01.05.04 - An important milestone in European history today.. the EU welcomes 10 new member states (it's biggest expansion yet) to form a formidable entity of 455 million people, the world's biggest economic bloc. What I wanna talk about isn't how the new EU will herald a new future for Europe, not how it has somewhat buried the "ghost" of communism behind them.. but what ASEAN can learn from EU. Like, we call ourselves a regional grouping.. but where's the political will to stand up together and fight the bigger threats in the form of China and India? For one, a Malaysian visiting Singapore is considered a foreigner and has to be subjected to long and quite meaningless hours of waiting when it's peak period and vice versa too. I can understand that security measures are necessary in the world we've inherited since 11 Sept, but surely it isn't impossible to create a common ASEAN card that allows for borderless travel in the region, like the EU? Think of all the manpower and costs that can be reduced..
But I think, for ASEAN to reach that stage of regional integration that the EU has reached, it's more like a distant dream more than anything else. For one, our economies are so vastly different.. different stages of development somemore. It's gonna be real hard to reconcile the economics if we're gonna come up with a common currency or tariff system. Even if we do have a common tariff system (like ASEAN FTA), there's always the home government who's gonna impose more excise duties on imported goods to make them less attractive (Malaysia and the issue of Proton cars are a good case in point...)
I watched 50 First Dates with jw today.. met daryl before that too. the show was just ok, occasionally funny. but rather bland. unspectular plot too. maybe it's just me and how i'm just so turned off by the little crazy thing called love that makes me feel this way.. but i'm so not gonna visit s'pore until i see my nus letter, the traffic jam is a really a huge turn-off.. sigh. i bought britney's "in the zone" album.. cos her new song is really cool, totally different from all her dance tracks.. it's called "everything".. her voice really reaches new heights here. of cos toxic and me against the music are credible tracks too.. but they're pretty one-off tracks, as in u won't remember after 5 years or so...
hey we're all working people now rite.. today is OUR day. happy labour (slave) day haha...