Friday, December 31, 2010
Happy New Year 2011!
Happy New Year,everyone! May it be filled with every happiness and fulfillment in the days ahead :)
Saturday, December 25, 2010
A Real Good Samaritan
A real Good Samaritan
One act of kindness that befell British writer Bernard Hare in 1982 changed him profoundly. Then a student living just north of London, he tells the story to inspire troubled young people to help deal with their disrupted lives.
The police called at my student hovel early evening, but I didn't answer as I thought they'd come to evict me. I hadn't paid my rent in months. But then I got to thinking: my mum hadn't been too good and what if it was something about her?
We had no phone in the hovel and mobiles hadn't been invented yet, so I had to nip down the phone box.
I rang home to Leeds to find my mother was in hospital and not expected to survive the night. "Get home, son," my dad said.
I got to the railway station to find I'd missed the last train. A train was going as far as Peterborough, but I would miss the connecting Leeds train by twenty minutes.
I bought a ticket home and got on anyway. I was a struggling student and didn't have the money for a taxi the whole way, but I had a screwdriver in my pocket and my bunch of skeleton keys.
I was so desperate to get home that I planned to nick a car in Peterborough, hitch hike, steal some money, something, anything. I just knew from my dad's tone of voice that my mother was going to die that night and I intended to get home if it killed me."Tickets, please," I heard, as I stared blankly out of the window at the passing darkness. I fumbled for my ticket and gave it to the guard when he approached. He stamped it, but then just stood there looking at me. I'd been crying, had red eyes and must have looked a fright.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Course I'm okay," I said. "Why wouldn't I be? And what's it got to do with you in any case?"
"You look awful," he said. "Is there anything I can do?"
"You could get lost and mind your own business," I said. "That'd be a big help." I wasn't in the mood for talking.
He was only a little bloke and he must have read the danger signals in my body language and tone of voice, but he sat down opposite me anyway and continued to engage me. "If there's a problem, I'm here to help. That's what I'm paid for."
I was a big bloke in my prime, so I thought for a second about physically sending him on his way, but somehow it didn't seem appropriate. He wasn't really doing much wrong. I was going through all the stages of grief at once: denial, anger, guilt, withdrawal, everything but acceptance. I was a bubbling cauldron of emotion and he had placed himself in my line of fire.
The only other thing I could think of to get rid of him was to tell him my story.
"Look, my mum's in hospital, dying, she won't survive the night, I'm going to miss the connection to Leeds at Peterborough, I'm not sure how I'm going to get home.
"It's tonight or never, I won't get another chance, I'm a bit upset, I don't really feel like talking, I'd be grateful if you'd leave me alone. Okay?"
"Okay," he said, finally getting up. "Sorry to hear that, son. I'll leave you alone then. Hope you make it home in time." Then he wandered off down the carriage back the way he came.
I continued to look out of the window at the dark. Ten minutes later, he was back at the side of my table. Oh no, I thought, here we go again. This time I really am going to rag him down the train.
He touched my arm. "Listen, when we get to Peterborough, shoot straight over to Platform One as quick as you like. The Leeds train'll be there."I looked at him dumbfounded. It wasn't really registering. "Come again," I said, stupidly. "What do you mean? Is it late, or something?"
"No, it isn't late," he said, defensively, as if he really cared whether trains were late or not. "No, I've just radioed Peterborough. They're going to hold the train up for you. As soon as you get on, it goes.
"Everyone will be complaining about how late it is, but let's not worry about that on this occasion. You'll get home and that's the main thing. Good luck and God bless."
Then he was off down the train again. "Tickets, please. Any more tickets now?"
I suddenly realised what a top-class, fully-fledged doilem I was and chased him down the train. I wanted to give him all the money from my wallet, my driver's licence, my keys, but I knew he would be offended.
I caught him up and grabbed his arm. "Oh, er, I just wanted to…" I was suddenly speechless. "I, erm…"
"I wish I had some way to thank you," I said. "I appreciate what you've done."
"Not a problem," he said again. "If you feel the need to thank me, the next time you see someone in trouble, you help them out. That will pay me back amply.
"Tell them to pay you back the same way and soon the world will be a better place."
I was at my mother's side when she died in the early hours of the morning. Even now, I can't think of her without remembering the Good Conductor on that late-night train to Peterborough and, to this day, I won't hear a bad word said about British Rail.
My meeting with the Good Conductor changed me from a selfish, potentially violent hedonist into a decent human being, but it took time.
"I've paid him back a thousand times since then," I tell the young people I work with, "and I'll keep on doing so till the day I die. You don't owe me nothing. Nothing at all."
"And if you think you do, I'd give you the same advice the Good Conductor gave me. Pass it down the line."
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Roosters and Car Horns
Roosters & Car Horns
Saturday, 02 January 2010 at 21:40 |
One thing I'll never forget is waking up on that first morning of work.As I woke up from my bombed-out , anxiety-induced sleep, I could hear and smell my surroundings long before I could see them. A little past 6 a.m in the morning and I could hear a few sounds in the distance. Those sounds would always sum up my Working experience for me - an alarm clock ringing endlessly while up from the road came a cacophony of car horns & engine rumblings. Not to mention, the ice-cold shower and change into a working suit before the inevitable car ride.
The first car ride uptown was memorable for a host of different reasons. One was the rush-hour traffic. Good god was it terrible, one of the banes of my upcoming existence. The other thing I remember thinking was that it didn't look too different.Tiong Bahru looked like any other suburban locale,only with more office workers, smoked glass office towers and, as I may have mentioned, ungodly traffic. Either way though, it was different. My worries about not going to perform well were fading fast - life was definitely taking a turn for the interesting . .
Reality has a nasty habit of whacking you upside the head.We were finally pulling up to "City Plaza" , my workplace-to-be for the next month.I was dropped off in the shadow of the imposing office complex , and gingerly made my way up to the NETS office.
Then it hit me. Hard. I was a long way from home , I didn't know anyone whom I hadn't met within the last 24 hours. I had no job experience and my only prospect of earning that was by doing something I had no clue about - telemarketing.What if I got into trouble? What if I hated it? Worse yet, what if I liked it but they hated me? This was more than some exotic adventure. This was no friends, little money, no prior experience, sink or swim time.
Just when I was about to pack up and make a run for it , I looked at the flip side of the coin. Some company had taken me, basically sight unseen , and given me my first ever job. Now, if that wasn't a risk...
Also on the plus side was that my supervisor,Michelle,seemed nice,as did my colleague,Vanessa.And my previous experience with telemarketers had shown me that One didnt seem to need much skill in this line of work, or even have all one's marbles. It was time to get up and give this a shot.
After the initial introductions though,came my first test to workplace utilitarianism. Vanessa took me down two levels to have my thumbprint scanned for identification purposes by Roger, the chief technical supervisor. Was this an scene straight out of Orwell's *1984* ? There would be a time though, when I would come to appreciate all this finger-jabbing.
" Press HARDER against the glass panel!!!!! "
" Okay, I'll do that"
"Stop TREMBLING! There is nothing to be afraid of , just calm DOWN and relax your hand !! "
" I'll try."
" Oh finally,we have this thumb scanned. Now, the other hand"
Que horrors du horrors! To undergo another orgy of finger scanning , which would take another 10 minutes as per the first hand? The horror!! But it was eventually completed , albeit at the cost of more time and the sight of a bemused Vanessa.
But there was no time to dawdle over such trivial issues.A crash course in Stalinist-style filing soon followed , before I was left to collate the mountain of thick office documents & assorted recipts in alphabetical order , to be sorted out into corresponding folders. Which brings me to say,the folders could be scattered in any of several wall-mounted wind-up safe-like compartments. I swear those safe compartments could have just come out of the dingy vaults of the Bank of England.
I get ahead of myself here.Lets just say the filing continued for agonising minute after minute , dreary hour after hour - until the blessed lunch-time finally came.
Lunch came and went with a hurried KFC meal & a bottle of water, until it was time to start work afresh. By 2 O'clock , the office had slunk into an unnerving mix between total silence ( the kind you would find in a library) and a constant but distant clamour of running feet, ringing phone calls and muffled voices. This was a trait that I would notice frequently over the course of my holiday job, NETS office workers tended to keep to themselves unless absolutely necessary, quite unlike what my other temporary staff colleagues would describe of the varying office cultures in other jobs they had held.
The main focus of my job though, seemed to include the duties of a general purpose office peon. There was the data-entry to be contended with , much time invested in typing the particulars of unknown persons into the system for one purpose or another. Then the classification of those lucky draw contestants into various catagories ( N.M for New Member , I.C for incomplete , A.C for add card, you get the drift..) , but not forgetting the mild irritation at deciphering the scribbling of some unknown person , who seemed to take pervasive delight in making their Zs look like a 2 , and to add in a few mangled symbols or Incomplete bankcard/identity card details.
At 5 o'clock or so though , came a ritual which I have had trouble believing it actually existed! It seemed that the honour of collecting various office envelopes , service reports and one very important Finance Book came to me , as the newest office temp.These were to be sent en-masse to the second level of the building, where they were to be delivered to the customer service agent (service reports) , into a tray labelled FRANKING ( assorted envelopes) and left on the desk of a specific person.(Finance Book) . Next up though, came the *fun* part of this ritual. I would hurry back to my office cubicle under a swaying mass of received office mail and assorted materials. * The T.K post office* would then commence operation , slicing through bundles of envelopes , sorting out their content and sending them to their respective places ( mail to the received mail section , worn-out NETS cards to be shredded, reports into the big yellow Report folder). I managed the entire mail allocation for the level I was on, just as I would imagine some other peon doing so for Post Danmark or the United States Postal Service!
The end of my first day at work seemed to come rapidly after this( the exhilaration of going home was ineffable),followed by a quick car ride back home and dinner, with some free time thrown. That would turn out to be all it took to get me ready for bed. By 10.00 p.m it was light’s out and slumber time until my friendly neighborhood alarm clock heralded in the new day. The remainder of my work days at NETS roughly followed the same pattern, with some variations in between.
Looking back in retrospect,I found my work at NETS to be extremely engaging. Even though it proved to be for a limited duration only , those days spent working injected new meaning into my character and beliefs.No longer would I fail to understand how my Father felt after coming home from his banking job , how precious a lesiurely weekend would be , how hard it would be to earn money & bring home the bacon. Of course,words like perseverance , determination , courage , friendship and grit , would seem much more personal from now on..
Where to from here? Who knows, it's a new day.
The first car ride uptown was memorable for a host of different reasons. One was the rush-hour traffic. Good god was it terrible, one of the banes of my upcoming existence. The other thing I remember thinking was that it didn't look too different.Tiong Bahru looked like any other suburban locale,only with more office workers, smoked glass office towers and, as I may have mentioned, ungodly traffic. Either way though, it was different. My worries about not going to perform well were fading fast - life was definitely taking a turn for the interesting . .
Reality has a nasty habit of whacking you upside the head.We were finally pulling up to "City Plaza" , my workplace-to-be for the next month.I was dropped off in the shadow of the imposing office complex , and gingerly made my way up to the NETS office.
Then it hit me. Hard. I was a long way from home , I didn't know anyone whom I hadn't met within the last 24 hours. I had no job experience and my only prospect of earning that was by doing something I had no clue about - telemarketing.What if I got into trouble? What if I hated it? Worse yet, what if I liked it but they hated me? This was more than some exotic adventure. This was no friends, little money, no prior experience, sink or swim time.
Just when I was about to pack up and make a run for it , I looked at the flip side of the coin. Some company had taken me, basically sight unseen , and given me my first ever job. Now, if that wasn't a risk...
Also on the plus side was that my supervisor,Michelle,seemed nice,as did my colleague,Vanessa.And my previous experience with telemarketers had shown me that One didnt seem to need much skill in this line of work, or even have all one's marbles. It was time to get up and give this a shot.
After the initial introductions though,came my first test to workplace utilitarianism. Vanessa took me down two levels to have my thumbprint scanned for identification purposes by Roger, the chief technical supervisor. Was this an scene straight out of Orwell's *1984* ? There would be a time though, when I would come to appreciate all this finger-jabbing.
" Press HARDER against the glass panel!!!!! "
" Okay, I'll do that"
"Stop TREMBLING! There is nothing to be afraid of , just calm DOWN and relax your hand !! "
" I'll try."
" Oh finally,we have this thumb scanned. Now, the other hand"
Que horrors du horrors! To undergo another orgy of finger scanning , which would take another 10 minutes as per the first hand? The horror!! But it was eventually completed , albeit at the cost of more time and the sight of a bemused Vanessa.
But there was no time to dawdle over such trivial issues.A crash course in Stalinist-style filing soon followed , before I was left to collate the mountain of thick office documents & assorted recipts in alphabetical order , to be sorted out into corresponding folders. Which brings me to say,the folders could be scattered in any of several wall-mounted wind-up safe-like compartments. I swear those safe compartments could have just come out of the dingy vaults of the Bank of England.
I get ahead of myself here.Lets just say the filing continued for agonising minute after minute , dreary hour after hour - until the blessed lunch-time finally came.
Lunch came and went with a hurried KFC meal & a bottle of water, until it was time to start work afresh. By 2 O'clock , the office had slunk into an unnerving mix between total silence ( the kind you would find in a library) and a constant but distant clamour of running feet, ringing phone calls and muffled voices. This was a trait that I would notice frequently over the course of my holiday job, NETS office workers tended to keep to themselves unless absolutely necessary, quite unlike what my other temporary staff colleagues would describe of the varying office cultures in other jobs they had held.
The main focus of my job though, seemed to include the duties of a general purpose office peon. There was the data-entry to be contended with , much time invested in typing the particulars of unknown persons into the system for one purpose or another. Then the classification of those lucky draw contestants into various catagories ( N.M for New Member , I.C for incomplete , A.C for add card, you get the drift..) , but not forgetting the mild irritation at deciphering the scribbling of some unknown person , who seemed to take pervasive delight in making their Zs look like a 2 , and to add in a few mangled symbols or Incomplete bankcard/identity card details.
At 5 o'clock or so though , came a ritual which I have had trouble believing it actually existed! It seemed that the honour of collecting various office envelopes , service reports and one very important Finance Book came to me , as the newest office temp.These were to be sent en-masse to the second level of the building, where they were to be delivered to the customer service agent (service reports) , into a tray labelled FRANKING ( assorted envelopes) and left on the desk of a specific person.(Finance Book) . Next up though, came the *fun* part of this ritual. I would hurry back to my office cubicle under a swaying mass of received office mail and assorted materials. * The T.K post office* would then commence operation , slicing through bundles of envelopes , sorting out their content and sending them to their respective places ( mail to the received mail section , worn-out NETS cards to be shredded, reports into the big yellow Report folder). I managed the entire mail allocation for the level I was on, just as I would imagine some other peon doing so for Post Danmark or the United States Postal Service!
The end of my first day at work seemed to come rapidly after this( the exhilaration of going home was ineffable),followed by a quick car ride back home and dinner, with some free time thrown. That would turn out to be all it took to get me ready for bed. By 10.00 p.m it was light’s out and slumber time until my friendly neighborhood alarm clock heralded in the new day. The remainder of my work days at NETS roughly followed the same pattern, with some variations in between.
Looking back in retrospect,I found my work at NETS to be extremely engaging. Even though it proved to be for a limited duration only , those days spent working injected new meaning into my character and beliefs.No longer would I fail to understand how my Father felt after coming home from his banking job , how precious a lesiurely weekend would be , how hard it would be to earn money & bring home the bacon. Of course,words like perseverance , determination , courage , friendship and grit , would seem much more personal from now on..
Where to from here? Who knows, it's a new day.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
The last day of being aged 16 years
Well, almost 17 years to the day I was born, 5th Nov looks set to loom up, I was just thinking about birthdays & life in general this evening. How much difference does it make to turn from one year to another? Granted that you cant do what you cant do from this day to the next, I have a melancholic feel about birthdays; happiness at growing up, but yet sadness at aging one more year & thankful for the 365 days that have elapsed, 16 years was a tremendous change for me;
I found my first holiday job aged 0 months
I celebrated Christmas by buying myself a journal aged 1 month
I took my GCE O level results aged 2 months
I sit at my desk and type , aged 11 months
A little bit of luck, just that tiny bit more of warmth and loving affection, enough comfort & security for difficult moments, a large dose of courage for dark days , a handful of dreams that now come true and a little box of happy thoughts!
I found my first holiday job aged 0 months
I celebrated Christmas by buying myself a journal aged 1 month
I took my GCE O level results aged 2 months
I sit at my desk and type , aged 11 months
A little bit of luck, just that tiny bit more of warmth and loving affection, enough comfort & security for difficult moments, a large dose of courage for dark days , a handful of dreams that now come true and a little box of happy thoughts!
Friday, October 22, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
North Korea - the most bizarre country in the world
North Korea - the most bizarre country in the world
North Korean People's Army soldiers marching at Kim Il-Sung Square in Pyongyang in a military parade to mark the 60th anniversary of the Workers' Party of Korea
North Korea has one of the world's largest armies
By Sue Lloyd-Roberts
BBC News, North Korea
Imagine a country where your mobile phone is taken from you at the airport with no explanation or apology, where there's no access to the internet, where your minders watch every move and you're reported if you try to leave your hotel alone.
A country which has not been at war for half a century but has one of the largest standing armies in the world and where people are expected to worship a president who died 16 years ago.
No, I am not describing Big Brother and the country of Airstrip One in George Orwell's 1984 - it's the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in 2010.
North Korea map
I went to the Soviet Union in the Brezhnev years and have filmed in Burma and Tibet, but I have never before been anywhere I have been so watched and controlled, or where everything is so stage-managed.
Potemkin villages sprang up wherever I went. I visited model farms, model villages, model factories and model schools, though, at the school, even my government minders looked faintly embarrassed when I asked a model pupil in an English language class who he admired most among modern world leaders and he answered: "Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong."
But then, with its personality cults, dictators and marching Young Pioneers, North Korea is so 20th Century.
A confused old woman pushing a shopping trolley along the road, a factory worker wearing an old jacket at work, and random street vendors were, all hastily removed from in front of the camera, lest they tarnish the sanitised version of their country that officials wanted us to film.
My cameraman almost wept when a group of children playing spontaneously by the side of the road were abruptly shoved aside. "We want to see ordinary people," we begged, day after day.
But spontaneity is not allowed in North Korea.
Immortal president
What they allowed me to film proves that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is truly the most bizarre country in the world
That evening we were taken to the theatre to watch a ballet devoted to the triumphant building of a hydroelectric dam. The next morning, we were removed to the safety of Pyongyang's model kindergarten.
As I approached each room in the vast, palatial building, children rushed out and grabbed my hand to take me to watch another carefully rehearsed performance.
Little girls smiling widely and dancing in perfect formation, little boys in smart red suits and painted faces singing praises to the country's Great Leader.
It started off faintly charming. But with mask-like faces and rigid grins, even children become rather sinister.
More children are employed to sweep the steps leading up to the 60ft bronze statue of the Great Leader, which dominates Pyongyang.
Kim Il-sung died 16 years ago but he's still the country's president.
Women sweep the steps in front of the Kim Il-sung statue
There are over 500 statues of Kim Il-sung in North Korea
"He's immortal," a 24-year-old-guide explained. "We don't believe he passed away."
When I tried to bring the conversation back to reality, to talk about the modern world, she revealed that she had not even heard of Nelson Mandela.
This lack of connection with the modern world is disconcerting, especially on the practical level.
State secrets
I had sent a "wish list" to Pyongyang via the North Korean embassy in London of the things I wanted to see and do while in the country.
I thought it might be polite to ask to film the country's football team which has, for the first time since 1966, qualified to play in the World Cup.
I was given the impression before I left that this, along with my other requests, had been agreed.
At my first meeting with my minders in Pyongyang, they put me straight. Not only was the football team out of bounds, but, they claimed, there was not a single football match taking place in the entire county during my nine-day stay.
Football is clearly a state secret.
North Korea's national football team
North Korea are playing in only their second World Cup finals
One morning we saw another couple sitting at breakfast, also wearing press arm bands. They looked utterly defeated.
It turned out that they were Brazilian football correspondents. They, too, had asked to come to the country to watch the football team and had flown from Rio to London to Pyongyang via Beijing to do so. "Going to a match today?" we'd ask cruelly every morning.
"No, we're going to the kindergarten," they replied forlornly one day. "No, we're going to the ballet," the next.
Despite the craziness, at least I have been able to make something of my stage-managed trip to North Korea - if only to illustrate, by what they allowed me to film - that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is truly the most bizarre country in the world.
But one can only weep at the thought of the Brazilian football correspondents at the ballet.
North Korean People's Army soldiers marching at Kim Il-Sung Square in Pyongyang in a military parade to mark the 60th anniversary of the Workers' Party of Korea
North Korea has one of the world's largest armies
By Sue Lloyd-Roberts
BBC News, North Korea
Imagine a country where your mobile phone is taken from you at the airport with no explanation or apology, where there's no access to the internet, where your minders watch every move and you're reported if you try to leave your hotel alone.
A country which has not been at war for half a century but has one of the largest standing armies in the world and where people are expected to worship a president who died 16 years ago.
No, I am not describing Big Brother and the country of Airstrip One in George Orwell's 1984 - it's the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in 2010.
North Korea map
I went to the Soviet Union in the Brezhnev years and have filmed in Burma and Tibet, but I have never before been anywhere I have been so watched and controlled, or where everything is so stage-managed.
Potemkin villages sprang up wherever I went. I visited model farms, model villages, model factories and model schools, though, at the school, even my government minders looked faintly embarrassed when I asked a model pupil in an English language class who he admired most among modern world leaders and he answered: "Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong."
But then, with its personality cults, dictators and marching Young Pioneers, North Korea is so 20th Century.
A confused old woman pushing a shopping trolley along the road, a factory worker wearing an old jacket at work, and random street vendors were, all hastily removed from in front of the camera, lest they tarnish the sanitised version of their country that officials wanted us to film.
My cameraman almost wept when a group of children playing spontaneously by the side of the road were abruptly shoved aside. "We want to see ordinary people," we begged, day after day.
But spontaneity is not allowed in North Korea.
Immortal president
What they allowed me to film proves that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is truly the most bizarre country in the world
That evening we were taken to the theatre to watch a ballet devoted to the triumphant building of a hydroelectric dam. The next morning, we were removed to the safety of Pyongyang's model kindergarten.
As I approached each room in the vast, palatial building, children rushed out and grabbed my hand to take me to watch another carefully rehearsed performance.
Little girls smiling widely and dancing in perfect formation, little boys in smart red suits and painted faces singing praises to the country's Great Leader.
It started off faintly charming. But with mask-like faces and rigid grins, even children become rather sinister.
More children are employed to sweep the steps leading up to the 60ft bronze statue of the Great Leader, which dominates Pyongyang.
Kim Il-sung died 16 years ago but he's still the country's president.
Women sweep the steps in front of the Kim Il-sung statue
There are over 500 statues of Kim Il-sung in North Korea
"He's immortal," a 24-year-old-guide explained. "We don't believe he passed away."
When I tried to bring the conversation back to reality, to talk about the modern world, she revealed that she had not even heard of Nelson Mandela.
This lack of connection with the modern world is disconcerting, especially on the practical level.
State secrets
I had sent a "wish list" to Pyongyang via the North Korean embassy in London of the things I wanted to see and do while in the country.
I thought it might be polite to ask to film the country's football team which has, for the first time since 1966, qualified to play in the World Cup.
I was given the impression before I left that this, along with my other requests, had been agreed.
At my first meeting with my minders in Pyongyang, they put me straight. Not only was the football team out of bounds, but, they claimed, there was not a single football match taking place in the entire county during my nine-day stay.
Football is clearly a state secret.
North Korea's national football team
North Korea are playing in only their second World Cup finals
One morning we saw another couple sitting at breakfast, also wearing press arm bands. They looked utterly defeated.
It turned out that they were Brazilian football correspondents. They, too, had asked to come to the country to watch the football team and had flown from Rio to London to Pyongyang via Beijing to do so. "Going to a match today?" we'd ask cruelly every morning.
"No, we're going to the kindergarten," they replied forlornly one day. "No, we're going to the ballet," the next.
Despite the craziness, at least I have been able to make something of my stage-managed trip to North Korea - if only to illustrate, by what they allowed me to film - that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is truly the most bizarre country in the world.
But one can only weep at the thought of the Brazilian football correspondents at the ballet.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
A spy machine with eyes and ears everywhere
A spy machine with eyes and ears everywhere
Foreigners must surrender mobile phones, other prohibitions abound
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The Stalinist espionage apparatus of Kim Jong-Il is believed to be even more efficient than the East German Stasi once was. Consequently, when asked, North Koreans will slavishly repeat the official truth of what their leaders have said.
There is no other choice for anyone who wants to avoid being sent to a labour camp, or getting into other serious trouble.
Foreigners visiting the country are also under close scrutiny. Immediately after being welcomed, they are warned by local guides not to take cropped pictures of statues of the dictators. And newspapers with articles about the leaders must not be used for anything other than reading.
At the airport, officials confiscate mobile telephones for the duration of the visit, and leaf through a passenger’s copy of the Economist to see if it contains anything sensitive.
“Rules are rules”, explains a Pyongyang official when asked why the mobile phone was taken away. “It could become a security problem”, says another. However, in Pyongyang, mobile telephones in the hands of officials are getting to be an increasingly common sight.
Only the elite have access to the Internet. It is possible to send e-mail from the hotel, but only with special permission. Application forms for permission to send e-mail include a space for the intended destination country. A 20-KB e-mail costs EUR 2.30 to send.
“I do not believe that the Internet will gain widespread use in North Korea. The reason for this is American and South Korean imperialism”, says one official. So what does the United States have to do with the citizens not being allowed Internet access?
“It’s hard to explain”, the man says and makes it clear that there will be no further discussion of the topic.
The list of prohibitions imposed on foreigners is endless. Photography from inside a car is not allowed. People must not be photographed. Soldiers must not be photographed. The bans are enforced by officials who keep a close eye on foreigners. There is no shortage of watchful eyes: there are three officials chaperoning seven tourists.
It soon becomes apparent that foreigners are not allowed to leave the hotel unescorted.
A British and an Irish visitor taking a morning stroll are quickly stopped by a crowd when they take pictures of street vendors. The men are driven back to their hotel by security officials.
The North Koreans consider this a serious incident. A report is written, the memory cards of the cameras are confiscated, and the pictures must be deleted from their computers. The men are also required to write a humble letter of apology to North Korea.
“This is a serious setback to the positive development of relations between Britain and North Korea”, the director of the travel agency says, as he chastises the Irish man.
The guide, a middle-aged North Korean man who is responsible for the group, breaks down in tears.
People have been sent to labour camps for lesser infractions.
Silence: North Korea’s most chilling sound
Silence: North Korea’s most chilling sound
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The strangeness of North Korea becomes apparent already on the flight from Beijing to Pyongyang. Before the safety demonstration the passengers are shown a video praising the strength of socialism and the country’s dictator Kim Jong-il.
A magazine is distributed among passengers praising an “asteroid pill” developed by North Korea.
According to the magazine, the medicine contains ingredients from asteroids. It is said to promote growth in children, prevent cancer, and protect against the effects of radiation.
A visit to North Korea, the world’s most isolated country, has been a dream of mine for years. If I had been given a choice of visiting the moon, or North Korea, I would have bought a ticket to Pyongyang.
Already at the airport in Pyongyang time seems to have stopped at a moment decades in the past. In addition to our aircraft, there are only old Soviet planes, and some helicopters on the edge of the airport.
Immediately after getting off the plane, the tourists start taking pictures: of the plane, of the terminal building - of anything. They’ve never seen anything like it.
A North Korean who is returning home behaves differently. Before donning his jacket, he carefully removes a pin with a picture of the nation’s father, Kim Il-sung, from his shirt, and carefully places it on the lapel of his jacket.
Every adult in North Korea wears such a pin. It is mandatory.
It becomes apparent very soon that it is not possible to ask ordinary North Koreans things like whether or not they know that they are living in a bubble.
“Tour guides” follow visitors everywhere, translating questions and answers as they please.
No profound points of view are forthcoming from the guides either. Questions about the country’s leaders bring answers of praise that have been learned by rote.
“I was at school when I heard of the death of Kim Il-Sung. The sky fell down then. All Koreans wept. It was impossible to believe”, one of the guides said.
Often it happens that the guide gives no answer at all, simply remaining silent and looking in another direction. It is a chilling kind of silence.
“Do you know what it is like in Seoul, the capital of South Korea?” I ask the guide.
“Pyongyang is the capital of the Koreans. We are all happy here, and we have no need to go to Seoul”, the guide answers.
“But do you know what it is like there?”
“I don’t know. I have not seen any pictures.”
“Wouldn’t you like to visit there?”
Silence.
Thousands of other North Koreans have not been content with silence. Instead, they have hopped across the Chinese border to Freedom.
The choice had to be a difficult one. The price of one’s own freedom is losing a family, possibly for ever.
Families are punished for a family member’s disloyalty to the state. Work camps in North Korea are bleak.
Some of those in the North Korean elite are quite aware of what kind of a bubble the people are living in. One such person is a young Pyongyang woman who has lived in Yemen and Singapore because of her father’s work.
“There was plenty of sand in Yemen. Singapore was better.”
“Would you like to move to Singapore?”
Silence.
Conversations with North Koreans often conclude in an absurd manner. During a visit to a model farm the guide was asked when their best crop was.
“It was in 1998.”
“And when was the worst crop year?”
“We have not had a worst crop year.”
While having a beer one of the guides says that he knows about the Internet, and has even used it once.
“Did you go on to Facebook?”
“Yes, I looked for a textbook there.”
“No, I mean Facebook.”
“What’s that?”
Between places on the tour the tourists are taken to restaurants where no local people are to be seen, and hardly any tourists.
The guides sit at their own table, away from the foreigners. At one restaurant, the guests are entertained by a unique selection of music. Blaring from the loudspeakers in turn are El Bimbo and Für Elise.
North Koreans live in a world where an attack by “the imperialist United States” is a daily threat, where the country’s dictator needs to be worshipped without question, and where the start of the dictatorship is spoken of as a “liberation”.
The citizens have been taught that “The United States is a terrorist power”, and that each of the stars in the country’s flag symbolises a massacre conducted by the Americans in other countries.
It is hardly surprising that South Korea has a centre dedicated to helping North Korean defectors adapt psychologically to life in the free world.
When coming from China to Finland on holiday, one enjoys things that would normally be self-evident facts of life: being able to access Facebook, reading newspapers that can freely criticise the government, and that politicians are chosen by the people.
The same kind of relief is felt when returning from North Korea to China.
Freedom is relative. There is more or less of it in various countries. In North Korea it does not exist at all.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 3.10..2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
New Blog,New beginnings
Wei Han had a crazy idea to set up a blog,so now I sit in my room trying to figure out how blogger works & how you navigate around the site.. ZY was the first to link, and the pictures of the cookies in his blog look really nice! Golden Brown cookies in elephant,heart shapes, more like the kind you buy packed in glitter-wrap at Carrefour :) Zhi Yong responded to Wei Han with 吃不到葡萄，说葡萄酸 :D
Is North Korea following the Chinese model?
"The Great Leader", "The Dear Leader" and... "The Brilliant Comrade"? North Korea has begun the process of political succession in the same idiosyncratic manner it has developed over the decades.
Just as the founder of the state, Kim Il-sung ("The Great Leader"), brought his son Kim Jong-il to the fore 30 years ago, so Kim Jong-il ("The Dear Leader") has now made clear his choice of his youngest son Kim Jong-un (to be known as "The Brilliant Comrade") to be his successor.The difference may lie in the timing. Kim Jong-il's elevation to the status of heir apparent was in 1980, but it was not until his father died in 1994 that he formally took over power.
It seems unlikely that Kim Jong-un, who is about 27 (such basic personal details can be absurdly difficult to pin down in North Korea), will have to wait that long.
The present leader, who is 68, is widely thought to be a sick man, who may well have suffered a stroke in 2008. There has been speculation that the reason for delaying the present gathering of the ruling Workers' Party for a fortnight, a remarkable and slightly humiliating change for the North Korean leadership, was that he was ill once again.
If Kim Jong-il's health is indeed failing fast, this may explain why an apparently wide-ranging reshuffle of the leadership structure has emerged at this party meeting.Hand of China In the space of a few hours his son, Kim Jon-un, who has no military or political experience whatever, became a four-star general, deputy chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party, and a member of the Central Committee.
Continue reading the main story 
Kim Jong-il and the handover of power
- Aged 68, Kim Jong-il is said to be frail
- Groomed as successor to father, Kim Il-sung, from mid-1970s
- Given military role and position in Workers' Party secretariat in 1980
- Finally became leader in 1994 on father's death
To bolster his position, the younger Kim's aunt, Kim Kyong-hui, was also made a general, as well as a member of the politburo.
Her husband, Chang Song-taek, is head of the National Defence Commission, and is usually regarded as the power behind the throne. Most of the seats on the politburo have been empty for years; it is possible they may now slowly be filled.Behind this may lie a determined effort to assert the control of the Workers' Party over the military, who have traditionally been the leading power in North Korea.
If that is so, it seems likely that the hand of China lies behind much of this. The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, rather than the foreign ministry, seems to be in charge of China's policy towards North Korea.
There have been clear signs that China would like North Korea to develop in very much the same way as China itself did in the 1970s and 80s, leading to the rampant and highly successful state-controlled capitalism of recent years.
The main architect of this change was Deng Xiaoping. Interestingly, his only formal official position for years was his control over the military committee of China's Communist Party: not very different from the most important of the young Kim Jong-un's new jobs.
China clearly wants reform in North Korea. There have been various signs of its alarm over North Korea's unpredictable military policy.
The thought that its economy might simply implode, perhaps unleashing a wave of millions of refugees across North Korea's borders, is deeply disturbing to the Chinese leadership.
And so the signs are that China is prodding North Korea down the path it took itself: control of the military by the Communist Party, and a gradual opening up of the economy to market forces.
To a very small extent, this already seems to be happening. People are being allowed to sell their produce openly in the streets, and at night the police no longer break up the illegal markets held in the darkened streets, as they did until recently.
It may not sound much, but it is very much the way the process began in China, a little over 30 years ago.
Interest in basketball And in the odd politics of the Kim family, distinctly absurd to Western eyes, it may make sense to pass over Kim Jong-il's relatives and his two elder sons and hand on the succession to his youngest, who was educated in Switzerland.
This gives him first-hand experience of life in a market economy; something no other close member of the clan can boast.
If fate is kind to Kim Jong-il, he will have some years yet to ease his son into the job of running the country.
If not, then things could well become much more worrying.
And it would probably not be difficult to find a number of political figures who might feel they had a better right to run the country than a little known ex-schoolboy from Switzerland with an interest in basketball.
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