Well, I woke up at 10pm in the evening to find a delightful piece of argument on Bing De’s blog.
It hasn’t blown up in anybody’s face (and I seriously don’t think it ever will), but talking about whether Singlish is relevant in Singapore is definitely some real fodder for the sniping.
I remember that back then, when local sitcom Phua Chu Kang hit the heartlands, it tugged at everyone’s heart with its blatant use of broken Engrish, got a lot of chinese, malay, and indian influence inside the words. 
Then, for some obscure reason, the elite powers that would be, having rocketed themselves past the levels of the commoner, suddenly decided that Singrish was uncouth.
They decided to stigmatise, and eventually murder the sappling, just like how they killed political opinion in Singaporeans.
Where that is concerned, if they decide on something, debate becomes a rather moot point, and you are put behind bars as fast as you can even get a decent demonstration to save Singlish. Hell, you even get arrested if you do a silent demonstration of 4 people!
Anyway, given the official stand of killing Singaporean culture, it would just have to take refuge along with the rest of Singaporean Political opinions, gays, and common sense on the Internet.
That the government compliant media takes frequent blanket bombardments of the Internet in general further isolates the last bastion of freedom and local culture from the clinical world that we live in real life. Kind of like the Matrix.
10 years, or 20 years down the road, they are going to wonder why there is no vibrant local culture, and chastise Singaporean’s lack of something Uniquely Singapore.
Tourists are not going to come back to Singapore for repeated visits. They visit buildings, party at pubs, go through the state-sanitised history tours, go to the zoo, pay through their noses to go to Sentosa, spend their money for the cheaper international branded things in Singapore, and fly back. Possibly all in one day.
I don’t think anyone would remember Singapore if we were suddenly blasted off the face of the earth. We may hit the news for some weeks, but all that we would ever be remembered for, is that we have no life. That, and the chewing gum ban.
[tags]singlish, current affairs, singapore, singapore culture[/tags]
Scribbled under:
Current Affairs, Writings
Even though I bombed at art back in school, I still like pretty pictures — at least I know that I still have the right to enjoy beautiful graphics even as my art teachers scream blue murder at my scrawls.
When I woke up at 3pm in the afternoon, after going to sleep only at 9am, I had a sudden peppy surge in my energy levels, though my body was still protesting about insufficient sleep.
I left the bed to look at the blogs: most of my friends are occasional bloggers, maybe with the exception of Harrison, whom blogs every few days.
After looking at the pictures, I was sufficiently inspired to do something about the blue header on this blog.
I found a stock picture of a truth serum, and modified the picture to land on the page. The beer mug was supposed to be on a white background; in sharp contrast to the black banner to the left, but I haven’t found a tangible way to sharpen the contrast.
Please post all your comments! Have I permanently killed your creativity with this poor excuse of a Photoshop job?
Scribbled under:
General
I think I’ve pushed it over the limit: it is now 2am Singapore time on my off day, and I am still wide awake. It is like how your productivity hours are altered with only one or two day’s adaptation.
To think I have to maintain this arrangement, or risk suffering through the transition period again makes me dread this a little bit. This is the reason night shifts are unpopular with shift workers.
I’ll try again at 3am to see if I can doze off; no use trying to change the work pattern until I complete this round.
Scribbled under:
General
Based on my work, I was supposed to take on the graveyard shift on the occasion. Wednesday was my first attempt at wrecking havoc on my body’s natural tendencies.
I did not know what to expect, though in retrospect, I should have slept a few more hours before going in to work. It was more of a direct plunge into the entire affair rather than a properly planned transition.
As the night-shifter, I was the saviour for the guys whom had to work from nine to nine, since they couldn’t reasonably go out to buy their dinner with a 20 minute break. It was more of a reciprocal gesture, since I was previously saved by other night-shifters previously.
I settled in, with 3 layers of clothing, since my friends whom have been through the artic before me have warned about the trying conditions. I ended up underestimating the prowress of 3 ceiling-mounted air-conditioning systems on full blast.
Even before the critical dew-saturation hours of dawn, the 3 of us were numbed like ice-cubes. I brought in a cuppa hot steaming Milo, which had frozen like the rest of us within minutes. I dreamed of setting up a sun in the office. I miss the glorious warmth of nuclear fusion.
The cold also made me feel even more tired: I was surprised because I had stayed up till the wee hours of 4am before, and I was only mildly sedated, compared to outright dozing off. Imagine an elephant sitting on your head.
We tried to keep warm by opening as many windows as we could (total of 2 out of 10 windows in the entire office, but without the huge difference in temperature, not much of the cold air escaped.
Eventually, the two ladies stayed in the corridors, which was only connected to the central air-conditioning system, turned on only during office hours. I stewed in the office, determined to overcome the ridiculous situation of freezing in the tropics. I think I would never understand the Japanese, if what a taxi driver in Taipei told me was true.
I am tempted to ask Badaunt: do the Japanese wear singlets out in the teen degrees climate? How could they still keep warm with such blatant assault of their senses?
I am thankful that I live in the tropics.
Scribbled under:
General
I had “I am a boring person” written all over my forehead today. The rest of the world was going about their lives, while I slept the night shift away. I didn’t manage to get much sleep anyway, so I think I’ll fall asleep on the bus again tomorrow morning.
Thankfully, all those guard duties that I have done during National Service came to the rescue when faced with a night vigil, handling weird people who love to call at 3am in the morning. Sometimes, the adrenaline that comes when the call system beeps can jolt an elephant into a trampede: now my heart merely races like a suddenly cold-started car engine. (Is that good for my health?)
I am still trying to figure out what forms of entertainment are appropriate to keep me awake. So far, I’ve tried Monopoly, but I nearly fell asleep at one point when the eye-shutter threatened to crash down. That was it; I have to do something about it. Tonight, short of propping my eyelids with toothpicks, I’d do absolutely anything to keep my mind off sleep. Maybe even tie my hair to the ceiling, but it just isn’t long enough to do that.
The layout of the office is like a mini-track, so I figured that with 30m per round, I can clock one 2.4km run with 80 rounds around the office.
How do you keep your night vigils? I know that many of you have to sacrifice your sleep just to get your work completed: how about sharing some strategies that would keep you awake while you have to tackle the night shift?
Don’t be surprised if you see another post at 3am in the morning. That is me imploring for something to keep me away from the Z-monster.
Scribbled under:
General
Some of my friends have told me that the Armed Forces have tightened the noose on imaging devices. While I am not surprised that they have been reticent on cameras, I was quite shocked when the blanket ban was announced.
Back during my time, the top brass was quite worried about revealing the features in the installations, hence a tight restriction on whom could wield a imaging device in camp areas. However, depending on the individual unit’s security officer’s stand, they were various restrictions on the ban.
Some units decided to issue Letters of Authorisation, which empowered the permit holder to wield the coveted camera capable mobiles, which non-incidentally, were the most advanced; and continue to be, in the market.
Other units were too sensitive to be allowed any leeway, while others were given the outright green light, perhaps as an experiment on the security of these devices.
Recently, somebody (we have still yet to know who actually discovered this) found videos of servicemen filming mock national day parades with rubbish bins and improvised equipment on YouTube, and wrote to MINDEF.
Apparently, the video was deemed too disgraceful to the image of the Armed Forces, and the top clamped down totally on imaging devices.
I can’t deny that it is a natural response to something that would degrade the stature of the service to the public, but it sounds ridiculous to ban tools just because somebody used it to disgrace the military; they might as well ban fires in the cookhouse, since it has the potential to harm somebody if it gets out of control.
What’s more, the irony is that the minister of defence, Teo Chee Hean, is simultaneously the minister of education. I am not surprised that the people involved in the video gets thrown in the slammer, and the underlying message is crystal clear: We’ll stop at nothing to preserve the military’s honour.
Couldn’t the servicemen be counselled instead? Besides, I don’t think there was anything wrong in the production, as there was no classified information, nor were they desecrating the national flag (which was not even in the picture at all).
Such a serious response to a parody of the National Day parade is an over-reaction, and only serves to reinforce the idea that free expression in Singapore is a myopic realistic consideration. Interested in doing a parody? Go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
It also serves to reinforce the fact that Singapore is intolerant of ideals and actions that are contrary to theirs.
The probable good thing about the entire incident? Possibly sky-high sales of non-camera cellphones.
Scribbled under:
Current Affairs
It is the annual big thing for writers, on the same scale of size as the National Day Parade, but not costing as much, and not burning as many weekends (it burns everyday!)
On 1 November 2006, writers around the world, including approximately 200 from Singapore, will race towards writing a 50,000 word novel from straight from scratch. If the thought of keeping at it for a blog post terrifies you, how about averaging 1,667 words just to hit the target?
(more…)
Scribbled under:
Writings
It is about to come again. The annually held NaNoWriMo, also known as the National Novel Writing Month, designates November of every year as the time for frentic and suicidal attempts to write out a 50,000 word novel by the end of the month.
And this time, they are not starting without me.
The pits of writing hell are waiting, and I’ll join the rest of suffering writers as we all aim for the target of writing ourselves into lifeless authors of 50k-worded essays: all in one month!
Please do contact me if you wish to join me in the noble cause for writing without criticism; meanwhile, I am going to squirrel away all the nice new materials to sustain this blog while I plough headlong into a month of keyboard banging.
After all, it won’t be nice for this blog to hang like a desert while I am having fun tearing my hair out over my novel, right? Progress updates when I hit the milestones!
Scribbled under:
Writings
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