For Too Long: A Tribute to Happenchance

For Too Long

For too long you have stood still
While time and things moved past at will.
For too long the dust has gathered here
Till all forgot 'bout your existence dear.

For too long the memories here have stayed
And those who used to read you have strayed.
For too long, keeping these things of the past
Seemed wonderful; I wanted it to last.

For four years I kept this gateway open
But for months I let it stay so silent.

For too long, far too long,
I have kept this blog.
And this time, perhaps,
I'll find another place to belong.

For some, perhaps, the demise of Happenchance might seem inevitable. The frequent visitors to my Multiply blog might have smelled a rat had they been observant: I have renamed Life, the Universe and Everything to Hieroglyphics (gasp!) and even placed 333 photos of my trip to Melbourne last year on that blog instead.

The truth: This has been a fantastic place for me to write stuff these few years, and though some may say that it never actually fulfilled its promise (and I most certainly agree, but I never made it out for this purpose anyway), it has been a wonderful "diary" of sorts, open to suggestions and ridicule.

I have written about anything under the sun here. If you had caught me in 2004, it would have mostly been about frustrations and musings of school. To some extent, I blogged about blogging in 2005. In 2006 and 2007, the army came into the picture, and in 2008 the love affair came sharply to an end.

In between all these, I have written stories, poems, reviews - and it certainly has been a terrific place for inspiration and my creative juices seem to start flowing every time I hit the Create Post page on Blogger. Some of the stories that I have written were never finished here, but I am proud to say that I did so on the Mindef eForums (though I wonder if they have deleted the two posts yet).

In short, Hieroglyphics by Happenchance was formed because I wanted something to store information, yet it gave me so much more.

It grew up with me. And now, I am about to let it go.

Thank you for the wonderful memories. It's time to move on.

I am not about to give up on my Internet life - not yet, but perhaps it is the beginning of a new stage, less puppy love and more of a mature relationship.

- Decipher on Blogger, deciphering on multiply

Occupational Hazard Entries: Prices of grain - what do cows have to do with it?

Ah, the wonderful sound of the mooing cows. I still remember watching how they were milked by the farmers when I was in Melbourne, and how the farmer said that we keep "a couple for milk. The rest, we sell for their meat."

And we all know how good Australian beef is. Except most Australians. I was talking to the tour guide, David, and these were his exact words. "They export all the good meat. You won't get any good wagyu or kobe over here."

But have you ever wondered that these peaceful grazing mammals - or rather, our desire for good-quality beef - is one of the primary reasons why in the world we are facing skyrocketing grain prices?

I was reading a primary school textbook recently (published in Australia), called The State of the Planet - and this was the fact that shocked me.

For every one kilogram of beef produced, seven kilograms of grain is consumed by that very cow.

How heavy is a cow? "Well," that very farmer in Melbourne - I regret to say that I forgot to ask his name - "It weighs a ton." Literally, that's 1000 kilograms.

For every 1000 kilograms, 7000 kilograms of grain is consumed.

Think about how many people 7000 kilograms of grain can feed. To be honest, I think that should feed a hell of a lot of people.

To that extent, you may say that we are all vegetarians - it's just which level that the veggies are processed.

Skeptics (and carnivores) will probably shrug their shoulders and say "Yeah, yeah, but that's not the main reason - it's the droughts and such that's causing the trouble."

We've been eating 3 to 5 times as much meat since 1950 - and the population in the last 50 years or so has only doubled. There's probably SOME relation there why we've gotten ourselves in a shortage of grain and an absolutely crazy price rise since the last decade.

Next time you bite on that piece of steak, think about the amount of grain spent to get that onto your table.

Occupational Hazard Entries: The Curse of Consumption

The Crazy Prices of Commodities

The only problem with being a developed country: People want everything, now, and they aren't exactly willing to part with their time to produce them. As the world grows and becomes more developed and the working class becomes more well off, something happens.

Like what was mentioned in my previous entry, instant gratification sets in. We are arguably one of the hardest-working generations of the human race. We understand that speed, quality, and efficiency is essential for us to improve our lives. Hence we put in a lot of effort to make sure that happens. And while we are working hard thinking of making our lives better, we start to leave the fundamentals to the proverbial "someone else" - as the working class becomes more educated, holds a better job and has an office in the Central Business District, they start to feel that they deserve this.

Farming and mining, two essential jobs in any economy and environment, are soon sidelined. "Leave it to someone else," most of us will say as we move up the corporate ladder. Being under the intense pressure in the corporate world, we tell ourselves we deserve better quality goods and services. We deserve better cars, better fuel, better spaghetti, better oatmeal, better everything -

Where is it going to come from?

But we need someone to produce these things. As we go back to the fundamentals, as the supply of something goes down - in this case, think of agriculture - and the demand constantly grows (think about it, 6.6 billion people all want something to eat), the price will increase accordingly. And as more and more people look for a job with a "better future", the agricultural industry will dwindle.

And looking from a global point of view, we are talking about people in general becoming more well off. The agriculture industry remains an industry where there is little prestige if you do it well and much trouble if you screw up. Of course, you might argue that consumerism has brought the same problem to many other industries as well. Yet other industries don't require you to stay in the cornfields or check the stock of feed for the animals, handling challenging tasks of maintaining them for milking, or slaughtering.

In short, as countries in general become more developed, and their people become more affluent, they become less willing to devote themselves to tasks of production, and prefer to get them now. Consumption will increase, but production decreases because less and less people will want to devote themselves to menial tasks. In all simplicity, a decrease in supply coupled with an increase in demand equals skyrocketing commodity prices for the long term.