this year; they’ve convincingly beaten just about everyone before, and when determined they’ve got the teamwork and spirit to win it all… if motivated. This year, after embarrassing themselves due to their overconfidence against the Cavs last May, the Bad Boys have definitely got a bone to pick. Detroit’s pissed off, they’re playing tremendously well, and have been spurred on by their deep, young and very talented bench.

As for the Celtics? The Pistons have broken the traditional mould (that predicts that superstars win games) with their special formula. They beat a Laker team with 4 Hall-Of-Famers to win the title, so I wouldn’t put it beyond them to beat a Celtic team with 3 HOFers to come up tops in the East. The only team that can beat the Pistons is… themselves, and I think they’ve got the mindset to win it all this year.

Western Conference Champs: SAN ANTONIO SPURS
Everyone seems to hate them for being “boring”. My NBA Live research, however, has proven otherwise. They are the perfect NBA Live team - Duncan the monster being unstoppable down low and grabbing every rebound that comes his way, Manu and TP each bringing their own brand of unstoppable-ness, a whole slew of solid jump shooters, cheap shot defensive players in Bowen and Horry, and 2 rock-solid big guys in Oberto and Thomas as “garbage dudes”. They have no flaws. They can kill you on the break with their deceptive speed, execute you to death in the half court, and dump it in to Duncan for the high-percentage shot every damn time.

These Spurs are a basketball purist’s (i.e. me) dream, and their sheer professionalism is gonna win it for the again. This is the year they repeat. The Lakers are nigh-unstoppable when they have their freak on, but a lot of this is contingent on their twin towers coming back and not losing a step - which may be a lot to hope for; for the sake of Bynum’s future, I really wouldn’t rush him back into shape. The Mavs are write-offs. N’awlins, good as they are, can not survive a 7-game series against the Spurs. The Suns have moved away from their “key success factor” and traded their future away for the now; they better enjoy the “now” while he lasts, because in a season and a half the “now” is gonna be older, phatter and grumpier - and is gonna start blaming everyone in the Suns organization for not doing enough to win a title. G-State’s live-for-the-moment thing isn’t really convincing anyone; they may win it all or not even make the playoffs, and it wouldn’t matter to those maniacs who’re in for it purely for the love of the game. Finally, Utah, solid as they are, was systematically taken apart last year by the Spurs… neither team has changed much, so do the math.

NBA Champs: The Spurs
They get the job done, no matter what that entails… including kung fu flying kicks and hip-checking you into the stands til your nose gets half-torn off.

They hit big shots. TP, Duncan and Manu are each able to take over a game and drop 30 on you… and once 2 of them get hot it’s pretty damn hard to stop the Spurs. So once more, I’m picking the Spurs to win it all. This might seem like a low-risk “value” pick, but the Spurs have not repeated so far, so it’s not as safe as one might think. Nonetheless, I’m not betting against these MFs, not until Duncan is finally deactivated and Popovich goes back to his old job of stealing Christmas.

The sun lies low in the sky, and my Company is crowded around a few dilapidated buildings which lie amidst a great expanse of jungle. Of key importance is the one building I’m currently standing in - an old, discreet-looking medium-sized warehouse with a single entrance, a tall and wide portal with its rolling steel door half-open - because the basement of this warehouse leads deep into the ground, ultimately leading to a single, locked, steel door which gives access to a network of tunnels that contain something of grave importance, something the likes of which me or my lowly Company would never have to know about. We are here to defend that door, those tunnels, with our lives.

I sit behind the cover of a large box that stands by the mouth of the warehouse, waiting for the sun to set…. and the inevitable attack by the enemy, which lurked deep in the palms and fronds of the jungle that encircled us. Every night the enemy came without fail, in increasing numbers, to open fire at us from the farthest range of their weapons, never once coming closer than a hundred or two meters. Besieged, we fired back, not knowing who they were or where they came from. We held them off for a week already, but after our nightly firefights were over, none of their bodies were to be found - just gore-splattered trees and undergrowth. Every day, while the sun was up, our scouting teams combed the jungle in various vectors, but invariably came back none the wiser: we hadn’t the slightest idea who it was we were up against.

The sun falls deeper into the horizon, and the darkening sky mirrors the mood of the Company. Preparations for the impending assault are done, and the men take cover behind crates and sandbags that litter the mouth of the warehouse. I load and cock my rifle, and tap at the extra magazines hidden in my combat webbing in anticipation. I look around and see, in the dim light of the warehouse, the dark silhouettes of my comrades, prone or crouching, grasping their rifles tightly and looking intently into the darkness.

Then it begins - shots are fired, and deep in the shadows I see vague silhouettes illuminated by tracer rounds and muzzle flashes. Pressing myself hard against the crate, I take aim and pull the trigger again and again. This night, the enemy comes in larger numbers; and, instead of hanging back in the shadows of the undergrowth, they creep closer in a line formation, hellfire spewing forth from their rifles as they run and crawl at us.

Under the cover of my crate, I pull the trigger again and again, in two-round bursts, and assailant after assailant falls to my hand. A bullet impacts the crate, inches from my face, and I get desperate; I fear that I’ll never see the sun rise again, that the tunnel network has already been infiltrated and the enemy will emerge from the massive door behind us and cut us down from both directions. As more and more of the enemy get closer, the firefight gets increasingly dire and bloody. Putting a fresh magazine in the rifle, I scream a war cry and let loose more fire at the lurking terror in the darkness, as they claw closer and closer and closer.

I wake up much later than usual. It’s Good Friday and - cliche alert! - that was all just a dream. A vivid one, however… I look at my face in the mirror and am surprised to see the absence of camouflage cream. Shaken, but intent to write it all down before wakefulness distorts the memory of dream, I sit down at the computer and start typing.

I was downstairs having dinner with my family while watching CNN. The half an hour I spent watching CNN during dinner served as a microcosm for CNN’s coverage over the last few months; little or nothing was said about education, the economy, or healthcare. Instead, I was treated to non-stop coverage of the various US presidential candidates, including an in-depth breakdown of their body language (Hillary’s pointing and clapping vs. Barack’s mild wave vs. Mccain’s Vietnam-injury-encumbered two-handed half raise).

What punctuated this inane deluge of presidential campaign information? Scary facts about the Enemy! China is recruiting American-Chinese people to work as spies to steal American technology! Russia is up to their usual devious no-good ways! And then Hugo - I had no idea what Chavez was up to at this point as I was helping myself to more roast pork, but big close ups of scary Hugo in customary menacing red shirt accompanied by the threatening tone of the CNN news anchor sure worked me up good!

Had I been living under a rock for the last 22 years of my life, or stuck on a deserted island with a volleyball as my sole companion, and were I to have sat down to watch the last half hour (last few months’) CNN broadcasts, I would know of only two things in the world today:

1. US presidential candidates are the centre of the universe and it is imperative that I educate myself about the intricacies of their body language.

2. No other countries matter (Kenya, East Timor, Darfur), except vile enemy nations (China, Russia, Venezuela) who’re always up to dastardly deeds like stealing US technology.

Put one and two together; what message are we being shown? A combination of fear mongering and an overexposure toward the various presidential candidates. Something’s amiss. Switch on the TV and just leave it on CNN for 15 minutes, and think hard about the picture that’s being painted.

PS. My laptop has been dead for 2 weeks now. It doesn’t even switch on now. I will have to try to fix it again - for GOOD this time - during reading week ahead. Sparse blogposts until then.

Hello everyone. Despite spending much of the weekend madly writing notes and doing readings that have accumulated over the past three weeks (already?) of school, I’ve finally had the first chance since the year began to breathe. Things have been terribly busy - as usual - and I’ve learnt a lot in these few weeks, in school and out of it.

A lot has been going through my mind, worries and thoughts of the future. About the direction my life should be taking, professionally and otherwise. This very evening, something reminded me of a… sentiment that went through my head over the New Year.

Usually, on particularly poignant days (birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, etc) I make a special prayer asking for protection and peace for my family and friends. This year, more than ever, I felt the need to extend that prayer to include the entire world.

I haven’t lived long, but yet I feel that our future has never felt so uncertain as it does today. I’m not saying it’s bleak - rather, I believe that the next decade or so will be a pivotal point for the world, for better or for worse, to take a new direction.

And so, I hope and pray that we have the strength and courage to meet the challenges of the future, and see past our differences and overcome our racial shortsightedness that has been the hallmark of every mistake we have ever made. I have full faith that humanity can do what we need to do; at the same time, I know fully well how capable we are of majestically screwing everything up.

So, for what it is worth, I pray that everyone out there has a successful and safe year; that we all find it in ourselves to value and cherish our loved ones, and protect them and be there for them; that we see past the propagandist vomit that’s woven into the media and never forget that we’re all brothers and sisters; that we never forget what Jesus or Buddha or Mohammad (or otherwise) has taught us, and live our lives in their example; and finally, that we stay true to ourselves.

Amen.

“2008 is 2 weeks old, and my recent busy-ness (today is the first time I was in school not wearing business formal / casual) has ironically got me all introspective…”

…was what I was typing before I chanced upon this clip, courtesy of my brother.

It’s ABSOLUTELY brilliant. The guy who plays Solid Snake does a really good job mimicking Snake’s actions; he moves exactly like Snake would. Brought a tear to my eye.

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I am a rabid Metal Gear fanatic. I could rant on for hour after hour about how perfect every single Metal Gear game is; but beyond all that, the underlying message behind every Metal Gear game truly touches you deep inside, in the same way the Matrix movies do. The Matrix movies and Metal Gear, pioneers of bullet-time special effects and the stealth video game genre, respectively, are too often only remembered as such; look deeper and you’ll find deep, mind-shattering messages that slap you in the face hard and make you rethink the very meaning of life itself.

It is for that reason why Metal Gear II, arguably the worst game of the series, has probably the most special emotional connection with me, because of one special line, uttered by Otacon dealing with tragedy: “You can’t wait to be loved. You have to go out and find it… You can’t just wish for a happy family - you have to go out and make it happen.”

I played this game when I was in my early days of serving National Service, at a lonely and rather desolate point in my life. That quote gave me strength, and allowed me to find my place and grow as a soldier and a friend to those around me.

Until someone goes out to make a Metal Gear movie, however, the non-gaming world won’t get a chance to appreciate the unbelievable story and the great educational message that Metal Gear has for its fans, which is a huge pity. I read that a movie is in the works, but if they massacre the movie the way they did to Hitman, it would be a tragic waste.

The new year is six days old, and school starts anew tomorrow. My iBook G4 laptop has been out of commission since early December, which has made things tremendously troublesome, but I had since gotten kinda used to working on a plain, old-fashioned, but significantly faster PC. Comatose iBook and exams partially explain my MIA status from this blog, but my affliction with inertia, recent propensity to write ridiculously long posts (which end up half-written and unedited), among other things, have kept me from it.

Thanks to much help from The Dad, I was able to dismantle my once immaculately white, now greying with age iBook G4 (warranty’s over anyway) and take a look inside. Not easy. Lots of screws and even taking it apart requires some degree of dexterity which I obviously lack. At least that’s done, and my iBook screen hasn’t gone out of commission yet for the past half hour since we fiddled with the inverter cables n stuff.

Anyway, I went to Montreal with my girlfriend over the December holidays. It was awesome. Montreal is a really pretty city, and having been to Paris when I was younger, I was reminded a lot of it, particularly in the architecture of the place. The Montreal subway system is excellent, and in my opinion rivals the best subway systems in Asia - trains move fast, there were few delays, and even when there was a 15-minute delay during the weekday rush hour in downtown Montreal, everyone in the large crowd was somehow able to get onto the rather narrow train carriage. C’est magnifique, says Joel.

There’s this really cool thing called the Biodome in Montreal which is kind of like an indoor domed zoo thing, it doesn’t have a HUGE variety of animals, but the various flora and fauna in there seem to be extremely well taken care of. The Biodome recreated a number of environments, from a tropical jungle to a huge underwater mini-ocean… pictures should follow if time permits.

All right. I’ve got quite a few things to do before school starts, and I want to get them done so I can have a good (final?) rest tonight before the grind begins anew.

To whoever reads this, have a safe and enriching year ahead.

Since school started, I’ve been tremendously swamped with work. I haven’t been busier, but my classes and involvement in school have never been more, well, involving and fun. Grades have sadly taken a dip, however.

One morning a few weeks ago, I hopped onto the feeder bus near my house to go to school. The bus went on its way once I got on, but 2 stops later, the driver stopped next to a small neighbourhood mall, stopped the bus engine, and sat reading a newspaper for a good 15 minutes. The driver only gingerly started the engine and continued driving us on our route when an annoyed woman told him off because she was going to be late due to his tardiness. In this way, what should’ve been a mere 10-minute bus ride took nearly half an hour. Ironically, this was the first day the 15 cent hike was implemented - which left me wondering, “Is this what I’m paying for?”

Upset by this incident, I started noticing ways in which the Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) policies are currently lacking, and must be dealt with if TTC management has any serious intent on improving its service and bettering its relationship with its commuters. The humble recommendations of a 3rd-year commerce student follow:

1. Improving Employee Safety:
Forget about installing protective plastic barriers. A year has passed since the 2006 wildcat strike, and employee safety remains a top employee concern. Putting a movable plastic barrier up to protect TTC employees is not only ridiculous, it is also a stupidly shortsighted stopgap measure. Instead, why doesn’t TTC management try to give commuters less reason to be frustrated at TTC employees?

Even absolute numbskulls (for lack of a better word) often need some sort of provocation to be set off and become violent. The numerous inconsistencies in TTC service quality - the frequent delays and breakdowns, the poorly maintained stations, the list goes on - give these potentially violent commuters ample excuses to unfairly vent their frustrations on poor TTC employees. Instead of posturing and making a misguided attempt at a lame preventive measure, the TTC has to look at the harsh truth that is the source of the problem: customer dissatisfaction, the direct result of a poor product.

TTC employees are, for the most part, extremely polite and courteous men and women. In my experience - I take the TTC nearly every day - they are generally helpful and patient with commuters, and smile a lot. It is therefore very, very unfortunate that the shortsightedness of management - translating to angry and dissatisfied customers - has in turn led to ground-level employees’ suffering.

2. Better Employee Management
The same article states: “Another unresolved item is the lack of a job description for drivers. Vehicle operator duties have never been formally defined, though the two sides agreed more than five years ago to do so.” Therefore, there is a lack of proper internal control procedures in place to govern TTC employees’ performance of their duties - which to begin with, aren’t clearly defined.

What does this translate to? Non-value added activities, downtime and most annoying of all, irregular service and frequent delays, which tick commuters off, leading us back to our first point about employee safety. Commuters are generally pretty understanding if TTC vehicles are slightly late, but the pervasive irregularity of the bus and streetcar services almost makes the transit schedules at TTC stops a farce.

Measures must be put in place to clearly define employee responsibilities, and to ensure that incompatible responsibilities do not lie within a single role. Objective methods to monitoring performance must also be implemented to ensure that personnel follow their roles satisfactorily. The inability to clearly define employee responsibilities, particularly in a company that so strongly depends on its personnel, creates ample opportunity for non-constructive employee behaviour and is a surefire recipe for disaster.

3. Long-Term Cost Savings
To cut a very long story short, the TTC needs more money. It suffered a net operating loss of $319.7 million in 2006 (even worse than 2005’s $260 million figure), and is only staying afloat due to huge operating subsidies.

What then is the TTC’s solution to improving operational cashflows? Yet another stopgap solution: hiking up transit fares by another 15 cents. Is the TTC losing money because it isn’t getting enough revenues from its commuters? No - the TTC is losing money because of its own lack of foresight, and commuters have been made to bear the brunt of the TTC’s rising costs.

In what ways can the TTC most easily improve, instead of making commuters pay more? For one, by investing in better internal control procedures, particularly employee safety measures. How does spending more money translate to cost savings, you may ask? Accident claims cost the TTC $21.5 million in 2006 - a figure which rose by more than $5 million, a significant 34% increase from 2005’s figure of $16 million. By making smart, longsighted investments into safety measures, the TTC can safeguard its employees, while simultaneously saving it millions of dollars in accident claims in the future. Instead, it hikes up its rates.

A second way in which the TTC can improve its cashflow is to make another long-sighted, future-oriented investment: invest in future contracts to hedge its fuel costs. Basically, this means entering pre-agreed purchase agreements in advance in order to safeguard the TTC from being at the mercy of volative fuel prices. To illustrate my point, let’s just look at its income statement: vehicle fuel expenses rose by more than 50% from $36 million in 2005 to $54 million in 2006. Did the TTC expand its routes or its fleet by 50% in 2006? No, but why then did fuel expenses skyrocket? A pure lack of foresight.

Due to its reliance on fuel, the TTC must find better ways of securing this key resource for its vehicles. A quick look at its financial statements reveals no evidence of any attempt to hedge against fuel price risk. Knowing that their operations rely so much on fuel, and that fuel prices are indeed extremely volatile, the TTC cannot continue to ignore hedging contracts as a means of protecting their future cashflows. Instead of exploring such long-term cost-savings options, the TTC merely continues to raise commuter transit fees higher. And higher.

In summary, I believe that the TTC has been too focused on short-term, stopgap solutions to its employee welfare, personnel management and operational cost problems. Worsening working conditions, inconsistent service, customer dissatisfaction and threats to employee safety form a vicious cycle that has resulted from this lack of foresight, which ultimately causes low-level TTC staff and commuters to suffer the most. By even considering my recommendations, I believe that the TTC can at least make an educated step towards improving their operational efficiency, their employee welfare and the strained relationship with their commuters.

Your friend,

Joel Ong

Charity, in my mind, starts from very basic things - and is a very simple thing to do, actually. It all stems from having very basic courtesy and empathy for other human beings, and doesn’t require one to join Doctors Without Borders or go volunteering in a less developed country halfway across the world.

What do I mean? If everyone was charitable to their family and friends around them, if we just did the tangible things we could to better the lives of our brethren, people wouldn’t need to go volunteering halfway across the world on some large-scale charity mission half as often.

Be good to your parents, and take care of them - otherwise some charitable stranger in an old folk’s home will someday have to. Don’t haphazardly throw litter on the floor when you’re out on the streets - that way road cleaners won’t have to pick it up, right? You get what I mean?

I’m not saying that large-scale, high profile charitable acts are a bad thing; no, in fact in many cases, they are very necessary and save many, many lives. What I am saying is that when we try to do good, sometimes we forget about the little, simple courtesies that we can do for people closer to us - ironically, people whose lives we can directly impact most with our actions.

Why fly to Africa to help the poor and sick when you can walk to your local mission and do the same? The same sick, the same dying, the same homeless. Toronto is filled with thousands of homeless people. So are other great metropolitan cities like New York, London and the like. They all could use a little help, too.

There are many factors, mainly economical and political reasons, why we continue to chose to help the poor and the suffering of another country rather than those close to us. On a more personal level, it is far easier for many people to donate $100 in helping some faraway AIDS victims than it is to give a $0.25 coin to a homeless man on the sidewalk, for a very simple reason: the NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) rule.

A relevant example of this occurred over the last year in The Beaches, one of Toronto’s posher and “classier” neighborhoods. The residents of The Beaches were lauded when they brought forward a charitable movement where homeless people would be given free food and shelter in local churches. However, when one such shelter was planned to be set up in The Beaches itself, the residents vehemently resisted, protesting strongly against it.

For a more obvious example, look at the USA’s involvement in the Middle East. Billions of dollars have gone into rebuilding Iraq (Waitaminute… why did it need to be rebuilt in the first place?), yet hulking highway bridges in the US are crumbling from disrepair. Katrina funds, collected over the years from millions of well-meaning donors and organizations, mysteriously don’t seem to be translating to much: New Orleans is still pretty much in shambles, a shadow of what it once was. Think about it: take every dollar spent on the Green Zone in Iraq and imagine it put into actually rebuilding New Orleans: the people there would be much, much better off than how they are now.

To sum my point up: charity then, is apparently a lot easier to perform the farther away one is from the person being helped.

Which is why a man like the late Ed Mirvish is so special, and so great. To those who are unfamiliar with “Honest” Ed, Mr. Mirvish was the owner of a huge discount store in Toronto (very similar to Mustafa’s in Singapore), as well as being responsible for nearly singlehandedly revitalizing the theatrical industry in Toronto. A true man of the people, Honest Ed showed that charity is as simple as loving those who are around you, and helping them in whatever simple means available to you. He didn’t have to go jet-setting across the world to help people; Honest Ed helped the people he could see and touch. The thousands of free turkeys he’s personally given out every Christmas to anyone who’d line up for them is just one example of Honest Ed’s charity. Honest Ed is just one of many good examples of how doing the simple things in our power to help our neighbours can very tangibly better their lives.

I write this not to judge, nor to dissuade or criticize. I merely am telling all who happen to read this, myself included when I reflect upon this in the future, to look closer to us when trying to do something good for someone else, because it’s a heck of a lot harder than to just dump $100 into some charity box, feel good about ourselves and think we’ve done a great deal of good by our sacrifice.

Instead, maybe we should try and just start by simply being considerate and courteous to our neighbours, our housemates, our parents and our friends… or, before we know it, in a generation or two, some humanitarian group from halfway across the world is going to have to waltz into our homes to help us.