So many reasons to leave...Not too many to stay.

I was talking to Ondine the other night about life in Singapore and I came to this conclusion: It's all a house of cards. Singapore. The government that we all fear. The system. The people. It's all a house of cards. And sometime soon, the wind will blow...and it'll all come tumbling down.

I'm actually looking forward to that day. (Right now I have it pinpointed to a couple of days weeks* after a certain old man dies...) Those will be interesting times indeed.

I'm presently wondering how many fragments the presiding party will actually fragment into with the lack of a strong leader. I'm guessing about 3.

What brought about this political melancholy? Perhaps a little bout of elitism. This stuff tends to get me down.

*The bureaucratic machine will continue for a while before it inevitably breaks down.

And they're back...

And it actually looks good.

Funny how one never seems to miss what you've thought was long gone.

TMNT forever. :)

Took Hangs. McCrea gets 10.

Nor would McCrea have had to face life imprisonment. Under the Penal Code, culpable homicide would attract a jail term of 10 years or life imprisonment if the facts showed that he intended to cause the deaths.

The charges against McCrea were that he did not intend to cause the deaths, although he knew his actions could have fatal results.

In layman's terms, the distinction goes something like this. If B provokes A and A attacks B intending to kill him, it's possibly life imprisonment. If A attacks B in a fit of anger without any intention to kill, even though he knows that B might die, it warrants a maximum of 10 years.

Reference if you will, a case sometime ago, where our criminal courts deemed a man who killed a man in anger and subsequently strangled a girl the very next day a non-murderer.

Look upon another man who may have been criminally insane (and therefore technically not culpable for the actions that he had taken) who (may have) killed a 7 year-old girl. He gets the death sentence.

Which one was the Caucasian?

As much as I would like justice to prevail, I've come to the realisation that justice isn't colour blind. It unfortunately looks in favour upon shades of white. Or perhaps it's green.

"To build a democratic society based on justice and equality."

Ha!

The last throes of a medium that is struggling to find relevance.

Anyone else watched Blogtv tonight? Aside from the extremely one-sided view that tried desparately to skew the audience's view that blogs were nothing more than flights of fancy by narcissists, did it really say anything else about blogging that we didn't already know?

No, it didn't.

They brought on the whole parade of bloggers and with very clever editing, made it seem that there really wasn't any real value in blogging, with the guest bloggers ending up looking like complete r*tards. It even had The mediacorp bitch Flying Dutchman as the borrowed voice of authority wagging his finger and admonishing blogs/bloggers by asking very shrewd (skewed) leading questions.

I especially liked when he prompted a prick guest to say that blogs were spaces for self indulgence and that they were perpetrators of misinformation. Word of advice to anyone working in the Singaporean media industry trying to preach about misinformation and the mishandling of facts: Pot, Kettle. Don't even think about it.

Perhaps it is because the Singaporean media industry really feels threatened by the advent of a new medium that forces its minions to start checking its facts before printing its items. Perhaps the industry has been losing revenue because people just aren't interested in their viewpoints anymore and wish to get their information from more credible sources. Maybe it's because the powers that be have seen the potential damage that blogs could cause to their propaganda machine and thus want to impress their stand on an audience that is slipping out of their fingers. Whatever it is, I would like to think that the pathetic attempt has failed.

After all, like the previous two (failed) attempts by Singapore to silence dissent*, blogtv has merely called more attention to the growing multivocality of our information today. No longer are we held captive by the mainstream media in its pro-PAP propaganda. No longer will the alternative voices be bullied into silence. Blogs are maturing (in Singapore, slower, but nonetheless still maturing...) and we are here to stay. We aren't quite articulate yet, but we're learning.

We are legion.

Hear us roar.

*Google the ban on FEER and Mr Brown getting his Today column taken away from him.

And this is our business how exactly?

I opened yesterday's Sunday Times to page 3 and 4 and I was appalled by the 2 page spread on Ronald Susilo and Li Jiawei's relationship, which was "hit[ting] the rocks". The citation by the Straits Times was "Media reports surfaced last week hinting that all is not well between Indonesian-born Susilo and China-born Li." Of course, being one of the two media conglomerates in Singapore that would POSSIBLY care about this, this would mean that the Straits Times was citing itself. (Anyone else see a problem with that?)

Aside from the excellent reporting (which takes not so much a page as in the whole volume [with cliff notes] from The New Paper) one also wonders this: How is a private relationship between two people (albeit sports stars) any of the business of the Straits Times and any of its readers? And why should it warrant 3rd and 4th page billing?

I mean are we so starved for news that Ronald and Jiawei warrant such a long (badly written) article that is based on heresay hearsay and whatnot? Couldn't the Straits Times have crammed in two more car advertisements? And if they couldn't hold back the diarrhea of bad reporting, then couldn't they have pushed it behind "Guilty! - the sentencing of the Singaporean that killed his friend's wife" or "North Korea wants to escalate crisis"? I mean, one's a matter of national importance only if there's a mass suicide if Susilo and Jiawei break up and the other's just about some country that wants to blow the world to hell in a handbasket. I wonder which one people should care about...And I wonder which one they really care about.

Because it's obvious that The Straits Times stopped distinguishing between the two a loooong time ago.

Taking a page from the book of the Singapore story.

Funny that the largest superpower in the world today has actually picked up some tips from the PAP in Singapore.

Funny that the US should ride us for being restrictive in our freedoms when they sign this into law.

Funny.

But no one's laughing.

The world is one heck of a scary place.

And a shout out to my man, Rook...

...Who took home top prize in the Mangaka 06 competition.

Congratulations dude. I knew you could do it.

When you know that you're doomed to Geekdom.

When you actually understand this sentence:

"I'm logged onto an MMORPG with people all over the world and getting XP with my party using teamspeak."

And you're definitely doomed when you know where it's from...(and you downloaded the episode only because it featured The World Of Warcraft)

And you're absolutely condemned when you realise that the sentence doesn't actually make as much sense as it should.

Check.
Check.
Check.

I'm just going to hardwire my brain to my computer now.

Be a mehn...To the right ting.

There's something about a southern accent that puts me off some christian speakers. It's a little too much like televangelism that really rubs me the wrong way. Add to that the fact that the speaker in question also slips into a Hongkong accent that reminds me of a Russell Peters clip and I really want to strangle said speaker.

And on other unrelated news: Does anyone else think that the reason the PSI went down was because 4 million Singaporeans turned on their air purifiers?

Sue them all...

So, what're the odds of a civil action lawsuit against Indonesia for the haze that they're sending down our way? If not for anything else, then perhaps each Singaporean can use the money for the medical bills that come our way. (BTW, sneezing fit for most of the day? Not fun!)

Either that or we'll sue just so that we can get one giant air purifier to place in the padang. Can then avoid the massive haze problems and smell lemony fresh at the same time. :)

The Finer Side.

So, anyone else thinks that The Finer Side is only screened so that in the event of the inevitable revolution, the Proletariat will know who to behead?

Anyone sharpening their scythes? (Especially for the guy that was featured in this weeks episode...who Ondine and I have labelled "The Prat")

Killing fields.

So apparently, they've been sending kids to Iraq who think that killing is cool. What was most disturbing was the fact that he'd said to someone that killing wasn't really like what it was in the videogames. That it wasn't pretty.

It's disconcerting that there are still people who seem to blur the lines between the virtual and reality. Which makes you wonder, is that why school shootings are becoming an annual affair in the US? Because people can't tell the difference?

Because I haven't quite seen crazed computer game psychos (and there are a lot of them, trust me) go to school on World of Warcraft inspired killing sprees yet. But perhaps it's only a matter of time.

Wise man say...

...He who eat hot wings will defecate in pain the next day.

Sunset grill has added to its lineup of hot wings. From the traditional 3 levels of hotness (the third of which I ate with much sweating, cussing and the dousing of the fires with the pitiful mugs of water), they have expanded it to 11 levels. It culminates at the chef's challenge which goes for $50 a pop for a dozen wings. I suspect that that entails your head melting off ala Raiders of the Lost Ark. Anyone game for a challenge? I'll stand by with a camera. :)

This is how you apologise...

...Without actually doing so.

MINISTER Mentor Lee Kuan Yew has apologised to Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi for causing him considerable discomfort over his remarks about Malaysia's race relations.

In a letter to Datuk Seri Abdullah, made public here last night, Mr Lee wrote: 'I am sorry that what I said has caused you a great deal of discomfort. After a decade of troubled relations with your predecessor, it is the last thing I wanted.'

Amazingly enough, he's effectively said "sorry you couldn't take the remarks I made" and ignored that it really wasn't his place to comment on the issue to begin with. He's saying: I'm right, you're just too sensitive to handle the truth. It's quite an insult really.

Nice to know that the old man hasn't gone soft in his old age.

Censorship in the media.

On the one hand, you've got the ridiculously sensationalized stories that pass off as news. On the other hand, you've got magazines being banned because something that they print rankles the administration.

One wonders how far the rabbit hole goes. How many skeletons are kept in closets that a government should go to such extremes to shut people up.

Unfortunately for the PAP, the louder the protests, the more people hear. And I don't think that people like what they are hearing. It's pretty much like the French teacher who made some comments regarding Muslims being violent and the subsequent death threats that followed. Seriously? Isn't that just proving something? Wouldn't your cause be better served by ignoring said remarks so that it doesn't hold any water?

After all, we are all too familiar with the litigious actions of our government (despite their insistence that Singapore remain free from these flighty lawsuits) and are unlikely to make any comments that might slur their holy names. So what's the damage of these words being in print in Singapore? Would anyone but the daring step up and speak against the PAP? Would they not be struck down by lightning from on high? Or perhaps Olympus is really a facade and to quote my Lit teacher from Sec 4, "the rottenness lies behind the facade".

There are hidden things happening in the wings, friends. the problem with hidden things however is that they tend to surface.

These are interesting times ahead.

Mooncake equation.

Late nights + clams + mooncakes + friends = Nice way to spend an evening.

Especially when mooncakes are of the gourmet variety which include Oreo Mooncakes.

Yummy.