Portrait of the Week

This week, I prowled the libraries of Singapore picking up interesting and possibly subversive material off shelves tucked away in secluded corners, visited by none save the occasional oddball like myself. Having reviewed the New Yorker, the Economist, the Spectator and the People's Korea together with other assorted periodicals (all of which happen to be publications from foreign shores), I have come to the realisation that the Straits Times is no longer sufficient to satisfy my palate for top-drawer literature.

The People's Korea, which hails from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, was my personal favourite, featuring a picture of the Dear Leader on its very first page, coupled with some jingoistic rhetoric and a tersely-worded protest against the expanding scope of operations of the Japanese Self-Defence Force to make up a four-page daily for the perusal of the average North Korean. The Spectator, from merry old England, came in a close second, with its delightful witticisms and predilection for Blair-bashing. Innuendos are served in generous quantities and it seems an editorial policy that every article should end with a punchline that both humours and ridicules. One gripe however, is that the delivery of its content, which quite parallels the ways and words of the British blue-blood, will limit its readership to the more erudite like yours truly. The latest copy of the Economist, on the other hand, was a letdown with little reference to the ruling family of this island city, a necessary step perhaps to avoid further punitive sanctions, as evidenced by its recent involuntary payments to Singapore's founding father Mr. Lee.

The New Yorker is unranked because of my inability to finish it from cover to cover before closing hours, but I shall be leaving home shortly to remediate that.