It’s hard to believe. They knew it was coming, they knew the Marriott was on the JI hit list, they took “precautions” and it didn’t matter a bit.

Police on Wednesday said they seized documents last month showing that terrorists had planned to target the area around Jakarta’s Marriott Hotel that was devastated by a powerful car bomb, and that they had increased security around Marriott thereafter, anticipating an attack.

The revelations came as the Australian government said intelligence showed more attacks across Indonesia, particularly in its capital, were likely in coming days.

The intelligence also indicates Jakarta could be in for more such attacks over the next few days.

According to today’s Times, an age-old Chinese tradition is about to be made extinct, another victim of Western marketing:

For many tourists, one of the indelible images of China is that of the cutie-pie baby wearing the pants with the giant hole on the bottom. If their timing is right, the tourists might even catch a toddler relieving himself, right on the street.

Visitors may find this disgusting, or delightful, but they may not see such sights much longer, at least in the cities. China’s famous split pants may soon be eclipsed by the disposable diaper.

The article goes into copious detail about every conceivable aspect of the Diaper Revolution, for those who care.

My laptop is being completely overhauled; Windows is being uninstalled and reinstalled, all my data saved on a separate drive, and I won’t get it back for at least another day, so again, no evening or morning posting. It feels downright weird to be at home with no email or Internet for four whole days. Nightmare.

It all started on Saturday night, after I downloaded McAffee anti-virus software (legally). Suddenly my cable modem stopped responding. The computer repairpeople and Starhub (my cable provider) told me McAffee is notorious for screwing up a computer’s software. I sure wish I had known that before I forked over $60 for their antivirus and firewall package (I never even got to download the firewall). One more of life’s myriad headaches….

That question arose in yesterday’s comments and I’d like to answer it as a post, maybe more for myself than anyone else.

If you look at the little legend to the side of the page — “A peculiar hybrid…” — you’ll see that I describe my journeys to/from Hong Kong, Beijing and Singapore as occurring “for reasons that are still not entirely clear” to me. And those are the truest words I ever wrote.

How did I end up here? As in nearly all of the phases of my life, it just sort of happened. An act of happenstance. Not just Singapore but practically everything I’ve ever done. This struck me as something of an epiphany. I’ve let myself be taken from one place to another to another, very rarely plotting the course or steering the ship.

My first three jobs all came to me when various friends recommended me to their bosses. In fact, that seems to be how I’ve got nearly all my jobs. I’m not saying this is bad. But it was something of a scary revelation to see that my life has not been so much about choice as it has been about quirks of fate, an unexpected recommendation, a phone call in the middle of dinner, an invitation…someone else’s initiative.

My being an executive in my field sometimes seems so absurd I can laugh out loud. A background in classical music and German, and here I am doing high-tech marketing in Asia! It’s simply too outlandish to even consider. But that’s my life. Ever since I let go of my initial dreams, I’ve basically let life lead me around.

I just went back in my archives because this conversation reminded me of somthing I wrote back in January. (Sorry, can’t link to it.) Sure enough, I had written:

Experienced, well read, a couple of degrees and good marks, a labrynthine knowledge of Wagner and the World Wars and a few other topics, I still feel that I am adrift, anchorless and rudderless in a world that I have allowed to pass me by. When I was young, things seemed to just come to me, and I always thought that would continue. Surprise. Not that there haven’t been successes and extraordinary experiences, including my living and working right now in China. But I made the mistake of which Joseph Campbell warns us so eloquently — I never followed my bliss. I allowed myself to be talked out of pursuing a career in classical music, my life and my passion and my joy; I took the path of least resistance and dropped out of my advanced music theory course because the professor, Louise Thalmadge, terrified me. I allowed my close friend, who meant no harm, to talk me out of my dream, and in giving up that dream I gave up a very big part of myself. I can hardly look back to that moment without a flood of poignancy that goes straight to the heart, and my eyes fight back tears as I wonder how I could have been so stupid. There’s a passage in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, toward the end, where the hero looks back on how he had “simply given up the best years of his life,” to paraphrase. That heartache, that realization that our love and our dream and our passion have gone to waste, it hurts and haunts as does nothing else.

Sorry to bring such a whiny, mawkish post up again, but it is key to figuring out my existence — and, if you are still young enough, maybe it will help provide an important learning. Do what you love. Don’t waste time. Choose your life and your course and don’t get blown around like a feather.

So anyway, getting back to what led me to Singapore before I went off on that endless sidetrack. The short answer is that I was quite desperate to escape from Beijing. I was physically cold and emotionally battered, and when the opportunity arose, again by happenstance, I seized it. It hasn’t been bad, I enjoy my co-workers and most aspects of my job, and it’s certainly warm enough. But again, it isn’t who I am. It’s not what I was meant to do. As always, I’ll stick to it and do it well enough, but I have made a promise to myself that when I return to America I’ll take a new course, one where I can feel wholly alive and thrilled about what I am doing.

So you see, Singapore is one more stop along the way, something of a lifesaver tossed to me by the Lifeguards On High. I’ve certainly had worse experiences, but I have never before, ever, ever, ever felt so adamantly that is time for me to get into the boat and chart the course instead of being dragged along, grasping a lifesaver.

And now that I have totally overused and abused that metaphor, I’ll call it a day.

The problem wasn’t with my cable modem but with my laptop, which is now being worked on. So I can only post from the office before and after work, and maybe during lunch. In any case, posts will be few until the problem is fixed.

(Is life anything more than moving from one headache to the next? Probably not. Whenever I reach the state where there are no immedite headaches, I get restless and bored….)

During the month of April in Beijing, when Sars was at its peak, I was getting as many as 3,000 unique visitors a day, which for me was pretty amazing. Now I feel lucky if I get 150 (though I still keep getting traffic to my old blogspot site, often more than I get here thanks to all the old links out there.)

I knew the minute I left China that I would have to give up most of that traffic; I would no longer be able to post around the clock and I would no longer be a mole in a mysterious country going through an unprecedented political, social and medical crisis. As I’ve said before, controversy is all but unknown here in Singapore, and there isn’t much to take a stand on. And I know that my style of writing plays to a limited audience, to say the least.

So why am I writing this? I guess I am just feeling philosophical, wondering whether this exercise is worth the time and effort. I’m not calling for a vote; I’m going to continue because I enjoy it and I keep making new cyberfriends, even now when my traffic is at a trickle. Still, I have to say, those days when I knew thousands of people were coming to my dinky site to read about what Beijing was going through — that was one of the most exciting times of my life. Not necessarily happy, but certainly exciting, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it.

Okay, pardon this little cathartic exercise. All part of my effort to come to terms with Singapore and my new life here….

On Saturday night my brand-new cable modem went into a coma and I haven’t been able to get online until now. It should be repaired later today, but until then I am pretty helpless. Please bear with me….

At least that’s the way it appears at the moment. According to a new article in The New Republic the hand-wringing by high Saudi officials, whining that they want the redactions in the 911 report un-redacted is just a show. And GWB is a principal actor.

If their request were granted it would mean the end of US-Saudi relations as we know them. This just may be the most devastating story of the year, because if it’s true Bush will be proven to be a prevaricator and hypocrite beyond redemption. It will mean that he has knowingly protected those who make terrorism possible, its bankrollers.

The article quotes at length a high official in the know, and it’s a true bombshell.

“[A]n official who has read the [9/11] report tells The New Republic that the support described in the report goes well beyond [support for charities]: It involves connections between the hijacking plot and the very top levels of the Saudi royal family. “There’s a lot more in the 28 pages than money. Everyone’s chasing the charities,” says this official. “They should be chasing direct links to high levels of the Saudi government. We’re not talking about rogue elements. We’re talking about a coordinated network that reaches right from the hijackers to multiple places in the Saudi government.”

This week, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal flew to Washington for a hastily convened meeting with President Bush. Faisal publicly demanded that the 28 pages be declassified, but he had to have known in advance, and welcomed the fact, that his request would be denied–ostensibly friendly nations don’t normally send their foreign ministers to meetings halfway around the world to be surprised. For his part, Bush has insisted that revealing the 28 pages would compromise “sources and methods that would make it harder for us to win the war on terror.

[….]

The Bush administration has, of course, good reason for not wanting to ruffle the Saudis by declassifying the 28 pages. Saudi Arabia sits atop 25 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and, through its dominant position in OPEC, essentially controls the global energy market.

This is astounding. If it’s all so obvious to the official quoted, it is certainly obvious to the White House. What it boils down to is the report has information that can help lead to key players behind 911, and these links and any reference to them have apparently been blacked out.

Could this be what Democrats have only dared dream of? If so, it could alter the war on terror, and the nation’s opinion of its beloved president. After all, if it’s 911-style terrorism we seek to obliterate, it seems Saudi Arabia — far more than Iraq — is the logical place to focus. But then, lots of people have been saying this for nearly two years now (Thomas Friedman of the NYT has brought it up many times.)

Bottom line: By deleting information about the Saudi connection to the 911 terrorists, Bush has protected them. Why? The only sensible answer, according to the article and to common sense, is the cliche, it’s all about oil. I never subscribed to that cliche, but I’m about to change my mind.

[via Josh Marshall, who says he’ll soon be providing some new inside information about the WMD search in Iraq.]

UPDATE: The cat is definitely out of the bag. It is even a banner headline over at Matt Drudge.

Edited, 11:58 a.m. SGP time, then again at 4:38 p.m. as new facts emerge.

Four total suckers fall victim to Singapore scam artists. How could they be this stupid:

FOUR people were duped into handing large sums of cash to strangers last weekend.

In each case, a man asked to borrow the victim’s cellphone, then asked for the victim’s bank account number so someone else could transfer money to it. No transfer was made, after which the man asked for a loan.

One of them actually gave the scammer his ATM card and PIN!

And that is the most exciting news out of Singaore today….

I stumbled fortuitously onto a new site today and went on to spend way too much time there. It’s not for the casual browser — lots of stuff on politics and religion and Freud and long book reviews, a great piece on how trustworthy the BBC can be, and a whole lot more. The fellow is obviously a genius, and I could imagine hanging around here for many hours at a time. Again, definitely not for lighthearted entertainment.

It also has some of the best articles I have ever read on the McMartin daycare witch hunt and related scandals.

[One hour later.] I just went and browsed through it again. This is a magnificent site.