September 29, 2008

My very own pet Whining

There is this black cat near my block that follows me intently with loud mewing sounds. Very scary.

Thing is, it is possible it assumed i am one of those feeders who are quite abundant in my area. However, i have never fed these cats, and it doesnt follow anyone else! Or do i smell fishy? Very scary.

It almost followed me up the stairs last week, and this morning, it followed me to the road. I have this worry that it might get violent and claw me. Luckily, one of the old ladies at the void deck called out to it and it eventually went back to the void deck. She said it was hungry but it only followed me! Very scary.

What did i do to deserve this feline stalker? I was almost mauled by a cat when i was young and the fear has always remained. Now, i am scared to go home.

Help!

September 26, 2008

Are You Interested Whining

I got this app on my Facebook which is called Are You Interested. As you surf through profiles, you can choose to click on Skip (no action), Yes (Anonymous) or Yes (Let them know). For Anonymous, if the other party also clicked on Yes for you, then there will be a Match in your inbox. You can choose to take action if you want to after that. For Yes (Let them know), an email will be sent to inform the other party that you are interested. Basically, 1 is more gutsy than the other. For people like me who cant handle rejection, i stick to Anonymous and see if there is a match (i dun do anything even after the match actually).

So happens that these Are You Interested people went to switch the positions of Yes (Anonymous) and Yes (Let them know). So, instead of clicking Anonymous, i accidentally clicked Let them know! Which means what i meant to do anonymously became known! Nabeh!

And as i checked my emails today, had this bunch of people who Let me know that they are interested. Guess they also didn’t realise the positions of the 2 boxes had been switched. Ha ha.

This is fun - in its own twisted sort of way :)

September 25, 2008

Of transport Commenting

Getting really irritated with every damn car and bike vrooming on the streets as if they are part of the F1 race. Maybe the marketing got to them, but just cos you speed at Marina Bay does not make you a race car driver; just an irritant.

Noticed that ads in trains have drastically dropped. Previously, every little space above the seats (including window panels) were plastered with something. But now, most of these panels are empty except for the ones with a map of the train network. What happened? With that loss in advertising revenue, trains companies need to raise fares to keep them going (or profitable in Sg’s case)?

There is a taxi surcharge for F1 areas - $5. Stop getting on my nerves. You still won’t be able to get cabs anyway, and there will be even less cabs elsewhere. Instead of managing demand by increasing supply, you increase prices. Sadly, customers and cab drivers are affected by booms and recessions, but the ‘competitive’ cab companies never make a loss!

September 15, 2008

The Lifestyle Whining, Commenting

Guess what article was carried on ST’s online Lifestyle section? George Takei marries partner. In case you are not familiar, George Takei was in Star Trek, but i only knew him in Heroes as time-space continuum bender Hiro’s father.

LOS ANGELES - GEORGE Takei and his longtime partner, Brad Altman, have agreed to live long and prosper together.

Takei, 71, and Altman, 54, were married on Sunday in a multicultural ceremony at the Japanese National Museum that featured a Buddhist priest, Native American wedding bands, a Japanese Koto harp and a bagpipe procession.

The couple, together for 21 years, was the first to receive a marriage licence in West Hollywood when the state began granting licenses to gay couples on June 17.

The Star Trek star and his manager plan to honeymoon in Argentina and Peru. — AP

Isn’t this ‘promoting a gay lifestyle’? Nothing sordid at all. And the word ‘married’ was used. It sounded all so peachy, how the guys have been together for 21 years.

Yes, 21 years. Many straight marriages these days do not last that long.

So, if MDA fines ST, that will be something interesting. I mean, MDA has fined Mediacorp before. And we know ST is pretty strong in lawsuits. Look what happened to T T Durai.

Wow, this could be a real opportunity to reopen the S377A issue. Fingers and toes crossed.

On a related note, proof that you can find someone to love at age 50. Now, all i need to do is become a TV star and wait another 20 years. Woohoo!

September 12, 2008

SDPC Commenting

Pls tell me we are the laughing stock of the world.

I understand the initiatives to curb smoking but having SDPC (Singapore Duty Paid Cigarettes) stamped on each stick is … embarrasing. I think it is more to do with ensuring no revenue is lost from those who buy duty unpaid cigarettes. When 1 smokes, the fingers will be default be around the area where the print is. So, we are going to have officers walk up to people and tell them to show their cigarettes with the print. Sigh.

And foreigners who come in will have to keep their receipts for their taxes paid for cigarettes. Do you know anything at all about human behaviour? I dun even keep my receipts for branded goods!

First, ban chewing gum, now this. Is this what policy formulation is about?

Ciggies to get new stamp

By Sujin Thomas

SINGAPORE is about to become the first country in the world to brand every single cigarette stick sold here with a mark.

It is a move to distinguish the duty-paid cigarette from its contraband counterpart, which the Tobacco Association here estimates make up 20 per cent of the market.

The marking means smokers can no longer pass off contraband cigarettes as the real deal by stuffing them into legitimate cigarette packs - distinguished now by health warnings printed on it.

Each stick will have ‘SDPC’, standing for Singapore Duty-Paid Cigarettes, near the filter end. New packs bearing such cigarettes will surface from next month.

By Jan 1, every cigarette sold here will bear the mark, said Singapore Customs on Wednesday.

Smugglers profit by evading tax of $7.04 per packet and selling the contraband packs to smokers here at well below what bona fide retailers charge.

From January to July this year, 2.1 million packets of duty-unpaid cigarettes, involving $16.2 million duty and tax evaded, were seized with 3,231 buyers caught.

To quell demand, a fine of $500 a pack was introduced for those caught in selected hot spots, such as Geylang, last October. On July 15, when this was extended islandwide, 284 contraband buyers were nabbed in the first two weeks.

Certis Cisco officers have been engaged since last year to beef up enforcement. Singapore Customs did not give detail on how officers will actually target offenders to spot the new mark on the sticks but said they will identify themselves with warrant cards.

Singapore Customs said cigarette retailers will carry posters informing the public of the new stick marks.

Tobacco companies, unhappy with the inroads smugglers are making into their market, are glad to bear the cost of having such specially labelled cigarettes.

The price of a 20-stick pack of premium cigarettes have been spiralling upwards over recent years because of higher duties. It costs close to $12 now, from just $5.80 nearly a decade ago.

The higher duties, as well as other measures such as smoke-free areas, are intended to get smokers to stub out. Singapore Customs also warned travellers who bring in cigarettes from abroad to declare them for payment of duty as well as the Goods and Services Tax. They should keep the issued receipts in case enforcement officers check on them.

September 8, 2008

F1 Fever? Commenting

Seriously, just cos you keep saying that everyone and everyone and everyone in Sg is excited about the F1 Night Race does not mean that everyone and everyone and everyone is excited. Many of us actually dun care.

Watch all the extensive coverage on the News nightly. And all the merchandising promotions … on the News. And interviews … on the News. Can we try any harder to make this look more legitimate?

All i know is … the race circuit will screw up my expressway route to the clubs. Which is the same thing that happened when IMF/WB 2006 Meetings were held here. And when Nicoll Highway collapsed. At least for the Nicoll Highway, i was a lil concerned about the people involved. The rest, i just felt screwed, but hey, shut up and suck it up for national interest.

Seriously, many dun even know when the F1 race will happen! All this so-called F1 Fever is just making me sick.

I ‘heart’ Ho Kwon Ping Commenting

I was very surprised to see this commentary from Ho Kwon Ping in Today paper. I do not know what prompted it and why Today decided to carry it. I don’t see what good it is going to do except elicit a rebuttal from Parliament, Attorney-General or Solicitor-General. And we have been hearing a fair bit from the AG recently. Perhaps, constantly keeping this issue at the forefront will help in changing attitudes. Anyways, thanks Mr Ho Kwon Ping. I ‘heart’ you.

Stop making A mockery of rule of law: Let’s accept gays

Why keep such an archaic statute when there’s no intention to prosecute?
HO KWON PING

news@newstoday.com.sg

SINGAPORE is known to be economically liberal, but socially conservative. It is a rules-governed society with clear parameters for behaviour, whether political, economic, or social. And within the “OB markers” (out-of-bounds markers) of these do’s and don’ts, it is a transparent and fair social order, with no favouritism for anyone operating outside the parameters.
This state of affairs governed the issue of homosexuality in Singapore for many years. Not only was gay sex illegal, but every manifestation was openly discouraged — some would say suppressed — and discrimination against gays in the public domain (the civil service, the military, the police, schools, and so on) was commonly accepted. Indeed, because it was public policy to promote heterosexual family life as the only norm, any other lifestyle was considered deviant and handled accordingly. Repressive though it certainly was to gays, it was at least very predictable.
Today, official attitudes towards homosexuality in Singapore are quite different. They are certainly ambivalent and ambiguous — some would even say, schizophrenic. On the one hand, many gay Singaporeans are feted and lauded for their creative contributions to Singapore, and warmly accepted by even senior figures of the establishment. On the other hand, gay sex remains a criminal activity, even after much public debate on the issue, and any kind of activity which is seen to promote a gay lifestyle remains off-limits.
To those who believe that the non-persecution of gays is already something to be grateful for, one could argue that allowing a black person to sit in the front of the bus while legally forbidding it, is something to be grateful for. Or, in an analogy closer to home for the supposedly homophobic heartlanders, should a Chinese person be grateful if the edict forbidding Chinese and dogs to enter parks in Shanghai in the ’20s were relaxed in reality, but maintained in the law?
At another level, my gay friends argue cogently that non-prosecution (or non-persecution, for that matter) signals, at the most, simple tolerance of them, and nothing more. There is a difference between being tolerated because gays are seen to be at the leading edge of the “creative class” — which Singapore is trying to develop as part of its new knowledge-based, creativity-oriented economy — and being accepted because of the recognition that fundamental human rights and the dignity of the individual extends to gays as much as to anyone else.
The somewhat schizophrenic decision to not prosecute an illegal activity has ramifications beyond the gay community, and has disturbed some sections of the larger community, which is not particularly interested in gay issues.
To many thoughtful citizens, Singapore has always openly claimed that the Rule of Law, possibly even more than the formal mechanisms of democracy, is a vital component of good governance. Yet, to criminalise gay sex and, in the same breath, state that anyone breaching this law will not be prosecuted, makes a mockery of the Rule of Law.
Minor though this violation of the principle may be, the proponents of the concept that the Rule of Law is a sacrosanct pillar of the Singapore ethos lament that the Government did not take the bold step to simply decriminalise something which the rest of the developed world has long decriminalised; which most Singaporeans (except, perhaps, the most fervently fundamentalist Christians or Muslims) don’t care that much about one way or the other; which the police, courts, and legal community would welcome simply to remove an archaic, Victorian-era statute; and finally, which the gay community would embrace as an important signal that their right to privacy — a fundamental human right — is considered to be more important than the right of anti-gay groups to proselytise about morality.
Optimists hope that the decriminalisation of gay sex — a yawn to anyone except the homophobic and the gays themselves — will eventually occur. In reality, rather than in law, gays in Singapore today have never had it so good, and should within a short time, become fully-accepted — not just tolerated — members of an increasingly diverse, and therefore vibrant, Singapore community.
But if we pat ourselves on the back for being so “bold” as to accept casinos and Formula 1 events into staid Singapore, why can’t the boldness extend to a simple act to enable gays to realise their dream — indeed, their simple right — to be normal Singaporeans like anyone else, no more and no less.
The writer is chairman ofSingapore Management University,executive chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings and chairman of MediaCorp.

September 7, 2008

A lil confused Whining

I used to think that people online did not connect with me cos they have a bad impression of me after seeing me somewhere. This sort of made sense cos foreigners do try to connect with me, so it cant be the horrible pics themselves that are stopping the locals.

And in my effort to expand my social circle, i reached out to someone whom i see regularly but with whom i have never made any contact. His reply?

He doesn’t know who i am.

Sometimes, i am just not sure what to do. But that i guess is due to me not really knowing what i want. Some days, i want to just disappear without a trace. Others, i want to be integrally connected in a social web. Based on experience, the former seems more realistic. Alas, i get depressed without social contact. Blame that on me being a social animal. Damn my humanity!

That aside, a fren was sorta depressed and spoke to me on the phone. The loneliness was getting to him. One particular issue he mentioned was how a fren of his just came out just 6 months ago and was already attached, yet he who was putting himself out there was not taken.

Hmmm, i wonder if i shd complain too. After all, it has only been 9 yrs plus without a second date, let alone a relationship.

Moving on, i shall fantasise about those things that have no purpose whatsoever in the bigger scheme of things, like the Damier Graphite series, the sleek Prada document carrier and the Tagheuer watch. Viva la consumerism!











Get free blog up and running in minutes with Blogsome
Theme designed by Chris Arthur