Nothing dampens my mood...

...faster than having my day out botched by rain.

Sien.

Makes me wanna run a marathon

If you're in Ang Mo Kio...

...go check out this amazing American-food joint. It's f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c.

Take a stab...at your ex

You can actually buy this.

And just like that...

...I got a second wind.

Two-wheel phobia

It's an odd thing to be afraid of, really, but I'm really scared of bicycles.

Or should I say, I was scared of bicycles. On Saturday evening, I cycled for the first time in a zillion years, since I was knocked down when I was like 10 by a car while I was cycling in the neighbourhood.

I was probably peddling like 5 km/hr and the car was probably doing only 30 km/hr, but that was enough to put me off getting on a bike for the next 20 years. Funny, rite?

Anyhooooo, it looks like I'm really getting over the fear and I have a feeling I'll be biking a lot more often!

You've created a (speed) monster.

P.S. Nacho Libre sucked.

Bring out the dancing shoooos

Listening to: Some great music I don't know, playing on an editor's computer

It's Friday, and I am in a party-ing mood. I never get into a party-ing mood.

I. Must. Have. This.

Ok, I don't know why, but I MUST HAVE THIS DOLL.

Click on the doll to order.

Downward....dog

Hmm so I was told by a yoga teacher that running and yoga don't mix. Apparently it's got something to do with how running tightens the muscles, esp those around the knees - bad! - and yoga "loosens" them - good!. So if I run, I'm basically undoing all the good stuff that yoga does for my body.

Does that make sense?

While I was waiting

I've checked it out and done the sums. I'm starting to believe this will soon be reality. It's within reach.

Stay tuned.

Grin and bare it

So work has been a little bit blah. I guess we're just in a quiet period and I keep forgetting the fact that I've only been back here for 3 weeks! It sure feels longer than that. Why am I in a rush to do more, ASAP?

In any case, someone said I probably need to be psyched by my life outside the office, so that that enthusiasm would trickle to my work life. How true, and how no-brainer. I think I know it, it's just a bad case of inertia and a mild case of the moving-back blues. (If I keep talking about my mini mid-life crisis, I'm going to have a mini mid-life crisis, right? So I'll stop talking about it. Coz if I look at the facts coolly and take away my moodiness and the emotional shit, life IS pretty good!) Oh, and PMS too. boo.

So I've slowly made a list of things I'm going to do - egged on as well by the fact I'm turning 30 in less than 8 weeks - and I've started taking little steps, and I must say I am psyched!

It's going to be soooo awesome. :)

Wake up

When you realise you're in a cycle of bad behaviour that sabotages something that could be potentially great, what do you do?

You do something about it. That's what.

If you're happy and you know it...

You would be happy too, if you lived here


SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The tiny nation of Vanuatu, one of the "happy isles of Oceania," has topped a new index that measures quality of life against environmental impact, with industrial countries, perhaps unsurprisingly, faring badly.

The UK-based New Economics Foundation (NEF) aimed to measure the environmental efficiency of global progress with its "Happy Planet Index" report, which it said painted a different order of world wealth but showed all countries could do better.

"The Happy Planet Index strips the view of the economy back to its absolute basics: what we put in (resources), and what comes out (human lives of different length and happiness)," the NEF said.
The Group of Eight (G8), an unofficial forum of the heads of leading industrialized nations meeting on July 15-17, failed to make the top 50. Host Russia came in at 172 in the 178-nation survey, with the United States at 150 and the UK at number 108.

The NEF, an independent group that did the index jointly with UK-based green campaign group Friends of the Earth, said the report showed high levels of resource consumption do not reliably produce high levels of well-being.

"The order of nations that emerges may seem counter-intuitive. But this is because policy makers have been led astray by abstract mathematical models of the economy that bear little relation to the real world," said NEF's policy director Andrew Simms.

NEF said Central America was the region with the highest average score, combining good life expectancy of 70 years with an ecological footprint below its globally fair share, while island nations scored above average and Switzerland came top in Europe.

Out of Asian nations Vietnam came highest at number 12 and Singapore was ranked lowest at 131.

African countries made up seven of the bottom 10, with Zimbabwe coming last.

Vanuatu is part of a vast sprawling Pacific archipelago described as "the happy isles of Oceania" by author Paul Theroux.

The full Happy Planet Index is available at www.happyplanetindex.org.

mrbrown lives on

Check this out. It's hilarious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQxU3K-w0bU

mrbrown canned

This has gotta be a new low.

P.S. Please continue to read him online.

Published in TODAY on June 30, 2006

mr brown

S'poreans are fed, up with progress!

THINGS are certainly looking up for Singapore again. Up, up, and away.

Household incomes are up, I read.

Sure, the bottom third of our country is actually seeing their incomes (or as one newspaper called it, "wages") shrink, but the rest of us purportedly are making more money.

Okay, if you say so.

As sure as Superman Returns, our cost of living is also on the up. Except we are not able to leap over high costs in a single bound.

Cost of watching World Cup is up. Price of electricity is up. Comfort's taxi fares are going up. Oh, sorry, it was called "being revised". Even the prata man at my coffeeshop just raised the price of his prata by 10 cents. He was also revising his prata prices.

So Singaporeans need to try to "up" their incomes, I am sure, in the light of our rising costs. Have you upped yours?

We are very thankful for the timing of all this good news, of course. Just after the elections, for instance. By that I mean that getting the important event out of the way means we can now concentrate on trying to pay our bills. It would have been too taxing on the brain if those price increases were announced during the election period, thereby affecting our ability to choose wisely.

The other reason I am glad with the timing of the cost of living increases and wages going down, is that we can now deploy our Progress Package to pay for some of these bills. Wait, what? You spent it all on that fancy pair of shoes on the day you saw your money in your account? Too bad for you then.

As I break into my Progress Package reserves to see if it is enough to pay the bills, I feel an overwhelming sense of progress. I feel like I am really staying together with my fellow Singaporeans and moving forward. There is even talk of future roads like underground expressways being outsourced to private sector companies to build, so that they, in turn, levy a toll on those of us who use these roads. I understand the cost of building these roads is high, and the Government is relooking the financing of these big road projects.

Silly me, I thought my road tax and COE was enough to pay for public roads.

Maybe we can start financing all kinds of expensive projects this way in future. We could build upgraded lifts for older HDB blocks, and charge tolls on a per use basis. You walk into your new lift on the first floor, and the scanner reads the contactless cashcard chip embedded in your forehead.

This chip would be part of the recently-announced Intelligent Nation 2015 plan, you know, that initiative to make us a smart nation? So you, the smart contactless-cashcard-chip-enhanced Singaporean would go into your lift, and when you get off at your floor, the lift would deduct the toll from your chip, and you would hear a beep. The higher you live, the more expensive the lift toll.

Now you know why I started climbing stairs for exercise, as I mentioned in my last column. I plan to prepare for that day when I have to pay to use my lift. God help you if some kid presses all the lift buttons in the lift, as kids are wont to do. You will be beeping all the way to your flat.

The same chip could be used to pay for supermarket items. You just carry your bags of rice and groceries past the cashierless cashier counter, and the total will be deducted from your contactless cashcard automatically. You will not even know you just got poorer. And if your contactless cashcard runs out of funds (making it a contactless CASHLESS cashcard), you just cannot use paid services. The door of the lift won't close, the bus won't stop for you, taxis will automatically display "On Call" when their chip scanners detect you're broke.

Sure, paying bills that only seem to go up is painful, but by Jove, we are going to make sure it is at least convenient. No more opening your wallet and fiddling with dirty notes and coins. Just stand there and hear your income beeped away. No fuss, no muss! I cannot wait to be a Smart e-Singaporean. I also found out recently that my first-born daughter's special school fees were going up. This is because of this thing called "Means Testing", where they test your means, then if you are not poor enough, you lose some or all of the subsidy you've been getting for your special child's therapy. I think I am looking at about a $100 increase, which is a more than a 100 per cent increase, but who's counting, right? We can afford it, but we do know many families who cannot, even those that are making more money than we are, on paper.

But don't worry. Most of you don't have this problem. Your normal kids can go to regular school for very low fees, and I am sure they will not introduce means testing for your cases. We need your gifted and talented kids to help our country do well economically, so that our kids with special needs can get a little more therapy to help them to walk and talk. And hey, maybe if the country does really well, the special-needs kids will get a little more subsidy.

Like I said, progress. High-definition televisions, a high-speed broadband wireless network, underground expressways, and contactless cashcard system — all our signs of progress. I am happy for progress, of course but I would be just as happy to make ends meet and to see my autistic first-born grow up able to talk and fend for herself in this society when I am gone.

That is something my wife and I will pay all we can pay to see in our lifetimes.

*******************

Printed in Today on 3 July 2006

Letter from K BHAVANI

Press Secretary to the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts

Your mr brown column, "S'poreans are fed, up with progress!" (June 30) poured sarcasm on many issues, including the recent General Household Survey, price increases in electricity tariffs and taxi fares, our IT plans, the Progress Package and means testing for special school fees. The results of the General Household Survey were only available after the General Election. But similar data from the Household Expenditure Survey had been published last year before the election. There was no reason to suppress the information. It confirmed what we had told Singaporeans all along, that globalisation would stretch out incomes.

mr brown must also know that price increases in electricity tariffs and taxi fares are the inevitable result of higher oil prices. These were precisely the reasons for the Progress Package — to help lower income Singaporeans cope with higher costs of living. Our IT plans are critical to Singapore's competitive position and will improve the job chances of individual Singaporeans. It is wrong of mr brown to make light of them.

As for means testing for special school fees, we understand mr brown's disappointment as the father of an autistic child. However, with means testing, we can devote more resources to families who need more help. mr brown's views on all these issues distort the truth. They are polemics dressed up as analysis, blaming the Government for all that he is unhappy with. He offers no alternatives or solutions. His piece is calculated to encourage cynicism and despondency, which can only make things worse, not better, for those he professes to sympathise with.

mr brown is entitled to his views. But opinions which are widely circulated in a regular column in a serious newspaper should meet higher standards. Instead of a diatribe mr brown should offer constructive criticism and alternatives. And he should come out from behind his pseudonym to defend his views openly.

It is not the role of journalists or newspapers in Singapore to champion issues, or campaign for or against the Government. If a columnist presents himself as a non-political observer, while exploiting his access to the mass media to undermine the Government's standing with the electorate, then he is no longer a constructive critic, but a partisan player in politics.

Moving on

For the first time in 7 months, we were able to enjoy a weekend doing things leisurely together. I mean, after 7 months of failing miserably at this long-distance thing, we are finally physically together. Last weekend, we whiled away the time doing nothing (but it still felt like a lot). There was no sense of urgency, no need to try to pack everything into a few days - most of our visits over the past 7 months were only a few days long - and no "end" in sight.

We took the dog out to the Botanic Gardens, shared some fries, played Scrabble, spent a few hours at Zouk, watched (both) quarter-finals of the World Cup, had yummy prawn noodle at East Coast Road, checked out sailing schools, went to buy books at Borders and called it a weekend.

And it was really nice. :)

Donno much about football...

...but I am sad Brazil lost.