It's my grandpa's 77th birthday celebration last nite. We've booked 8 tables at a restaurant. We went there, catch ups with some relatives and there's a ktv room where we can sing to some slightly outdated songs.

Had a chat with grandpa. He always like to ask me to continue studying, saying it's the 1 legacy that I get to keep forever. The money that my dad can leave me, pp can snatch/rob. The degree stays with me forever. Which is quite true.

But I've have the luck to work in this company that overlook the fact that I am onli a diploma holder and recognise tat I got exemplary skills in my work. :P And I also believe that the one making the most money is not the most highly qualified person, but the person with the most number of highly qualified person working for him. Of course I did not tell grandpa that. I am very respectful of him 1. :)

This is it. more than 1 week ago, I sent an email to my web host tech support to enquire about setting up Ruby on Rails. The idiots until now still no reply to me. I quite like this host, gimme more bandwidth then i need. And most features have. And cheap. But 1+ week and still no reply to my email is terrible. Anyway, I already moved my DNS host away. So now I just have to find a new host.

Grr. Guess thats an excuse for not going ofc today...

Think gotta go ofc later. sianz. Gonna start new project on monday, but old project still got things to do... a few btis and pieces to pick up. :(

Watched some movies in the ofc using the projector last nite. quite coolz. the bad part is that i no eat dinner and no 1 is interested in supper except for sharon. we went je centralto look makan onli to find tat all the 24 hr kopi tiam all closed!! grrr! in the end went to the 1 under her hse then got. Walk until hungry.

Went with Yongsing and Hanwen to get a stroller and a car seat for Yongsing's newborn daughter yesterday. Learnt a fair bit about getting them. :P

There are not so many kinds of car seats. Basically it’s just car seats for what ages. 0-4 yrs, 0-8 yrs, 1-8 yrs, etc. You just have to consider your budget and the age of your baby.

There are so many kinds of strollers. First condition you have to think about is the age of your baby. Newborns required the stroller to recline. Then there is the size of the wheels. The bigger it is, the more maneuverable when u reach curbs or steps. There are 3 wheels type and 4 wheels type. And there are those that come with a car seat for babies 0-1 yrs as a package. The car seat can be used at home for the baby to sleep. Then you can carry it out with the baby sleeping in it to the car and mount it in. When you reach your destination, you can take the stroller out from the boot and fix the car seat into the stroller without disturbing at all. And saves you the trouble of buckling and unbuckling the baby.

I thought the 3-wheeled-stroller looks cool and spotty. It’s meant for use while the parent is jogging. But as what Yongsing said, it’s like getting a sports car. It’s more expensive and you don’t really get use it properly. It’s mostly for looking nice.

Then we found a practical reason for it. There’s this range of car seats called Maxi Cosi car seats. It’s for babies aged 0-1.5 yrs. Longer than the ones that comes with certain strollers as a package. And it can be mounted on to the three-wheeled-strollers. This makes it pretty convenient, just like the packaged strollers and car seats. I thought it’s pretty cool. The downside is that the stroller is quite big and heavier than the other strollers. But it is sturdier. And since the Maxi Cosi car seat is for babies aged 0-1.5 yrs, Yongsing will have to get another one when she’s older. But by then, she would have a birthday and hopefully got 1 car seat as a present. :P Either that or baby number is coming / on the way, and he’ll need 2 car seats anyway. :P

So we bought that for Yongsing. Alas. When he brought it home, his wife complained that it’s too big and heavy for her to handle. L Let’s hope the shop let us change it with another model. But I doubt it. They removed it from its nicely packed form and we have pushed the stroller some distance from the shop to his car, meaning the tires are dirty. They may have problem selling it again if they exchange it for us. We shall see…

Just read Xiaxue. I thought this is a good article, abit zuai, but confident and valid points. Who are you to teach XX how to blog. :P

If you have not noticed, I have been using the mobile feature of flickr. I have been sending emails from my phone to here a few times already.

Anyway, there's 2 ways to send emails from phone, via MMS or GPRS. Since I predict emails sent from my phone are going to increase, I do some research on how to cut cost on emails. I only research M1 because my mobile number is from M1. I have another mobile number from Starhub, but the phone does not have a camera feature. I may just research about it at a later time and switch the phones if necessary.

For MMS, the cost is $0.30 if it's below 30kb in size, $0.80 otherwise. Since the picture that I look with my phone is 100kb each, it's $0.80 per email. I have been using this, since I got problems with GPRS email sending settings on my phone.

M1 have this MMS Saver, which charges u $2 for $6 worth of MMS, which is 7.5 MMS, and MMS Super-Saver, which charges u $5 for $18 worth of MMS, which is 22.5 MMS.

For GPRS, the normal cost is $0.10 per 10KB, which is about $1.10 per email, more expensive than MMS. They have Sun Surf Mobile 10. It let u transfer 5mb, which is about 45.4 emails, and only half the price for subsequent transfers. This bundle deal is better than the MMS bundle due to the large amount of free transfers.

There's another Sun Surf Mobile 50 which is too high up there for me to consider. $50 for 20mb, about 182 emails and only 1/3 the price for subsequent transfers.

In the end, I chose MMS saver. 7 MMS a month is fine for me I guess. I also managed to configure my GPRS email sending with help from here so that I can chose to send via GPRS if I feel like it...

I slept thru my alarm this morning. I am supposed to wake up at 6:50am, to get ready for booking badminton courts at 7am.

Speaking of booking of badminton courts, Singapore Sports Council had a very stupid rule for it's booking system. The booking is open at 7am every Tuesday for the whole week starting from the following Wedesday, which is the next day, until the following Tuesday. This means that every mother son who wanted to book the courts during peak hours, especially during evening time tight after pp knock off work, will be logging in at this time. Imagine the traffic. It's crawling. They putting a unnecessary load on their server, and it can absolutely be avoided.

Maybe it's on purpose. So that their staff can access it easieer using another server. This statement is purely a wild guess. Please do not quote me on this.

Anyway, I overslept, but luckily ys managed to get the courts. He's a good chap. I had been waking up before 7am every Tuesday for the past 1 and 1/2 yrs. He has been doing this for years. And he has not been playing for the past yr cos his wife got pregnant. She gave birth to a cute girl last month. But he still wake up a wee hours every week and pay for the courts that he don't even play. Thanx ys.

Farewell lunch for Jon, originally uploaded by StupidGenius.

Good bye and good luck Jon!

Farewell lunch for Jon, originally uploaded by StupidGenius.

Good bye and good luck Jon!

Read from Finicky Feline that there's a Tsunami alert in Phuket. She's supposed to go there this Thursday but her parents wanted her to cancel it. Apparently, it's over now. And nobody was injured or killed.
Phuket Gazette

Which brings me to this question, I am going to Phuket during the last weekend of September. Will there be any problem? How do I know if there's any warning or what not??

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to Sang Wee
Happy Birthday to you

*clap* *clap* *clap* *clap*

Today is grandma's 100 day death anniversary. My sis and aunt came back to offer some joss sticks and we have a sumptious dinner. Tomorrow onwards I can finally wear apparels with color red on it.

Mom said that the more bright color, the more red that we wear, grandma will be made to suffer the more in hell. Oh gee. The things that parents of ancient times said to make their kids to follow a custom. What do wearing of colors gotta do with the punishment one have to suffer in hell, assuming one will be made to suffer in hell after death?

Speaking of apparels with the colour red. My track shoe, the army Brooks shoe, have red linings. But thats the only pair of track shoe that I have, so it's too bad. And my t-shirts, I have alotta white or black t-shirts. But most of them have a tad of red on it, a red dot in the logo, a red slash to in the design, etc. I was restricted to only about 5 t-shirts to wear in these 100 days. I dun really care abt this rule, but mum was adamant about it. Finally it's the end now. :)

I've added the links of blogs i read frequently to the side bar. I hope i no offend anyone...

Live: NDP rehearsal, originally uploaded by StupidGenius.

I was coming out of city hall mrt wanting to cross the road to Capitol but can't cos they were talking a walk down the road.

Think I am abit addicted to blogging.

I think my blog is ugly, so I wanna go buy a new design.

I think ruby on rails is cool. and I wanna install typo, which is built with ruby on rails. But my webhost do not have ruby on rails, and I dun have the access to install it. So I have to either somehow convince them to give me the access or move to a mroe expensive web host that supports it.

My normal hits per day is about 4.

Anyway, to anyone who are reading my blog, pls use the url http://blog.stupidgenius.org/ rather than http://stupid-genius.blogspot.com because I may move away from blogspot. Likewise, my blog feed shld be http://feeds.feedburner.com/StupidGenius instead of http://stupid-genius.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

Thanx for ur support.

At chinatown kster with ecq pp

What prices fame? It would looks to be freedom to me. As wat Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker, With great power, comes great responsibility. When you have lotsa eyes looking at you, especially if some of those eyes belongs to kids or teenagers who look up to u as role models, you have to set a good example. To a blogger, I think this sucks.

No, I am not a famed blogger. My normal hit count is 4 hits a day. But I have been following the Kenny Sia and SPG incident with interest. It's not really my problem, but I was present when Kenny and SPG took a topless picture together. And like what most men would feel if put in my position, I envy Kenny. It's not everyday that you get to take a topless picture with a well-known persona. I think it's brave of SPG. Not because she showed her boobs. But she dared to do something that is not acceptable to the social norm, which is showing her boobs. There's a difference in my above 2 statements, if you wanna diss me for talking cock, maybe you should ponder on the difference before doing so. I've always admired her for that. She has a clear idea of how she wants her life to be and she's sticking to it regardless of what other pp thinks abt it, except for her loved ones. Human are such conformist creatures. They always feels the need to be accepted by the society. Kudos to her for sticking to what she beleived in. It's a pity her idea of having fun in life revolves around sex and sex only. I may be wrong abt this, if I am, I apologise. I thought it's bad to obsessive abt anything. There should be a balance in life.

I have digress too much. Back to the Kenny problem. After the incident, he posted an entry in his blog describing it. I thought it's quite funny. And it's really something that happened to it, and it's his blog after all. But alotta pp have other ideas. They started slamming Kenny for doing it. They say they lost their respect in him. That he shld not do this kinda thing. Some even bringing his gf and parents into the picture saying he has brought them shame and hurt them. This so so totally wrong. It's his blog and last I check, it means web log. And not magazine or newspaper. He's logging abt something that has happened to him. What right do pp have to criticise him for it. Some say his actions are deplorable. He took a topless picture with another woman in a room where there's less than 20 pp around and where there's definitely no kids within any line of sight. Looking at the comments in the article, you would have thought he's married but he made love to a prostitute in public. People in self proclaimed morale high ground seems to think they are superior and like to kick at those in lower grounds. For gdness sake, just because someone do not share ur values do not make them any less of a human being. You should just get on with your life and let them get on with theirs.

Sometimes I think it's also due to pp feeling they are part of the blog since they read it regularly. They feels they owns it. So if anything happens thats contrary to wat they believe in, they whacked the author. You want him to be funny and creative and set you are setting markers everywhere. You have such a lousy sense of humour. You want pp to come up with good works, you have to give them the authority to do what they want. And accept those that are deemed not acceptable. It's part of the parcel. If you can't accept it, either you change or you leave. It's similar to raising a child. You want the child to grow up to be a perfect person. So you scold him whenever he does something u do not agree with. Do you think the child will grow up to be a gd leader? No. He will only be a puppet as he's used to taking instructions from you. He won't know how to think for himself.

Why is it humans reproduced by giving birth and not by cloning. It's because nature wants every human to be different. So when pp are different, it's a work of nature and accept the person for who he is, not for who he is not.

Again, I digress too much. Anyway, Kenny got alotta flames, and he decides to take out the offending picture from the post. It's still not enough. So he took out the whole post and replace it with something alot less controversial. His right hand is itchy and he used the index finger of his left hand to scratch it and it's not itchy anymore. Thats a superb post man. Real funny. I had a good laugh from it. Few days later, he do even better. He posted another article that looks strikingly similar to the SPG post that he removed and replaced Sarong with Saddam. This guy is a genius. He can be funny and yet taking a dig at his detractors. My hats off to you, Kenny. Just this morning, Kenny posted an apology to the pp he let down by posting the original SPG post. This guy has really been to a lot. He has felt the weight of his great power. He felt stifled cause he can't write what he wants anymore. Even then, I feel there's a thinly veiled sarcasm aimed at his detractors. This guy is a genius at being funny. I hope he manages to find a place for himself in the blogging world which is closest to what he wants to be.

To all those who are quick to judge and condemn pp, pls try to repect that sometimes pp are different. Respect that and you may find that the end result is better than if you are being uptight abt it.

Went to see The Island just now. It's actually quite good. Ewan Mcgregor is fantastic. I've seen 5 movies of his. Moulin Rouge, 3 x Star Wars and this. They were all good movies. And Scarlett Johansson is HOT. Woo.

Anyway, other than the cast, the story and the filming is quite nice too. Exciting and visually stimilating. I shan't be a spoiler and reveal the content here, but this is a movie where a spoiler would not spoil the movie too much though.

Catch it if you can. It's nice. :)

I was having my dinner at the Kopi Tiam food court at Youth Park at abt 8pm. You know, the newly opened, or so I thought, opposite Cineleisure, that Kopi Tiam.

Anyway, I was having my dinner when a bunch of fellas wearing office wear came. I looked up and saw 1 of the woman, and thought she looked like Anita Yuen. At that moment she turned, saw me and smile sweetly at me like she know me very well, so I smile back. I know I did not stare at her. I barely looked up from my dinner when she smiled at me. I dun think I know her, can't rem her at all except that I thought she looked like Anita. And she did not even bother walking over to talk to me so she prob duno me. And I am no celebrity.

So why did she smile at me? My answer is that she is really Anita. She is jus being frenly to a fan. She's Anita and she thought I am a fan. I told my fren. She looked at the woman and say she's quite sure she's not Anita. So I duno. Her complexion does not look like it's a actress's complexion though...

This morning at about 4am, Xiaxue found her blog and gmail acct hacked and all entries and emails deleted. This is a very evil and despicable thing to do. I can still understand it if it's just to deface her blog, not that it's ok, but deleting all emails and blog is really really too much. If anyone have any means to help her, pls try to help her.

---

Dear readers of xiaxue.blogspot.com,

Yes, indeed, my blog has been hacked. I understand some of you might be sending emails to me right now, alerting me, and the thought warms my heart (which is very startlingly cold right now mind you).

Unfortunately, the hacker is quite clever. He also managed to guess the password to my gmail account. My 3,000 emails, some of which very important business contacts, are all gone.

*snap!* Gone.

The last time I saw my account, I saw two new emails, and these were the only two. I thought Gmail cocked up on me. I laughed, refreshed, and hey, I got logged out! To my horror I couldn't log in anymore. Can you imagine the amount of time he or she took to delete everything?

Checking blogger.... GONE TOO!

How wonderful. A total of 12 or so blogs, all painstakingly done up, all gone. The media center, the FAQs, the photolog, the Hate site. My hard work of 3 years, gone.

Vanished into thin air now! How very cruel this person is. I wonder what made him or her do this.

I remember I once told Adrian, "You know what is my greatest fear?" "What?" he mumbled (not because he wanted to mumble but because he only grunts and mumbles).

It was that someone would hack into my blogger account.

Adrian laughed and said, "Then did you save all your blog files?"

I told him no. He scolded me and said, "Then you better go and save them now!"

And I did! The latest, however, was the May archives. So if you do have ways to get back the June and July archives, or you saved them even, do tell me! I never thought I would ever be thanking this person, but... xialanbin.blogspot.com did put in some work in copying my files afterall. The URL for my archives are there.

It will be hard work doing up all the old blog entries again. It will take a lot of time and sweat, but I can do it.

Because being Xiaxue means nothing can get me down, ever. Especially when so many of you are with me. Thank you Shuyin, for waking up at 430am to help me.

I started out with nothing, and I can do it all over again. I will stop those bloody tears right this moment.

Help me spread the word. Help me put this message on your blog. Do not email me at xiaxue@gmail.com from now until I get back my account. If you want a word, please email me at wendycheng@gmail.com.

Thank you.

The real Wendy
[Because this email can be authenticated by my friends Shuyin, Wanyi, Mrbrown, Mr Miyagi and Kenny Sia.]

melody: download here

I wrote this song some time back. Both the lyrics and the melody. I had always wanted to record this into a proper cd but lacked the facilities. I've even engaged someone who arranges songs for demo tapes to arrange this song for me. A friend had agreed to be my singer. He is a very good singer. So what's left is to find a studio. Think there are a few out there for rent. Anyone knows a cheap studio? :P



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

I love Stat Counter. They collected quite alotta info abt my visitors. For example, the referring link. Ever since I put myself in the bloggers.sg 2005 trackback, I've got alotta visitors from tomorrow.sg. I've got a number of visitors from mrbrown too as I shamelessly put my link in his comments. At that time I duno how to use trackback. There were other interesting referring as well. Kenny Sia's blog on spg (it was deleted few hours after it was put up) have loads and loads of comments, mine is 1 of them, and I've got a few visitors from him too. 12, to be exact. I also got a few from the search engines like yahoo, technorati, etc, searching for kenny sia spg. I mentioned them in my bloggers.sg post. There were also searches in technorati for sassyjan.blogspot.sg, www.mrbrown.com, and Cowboy Caleb that leads to me. I would think that it's the bloggers themselves looking to check and see who linked/mentioned them. Who else would search for a bloggers url...

Other than the bloggers searches, other searches that leads to my blog are "mrs goh peanuts", which leads to my 600k peanuts entry. "Sarsi syrup" turns up my entry on Jerry's and Mich's wedding cos the gers made Jerry drank sarsi syrup, which I documented truthfully. My 2 entries on racism also turned up in 2 technorati searches.

Other than the referring url, the isp of my visitors also turns up interesting fact. I've got visits from mindef, CPF, Ang Mo Kio hospital, ntunet, Ernest and Young, Yale University, Lucent Techonologies, etc.

Other info like screen resolution that my visitors uses, browser, etc is there too.

Sunday Times described this event as a big yawn. I duno what he expecting. That we all have a big orgy in the middle of the pub? Or for mrbrown or Mr Miyagi to shout anti-gahmen chants and the rest of us waving our arms in the air, stamping our feet and echoing their chants? People don't like to be interviewed by him, and it's now a boring event, or so I've heard.

Anyway, I did not see the article, any kind soul willing to show it to me will receive my gratification in the form of a Thank You message.

This conference is quite good for a 1st time, though there's alotta places that can be improved. With the right funding. I've only been to 1 conference kinda event. It's the Sun Tech Days held by Sun regarding the Java programming language. They held seminars over 2 days. Some of them concurrent, so you have to chose which seminar you want to attend. And there's alotta free gifts. The speaker will ask simple questions during his talk, and the correct answer will win the fella some memorabilia.

There's also booths manned by their different partners. And talking to them regarding their products and services will earn us Sun Bucks, which we can use to exchange for gifts at the souvenir counter. I thought this is quite a good idea as now the attendees have a sense of purpose. And it also ensures that the booth will have a steady stream of pp.

And finally, they provide yummy food. And a goody bag at the end of the seminar.

Havind said all these, that seminar is not free. Unlike Bloggers.sg. But, maybe we can learn something about it. If we can have a big enuff turn out, maybe we can convince companies to set up booth in the conference for a fee to us. Hopefully, it's enuff for us to buy items for the souvenir counter. Holding 2 seminars concurrently will mean each seminar will serve a smaller group, and thus, enhance interaction and rapport with speaker.

I understand that what I suggested is a big organiser nitemare. A hell lot of preparation is needed, including looking for sponsors and booth merchants. And someone with good event management skills is needed as well. And a good marketing person to promote the event to get more audience. I probably missed out alotta points, and this is just my 2 cents worth on this topic.

This may not mean much, but I am willing to help out in any way I can, to make the next Bloggers.sg as gd, if not better, event then this year.

I am like some mountain tortise. Cowboy Caleb and Sassy Jan dropped by and gave me a comments each. First time got celebrity come visit, so thrilled. Haha!

Anyway, Cowboy, you dun have to say thanx, man. The pleasure is every bit mine as well. :)

And Sassy, that day, I've got too many pictures and too many names in my head and I am having trouble piecing them together. So I thougth I'll not take the risk of calling the wrong name. And I am shy...

Zhiming is my fren since primary sch. Thats abt 20 yrs ago. Getting old. Damn. Anyway, contact with Zhiming in recent times is quite little. And I am slightly surprised and honoured and proud that he's asking me to be part of his brother gang in his wedding.

Best wishes to you, Zhiming.

Went to Bloggers.sg 2005 yesterday.

Quite a number of pp said that it's boring. And then I read tenebrousi's view on it and thought I agreed whole heartedly.

This is roughly my conversation with mrbrown when I approached him to take a photo together.

me: Hi mr brown.
mb: Hi
me: I am yew mun. I wrote the jilted superion in stupidgenius
mb: Oh. Ok.
me: Shall we take a picture?
mb: Ok.

<click>

me: Thanks
mb turns around and started walking away
me: Oh, by the way,
mb turns back again: Yeah?
me: Few yrs back, long time ago, I took ur phone picture and asked u for it, remember?
mb: Oh ya ya. Wow, tats very long liao.

The end.

I saw a number the hot female bloggers there, but it's like quite prudent to approach them to talk and take pic. Me shy leh. :P And I am quit4e worried abt making a mistake in their identity. Imagine this:

me: Hi Sassy Jan! I like your blog. I think you are cool!
sj: Er... I am Sandralicious.

This will be disastrous.

I reached the place at abt 2. Slightly before it start. The TShirt booth is outside and I got 2 Tshirts. 1 for Jonathan. He can't come and wanted me to help him get 1. Belinda supposed to go with me but she overslept and will only be there at about 4. Choon Kiat thought Embassy is Embargo and went to Fullerton 1. Luckily both are near each other. I saw Jean there as well. She's a helper. Coolz. I volunteered but they did not reply to me. Anyway, it started with mb annoucing the event and started introducing a few blogs and blog groups and then it's the refreshment.

I thought the snacks are quite lousy. After eating, I go to ask mb for a picture (see above). And then I took another pic with Kenny Sia. And off I went to print the photos. And Belinda came. And Choon Kiat announced he has to go for family dinner. After that it's the law session. Some of it was quite interesting, but the volume can be quite soft. And I had abt 4 hrs sleep the last nite, so unfortunately I dozed off during 1 part...

After the law session, it's the technology session. Flickr looks cool. So is RSS. I have just subscribed to blog lines. Word Press and Typepad looks interesting too. Maybe I'll change to them 1 of these days... Oh, and Adri is hot. :P She said she used to pay US$6 per month for her web host. But now she needa pay US$100 to maintain the site which she isn't going to, so her blog is down indefinitely. US$100 a mth! That's to pay for a very big bandwidth! Wow!

And finally, it's the belly dancing! They are hot! And pretty!. After the dance, they were available for photo taking. Kenny is the 1st to go. After that is mb and Mr Miyagi. And next is me. I am the 1st non famous blogger to go take pic! :P And I went to print the photos. Thanx Lexmark! :)

Xiaxue walked past me as I was finishing the printing. I asked her to take a picture with me. She agreed, but as I am waiting to take my sd card outta the printer, she say she'll come back in awhile, which she never did... Fly me aeroplane...

Bel and I went for dinner after that. mb annouced that there's free flow of house pours until 9:30pm. We came back at 8:30pm. I managed to drink 4 glasses of Bourbon Coke. They were quite big glasses and quite potent mix. I like it! Bel had 2 glasses of Vodka Ribena, and I kept 1 glass of Vodka Ribena for Choon Kiat. The popular bloggers were in this room having a chat. It makes it a tad harder to try to join in. Me and Bel were sitting outside.

One interesting thing that happened is that I saw Kenny unbuttoning his shirt for a picture. I was wondering why is he doing that when I look to his right and saw SPG's boobs hanging out ready for the pic! Wow! Now I can say I see her boobs for real! Hee hee.

I thought I enjoyed this event somewhat. Though it will be better if there is more interaction with the other bloggers. But me shy... I hope there will be more of such events that I can join. Maybe I shld make my way to Hideout sometime...

I shan't post the pictures here. But you can see them here. Belly Dancers included. :)

Update: More updates

I watched this movie last week. Oh my, alotta blogs to catch up on... :P

Anyway, the movie is nice enuff. Nice drift shots. Jay Chou and Edison did ok. Anthony Wong is fantastic. But they changed the characters quite considerably. I wanted to list them here and realise it's a really long list and decide not to do it after all... :P

Recently there were alotta posts on the NKF saga. So I shall attempt to jump in the bandwagon. Few years back, somebody accused the NKF CEO of travelling first class and having gold plated taps in his office. They were sued. I am not sure of the details, but they lost and they made a public apology and paid some conpensation. Then some ST reporters reported on the travelling first class and the gold plated taps, they were sued too. But this time, ST got Darvinder Singh, I was told he's MM Lee's lawyer, to defend them. And this time, NKF was screwed big time. It was revealed that the NKF really travelled first class and have gold plated taps. In fact, he have a $600k annual salary, inclusive of a 12 months bonus. Wow!

That's public funds they are using. Our sweat and blood's in it. It's given to help the needy. Not to fund some1's lavish lifestyle. I thought they should be more prudent with it. I am ok with paying gd salaries to their employees. They were learning a living as well. They should be paid what they might be getting if they were to work to a similar capacity in another company. But isn't $600k annual salary and 12 months bonus abit excessive? Those money could have been used to help alotta other pp.

And to top it off, our dear SM Goh's wife, Mrs Goh, made a stupid comment about paying $600k to a CEO who manages a fund of millions to be peanuts. I shan't argue abt the validity of the statement. But at a time when pp were angry with it, this statment is not going to help anything. It is only going to make her look bad. And it did. She redefined the meaning of peanuts. Now, the ah peks drinking beer at the kopi tiams were opping $600k into their mouth together with their beers.

My friend told me he emailed SM Goh about this. He mentioned he found Mrs Goh's comments to be insensitive. He agreed and admitted that she made a mistake. But it's not meant to be a political statement and that she's not a politician, so she's do not have political instincts. I duno. I will have thought that it do not take a politician to know that it's a stupid statement, but at least he's being nice about it.

Recently read some1's blog abt sg. he said tat racism is still very much in singapore. and that cos we last time oppressed by ang moh, so now there's a certain hatred to them.

I think he onli partly rite. it's only oppression tat caused such sentiments to overflow. There are still many pp who think tat ang moh is 1 class above us. It's the jealousy and the frustration against the ang mo that alotta Singaporeans are biased with. If a movie is english, it's worth watching. If it's chinese, it's not worth watching. If a company's ceo is ang mo, it must be a good company. If an ang mo sue a singaporean, he must be rite. If ang mo is gay, it's ok. If a Singaporean is gay, it's disgusting. If an ang mo bared her boobs, she's pretty. If a Singaporean bared hers, she got no morals and her parents did not bring her up properly.

Oh my. I do sound biter against ang mos. But I aren't. I just find it strange to be accused of racism ang mos when i alawys thought it is mroe the other way round. Maybe I am myopic. Some pp were overheard saying pretty derogatroy remoarks in the 1421 exhitbitions. Alotta us refers to caucasians as ang mos, me included. But have we made the lives of them unbearable here? Do any of them feel his life is threatened by racism? I don't know. In my myopic world, it isn't.

He also commented that we have our race printed on the IC. If we are all Singaporeans, why should we be segregated by our race? And why are there places where it's predominantly malay, and places where it's predominantly chinese, malay, etc.

For the 2nd point, I thought there were quotas in the number of pp of each race can stayed in a block and in an estate. ie, a chinese family may not be able to sell their flat to an indian family because there were too many indian families staying in that block or in that estate.

For the 1st point, I read in the comments in that blog that we should celebrate our diversity rather than to assimilate everyone. That I agree wholeheartedly with. Every race have certain characteristic. We should look at how to maximise our own potential in our own arena rather than to make everyone the same. We should be proud of our heritage, be it chinese, malays, indians or ang mos. We may laugh at the other races sometimes, but if it's done with humour, and not malice, then I see no harm in it. We should be able to laugh at ourselves as well.

He also mentioned that at places where alotta pp from all races congregated, you can see the pp of different races forming their own cliques. I feel this due more due to familiarity. We just feel that it's easier to relate to our own race. We do not shun the other races, though we do not actively try to assimilate with them.

Racism in Singapore is not totally eliminated. I do not think it ever will be. Not only in Singapore, in the rest of the world as well. But as long as there's equal opportunities for all, then the most important thing is done, and we can progress as a nation.

Last week, I wrote a post abt how it's been a long time since I last posted something here. I wrote some update abt the events that have happened at that time. But sadly, I think I forgot to click on the submit button or something and that post is now lost. Sigh. Well, I am not going to repeat myself again, so it's too bad I guess...

Last week, I shamelessly posted A Jilted Superion, a picture toy story I've written/made 4 years ago, in http://tomorrow.sg. What ensures is that I've got abt 300+ new visitors over the next 3-4 days. I dun think i've got 30 persons since this blogs started. I was quite excited about the effects tomorrow.sg has done for me.

Anyway, life has now gone back to normal, with abt 2 or 3 visitors a day. Now I have to work on writing new stuffs here. :)

Sometime back, some ang mo criticise some sg blogger for being a racist for calling ang mo ang mos. I may jus be criticised for this entry as well...

Anyway, he pointed out that identifying a race by physical traits is racism. So ang mo, whites, blacks, yellow are all racist terms.

I beg to differ. Skin color is part of us. If my skin color is yellow, and pp call me yellow, it's nothing. Unless they say say it in a derisive tone or they append some insulting words to it. I know there are pp who refer to malays as pigs. Now, that is racism, and that is rude, and that is wrong. Statements like Indians are stingy, chinese are selfish, are racism.

Are pp ashamed of their skin color? If they are not, why do they take offence in pp referring to it?

There are always campaign to stop racism. Unless everyone accepts their own skin color and is able to joke abt it, racism will still be there. Stopping pp from mentioning it not the way.

On the 3rd July, I shamelessly posted my Jilted Superion article in tomorrow.sg. And I got 128 new visitors tat day!! I dun even have 12 visitors before this. :P

i am back

It's really been a long time. And much has happened in this time.

On the personal front, my grandmother died some time in April. She's quite old and has been quite weak for some time, so I guess this is more of a release for her, and I hope she's in bliss now if there's life after death.

On the Singapore front, someone criticised the A Star scholarship system and was threatened with a libel suit. He has since apologised and much has been written about this incident in alotta blogs and I shall refrain from throwing my 2 cents worth in this time.

Recently, SPG, another Singaporean popular blog, was featured in the papers for showing her nipples in her blog. Some criticised her for going against our Asian values. Some even criticised her parents for not bring her up well. Alot defended her, saying her pics were quite artistically taken shld not be taken as porn. And that it's her blog site, she can put what she wants, there were ample signs that her blog is not of the squeaky clean kind, the reader shld refrain from visiting the site if he find such content offensive. Again, much has been said about this, so I am gong to restrain myself again. I'll jus say this, It's her blog, if she has done something not agreeable to u pp wearing the moral high hats, pls get life and not force ur values on others. I am not her fan, but i find her pic quite well taken. And I admire her courage in doing what she believes in and not follow social norms blindly.

And lastly in the Singapore front, the Singapore bloggers conference, aka bloggers.sg 2005 is around the corner. They even have a Tshirt printed. I shld be attending.

Now for the global front. Liverpool have won the Euro Champions Cup! This the 5th Champs Cup. We are the Kings of Europe! HaHa!

Star Wars ep 3 has released as well. This ep is quite well done. Pity this is the last Star Wars movie...

Ok. Thats the update so far. Hopefully my next entry won't take as long. :P
Btw, I posted , I hope it will be approved. This started from taking pics of my colleagues' toys and my toys in various pose. Somehow managed to string them into a story. :) Hope it's enjoyable to all who read. :)

Rgds