December 2011
2 posts
"Water Ponding" is PUB's New Term for "Flood"
Look at this Straits Times photo. Do you call that a flood?
What PUB said:
There was no flooding at Orchard Road. However, water ponded at the open area of Liat Towers, the underpass between Lucky Plaza and Ngee Ann City, and the basement of Lucky Plaza due to the sustained heavy downpour.
Alamak! It is called a flood! Flood!
May 2011
2 posts
Here's What I'll Vote For. What About You?
Humility, Not Arrogance
I will vote for representatives who listen to my countrymen, instead of scaring, threatening and punishing them
I will vote for representatives who admits and apologizes for their mistakes once they happen, instead of telling me that my expectations are unrealistic
I will vote for representatives who listens to my feedback earnestly, instead of saying that I am...
A Warning at the Polling Booth
Forget about talk about the rising cost of living, foreign talents, HDB prices, GRCs and other common gripes. The tides are turning and people are really unhappy? This will be a watershed election? Big deal.
Some of these memes, true or otherwise, are already spreading on the ground:
Election votes can be tracked to you
Your kids will have a lower chance of getting into their school of...
March 2011
2 posts
“We may have produced Asia’s richest country outside Japan. But what is the...”
– Anthony Prakasam, S’poreans’ reactions to Japan disaster sadden me
February 2011
3 posts
“All of you will go to the polls: you’ll stand there in the polling place...”
– Ronald Reagan, 1980
A Rabbit Year Greeting Gone Berserk
A: huat ah!
B: few more hrs!
A: tio toto, tio 4D
B: yeah man! good luck coming!!
A: carrot is coming too!
B: hahaha, then after erection, your carrot will get CHOP ah
A: then after chop your carrot, they will skin you like a rabbit!
A: and leave you in the cold for winter without your fur?!
B: then they will import other rabbits from overseas to replace the skinned rabbits
B: those rabbits have special talents, like working very hard for less carrot
A: ohhh… those are not exactly rabbits but small rodents, which can eat less and run fast on the wheels!
B: and they don't ask for more carrots!
B: and in due time, carrots will be taxed at 10%, transporting of carrots will be charged every 50 meters, and chopping of carrots will also require a levy
B: unlike the native rabbits who demand larger cages at the same low price
A: well, it's so stressful in the farm that the rabbits doesn't fuck like a rabbit and make rabbits like before so they import hornier rabbits from other lands
B: then the imported rabbits eat more local carrots, causing the price of carrots to go up
B: the native male rabbits have to live in a special cage for 2 years, while the imported horny rabbits can do whatever they want in the farm
B: then the native rabbits are told to buy special kind of carrot called "house carrots" because they are actually the same thing but cost less
A: the farm owners are happy skinning all those rabbits
B: and once the native rabbits are all skinned, the imported rabbits will be next
A: and native rabbits are asked to eat frozen carrots, because it is the same after defrosting and at the same price as fresh carrots
B: and 35% of the frozen carrots will be chopped before they are allowed to be sold
A: some native rabbits had moved on to greener farms
B: and they enjoy fresh carrots at much lower prices, and less imported rabbits to snatch their carrots away from them
B: the rabbits also have a much larger cage to poop in
A: while the native rabbits in the original farm had to endure all the poops from both imported and native rabbits
A: and sometimes the weather gets bad, drains are choked and it floods. help, rabbits can't swim. they will drown!!
B: and the farm owners will calmly say that such things happen only every 50 years, and the rabbits should not worry
A: no amount of farm improvement can ensure there is no flooding, but whenever it does, the rabbits will drown
B: yes, the rabbits expect too much but all they really want are bigger carrots
B: it turns out most of the chopped carrots are stored in this refrigerator that belong to the farm owners
A: all the masters want is MORE RABBITS in the same area for farming
B: yes, so that they can chop more carrots monthly and place the 35% of each chopped carrot from each rabbit into the fridge
B: the carrots in the refrigerator are then loaned off to other farms. the other farms are thankful and return even more carrots than was loaned. the farm owners buy more refrigerators.
A: and the fridge is guarded by a friendly nepalese rabbits imported by the farm owners.
B: these are fierce and loyal rabbits
A: the farm owners will let all their friends open the fridge
B: the only thing about nepalese rabbits are that they cannot watch the cage properly and sometimes other naughty rabbits that are supposed to be locked up escape
B: turns out some naughty rabbits can escape the farm's high security fences and somehow manage to swim across the pond to other farms!
A: i heard these nepalese rabbits are so fearsome, they can even guard the owner's gates. shame on the native rabbits.
B: of course. the farm owners don't really trust the native rabbits to behave themselves, especially those from the farm up north which are regarded as separate breeds
A: that's why masters don't even trust native rabbits, they only use imported nepalese rabbits for their own security
B: yes, but there are a group of specially trained native blue rabbits who will ensure the other normal rabbits obey the farm owners
B: and also another group of special native rabbits with a special head of white hair that will sentence normal rabbits to death, if they nibble illegally on forbidden fruits
A: those blue rabbits lived among the rabbits, but are programmed to do the owners' bidding, in case some rabbits become noti or horny and start to fuck like a rabbit and reproduce like a rabbit again!
B: and some horny rabbits even take off their fur in front of the place where they serve carrots very quickly. they even piss and shit there!
A: i hope there is less noti rabbits, more variety of carrots in 2011 in the year of the rabbit.
B: yes, let all the rabbits pray and wish for a better 2011. the year of the rabbit!
A: happy rabbit yr, hope everyone fucks like a rabbit.
A: and makes more baby rabbits, so that we won't have to import so that there will be less imported rabbits.
B: so we shall wish for cheaper carrots, cheaper cages and more native rabbits. gong xi fa cai!
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution...”
– John F. Kennedy, 1962
January 2011
3 posts
“Friends ask me what Singapore is like and I call it ‘Cuba with...”
– Michael Levin, Singapore’s flawed ‘freedom’
A Simple Guide to Holding Power →
Not written by a local blogger, but please indulge us and take a read and see if the points apply!
Telemarketers in Singapore Getting Ruder?
Caller: Hi Sir, _____ calling from Australia New Zealand Bank, ...... We would like to offer you a loan at a low interest rate.
Me: I don't need a loan.
Caller: Why, Sir?
Me: ......
Me: I DON'T NEED A LOAN!
Caller: In that case, thank you... *CLICK*
October 2010
2 posts
3.3% Inflation Due To Rising Costs? →
You’ll be surprised at the answer. It’s due to population.
“Singapore is the only country where the median wealth per adult is lower than...”
– Singapore ‘average wealth per adult’ owned by less than 20%
September 2010
4 posts
Your Vote is Secret →
The citizen believes everything the government says, except this very critical thing.
Buses Disappear and Credit Claimed
Intended reaction to this exercise: “Government is doing something about the gambling problem.”
Result: Success
A Particular Group is Unhappy
The news that Singaporeans are losing their money at the casinos did not go down well with the vocal group who opposed the presence of casinos in our country in the first place.
This opposition forms a rather large group, due to it being...
“Authoritarian regimes, by contrast, ultimately produce economies that are as...”
– The Myth of Authoritarian Growth
The GRCs of Singapore →
A good recap of the always-changing GRCs.
August 2010
1 post
The Dual Economy of Singapore →
A highly plausible explanation why native Singaporeans now benefit much less from the country’s boom than ever in history.
July 2010
6 posts
“…the Government did not know what was going on and seemed more interested in...”
– Siew Kum Hong, More on 50-year floods
SingTel Customer Pays $800 Penalty for Changing to... →
When they say you “can recontract” it does not mean your contract is up. Be careful!
SingTel Charges 3x for Micro SIM Card →
How long more before M1 and StarHub, in a classic cartel-like fashion, increase their prices as well? With the iPhone 4 and iPad launching, probably very soon.
HardwareZone Faking Forum Over-Capacity to... →
Members who paid for membership should initiate a class-action suit on grounds of being misled.
“Telling us that we will never be flood-proof and so we should simply suck it up,...”
– Siew Kum Hong
Politicians' salaries: Leaders of the fee world →
Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the richest of them all?
May 2010
2 posts
Micro SIMs: Telcos Show Their Greed
Summary: Telcos are artificially limiting the availability of micro SIMs to make customers pay for the most expensive mobile broadband plans.
The iPad 3G and 4th iPhone will use new micro SIM cards that are smaller than the current SIM card. Apple is probably using this format to squeeze out every tiny bit of space they can, especially for the next iPhone which will pack a larger battery in a...
April 2010
3 posts
Four Things the Circle Line Stickers Tell Us
In particular, the fancy term “revenue service” found on notices and stickers in all MRT stations.
Some business-minded mangement person approved it
They’re looking forward to the revenue when the line starts to run
You live in Singapore, where key public infrastructure and services are run by profit-making entities
Such entities are designed to “earn maximum...
“One more issue that many people overlook is that unlike private property, since...”
– Nabs, “The HDB conundrum”
March 2010
1 post
Singapore Opposes ACTA Transparency
There has been no coverage of this locally, and its no wonder since details of the ACTA negotiations, to implement broad-reaching intellectual property protection worldwide, have always been kept secret.
In a leak, Singapore is revealed as one of the few countries who oppose transparency of ACTA.
Does Singapore have something to hide?
Why has nobody raised this in parliament? Why has no...
February 2010
2 posts
The State of Broadband in Singapore
The new YouTube Speed History provides very revealing statistics on the state of broadband in Singapore, in spite of the big marketing numbers that ISPs throw out in their marketing materials (“100 Mbps!”).
How to Read the Chart
This is a chart from a StarHub “8 Mbps” connection:
Unbiased data from popular internet sites like YouTube can easily show:
How...
“There is only country in the developed world where the income inequality is...”
– Sickness in Wealth and Poverty….
December 2009
1 post
“Tiger Airways wants to provide quality service to our customers through...”
– Tiger Airways, explaining why snail mail is better than faster forms of feedback (i.e. “because its not so easy for you cheapskates to complain to us!”)
November 2009
2 posts
Singapore Has Health-care Hurdles Too →
Following what other countries do may not be a good model.
The Poor HardwareZone Forum
Purchased by SPH sometime back. Should have lots of money for server upgrades but still unable to handle any slight increase in usage.
Or more likely, they’re spending extra CPU cycles to calculate how many people hit the forums per minute, and artificially display the message that the server is “too busy”.
Are they shilling for deluxe membership revenue? Preposterous,...
October 2009
1 post
Jobs Credit and PRs
The old media is reporting that employers are elated that the Jobs Credit scheme isn’t yanked out from under them but rather its slowly being phased out over the first two quarters in 2010.
Let me relate a story I’ve heard on the ground…
When the bad markets came like a typhoon at the end of 2008, this local Singaporean-run company with 60% of their staff strength being foreigners...
September 2009
4 posts
SingTel vs Local iPhone Developers
Seeing the success of the app store, SingTel has smartly cooked up its own scheme called SingTel App Zone to get developers to sign up, offering marketing support of their apps in exchange for a 30% cut of a developer’s income.
Given that SingTel has no way to bypass Apple’s App Store for the iPhone, SingTel’s cut of the developers income would be on top of the 30% that Apple...
List of Restaurants That Do Not Serve Free Water →
Down with the nickle and diming. Let the movement begin. Repost on your Facebook, Twitter, blog, wherever!
Pigeon is Faster Than Broadband →
How about you StarHub?
Deceived in Marina Square
Business must be really bad these days.
We were walking in Marina Square near the arcade centre when a man eyeballed us and walked towards us. Let’s call him Sheep Herder.
Tried to walk past Sheep Herder, who then shot out his arms with authority like a traffic policeman. No way was he going to let us walk past the aisle.
Then the begging began: “You have to help us. Otherwise we...
August 2009
2 posts
“Accountability requires the government to go beyond lip-service in addressing...”
– Viswa Sadasivan, Nominated Member of Parliament
July 2009
5 posts
“Being able to establish and enforce a minimum wage says a lot about a govt. If...”
– The Truth about Jobs, Jobs, Jobs….
SingTel iFlexi iPhone Plans for 2009
Thanks for the feedback on our 2008 article, SingTel iFlexi Plans for iPhone 3G.
SingTel has tweaked their plans for the iPhone 3GS launch in 2009. Here are the changes in the iFlexi Plans compared to 2008’s offering:
MMS = SMS
iFlexi plans get a 500 (or 1500 for iFlexi Premium) quota that can be used for SMS or MMS
Other (non-iFlexi) SingTel plans do not bundle MMS
SingTel has...
Pfingo SMS is Broken
Pfingo is a service by StarHub that provides customers with an internet phone (VoIP) account, allowing affordable calls to Singapore and overseas numbers.
One huge advantage of Pfingo compared to other internet phone services is that for an additional monthly fee, you can get a local phone number tied to your account so that your family and friends in Singapore can call you locally, pay local...
May 2009
3 posts
How to Answer Important Questions
Person: Why did you make such a huge loss?
Corporation: You cannot always expect gains.
Person: Why did you sell that so quickly?
Corporation: Our performance over the last few years have been respectable.
Person: Why did you sell that at a loss?
Corporation: We invest for the long-term based on our portfolio.
Wolfram Alpha on Singapore
Doing a quick search for Singapore on Wolfram Alpha, the internet’s hottest new search engine, brings up some interesting (accurate?) information on Singapore.
Our island is shaped somewhat weirdly
Our population grows 1.24% yearly
Chinese languages is interestingly split up into “Min Nan”, “Yue” and “Mandarin”. Where did they get this info from?
The...