My Sunday Think-Time

Sundays are always good time for thinking & reflection, especially when you wake up fresh, having enough rest over the previous night. I realize how little think time I really have nowadays compare to what I used to practise. Yes, think time: a time to think. Think about things, think about what to think, and also think about what not to think.

It is already May...the 5th month of the 7th year of the 21st century. How time flies! Who would have thought?

I remember back in the 1990s, we wondered what it would be like in the year 2,000. Flying cars, regular commutes to the moon & space, futuristic this & that. We imagined all sorts of things that turned out to be further in the future than we had thought. What really changed in the last one & a half decade? I managed to come up with some: Cars, airplanes, skyscrapers, tennis, hamburgers, TV, air-conditioning, antibiotics, nuclear bombs – all the big things that shaped our lives had already been invented & improved.

Today's cars are so much fancier. We have the Airbus which claims superlative luxury & style. My country's skyline changes so much downtown, with new this & that building boasting $2000 per sq ft. My tennis game has just got faster, thanks to new technology that goes into my racket. And I realised my hamburger no longer taste as good as it used to (same goes for KFC). There is just no more juice in those thighs and breasts (chicken I mean). T.V. just got flater, just got mobile (now that we have MobTV). Air-con goes invertor, and we are in the fourth generation as far antibiotics are concerned. Talking about viral resilence. So, what has been invented since then?

Hmmm...the Internet? I can’t think of anything else.

Of course, the Internet is changing the world. It is part of the reason real estate prices are going up faster in desirable resort locations than elsewhere – so many more people can live in these places & still continue working. It is also changing the way we get information & ideas, never before have so many people had such ready access to so many bad ideas.

And everywhere traditional news media, in which the half-truths & whole-lies are printed on the pulp of trees, is giving way to the new news media, in which the drivel comes to you electronically. I have cancelled my newspaper subcription long time back. I go online for news nowadays; on-the-go, on-demand, & on time.

I cannot help but conclude, through no fault of our own, that we have occasionally been the victim of news media stories, in which the ‘news’ differed dramatically from what we knew to be true, & often to such a degree that the reader would come away with the exact opposite of the truth. But what would you expect? Ours is a fast world but inhabited by a class of people who are particularly dull-witted & lazy, a short-cut thinking generation which demands instant satisfaction & are foreign to delayed gratification.

Meanwhile, global warming seems to having a dichotomizing effect on different parts of the world. Some like it, some don't. The ocean is warmer, icebergs are melting faster than ever, & dry areas seem to be getting drier. Is Global Warming real? I don’t know. All I know is that it seems unusually warm and humid here in "Eagle-land" Singapore. My friend who visited me at my nest yesterday almost fainted despite the air-con was on.

Conclusion: Times have changed, but some things have not. I need to move along, or else move aside. There was a popular saying in my youth: Anchor to the Rock, but Geared to the Times. I think it still holds true, ... I think.