Gosh my life's so boring I'm loving it hey.

My life's a carousel that goes round and round, round and round, round and round
And somewhere in those rounds I go what the hell
My life's so boring hey.

And every day I call people and talk and talk, talk and talk, talk and talk
And sometimes I decide they aren't worth my time
I hang up on them yay.

And sometimes I go out and run around, run around, run around
Then I get real tired from running around
I take a cab and claim.

My pay's so low I eat canteen food, canteen food, canteen food
But when the canteen has shitty food
I eat baos the whole day.

I work nights and weekends and have no life, have no life, have no life
And when people ask me why like that
I forget to reply them leh.

And then I tell children to study hard, study hard, study hard
They don't listen when I tell them don't end up like me
Because only my writing is seh.

In the news.

New York Times to pay damages to Singapore leaders

(AFP) – 11 hours ago

SINGAPORE — The New York Times Company has agreed to pay 160,000 Singapore dollars (114,000 US) in damages to Singapore's leaders over an article about political dynasties, the leaders' lawyer said Thursday.

The newspaper's global edition, the International Herald Tribune (IHT), had printed an apology Wednesday over the article.

It said the piece may have implied that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the son of the city state's founding father Lee Kuan Yew, did not get his job on merit.

The elder Lee is a senior adviser in his son's cabinet with the title of "minister mentor". An apology was also issued to former prime minister Goh Chok Tong, who is now senior minister.

The New York Times said in its online edition Thursday that it "had settled a claim by Singapore's government that they were smeared" by an article written by Hong Kong-based columnist Philip Bowring.

Davinder Singh, the lawyer for the Singaporean leaders, said the newspaper and Bowring would pay 60,000 dollars in damages to Prime Minister Lee and 50,000 dollars to both the elder Lee and Goh. They will also pay legal costs.

"They have an agreed period to pay the damages," Singh told AFP.

The Bowring article, entitled "All In The Family", was published last month in the IHT and included the Lees in a list of Asian political dynasties.

The Singapore leaders, alleging the article was libellous, demanded an apology, damages and legal costs.

"We apologise to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and former prime minister Goh Chok Tong for any distress or embarrassment caused by any breach of the undertaking and the article," the newspaper said.

It said Bowring's article "may have been understood by readers to infer that the younger Mr. Lee did not achieve his position through merit".

"We wish to state clearly that this inference was not intended," it said.

The article has since been removed from the IHT's website, according to the New York Times.

Bowring declined to comment to AFP.

The Bangkok-based Southeast Asian Press Alliance said it was saddened by the apology.

"This continuing line of major media organisations too quick to offer contrition and money is a sad sight, and a persisting insult on legitimate journalism, fair commentary, free speech, and the rights that Singaporeans deserve," SEAPA executive director Roby Alampay told AFP.

Bowring was involved in a similar case in 1994 when he wrote an article in the IHT that referred to "dynastic politics" in East Asian countries such as Singapore.

Lee Kuan Yew, the junior Lee, who was deputy prime minister at that time, and Goh, the then prime minister, threatened legal action, alleging defamation.

The newspaper published an apology, saying it had implied the junior Lee got his job because of nepotism.

As part of an undertaking at that time, the newspaper and Bowring promised not to make the same allegations in future.

Singapore's leaders have won hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages in defamation cases against critics and foreign publications that they say are necessary to protect their reputations from unfounded attacks.

Last year, Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review and its editor paid over 400,000 dollars to settle a defamation suit filed by Prime Minister Lee and his father.

A Wall Street Journal senior editor was fined 10,000 Singapore dollars in March 2009 for contempt of court over three articles that allegedly insulted the city-state's judiciary.

The fine followed a 25,000-dollar judgement against the business newspaper's publisher Dow Jones Publishing Company (Asia) Inc. in November 2008 over the same articles.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.

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I love these two sentences from the article, and how they were deliberately arranged together.

"It said Bowring's article "may have been understood by readers to infer that the younger Mr. Lee did not achieve his position through merit".

The elder Lee is a senior adviser in his son's cabinet with the title of "minister mentor". An apology was also issued to former prime minister Goh Chok Tong, who is now senior minister."

The paper is obviously trying to infer that the Singapore government takes the local readers of the International Herald Tribune as idiots.

All I have to say is, if I believe the family is a political dynasty, reading this article will merely reinforce a belief, and even if you state otherwise I won't believe you.

If I don't believe so, reading the article won't simply make me believe the claim just because some journalist said so.

I believe Singapore's leaders are too quick to sue sometimes, in the mistaken belief that it will shut people up. Well, people do shut up in front of you, but the talk will be all over internet forums, the coffeeshops, in the taxis, and in homes. And the government is wondering why no one engages in politics here.

What's wrong with the term political dynasty? The Kennedys are a political dynasty too. So are the Roosevelts. So are the Gandhis. And you know what's the common link between all their political systems?

They are all democracies.

And after that, there's this.

"Singapore's leaders have won hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages in defamation cases against critics and foreign publications that they say are necessary to protect their reputations from unfounded attacks."

This is like the most loaded paragraph in the whole article, which leaves no doubt as to what they really feel about the whole issue. It's stated like a fact, but by putting "that they say" in the sentence, they are trying to imply that this is a stand that no one endorses but Singapore's leaders.

The power of words and implied meanings. People get rich on them.

tired.

Every day, I enter the office in the mornings, and I don't leave until the sky is dark.

I realised how wretched my working hours were one day when I returned from an assignment and saw a friend from marketing going home, when I was just preparing to go back into office and file my story for the next day.

I was also tying my shoelaces when I waved at her, and when I got up, I promptly realised that I'd been kneeling in mud and my jeans had a huge brown stain over the kneecap area. Now that I think about it, I should have put my other knee in the mud too so that they'd be equal. Having one kneecap in mud is bad, having both is perhaps worse, but at least they would match and people wouldn't stare as much.

That day, I eventually left the office at 1130pm, and I left at 11pm the next day too.

The working hours have taken a toll on me, even if I don't want to admit it. I find myself wishing for a break, but I don't see any coming, and the work is neverending. The competition is fierce too because as of now there are 11 interns in the newsroom, and each one of them is fighting for stories.

This is especially so for those who want the scholarship, because they have just up to April to prove themselves. I know deep inside they probably resent me because I'm denying them chances to shine, but that is reality.

I try my best to pretend that I am oblivious to the jealousy and envy that comes when they realise I have stories to cover and they don't. The paper only has space for that many stories, and that is not including the ones the full time reporters put out. Its a mad rush to clock up as many stories as I can in the 6 months so I make the most out of my experience.

I'm lucky in a sense that I'm one of the first ones my editors go to when they have something, but I know the moment I take a break, there will be 10 other hungry interns waiting to snap up the opportunities.

It's really a dog eat dog world out there. Even as an intern. And so the rat race goes on.

We are the World.

A month ago, in the light of the Haiti earthquake, several international musicians thought it would be good to ride on the cause of philanthropy, while raising their own profile.

What came out was surely a musical abomination, where the egos of superstars took over. I can live with the fact that Justin Bieber sings the opening line, even if he is replacing Lionel Ritchie in the original, because we need to make the song relevant to hundreds of hormonal teenage girls.

I can live with the fact that the talentless Miley Cyrus sings in it, because once again, they also have to target the tween market, who are infamous for being clueless about anything except being popular and "cute things."

However, they thought it would be okay to add a rap track into a classic charity single, and they even had a section where Wyclef Jean vibratos like a baboon in the defence that he is singing in Creole, the native language of the Haitians.

It's like taking "Heal the world" and turning it into one of those stupid hip hop tracks. Ludacris' "How Low" comes to mind. The music video actually starts with "Rumour has it, if you go low enough, Ludacris will appear in the mirror."

Wow, how freaking creative. So now Ludacris is the Candyman, or Japanese horror just found a new superghost. "How low can you go" indeed.

The funniest and perhaps saddest thing to come out of this whole saga is, the single was actually deemed an unprecedented success in getting the musical superstars of this age to do their part for a charitable cause.

Check out the crappy video here, and look out for the monkey cameo at 3:16. Thank goodness Adam Levine of Maroon 5 appears immediately after, because at least he sings well, even if he hasn't been releasing many new songs lately because he's too busy playing the field.



But just when I thought hope was kind of over for good music, I found the Youtube version of the same song, and I must say it trumps the 2010 "25" version. Simply because people who can actually sing are in it, without the use of "autotune", stupid raps and monkey mating calls.



It's really amazing how Youtube can actually bring talent from households worldwide and congregate them together in a single medium, on a single video, without the need for record companies that sometimes have no idea what they are doing. If you don't watch the video, and just listen to the song by itself, you will realise it's actually good enough to be commercially produced.

That being said, I still don't understand how music and social causes link together in this day and age.

I don't know why I even bother sometimes.

Today I was on hotline again, and this man called in complaining that there was a printing error in the paper.

So I decided to check out the page he was talking about. It turned out that it was the racing page, which no one ever reads, but I decided to humour him anyway. His complaint was about how there were two entries for "Singapore - Sunday" races, when there should be only one.

I looked through the page. The last entry on the first page was race 9, the first entry on the next page was race 10. Which basically meant there wasn't a printing error. There simply wasn't enough space so the column spilled over to the next page.

I then told the uncle so. I even had to spend several minutes trying to explain to him that ten naturally follows nine, and just because both pages have the header "Singapore - Sunday" doesn't mean that the content is exactly the same.

I don't even know how he could have assumed so, because one page had 9 entries, and the other, 3.

After 5 minutes, he finally realised the error of his ways. He said: "Oh sorry sorry, my mistake, I never see."

Glad to be of service uncle. Just by one phone call, I cured both blindness and stupidity. I hate to say this, but I'm a miracle worker.

If you ain't a scholar, the government doesn't want you.

Singapore is a small country, with a huge population of well educated people. The conundrum is, this is a small country, so there will not be enough jobs for all these people.

There are many people out there who are overqualified for their jobs, who would easily find better paying jobs in other countries, and hence they are moving out of Singapore.

Add that to the fact the Singapore practices what is on most counts, a ruthless meritocracy, and you soon end up with a system where the haves quickly outpace the have-nots, simply because the haves get more at the expense of the have-nots, regardless of actual ability.

There is a system in Singapore that the government actively practices in finding what it believes are the best and brightest of the crop in Singapore - scholarships. It believes that the best way to tie the best talents to the civil service is to sponsor their education, and slap huge bonds on them so they cannot flee for greener pastures.

The problem is, the talented will inevitably seek out greener pastures because their talents merit them. And the best paying jobs are all to be found in the private sector, because the civil service can only pay so much. So unfortunately, these talents will be lost to the private sector.

Equally superficial is the method of filtering out such talent. A couple of interviews, a perfect grade transcript, and you have a golden ticket to a safe and comfortable lifestyle because you will simply promote faster than your peers by virtue of the fact that you're a scholar and they are not. Regardless of actual ability by the way.

Working in SPH, I have realised that there is little point in trying out for a career in the company, simply because in every sense of the word, I have already missed the boat. I am not a scholar, and no matter how much ability I have, I will never make it to the upper echelons of the company, simply because there are too many scholars ahead of me.

Government-linked companies in Singapore have this odd concept of letting scholars start at a higher payscale, and promoting them faster than other employees, simply because they are on scholarships. If they were truly capable, I believe there wouldn't be a need to do so because they would promote faster anyway by virtue of their working ability.

Working ability by the way, is a combination of many things. Emotional intelligence, aptitude for the job, and day-to-day work attitude, none of which can accurately be determined by the simplistic basis of a scholarship selection.

There are limited places in senior management, and if these scholars are to constantly start with a ridiculous headstart and get fast-tracked on top of it, what hope do other non-scholar yet equally or even more capable employees have of making inroads into a better paying position?

Am I supposed to accept that just because a young upstart aced an interview and exam a few years ago, he can come in with a higher starting salary than me and promote faster even if I constantly put out work of a higher quality than him? Does that make sense to you? Would you even want to work for a company like that?

And the civil service wonders why it has problems retaining some of its brightest and most capable talents. Perhaps it is hubris on my part that I am suggesting I am one of those talents that have fallen out of the system. But I do not speak for myself alone, because I do know that one thing people hate most is having less competent superiors who draw larger salaries.

If you have ever wondered why your superiors are ridiculously incompetent, perhaps it is a result of the system we are putting in place to lift them above our heads.

muzik.

I just watched Lady Gaga's latest music video "Telephone" and I was amazed at what goes on MVs these days. I'm no music purist, because that's the fastest way to become a music idiot. The moment you start pigeonholing yourself into genres you deny yourself to a world of music that could change your life.

I believe everyone has their own guilty music pleasures. These are the songs that you would not be caught dead endorsing, and yet when nobody is looking they are the songs you blast to yourself on your mp3 player, or sing when you think no one else is around until somebody suddenly taps you from behind and goes "excuse me" because she needs to get past you in a narrow alley you were previously obstructing because you were doing your own version of "Sorry Sorry".

However, I find it quite impossible to like Lady Gaga's music, especially now as it descends into depravity. Poker Face was okay, Bad Romance tolerable, but Telephone is just off. The song was average but what the hell is with the video.

Somewhere in it, there was a part that went "It's your lucky day, someone bailed you out." Well, I would like to put her back in for several crimes against humanity.

The first would be for turning guys off worldwide despite all the gratuitous skin she showed, because she simply looks like a street hooker who someone took off the streets and put on music videos. And that's being mean to street hookers.

To be fair there are probably guys who would enjoy this, but I have to say for them to like something that looks like this, they are probably the kind that would also bang cross-eyed 22 year olds on the streets.

Such people are made for each other. Totally "pah jiao".

The second crime against humanity here would be for making Beyonce look retarded. There are enough ugly people around, like a certain *cough* Gaga, please don't take gorgeous people and make them ugly. There's a famine of beautiful people as it is.

I can get the whole concept of the video, in that she's trying to be different, artistic, and whatever, but after awhile all that flash and style over a lack of substance just grates. I won't deny she's genius, because it takes genius to be so weird nobody can understand you. However, on certain occasions she steps a little too close to absolutely swinging loopy.

I struggled to get through the video, it was that bad. And the funny thing is, after the entire thing, I forgot what the song sounded like, because for a music video, somehow the music wasn't the point of it all.

Tiger Neo

Lately, with the Jack Neo scandal rocking the Singapore tabloid scene to its foundations, I have to say that the hippest thing now is to jump on the Jack Neo bashing bandwagon. No one wants to be seen defending a man who obviously has such questionable morals, unless you're George Yeo and have no idea what your job scope is.

Instead of trying to catch the Romanian diplomat who ran down 3 people, he decided that his time was better used defending a man who at last count had liaisons with at least 11 women.

Hey mister foreign affairs minister, you should be concerned with foreign affairs. Leave the local scandals to us. We don't pay you so much so diplomats can run amok in our country in the name of maintaining good foreign relations. And really, you don't want to be associated with this man.

And by the way, how is Aljunied GRC doing? In case you didn't realise, it's the ward you're in charge of in Singapore. You should pay more attention to it because it gets you elected into Parliament. People are still peeing in the lifts. Catch them.

When Tiger Woods came out with his 14 women, I thought it was disgusting. Now that Tiger Neo is coming out with Jack's Eleven, we should really make a movie about it. A few months later, we can make a sequel called Jack's Twelve. And after that, Jack's Thirteen.

Well he will probably have trouble trying to stick to just adding one woman every months into his harem but from what I know filmmaking is supposed to be time consuming. Perhaps it will keep him busy enough so he has less time to flirt around. But oh who am I kidding.

For every movie Jack has to cast a few women. And this is how his auditions probably go. When you enter the audition room, Jack will tell you "I think you're the next Fann Wong. I can make you a star."

After the initial audition, he will send you an sms asking you to meet at a hotel room somewhere, so he can audition you again himself. For most people, auditions are a test of acting skill.

For Jack, just show up.

Family guy - Oh a dollar!

Cat crazies should be culled.

Recently, one of my friends wrote a story about a flat in Singapore that had a cat problem. By cat problem, I mean that the block was virtually overrun by cats due to the actions of an irresponsible flat owner that kept 9 cats and did not keep them in check, allowing them to urinate and defecate all over the block.

The Cat Welfare Society took offense with the way the article was written, claiming that it put cats in a bad light, and in their own words, "misquoted and played down the fact that it was the irresponsible behaviour of the owners that caused this."

After that, they went on to take issue with the fact that "interns" wrote the article, and launched attacks on our credibility and character, before going on to paint the editors and the New Paper with the same brush.

Before I get started on exactly how offended I am by their attacks on our characters, let me detail how exactly they intend to deal with us. They intend to write into the TNP email and "blast" us for our irresponsible reporting.

This is illogical on many counts. First of all, there obviously is a problem, or else there wouldn't be so many residents complaining, and the AVA would not have taken the drastic action of removing all 9 cats. Trying to deny that there is any problem whatsoever just because you love cats only further convinces the neutral observer just how blind you people actually are.

Secondly, it is against the law to keep cats in flats, whether your cats are a nuisance or not, so their gripes are a non-issue. Just because you love cats doesn't mean it becomes any more legal to keep them in your flat. Don't get me started on irresponsible cat owners.

Thirdly, we were accused of painting the cats in a bad light, which was deemed wrong because cats cannot defend themselves. They claimed that we had taken sides in writing the article, when they are the ones who are reading our article through their bigoted glasses. They insinuate that it is very clear to readers what we are suggesting, that cats and solely cats are the reason for the problem, and only their removal would solve it, when nowhere in the article did we state that explicitly.

An insinuation is very hard to prove. You can claim that I am insinuating something, but in most cases, it is a case of your word against mine. Who are you to decide what other people are thinking when they read something? Are you them?

Let me describe through the use of an example of what they are actually trying to say by making those allegations against us.

A girl gets raped by a man. The man's friends and family band together, and say that the girl was raped because she just happened to be around, not because the man had a problem, and the people who should have been keeping him in check, namely his parents, failed in their duty.

Would such an incident outrage you? Now, replace the parties involved with the flat's residents, the cats and their owners, and you pretty much get an idea of why their reactions are illogical. They may say that the cats didn't know better, but the cat owners did, and they didn't do anything about it. And, they were keeping cats illegally where they shouldn't have been any at all.

The only way perhaps to convince such people that there is no problem would be to stuff their mouths with cat shit so that the problem of cat refuse disappears.

Sometimes, people forget just how selfish they actually are. We live in a society, which means everyone accommodates each other, to a reasonable level. I have no problem with cats, as long as they do not make life difficult. In this case, they didn't just make life difficult, they made it hell.

In addition, I think that many people forget these days that by publishing potentially defamatory comments on a medium that is accessible to many people, one is opening oneself up to lawsuits. Just because it is easy to post slanderous comments does not mean that one should be any less responsible in getting the facts right before making allegations.

I would sue these people, but I do not want them paying me in cats, because they probably have little else.

I may be an intern, but I check all my articles thoroughly for accuracy before I write them. I may write for what people consider a tabloid, but I do not sensationalise my stories. And above all, I certainly believe that I can write or argue my case in a logical manner much better than people fueled by selfish agendas, because impartiality makes a case for itself in disputes when compromises are sought.

We do our jobs just fine, and I will continue to believe so.

The fear.

The fear of authority is well and alive in the heartlands. For what reason, I don't know why.

You learn that fast enough when you have to interview all manner of people for articles. Often, you get an uncle or auntie who gives you a brilliant quote. One that if you plug into your news article makes it sound complete, full of sense and sensibility, so much that you can feel the whole story falling into place.

Suddenly the sun seems that much brighter and the world a much better place. Then the hard part comes up. You have to ask the person for their name, age and occupation, or you have no proof that you didn't just pull this quote out of your imagination.

"Uh I'm sorry, I don't want to be quoted. Later I get in trouble."

When you hear these words, all you're thinking is "No shit my story just went into cardiac arrest." So of course when such a thing happens, you try your best to save the damn thing. You do the journalists' version of defibrilation, you know, those electric shock things they use to restart the heart.

So you start by armtwisting the newsmaker at the most safe level. You promise him that he will be anonymous. He might find out the next day that you're as trustworthy as a snake, but that's up to you.

"Don't worry sir, I just need these details so I can show my editor I actually talked to someone. I won't publish it."

He still doesn't want to give it to me. Okay, crank it up a level. Play bluff.

"No no, don't go, Mr Tan right? Is that how I address you? Oh you're not Mr Tan? Then how do I address you?"

Sometimes if they are unsuspecting enough they tell you their names, and from there you can more or less force everything else out from them.

But occasionally you meet a tougher nut. Okay, crank it up another level. The guilt trip.

"Sir, I can't quote you if you don't give me a name. If you don't do that, I can't run the article. Your fellow residents will suffer, you will be doing something that is not civic minded, its very selfish."

Sometimes it works and the person gives you what you want, because they actually have a conscience or some form of civic mindedness.

However, once in awhile you meet a cynical heartland uncle who has lost too much money on Toto, and paid too much money to CPF that he withdrew and spent on Resorts World Singapore, while firmly believing that the old man took his money from him.

Tactic: Play hardball. I think that's why people hate journalists.

"Okay, you want to tell me your name, or you want me to ask everyone around you till I get it? If I do the latter, I will run the name and there's nothing you can do about that because I got it myself, so you better tell me now, and we'll see if I keep you anonymous."

I have to admit that sometimes, I really feel like an asshole.