In Continuum.

I think it is easy to allow yourself to slip into this oblivion. We drive our fancy cars and then we use our fancy phones. We wear our fancy clothes and then we use our fancy computers. This, is what we think is the way of life, and it really is the way of life in the context of this country. But then when you are bubbled and bottled up, it becomes very difficult to look at these things and think about how fortunate you are. I don't think about such things either, in fact I hardly think about it at all. The teachers always tell you at school to not take things for granted, always be grateful, never be greedy, and always, always thank your parents for what you have. It's easy to say those things, but then when was the last time you looked at your parents and said, "Thank you for everything", anyway. My family isn't up for all those fanciful words and mushy language, so that kind of things go pretty subtle in my household. That's why they always say that we need a reality check, that we need something to enlighten us about how fortunate we are and how unfortunate they have been. That's kind of why you seldom see good things happening in the international section of the evening news. It's always about earthquakes, riots, murders, scandals and corruption. And then we go back to local news, and we see smiling babies and laughing politicians. It's a tactic by the government, and it's all about the presentation anyway.

When you live in a place that is so biased in its perspectives, you need to find your own from other sources. I recently came across this website called VBS.TV, which is a website dedicated to short documentaries about social political issues, obscure cultures, independent music and whatnot. It is under a free magazine called Vice, and they are controversial in their own rights when tackling these taboo issues and affairs. I started watching it when they did a piece about the garbage dump in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a myth about a vortex of garbage that gets collected there in the middle of the ocean to form an island that is as big as the state of Kansas. So three teenagers from Vice magazine sets off on a journey with a crew to seek out this mysterious island, and the obsession on my part stemmed from there onwards. First of all, I was curious to see how an island made up of garbage would look like. Second of all, that was the kind of journalism that cannot be found in Singapore - ever. You are never going to see journalists making three week journeys out into the middle of nowhere just to find out whether a myth is true or not. This country is devoid of both liberalism in journalism, and urban myths. So you are probably not going to get that kind of documentaries here in Singapore. 

The latter aspect of the documentary fascinated me of course, which really motivated me to stay up late at night to check out the other free contents that they have posted on their website. One of them is called The Vice Guide to North Korea, and it has the creator of Vice magazine going into North Korea with a film crew, and going on this tour of the country and showing us how it is really like there. You get to see the state that the country is in, and you can't help but feel sorry for the people there even though the world tends to think them to be anti-gods or merciless terrorists. I can only imagine how it'd be like to live under a totalitarian society, with the government controlling when you fall asleep, when you wake up in the morning, what you watch on television, what you hear on the radio, what kind of clothes you wear, and every single aspect of your life. That documentary was amusing at times, when you see just how delusional these people can be at times, and how easy it'd be to just start a riot and then depose the government. They have, after all, the fourth largest military in the entire planet - what are they afraid of, really. There is one man with a god-awful hairstyle treating them and their families like minions or pets. 

Then there's this series of documentaries I really like, called Balls Deep. Thomas, the journalist, goes to various cultures around the world to find out about their lives, because his bosses think that he is too much of a nerd and needs to see the world more often - kinda like me, only nobody gives me such awesome job on a day to day basis. I was particularly moved by a piece he did in Colombia about the people living in the sewers underneath the city. These are people living in the sewers, the place where all our garbage and our urine, all our feces go to from every pipe and every toilet bowl. That's where those people lived because they haven't got anywhere else to go, and they are always on the run because of these group of people called the Death Squads. They do this thing called "social cleansing" from time to time, and their idea of "cleansing" is to pour gasoline on children living in the sewers and to burn them alive, not before raping them and then slitting their throats of course. But then Thomas got to sit down with a resident of the sewers, in his "apartment" he called it. He lived with his wife and four other children, in a room with pornography plastered all over the walls and their income revolved purely around recycled plastic bottles and drugs. But they were happy, they were really happy. Or rather, happy isn't exactly the word, but contented with what they had because they had the best spot in the whole sewer. It isn't saying much, but to them it certainly meant a whole lot. And here I am, living nineteen floors above the closest sewer lines, with my clothes back on and the air-conditioning turned down to the coldest temperatures. I feel spoiled somehow, like a brat with ponies as pets or something.

Then the crew takes you to Manila's city of garbage, called Payata. There is only one place in the whole of Manila where the garbage goes, and it is to the town of Payata. Just imagine a whole city of trash being dumped there on a daily basis, and there are people living on top of these garbage hills as scavengers, and they would go through the garbage to pick out valuable trash like plastic bags or plastic bottles. A kilogram of plastic would earn them about two pesos, and you need about twenty-five kilograms to earn a single dollar. The living conditions there were bad enough just by looking through the computer monitor, but it is made worse that rapes and murders are commonplace in those squatters. Somehow, I started fearing for my next life somehow, which is kind of silly if you think about it. I started thinking to myself, what if I am born into one of those sewers in Colombia in my next life, or those squatters in Payata? Maybe even to a family in North Korea or some other totalitarian society, how'd life be like? I genuinely feared for my next life, which is really stupid but I do think about things like that at times, not that I truly believe in the whole reincarnation thing. This is my form of reality check, this is how I become more aware of the things I have, the things that I own. This is how I realize how lucky I am to be the person that I am in this life, because it can very easily get worse than this - very, very easily. 

In fact, the website has inspired me so much that I imagine myself working in a similar line of work in the future, or at least dream of having a profession like that. You know, visiting a country to find out a certain social condition or culture, and then filming a documentary and writing an article for the magazine you work for at the very same time. It is not without its perils and it is not like you get paid big bucks for stuff like that. But in this age and time, it is about a job you hate but pays well, or a job you love but pays peanuts. It is difficult to juggle both in one's life, though I am sure a lot of people have that kinda jobs. Half of those people, I am sure, probably do not compare their own fortunate lives to those people living in sewers somewhere, constantly under the threat of being beaten to death by the police. Some people earned their rights to be rich, while others just so happen to be born that way. It is unfair, but what can we really do about it. It makes me wonder at times what kind of a person I would end up to be: the kind who earns a lot with a job that I dread, or the kind who earns minimum wage but with a life full of stories to tell. I am a creature of comfort, and I don't suppose that goes very well with earning peanuts at all. Still, given the opportunity, I am definitely going to be willing to go down and dirty and put my face in the dirt. 

So yes, do check out the website at www.vbs.tv soon, because it is one of those websites you can spend hours just watching. Do check out Thomas' date with the leathermen, and also the female taxidermist with a fridge full of dead animals. If only I can write for a magazine like that, I'd really be a happy man for life and live without regrets. And, most of all, be grateful to what I have. Always, be grateful. Because it is so easy to slip into the darker corners of life, it is so easy.