A Problem With Sengkang

I recently moved to Sengkang. It was a choice determined by proximity to my nephew (for the weekday delivery of the little monster for my mum to look after with the rotan nearby), availability of a flat within a reasonable walking distance to the MRT (I hate taking feeder buses), how broke I'd be when I sold my soul to HDB, COV, HSBC and other acroymns you read about when people talk about flats, plus other factors.

Having been here a month and a half, I made some conclusions about why Sengkang sucks, or could suck for some.

Urban planners had put on their Utopia hat on when thinking about the transportation scheme here. They imagined brainwashed heartlanders walking in file to LRT stations, pleasantly smiling and hardly distressed by small platforms and closeness with each other, all fillng up small compact metal boxes headng towards the nexus of Sengkang, the all-hallowed MRT/Bus interchange, the heart of this suburb. But all this of course, doesn't quite pan out in real life. All these peak-hour people stuff themselves into small lego-land trains and fall out at the hub to get into bigger moving boxes. Thank God that it's just the Punggolians/Punggolites/Punggolers that board the NE trains down to the city before us Sengkangers/Sengkangites/Sengkangolians enter. So yes things are a little crowded.

The LRT system itself is kinda screwy. From the hub, the trains apparently can venture off in 2 directions in 2 loops around the estate and passengers have to board this confusion at one of two platforms. So there's a 1/8 chance of picking the optimal train. I use the term "apparently" because I can't sometimes figure the signage out. I pity the tourists.

Why couldn't they split the hub role? Sengkangers/Sengkangites/Sengkangolians don't always want to end up at one place. Why put the stress of populace and sweaty bodies in one place? It would have been smarter to spread the LRT network between Buangkok (Yes, the urban planners and SBS Transit of 'white elephant' fame forgot that Buangkok has people and it's also part of Sengkang) and Sengkang. Then the madness of platforms and directions would have been solved. Residents headed to the city would end up taking LRT trains to MRT stations closer to them, splitting the human traffic and the associated craziness in two directions. (Buangkok MRT station would have opened earlier too instead of languishing in Compass Point - Sengkang hub's dust.) It would be smart to invest in this change even now, as the HDB puts up more Sengkang BTOs.

There is only one pan-Sengkang feeder bus. The rest are trunk services that connect between the interchange and some other housing estate. So everyone generally has to pay extra (I think) to get to work and school. The feeder bus also doesn't really connect all the neighbourhoods because they're thinking the LRT does that job. It does but bus stops are far more in existence than LRT stations, walks are shorter to bus stops and people are lazy or don't want to sweat.

On the bright side, there are 3 express bus services to the city in the morning. I hope they make sense for those paying $3-5 for each daily ride. I hope the CTE morning grind doesn't mess things up.

Well that's the state of Sengkang transport. I mean the nomenclature sucks already (come on, Rivervale, Compassvale, Anchorvale and Fernvale with all the usual street types at the end is more than enough to confuse drivers without GPS) so let's just improve the dynamics.

Milking It For All Its Worth

Today I sent a number of Tweets about Ris Low. And then I Googled. Get this:
- Ris Low is mentioned 166,000 times on the web
- Zoe Tay is mentioned 32,500 times, 5 times less than the reigning Miss Singapore
- "Fsnn Wong marriage" has 11,800 mentions, more than 10 times fewer than Ris.
- She's not far behind Xiaxue which has 205,000 mentions.

It's amazing how much media attention has gone into portraying Ris first as a bimbo with bad grammar and enunciation, then as a criminal. In a month, she has managed to capture our imagination, change the way we speak, change the way we make fun of each other. Newspapers have mentioned her to varying degrees and she been on the front cover more times than any other Miss Singapore. The radio stations, from the noisy Class 95 DJs to the hilarious Radio 913 crew, have taken the piss out of the Youtube video countless times. Radio 913 is even running a 'Beat The Boomz' contest. I am just waiting for her to appear on CNA.

I feel that Miss Ris should take her fame, in whatever form it exists now, to the max. Do radio, do TV, make TV commercials, write memoirs on how bitchy the Miss Singapore competition is all about and what it took to swipe someone else's credit card. Go all the way man. It's not very often that fame like this comes around, albeit accidental and slightly negative. As long as she doesn't resort to porn, she's better than Paris. And she's almost gonna beat Xiaxue on Google, who's spent years being herself to get endorsements and popularity. Go Ris go, I say. Squeeze sloppy media sponge for every last drop.

Howdy Hougang

I am guilty of not writing, again. I blame it on the move. We moved out of the Woodies to Hougang.

Moving is always trying and tiring. Good thing we left most of the boxes (mine by the way) in the other room and so we didn't have much packing to do. Though the packing we had to do was done painfully. We ran out of boxes and improvised with many a trash bag, pails, baskets and other things around the house. Even the large clay pot had something else in it.

The other bad bit about completing the move is unpacking. I spend a whole Saturday opening boxes and deciding where to put stuff. Guess what, I don't have enough shelving for my millions of artefacts, books and CDs. Habis. So now there are 14 boxes mostly untouched taking up space in my room. It's a large room though, so it's not so bad. Old flats were built bigger is the general concensus.

Apart from these gripes, I am so glad I got broadband back. The modem connects at 130mbps sometimes! 130! More than the speed in the office. I could finally update my Mac software. It came down at a blistering 1mb in 5 secs. Happiness is digital.

The ride to work isn't so bad. A 2 min walk to the bus stop, a few minutes wait for one of 4 buses to bring me to the train station, a 2-min bus ride to the mrt (I know I should walk but the weather ain't conducive) and a 38 min train journey across 1 interchange and 2 lines, a 2 minute stroll up to the office and I am sitting pretty. Still coming in 15 mins late each day but at least I'm consistent.

I twittered that the NEL seemed sterile, and blamed it on the underground nature of the whole line. No sunlight gets in vanquish the early morning vampires from the northeast with their pale, lifeless skin and bloodshot eyes, smart in shirts and skirts. I miss the glistening waters of Sungei Seletar reservoir that would reflect too much sun into trains that zoomed by on the red line to and from the remote north.

I think physically I am staying half the distance I was from the city barely 2 weeks ago. I've already experienced the superior connectivity of the KPE but yet to discover the hood. I need to jog around Punggol Park too.

Here's to new beginnings.

Cational Day

Unplanned, I showed with a few friends I was watching a movie with at Jason's apartment in an interesting part of town to celebrate his cat's birthday and watch the National Day Parade on TV. It's a nice cosy apartment done up to reflect Jason's creative designer status. Lots of black. The creepy bit were the windows that slid open, exposing me slightly more than waist up. It was tricky taking some of shots I took (see my Flickr). We had impressive lychee lemongrass cocktail to enjoy.

The cat is Socks and was involved in the cat toys bought for him. Then he started to sniff my armipits quite a bit. I dunno, maybe I have some chemicals I exude that pique a cat's interest. It was quite ticklish and I often had to stifle laughter.

822pm came and about 2/5 of the people there stood in front of the TV with their fist at their hearts. I had my fist there but wasn't saying anything - I can't remember what I was distracted by. Was I trying to take a picture of the loyalists?

The fireworks didn't really impress me this year, and the RSAF didn't make more than one thundering pass over the city. Tough times, costs cut?

And President Nathan didn't sing the anthem, again. Wazzup with that?

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.

Sawasdee Sedap!

I had this for dinner after yoga one Friday night some weeks ago. It's minced pork fried with basil and served with hot rice and an egg. A relatively simple dish that gets me happy. It's just damn good. And I toss on the prik-ki-niu (chilli padi) for the kick that hits the throat like a raging inferno. If you haven't heard me mention Senat Thai Food before, well you have to make your way to Maxwell Hawker Centre and look for the stall nearest the loo facing the Farfield Church. The man and woman who run the stall are Thai and pointing at the pictures helps. They are also famous for their Tom Yum and fried chicken wings. And there's a photo of the couple with President Nathan (erh?). The food is great and so are the prices. Go.

Not A Great Start To Oh-Nine Is It?

So what's bad that's happened?

1. Three Singaporeans died in a Bangkok club fire on New Year's Day.

2. Israel decides to attack Gaza.

3. I got back pain from a yoga pose in mid-class.

Point 1 is just depressing. We lost one person to the Mumbai terrorist attack and now three more locals perish horribly in a fire. Are there more Singaporeans out there now putting themselves at risk? I am over-reacting. Perhaps we are just used to safe Singapore versus all the crap we hear about everywhere else. We are too well protected, too safe, too unfamiliar with all the bad things we hear about on the news. It's a sad way to usher in 2009.

Point 2 pisses me off. Most people think the Palestinians are terrorists, all of them, the women and children and tea-drinkers. There's Hamas who have clearly made themselves known as terrorists. Unfortunately, they run the Gaza strip and even more damagingly, launch missiles into Israel from their people's brick houses. So Israel decides to go whole hog into Gaza, bombing buildings to kingdom come. Now the ground forces have gone in to eradicate the militants. 450 dead Palestinians and about 5 dead Israelis.

Yes, it is ok for Israel to defend itself. It is ok for the Palestinians to be pissed. It is not ok for Israel to blockade the territory so that the Palestinians can't live like normal people. It is not ok for Hamas to send missiles into Israel but think about it - the Palestinians got chased out of their homelands 50 years ago and were not allowed to return, had their families shattered, economy screwed up, education and healthcare left to pieces, no real semblance of a nation, much less a society. When people are put down too long, they turn to violence to keep themselves alive. (One of the Sikh sacred symbols is a dagger, a reminder of the persecution of religion's followers in the 1600s and the right to arms as self-defence). Israel has not allowed Palestine to 'live'. Palestinians live horrible lives. So how can they co-exist?

I am worried about the bigger repercussions. Will the Arab countries come in to defend Gaza? Indonesians already want their government to send troops to protect the Palestinians. Will Iran launch a naughty pointy thing towards Israel? How will the US help anyone anymore? The UN is simply making a lot of noise thus far while homes get blown up and people die and mothers worry. Expect more crap from the Middle East.

Point 3. Oh it just hurts. Especially when yoga is supposed to fix things. Ow.

Thank God I Have A Job

Bank of America out in the US announced today it's gonna cut 30,000 jobs over 3 years. Citibank announced last month that it was gonna shed 52,000 jobs. HSBC is dropping 1,100 people from its payroll. Nomura is saying goodbye to 1,000; Credit Suisse 5,300; JP Morgan 9,200. At home, we all know about DBS shedding 900 people and NOL 150 staff in heartless moves before Xmas and CNY.

That's about 100,000 people. Or Clementi New Town.

The big question is who's employing? And what are these people gonna do?

Here's the other thing. The employed folks are supposed to keep spending to keep the economy running. Well that's gonna make things interesting. Did you know people are actually putting cash into the US government debt system at ZERO return? Sort of like hiding cash under the mattress. That means people would rather get nothing for their savings than put any money with a bank, any bank.

Isn't it amazing the world's ended up this way? Haha.

Intro Shots

Resistance is futile when faced with such odds. $1 for a hotdog in a soft bun in this day and age is an ok deal. Many people now solely go to Ikea to eat and not to buy furniture. They generally attest to the scrumptiousness of the chicken wings. I also fall victim to the kid's fish and chips.













Stars in a star. It's the little touches that make the difference eh. Maybe they should get Ikea to decorate Orchard Road one year for Xmas.

















How can I resist such pretty stackage? The colours are joyous if not a little Mardi Gras. They are stacks of plastic watering kettles (they are not cans, and containers would not do justice, and there's a long spout!) from Ikea.





Well, well, well, some people must have had a good time in Ikea. It's the season after all.

















I know this is a very boring looking picture. But can you tell me what's so combined about dental surgery? Is this a case of badly transliterated Chinese? Maybe the dentist does Botox on the side. Check out Wilhem Tell too.




You really have to maintain appearances to keep up a certain image. The drooping E, not so high-tech, and so might be low-down.

















Inadvertent nstallation art. I call this piece Woman, Her Needs, With Protection. I got rave reviews among 2 people. Of course, the piece was dismantled once we left the Collectors Gallery.

Dunlop Street Snaps & Zsofi's Tapas Delights

It's always good to shake things up a bit, break off from the routine. Most people my age quite likely live a "wake up - go to work - go home" life most of the week. Take a detour man, it'll do you some good.

I ended up at Dunlop Street on the shophouse fringes of Little India. The street is a surprise. I started at Serangoon Road and cross over at the lights - indoctrinated procedure for Singaporeans - while throngs of others simply dodged traffic in a lane by lane approach to jaywalking. No chicken would make it across this road safely.

Dunlop Street has shops galore, filled with Indian spices, saris, cloth, religious ornaments, food, electronics, mobile phones, CDs, VCDs, DVDs and many other things. Komala vegetable market was a sight to behold. All the greens and beans an Indian chef would need lay in crates displayed across one side of a no-signal junction. Beautiful.

Further down, lay one reason why Dunlop Street shot back to fame - The Prince of Wales. Pub and backpackers' inn, the POW, as its term of endearment goes, has given a interesting lifeline to the area. Backpackers from all over now stay in the area and more such hostels have opened up to cater for the budget traveller who doesn't mind sharing. The angmohs trawling the street are an interesting contrast to the overwhelming number of Indian and Bangladeshi workers who do the same.

Opposite the POW lay my endpoint. Zsofi, a tapas bar, opened about a month ago and Ashlynn, recommended meeting up there with Farah (author from previous post) and Ravi. I got there early and was the only one being served at the first floor bar. Armed with my Ixus and not much else to do with my hands, I went around snapping. Soon, company arrived and we moved upstairs to the 2nd floor rooftop, a horizontal plane shared by all the adjoining shophouses, partitioned only by low walls and zinc roofing. How cool. Thankfully, the weather was too. Next door, Filipino ladies were singing real bad karaoke. We beared with their rants and made good conversation.

Turns out that down the street towards Jalan Besar, many Thai massage parlours had come to be. They, ahem, provided reasonably priced services. I think the prophylactics come per entry.

Well, go check out Zsofi. You get a small plate of excellently crafted tapas item for each alkie ordered. And the quality of the produce is amazing. Seriously, the chicken wings, prawns, mushrooms, salad, potato frittata, sundried tomatoes, tomato poppers and salad will have you raving (They've got a really experienced chef apparently). Perhaps even ordering larger portions from the menu. The alkie is cheap too, a pint of Heiny from the tap is $10, no taxes. Check out Zsofi's online presence at www.tapasbar.com.sg. Go make an evening, and a friend or two, at the place.

Got home way past midnight, too tired but happy.

God Save The Queensway

It's a throw back in time. I remember my father buying me strawberry Meadow Gold ice cream there when I was a wee kid. I can't remember why we were there. It could have been because we had gone to Alexandra Hospital next door. Today, Queensway stands like a historic testament to the power of focus. People from all over come to buy shoes at the scores of stores that stock every conceivable form of footwear. Escalators now carry you upstairs, only one way up - which I figure helps to control shopper traffic flow. On the top floor, the same old shops that zap 10 pages a second still do a reasonably roaring trade. I bound my Final Year Project report there, as did many other undergrad. We did a loop around the first floors before we decided that this blast to the past maybe perhaps had lost its charm. I guess we were a little tired and aimless. But I got a cone of strawberry to enjoy :)

I may be coming back, since my pair of Asics are looking less than fresh. We'll see.

Future One

In the aF1ermath of the "most exciting to happen in Singapore this year", I have ten suggestions to make:

1. After the race is over, have a charity race where people race on the actual circuit in cars powered by alternative fuels - solar, water, human, human waste, whatever. All proceeds will go to offsetting the cost of oil.

2. Given the perfect storm of morning traffic incidents that took place on 26 Sep (F1 road diversion, heavy rain, trains not working on the EW line), the organisers should give people bicycles to congest the pavements and have boats from West Coast Park and Bedok Jetty to bring workers into the CBD.

3. Open up both sides of Anderson Bridge to give Hamilton a chance to overtake everyone ahead of him.

4. Put some colour on the grey boundary walls. Think advertising man.

5. Get Khong Guan, Arnold's Chicken, Eu Yang Sang, Yeo Hiap Seng, Lee Kum Kee, Mustafa and Hyflux premium spaces to advertise on. Like on UOB and OCBC buildings. Money shots baby.

6. Let Ah Bengs and Ah Lians live out their The Fast And The Furious fantasies by allowing Evo vs Type R races on the circuit as a build up to the actual F1 race.

7. Allow Kacang Puteh men to troll the grounds to sell-in the local peanut flavour.

8. Have a stylist decide what the PM should wear when he gives the trophy away.

9. Wouldn't it be cool if the F1 cars could do the ECP-AYE-KJE-BKE-SLE-CTE-PIE loop? At 300km/h no less.

10. Re-employ the Grid Girls as steel fence dancers, and replace local commentators with those that actually have a passion for the race and know what's going on beyond how beautiful everything is.

I Googled "What's Wrong With Singaporeans?"..

... and it spit out 8 hits. I repeated the search with 'Ugly Singaporean' and about 8800 references came to the fore.

I am sure you have thought about this too if you live in this small island. I am actually suprised I haven't ranted about this earlier. I dunno, maybe I am too free now and have serious time to seriously think about what's wrong with some of us. Ok, not so seriously :) Just some things in the papers that got me thinking and now writing.

Some of us abuse maids. You hear about these horror stories about maids being tortured with hot irons, not fed adequately, been deprived of food and driven to suicide or reciprocal caustic action. There are smart, educated people on trial for causing their maids harm. When we read about these things, we think 'how can these people do this?' and 'what monsters! what's wrong with them?'. I think many Singaporeans have a superiority complex. We think we are too good, perhaps a part of the elite. We may have got there because lalaland is so perfect and we are raised to be literate, safe, comfortable, healthy and clean. (I think this complex makes us litter when we cross the border.) When foreigners from less fortunate places come over, we may feel like they aren't worthy of our country. That they are here to get some that's rightfully ours. And that may make feel like we can take advantage or even get away from treating some of them badly. There may be undertones of racism but at the same time, I know Chinese Singaporeans who can't stand Chinese nationals. What if maids were angmohs? That would make things interesting. We need to think about these things especially because Singapore is a rojak of people from all walks, and decide where we stand and what we need.

Some of us are thoughtless. You know, all those little infuriating things Singaporeans do. I'm gonna blab about what happens in my favourite mode of transport - the train. We all have observed jokers who
- rush into trains
- have children trained to rush into trains
- lean their boneless bodies on grab poles as if they are semi-official places to rest their asses
- use seats for bags
- let their kids run around like wild animals
- simply not move in
- play music or change ringtones with volumes set as if they were deaf

Ok, I am ranting. But I think some Singaporeans are hardly aware of the world around them. It's about 'me me me'. When we need the train operator to put up 'Priority Seat' stickers above seats to remind people of social graces, or rather the lack of, it's a sign we aren't there yet.

I think I better stop before the bitterness overwhelms. There are of course more things to complain about. Hey, that's a problem too :)

NDP Rainbow

Guess what my mother spotted out the window just before the NDP started on TV? I had to capture it on camera and share the multicolour joy.

Hitler And The ERP

CW8, whoeever he is, has done a fantastic job supplying the subtitles on the following video that takes a unique Deutschlandish perspective on Singapore's system for controlling traffic congestion. Bravo!



(If it's offensive in German, I'm sorry. Any Nazi references, if any, are purely for entertainment and are not condoned. Seriously.)

080808, Toto, Olympics, NDP And Everything

So everything began on 080808.

Very much earlier in the day, I went to the Tanjong Pagar NTUC to purchase 60 sets of System 7 with money pooled from office colleagues. The lady behind the counter was unsure of what I asked for and shouted back '60 ah?' to let the entire queue gasp at my bad gambling habit.

When I got home at about 11pm, a little worse for wear from regular Friday activities in the office (though accentuated with the presence and subsequent frolic of a small rubber ball in the car park), I turned on the TV to watch the Olympic opening ceremony.

I think most people will share in my open-jawed expression of 'Oh My Goawd'. From the flickering number opening to the unfurling of the scroll to Li Ning running along the rooftop to light the Olympic flame (though the oversmiley little girl at the piano drove me nuts) was spectacular. And the fireworks, goodness. All over the shop. Only China could have pulled this off. And now the world knows for sure what the next superpower is capable of. (Am listening to BBC Radio 1 Pete Tong's show as I write this, and the host is asking listeners to put the Beijing show on as lighting effects for a dance party "It's like the biggest club in the world")

Then Saturday was spent watching men's gymnastics and swimming trials. I was jumping up and down for Korea's Park Tae Hwan and AU's Stephanie Rice sped towards the end of the pool to win their respective events. Australiasian Power seh!

At about 6pm I switched over to the National Day Parade, and for the first time I was half-hearted about watching it. It was a 'I've seen it all before' 'What else could happen?' kind of blase-ness. So I channel surfed between live Olympic coverage, live parade coverage and The History of Singapore documentary on Discovery (they showed Lee Kuan Yew crying in 1965 all over again, twice, and JBJ sellling The Hammer).

One thing about the NDP. The commentators were incredibly chatty and were describing everything they saw. "This event symbolises our resilience..." 'The lights represent our people's desire for excellence..." "The dance includes elements borrowed from our four main ethnic groups..." Come on, give us a break. Those lines seemed to be recycled from the previous ten NDPs. It really put me off. I liked the techno version of 'Shine For Singapore' though. The fireworks were, as usual, stupendous.

Too bad Beijing spoiled the market the night before.

And no I didn't kena the 8 million. Did you?

Men In Green

These are my army guys. Part of a larger, more insane group bonded together by green uniforms, threats to the nation and more accurately, year we were born in, we have been meeting about once a year since 1995. Although we've all grown up and have some semblance of an adult Singapore life, we still behave the same way when we are together - like a bunch of goofballs. Perhaps that is the thread that unites this group. That and all the crap that reservist life is made out to be. This occasion came about because Alex, the 2nd chap from the right, needed an escape before his first kid left his wife's womb to become a lifelong obsession.

We had dinner at Botak Jones, our version of Singapore haute cuisine brought down to the masse. Western food always conjures up impression of grandiose extravagance. The food was good, carbo aplenty, flushed with many a lemon tea and a margarita.

New Signs For Niceness

Good move? I dunno. It means we aren't gracious enough (clearly true) but also reminds us to think of other users who are a little more inconvenienced that ourselves. Not too sure about the word 'Priority' though. It tends to imply importance in a prestgious kind of way, as opposed to "women and children first".

The Reality Of Paying For TV

Each household in Singapore has to pay $110* a year for a Radio and TV licence. There were about 934,000 households in 2007**. That means MDA should have collected about $103 million taxes in that year.

At the same time there were 531,000 Pay TV subscribers** in the same year. With the cheapest plan on offer from StarHub set at about $25, these subscribers must have forked out at least an additional $13.3 million dollars a month. That's about $160 million for the year.

A large part of the Radio and TV licence goes to Mediacorp and other media owners for creating free-to-air programming. Mediacorp takes care of eight TV stations and 14 radio stations. Mediacorp also makes money from advertisers.

Enough facts, let the ranting begin.

I am not the first one to question the amount of money that goes into paying for a licence to watch TV and listen to the radio. The complaints got louder since Starhub with its cable TV started to fill out screens with more entertaining fare to keep us up at night. We all get 8 free-to-air channels. I am paying for an additional 42 channels on cable and personally, spend way more time watching cable programming than Mediocrecorp crap. So should we pay for the right to have TV in our homes, pay for free-to-air broadcasting and pay again to the cable TV operator? I know some of you don't even listen to radio anymore, and others don't watch TV because you get your fix from Youtube and other Internet media sources. If you don't use it, you shouldn't have to pay for it.

Someone's gotta talk about this more. Apart from makan, there's little else to do but watch TV and worry about $.

*http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/devnpolicies.aspx?sid=185
**Statistics Singapore (http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/sif2008.pdf)