I've always wondered how columnists do their job. To be fair, their job at the newspaper does entail more than just writing that column every week but even so it sounds like a pretty good job. It's like being a soccer player for someone who likes writing instead of soccer. There's a big match every Sunday or so and then the rest of the week is just training.

But from a bewildering number of issues to consider, it is difficult sometimes to choose what vegetable to put between the bun and the beef patty. It's usually lettuce, but generally if you've ever ordered a sandwich from Subway you would put everything down (except the pickles please), which would mean olives, green and red capsicum, lettuce, cucumber, zucchini and tomato.

Father's birthday again today, and we celebrated it in the low-key way he likes. I'm glad I managed to write something for him that I thought was fitting for someone my age and I hope it will be a good year for him, and I guess I was wrong about him needing work cause he seems to be occupying himself just fine.

Have to start preparing for NDP publications(again, more publications). I was just looking at the manifesto by the 'Remaking Singapore' committee and it really seems encouraging. Things are changing, as evidenced by the many changes in education, and there is a good deal of bureaucracy in the public sector, but at least they've shed the inertia. A lot of discussions do occur in the background(and usually the grounds for people's pessimism is that this force of change isn't accurately reflected in the media, due to the closed nature of many of policy debates), but if one is to follow policy closely there is much to hope for. The changes are probably not nearly deep-seated enough, esp with 2nd lang teaching methods and cultivating of creativity and not forcing kids to go for things they don't understand or like. Yet still although we're not achieving change by hanging out in the cafes of NUS with Camus or Sartre in our hands(although the culture of SMU next to the heart of the city would deserve notice) or smoking pot on the Padang demanding that we recall our navy ship from the Gulf, we are doing it the way we know how, leave it to the government. A bit more civil activism could help but otherwise we'll do along fine thank you. You see, people would like less government but that sounds like the Republican agenda. Cut taxes, return your money to you, BIG government bad, run deficits, give you debt which isn't so bad because it's just a number, but its going to come back to haunt them eventually. I don't see how cutting taxes increases the incentive to work, though I do admit it's good for investment. It's absurd though to see budget cuts for good programs for the poor (Cause Big government bad and poor people should get off their asses to work) and then authorise emergency spending to fund a war in Iraq. I do realise that its important for the world's sole superpower to flex its muscles from time to time to show its willing to act on its ideals but one must question the method of achieving regime change in Iraq. (Ground war? Come on.) Kosovo was a cleaner solution although bombings still do kill people, but there isn't that stigma of being an occupying power. It's pretty anachronistic to go after Iraq after all the changes in the global security situation.

Credible opposition in Singapore? Probably has to position itself to the right of the PAP in economic issues and to the left in national security. But it's simplistic to say left/right. On the one hand we have a lot of state conglomerates on the other hand there's an absence of strong unions. We have enforced savings but no unemployment net. Generally speaking its because we don't have a problem with unemployment yet, and the government may well shift to the left on this matter. It seems though they're doing a good job of accepting accepted wisdoms instead of positioning themselves on certain broad policies which would happen if the elections here was more tightly contested.

So I must start thinking about what to write.