2009 Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix

I was at CHV today for the launch of BC41. Apparently, TF had shifted the venue of the launch from STC to CHV to avoid the expected huge volume of human traffic at City Hall MRT and I must say that this is indeed a GOOD judgement call! The presenters were 3 of the better instructors in TF's stable and thats the main reason why I'm even there. I'm not sure if I would have attended had it been other mediocre fellows....

We all had our own programs after that and thus didn't wait up with one another for dinner. For me, I went around near the F1 Trackside, hoping to buy some F1 merchandise after having seen some of the fans wearing the better looking ones. Sad to say, besides the stall I saw in Orchard Rd yesterday, the few I saw just now were all within the F1 Spectators' Area which is obviously out of bounds to me unless I forked out some dough for the tickets.

By the way, the 2009 Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix (official name) is in town this weekend for the 2nd consecutive year. Actually, Singapore used to host the Formula Libre events back in the 60s & 70s but thats eons ago...

Disappointed, I then made my way to the MRT. Along the way, I noticed the heavy police presence in the vicinity and noted that those under SPF had, strapped to their left thigh, a black bag which I assumed to be containing a chemical defence suit similar to the one I've been trained to put on back during my NS Days. WOW! Looks like they had even factored in chemical terrorism into their security plannings. Splendid job by the organisers!!

Up till yesterday, I was actually still harbouring hopes that someone would somehow have a spare ticket or 2 to give up and I would be the lucky recipient. :p But then again, reality isn't as such. As I walked along on my way to the MRT, memories of my experience at the very first F1 'Night' Race came flowing back. I was very lucky to have gotten 3 free passes for the Friday 'Practice' session thanks to my Bro-in-Law who had bought the tickets for his staffs as incentives but they prefer monetary rewards. Thus, the 3 passes become excess. If I had not been scheduled to depart for my US Trip the following day, I would have tried ways and means to get the Sunday passes instead!

Attending the race and watching it on TV is a totally different experience. Being on the ground, you'd see the cars for only a few seconds each time due to the speed at which they are going. You'd only get to see them for that bit longer if they had to slow down due to cornering or if they had a crash. Most of the time, you'd turn your head from right to left, back to right and then to the left again as the cars zoomed by. The noise generated by the engine can go up to 140 decibels and if you do not use earplugs, good luck!! If you're near enough to the tracks, you'd be able to smell burnt rubber, probably due to the friction between the road and the tyres during braking.

I must say I'm extremely lucky to have experienced all these last year and am looking to be able to tilt my head right-left-right, hearing 140 decibel noise and smelling burnt rubber in 2010 at the Marina Bay Street Circuit.

I strongly recommend you to try watching it on location at least once to experience it. If you've already done so, stick to the TV for its commentary, race statistics and most importantly, for the numerous camera angles!!

Something strange about Hero today....

Hero had always been a staunch Buddhist for most parts of his life but today.... he did something which none of us could ever have imagined!! I can still vividly remember how he locked Mat out of the house when he found out that she had been going to the church with her classmates while in uni.

Hero had a portrait of a certain Deity in the hall which he would spend hours daily cleaning it, wiping the area around the altar and doing 'horticulture' with the 'legs' of the joss sticks & the ashes in the urn. He is so devoted that he would go vegetarian twice a month, visit the temple pretty often to offer prayers, etc...

However, since his operations last year, he had been cutting down on the above activities gradually.... First, he stopped going vegetarian twice a month. Next, he also visited the temple less often. Today, the last straw come in... he actually 'invited' the Deity back to the temple from our house and he took that portrait back to the temple!

When asked, he said he had a dream sometime ago about him 'inviting' the Deity back to the temple....I don't know how credible is such a theory but my sister, Mat prefers to attribute this phenomenon to his weekly visit to her church since the op....

I hope the event today is not to be followed by anything untowards.... if you know what I mean....

Are Singaporeans better-off now?

Referring to the above statistics, my answer to the question posed in my blog title is a BIG FAT NO!!

How can we be better off now than in 2006 when the "Wage level" had fallen while the "Price level" had moved north instead? However, there are 2 bright sparks though...the falling "Car tax" & "Cost of a mid-range car". However, with the related increase in "Fuel", "Prices of services" (aka car washes, maintenance, etc), ERP and parking charges, the outlay far exceeded the savings from those fallen charges.

Oh, and I've not even mentioned that we're putting in longer hours at work and potentially spending lesser time with our family and friends.

With a stressful situation as such, no wonder we've got a population replacement problem at hand.

60 SIGNS YOU’RE A TRUE SINGAPOREAN

Extracted from Talkingcock.com

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It’s not enough if you pay taxes or carry a pink IC. To commemorate National Day, TalkingCock.com brings you a checklist to see how Singaporean you really are.

1. Thanks to SMS, you have an extra large thumb.
2. Tks 2 SMS, u oso dun no how 2 spel n e mor.
3. You pat MRT and bus seats to cool them before you sit down.
4. At lunch, you start discussing what to eat for dinner.
5. Your wedding photos include shots of you dressed up like Louis XIV, Michael Jackson, or Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic.
6. When speaking to foreigners, you somehow feel a need to adopt an accent. (If you’re a DJ, this happens even when you’re not speaking to foreigners.)
7. You won’t raise your voice to protest policies, but you’ll raise your fists to whack someone over Hello Kitty.
8. You’re forever talking about businesses you want to set up but will probably never get around to starting.
9. You don’t know ¾ of the people attending your wedding.
10. You separate food into 2 basic groups: ‘heaty’ and ‘cooling’.
11. You’re never completely sure how many times you’ve sung the second verse of the National Anthem.
12. You think that what makes you ‘married’ is not the legal registration but whether you’ve thrown a 12 course dinner.
13. You marry for the real estate breaks.
14. You have kids for the tax advantages.
15. You move to where you want your child to go to school.
16. You feel you can’t walk around naked in your own flat.
17. You force your children to take Speech & Drama classes, but pray they won’t wind up in Arts later on.
18. You suddenly realize you’re very interested in biotech - just like you suddenly realized three years ago that you were very interested in e-commerce, and before that, engineering, and before that, medicine and law.
19. You think being an entrepreneur is setting up a bubble tea/Portuguese egg tart/gao luck/porridge shop right next to an existing bubble tea/Portuguese egg tart/gao luck/porridge shop.
20. You think people are inconsiderate when they don’t leave their table immediately after eating at the food court but think you have every right to take 25 bites to finish the last red bean in your ice kachang.
21. You find it impossible to make suggestions without drawing a fishbone chart first.
22. If you’re a guy, whenever you get together with your guy friends, you invariably trade army stories.
23. If you’re a girl, whenever you get together with your girl friends, you invariably trade stories about how your stupid guy friends are forever trading army stories.
24. You think the most important sporting event in Singapore this year was David Beckham switching from Manchester United to Real Madrid.
25. You somehow feel that food tastes better when eaten by a longkang.
26. It actually makes a difference to you being called an ‘NSMan’ rather than a ‘Reservist’.
27. You’ve eaten more times at the Esplanade than you’ve actually seen shows there.
28. You need campaigns to tell you how to be courteous, to flush toilets, have sex, etc.
29. When you visit the Zoo, you wonder what the animals taste like.
30. You feel the urge to add the suffix ‘-polis’ to everything, viz. Biopolis, Airtropolis, Fusionopolis, Entrepolis, etc.
31. You always feel oddly hungry at 11 pm, and are willing to drive to far away places for supper.
32. You meet in hotels a lot.
33. Your children have a rudimentary knowledge of Tagalog or Bahasa Indonesia.
34. You work at McDonald’s when you’re old rather than young.
35. You’ll gladly spend $50,000 on a car, but will go to great lengths to save a few bucks on ERP charges or even a few cents on a parking coupon.
36. Pork floss and mayonnaise on bread is a completely natural combination to you.
37. If you’re pregnant, you have the strange ability to make people on the MRT fall asleep instantly.
38. You ask for the bill by miming a signing movement.
39. You’ve started referring to foreign employees as ‘talent’ instead of ‘expatriates’.
40. At the dinner table, you’re always discussing which other food places serve better versions of what you’re eating.
41. You copy down licence plate numbers of cars involved in accidents.
42. You think your boyfriend doesn’t really love you unless he gives you part of his liver.
43. During sales, you book hotel rooms near malls to enable you to shop more efficiently.
44. You pronounce the letter ‘R’ as ‘ah-rer’ and the letter ‘H’ as ‘haytch’.
45. No matter how old you are, you keep associating people with their secondary schools. (alternative: No matter how old you are, you secretly need to know what other people got for their PSLE, O levels and A levels.)
46. You’re always on a quest for the definitive version of your favourite local dish.
47. When you explain things to people, you keep (a) using alphabets, and (b) speaking in point form.
48. You believe that you can generate ‘creativity’ through rules and committees.
49. You ‘chope’ a seat by placing a packet of tissues on the chair.
50. You’re very forthright with your criticisms of the Gahmen, unless there’s a chance they might actually hear you.
51. You diligently track the whereabouts of your favourite hawkers, i.e..you know that the famous Tiong Bahru Bao is now in Jurong, the famous Outram Char Kuay Teow is now in Hong Lim Centre and the famous Lau Hock Kien Hokkien mee from the old Lau Pa Sat is now at Beach Road.
52. Your mother probably can’t speak your ‘mother tongue’.
53. You’d rather drink your own pee than pay someone more for water.
54. You secretly find that the best part of the Speak Good English Movement is hearing the Singlish bits in their ads.
55. You have an automatic sensor in your head which categorizes people you meet into stayer/ quitter, cosmopolitan/heartlander, normal/ express/ gifted, etc.
56. You think we’re living in a modern, sophisticated country even when our leaders still insist on wearing their school uniforms.
57. You wish your constituency is in a walkover, because otherwise it’s damn ‘leceh’.
58. During elections, you decide that there is no credible opposition even though you don’t know the name of the opposition candidate in your constituency.
59. You think having a constitution is like the condition you get when you don’t eat enough fibre.
60. You can never quite remember what “the core values” of Singaporeans are.

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Yours truly guilty of those in green....

Numa Numa Misinterpreted Lyrics

Is Cyber-Connectivity Hindering Free Speech?

Yes or no? I'd say yes if you asked me... The reasons are very simple... just read on.....

With the increasing ease by which we get hooked up with our friends online via social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster, Myspace and so on, the world is getting smaller as we soon come to realise that our friend knows another friend of ours which we all do not know in the beginning.

And so you can see that we're all becoming very interconnected in one way or the other and this brings me to my topic of discussion for the day : Is Cyber-Connectivity Hindering Free Speech? Why would I say this? Now, if you could just lend me your imagination for the next few mins... I'd be able to show you how do I arrive at this statement.

Scenario 1 :
You're on Facebook(FB) and you have your best friend, David and John in your circle of FB Friends. David had unknowingly done something which pissed you off. You posted an angry 'Status Update' in FB which goes like "Screw you David! Don't you know how to be on time for the important meeting?"

What can possibly happen? Either David logs in and sees the post or John sees it and inform David. You're screwed either way... Alternatively, you can keep the anger to yourself and tell no one about it.

Scenario 2 :
You've got a blog (like what I've got here) and you think you could write freely because you think you had stayed anonymous by not revealing your name, photos and other related tell-tales details. But you had your friend reading your blog too because you shared the URL with them. Supposedly you need to bitch about your friend in the blog yet you're worried that he/she may come across the blog and read about it.

As a result, you wrote a watered-down version of the rant or you maybe even omitted it altogether and wrote something else totally un-related.

End of the day, what I'm trying to drive at is that with inter-connectivity nowadays, I felt that we're holding back our real feelings for fear of offending the peoples around us. Is this a good or bad phenomenon? I used to be an advocate of "If I dare to post it online, I'm not afraid of its repercussions" but recently, I've noticed that I've mellowed down somewhat and each time I need to rant online, I would think twice, thrice before acting... Something is holding me back, I'm losing my 'baptism of fire'!!

Someone please tell me what to do......

And back to where I belong I go....

Yup, the journey's come to an end... its not unexpected anyway. But the way it had been ended was kind of unexpected. It in the end, I didn't lose out because a competitor was better than me, but I had lost out because the 'Assesser' preferred the other party even though he'd need more mirror-work than I (maybe we, if you know who they are) do. :( thats DAMN SAD....

Well, with the events today, I've made up my mind not to pursue any further. I shall just quietly go back to being a 'happy' member just like what RL had opted for right after her course. Come to think of it, I've not imagine that I would come 'so far' in this journey. To be honest, back then when I had signed up for the course, I've only had a few objectives in mind and they are :
1. to be able to buy the DVD
2. to be able to better my techniques
3. to be able to appreciate the programme better

It never really crossed my mind to go into shadowing and the eventual instructor-ship. REALLY! Actually, my objective in going for the audition wasn't even to proceed for shadowing. I merely wanted to upgrade my grades from 'Withheld' to 'Pass'. But since the 'Assesser' said both grades makes no difference to TF in terms of shadowing, it somehow turned my purpose of attending the audition from a 'grades-upgrade' into a fight for a shot at shadowing.....

Now that the outcome is clear, I'm not really disappointed that I wasn't selected. But I'm just pretty pissed that the outcome is such....

Nevermind, now that events had turned out this way, I doubt I will go for auditions again.... I'm not the kind of person they are looking for and I might as well save my breathe?

Ten Commandments for Body Combat

Gotten the following from somewhere....

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1) Members must be able to shuffle right/left and back/forth smoothly.
2) Members must not be in contact with one another.
3) Members must learn and do CORRECT techniques which include stance and guards, jab, cross, hook, upper cut, front kick and roundhouse kick.
4) Members must work with different levels of power in arms and legs from level 1 to level 3.
5) Members must have good stamina to kick, punch, ginga, elbow strikes and defensive moves.
6) Members must be able to do high jumps n kicks at knee level height.
7) Members must do their best, never give up and complete the whole class include arms press up / abs crunch / cool down..
8) Members must not cheat and proof they are sweat all over and even better to have hot air coming out from the body.
9) Members must be ready with 100% focus and would be better if they have chemistry with the Instructors they like.
10) Members should show confidence and shout as loud at the right time and not all the time.
11) Members must try and do all the moves correctly especially those occupy the front rows.

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OK, I'm guilty of No. 7....

Irritating Passengers on Public Transport

When had you last taken a ride on our 'infamously' slow and packed-like-sardines public transport such as the bus or MRT? Well, for non-drivers like me, I had to face the 'crap' daily... and its more often than not, pretty much bearable (perhaps used to it), but then again, sometimes you'd just be so lucky and ran into some pretty inconsiderate or even irritating passengers to help make your ride even more miserable (if its not already bad enough).... I recently encountered 2 incidents which I could not resist but need to rant here!

The other day I boarded SMRT963 home from the AYE after work, intending to change to SMRT67 along the way as the former doesn't pass by my place. Just one stop after I've boarded, up came this long-haired uncle wearing tattered berms which looks like had been unprofessionally cut off at the knees to make a pair of berms from an orginal pair of jeans.... This uncouth looking guy seemed like a labourer kinda worker which explains the sourish smell emitted from him, smelt heavily of cigarette smoke. As the bus was packed to the brim, he stood somewhere behind where I was seated and started clanging against the metal overhead grap-poles using a coin (I presumed). Then as the bus reached a popular stop, many alighted and he came to sit next to where I was seated BUT across the aisle (thankfully). Immediately, he propped his knees against the back of the seat in front of him, whipped out his HP and blast the hokkien songs away sooooo loud that I can hear pretty clearly the melody even though I'm using an in-ear earphones!!

Knowing that such people sometimes do appear from time to time, I tried to ignore him. But I really do pity the lady seated right beside him for she had to endure the smell and the constantly repeating song.....

I encountered another incident on my way back from town earlier this evening.. As usual, the bus was packed like hell by the time it pulled into the Dhoby Ghaut bus stop... the front of the bus had already been packed until the passengers where standing on the steps! And when the doors behind had opened in anticipation for others to alight, this group of teenagers which I presumed were no more than 16, boarded from these 2 doors!! Not that I've a problem with them not paying for their rides... but I'm more pissed off with the din created by that group of pent-up teenagers with nowhere to release their energy.... They were standing near the exit, blocking everyone from moving further back to the rear of the bus, talking and laughing out loudly, spewing vulgarities from their foul-mouth like nobody's business! Damn it... I really felt like telling them off there and then... but then again, I'm only on the bus for the next 30mins, might as well just forget it?

Sometimes, I really do wonder what is today's world coming to?