Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up

How awesome is that?! Who'd would have thought Rick Astley would actually sound quite alright doing grunge. Nirvana may not like the idea very much. Thank goodness for Youtube and the creativity of free people.

Other popular mashups you may have heard or heard of, Every Car You Chase



Lo and behold, there's a mashup chart. Awesome.

Revised iPhone Price To Value Ratios

Hello folks. I have to apologize as I got the ratios a little wrong. I had multiplied by an extra factor of 100. Here's the thing, I decided to keep the extra x100 because it made the numbers more palatable.

And I have also put the Singtel iPhone plans versus phone capacity PTV ratios neatly in Table 1.

Additionally, I put have calculated the ratios for non-iPhone plans with Broadband On Mobile additions in Table 2. These do not take into consideration the discount and are also based on 24-month subscriptions. Enjoy.

What's noteworthy that a Singtel customer on an ordinary iTwo Value plan taking on a BBOM New Platinum plan with a 16gb iPhone can better the most expensive iFlexi premium plan PTV, 0.218 vs 0.228.

To iPhone Or Not To iPhone

So the latest Apple toy has hit town. Branding my initials, the iPhone 3GS has taunted and tempted me for quite a while now. I have friends who are true Appletons and constantly are whispering words of temptations into my unbelieving ears. "Of course, it's the best" "It's not a phone, it's a computer" "See how easy it is to use" "See how cool this app is" "Blah blah"

A few days ago Singtel, the only provider of the great i in Singapore, announced prices and I quickly calculated that it'll be a minimum spend of $1334 and a maximum spend of $4920 over 2 years, adding price plans and initial cost of acquisition. I posted that on Twitter and Facebook, and lo and behold, comments poured in. I was suprised at the urgent reaction. In the end, it became more about additional cost of getting the iPhone versus what one was using and paying for now (There are more mobile phones than people in SG).


I thought about this for a little while longer after screencapping and posting the graph - how do I assess value of a mobile plan. I thought of ratios and products. If a plan had 100 free mins, 500 free SMSes and 1GB of data, then the min-SMS-data product would be a good indicator of value, 50000 in this case.

If the plan cost $10 or 1000 cents a month for 24 months with the initial cost of the purchase set at $100 or 10000 cents, the total cost would be 34000 cents. The ratio of price to value (PTV) then would be 34000/50000 = 0.68 (I decided on cents because it'll kill off more zeros in the division). So the smaller the number, the more value for $ the plan would be.

With this logic, the new Iphone plans for the 8GB model would give the following ratios:
- iFlexi Lite - 5.3360
- iFlexi Value - 1.4820
- iFlexi Plus - 0.4560
- iFlexi Premium - 0.0729

Clearly the highest end plan for a huge $205 monthly outlay has the most value but who really, who needs 1500 free mins and 1500 free SMSes? The ratios for Plus and Premium are also lower because the 8GB iPhone comes free with those plans.

My current MIO plan has no free data roped in and I pay $48.15 monthly. But if I added on a 1GB/mth Broadband on Mobile (BBOM) data plan for $19.90 (same amount of data for iFlexi Value) and got the 8GB model at $198, the PTV ratio becomes 1.5408, close to the 1.4820 for the iFlexi plan.

If one could get the iPhone at iFlexi plan and add on the 1GB BBOM plan, the PTV ratio is 2.4443 - already better value than the orginal plan.

Well if the maths doesn't get you, I know some people who are getting it because it's pretty. And now has a compass for fengshui.

Time to commit? Perhaps. My N73 is showing signs of crossing over to the mobile phone junkyard in the sky.

What Is North Korea Up To?

I know most of you might be thinking why on earth would anyone should be concerned about the commie Kims up north when they are blissfully close to the equator.

Simple reason. Their missiles can go far now. Like North Korea to Singapore, easy. That's just 5,000km. Their big guns fire till 8,000km. Yikes.

It's also been reported that they got their missiles firing more accurately now. Like 5 out 7 landed in the same-ish spot in the sea off Japan the last time around they decided to test the pointy buggers. Scuds they were, like the ones Iraq used when Saddam was around. Those went all over the place. These don't. Maybe they've got GPS on. So getting all the bombs going to the same place might mean they could wipe out Seoul quickly enough. Given that Seoul is just a wee bit south of the border and gleams at night while Pyongyang hardly makes a flicker.

More bad news is that they aren't too keen on stopping their nuclear programme. And no one really knows what they are doing. So they've got accuracy, distance and power. Triple threat.

Hungry dogs will eat anything. Given the nasty propaganda about the world being against the Kim regime and all North Koreans, and how we've held back on food to punish them for their ideals, it isn't too difficult to see why they'd like to fight anyone. So psychologically, the ordinary North Korean is ready to die for the Leader for a bowl of rice and to bring glory for their glorious nation.

Here's what makes things ever worse. They seem to be looking for a fight. Like when two drunk guys in a bar are waiting for the each other to pull the first punch. Who's eager for a fight, baby?! Mr Kim (which ever is in power) is boasting and bragging and testing the damn warheads, making everyone else sweat. Well, like a friend said once,. the first person to get angry is the loser, this waiting game may play out very badly very quickly.

Check out the North Korea govt website

I did a WHOIS on the North Korea govt site and guess what, a Spanish guy owns the domain name to the site for the North Korean govt

Registrant Contact:
Alejandro Cao de Benos de Les y Perez
Government of the DPR of Korea
korea@korea-dpr.com
Av. President Companys, 5-7
Torredembarra TARRAGONA
43830 ES
Telf: +34.616400420

Interesting.

Independence

Got this shot on the 4 July somewhere in Little India on a old block of apartments near Mustafa. How slightly apt for America. Way too much sun though.

A Thorny Issue

We set ourselves up for a feast on Friday night and it got disappointing. The two big durians had tasteless fruit. Bleh. Someone commented that 'if water wanted to be durian, it'd be this durian'. A few of us went down to the shop nearby to buy more and complain about the big bad ones, but they had run out. 1030pm on a Friday, no more durians. We even thought of going to Geylang for a sit down gorging of the good stuff but we decided against it. Not a satisfactory event. We need to get it done right. More durians this week!

Michael Jackson Should Have Had Tougher Friends

Fame. Once you got it, it clings in varying doses. More commonly, it follows a simple 1/x curve, dwindling over time until something new and exciting happens, worthy of media attention, whether warranted or not is another question. That's what happened with Michael Jackson.

We loved him when he had big songs on the charts. My favourite is still Billie Jean (why hasn't anyone set up the one step light up dance floor anywhere?). Coming in close by are Off The Wall and Smooth Criminal. Yes, early Michael, before the pointy nose and Diana Ross-ish hair. Black Michael.

When we got news about his weird ways, many labelled him a freak. More fame, the wring kind. It was easy because we don't want to understand why he'd do such things and we love to talk about famous people. From Bubbles the chimp, the oxygen chamber, Neverland Ranch, whether he and Janet were the same person, the child molestation stories, MJ and Elizabeth Taylor, Brook Shields, Macaulay Culkin and Uri Geller, the burnt hair incident, the skin disease, the two marriages, the three kids hidden behind scarves, how he's broke (How did that happen anyway?). The list could go on longer easily. It was fun to wonder what the real Michael was about. No one knew. We don't even know if he told anyone how he felt really.

I remember he hired this Malaysian chef to make nasi lemak for him, once a week, at a salary of US$10K a month. Or so we heard.

Now suddenly we are all keen, again. Playing his songs, sending them up the charts (6 MJ songs debuted on the UK charts in the week following his death, Man In The Mirror coming in at number 11), asking how and why he died. Famous again.

I stopped being as keen about MJ after the Dangerous album came about. His music got less impressive though his slower songs were becoming poignant. The stories though got more interesting.

His life seemed all topsy turvy these past 10-15 years. I think he needed friends, some stronger ones to tell him to wake up his ideas. I think he should have been less paranoid about his face and looks. He should have been more concerned about where his money was going. It seems his celebrity friends were simply dragging him along their Hollywood journies and being chums. He had all these people around him that sort of knew he wasn't doing too well and somehow had little positive effect on him. What's the point?

They say he's worth more dead than alive. What a horrible truth. There'll be people who'll want to milk this for all its worth. Getting that fame any way they can. We saw some bodyguard with info about his past being interviewed on E! entertainment. Wonder what he got out of it?

Now his kids are being fought over. I'm pissed with Debbie Rowe. She took millions to not have custody and now that MJ's will leaves them to his mum and Diana Ross, she's wants to have her day in court. Goodness, she took money to leave her kids! She, what, regrets now? I hope the kids will be fine.

Let's all remember him for all the great music he brought us. That's the way I will.

Thank you Michael Joseph Jackson.

One Wood To Another

Yes. it's been a while since I blogged.

Admittedly, I have been lazy. Also the weekends have been somewhat busy or in other cases quite the opposite. Additionally, since the move I've lost my good old broadband and now rely on an M1 USB mobile broadband thingy that isn't as quick. I have been stealing Wifi on and off from someone in my new block of residence.

Have I talked about the move? I don''t believe I have. It's kinda complicated as this is a temporary measure to placate the HDB and CPF. So for 2 more months, we'll be in another part of Woodlands. Woodlands to Woodlands. (I was actually looking forward to a new albeit temporary neighbourhood). By end August, it'll be Hougang that I'll call home.

This current abode was a hasty decision. Not many short term, whole house, HDB rentals in the market, so my sis decided to agree to the place despite it being a little dodgy and messed up. We went two weeks earlier to properly clean the place up with lots of bleach, Dettol and copiously sprayed torrents of water. The owner's looking to sell the place and I think we did him a favour.

I'm also looking for place to buy - I'm am turning the HDB approved big 3-5 this year and will be able to fork out my life savings and CPF to invest in a tiny space to call my own. We'll see.

Time to knock off work. Will blog more later :) There's many things to talk about eh. MJ for one.