Simply being aware doesn’t solve the problem

First off, even the NGO themselves stated that the goal was to pressure the US government into dumping resources into helping to stop this evil-doer. Yes, spreading awareness is the first step to getting policy-makers to listen up, but the ultimate goal is to effect changes in policy, not just spread awareness. It’s pretty annoying when people think they’re suddenly humanitarians just because they shared a video with tons of people and that they’re actually helping to alleviate the situation over there. No, you’re not. Spreading awareness is just a stepping stone to your final goal of stopping this madman. If you don’t take the extra step to contact policy makers or donate money or something, you’re not helping that much. For sure, you’re helping to spread awareness about the issue, but that’s it. You’re not stopping the guy.

Saying that “spreading awareness” causes Kony to stop his violent actions is like saying buying home bread and ham will cause a sandwich to make itself.

Awareness is necessary, no doubt

Don’t get me wrong, having awareness of what’s going on in the world is definitely a really great thing. But it’s just like how everyone is aware that millions of kids in Africa are starving, dying of illnesses that are easily treatable in more developed countries. We’re aware of them for sure, and we certainly do feel sorry for their plight, but we don’t think we’re actually doing anything to help them simply by being aware and being sorry for them. If we spread an image of a starving African kid on Facebook, we don’t think we’re actually helping that kid get food do we?

But when it’s an organised campaign by a NGO, we feel like we’re part of this cause just because we “Share” their Youtube video, we feel like humanitarians. But in all honesty, we really aren’t.

So yes, thank you for letting me know this situation is happening, but don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re actually stopping Kony simply by “Liking” the video.

Not to mention we’re a country of just 5 million people

So, now that we’ve established that getting the attention of policy makers is the only way we can actively help alleviate the situation, let’s discuss if us Singaporeans can actually do anything. Can anybody really envision a Singaporean calling up their MP’s office, asking them if our government is going to do anything about Kony? Is anybody really going to attend the next Meet the MP session to express concern about the situation in Uganda (even though he’s probably not even in Uganda anymore, more on that later)? Maybe a few might? But not many.

The fact is that we’re a tiny country that doesn’t have much resources to begin with. We have plenty of problems to deal with here in our own country. We have very little say in the international stage when it comes to situations like these. Honestly it’s pretty damn unlikely our government is going to actively do anything about Kony, and rightfully so.

Money money money

There is one way individual Singaporeans can help of course, and that’s to donate to the NGO who put out that video, Invisible Children, and hope that your funds do make a difference in stopping Kony through the actions of this organisation. If you do donate, more power to you, it’s great that you’re helping with money. Just know that this NGO doesn’t actually spend that much on actual aid to begin with (just 32% actually). They’re much more focused on spreading awareness. A really large part of their funds goes to stuff like filmmaking and travelling expenses, because the goal of this particular NGO is more to raise awareness rather than actually provide aid. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, you need some organisations to be focused on spreading awareness.

Not to mention it’d be pretty ridiculous to think that a NGO would just take the funds and hire some kind of private military to take down Kony, seeing as how that’s really the only way to actively bring him to justice.

Get your facts straight

Please know that all NGOs, despite their desire to do good in this world, will all at the end of the day have some form of agenda. It’s the reason why so many activist groups target Apple when it comes to working conditions in Foxconn factories in China, even though dozens of other big tech companies use Foxconn as well, and many other factories in China have even worse conditions. No, they target Apple because they’re the biggest target out there by far, everyone relates to them because so many people have an iPhone.

Now, I don’t know what agenda Invisible Children has at all, maybe they don’t have any, but then it begs the question as to why most of their video was pretty factually inaccurate to begin with. After getting all riled up about the video, it’ll come as quite a bummer that most of it is pretty factually inaccurate to begin with. There are many reports that Kony hasn’t even been in Uganda for about 6 years, and that this army of his that supposedly numbers in the tens of thousands probably only numbers in the hundreds now.

To quote Ugandan journalist Angelo Izama:

“To call the campaign a misrepresentation is an understatement. While it draws attention to the fact that Kony, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in 2005, is still on the loose, its portrayal of his alleged crimes in Northern Uganda are from a bygone era. At the height of the war between especially 1999 and 2004, large hordes of children took refuge on the streets of Gulu town to escape the horrors of abduction and brutal conscription to the ranks of the LRA. Today most of these children are semi-adults. Many are still on the streets unemployed. Gulu has the highest numbers of child prostitutes in Uganda. It also has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis.

If six years ago children in Uganda would have feared the hell of being part of the LRA, a well documented reality already, today the real invisible children are those suffering from “Nodding Disease”. Over 4000 children are victims of this incurable debilitating condition. It’s a neurological disease that has baffled world scientists and attacks mainly children from the most war affected districts of Kitgum, Pader and Gulu.”

Full article here.

So basically everyone got all riled up and spammed that “Share” button for something that ended 6 years ago… Oh well…

First and foremost, please Apple, please somehow incorporate a stylus for the iPad 3. Apple recently started its forray into the distribution of textbooks via the iBookstore, as well as encouraging the use of iPads in schools. Now I know they introduced a lot of useful features like notes and highlighting to iBooks, and I know the touchscreen is great and all, but when you’re a student nothing beats scribbling stuff on the white margins of your textbook. And taking notes with a pen and paper still feels way more natural than typing (even on a physical keyboard).

Back in secondary school, I loved taking notes on my tablet computer in Windows Journal. It felt really natural, and I didn’t need to worry about wasting paper and any mistakes I made while writing could be easily rectified. However tablets from 6-7 years ago are vastly different from the “tablets” we know of today. Back then there was no such thing as touchscreens. Tablets were basically a laptop with a screen that could be swivelled around and laid over the keyboard. Also, the displays were only able to receive input from the special stylus that came with the tablet. This was pretty great because it meant that you could rest your palm on the screen while writing without worrying at all. 

Plenty of 3rd parties have introduced styli for the iPad, but the problem is that the iPad itself isn’t designed to receive inputs from a stylus. This is a really big problem because while writing, you can’t rest your palm or wrist on the screen while writing as the iPad would take that as input as well, thus interrupting your writing. Some apps have tried to mitigate this problem by introducing features that detect your palm and try to ignore that input, but it’s far from perfect. You still can’t comfortably rest your hand on the screen while writing, making it nigh impossible to easily take notes on your iPad without causing strain and aches to your wrist.

I’d be so damn happy if Apple somehow works some kind of magic and has some special stylus and some special app that allows the user to easily write on a capacitive touchscreen. The iPad 3 would become the only thing I carry all over campus in the future if that were the case.

Other than that though, I don’t really have any other wishes for the new iPad. People have been clamouring for a retina display on the iPad. While that would definitely be a nice addition, I have to wonder what kind of a nightmare it would be for developers to double the resolution of all their graphics. Furthermore, if powering this screen would require more juice which would cause a decrease in battery life, I would much rather live without a sharper screen thank you very much. The insanely awesome battery life of the iPad 2 I’m currently typing on is one of the biggest reasons why I love this device so much. Unlike my stupid iPhone 4S, this thing can last for days and days without having to get plugged in.

I’m sure Apple will try to make it thinner once again, but I don’t really think that’s necessary. What would be nice though is to make this thing lighter. Sure, in comparison to a laptop this thing is really light, but it’s still not light enough to the point where I can just bring it out with me whenever I want to.

So listen up Apple, writing and weight. Just handle those 2 things and along with many other students out there, I’ll be over the moon. 

There’ve always been “music discovery services” floating around the Internet for years now. In all honesty, I haven’t found a single one of them that can accurately provide me with songs that I enjoy. Most of them usually ask you to name one or a couple of songs that you already like, then they’ll suggest other “similar” songs. From there, you have to manually tell the service whether you like or hate each and every song they throw at you to give them a better idea of what kinds of music to filter and present to you. What a hassle to begin with.

But it doesn’t work like that

The problem with this approach is that they’re taking a very scientific approach to music discovery. Oh, you like an R&B song? Well let’s play more R&B for you. The problem is that music doesn’t work like that. Just because you liked a particular R&B song doesn’t mean you’ll like all other R&B songs. You might have liked that first song because you liked the unique beat it had, or the unique vocals of that particular song. The fact that it was an R&B song was just a coincidence. But these “music discovery services” don’t know that. To the algorithm, both songs are tagged as R&B, so you should like both songs, right?

Of course, I’m over simplifying here. I’m sure there are many other algorithms that go into determining whether a particular song would be to your liking. But the fact remains that discovering music isn’t a scientific endeavour, but rather an intuitive one. That’s what’s so brilliant about Apple’s Genius feature. It relies on the intuition of other humans to decide what songs to suggest to you.

A little history…

For those who don’t know, Genius is a feature Apple introduced into iTunes all the way back in 2008. It’s s system that suggests songs to you based on what you already have in your library. Plenty of people saw this and immediately dismissed Genius as another way for Apple to sell you more songs from their iTunes Store. However, it goes way further than that. Genius also allows you to create playlists from your library based of off any one particular song. The genius (pun intended) of this feature and the factor that sets it apart from most other music discovery services is that instead of basing the suggestions off of the song’s descriptors, it bases it off of who else listens to that song as well, and what other songs they have in their library that you have as well. Once they find these common denominators, it’ll put it together into a playlist. The basic idea is:

Oh, both you and these 100 other users here listen to this particular song. And you have these 24 other songs that can also be found in the library of these 100 other users. I’ll put them all together into a 25 song playlist for you!

Of course once again I’m over simplifying and there are other algorithms at play here (e.g. For starters the 24 other songs they put in will most likely be the 24 most common songs among these 100 users, and they probably won’t suggest Heavy Metal songs when you chose a Pop song), but that’s the gist of how Genius works, and more importantly why it works so much better than other music discovery services.

“It just works!”

Genius is one of those Apple products that follows their mantra of “it just works”. Whenever I generate a Genius playlist, the other songs included in the playlist are oftentimes from vastly different artists, and even slightly different genres. However, for some strange reason, when I’m in the mood for that particular song I chose to build my playlist around, I will also be in the mood to listen to the other 24 songs that Genius chose for me. It works so well for me that I’ve more or less abandoned manually creating playlists because I completely rely on Genius to put playlists together for me.

Y U NO USE THIS FEATURE

And yet, despite being such a useful (and free) feature that’s included with iTunes, a surprising number of people actually don’t even know about it or use it at all. To be honest Apple didn’t even really advertise Genius much. They seemed to have made an even greater effort when it came to Ping, their attempt at a social network based around music. That turned out to be a huge flop, and rightfully so. Apple didn’t seem to realise that the last thing people wanted was another social network profile to maintain. Not to mention it hardly did anything out of the ordinary to justify their users spending time on it.

In comparison, Genius is a feature that actually works and is actually useful. Unfortunately the only problem is that few people outside of those who know the ins and outs of iTunes+iPod actually know of it at all. A problem that really needs to be rectified.

Yes I know, as a recent The Online Citizen article pointed out, there have been a ton of train stoppages within the last 2 years, but all of them have been relatively minor break downs compared to this incident. No mechanical system is perfect and in my opinion such minor stoppages are acceptable.

But there’s absolutely no doubt that the break downs over the past week or so have been pretty damn bad. Stoppages lasting almost the entire day, trains getting stuck in the middle of a tunnel with passengers on board, etc. Even I was affected. However, just to put it into perspective, I’ve been taking the MRT religiously for the past 7 years or so, almost every single weekday, and of course pretty frequently on weekends as well. This is the first time in all my life that I’ve actually been affected by a train breakdown.

Yet, suddenly the entire Singapore has been engulfed in a burning desire to see SMRT burn at the stake. This (brilliantly titled might I add) TOC article has been making the rounds on Facebook with many applauding it’s superb writing and its persuasive and well explained arguments. No, it’s not that great an article. It does have a couple good points, no doubt. For example the notion that SMRT should release its maintenance records (w.r.t industry standards) to prove to commuters that they do spend sufficient funding on ensuring the safety of commuters. Also, it raises a good question of whether or not fare increases are linked to Quality of Services standards, as they rightfully should be.

But the remaining demands made in the article are downright preposterous. It calls for the resignation of SMRT’s CEO, as are many other Singaporeans. Because “somebody” has to take responsibility for these failures, why not it be the person holding the highest level of management! It doesn’t matter that this is a mechanical fault that’s so close to the ground and so many layers below her that she has absolutely no control over it! Get rid of her! Who cares that she’s been running the whole system just fine for years and years and years! WE JUST WANT TO SEE HEADS ROLL BECAUSE IT MAKES US FEEL BETTER!

(Though over here I must admit I’m perplexed as to why a Malaysian is running the biggest public transport company in Singapore)

Then the article goes on to ask SMRT to provide free rides for everyone “affected” by their disruptions for a month. Seriously now, are we at the wet market bargaining or something? Or at an IT show asking for free gifts? But never mind that. Who do we count as “affected”? People who got stuck in trains for an hour? Maybe. But technically I was affected as well! I wanted to go out but couldn’t take the train, along with hundreds of thousands of other Singaporeans. So we should all get free rides for a month? Really? Come on… That’s just looking at a situation which you realise you stand to benefit from and squeezing it as hard as possible to get as much out of it for yourself as you can.

That’s just selfish.

The lucky bird who's not getting charged

The general Singaporean attitude towards this whole fiasco is honestly quite disgusting. Tay Ping Hui even tweeted out that SMRT should provide a “FREE TRAVEL DAY” for EVERYONE IN SINGAPORE! Is he mad? Then when everyone takes the trains on that day they’ll complain that “they’re too crowded” because obviously EVERYONE will take trains. Even those that didn’t really need to go out will just go take the trains for the sake of taking them because “free mah, why not? Free leh!” Someone actually pointed this problem out to Mr Tay on twitter. His response? “Then it is up to SMRT to have more trains in higher frequency.”

WTF he think trains appear by magic ah? Oh then if the trains get overworked and break down again then scold SMRT again loh…

This is the first large scale breakdown in our train system in more than its 20 years in existence. That’s pretty damn good. And all the trains did was break down. Did they collide or something? Nope. Did they derail? Nope. Did they explode? Nope. Did anyone get injured? Nope. They just broke down. When buses break down (a relatively frequent occurrence) do we blame SBS? No, we accept that buses break down. But for some reason when gigantic trains that go at many times the speed carrying many more times the number of commuters break down it comes as a huge shock to us. People treat it as a fault with the people instead of a fault with the machines. It’s just that the people behind the scenes have been running these machines so optimally that you think it’s the machines doing the good work and the people screwing them up, when in fact it’s always been the other way around.

If anyone at SMRT should be fired, it’s their PR department. For example they released a statement that commuters shouldn’t break windows because a backup ventilation system will come online. This despite the fact that it was explicitly clear that no such system came online in that particular scenario, yet they went ahead and released such a prepared statement. To make matters worse, they had the guts to assure people that they wouldn’t be charging the man who broke the window for ventilation. This statement shouldn’t even have been put out and goes to show what a horrible PR department SMRT has that doesn’t know how to properly address complaints.

In terms of responding to such emergencies however, SMRT have done a fairly good job. Communication about the status of trains was very efficient and clear, especially through their twitter account. Shuttle buses were deployed (albeit queues were ridiculously long but they only have that much capacity). Of course, these are systemic responses that were obviously well drawn out contingency plans. Any on-the-ground and on-the-fly decision making is still very lacking, as seen from drivers being told to not open the doors at any cost even though there was no ventilation.

Such an attitude of over-reliance on systems and contingency plans, and more importantly the absolute refusal to deviate from them under any circumstances has to change. But to be honest many big co-operations are guilty of such problems as well. Still, we will be able to tell from the next crisis whether SMRT learns anything based on the way they interact with the public. For now, I just wish that Singaporeans were more rational and be more interested in seeing the problem fixed rather than pointing fingers and trying to decide who should be blamed for the problem.

My first real “magic” experience with Apple products was with the introduction of the iPod Touch. Back in 2007 when the first iPhone was announced, I didn’t really feel a strong compulsion to get it considering how young I was and how undeveloped 3G technology was in Singapore at that time. However, when the iPod Touch was announced, I knew I had to have one. Being a tech geek, the idea of a handheld device that was nothing but a touch screen was like a dream come true.

I got my first ever first-gen iPod touch at the end of 2007. Because the store I went to was out of stock for the 8GB version, I got the 16GB version, at $700. Yeah, 700 bucks for an iPod Touch, that’s almost the price of an iPad 2 today. Crazy huh? But till today I think that that $700 was exceedingly well spent, for the joy of having an iPod touch at a time when no one else had one was simply too gratifying. I had that iPod for years, but unfortunately lost in in 2010. Careless me…

Since then, I replaced my iPod Touch with a new one, and am now typing this blog post on an iPad 2. (By the way the keyboard works a lot better than I expected it to). As much as it sounds like rhetoric, these iOS devices really do feel magical to me. It’s crazy that 4 years on, I have yet to see another device that has a touchscreen that works or feels better than the iOS devices. And I think it’s all thanks to Steve Jobs that the devices we have feel the way they do.

Even detractors owe Steve a big one. Without the Macintosh all the way back in 1984, you might not have Windows. If not for the iPhone, you probably wouldn’t have Android. Without the iPad, you probably wouldn’t have your Blackberry Playbook. Without the Macs, probably not a single windows PC would be remotely aesthetically pleasing. Steve Jobs’ understanding of how the common man thinks, feels, and wants has helped him develop all the magical products we have today.

These products have brought me a great deal of joy and excitement. Oftentimes when I’m using my iPod Touch (and now my iPad), I will occasionally stop and think, “Wait a minute, I’m using a touchscreen device. That does basically everything. That feels great and isn’t clunky. Wow, just wow…” When I was a much younger kid, I never really did think that touchscreen devices would become so readily available to me. They were always these cool devices you saw in sci-fi films that you’d never have. But thanks to Mr. Jobs ushering in the “post-PC” era, I now have one with me everywhere I go.

He truly is the inventor of the 21st century. It’s a pity we will never know what else he had in that creative brain of his. Regardless, thank you Mr. Jobs, for everything, you will be missed.

I’m not a fan of Korean music (even though Char absolutely adores SNSD). For me, it suffers from the same problems that Chinese music suffers from: everything sounds the same. Every single Korean song I’ve heard is either a) ballad or b) Pop. And it doesn’t help that almost all of their voices sound almost identical to one another.

Don’t get me mistaken, they all sound good, but they sound the same. Come to think of it that’s also probably because plenty of the Korean groups are managed by just a couple huge music companies. These profit-driven assholes companies treat these bands as investments and entities rather than actual artists or musicians. You get to see glimpses of the potential some of them have when there are those rare lines in a couple of songs that force them to really sing. But unfortunately they’re stuck with boring ol’, almost kiddish sounding K-pop songs most of the time. And think about it, they have to fly around the world, performing these same few songs with those same few dance choreographies over and over and over again. Sure other musicians perform the same old songs during their concerts as well, but most of them are “true” (for lack of a better word) musicians. Some of them write their own songs, others are at least given some form of artistic freedom to interprete the song they’re given in their own way. In some way or another, these artists at least feel emotionally invested in the music they put out. Korean bands on the other hand feel like they’re just given the lyrics, the song, the choreography and told to go memorise and practise.

Add on top of that the fact that some of these performers have like 10 year contracts with their “management agencies” and you really have to wonder if they are truly happy with what they’re doing. And then you have Singaporean kids as young as 11 years old raring to fly to Korea to go through ardious training for something they might ultimately hate.

It’s almost as if Korean music in the 2010s is in the same state that Western music was in the 1990s, when boy bands were all the rage. I generally had the feeling that boy bands also suffered from the “take-this-song-and-memorise-and-practise” syndrome. They were relatively good singers, but they weren’t genuine artists, which is why the whole boy band trend has fizzled out and died. Plenty of people can sing, what the people want are truely talented musicians. You just don’t associate a Backstreet Boys’ song with the band itself the same way you associate, say, Thriller with Michael Jackson. It doesn’t matter that Michael Jackson had no invovlement in writing the song, what matters is that he took it and made it his own, through and through. No other artist could perform that song and achieve the same results. On the other hand, I think if you got SNSD to record Wondergirls’ “Nobody”, the average person wouldn’t be able to discern much of a difference.

Despite (what I think are) shortcomings of Korean music as a whole, it is absolutely astounding the level of influence it has had in Singapore. The J-pop wave kind of hit Singapore a couple years back, and while I wasn’t old enough back then, I generally got the feeling that only a niche group really got into Jap music. But now with the whole K-pop wave, almost everyone knows at least a couple of people who are gi-normous fans of these Korean bands. Interestingly enough, Korean girl bands are way more popular than their male counterparts. While the boy bands of the 90s had a predominantly female fan base, Korean girl bands have the benefit of having ardent male and female fans alike. Guys love them because they’re absolutely gorgeous, sing well and dance amazingly well. Girls like them because… well… they’re absolutely gorgeous, sing well and dance amazingly well.

For that reason, I think Korean bands are going to be around for quite some time. The fact that their fan base could potentially be twice that of those good ol’ boy bands means a much larger target audience and thus more people to buy their albums and attend their concerts. Couple that with the fact that those greedy “talent agencies” are constantly recruiting new kids and putting them through years and years of training, pumping out band after band after band, resulting in a never-ending influx of new bands. To them, even if some bands fail to gain any traction, so what? Out of the dozens of bands they pump out, surely at least a couple of them will achieve the level of success that SNSD has. (Though you really do have to wonder what happens to those bands that get cast aside, are their contracts automatically revoked or something?) And those few investments will probably provide enough returns to earn them a handsome profit.

Ultimately though, I think that this formulaic, scientific and rigid approach to producing “music” and “artists” will be the downfall of the Korean music industry in the near future. How an entire country worth of talented artists all produce similar sounding music just astounds me. Unless the industry realises that they can’t just rely on this one “shtick” to sell albums and recognise the need to evolve and progress past the pop genre, I don’t expect any of these songs to be considered “classics” decades from now.

Of course, I could be completely wrong and SNSD songs will live on as timeless classics forever and ever. Oh the horror…

P.S. They are GORGEOUS though:

Electoral Divisions

Before going into any specifics, I think the way in which Electoral Divisions are drawn up every election is kind of… interesting.

Take a look at the two SMCs I’ve coloured in above. Yuhua SMC and Bukit Panjang SMC. Why in the world are they so precisely cut out of the bigger GRCs that completely surround them?

Yuhua SMC was just formed for this election while Bukit Panjang SMC was drawn up only during the last election. And both SMCs were won by PAP this time round with 66% of the votes, which is a relatively comfortable win as compared to other constituencies.

If randomly cutting out portions of a GRC to form random SMCs is so easy to do, then there’s a perfect solution to get George Yeo back into parliament next election. Cut out a tiny portion of Aljunied GRC, name it like “George Yeo SMC” and let him run there to walkover.

Aljunied

Not surprising that WP won Aljunied in my opinion, despite how popular George Yeo is. Though I believe that if our media hadn’t branded the Aljunied WP team as the "Dream Team", they wouldn’t have won. Interesting.

I’m kind of glad that the WP team finally got a GRC, we really do need more opposition in parliament. However it is such a shame to see George Yeo go. Xiaxue’s posts and other stuff I’ve read have really convinced me that it’s such a shame that George Yeo is going.

There’s been speculation that George Yeo was a scapegoat due to infighting within the PAP. That’s a redonkulous theory IMO. George Yeo is too awesome a Foreign Minister for him to not be recognised by the PAP. He’s been contesting in Aljunied since forever. WP just decided to go all-out in this GRC because it secured 44% of the votes last election, the closest any opposition party had ever come to winning a GRC. It’s just unfortunate that George Yeo had to be the victim in order for a opposition party to win a GRC.

Potong Pasir

I had expected Potong Pasir to finally go to PAP this round, though not by that close a margin. Mr Chiam’s stroke is obviously taking its toll on him (Here’s a video of him before, and after his stroke). I think the fact that he can’t even stand up straight and can barely speak coherently (let alone convincingly) anymore caused people to lose confidence in the SPP. Add to that the fact that its his wife running in Potong Pasir and not him, and it’s pretty obvious that the man in white would get that SMC.

It is really really shocking to me however how close the fight was. PAP garnered 50.3% of the votes, winning by just over 100 votes. If just a fraction of 200+ spoilt votes had gone to SPP, they would have won. What a shame. It’s obvious how much his supporters love him, and while I don’t really know him, I’ve heard plenty of good things about him. So it’s sad to see him go. Looking at the condition of his health, I doubt he’ll be able to put up a good fight in the next round of elections.

It’s pretty obvious how passionate he is. This is the makeshift cubicle at one of the void decks that he has to use for his Meet-the-People sessions. While most other MPs have proper air-conditioned offices for such meetings, he’s been stuck with this “office” for the past few decades.

It’ll be interesting to see if the new Potong Pasir MP from PAP, Mr Sitoh Yih Pin continues to use this cubicle, or moves to an air-conditioned office.

Hougang

Hougang’s results were also really really interesting. I was expecting Hougang to go to WP by a lower margin as compared to previous years. However, despite Mr Low moving to Aljunied, WP’s Mr Law Shin Leong held on to Hougang SMC with the highest percentage of votes (64%) ever since WP got the SMC in 1991. I think it really goes to show how much faith the people of Hougang have in not just Mr Low, but the Worker’s Party as a whole.

Joo Chiat

Just a quick note on what I think is the most surprising result of the night. The PAP got Joo Chiat SMC by just ONE percent. That’s just insane. Out of absolutely nowhere, WP almost got a PAP stronghold. PAP got 65% of the votes in Joo Chiat in 2006, and roughly 80% for every preceeding election since 1972. Suddenly they only get 51% of the votes?! Seems like no one saw that one coming. Joo Chiat SMC might cease to exist in 5 years.

On the whole

There’s still other stuff I have in my head, but I can’t be bothered to list them all down. Just a couple of stuff to round up this post.

It’s sad to hear so many opposition candidates go “If this SMC/GRC is still around in 5 years, I’ll come back and contest”. I don’t think any other country in the world has its election divisions redrawn so drastically every couple of years.

PAP has gotten the lowest percentage of the popular vote since independence in 1965 with just 60%. A very clear downward trend. They have got to be concerned about that figure.

Finally, am I anti-PAP? I don’t think so. I’m more “pro-more-opposition-voices-in-parliament”, which is why I’d rather have 5 strong opposition candidates in parliament than one very strong PAP foreign minister. PAP’s scare tactics and the way they treat us all like babies is exceedingly annoying, but you cannot deny they’ve been doing an excellent job at governing our country.

Their focus on nothing but the economy and GDP growth is a little weird as well. Does so much emphasis need to be placed on the economy that other things like housing are left behind? Though I do agree that Singapore is in a very precarious position. If other small countries like Denmark fail, they have the EU net to catch them. If we fail, nobody’s going to catch us. As I’m no economist, I can’t say for sure if our economy is the one and only yardstick to determine if Singapore can survive or not. Though I really do have doubts over PAP’s constant assertions that Singapore will plunge into chaos and turmoil the moment our economy falters or if opposition members get into government.

If the PAP changes in the next five years and stops treating us all like idiots, maybe I’ll start supporting them. Part of the reason why I kind of support the opposition is not so much that I thing they’re awesome, but that I cannot stand the kind of things PAP says (“repent if you vote for opposition”).

Things are going to get really exciting five years from now, when I’m actually eligible to vote. Even with 6 opposition members in parliament, I think the next five years are going to remain relatively boring.

Seeing how much I loved last year’s Social Network, I decided to visit one of David Fincher’s earlier movies, the much acclaimed Se7en. Going in, I had no idea what to expect from the movie, except that it was kind of a really dark cop drama. But after watching it, I can safely say this about Se7en: it’s an amazing film, and I kind of hate it.

One of the things that drew me to the film was the cast: Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt in the main roles, both of whom put up amazing performances as per usual. The plot itself started off really well. The premise of the film is this series of seven murders, each symbolising one of the seven deadly sins, while Freeman and Pitt race against the clock to apprehend the serial killer. Neat stuff. Though it’s evident from the get-go that this movie was going to have really dark themes to it. It’s sort of a “horror” film according to Wikipedia, but everything’s more tense rather than horrifying. No doubt, some scenes are pretty gross, though they’re all artfully shot such that they accentuate rather than take away from the story.

Not to mention there’s this foot chase in the middle of the film, which might be one of the greatest foot chases of all time. Amazingly tense. Largely due to the fact that you have a cop chasing down a criminal that has outsmarted everyone at every turn, you have no idea what the smart alec was going to do.

At the end of the day though, this movie is just too damn depressing for me. Great premise, great plot, great twists in the story, really nicely shot. But ultimately not a very pleasant movie to watch. The way the plot unravels, and especially the ending, is just so bleak. Nothing good ever happens to the good guys throughout the movie. It doesn’t help that none of the characters (even the good guys) appeal to me. The extent to which the characters are fleshed out reach the bare minimum for them to have any character to begin with, and with any lesser actors everything would have completely fallen apart.

The random conversations between characters that are inserted between plot scenes are sort of “philosophical” in nature, and you can kind of feel the writers trying to shoehorn themes into random conversations that have almost nothing to do with the main plot. Of course these kinds of “irrelevant” conversations are kind of a staple of movies from the ’90s.

Anyway, I’ll say it again. This is a really great movie, well-deserving of its critical acclaim. And I hate it.

Our attention span is getting way shorter, and we are seriously impatient.

With the Internet and everything, I sometimes wonder how the hell people of ye olde days could survive. I’ve read and watched Pride and Prejudice multiple times, and I simply cannot fathom how people then passed their time. I mean all they ever seemed to do was:

• Dress up in the most extravagent way possible
• Read tons and tons of really thick books
• Spend a ton of time on meals
• Talk to each other about everything, in the longest manner possible

I mean one brilliant example of how boring their lives were in that book was the part where Elizabeth was chatting with some other woman (can’t remember who) in Bingley’s library. The two girls can’t even start talking right off the bat. They got to sit down in a lady-like (pompous) manner, then the other girl had to “invite” Elizabeth to walk AROUND THE FREAKING ROOM to chat with her (which means they can’t go up to each other and say “Hi!” but have to start off with “May I say “Hi” to you?”). So they get up and start walking around the tiny room talking about something boring for awhile, then Bingley comments lamely about how he was observing their “form” as they were walking, and then the- zzzZZZzzz…

And yet somehow none of them actually died of boredom (or did they?). Fast forward to today and we can’t even write properly anymore. I mean every1 nowadays wanna rite in teh shortest way possible, lol.

It all started with SMSing I’m guessing, trying to squeeze everything within 160 characters and with the minimum keystrokes possible so our hands wouldn’t cramp up. Then even with full fledged keyboards people can’t be bothered to type properly, till the point that we have to come out with acronyms for everything. Brb, afk, lol, ttyl, omg, wtf, etc. It won’t be long before we come up with stuff like ADCOMSUBORDCOMPHIBSPAC (which by the way is actually a real acronym).

The Internet only seems to encourage our impatient attitude. First came the whole concept of “microblogging”, then Twitter came along and more or less dominated that arena, feeding on people’s desires to consume bite-sized amounts of data at a very rapid pace. For many people, Twitter is where they get their daily news, not the long, in-depth reports and articles on the New York Times. Why waste precious time reading a long report when you can just get the whole story summed up in under 140 characters? Then Tumblr was born to encourage short-form blogging (e.g. throwing a picture in a post without offering any commentary whatsoever). Then we have Youtube, which even encourages its own high-profile video uploaders to post stuff that’s less than 5 minutes long becuase the average user won’t bother with anything longer than that. Not to mention most of the multi-million viewed videos are less than a minute long.

And while Charles Bingley could spend his whole life just reading books, it’s shocking how few people still enjoy reading. The next time you get on the train take a look at how many people are reading books vs. watching videos on their iPhones (or one of those ridiculous “portable” DVD players). Books used to be one of the best ways to entertain ourselves on long journeys, but ever since our phones became “smart”, books just seem so boring in comparison.

But of course the opposite can be argued for books. It’s probably the only remaining form of media that doesn’t provide immediate gratification (compared to say, Twitter, movies, video games) and yet still remains exceedingly popular. Though I have to say the number of people I know that read on a regular basis is startlingly low. Certainly way lower than what they were during Charles Bingley’s era.

I mean the fact that I can’t even focus on finishing this whole post in one sitting (because I’m being distracted by MSN convos and other websites) just goes to show how much the world we live in today is trying its absolute best to distract us from whatever we’re doing. Now if only I could concentrate long enough to fini

Regardless, I’m so bored out of my mind right now that I’ve got nowhere else to turn except back here, and while I’m here I might as well let loose what’s been on my mind for the past few months. It all comes down to two words:

Working sucks.

For anyone who hasn’t taken up an office job for an extended period of time, the level of sucky-ness of such a job is incomprehensible. It really is mind-boggling how horrible it is to work in a 9 to 5 job (or in my case an even worse 8 to 5.30 one). Where to even begin describing the suffering? The monotonous schedule. The stress. Bosses. Colleagues. Office politics. Spending day after day just sitting in front of a computer doing absolutely mind-numbing work. And then there’s the kind of work that just can’t be done regardless of how much effort you put into it. Some things are simply out of your control, and those are the worst.

Sure, back when I was studying I did know it wasn’t all suffering, and I knew I had fun. I just never realised how much fun I really was having. In retrospect, going to school felt like I was going to Disneyland every single day as compared to the typical working day. There was no dread every morning, nobody there who could order you around. I was just going there to hang out with a nice bunch of people and generally just enjoying myself. It’s no wonder that Friday didn’t seem any different most of the time.

Boy oh boy does Friday taste good now.

Here’s usually what goes through my mind throughout the day.

Wake up 6am: Groggygroggy. F**k gotta go to work.

Leave house 6.30: F**l I’m going to work.

Reach office 7.45: F**k I’m at work. Again.

Start work 8am: Is it lunch yet?

10am: Is it lunch yet?

1pm: Finally lunch. Only half a day left.

2pm – 5pm: Is it 5.30 yet?

5.30pm: *breaths sigh of relief*

Reach home 7pm: Finally.

7pm – 11pm: FunFunFun.

11pm: F**k gotta go to bed.

…

Wake up 6am: F**k gotta go to work.

Rinse and Repeat.

And that’s about it. Oh except for one exception:

5.30pm on FRIDAY: OMGWTFBBQ FRIDAY FRIDAY FRIDAY. WEEKEND. NO WORK. FRIDAY. OMGOMGOMG. BEST DAY EVER!

I miss studying

Yes I know university is gonna be tough, like really tough. But at least all the suffering I go through then will all be for my benefit and my enrichment. As compared to draining myself on highly unfulfilling work every single day of my life.

There’s a saying that goes something like “If you love your job, it ain’t work”. That’s an understatement. It should be more like:

“Get a job you like or your life is going to be miserable. Forever.”