I cant help but feel that if it were the other way round, ie if lebanon were to be the one bombing israel with impunity, then the world (in that I mean great almighty us of a and their cronies) would retaliate without hesitation. They’ll be declaring lebanon to be yet another ‘axis of evil’, sending their troops over to help israel, imposing sanctions on lebanon, the works.
Unfortunately it’s lebanon that’s being bombed. And so the world watches..
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Had my feet dreadfully blistered cos I had to wear covered shoes for a worksite visit. Somehow covered shoes and me just don’t go well together. Unless they’re track shoes. But who wears track shoes at work anyway? Ok manymany people wear track shoes to work, but that just wont do with me. I have to wear nice court shoes, no matter how painful they are. Hahha! So worksite visits = blisters. The equation works every time. And it doesn’t matter if the pair of shoes was from marie claire and looked damm comfortable, not to mention oh so sweet. Once they’re on my feet, they bite. And boy do they really bite!
I had the occasion to meet some of the people I used to work with back at my old posting. It was nice, seeing as to how they remembered me, and still valued my thoughts and opinions even though I’m no longer working with them. I miss my old posting. Work had meaning then.
And then there was the gala dinner on Friday. Networking can be a yawn, but this time round I was in a table filled with people intent on having a good time. So it was enjoyable. In fact, I don’t think I’ve had this much fun at such events before. And the food was great too – western halal food was served to all invitees, unless they specifically requested for vegetarian. That’s a welcome. I’ve always wondered why it is that most organizers still have chinese tables and muslim tables for their d&d. Aren’t you doing the segregating right there? How do you expect your staff to mix around? How do you expect to get away with this and not have enclaves based on ethnicity and religion forming at your workplace?
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Less than 5 months to go to my wedding. My mum’s getting frantic cos my hair’s still short. Hahha! Told her not to worry. After all, why should brides have long flowy hair? Short hair will do just nice too.
I finally got around to doing some shopping for the wedding. Now stuffs like bunga paha and bunga rampai have all been taken care of. I’ve gotten the dulangs too, minus the goodies to be placed on them. That’s another round of shopping again. Bleah.
I thought I’ve found a photographer for the actual day, but I think that fell through. It’s my fault I know, cos I was supposed to get back to him ages ago. But with things as they were back then, photography was the last thing on my mind. Now that I’m ready to confirm, he’s gone silent on me. Ah well. I’ve not hit the panic button yet. Anyone knows of someone good who does digital journalistic wedding shots for less than 1k? :)
choices
spider got this last wednesday.
We were at the creative shop at plaza sing. And we were pretty amazed at the kind of things sold there. They seem to have better, cheaper things than apple, with more colours/choices and more functions to boot.
“Then how come people still prefer to buy the ipods than the zens ah?” - spider asked.
“Donno. Maybe they give people too many choices. Ipod got few colours only. But with zen, got so many colours you just give up ah trying to decide which one to get” – offered me.
That was just my way of trying to explain away something I don’t understand. But yesterday, I came across something from the book I’m currently reading that seems to hit the nail on the head.
According to the book, “if you are given too many choices, if you are forced to consider much more than your unconscious mind is comfortable with, you get paralyzed.”
There was an experiment done in which a tasting booth with a variety pf exotic gourmet jams was set up at an upscale grocery store in California. Sometimes the booth had 6 different jams, and sometimes there were 24 different jams on display. They wanted to see whether the number of jam choices made any difference in the number of jams sold. of course common economic sense would tell us that the more choices we the consumers have, the more likely we are to buy, because it’s easier for us to find the jam that perfectly fits our needs.
But they found the opposite to be true. “30 percent of those who stopped by the 6-choice booth ended up buying some jam, while only 3 percent of those who stopped by the bigger booth bought anything. Why is that? Because buying jam is a snap decision. You say to yourself, instinctively, I want that one. And if you are given too many choices, you get paralyzed. Snap judgments can be made in a snap because they are frugal, and if we want to protect our snap judgments, we have to take steps to protect that frugality.”
Amazing.
Lesson to be learnt (for when I finally get down to starting that lil biz of mine):
Don’t offer too many choices, but instead, be very focused on yr product offerings.
so italy won..
Whatever made zidane do the thing he did?? I’m still reeling from that. No matter what instigated the act, he should never, NEVER, have done what he did. You are representing your country on the international level for god’s sake. And there are dozens of cameras focusing on yr every move. Do you seriously think that you can get away with that? The press is gonna have a field day writing abt this…..
Italy won. And I’m mighty pissed. They have been mediocre throughout the world cup finals, and they were mediocre in the final match. France dominated the match throughout. Granted, the penalty awarded to France was iffy. But there was an instance later in the match when they shd have been awarded another penalty. Not that I’m a die-hard France supporter. But I thought they played well, and so of the 2 they deserved the cup more.
Not that the 2 teams are that great to begin with. Can you remember the last time the world cup was decided on penalties?? I certainly can’t. Then again I don’t exactly have an encyclopedic memory of the world cups.
Wished Germany had been in the final instead. They were wonderful in their last match. 3 goals. And they were constantly attacking. I started out thinking that the german team is gonna be the same practical, boring team like the german teams before. Solid defence, with one or two forays upfront. But this german team has proven me wrong. The german team that I saw in the opening match against costa rica was exciting, always attacking. And I was won over ever since.
If only Germany had been in the final..
disillusioned
Every Friday, one of the things that I look forward to is getting a copy of TODAY. Not so I could read the news of the day…I could get those anywhere. I look forward to getting a copy of Fridays’ TODAY so that I could read the writings of this particular favourite blogger of mine, who also happens to have a column in the paper on fridays.
My ritual every Friday is to collect a copy of the paper during lunch, bring it back to the office, and deliberately put it aside without taking a peek inside. and then, when the work day is over, I’ll finally flip through the pages till I come across the big smiley face caricature that’s a trademark of those columns. And, after devouring the contents, I’d invariably smile, or sometimes laugh out loud.
His columns have that effect on me. Because they're funny. Because they're irreverent. Because they usually hit the bull's eye with commentaries that are closer to the hearlanders' hearts than many i've seen. Because he has a way of verbalising his thoughts like i never could. satire at its better moments.
Today, the smiley face caricature will not be found in TODAY anymore. His columns have been suspended. All because of a letter from the powers that be. For those who missed out on reading his last piece, here’s the piece in its entirety..
S'poreans are fed, up with progress!
Moving ahead is great but it would be even greater to be able to make ends meet
THINGS are certainly looking up for Singapore again. Up, up, and away.
Household incomes are up, I read. Sure, the bottom third of our country is actually seeing their incomes (or as one newspaper called it, "wages") shrink, but the rest of us purportedly are making more money.
Okay, if you say so.
As sure as Superman Returns, our cost of living is also on the up. Except we are
not able to leap over high costs in a single bound.
Cost of watching World Cup is up. Price of electricity is up. Comfort's taxi fares are going up. Oh, sorry, it was called "being revised". Even the prata man at my coffeeshop just raised the price of his prata by 10 cents. He was also revising his prata prices.
So Singaporeans need to try to "up" their incomes, I am sure, in the light of our rising costs. Have you upped yours?
We are very thankful for the timing of all this good news, of course. Just after the
elections, for instance. By that I mean that getting the important event out of the way means we can now concentrate on trying to pay our bills.
It would have been too taxing on the brain if those price increases were announced
during the election period, thereby affecting our ability to choose wisely.
The other reason I am glad with the timing of the cost of living increases and wages going down, is that we can now deploy our Progress Package to pay for some of these bills.
Wait, what? You spent it all on that fancy pair of shoes on the day you saw your money in your account? Too bad for you then.
As I break into my Progress Package reserves to see if it is enough to pay the bills, I feel an overwhelming sense of progress. I feel like I am really staying together with my fellow Singaporeans and moving forward.
There is even talk of future roads like underground expressways being outsourced to private sector companies to build, so that they, in turn, levy a toll on those of us who use these roads.
I understand the cost of building these roads is high, and the Government is relooking the financing of these big road projects.
Silly me, I thought my road tax and COE was enough to pay for public roads.
Maybe we can start financing all kinds of expensive projects this way in future. We could build upgraded lifts for older HDB blocks, and charge tolls on a per use basis.
You walk into your new lift on the first floor, and the scanner reads the contactless cashcard chip embedded in your forehead. This chip would be part of the recently-announced Intelligent Nation 2015 plan, you know, that initiative to make us a smart nation?
So you, the smart contactless-cashcard-chip-enhanced Singaporean would go into your lift, and when you get off at your floor, the lift would deduct the toll from your chip, and you would hear a beep.
The higher you live, the more expensive the lift toll.
Now you know why I started climbing stairs for exercise, as I mentioned in my last column. I plan to prepare for that day when I have to pay to use my lift. God help you if some kid presses all the lift buttons in the lift, as kids are wont to do. You will be beeping all the way to your flat.
The same chip could be used to pay for supermarket items. You just carry your bags of rice and groceries past the cashierless cashier counter, and the total will be deducted from your contactless cashcard automatically.
You will not even know you just got poorer. And if your contactless cashcard runs out of funds (making it a contactless CASHLESS cashcard), you just cannot use paid services.
The door of the lift won't close, the bus won't stop for you, taxis will automatically display "On Call" when their chip scanners detect you're broke.
Sure, paying bills that only seem to go up is painful, but by Jove, we are going to make sure it is at least convenient.
No more opening your wallet and fiddling with dirty notes and coins. Just stand there and hear your income beeped away. No fuss, no muss! I cannot
wait to be a Smart e-Singaporean.
I also found out recently that my first-born daughter's special school fees were going up. This is because of this thing called "Means Testing", where they test your means, then if you are not poor enough, you lose some or all of the subsidy you've been getting for your special child's therapy.
I think I am looking at about a $100 increase, which is a more than a 100 per cent increase, but who's counting, right? We can afford it, but we do know many families who cannot, even those that are making more money than we are, on paper.
But don't worry. Most of you don't have this problem. Your normal kids can go to regular school for very low fees, and I am sure they will not introduce means testing for your cases.
We need your gifted and talented kids to help our country do well economically, so
that our kids with special needs can get a little more therapy to help them to walk and talk. And hey, maybe if the country does really well, the special-needs kids will get a little more subsidy.
Like I said, progress.
High-definition televisions, a high-speed broadband wireless network, underground expressways, and contactless cashcard system — all our signs of progress.
I am happy for progress, of course but I would be just as happy to make ends meet and to see my autistic first-born grow up able to talk and fend for herself in this society when I am gone.
That is something my wife and I will pay all we can pay to see in our lifetimes.
mr brown is the accidental author of a popular website that has been documenting the dysfunctional side of Singapore life since 1997. He enjoys having yet another
cashcard, in addition to his un-contactless one and the ez-link one to add to
his wallet.
- TODAY, 30 June 2006
And here’s the letter, in response to this piece, that brought on his suspension..
Distorting the truth, mr brown?
When a columnist becomes a 'partisan player' in politics
Letter from K BHAVANIPress Secretary to the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts
Your mr brown column, "S'poreans are fed, up with progress!" (June 30) poured sarcasm on many issues, including the recent General Household Survey, price increases in electricity tariffs and taxi fares, our IT plans, the Progress Package and means testing for special school fees.
The results of the General Household Survey were only available after the General Election. But similar data from the Household Expenditure Survey had been published last year before the election.
There was no reason to suppress the information. It confirmed what we had told Singaporeans all along, that globalisation would stretch out incomes.
mr brown must also know that price increases in electricity tariffs and taxi fares are the inevitable result of higher oil prices.
These were precisely the reasons for the Progress Package — to help lower income
Singaporeans cope with higher costs of living.
Our IT plans are critical to Singapore's competitive position and will improve the job chances of individual Singaporeans. It is wrong of mr brown to make light of them.
As for means testing for special school fees, we understand mr brown's disappointment as the father of an autistic child. However, with means testing, we can devote more resources to families who need more help.
mr brown's views on all these issues distort the truth. They are polemics dressed up as analysis, blaming the Government for all that he is unhappy with. He offers no
alternatives or solutions. His piece is calculated to encourage cynicism and despondency, which can only make things worse, not better, for those he professes to sympathise with.
mr brown is entitled to his views. But opinions which are widely circulated in a regular column in a serious newspaper should meet higher standards. Instead of a diatribe mr brown should offer constructive criticism and alternatives. And he should come out from behind his pseudonym to defend his views openly.
It is not the role of journalists or newspapers in Singapore to champion issues, or campaign for or against the Government. If a columnist presents himself as a non-political observer, while exploiting his access to the mass media to undermine the Government's standing with the electorate, then he is no longer a constructive critic, but a partisan player in politics.
- TODAY, 3 July 2006
So now his column has been suspended by TODAY. And though many have written in to point out the many errors in the above letter, [like how ridiculous her request that mr brown “should come out from behind his pseudonym to defend his views openly” is because mr brown has never hidden behind his pseudonym. He’s been quoted countless times in the media, and anybody who follows the news know his real name, plus his pictures and his family’s are plastered all over his blog. But this post is already too long for me to include a point-by-point, in-depth rebuttal of the letter. Those interested can check out tommorow.sg for them], the paper has responded to them by saying that they will not be publishing any correspondence on this matter.
We see his column last Friday. And then we see the response from the powers that be on monday. And then…zero. Nothing else is published on this matter. Zilch. It’s like as if the issue didn’t even exist. It’s like as if readers saw the response, and agreed with the response, cos nothing else was said on the matter.
But there are tons of indignant, angry, sad, disappointed people out there. Just check out the blogospehere. Hundreds have left comments on his blog conveying their support to him. This has been the topic of posts on manymanymanymany blogs. The written media might choose to ignore this and pretend it never happened. but there’s always the net, and in here we will not be silent.
So here I am, taking time out from my usual rants and raves, my usual musings and whinings, to write about this. Frankly speaking, I’m tired of the nonsense. I’ve been known to be supportive of the govt, even with their warts and all. Not the ra-ra fan-club kind of supportive, but supportive nonetheless. But I’m beginning to be disillusioned. If honest citizens cant even make comments about the state of things in this country (then again, u can, but only if you have suggestions and solutions to yr complaints too!), then who can??
Like I said, I’m disillusioned.
escape from the jam
while trying to escape the horrendous jam at the ecp last evening, we came across a gem of a find…
france has proven me wrong!
finally!!
france has shown brazil to be what he(she?) is...over-rated.
brazil is out!
woohoooo!!!
quarters highlights | starhub’s cracking me up!
i thought argentina would win, though i wanted germany to prove me wrong.
germany won, and what a hard-fought win that was. like spider said, the blame’s squarely on the argentinian team, most specifically the manager, for who in his right mind would take out 2 attacking midfielders for defensive ones when they’re only 1-0 up? they’re playing against the host country for god’s sake. surely they didn’t expect germany to just give up and gift the win to them?? they should have kept on attacking, instead of holding back and defending their slim advantage. kudos to the german team for being tenacious. for never giving up. for going all out to get the equalizer. and kudos to pak leman for the amazing saves that he made, both during the match and the penalty shootout. by the way, don’t you think the argentinian substitute keeper looks like mcfly the dad in back to the future??
i thought portugal would win, though i wanted england to prove me wrong.
no luck there. portugal won. and i suspect ronaldo wont be having the time of his life in the premier league for months to come. i certainly felt a certain amount of animosity towards him. irrational yes. and i’m not even english. if you ask me, the blame’s on eriksson. what was he thinking putting just one striker up front? no wonder rooney was as agitated as he was. that’s no excuse for his red-card behaviour of cos. but still, you wonder if things would have been different if eriksson had placed 2 strikers up front instead of just one.
as i’m typing this, the brazil-france match is underway. i’m not much of a brazil fan. i think they’re over-rated. but, unless france proves me wrong, i think it’s gonna be a germany-brazil final. with germany to win. yeah!
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starhub’s coverage of the world cup is hilarious. pretty hilarious that we the sports group subscribers had to pay extra for this. what’s the point of subscribing to the sports group? but hey, the people at starhub said that we’re paying for premium service ok! we don’t just get the matches shown live, we get the WHOLE PACKAGE. like i said, it’s hilarious…
- hilarious that even though we have the luxury of 4 channels to choose from (4 channels i tell u! woohooo!), we’re in fact watching the finals on only one. hahhha.
- hilarious that the amazing programmers at starhub know exactly when to break for commercials. their timing is perfect. case in point: the germany-argentina match has just ended. the germans have won from the shootout. we see an angry group of argentinian players pushing and shoving, making their way to the referee. yess there’s gonna be a fight! and at that very moment, the brilliant people at starhub decides to break for a commercial. hilarious!
- hilarious that we’ve been treated to post-match interviews in every imaginable language except english. unless enland’s playing of cos. what’s the point of showing these interviews if they couldn’t be understood by us singaporeans? i’m not saying the interviews must be conducted in english. i’m just asking for some translation. or, at the very least, the brilliant people at starhub could choose not to show those non-english interviews so that we viewers would be spared the agony of watching one of those and not comprehending a single word.
but hey…we get the WHOLE PACKAGE ok. like i said….hilarious!