Archive for the ‘News & Letters’ Category

There are three local news publications I check every morning. There’s The Straits Times Online—which requires a subscription for most of its content—that tabloid-styled daily The New Paper, and there’s Today, whose site I’ll read for the mornings when the newspaper ah pek doesn’t deliver our copy of Today in time before we leave the house each morning for work.

The three are really quite different in tone. Online critics e.g. from the numerous blog sites and forums like HWZ regard The Straits Times as the government’s official mouth piece. Just check out the posts on some of these forums and you’ll see what I mean. But I’ll still read it to at least get the raw news headlines. There’s also TNP, whose articles I take a look at mostly for fun.

There was one article though yesterday that brought to mind a topic a recent discussion. We were talking about foreign brides last Friday evening too during our small group discussions, and at one point the discussion veered to prostitution. One little bit of information Grace shared that came by way of her hubbie Roger who couldn’t attend on who patronizes these services at Geylang was so shocking that I thought I’d better not add it here on this blog (which I’m always mindful of is read by my students).

Coincidentally, there was an article right on this in TNP a few days ago. The article is right here currently, with a few excerpts below when the article gets archived. Formatted to save space.

Teens, pimp went from table to table
They solicited openly at Geylang coffee shop, sometimes in broad daylight
By Hedy Khoo, October 30, 2008

HIGH JINKS AT COFFEE SHOP: The scene at a Geylang coffee shop near where Wang and the two prostitutes touted their services.

This was the indecent proposal from two girls from China as they went from table to table at a Geylang coffee shop, at times in broad daylight. They were accompanied by their self-styled pimps - Chinese national Wang Minjiang, 36, and his nephew, Wang Youyi, 31.

Their selling point: The girls’ youth.

I’ll get straight to the point in this one: reading articles like this makes my heart boil. Not merely on how they solicit services, but why there still is a flood of this type of women coming into Singapore and abusing their social visit passes for prostitution. Is local enforcement doing enough? Or is it just that some local men are so desperate that there’s persistent demand?

A married friend of mine who also reads this blog once remarked that she packs contraceptives for her husband when he goes alone on his overseas trips. Her reason? Well of course she hopes her husband won’t use them. But if he has to, at least don’t bring home any diseases.

Sure gives you a funny feeling.

(Picture from the TNP article)

Here’s one of the most thought-provoking, if unintentionally hilarious to some readers, letter to the forum page in the last few days:

Sep 20, 2008
Baby’s birth cert reverses parental joy

THE arrival of my newborn daughter was a source of joy for my wife and myself - until I went to obtain her birth certificate from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA).

To my horror, she was given the number T08-XX444X. As Chinese Singaporeans are aware, the number four suggests death, and implies misfortune.

I appealed to the ICA officer, also a Chinese Singaporean who understood my discomfiture. But she firmly rejected my plea because rules were rules, I was told. Subsequently, I appealed to a superior officer and waited an agonising week, making several calls in between, only to be given the same answer.

… (etc.)

Thing is, lucky and unlucky numbers are part and parcel of life in Singapore. I mean, whenever there’s an accident along an expressway here, there’ll be traffic jams caused by Singaporeans jockeying around to get the vehicle numbers so they can buy 4D.

Sadly, in this day and age of education, there’re still people who’ll believe that somehow their lives and fortunes are governed by a bunch of digits. The online responses to this fellow’s letter haven’t been all that surprising, few of them sympathetic and most of them incredulous of both the letter writer and even disbelief at The Straits Times for printing what one poster called such “trash”.

Funnily, I was asking Ling the other evening that if we ever have a daughter, could we name her “Faith”? She laughed and said our daughter would have a lot to live up to then, though it’s still better than naming her “April”. :)

It’s been several weeks since I’ve blogged about current affairs, with the last dozen entries on our blog about our Bali trip then on music. Ironically, it’s been nothing but gloomy news in the last fortnight.

What has there been? Well, there was that Serangoon Gardens uproar about their area listed as a potential site to house a foreign laborers’ dormitory, which started off as a semi-self-contained scene of dissatisfaction… until a certain Straits Times editor—really carelessly in my perception—wrote a piece accusing the residents of over-reacting out of prejudice and unfounded xenophobia. Boy, what a can of worms that opened up! For the next couple of days, we got a tornado of letters to The Straits Times forum all responding to her editorial, and few of them sympathetic.

Then big financial institutions like Lehman Brothers and AIG ran into trouble. I’ve never been able to make much sense what a subprime mortgage crisis is, but heng arh; neither of us have any sort of investment or policies related with either. It’s funny though, because when news of the AIG’s difficulties hit the front page news, Ling asked if we had any policies with AIA.

Then there’s the milk scandal and the allegations of corruption, graft are flying off yet again. Yeah; another incident in a growing list of food scandals in China. Ling just shakes her head in resignation. I’m reminded of an incident at an old work place perhaps 10 years ago now, where I was on a board meeting and this director was extolling the virtues of doing businesses with the company’s counterparts in China. I was young and brash then, and I remarked hotly that he really should be a little more circumspect about assuming that just because Singaporeans possess certain attitudes about authority, law and following regulations, others will perceive the same.

And oil prices have been going up and up again after falling to an all time low of USD92 the other week. Maybe I should just remove that little script I’ve got on the right-hand bar of our blog. Funnily I put the script in because I was getting nervous watching the repeated increases in petrol pump prices here a few months ago and wanted a bit more advanced warning LOL.

Then a bomb explodes at a Pakistani hotel. And if that’s not enough; just today a bunch of tourists in Egypt get kidnapped! No I don’t know any of them personally (they’re Europeans), and fortunately (maybe) the kidnappers seem more interested in ransom money than making some sort of political statement, as the Taliban would do. So fingers are crossed that the victims would get released safely once money exchange hands.

So, is there any good news at all? Well, we’re gonna get a few hundred moola as part of our Growth Dividends at the end of this month. Not much but hey it’s free money.  And I got more than a thousand dollars worth of software from the event organizer as a token of appreciation for judging a competition they were running at SMU over the weekend. I was absolutely floored by their generosity.

And Ling’s birthday is coming on Thursday, and she’ll hopefully like the third birthday present I’ve got her. She’d better; after all the trouble I went to to get it for her LOL.:)

Or so a Dr Woffles Wu said of MP Lee Bee Wah in his letter to The Straits Times this morning. The news has been making the rounds since last weekend and online media, discussion rooms and bloggers sure have been having a heyday on this one.

What’s this about? Well, capsule version: A male Singapore table-tennis player who played during the Individual tournaments was apparently so stricken by the absence of a supporting coach he badly lost his match, and cried even. Shortly after, MP Lee, also the President of the Singapore Table Tennis Association told television that the services of table-tennis team manager Antony Lee would no longer be required.

Why I’m writing this has everything to do with Dr. Wu’s letter; specifically, one part of his letter echoes my sentiments:

As for men’s singles player Gao Ning, who started it all, what a big baby. Surely an Olympic athlete has enough training and experience to play on his own. What was the big fuss about?

Gao gave up the fight before the game was over and that was the biggest shame and disgrace for any sportsman. One wonders if he is made of the right stuff. Please don’t lay the blame on the manager and the head coach.

I mean, Li Jiawei shed tears after losing her individual tournament, and she’d given  her opponent a huge and close fight. Moreover, she’d been gunning for that Individual medal for so long now. Ok, maybe I also have a soft spot for women who cry. But to see a male national athlete in an Olympics match crying because he didn’t have the support of a coach behind him, and after losing blamed his team manager and coach… *shudder*. I don’t know about you, but I feel more embarrassed than sorry for the guy.

It’s MP Lee I feel sorry for. As The Online Citizen noted, Ms. Lee had stated she wasn’t sacking anybody, but rather Antony Lee’s contact was already expiring after the Olympics, and she’d no objection on his return / renewal. As far as I can tell from the news, apart from the, well, awful timing of her announcement on television and maybe she should have chosen the words of that announcement better, did she actually do anything wrong?

Unfortunately, that she made her earlier statements shortly after the Gao Ning incident was too coincidental for everyone else, and now you have every person with a voice jumping on her. Folks online are attacking her qualifications, her background, her country of birth, and the fact that she’s reasonably new in the post of President of the association. Someone has even written a poem on this saga and posted it on the ST Discussion Room, and it’s a hilarious read. Excerpts below:

The Dowager has shown her colour
A President who loves to display all her power
Earning the players’ trust & support, she claims, from her ivory tower
But becomes a dampener on what should have been S’pore’s finest hour

Even the chef de mission expressed his disappointment
The matter was closed, according to his statement
But LBW like a dragon lady, acting on divine appointment
Decided it’s time for her announcement - what’s wrong with after the celebrations?

So, it looks like the Olympic Games controversies are not just limited to China. Even Singapore has its own ‘little’ drama. I wonder how long it’ll be before Mr. Brown comes up with his own satire of this drama.:)

In our blog here, I’ve occasionally mentioned a forum called HWZ, or the forum hosted at Hardwarezone.com. This forum is the largest and the most popular one in Singapore, and is a sort of one-stop portal for all sorts of online discussion. Its rooms run quite the gamut of technology, travel, lifestyle, gaming, entertainment etc. In fact, the forum has gotten so large that over the years, several other sites have been created to keep its attention on specific topics and interest areas.

The forum is not without its controversy though, due in large part I suspect because of the huge range of behaviors shown by its users. And that well, keyboard warriors are wont to be less restrained when they believe they’re under the cover of anonymity. One of the earliest incidents I remember regarded a certain computer shop at Sim Lim Square which threatened to sue a bunch of users, some of them in their teens, for making disparaging and insulting remarks about their services nearly 7 years ago. Then you have more recent incidents like the fellow who apparently thought it funny to issue a bomb-scare warning in the forum, only to have the police descend right on his head in return.

The thing though is this; these forum users can be quite a vicious bunch if something stirs them up. Like this Indian PR who wrote to The Straits Times forum page asking why couldn’t he buy a flat from HDB. I wonder if he was shocked at the online onslaught that followed. HWZ Netizens who found his letter disagreeable did their thing i.e. attacked his letter, his character, scoured, (apparently) found and posted his personal details and pictures.

It sure is a reflection of the changes wrought by new media. As much as I respectfully disagree with the letter writer’s position on the rights of permanent residents in Singapore, the attacks on his character and posting of were unwarranted. Really. Disagree with his stand by all means, but what’s with all this hostility against his person.

Easy; if you want to be one, just move to Zimbabwe.:)

If you thought inflation in Singapore was bad, check out what’s happening in Zimbabwe. Inflation there has hit 11,200,200%…!! Apparently, a loaf of breadcost less than $200,000 Zimbabwe dollars in February this year. This week, it costs 1.6 trillion Zimbabwe dollars. Ouch!

Source right here.:)

I was humming along while the American national anthem was played during the awards presentation for another gold medal win at the Olympics the other night. Ling then turned and asked if I knew the words to the anthem, and there I was singing the words out.:)

The US Presidential Elections is coming real soon, again and I figured I’d better write a first entry on it. Yeah I know this blog has so far largely concerned itself with education and customer service in Singapore, photography, debating, cooking, eating in Singapore etc. everything local. But on occasion I write about foreign affairs, so there. Like this one or this one. So I figured I should do a 4 year-later follow-up entry on the elections between presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain.

Matt was online and here’s how the MSN conversation went.:)

Chek Yang says: I have to write an entry on the presidential election soon, if nothing just to echo my 2004 post.

Matt says: I hope McCain and Obama are caught sleeping together so neither of them get elected.

Chek Yang says: Haha.:) Well, I need to make a prediction, if nothing else just in the oft chance I get to say “See, I predicted right..!!” and make myself feel good.:)

Matt says: My world sucks because no matter if you predict correctly or incorrectly, my president will be a moron.

Chek Yang says: Hahahahaha.:)

Matt says: And send me some anthrax in the mail too, so I don’t have to live through the next four years. :)

Thing is, I’m not naturally a funny person. My students make that clear enough in every semester’s feedback reviews; all their comments go along the lines of “Great lecturer, always well-organized. But why so serious; needs to crack more jokes.” So, whatever entry I write is going to be a matter-of-fact.

Or maybe I should just ask if Matt could write one.:)

Of the lot of sporting events in the Olympics this fortnight, the event that Ling seems most interested in is the woman’s gymnastics. How’s that? Well, she was a school gymnast herself you see. As for myself, I’ve run a network cable from my router in the workroom into the living room—the wireless access doesn’t work so well—and armed with a connected notebook, I’ll watch everything and anything that’s on, even men’s handball (!).

So, it was rather bad luck that neither of us caught the women’s team gymnastics finals the other day. But lo behold; there’s now yet another strange episode in what cynics are starting to call the Fake Olympics (it used to be Drug-Ridden Olympics in yester years). Yeah, as though the controversies over the CGed fireworks, then child singer switcheroo, then volunteers to fill seats for supposedly sell-out events weren’t all enough, here comes another one. And we’re not even halfway past the competition.

It’s the age issue of the Chinese gymnasts again after they took Gold. Barely minutes after the American gymnast team lost the medal to the Chinese, the former US head coach openly questioned again whether the Chinese winners had met the minimum age to compete at all.

News media is certainly smelling another onion and picking up this story. E.g. the photo on the right here comes from Kansascity.com and with the caption “So does China’s Deng Linlin look like a 16-year-old?”

I hear ya. Those grapes sure are sour eh. Ironically, the American gymnasts themselves are retrospective; they’ve admitted they just didn’t perform as well as they could have. It’s the American officials who are clearly upset. But for the sake of argument, if you were to discard the probability that these are just sore losers talking, there’s still the very disturbing fact that the ages stated on the winners’ official states just doesn’t sync with local newspaper articles and online records. And if you think age falsification in gymnastics is unheard of, think again.

OK, so I tell my students that the Internet is the Wild West and to take what’s on it with two wheelbarrows of salt. So many of my students think that everything that Google throws up equals “serious” and “academic” research for instance. But the pundits will then tell you that this is about a country that produces the world’s best fakes, so is a little passport forgery going to be all that technically impossible for these wizards if they set their mind to it.

Ironically, so many of us are the beneficiaries of these, er, products. I should know. I used a Benro tripod and we all know it’s a knock-off from The Mother of All Tripods i.e. Gitzos. And my heart skips a heartbeat when I check newly-arrived memory cards I get off eBay. But they work, so what do I care. And if you’re a Ken Rockwell fan, you’ll want to read his take on MIC or Made-in-China products too for a non-conventional perspective of the issue.

But coming back to the age issue, the International Gymnastics Federation is hearing none of it and insists there is no evidence of under-age participants in the competition (but whatdayaknow, they’re now instituting age monitoring). And at least one person here in Singapore a.k.a. little Red dot insists this is the work of the green eye and just China-bashing on the part of the West.

I wonder if in my life time I’ll get to witness an Olympics that isn’t saddled with these unhappy controversies. Yep, the perfect Olympics where it’s all about ability.

Hey, I know what I’ll do. I’ll buy the Beijing Olympics - The Official Video Game! Yeah, my own sandbox with no drugs, no fakery, no singer switcheroo!

But what’s this? It scored a 3.0 / 10 in game ratings…?! Gaaaaahhhh!!!!! All’s lost…! Someone just shoot me right now.:(

The two of us have been watching more TV in the last couple of evenings than the whole of a typical month put together. Yep you’ve guessed it; it’s been the Beijing Olympics and just prior to that, we both finished the entire third season of Battlestar Galactica on rental DVD over 5 evenings.

The Olympics so far has gone well. Great free coverage courtesy of Starhub Cable TV—for the Athens 2004 Olympics, I had a wonky 21 inch TV receiving signals over airwaves. And the Chinese supporters were distinctly more gracious and less hostile towards the Yanks; the Greeks in Athens 2004… *shudder*.

Now, one of the things the both of us missed though was the opening ceremony that everyone had been raving about. How was that? Well, we were watching Ratatouille and missed the live broadcast. Over the weekend, my parents and uncles were all raving about how incredible was the opening ceremony’s fireworks and how the NDP was going to be a kachang puteh display in comparison.

In all honesty, I was a little peeved myself for having completely forgotten about the opening ceremony, so resolved to look around for the DVD when it gets released. I mean, from what everyone else was saying, the ceremony was the event of the year, bigger than The Dark Knight even. So, it was all a little shocking when today’s news screamed…

Parts of the spectacular Beijing Olympics opening ceremony were faked, it has emerged.

The global television audience of more than three billion people watched in amazement as a series of giant footprints outlined in fireworks proceeded through the night sky from Tiananmen Square to the Bird’s Nest stadium - except they were watching a computer animation.

Even the giant television screens within the stadium itself broadcast the fake images.

Yeah no kidding. One of the key sequences that wowed the billions of TV viewers had been faked. And if that wasn’t enough, news sources like here and here are now reporting that the uber cute 9 year old singer in the opening ceremony was not only miming, but the voice heard wasn’t hers either…!

Beijing Olympics: Faking scandal over girl who ’sang’ in opening ceremony

Chinese officials have admitted deceiving the public over another highlight of the Olympic opening ceremony: the picture-perfect schoolgirl who sang as the Chinese flag entered the stadium was performing to another girl’s voice.

Gaaaaahhhh!!!! This is all too much. How am I gonna watch the Opening Ceremony on DVD now and not feel just a mite cheated.

Thankfully, the international news media have been pretty sympathetic even if they were still reporting the facts. After all, Beijing is doing a great job hosting the Olympics regardless. The online Chinese discussion forums have, predictably, fiercely defended the faking with many rationalizing that it was a great show, and so what if a little computer generated trickery was involved.

Though I wonder if some of them are just privately, maybe a little, feeling a little shocked and embarassed themselves. This was a golden opportunity for them to show just what the Chinese people can do, but now people are going to remember “the great opening ceremony that faked parts of it”.

Here’s another article from The Straits Times on national service in Singapore. Just excerpts with the original article on the 11 August 2008 here, and emphasis mine.

Rejected: Teen’s 5 appeals to defer NS
Mindef turns down SIM student’s pleas to sit for first-year exams first
By Esther Tan

SINGAPORE Institute of Management (SIM) student Samuel Tan Chee Hong will not get to sit for his first-year examinations at the end of this year. By then, the youth, who turned 18 last month, will have been called up to begin his national service (NS).

Samuel joined the private educational organisation in the middle of last year, finished a six-month foundation programme and started his course in computer science at the start of this year. But, last month, he received a letter from the Defence Ministry telling him to report for NS next month. He has made five failed appeals to Mindef asking for a deferment. At first, he pleaded for a deferment until the end of his three-year bachelor’s degree. When that was turned down, he made four further appeals seeking a three- month deferment to allow him to at least complete the first year of his course.

All have been rejected, even with support from Aljunied GRC MPs Cynthia Phua and Lim Hwee Hua. Mindef’s replies to him all carried the same reason: Male Singaporeans aged 18 and due to enlist will be granted a full deferment from NS only to pursue educational qualifications up to ‘A’ levels, a polytechnic diploma or equivalent qualifications such as those from the Institute of Technical Education.

…

Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean also reiterated Mindef’s stance in Parliament last month. ‘Allowing such students deferment would be unfair to the vast majority of their peers studying in junior colleges, polytechnics and other institutions who do not have the same opportunity to be deferred for their university studies.’

Samuel’s father, Mr Roger Tan, said his youngest of three sons had started the SIM course knowing there was a chance he would not get to defer. ‘But we didn’t want to waste time waiting for him to hit 18 before he started NS. It was a risk we had to take,’ said the IT manager. (etc.)

Just to get this out of the way; I’m a firm believer of second chance education institutions. I lectured in one for 7 years, and watching the tremendous effort my students put in in order to complete their studies has left a lasting impression on me. Many juggle work, family, and public stigma and yet finish their degrees in Private Education Organizations (PEOs).

What’s surprising however is how the parent in this instance allowed his son to do a degree program knowing full well that his son would be called up for national service in due course, and is now (I’m guessing) apparently unhappy with the outcome. I wonder if he was honestly expecting an exception to be made for his son’s case when Mindef has made no exceptions outside students studying in the programs listed in the article above.

I can imagine how wide the floodgates will come rushing open if Mindef permitted a deferment here, even if it’s to sit for exams. Every other 18 year could equally start a course intentionally, then seek deferment for an exam, to finish a semester, to finish a module and what have you not; and that’s going to create a significant impact on the demography of the enlistee soldier. Moreover, how about the tens of thousands of male Singaporeans who deferred the start of their studies locally and abroad to do their national service first. However is Mindef going to explain themselves if they granted a pre-enlistment deferment here and now.