The Curious Diary of Mr Jam

Facebook becomes a country

2010-01-08T09:31:18+08:00

Thirtysomethings have found a new way to take over the world

THE MESSAGE WAS MYSTERIOUS. “I’d like to meet you. I am the ruler of one of the three biggest countries in the world.”

I don’t get an invitation like that every day. Once or twice a month, yes, but not every day.

But who could it be? All large countries are run by guys, aren’t they? The biggest nations by population are China, India and the US. The biggest ones by land mass are Russia, Canada and China. The biggest places by ego of ruling party members are Singapore, North Korea and Malaysia. They’re all run by guys, which is probably why the world is in such a mess.

Any sensible, intelligent person would have ignored such a wacky invitation. So 14 minutes later I was there.

At the coffee shop I met a pleasant thirty-something Australian woman called Janice. She explained that “the land of Facebook” had just overtaken the US as the third biggest country in the world, with 350 million people, compared to America’s 308 million.

“And at present rates of growth, we will hit one billion by 2015 and overtake China and India by 2017,” she said. “Then we will rule the world.”

I pointed out the flaw in her argument: “Facebook is not a country.”

She smiled slowly. “That’s a technicality. The information you need to provide to join Facebook is similar to that you provide to get a passport, and your Facebook name is equivalent to your passport number. Facebook users have rights and duties, and are actually more cohesive than citizens of other countries.”

The points she made were reasonable, albeit insane, but there was another issue: What made her the ruler?

She explained: “Facebook is a democratic kingdom. The company tries to make decisions, but in the end, the typical user decides what happens. The gingerism debate is a good example.”

I had no idea what gingerism was, but I could guess what was coming. I said: “And you are a 35-year-old white female, thus you are the typical user, thus you rule Facebook.” She nodded and took a sip of her triple-shot soy latte.

I asked: “But have you and your mates had any experience at governing a country?”

She shook her head. “No. But we’ve all played Farmville.”

I said: “That’ll do. It pretty much covers all the bases.”

It was one of the strangest conversations I had had for a long time, and I’m talking two, maybe three hours. I told her: “You know, it’s not really the number of people that count. It’s the size of the economy.”

But she replied: “If it’s the economy, then the Facebook community has already got more money than China and India.”

Janice and her mates are working on a flag and a national anthem and are writing immigration policies (some of them want MySpace users barred).

But I eventually came up with an argument that caused her to pause. “If Facebook is a country, users have to get off their backsides and compete in the Olympics; they have to finance international bodies like the UN; and they have to send their share of peacekeepers to Afghanistan.”

She put down her latte. Maybe being experienced at Farmville isn’t enough after all.
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ON ANOTHER topic, thanks for all the mail and comments on the takeover of public spaces by over-zealous guards. (See yesterday’s posting.)

This is clearly a matter of huge interest, and a problem that has emerged in multiple countries at once – keep the tales coming and we’ll do some follow-up work on it.
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(Illustration at the top comes from promotional material for new DVD set of TV series Thirtysomethings)
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Technorati Tags: facebook,country

Guards take over the world

2010-01-07T09:47:07+08:00

Petty officials make up laws on the spot in a bid to ban happiness

WARNING: by reading this column you may be aiding and abetting a criminal. Furthermore, you will be reading the words of an unrepentant lawbreaker. Don’t blame me if you end up sharing my cell.
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It all started one Saturday night just before Christmas, when a group of us were bemoaning the commercialism of the season.

“Let’s MAKE gifts, not buy them,” somebody said. “And then give them to deserving people.”

So that became the plan.

On the morning of December 26, we met around a kitchen table and assembled 120 packages of chocolates to give to deserving but underpaid people, such as domestic helpers.

We dressed up our children in red and green elf costumes and set off to find deserving people to hand them to.

We didn’t have to look very far. Lots of domestic helpers were sitting in the city-centre public areas, enjoying a few well-deserved hours off. The children raced forwards to wish them joy and present each with a small package of chocolate. The helpers fled, screaming. No; that’s what I would have done, but they held their ground and accepted them graciously.

Which was when the law stepped in. Three guards in uniform raced over to us.

Their leader, a sour-looking individual with Jiang Zhemin glasses, (see pic at the top of this page) informed us that what we were doing was not allowed. It wasn’t clear what he was objecting to: the smiling, the expression of good wishes, the sharing of chocolate, the wearing of elf costumes, or the breaking of the class barrier, but I suspect it was the crime of Being Nice in Public.

This happens all the time these days. Standard childish activities (talking, singing, laughing, jumping around, beating each other to a pulp) in malls or parks or just in public streets are interrupted by uniformed guards who make up their own laws on the spot.

Outraged, I urged the children to continue what they were doing. If being nice in public was illegal, then I was willing to have my entire family arrested for this. I made this executive decision under my authority as Official Dad, forgetting that these days fathers have the least decision-making power in families.

(Vicious criminals)

I then took a photograph of the chief guard, which REALLY annoyed him. You could see his mind clicking away as it dreamed up new laws. Camera possession is illegal! Camera use is illegal! Phototaking of uniformed persons is illegal! You will be hung, drawn and quartered, and then revived by doctors so you can be executed again and again and again!

(Criminal singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” to unamused guard)

Then came a brainwave. I raced over to my neighbour’s child. This little girl is so heart-meltingly cute that she can jump with her full body weight onto a man’s testicles and still be considered utterly enchanting. I speak from personal experience.

“Go and offer that man a pack of chocolate,” I told her.

She trotted up to the mean guard, holding out a bag of goodies. He shook his head and stepped back. But I could see the corners of his mouth twitch upwards. I think it may be the closest he had come to smiling for a while, possibly since birth.

After a moment’s thought, he took a few steps back. We continued to distribute good wishes and packs of chocolate. Ten minutes later, all 120 packages were gone. The guards, too, had made themselves scarce.

The children danced all the way home.
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(On the subject of nazi guards taking over public spaces, this earlier posting caused a minor sensation – please continue to copy it and distribute it: link here)
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ON A DIFFERENT subject, huge congrats to reader Dancer, whose real name is Kanyu, on her recent wedding at The Rocks in Sydney. She sent me this picture with a caption: “The Rocks nuptials: hopefully not rocky.”

How to give to charity

2010-01-06T09:23:19+08:00

Yes, you too can be a great philanthropist

EVER HAD A conversation that didn’t go quite the way you planned?

It happened to me with my youngest child three years ago. I was trying to persuade her that she should forego the usual Barbie Princess doll for her birthday and instead donate the money to the Heifer Project to buy a piglet for a poor child living in some rural hellhole in China or India.

“Oh yes, Dad, let’s buy a piglet,” she said, clapping her hands enthusiastically. “It can live under my bed.”

I hastily backtracked. “No, you see, we don’t actually GET the piglet ourselves. We get a card thanking us for our donation, and a child in need gets the piglet, which she can breed to start off her own little farm.”

“But I need a piglet,” she replied. “I haven’t got one. I’ve NEVER had one.”

I folded my arms to signify that I was being Very Serious and said: “You have a hamster.”

She folded her arms to signify the same thing and said: “A hamster is not a piglet.”

I then went into a lengthy attempt to prove that scientifically speaking a hamster is actually more or less a piglet.

By the end of this, the initial thrust of the argument had been completely lost. I ended up sending a donation to the Heifer charity AND buying a Barbie Princess.
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Since then, I have been strongly opposed to giving people “I-made-a-donation-on-your-behalf” cards. There is too big a chance that the recipient won’t get the point and will just feel robbed.

Moaning about this in the bar two weeks ago, my mentor/ bartender gave me some advice. “These days the charity people know how to make the recipient feel involved. You go to a website, type in your credit card number, and they email the person of your choice a secret code number. The recipient then gets the fun of going to the web, scanning lots of different worthy causes and then making their own choice about how to divvy up the money.”

I decided that I wouldn’t mind receiving something like that, instead of the usual boring socks I get for Christmas.

That night, my youngest daughter (who this year yet again asked for a doll from Santa), asked me what gift I wanted. “I want a well or some trees or stuff like that to donate to a charity,” I told her. “Get your mom to organize it.”

Ten minutes later, I spotted her with her mother working on the computer.

I sat back, imagining myself to be the next Bill Gates.

I saw myself typing in my secret code and splitting the cash into a variety of causes. I would plant trees in China, finance a well in India and perhaps buy some piglets for rural people in Africa.
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On the morning before writing this column, my secret code arrived by email. I went to the charity website to choose which project to finance (there are lots, but my card was for www.water.cc). There were several good ones. Unfortunately the sum total of the money I had been bequeathed to hand out was US$5.

This was not quite enough to rejuvenate the Third World, as I had hoped. Mr Gates, you’re on your own. I may join you next year.

This morning I went to get dressed, opened my drawer, and I discovered that I was completely out of socks.

Life. There’s really nothing quite like it.
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Technorati Tags: charity,giving,water.cc

What to expect in 2010

2010-01-05T09:22:31+08:00

Your exclusive guide to the year ahead

NEWSPAPERS ARE FULL of predictions about the coming year. It seems to me that forecasting the future is risky.

But no one will pay me to forecast the past, so what can you do?

Remember that executive at Decca Recording Company who reviewed the Beatles in 1962? “We don’t like their sound and guitar music is on the way out.” Hope he enjoyed the rest of his career, which presumably involved a lot of toilet cleaning.

He was the spiritual father of the Peruvian Shamans who were interviewed in December 2008 and said, “Michael Jackson would get stronger in the coming year.”

Hmm. Define “stronger”.

Tech trends are also hard to forecast. In 2005, businessman Sir Alan Sugar said: “Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput.” The iPod is fine. Sir Alan is not looking so good.

Only a totally reckless fool would put down in print a list of forecasts of the future. So here goes.

1. President Obama will receive a Grammy award for the best album, given to him in the expectation that he may one day record one.

2. Jealous of Apple’s success with iTunes, the iPod and the iPhone, Microsoft will launch an all-purpose portable device called the Internet-Software-User-Cyber-Keypad, known for short as iSuck.

3. Leading members of the General Chamber of Commerce in the US will continue to deny global warming, but will all be killed as they attempt to ski down snow-less mountains.

4. Tiger Woods will try to deflect further allegations of bimbo-chasing by claiming that he is gay. No one will believe him. On hearing the news, Bill Clinton is overheard saying, “Dang, I wish I’d thought of that.”

5. In a last ditch bid to get people to buy newspapers, publishers around the world will arm sales representatives with AK-47s to “encourage” people to subscribe.

6. With the success of the end-of-the-world movie 2012 last year, Hollywood will start filming a sequel called 2013, in which the destroyed planet faces a new, horrifying threat: George W Bush survived.

7. An intelligent comment will be posted to the comments sections that lie under YouTube videos – no scrub that one, it’s just too far-fetched.

8. Sarah Palin will secretly spend hours reading so that she can relaunch herself as an intelligent, informed person. Unfortunately she chooses to limit her choice of reading matter to the Internet, so her comeback speech is entitled: “OMG being the next Prez would be so LOL.”

9. A white male will head a political party in the US, and this will be seen as a breakthrough for society.

10. While Asia and Europe debate whether same-sex marriage should be allowed, San Francisco passes laws making different-sex marriages illegal.

11. The present writer will achieve world fame with his new book, “Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code at Twilight.” He will be accused of plagiarism but will successfully defend himself by claiming that he wrote it when he was sacked from Decca in 1962.
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Highlights of 2009

2010-01-04T09:22:32+08:00

The past 12 months was one of the silliest years on record

PHEW THANK GOODNESS 2009 is over. What a year that was.

What was your most memorable moment?

My colleague Eddie said, “My worst moment was when I learned that the family name of swindler Bernie Madoff was pronounced ‘Made-Off’, as in ‘Bernie Made Off With Your Savings’. This made me worry about my own savings, which are parked with investment advisors named Bob Flybynight and Dave Crook.”

It took me only ten minutes to realize that Eddie had made a joke. What a pair of totally sharp guys we are. But his comment did inspire me to dredge up the year’s more remarkable incidents.
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It was the year in which singer Michael Jackson died after a losing a thirty-year battle with a very nasty disease called Excessive Weirdness.
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It was a year in which tens of thousands of people worrying about how airplane flights were damaging the climate decided to take action by flying to Copenhagen, which is apparently a place, although I always thought it was a brand of ice cream.
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It was the year in which Sarah Palin had a professional ghostwriter write a book for her, setting off furious media speculation that she will soon hire a professional reader to read it to her.
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It was the year in which fugitive European rapist Roman Polanski was finally tracked down, having been hidden for 30 years, except for brief appearances in every magazine and gossip column ever printed, not to mention 217,000 television shows and several reality TV series.
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It was the year in which panicking Hong Kong authorities sealed off a hotel full of guests for a week, before learning that swine flu caused less long-term damage than watching 20 minutes of High School Musical.
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It was the year in which the Nobel Peace Prize committee changed their criteria for winning the prize to a single requirement: “Candidate must be a way cool dude.” I was thrilled. FINALLY I’m in the running.
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It was the year in which billionaire golfer Tiger Woods, the world’s most envied man, slipped up and lost everything, causing great rejoicing among pathetic, jealous guys with no lives of their own (suffer, you sleazeball, SUFFFFFERRRRR, DIE, SCUM!). Oops, sorry, let me just recover myself for a moment.
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It was also the year in which the Large Hadron Collider was restarted, I believe after Tiger Wood’s wife hit it with a nine-iron.
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It was the year in which a pair of gatecrashers got into President Obama’s private party, causing every columnist in the world to criticize them in an outraged tone of voice while secretly wanting to learn how they did it. (If Tariq or Michaele Salahi are reading this, please email me. I can offer you exclusive Hello Kitty souvenirs.)
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It was the year in which the American car industry showed itself to the world’s worst managed transport business, and the Somali piracy operation was revealed to be the best.
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It was the year in which bankers lost their jobs and had to eke out a humble living on their massive bonuses, inspiring the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Sacked bankers were astonished by the level of public sympathy they received (none).
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It was an unforgettable year which will be remembered as the only 2009 in the whole of recorded history.

Thank God.
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PS. I loved the comments that were posted while I was away. I am definitely the world’s luckiest columnist. I particularly loved these pics of two of my favourite people, posted on Christmas Eve. On opposite sides of the world, some lucky guy found Angela under his tree and some lucky gal found Fardel under hers. That’s what I call peace and goodwill to all mankind!

Merry Christmas from Mr Jam

2009-12-24T09:55:01+08:00

Mr Jam

Four holiday jobs to do

2009-12-24T09:46:28+08:00

Here’s a checklist of things to achieve this season

THE WORLD’S MAJOR holiday season events are in full swing: Christmas, Hanukkah, Bodhi Day, the birthday of our family’s hamster, and so on. This is a time when we step back from our busy lives and ask ourselves key questions about our core values: Are we shopping enough? Are we over-eating enough?

“Yes, yes, way too much already,” comes the reply from a tiny voice, which may be my conscience, or possibly my accountant. But years of training have given me the ability to instantly beat my conscience into submission.

And my accountant, come to that.

Hah! A quick right hook to the side of the head drops either one of them to the floor, after which they can be dragged to the spare room and locked up. We cannot be distracted from vital tasks.

Job one: buy over-priced cards and send them to people to throw away.

At the greeting card shop, I saw a beautiful card which said: “You have a new baby”, which I bought in case I meet someone who has given birth without noticing. (You never know.)

There was also a card which said: “You have passed your driving test” which I bought for my son. It will be much cheaper than paying for driving lessons. He can show it to police officers who stop him on the road: “Look, I have this card, see?”

Job two: Organize festive meals with family members.

This is challenging. My clan spans many cultures, religions, countries and sexes. Getting them together is like organizing a G20 summit but with fewer rocket-proof limousines (possibly). Usually I remember to give the right greeting to each family member but occasionally I forget, and have to say: “Happy whatever-it-is-that-you-celebrate! Hope you’re having a good thing!”

Job three: Exchange long-distance greetings with far-flung family members.

This involves various methods of cross-border communication, including international phone calls, internet video links, voodoo, black magic and the chanting of names while chicken blood is splashed around.

Job four: Celebrate one’s traditions while respecting other people’s.

My kids are modern and multicultural. They’ll happily carry Dewali candles and suck Chinese winter-festival sweets while sitting on Santa Claus’s knee at a shopping mall. “And what are you hoping for this Christmas?” Santa once asked my youngest. “Didn’t you get my email?” she barked, horrified.
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Even my bigger kids cling to traditions, but only where the receiving of gifts or cash is involved. After I told them that the year they stop believing in Santa Claus is the year they start getting sweaters, they instantly regained their faith in the fat guy with questionable clothing choices (I mean, red velour for an adult male?).
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December rocks. Everybody’s celebrating something, and all the parties share one goal: to consume obscene amounts of food. I once went straight from a Chinese winter solstice meal to an American turkey-and-trimmings feast. By 10 pm my width equaled my height. Had I fallen over, I would have rolled several kilometers.
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This year, my kids have been telling me to consume less, spend less and try to remember that it’s really about peace and goodwill to all. In the distance, I hear my conscience banging on a locked door. Or it may be my accountant.
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Technorati Tags: Christmas humor

A message from Santa Fardel

2009-12-24T09:35:06+08:00

Reader Christian Fardel has sent this "live" card. Click the link below. You'll get a 1.5 MB PPS (Powerpoint) file with a picture which will come to life and deliver a charming Christmas message.

Download Joyeux_noel

10 best holiday jokes

2009-12-23T11:01:30+08:00

10 reasons top teachers are like Santa and other seasonal laughs

Thanks for all the good advice for things to do at Christmas.

The flaming snowy ice-cream cake from Fardel (pic above) sounds fantastic.

I was also touched by the message from Farah in Bangladesh in the previous posting, reminding us that there are places which hardly celebrate Christmas at all.

Farah, my friends tell me that the new Christmas Carol movie really captures the spirit—I’m sure you must get the latest movies there, at least.

This morning, my kids were watching The Grinch.

That’s a great movie, even for adults, but you HAVE to set aside your adult concerns and pretend to be eight years old again.

But then again, there’s not much time. For people who do celebrate Christmas, it’s actually a lot of work.

For parents of small children in particular, Christmas is just like working at the office. You do all the actual work, but some big fat guy in a suit gets all the credit.

This is particularly true for a reader named Sue, who works as a researcher in a university. She says that there are a suspiciously large number of similarities between typical senior professors and Santa Claus. Consider the following:

10 Reasons Santa is Like Your Professor

1) He has shaggy hair.

2) He has a beard.

3) He wears unfashionable clothes which make him look ridiculous.

4) He is fat.

5) You are expected to write to him, but he never writes back.

6) You can give him a list of things you want, but you have almost no chance of getting anything on it.

7) He lives in his own world, which seems entirely unconnected to real life.

8) He does around one day of actual work every year.

9) He is surrounded by practical people who do stuff that needs to be done on his behalf.

10) He seems to be several centuries out of date.
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There’s a lot of humor going around this season. A small child named Mandy wrote the following email to me: “Knock Knock. Who's there? Mary. Mary who? Mary Christmas.”

So I sent her this one in return: “Why do reindeer wear fur coats? Because they look silly in Armani cashmere suits.”

You know, I much prefer kid-jokes to the kind of ghastly, unfunny, risqué stuff that passes for humor on the Internet these days. In fact, while I am in an excessively silly mood, here are my ten favourite child-friendly jokes for the season.

1) Q: What nationality is Santa Claus?

A: Polish, or North Polish to be precise.

2) Q: What do monkeys sing at Christmas?

A: Jungle bells, jungle bells.

3) Q: What did Adam say to his girlfriend on December 24th?

A: 'It's Christmas, Eve.'

4) Q: If Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus had a child, what would he be called?

A: A subordinate Claus.

5) Q: What bird has wings but cannot fly?

A: Roast turkey.

6) Q: What do you get if you cross an apple with a Christmas tree?

A: A pineapple.

7) Q: What did the little candle say to the big candle?

A: I'm going out tonight.

8) Q: Mum, Can I have a dog for Christmas?

A: No, you can have roast goose like the rest of us.

9) Q: What happens if you eat the Christmas decorations?

A: You get tinsel-itus.

10) Q: What do angry mice send to each other at Christmas?

A: Cross mouse cards.
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By the way, over the past months, readers have sent me Buddhist humor, Islamic jokes and even a Daoist laugh or two.

Yes, Asians DO have a sense of humor, contrary to popular belief. Keep them coming, and I’ll make a database of them, which will quite possibly be the most important stash of documents in the world and the thing most likely to bring up World Peace, or World War III.
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One more seasonable joke to fill up the space:

How many reindeer does it take to change a light bulb?

Eight. One to screw in the light bulb and seven to hold Rudolph down.

Merry Christmas.

Technorati Tags: christmas jokes,christmas humor

Holidays for cheapskates

2009-12-22T12:39:51+08:00

How to spend almost nothing this Christmas season

GOOD MORNING, GANG. Oops, it’s past noon. Good afternoon then. Your humble narrator was up all night vomiting so I am making a slow start to the day. Must have eaten something bad. (Thinks: On the bright side, I will have a good excuse for packing in extra calories over the next few days.)

Thanks for the interesting comments on the meaning of Christmas.

Let’s build in another factor. I was talking to my sister on the phone last night, who just got back from the Climate Change Conference.

So here it is: the Post- Copenhagen Guide to Celebrating Holidays. Let’s all follow a program of de-commercializing Christmas and similar shindigs.

I'm consuming less because it's vital for the planet - in particular the 11-square centimeter block of Planet Earth known as My Wallet.
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First, don't spend a fortune on tinsel and lights for your home. Simply take credit for everyone else's decorations. When Christmas lights went on in Central and Tsim Sha Tsui, I took my kids on a night- time bus tour.

"See? I decorated the city for us. Do you like it?" They were pretty impressed.

"Did you really do all that?" one asked.

I replied humbly: "Not by myself, dear, I had help."
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Second, use climate change as an excuse to avoid paying for a real Christmas tree. "I was going to buy a three-meter-tall genuine imported spruce, but for the sake of the environment, decided that we should reuse the tatty old artificial tree from last year, despite the fact it has lost all its plastic pine needles, and looks like the arm of a petrified zombie."
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Third, disguise your lack of spending on trimmings by the clever use of "spin."

"Wouldn't it be fun to try decorating the tree without any decorations? We'll just hang stuff on it that we find lying about. No, stop, put your sister down RIGHT NOW."
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Fourth, turn chores into events. All parents know that if you say things in an excited tone of voice, children will think of them as fun things to do.

"Let's wrap parcels to send to relatives we don't like!”

“Let's spend four hours boiling a pudding!"

"Yay!"
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Fifth, if you MUST buy stuff, avoid the brand-name versions and get cheap ones. "I know it's not a real iPod, but there's no Apple dealership at the North Pole, so Santa had to get this cheapo version."
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Sixth, get yourself a bit of peace by elevating the song Silent Night to the status of a law. "Santa named the song Silent Night because you have to be really, REALLY quiet, otherwise he puts you on the naughty list for EVER AND EVER."
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And here's the best idea to get the real holiday spirit going, as opposed to the Swire version (see yesterday's column). This really works.

The kids you know expect to get toys, right?

Well, get them to GIVE toys, too. Tell them to put their clean but unwanted toys into a box for Santa to take away in the middle of the night to give to poor children.

At the crack of dawn on Christmas Day, the kids will wake up and stampede to the living room, as usual.

But instead of "look what I got," they'll race past their gifts to the terrace where they put their old stuff.

"Look," your child will say, her eyes as big as planets, "Santa came and took our old toys away to give to poor children."

The gifts your kids are about to receive will remain completely forgotten under the tree.

For about 10 seconds. But what a deep and meaningful 10-second period that is. Ho ho ho.

Technorati Tags: meaning of christmas,copenhagen,rethinking christmas,advent conspiracy