4.8.25 - YAY!!!!

I have spent most of the holidays already listening and reading to the myths I'm supposed to be doing over the course of the coming year. So putting together the year's ML curriculum was laughably easy. I also know EXACTLY what lesson the kids will be taught - so yes, it has been so good to finally get it down on paper. It took me exactly 3 hours from start to finish. And I didn't even notice the time passing. I'm so pleased. Tomorrow I'll go through the thing again and just refine it. It is just so so good that that has been done. It is my largest piece of work and that is now complete. I shall now look at the timetable and other things. 

So satisfying.

Ubin was fascinating yesterday. But even as I listened to the man, I could feel it slipping from me. The story of Singapore is one of enduring loss. We have had people with zero connections to the land come in and decide that it is there for the raping. Each empty parcel of land is deemed unproductive and it doesn't matter that that strand of trees gave cooling air, that it was home to birds and small mammals, that it gave relief in an unrelentingly hot and inhospitable landscape, no it was doing nothing as it were, so it was to be built over.

There's a parcel of land on the old Daimaru at River Valley, it says that it is 'earmarked' for hotel development. DOES Singapore need another stupid hotel? Does it really? Or does it need some green space where trees and butterflies and the occasional bird can find solace? Where the straw headed bulbul will call its sweet cooling call, where the olive back sunbird may flit in and out and drink the nectar of the flowers which have been refreshed after the rains? Or does it need another fucking hotel? It's so so stupid. 

But it is because people aren't connected to the land. The lack of connection means that it is now only utility. There are no emotions attached to it. Configurations which remind you of something, where you may invest a memory - a physical repository. Why do we grieve when people die, even if we think that they continue with a soul after they have gone, or may be reincarnated as a pet or another person? We grieve of the physical presence of the person. Similarly, when the land is destroyed, when a building which has stood for a century, when a tree which has grown for half a decade, when a strand of trees has been there for 150 years is eradicated to make way for 'progress', the living presence is killed. It is EXACTLY as we would feel as a death of someone dear and familiar and yet we are expected to suck it up. We learn how to endure these losses because someone thinks that we need to make more money, contribute to the GDP. That is the only metric these people have.