shift happens?

haha more like shit happens.

looked thru hasu's post on class blog. here's the link oneso6a.blogspot.com
suddenly reminded me to blog abt something that i forgot after i attended this particular seminar. on fri i attended this talk by cisco's vice ceo cum chief globalisation officer. yes u heard right, chief globalisation officer.

he talked abt the globalisation of talents on top of the usual thomas freidman BS abt the globalisation 1.0 2.0 blah blah blah. talked abt how connectivity is affecting the whole world how it can help countries to development. how technology saves costs and stuff. basically nothing a decent jc or uni grad wouldnt know if he bothers to read some stuff.

frankly i'm pretty tired of all these globalisation shit. all these connectivity and stuff. i dun reli care if china is building 200 new cities in 2008. admist all the urbanisation, the development of technologies, the building of new skyscrapers, does anyone give a shit abt agriculture? i not some super wide reading guy. jus read some books and a few periodicals. but it surprises me that none of them mentions about how we are going about to boost production of food.

we are currently experiencing exponential growth in population growth. unlike cars and planes which get more and more fuel efficient as technologies advance, i highly doubt that humans will become more and more energy efficient. in fact, the newer generations requires even more energy. there is this new trend that guys want to look muscular, so they eat alot of protein shit and go gym alot (like jenhan and ghin hoe). some might argue that girls are eating less to get that toothpick figure which they think is desirable and this will balance out the guys. but anyways, back to the main point, the requirement for food is going to increase exponentially along with the population.

china and india are among the world's largest crop producing countries. sadly these 2 countries are also the fastest developing and urbanising countries. i fear that by blindly aiming for urbanisation and development these 2 countries will overlook one of the most important role they play in the world, providing food, not mass production of random stuff at dirt cheap prices.

i've seen what is happening to farming villages. people are very poor and they are trying desperately to escape from farming. they want to get higher paying jobs in the city, building houses and railways. farming is a dying business in many of the rural villages in china.

take a look at where some ancient civilisations are born. the yellow river, yang tse river, nile, mississippi, indus river. all these great civilisations are born beside rivers. where the soil is fertile. why? cos can grow crops. got food. wun starve. then got energy to have sex and have babies. farming used to be the foundation of civilisations. wars are fought for fertile land. but today. what is happening. farming is one of the lowest paying jobs (except countries which provide bloody subsidies for farmers). it is no longer considered to be the foundation of development.

i agree that development in agriculture techniques and fertilisation have increase crop yields dramatically over the past decades. but until people invent a way to grow rice on building resembling multi level car parks. i do not feel safe seeing padi fields being converted into concrete floors. arable land is already rapidly decreasing due to changes in climate, urbanisation is jus making it worse.

today we are already seeing an increase in rice prices. what next? maybe now we are not seeing the effects. but in the near future, what will happen? we dunno. we can predict this predict that. we predicted the economic crisis. but were we ready for it? no. we can predict food shortage in the future. and i doubt that we will be prepared for it either.

i'm getting tired of hearing all the BS abt globalisation. building infrastructure for connectivity. have a global economy. free flow of talents. do something about our future meals for christ's sakes! at least let us see that action is being taken. i dun wanna see stats on how many people visit youtube a year, or how many google searches are made. does it help put food on our plates. kinda reminds me of army where ppl used to say "got pride got wad shit use? pride can eat ah?" i wanna see how many more grains of rice can be grown on 1 square metre of soil, or how many more tomatoes can be grown on a single tree.

like oil, price of food will affect overall cost of all commodity. price of food goes up means everything else goes up. which means shit happens. and when this kind of shit happens, pumping money into the economy will be useless.

i shall call this essay Hot, Crowded, and Hungry.

btw thomas freidman's new book is crap. anne hathaway ftw. devil wears prada.

like i said, completed assassin's creed already. fantastic game. could have improved the ending a bit better. too much of a cliff hanger.

played my muddiest game of football on sunday. the field is so bad its a swimming pool for babies. its sandy in the middle and muddy at the corners. mud go so deep it covers my entire boot. insane gross. a good game nonetheless. met up with a couple of random frens. time to get back match fitness.

the wait for uni accpetance (...... more like rejection) is painful to say the least. a very very very long wait. the feeling sucks man. sigh......

looking forward to tmr. meet up with some long lost frens from tuition.

miss amk....

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