Urban Caveman

Yeah that's me in my current situation... Moved to a new house in Fitzroy North like a week ago, while my housemate's yet to move in and he has all those appliances that we need, means I don't have a thing for the week... No fridge, no washing machine, no internet etc... Well my caveman life begins here then...

Day one. Thinking of cooking something home, went to the nearest supermarket, which is an IGA, very expensive although it does have many stuff that we don't see in Woolworths or Coles... There were two lightbulbs in my room, one obviously already broken, and the other was burnt while I try to switch it on... Got a friend over so I got some food and realizes I need cutlery... the ones sold in the supermarket was horrible so I bought some disposable ones instead... but still can't escape buying a bowl there, just simple and pure white, quite a large one. And it was after getting home that I realize I only have one saucepan and not enough for even cooking pasta, I managed to do that at last though, by tipping the boiled pasta into a microwave box and keeping it warm. Well the food was OK jus that we don't even have chairs to sit on for dinner... Well, I did not bad in changing the lightbulbs standing on my wheely chair and very weak drawers from Ikea...

Day two. Waking up finding that the room was actually pretty cold, although with all the windows closed I could feel breeze through my face. The window's facing east and the shade is not low enough that sunshine leaks right on my face early in the morning. Well, no more sleep in then... Went to uni to do a few stuff, changing my address of the bank account and university contacts, then went to the Italian wholesale near my old place in Brunswick for some grocery and cookware and stuff. Did found that the cutlery is better than wherever else to be found, all $2 each and most importantly, they are all one-of-a-kind, you could rarely find any two that is the same. Bought a chopping board but decided to leave the saucepan for the next time...

Day three was Saturday, worked from early in the day and did not have much things done, business was not too bad as far as I remember. Partied in Ben's place after work and got quite drunk and was actually surprised that I made my way home without a fuss.

Day four. Up at 4:30AM and can't get back to sleep, then just waited in bed for the alarm to come off at 6:30AM and prepared myself to work. I actually did ride a bike to work with a bit of a hangover and when I have to train a new guy, I thought I did OK though. Went to the laundry for a hell lot of dirty clothes to be washed and found that the stupid machines only accept $1 and 20c coins and there are no changing machines and stuff around. Well well well, went to the burger shop nearby instead and asked that nice looking waiter for some change while getting myself some dinner. Went back to the laundry and got it started then go back to the burger to pick it up and then had my small dinner there. After dinner the laundry was almost done, I waited for a while with a magazine in hand then took them all back and hung them at the backyard.

Day five. Went to Ikea and spend most of my day there. looking for a desk for myself. I scrabbled and scrabbled on the shopping list to try to make sure that a 2m long desk would fit in my room. While I still can't be sure I had to leave it alone so I went back with a chair and some other small stuff. After getting home I measured the room again and it definitely fits so I decided to get it somehow. Had to get someone to deliver it for me though I don't have a car.

Day six. Tuesday, stayed all day in bed. Did not even wanna get off the bed. Had to though, so I looked at the laundry at the backyard, and found some of them nicely blown down by the wind on the soil, never mind then. Just pick it up and hang it for bit more. Should be all good to have an undie that had kissed the soil once.

Day seven. Not much for the day but very much in the night. Stayed out all night and had quite a lot of fun out there. Best sex I've had for quite a while. Indeed. I don't know if I would have more of connections with that person, I do hope so and I got the answer as 'probably', I still can't be sure to date. I guess I wasn't really good at handling this anyway.

Day eight. My friend finally moved in along with his parents. And it was pretty nice to sort of have my urban cavemen life terminated. Although it was not until today that the internet of the house is finally connected, other appliances did come in earlier and well, it wasn't all that bad. Without the internet is the only occasion that I had to watch that three and a half hour long black and white movie 'Seven Samurai' back in the 1950s and enjoying such classic without a worry of anyone buzzing me on MSN. The lack of internet also gave me the inconvenience of not being able to download and print out the notes for the first week of the sem but it's only the first so things seems fine so far... Well I am back online now anyway so things are back to normal.

Progressive Democracy?

Hmm the term 'progressive democracy' that I am discussing here is different from the one described by Herbert Croly in 1915, although I haven't been studying that one. The one that I am discussing is what Chinese Author Wang Lixiong described in his book 'Progressive Democracy', which is said to be a system that would lead China into a smooth and safe transformation into a democratic society, although it would remain a theory until there are any sort of practise of this method somewhere in the society.

The principle of this progressive democracy is to consider all the 'cells' of the society, for example, families, and weave them together and erect them upwards to the top of the society, in this case, the country. Every family would have the right to elect one family representative, who interacts with other families' representatives within a small area such as a natural village in the countryside or one/several floor(s) in an apartment in the city. The principle of deciding the size of the area is that everyone has to know (or it would be easy to get to know) each other personally. After every one of the families in one such area has a representative, they form a representatives committee and a representative of the committee would be elected, whom would enter one step higher into the representative committee of say a governable village in the countryside or the whole building of the apartment in the city. A term 'layer' is adopted to describe the entirety of committees in a same grade, such as 'family' and 'natural village' in which 'natural village' is a layer one step higher than 'family'. These representatives create 'links' between the lower and higher layers, which are restricted themselves by the member of his/her lower level committee that they have the right to re-elect their representative at any time if they are not satisfied with their representative. Any single person is only allowed to be in two adjacent layers at most. The art of negotiation is what plays an important role here, that is, to have the aim for benefits that could represent the entirety of his/her lower committee, instead of his/her own benefits in order keep him/herself in the current place and not to be overthrown by the committee. This structure goes on and on, the governable villages in the same township would elect their representative for the town, and then the townships in the same county would elect the representative in the county... Until the layer of province representatives elect a representative of the country.

Every single person is involved in this system, and it is said that everyone's voice is heard because they make sure their representatives represent their benefits when it comes to any decision, or the representative will be overthrown. This is different from current democracy societies practiced in many countries in which peoples thoughts are abstracted to 'yes' or 'no' or 'A' or 'B', which eliminates many of the possibilities between 'yes' and 'no' or 'A' and 'B'. For example most Chinese would say 'no' when voting whether Taiwan should be separated from China, but many might change the idea if it cost their own benefits such as heavier tax in order to establish a competitive army and the requirements of themselves to attend the army and risk their own lives for this good.

Wang preferred to describe the the thought of a person to be a vector instead of a number, which has not only an amount but also a direction, the direction could be multi-dimensional and would have unlimited possibilities, unlike just 1 for 'yes' and -1 for 'no' in counting votes, of cause the absolute value of each vector is the same (let's say 1) in order to represent the equality among people. The sum of vectors follows the rule of parallelogram in maths, which would represent a dimension compromising all the thoughts and the amount of all the sums of the components of individual vectors on that direction. The representative of a committee is elected to represent this sum of vector among its members and deliver it up to the upper layer to perform another summing.

There are obvious benefits that Wang described in his theory of progressive democracy, such as that there is no need to restructure the current society, the only difference is that rights are delivered upwards from the mass instead of downwards from the leader. On the other hand, difficulties are obvious too. The practise of progressive democracy requires the knowledge of its principl of it in the entirety concerned, while this book is still banned from publishing in China, initiation of this practise is extremely difficult. Once the first layer is formed, people would disrespect the government-appointed leader of this layer and obey only the representative elected for the committee, which dysfuntionalizes the local government, and unless the higher grade of government accepts the new committee, they will be dysfunctionalized as well. The restructure of the governance system in China under progressive democracy will start from the bottom end and the new system will gradually grow upwards, which is more gentle than a sudden transformation to Western style democracy which breaks the whole system down before establishing a new one.

Well I do appreciate such a method that sees a better future of China. Thing is, no matter how carefully thought through this theory had been before it is published, it is until practiced that the flaws will show, Wang said the system will perfect itself, but we will have to see this in practice as well. Until then, it's only a theory, which no one would know for sure whether it works for modern China. We definitely hope so.