What would you bring to heaven?

All I need

What would you bring?

New day, new goal

Time to get serious.

My iPod....

THE UNIMAGINABLE HAS HAPPENED.

There was no warning, no hint, no indication.

But a couple of songs into my daily session with my beloved iPod, it stopped playing.

I was aghast, frightened and most of all, pissed off.

It is only 4 months old, for goodness' sake.

The folks at the Apple store at Wheelock Place said there's nothing to be done except to send the baby to the manufacturer...which means that I probably won't see it again for another two weeks.

D-A-M-M-I-T.

I can survive without my phone, but I am not sure I can cope without my iPod.

What am I going to do?

Old friends and ice cream

Happy birthday, Deepa! 04.05

Listening to: The Best of Sade

Note to self: Sneak out of office whenever there's a chance.

Change and circumstance

Listening to: Stina Nordenstam's And She Closed Her Eyes

Yesterday shall go down in history as one of the weirdest days of my life.

Maybe I'm being a tad melodramatic, even by my standards; there have been more emotional episodes and there'll be more to come, but yesterday was certainly one of the most memorable days.
And it was all because of a telephone conversation.

I hesitate to say too much coz I don't want the whole thing to blow up in my face - I know, I'm such an awful pessimist - but I'm quite excited, quite happy and overwhelmed.

Ok, now to come back down to earth.

Ok but not good enough

Time: 25 mins
Distance: 4 km

I need to sleep

1. Call me. . .
...whatever you want.

2. what are you listening to right now?
Typing sounds in the newsroom.

3. what was the last thing you ate?
Peanut butter crackers and instant cereal.

4. if you were a crayon, what colour would you be right now?
Purple.

5. how is the weather right now?
Quite warm I think.

6. last person you talked to on the phone?
Mom.

7. favourite drink?
Hot - teh si. Cold - ginger ale

8. favourite alcoholic drink?
Gin and tonic. No, Midori 7-up. No, Malibu Orange.

9. favourite sport?
Still looking but top contender now - rock climbing.

10. hair colour?
Black.

11. eye colour?
Black

12. favourite band?
None; I love them all.

13. favourite months?
Those at the end of the year.

14. favourite foods?
Spicy!

15. last movie you watched?
The Matrix Revolutions.

16. favourite day of the year?
Christmas Eve.

17. what was your favourite toy as a child?
Dungeons and Dragons.

18. chocolate or vanilla?
Strawberry.

19. favourite smell?
Someone who has just showered with something nice.

20. who inspires you?
People who have overcome odds.

21. number of keys on your key ring?
what key ring?

22. favourite days of the week?
Believe it or not, Monday...and Friday.

***

I'm feeling so weird now.

I can't describe it. I think it's restlessness + impatience + worry + surprise + excitement + wistfulness. It's just a jumble.

It's the inability to pin down what exactly it is that I need because there are just too many options.

It's the fear of making the wrong decision and the consequences that come with that.

It's not knowing what's going to happen in the next month and if I'll be able to cope.

I need to rest.

Envy...what a feeling

Me and recent birthday boy Darren 04.05

I'd normally be in bed at this time of the night.

But I arrived home from Guangzhou a couple of hours ago, and was picked up at the airport and driven to eat nasi lemak at Changi Village. And now my head is in a sort of half-buzzing, half-weird comatose state. I'm just not used to late nights.

This posting, I guess, is prompted by one of Rita's.

I've never had a problem with envy, which stems from comparing the lives other people seem to lead with your own. You imagine that others are happier, are more accomplished, have more possessions, are cooler, are prettier, are more whatever.

That's just poison.

Comparing accomplishes nothing but it's something most of us do very well.

I admit that I've fallen into the trap of envying someone coz of something he/she possesses or coz of the life he/she has. But the feeling never lasts beyond a few minutes and after that, I'm off doing what I do.

I think one can use envy positively. You see someone accomplish something you deem wonderful. And you feel awful, wishing that person were you. So maybe it's time you started doing that thing you've been dreaming about? Instead of letting it get to you and making you feel small and worthless - why should you feel small or worthless anyway?!??? - use it to make your life a little better.

And I can bet my last dollar that someone envies what you've got. You can be dead sure about that.

Bloody long week

It's 7pm, I just filed my story, I'm done and I'm going home.

Bye bye China!

I want this!!!

I haven't wanted something so badly in a long, long time.

(That wasn't English, was it?)

And I'll do almost anything to get it.

Stay tuned.

Can Singapore Rediscover Itself as a Fun City?

Nothing new but still worth a read

By Andy Mukherjee
Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, described his island-nation in parliament this week as "a neat and tidy place with no chewing gum, no smoking in air-conditioned places, no this, no that - not a fun place."

Lee was explaining why he has decided to overcome personal misgivings about gambling in order to back his son and current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's decision to scrap a four-decade-old ban on casinos in the city-state.

With China and India chipping away at Singapore's manufacturing and service businesses, the city-state can't remain a top draw in Asia for money and talent simply because it's "a healthy and wholesome society, safe and secure for everyone," as the 81-year-old leader put it.

Lee's diagnosis is correct. Still, Singapore should concentrate on having casinos to fulfill a limited objective of attracting more tourists and creating more jobs. Any goal of creating "urban buzz", which is the jargon often used in Singapore to describe what the city is lacking, is largely a serendipitous outcome. Even a government as efficient as Singapore's can't manufacture it.

Bangalore Benchmark

A build-and-they'll-come strategy doesn't guarantee urban vigour. It's hard to predict if the two casino resorts that Singapore plans to have - along with a new, more colourful downtown - will realize Lee's new vision of the city as "an economically vibrant and an exciting city to visit with top-class symphony orchestras, concerts, dramas, plays, artists and singers and popular entertainment."

Before one compares Singapore with its own chosen benchmarks for vitality - New York, London and Paris - it might pay to look closer home at a city like Bangalore, whose population of 5.7 million is similar to Singapore's 4.2 million.

While there are many things Singapore can teach Bangalore, what it can learn from the Indian city is that a lively urban landscape need not be a planned outcome.

Bangalore, which is often referred to as India's Silicon Valley, doesn't have a fraction of Singapore's amenities. Its airport is a mess; roads often exist only to join one pothole with another; water is scarce; only three-fifths of the city's garbage gets cleared; and computer-software companies keep enough fuel handy to run backup generators in case power goes out for a few days.

Bangalore's Buzz

And yet, Bangalore is buzzing. Between April and December 2004, hotels in the city charged an average US$199 a night, more than double Singapore's average room rate of US$71 in the same period and a whopping 80 percent increase from a year earlier.

It's true that Bangalore has a crunch of hotel rooms, though shopping malls, art galleries, lounge bars and pubs also are booming. Bangalore has displaced the Taj Mahal from the itineraries of visiting dignitaries. It's also emerging as a hub for popular culture, having served as host for rock stars like Elton John, Sting, Bryan Adams, Mark Knofler and Roger Waters during the last few years.

It's all being made possible by the thousands of new jobs that are being created every month. Motorola, which last year closed its semiconductor design units in Singapore and Taiwan and moved them to China and India, has 2,000 researchers in Bangalore, a number it wants to boost by a quarter each year, Indian newspaper Hindu Business Line reported this month, citing the company's chief technology officer, Padmasree Warrior.

A Series of Accidents

A series of accidents created Bangalore:

1911 - India's British rulers invited Nobel-laureate chemist William Ramsay to help select a site for a science school. Ramsay chose Bangalore.

1950s and 1960s - Independent India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru set up state-owned engineering companies near Bangalore to fulfill his vision of rapid industrialization. He selected Bangalore because of the talent available at the Indian Institute of Science, the school set up by Ramsay. Non-state companies like Motor Industries, a subsidiary of Germany's Robert Bosch, moved to Bangalore to supply parts.

1977 - A socialist Indian government asked IBM to leave the country after it refused to dilute its stake to 40 percent. IBM's departure became an opportunity for entrepreneurs like Azim Premji, who was then running a Bangalore-based vegetable oil business started by his father. Premji hired engineers and built his first minicomputer.

Infosys

1981 - N.R. Narayana Murthy, an engineer who wanted to become a communist politician, changed his mind and set up Infosys Technologies with US$250 in Pune in western India. He moved the company to his hometown Bangalore in 1983 after Motor Industries gave him his first order.

1996 - Global companies panicked that the year 2000 date change would crash computers. Premji's Wipro and Murthy's Infosys rewrote millions of lines of code for customers worldwide. Bangalore's software industry, which employed only 947 people in 1991, expanded rapidly.

2005 - Companies like IBM and Accenture are hiring in Bangalore to cut costs. Meanwhile, Bangalore's homegrown software makers are competing for consulting contracts outside India that were once the domain of U.S. and European technology companies.

The "sudden" buzz in Bangalore is actually just a new chapter in a 100-year-old saga. No amount of planning could have telescoped the process into 10 years.

This isn't to say the government has no role to play. Deutsche Bank economist Sanjeev Sanyal recommends a change in Singapore's trust laws because philanthropic institutions "play a very important role in cities like London and New York by funding a variety of activities such as art, architecture, environmental protection, esoteric research, and so on."

Buzz is too nebulous to plan for. Not every city that allows chewing gum - or casinos - is a fun place.

Restlessness

Help!

I'm in China.

And I'm bored stiff.

I don't know what it is about smallish cities in this country which makes visiting them so blah. I think it's coz all buildings look the same, the people look the same, the TV programs are the same, and people are constructing the same things - offices, roads, residential flats without any character.

Maybe it's coz I'm here covering some silly conference when I'm supposed to be writing about the casinos.

Maybe it's coz I'm not lying on a beach somewhere in Sanya.

Maybe I'm just...restless.

I have to stay here till Monday afternoon, I've been here slightly over a day, and I can't wait to go home already.

sighhhhhh

P.S. Remind me to get an external portable hard disk drive so that I can back up/store my photos and music; I would be devastated if I lost anything.

Singapore to get two resorts

The latest: The government has decided to go ahead with controversial plans for not one, but two, integrated resorts - ending a 40-year ban on casinos - which the government said will add $1 billion to GDP and create more than 35,000 jobs for Singaporeans.

More to come...

This weekend, I...

Vertigo 04.05

• woke up early for my Sat ritual
• went to Sentosa for the Boat Show and took a ride up Sky Tower ("Look! What a beeg Merlion!")
• had a tall lime margarita, a sip of Heineiken and yummy calamari at km8
• went to Pasir Ris and ogled puppies
• stuffed my face with pork knuckle and sausages at Paulaner Brauhaus
• stuffed my face with mom's once-a-week cooking
• had my piano lesson
• surfed too much of the Web
• watched - and enjoyed! - School of Rock
• read too many magazines
• skipped yoga, but...
• ran

The zoo

More than Ben and Jerry's 04.05

Our zoological gardens is a pretty awesome place; it's easy to spend an entire afternoon there.

Unlike those in many zoos overseas, the animals here are not cooped up in miserable, sorry-looking enclosures that are too damp and too dark. These creatures are well taken care of, are sprightly and are actually a joy to look at.

They're even more fun to snap.

My favourite animals, the racoons. What total exhibitionists.

I think I can safely recommend this spot to a visitor when the next one asks me: "So where can I go in Singapore?"

Singapore bars Amnesty activist from speaking at forum: opposition group

So their methods and some research may be questionable. However, after having worked a while with them in Sydney, I must say that their intentions and enthusiasm are faultless.

SINGAPORE, April 15 (AFP) -

The Singapore government has barred Amnesty International spokesman Tim Parritt from speaking at a forum on the death, an opposition group said Friday.

Parritt, a Briton, was scheduled to speak at the forum, entitled "Death penalty and the rule of law in Singapore", on Saturday, the Open Singapore Centre (OSC) said in a statement.

OSC director Chee Soon Juan said the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority had denied Parritt's application for a professional visit pass without giving any reasons.

Chee told AFP Parritt was allowed to enter the country but was barred from speaking.

"Amnesty International is a prominent critic of the death penalty in Singapore," said Chee, who is also a leader of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party. "No reasons were given for the rejection. As usual, the reply came at the very last minute."

The human rights watchdog in a report last year singled out Singapore for executing more people than any other country relative to its population and renewed calls for it to abolish the death penalty.

It said more than 400 convicts, many of them foreign migrant workers, were executed in Singapore from 1991 to October 2003, which an Amnesty official at that time described as a "shocking number" for a country with just over four million people.

Chee said the forum would proceed on Saturday with mainly local speakers, including himself and another opposition leader, J.B. Jeyaretnam.

Indochina - what a trip

Locals and more locals 03.05

My school and I

What's the difference between ignorance and indifference? - I don't know and I don't care.

- Saul Bellow

Yesterday, I received an email from a St Nicholas classmate, Andrea, who pointed out that apparently, our school is in some sort of a fix involving rankings and prestige and an identity crisis.

I must admit that I've always been proud of the fact that I went to St Nicks, not coz it's supposedly one of the top schools for girls in the country but coz of the experiences, memories and friends it gave me. That's worth far, far more than the academic side of stuff, as I was never a good student. I chalked up Cs and Ds while my classmates scored As effortlessly. The only subjects I was remotely good at were English and History, and I probably spent way too much time in the band. I don't regret it.

In any case, as I did only six months of JC, or junior college - for those not acquainted with the system, that's like Grades 11 and 12 - before going to Perth, my experience with Singapore's education system ended there. My memories of my school days in Singapore were limited to the six years at primary school - when I was barely aware - and the four years at St Nicks. Others have their JC experiences and friends to recall; I don't. This is why St Nicks is, and always will be, a very very special place for me.

Regarding the crisis...I can understand why some old girls feel the need to maintain the reputation of the school - for details, please read Andrea's blog, as she explains it better than I ever can. Singapore has always been a society that puts a lot of emphasis on, how shall I put it, certain kinds of achievements (read: financial). There is the elite - the ACS, MGS, or even Raffles schools though they are packed with heartlanders - aha, a term only Singaporeans can relate to. If you're from a certain type of school, then you're supposedly on your way to a "successful" life as defined by most Singaporeans. That means you'll make a certain amount of money, know certain people, live in a certain neighbourhood, drive a certain type of car, drink a certain type of wine, blah blah blah.

Now, I personally don't givva rat's ass about being "successful" and I don't givva shit which school a person comes from. It doesn't mean anything and it certainly doesn't say a damn thing about you. And after a certain age, shall we say, 25, no right-thinking person asks another which school he/she is from anyway. Coz at the end of the day, it's who you are and what you deem important that matter. And that's the whole point of education.

Audition me!

It was only an hour of my life, but I think spending any time with the most plasticky and fake people in the country deserves its own post.

I got a call from a friend - I'm still deciding whether to name the person - on Friday afternoon. The friend...we shall just call the person Z...asked me to go to a function on Monday evening. I was supposed to be at the Ritz-Carlton at 7pm and dress "smart casual".

Of course, I had to ask what the event was; although I love you dearly, I don't turn up somewhere just coz you asked me to. And to my absolutely shock, Z had been selected as one of the finalists of Audition Me!

For those who were not at Wheelock Place during the Good Friday weekend or don't watch Channel NewsAsia, Audition Me! is the island-wide talent hunt for new presenters for the channel's new food, travel and sports programs. I was at Borders that weekend and the audition booths were packed. Apparently 800 people turned up over 3 days for a shot at fame and their own TV show, which I guess is pretty attractive. I could NEVER, EVER do that coz I just don't have the balls.

So anyway, Z was selected and asked me if I could be there too as a supporter. I couldn't refuse.

Went by the weekend and came Monday, during which I was jittery as hell coz I wanted to get out by 6.30 the latest. I got to the office at 10am, was told promptly that I had to attend a Ministry of Health briefing at 2.30pm. "Ok, no problem", I said, thinking I could handle one miserable story on the ministry's proposed new law.

So I went and the thing didn't end till about 4pm, when it started to pour. That is definitely a bad thing when you're rushing for your life. So I got back at 4.30.

Murphy's Law was definitely at work coz the second I was walking through the door, my editor was holding onto a press release, which apparently needed to be written up. This is what we call management by sight. You see, you assign. So two hours before I was due to leave the office, I had TWO stories to write.

At that point, quality didn't really matter, as you can imagine. I hit the 'cruise' button and finished a 40cm and a 30cm in 2 hours and was out of the office without anyone knowing.

Z was jittery as hell in the car and so was I. We both didn't know what to expect. "How big is this going to be?", "What happens after this?", "Will this change Z's life?"...we just didn't know. I blasted upbeat tunes on the iPod on the way and by the time we got there, we were both a little high on excitement.

There were cameras, lights, a couple of MediaCorp reporters. There was Diana Ser, Cheryl Fox. And there were quite a lot of beautiful people. Exactly the way we expected.

Z went to sit with the other contestants and I was relegated to the other section where "real" people sit, but the saving grace was meeting and talking to a reporter from Today who was there to cover the event. The initial excitement I felt was very quickly replaced by erm, something else. Disgust is too strong a word, boredom is not it...I probably felt a bit of both. But most of the time, I was squirming in my chair and couldn't wait for it to end.

Blatant self-promotion, vanity, shallowness, self-congratulatory smugness - you name the bad behaviour, it was there. And I am not talking just about the contestants.

So anyway, it turned out that Z was one of the 39 semifinalists and was there so that they could reveal the final 9, who will take part in a reality-show-based contest, and viewers can sms their votes on the 3 who will get their own food, travel and sports show. Z didn't make the final 9.

And we left.

To that, I say congratulations. You just missed the chance to be turned into a monster.

Cool shophouse with hot food

More people should come here 04.05

Chai brought me to a charming little restaurant on Kandahar Street called Bumbu, which serves wonderful Thai-Indonesian cuisine. We had tum yum kung, olive rice, green mango salad and some fried fish - all were yummers, except the last dish which was a little suspect.

I could eat Thai food everyday and not get sick of it.

We need more such great places!

I'm jet-setting!

Ok, quite a bit has happened since I last properly posted, there are quite a few overdue pictures and quite a lot to pour out. The pictures from Kota Kinabalu will have to wait coz the bunch of us are collating and sharing them, but believe me, the wait will be worth it! I'll post a few Indochina pictures later...I think I'm really getting addicted!

The travelling shows no sign of stopping; even when I was in Myanmar, my editor sent me an email to tell me that she's sending me to Hainan, China on April 19 for about a week. I guess I AM happy about it coz at the beginning of the year, I told her I want to go for more overseas assignments and she obviously remembers.

So here I go again.

Now off for a run...!

It's good to be home

The beautiful ones...Gor, Mom, me and Andy 04.05