Christmas Day Message

Warm greetings and holiday regards to all.

On this day, 2005 years ago (yes, 2005 not 2004), Christ the Saviour was born in a manger at Bethlehem, in what is now the West Bank, Palestine. This is the true significance of Christmas; our annual commemoration of the birth of Emmanuel, "God with us."

This is the tradition, the legacy that is at risk of being bypassed or worse, forgotten in the avalanche of commercialization every time Christmas is around the corner. The signs that the true meaning of Christmas is at risk are all around us. You see it when the image of Santa Claus, a wholly manmade fiction, becomes more associated with Christmas than that of Christ Himself. We see it in the "celebrity portrayal" of the Nativity scene at Madame Tussauds and Channel 4 roadside billboards reworking the depiction of the Last Supper, both of which were shocking and calculated to be offensive.

This season, we can rise above such distasteful marketing by remembering and applying the spirit of Christmas in our lives. When "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us", as John 1:14 tells us, it epitomised the supreme sacrifice of love - Jesus coming to endure the pain and the suffering so that we may be freed from the burden of our sins. We can seek to emulate his love in the way we relate to the people around us, in the way we "do unto others what we would want others to do to us."

This Christmas is a very significant one for many people including myself, as it is the first time we are experiencing Christmas in a foreign land and in the actual cold of winter. In this context, we are constantly facing new situations, new dilemmas, new challenges. Let us manifest our care and concern for the people around us by being there for each other in times of need, by keeping in touch and by spreading whatever joy we can to the downtrodden, the poor and the lonely. Verily we are called upon to "be kind, for everyone we encounter is facing a hard battle" whether or not it shows, appearance-wise.

Christmas does not have to be celebrated on a grand scale to cherish its meaning and significance. It is indeed a wonderful holiday occasion and a nice opportunity for merriment in the cold months of winter, but of greater importance is our recollection of what Christmas stands for ... and what we can do to not just put Christ back into 'Christ'mas, but also into our lives as a whole.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Message of Appreciation

Here I would like to express my gratitude to my friend Teow Wee who has most kindly assisted with the reconfiguration of 'html code' on this page, thus considerably enhancing the appearance of the site as a whole.

Thank you also to Imran Yusuff @ Pakcik, with whose help the effects of some faulty script on the page were removed.

Many thanks for the fine assistance you have volunteered.

Christmas Open Room

This is an invitation to all friends to come for a Christmas visit and "open room" at my place:

Room 26-5-05, Frances Gardner House, c/o Langton Close, Wren Street, London WC1X 0HD

The way this is done is like this. Everyone has different plans for the holidays so I am finding it difficult to have one single gathering here. You are therefore invited to come at any reasonable time on 18, 22, 23, 24 or 25 December, at your own time and leisure. The only thing you have to do is call me beforehand at 078 9183 7421 to confirm your time of arrival. You can come between the 25th and 30th as well but there may not be as many snacks as before.

If you use some online search such as streetmap.co.uk, or if you have a reasonably good map of London you should be able to find the address above. If you are coming by Tube, we can arrange to meet at the nearest station, Russell Square. Please call to arrange for me to meet you if necessary. Buses 45, 46 and 17 serve this area, running via King's Cross, Blackfriar's Bridge, Elephant and Castle etc. I can meet you at a designated spot along the bus route; again, call for details.

For more info, email me at wilson_tay@softhome.net or call the number above. Hope to see you here. Spread the Christmas joy! =)

Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

A Most Desperate Undertaking

Last Saturday it was my good fortune to visit the National Army Museum in Chelsea (near the Royal Chelsea Hospital, nearest Tube: Sloane Square). This was because they happened to be running two special exhibitions that weekend, both of much interest to me. One was on the Christmas Truce of 1914 and the other on the Crimean War in the 1850s.

For the Christmas Truce exhibition, they had British army officers in World War 1-era British and German uniforms recreating the atmosphere of the Truce, which happened on the first Christmas of the Great War. They brilliantly built model trenches and field guns on a patch outside the Museum, with "combatants" from both sides actually kicking a rugged football in a "match" at the designated time of 12.05pm.

Other activities included a screening of Michael Foreman's animation film War Game. This was about an English village football team that signs up en masse in a gaudy Army recruitment drive, witnesses the Christmas Truce and relives their beloved sport against a very different kind of opponent. The attention to detail in the film was excellent, including the depiction of the German barber giving a British "Tommy" a haircut while telling him that he (the German) worked in England for some time before the war.

World War 1, as a matter of historical fact, was a different kind of war. In 1914 men on both sides willingly rushed to enlist for service, believing that "it will all be over by Christmas". As it happened, it took more than four years and the entry of a transatlantic power to settle the affair, most of which was a sordid trench-warfare struggle over territory like Arras, Ypres and the Somme. The enthusiasm was well over in the combatant states by the time the war dragged on through 1915.

The film finely captures the hopelessness of it all, through its lines and screenplay, and I would quite recommend it. The watercolour animation is also very neatly done. It builds up to a very tragic end though.

The other exhibition was about the Crimean War. That war occupies, to this day, a special place in the hearts of many Britons, not least due to the Charge of the Light Brigade that Tennyson wrote so immortally on, but also due to the shocking deprivation endured by the soldiers who fought. The Crimean War was a campaign fought by an alliance of Britain, France, Sardinia and Ottoman Turkey against Russia to prevent Russia from exploiting the imminent collapse of Turkey and making dangerous land advances in the eastern Med. It involved a large British and French force being sent thousands of miles to neutralise the Crimea, which is a peninsula in the Black Sea. On the campaign, more soldiers actually died of sickness, exposure and non-combat causes than in actual battle. The war is noted for valiant acts of courage such as the Charge and the work of Florence Nightingale, the British nurse who defied social inhibition to provide sterling relief and comfort to the stricken soldiers in the war.

What struck me while witnessing the two exhibitions was a sense of the fruitlessness of both campaigns, the Crimean War and World War 1. After tremendous loss of life, Britain and her allies won the Crimean War, obtaining their goal of the military neutralisation of the Crimea. But less than 50 years later, Russia remilitarised the Crimea, taking advantage of the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War when the allies were divided. Ottoman Turkey was briefly spared collapse, but lost its Balkan territories one by one anyway over the following decades leading up to its final collapse in 1918. World War 1 was intended to curb the aggressive, expansionary power of Imperial Germany and her ally Austria-Hungary. It did result in German capitulation and the final demise of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, but the peace after that was so tenuous and the price exacted by the Allies so high that, slightly over 20 years later, Europe was back in the clutches of an even more devastating war, the Second World War.

"A Most Desperate Undertaking" is the theme of the Royal Army Museum's exhibition on the Crimean War which, I am informed, runs till February next year at least. Admission is free.

Do you agree with the writer's observations? Comments here or emailed to wilson_tay@softhome.net are most welcome, especially regarding historical points and observations.

"The supreme purpose of learning history is to avoid repeating past mistakes"- George Santayana

Ride on London Eye

Yay ... today I made it on the "British Airways London Eye" at Waterloo, one of the must-sees of London, I would say. Heard of it for some time but always been wanting to wait for friend/s before going together. And in hindsight not a bad decision, considering the very special friend with whom I eventually went today ;-) but that, as they say, is another story.

For those who are not already aware, the London Eye is a huge and rather sophisticated version of the high merry-go-rounds that always set up shop in Malaysian towns during the "funfairs" seasons. Instead of the steel cage with benches that you get into with the latter version, however, this has got futuristic-looking oval "capsules" with neat glass panels, for seeing London in all its splendour from on high. The ride operator is British Airways itself, and I found their attempts to make everything on the ride similar to a "flight" (from printing "flight times" and "boarding dates" on tickets) a bit funny, but anyway. It's near Waterloo on the South Bank of the Thames, the surrounding area being turned into something like a carnival zone with ice cream sellers and even stuntmen plying their trade.

The ride itself was excellent, particularly because of the timing which my dear friend insisted on (sundown, 4.15pm). London was just lighting up for the night and the sea of lights, stretching as far as the eye could see, was quite unlike anything I had ever experienced. The capsule was very helpfully marked with compass points, so anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the layout f London landmarks would know where to look. It was particularly enthralling for me because the lights beneath seemed to stretch to no end whereas I had been attuned, in my dear hometown, to an urban panorama bounded by rolling green fields and hills. Here it was different. Each bright row of buildings seemed to lead on to another and another "ad infinitum" (to reluctantly bring in an LLB phrase). It was truly something new for me, truly something I had come to metropolitan London to see.

Waterloo International Station at sundown, from an aerial perspective, is truly a wonder to behold. Rail lines from all directions, often with some train sliding along them, seemed to converge at one great hub. The effect of the lighting was superb.

It would be quite hard to get a better panorama of Parliament Square and Big Ben across the river from the ride. To the east was the dome of St Paul's Cathedral and beyond that, the brightly-lit commercial district of Canary Wharf. Across the river on the north, the Christmas Lights of Oxford Street and Regent Street were just beginning to light up, bathing the night sky with the glow of neons and "dancing" spotlights.

The ride lasted about 30 minutes (the standard average time) and all too soon, it was time to say goodbye. In fact, I quite missed the moment when the capsule we were in (10 to a capsule) was at the very summit of the ride, which was quite regrettable. I only noticed when we were beginning the descent, which set the pace for a most memorable finale.

A ride on the London Eye is what I would recommend if you happen to be in London. It's quite expensive, at a price of 9 pounds (appx. RM65 at current rates) so it's probably not necessary to ever ride more than once =P It's one of the experiences of a lifetime. Considering the timing and the company I was in, both of which were magnificent, this was truly an outing to remember.

Rational Choice

Here is what I thought of today on another cold, quiet walk back from university.

In life there's no absolute right or wrong, only a matter of degrees. No action, event or occurrance can be termed completely right or wrong, true or false. What is true? What is false? What is right and what is wrong? All these things are relative and subjective depending on individuals, circumstances and surroundings.

Is it definitely true to say the sun rises from the east and sets in the west? To my mind that's not expressing a truth, that's expressing a truism. You set the position of the sun in a geographic system of north, south, east and west and then say, with reference to your model, that the sun rises in the east. Do away with this mapping system and it would mean nothing to say "the sun rises in the east."

This example quite illustrates how we set up a system of relativity and measure events according to the parameters we have defined. But individuals can have different, sometimes vastly different, ways of looking at and measuring the "goodness" of events. So, what is right? And by extension, what is truth?

My opinion is that there is no standard of absolute right or wrong. Therefore what we can do when faced with the difficulty of making decisions in life is to look at prevailing circumstances and accessible resources, then make the rational choice based on the information available at the time. There is no need for the often crippling worry that the "wrong" choice might be made. Knowing that everything is only "right" or "wrong" to a matter of degree gives emancipation from the false dichotomy that you will either make the gloriously "right" choice or the damning "wrong" one. In reality neither exists.

The reason I thought of this is partly the experience of meeting people who are tormented by past actions or decisions, especially on the question of "did I do the right thing"? Another part of it is my own self-reflection of difficult (some, extremely difficult) decisions I have struggled with in the past and my own tendency to ask, "did I choose the wrong path"? I believe if we see that concepts of "right" and "wrong" are matters of circumstance and individual perception rather than absolute truths, and that there is no 100% right or wrong decision to be found anywhere, we would be liberated from much of this emotional baggage that we needlessly carry in our lives.

Perhaps one may find it surprising that a student of law should be suggesting this. Might I just say that the law does not necessarily exist to give the "rightness" or "justice" to society as is often (mis)perceived. The law (as I stated in my PS, incidentally) is simply an essential set of rules that govern the operation of society and tells you, in each unique legal problem, how the particular society expects the problem to be settled. Which is why you get very different legal systems in different parts of the world. Study of the law is the study of such rules, not some fantastic training to become protectors of justice or any similar rubbish. It is in fact quite a myth to say that the law ensures justice for all, but that is a subject for another day, perhaps.

I hope that at points when "two roads diverge in a yellow wood" in the days to come, we may draw reassurance from the fact that neither is going to drop away into a bottomless chasm or prove a secret teleportation device into some heavenly world on the first step. Because there is no absolute right or wrong, we aren't doomed by the decisions we make ... it's how we carry them out and stick to our principles that will matter in the end.

And that's my two-sen's worth. =)