Pardesi

Brilliant, iPod's gone to the next stage: the Rokr, by Motorola. Of course, my Nokia 6230 had been both a trusty phone and an MP3 player, until my iPod mini came into my life. It was 4 gigabytes against 32 MB in Nokia. So, naturally. Anyway, the Rokr can only hold 100 songs at the moment, with plans to release bigger storage later on. If I'm not wrong, Nokia has a 4 GB hardisk phone in its pocket, but its release date is Q4 of 2005. Hallo, Nokia faster lah dei.

I listen to the Pilot n' Jo podcast regularly, and their latest episode was an interview by an American radio station of the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, shortly after hurricane Katrina washed out its people. In Ray Nagin's voice I heard such emotion, such helplessness, such frustration and such defeat I have not heard in a long time. Apparently the interview has since been censored. Listen to it at the Pilot n' Jo show under "Katrina".

Anyone caught the new Visa TVC starring Richard Gere recently? I've seen it like 10 times, in the train and TV bloody mobile. Of course, it looks like a well-taken, soppy, sentimental advertisement, with Gere being the Man with a Soft Cuddly Heart and Deep Pocket. Well, let me give you a critical reading of the ad, cultural studies-style.

Richard Gere, the White, civilized man with white shirt and stylish trousers, pays a visit to the backward, wild, untamed but exotic Rajasthan in India, where males wear funny turbans and a little girl is drowning in poverty, not being able to release more than one pigeon at a time. So she becomes the White Man's Burden, the oriental Other. White Man thus takes it upon himself to promote freedom in the land and helping out the poor wretched uncivilised youngling by freeing some birds she can't afford to. He releases a few hundred birds using his Visa card, and only heaven knows where the Turbaned gentleman from rural Rajasthan is going to swipe the card (up someone's arse, maybe?). When the birds are released, a strange cry is heard from the background Indian voice "...pardesi...", as if to cheer on that the White Master, a foreigner (pardesi) for rescuing them from a Visa-less doomsday. There you go.