Hello, I'm Blowing_Wind from my fav folk song "Blowing In The Wind"


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1st Aug 2003 - The ASEAN Community Need To Integrate Or We Will All Suffer Badly
     
This is an update of my 2nd article - "The Chinese Model Answer Or Why Bother About My Private Live ". In it I was discussing the future of Singapore :- "The bad news is that we are going to have a double collision; with China (at the bottom competing to offer cheaper labour) and the USA". In the 5 years since that article, the collisions already happened and we are still reeling from the effects. China is booming and we are suffering our worse economics downturn ever. The rest of ASEAN are just as badly affected.

Why is the world so worried about China. It is her vast market power; vast enough to stand against the might of USA. For example when US companies set proprietary standards, the vast market in China would be paying huge amounts of licensing fees to use those standards! From the many technical standard wars in USA iself, we know there's always more than one way to accomplish most technical tasks.  Hence China can choose to produce their own standards. With their own vast market support, these standards will have enough volumes for economies of scales in manufacturing. Recently, they even produced their own video standards to avoid paying for licences for DVD and can use latest better technology available now.

The powers of a vast market are not lost on politicians everywhere. The Europeans had long realised that they need to have their own local vast market in order to compete with the Americans who have their 50 states to support their market for technical innovations or pop cultures. USA guarded their market so tightly that they even considered the popularity of the Beatles in the 60's as a British invasion on their world dominating pop culture. The European nations were historically always fighting amongst themselves and that gave the American the chance to creep ahead. World powers then slowly transferred across the Atlantic. So the Europeans created the EU. I thought those quarrelsome and xenophobic Europeans would not be able to achieve much. I was greatly surprised when I travelled in Europe. Within the EU, there's no need for those troublesome passports checks at the borders any more; it's a breeze to cross from one country to another. In one company that I visited, there are staff from almost every country of the EU.  There was no outcry of protecting jobs for the locals.  Now with their common Euro currency, the Europeans have almost produced a miracle! Now the EU has enough powers to question the USA for unfavorable marketing  imbalance. They are even big enough to develop their Airbus industry to compete with the USA successfully.

The ASEAN states look to the vast market in China as the future growth engine pulling ASEAN along. Unfortunately, the reverse happened. Just like the 20th century Europeans watched their powers crossed the Atlantic, 21st century ASEAN watched our economic base being undermined when China sucked markets and capital investments from us. No matter how we try, we can never be given equal access to the China market as their local ones. Their own pop culture award ceremonies will never give our SBC TV serials much mention even though we tried to penetrate their markets with production partnership. But the Americans don't even need to do much and yet their movies and TV serials are very popular there. Pop cultures thrive on cool factors not the "Asian values of Confucianism".  What's ironic is that we have "Speak Mandarin Campaigns " here, over there they think learning English is the cool thing to do. Here we say we are gay tolerant, there they don't even have a law against homosexuals. No matter what we do, we never have the economic powers for equal treatment.

ASEAN used to be a powerful bloc. Now the politicians became xenophobic just like the Europeans were before 1950. The latest spats between Singapore and Malaysia seem so petty and childish beyond beliefs. They remind me of those spats between France and Germany during the periods of the two world wars. They just cannot see beyond their noses and fight each other for gains in the short term. In the meantime, they try to blame the ecomomic conditions on anything except trying to work together. Why can't they see that if ASEAN work together then we all have our own vast market to find employment for ourselves? Typical of immature and selfish politicians, Singapore will fear others especially Malaysians will swamp the little island. The Malaysians will fear that Singaporeans will dominate the market. the Indonesians will fear others will exploit their natural resources, the Thais will fear being swamped by other Indochinese states and so on and so on. You now find a bunch of small minded men in the region's history who think that they are saving their little markets from being stolen. 

If you look carefully, everybody seems to have something to gain from the integration just like the EU did. If we lose some of the ports to Johor, our Singaporeans can still work in Malaysia to help make these cheaper ports more efficent to compete with Hong Kong. If Malaysia lose some of their computer industry to Singapore, their engineers can work here for a more efficient bigger market. If cheaper land in Malaysia and Indonesia help to keep factories running here, we don't need to open factories in China and lose jobs here.  It's all gives and takes.

Yet they all only look from the negative side. If the Europeans can band together after two great world wars where millions were killed, why can't we put aside the petty differences of an unhappy separation?  Of course these politicians are not dumb after all they had all learnt modern economic market theories. Just that these kinds of theories do need a lot of explaining to do to the mostly unsophisticated citizens of this region. With the threats of religious extremism in this region, the religious extremists will take the opportunity to twist the favourable arguments around because fears of the disadvantages are easy to magnify upon but the long terms benefits require "gives and takes" that require collective good faith in each other. People can have faith in religions but not have faith in each other. What irony.

But the politicians and the local papers are playing exactly into the hands of the religious extremists. The extremists thrive on hatred and suspicious minds. If the leaders and the local papers don't try to explain such things to the local people, such distrusts grow and the papers gain financially by stirring things up to sell more papers. In the mean time the local people with enough education have no ways to express our disappointment with the short-sightedness of the politicians or spread our views to counter the hatred spread by the extremists. The NGOs ( non-governmental organistions ) of ASEAN are very poorly organised.

The extremists are making all the nasty noises yet the educated moderates just quietly stood aside. The extremists actively seek out disgruntled people to join them and the educated moderates just pretend not to see so that the extremists will not attack them. In the name of racial harmony, discussions over religions are discouraged. So we all keep quiet while the extremists don't need to follow such rules. Again evil wins.

I, for one will not keep quiet. This is my little corner of protest. I always believe in everybody doing his very small bit and together we add up to make a very big difference. Let all the educated moderates of ASEAN show their wish to be united in these difficult times.

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The description of my page is:
   I am in my early 40. I would like to share my gay experiences since I am still in the closet with no one to talk to :-(
   I'm married so it is impossible to come out! So I maybe Bi ? Except for the occasional gay sexual exploits, I remain deep in my closet.
   Most of what I have to say can be very sexually explicit  but no yucky S&M stuff. I notice that most gays on the web are reluctant to be sexually explicit in describing their sexual experiences but I prefer to hide my identity so as to be explicit in my true stories. As these experiences happened over a period of more than 10 years, I may be vague at times and may revise them later.

   If you think they are interesting, please email to let me know and also tell me how you found my homepage's URL address. Otherwise, these pages are more for my gay tension relief; I just need to let out some sexual steam so that they do not go round and round inside my head !

Email to me at blowing_wind.geo@yahoo.comenvelope .
( Please note that previous geocities email address is closing on 15th Jul 2000 )

These are my true personal stories:-
( x = x-rated, sexually explicit stories;  n = non x-rated articles )
  1. x-Everybody Has A First Time
  2. n-The Chinese Model Answer Or Why Bother About My Private Live
  3. x-Cruising in Singapore Part -1
  4. x-Cruising in Singapore Part -2
  5. x-Cruising in Singapore Part -3
  6. n-Put 2 And 3 Together And In Praise Of Yawning Bread
  7. x-Thermos Day and Thermos Night In Amsterdam
  8. x-How To Visit Japan With An Arigato And A Smile( Updated )
  9. n-Evil Looking Villains Wanted, Please Apply Inside
  10. x-Bangkok, The Gay Capital Of Asia - Part 1
  11. x-Bangkok, The Gay Capital Of Asia - Part 2
  12. x-Bangkok, The Gay Capital Of Asia - Part 3
  13. n-There Is Hope
  14. x-Mama Mia, Hello !!
  15. x-Red Rubber Band
  16. x-Smile ! You're On Candid Internet
  17. n-Welcum To BW's 1st Birthday Party On The Internet.
  18. n-The "Moralist" Communists ( MCs )
  19. x-Learning A "Killer" Love Making Technique From A Blind Man.
  20. x-Excuse Me, Are You A TV Star ?
  21. x-Cruise/Free Sex Versus Paid Sex
  22. n-How Many Times Must The Cannon Balls Fly ?
  23. n-Gay History Of Hong Lim Park ?

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