The day we became a world class city

Yesterday, Singapore experienced an epochal moment in its history as a wannabe world class city. We had a massive transport breakdown on our much vaunted MRT system.

Now, why am I calling this a massive moment for Singapore, despite the terrible inconvenience it caused? Now, I was one of those 127,000 people inconvenienced by it, so I know exactly what I am talking about.

No major city in the world has anything less than a screwed up transport system. London has strikes on the Tube so often nobody bats an eyelid when it happens. The trains in Paris are as slow as they are filthy. The trains in Tokyo need special employees to pack people in, because they are that full. Even looking across at our neighbour across the straits, they have carriages that are female only but males still find their way in, because the only thing worse than a crowded train full of females is a crowded train full of females and one male. For the females of course.

So in a sense, we have finally arrived.

I am not surprised at all that Singaporeans made a huge uproar about it, but I find it ridiculous that the ones making the loudest noise are not the ones who were actually stuck in the trains. Sure it was uncomfortable, stuffy, and very unfortunate, but anyone who has lived in anywhere that is not Singapore will know that occasional breakdowns are par for the course in any major city, where the transport system is overstrained.

Many of the people affected by the breakdown did not complain. Not because they didn't want to. Not because they didn't suffer. But because they knew that this was a one-off, which in every sense it was. Many of these people have been in a Singapore where there wasn't even an MRT, and that will always be infinitely worse.

It's really uniquely Singaporean behaviour. KPKB until the cows come home when shit happens but when it comes to the time to do something about it, keep quiet.

Honestly, this is still not anywhere near ridiculous. Not to say that SMRT has never tried to be ridiculous, as evidenced by this video. To this day, the name "Roger Foo" is still a dirty word.



I've been in Singapore 25 years, and this is the first time I've seen a breakdown like this at such a scale. I take it as a blessing, because I have had 25 fuss-free years before this. We have actually had it so good all this while that such a breakdown was too much for us pampered citizens of Singapore to bear.

Not to say that it is becoming of any transport system of course. SMRT did badly here in responding slowly and not updating the public on just what the hell was going on. I spent almost an hour in Raffles Place waiting for a train that never came because I had no idea whether it was going to or not, and I still had a class to attend. And the timing of this breakdown was really unfortunate, coming right after the fare increases for taxis.

For those railing about taxi fare increases, they fail to realise that it was inevitable. As it is, taxi drivers barely make $2500 a month on average, and they still have families to feed. Driving a taxi is a very hard job, and it is exhausting. Making the fares too cheap is actually dangerous for the drivers, who will have to drive extra hours on congested and unpredictable roads to make up for their rental shortfalls. And ultimately, it will be dangerous for the commuters, because they are the ones taking the taxis with the tired drivers. Think about that.

Taxis are a luxury good and not a basic necessity. If you want to travel in comfort in a crowded city, be prepared to pay for it. Otherwise, take the bus. I work till 10pm almost every day and I still take the mrt, bus and walk. I don't make excuses for it. I know I don't earn enough to take that many taxis.

In any case, we have bigger things to worry about.



Prease la, don't come out onto the streets. Stay in the boys home. Prease la.

Things to do before you die - #02 Attend a Girls Generation concert

I've seen people ask this question sometimes - What's so great about kpop? And sure kpop has many critics, of its shiny packaged nature, about how it is an endless assembly line of cookie cutter idols and autotuned songs set to dance beats.

All I can say is, sometimes you shouldn't take life that seriously. I like kpop because it is unabashedly superficial. The industry doesn't even bother trying to hide that it is a machine of dramatically over the top dance friendly singalong songs sung by impossibly good looking idols. And in a sense sometimes that is one mother kind of awesome. It's supposed to be entertainment anyway, it might as well look good.

One mother kind of awesome. No actually, nine kinds of awesome. Bring the girls out!

People who know me will know that I'm a very rational person who has the tendency to do random crazy shit, as the entry before this will testify. One of the lines I hear most often is this - "You totally do not look like a kpop fan." By this, I take it to mean that I am not a 16 year old girl wearing braces. Which is a good thing. 16 year old girls are responsible for one of the greatest musical atrocities of the world, also known as Justin Bieber. Also, I need to maintain some form of credibility in the corporate jungle.

This tendency for craziness though saw me queuing in a line for the concert several hours before. However, my friends who were far greater fans than I was had saved a place for me, thankfully, or I'd probably never have made it. Just to give an idea, the tickets for this concert sold out within several hours. And the queue for the mosh pit went an entire round around the whole indoor stadium. Have you ever seen the size of the indoor stadium? Now imagine a two rows of people, seated, going one whole round around it. That's how many people there were just going into one mosh pit. And there were three. A mindboggling number of pink warriors.

It was quite a motley group I queued with though, one of which was a 16 year old girl (but of course), who told me before the concert that she thought she was going to die of excitement because her heart was beating very fast. I thought that she was being crazy, until one of the guys in the group told me the same thing. It was then I realised that maybe I was the only relatively sane one still around.

This same 16-year-old girl would later make one of the most epic statements of the concert. But that's for later.

We were quite lucky, because our group was apparently the last in line of the first group to enter the mosh pit. So when we got into the mosh pit, we were in the 2nd row. You know those crazy people you see on the news screaming their lungs out at their fans? Yeah, we were just right behind them. We were nowhere less crazy, but at least the camera wouldn't pick us up that easily. In front of me was a bunch of young girls, and behind me was a bunch of Indonesian fans who had flown all the way to Singapore just to catch Girls Generation.

Now, I have attended my fair share of concerts. Even concerts filled with screaming girls brandishing lightsticks. But this was easily on another plane. It was a concert filled with the craziest most high fans I have ever seen. And not all of them were girls. Many of them were guys screaming like girls.

The moment Taeyeon opened the first line, the crowd went nuts. If they weren't nuts enough when that metal cage opened to reveal the nine girls, they reached a new level of nuts that superceded anything before it. In terms of energy level, it was like "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!"

The Indonesian guys behind me were screaming but in a manly voice so they sounded like silverback gorillas in heat, and they started shoving. But I could hardly have given a shit. From where I was, at that distance, at that angle, all I could see was pairs and pairs of perfectly straight legs. It quickly became apparent why the guys were shoving. It is one thing watching the music videos, and another actually seeing those live. At least you know for sure that it isn't some camera trick. These girls really do have ridiculous legs.



This video is actually from the 2nd night that I didn't watch but the first night had the same performance, only that the security guy was being a bastard so nobody got good fancams of it. The concert had a strict no photography or videography policy, which meant that the security guy was walking around asking people to read the English on his stupid sign, when nobody gave a flying fuck because all people wanted to listen to at that point was Korean.

And the concert sure didn't pull out any stops. At certain points they had the girls suspended in mid air, and at another they had them on a giant pink boat. And there were countless other songs and solos.

You might wonder, why was everything pink? Well, that was their colour. And it sure didn't stop many guys wearing pink shirts to show their love for them. Well, I am a fan, but even as a fan I draw certain lines. No pink T-shirts. Otherwise, it was a good thing that none of you saw me there, because I was a screaming pink lightstick waving madman chanting in Korean. You only live once, so for 3 hours of your life, you can afford to be a pink lightstick waving madman chanting in Korean. Yes, I'm rationalising it. And no, you are not allowed to show me why that is faulty logic.

And here's where the epic line comes in. Somewhere after that song above, the 16 year old girl on my left tapped my shoulder and pointed to the lightstick I was waving like an idiot.
She said: "You have the most special stick. It's pink and shiny and it flashes."

Innuendo aside, that felt exactly like I had been given an honorary membership to the sisterhood of the unicorn and pony club. Heck, man enough to wave pink lightstick, as long as no one I know ever sees me doing it.

Things to do before you die - #01 Run a vertical marathon

Ever since I've started working I've realised that I don't have a lot of time left to do all the things I want to do in this life. Which sucks, because you only live once. It is really difficult to dream of living the life that you wish you were living, when you only have 14 days of leave a year, and many debts to pay.


But while I was copywriting an annual report for an oil company, I stumbled upon a series of quotes that inspired me. One quote in particular, stayed with me, and I ruminated about it over days, in the empty hours between busy periods at work. It simply said: "The greatest of journeys can be planned on the back of an envelope."

It got me wondering if it was time to put into action all those things I've always wanted to do, but never got down to. Another of my favourite quotes also came into mind, one that I got teased about, but I shall just write it here nonetheless - "anything worth striving for is worth measuring." Because if you can't even be bothered to put pen to paper to track how far you're going, you don't really want to do something.

So I bit the bullet. And here is one of the things I have always wanted to do, that I finally did -Climb the Swisshotel.

Before I did it. there were plenty of naysayers. I got a lot of stick from my own family, who said that I was crazy, that I'd be better off using the time to prepare for my finance papers, that I'd never make it to the top of the tower because I was too fat to run. (that one really rankled, because I've rediscovered a fondness for pastries and dessert and it was starting to show) And none of my friends wanted to do it either, because they didn't see the point of it. Pay money to torture yourself? I'd rather enjoy, they said.

But one thing I've learnt through this entire experience is, it is your life to lead, and your decisions alone will determine the kind of life you live.

It wasn't easy preparing for the race though. I tried training after work, which was okay at first, till work got a little too crazy and started ending at 8pm every day, by which time there was just enough time for me to get home, cram in a bit of studying, and go to sleep. So it became training sessions at 7am in the mornings, before most people got up for work.

And it was really tough getting up every morning. Some mornings, I hated myself. I asked myself why I put myself through all this. And the only answer I had was because I knew I had to do it. Some days I ran up a whole HDB block three times, others I swam, or hit the gym. Really, sometimes it is a lot easier when you stop asking yourself stuff and just do it.

But as the best of plans always do, they tend to go awry. I got hit with an extra caseload of stuff at work just a week before the race, which saw me going home at 10pm most days, a bit earlier if I was lucky, which effectively put an end to all training. And perhaps due to the long hours, I also got a little sick.

So on Sunday morning, the day of the marathon, I was carrying a slight cold, and wondering if I was going to make it. But somewhere inside me was also the rush that I was finally about to do something I'd always dreamed of.

The run itself took a long time to start. There were waves of participants to flag off, and my category didn't start till 10am, a full 3 hours after I'd collected my race pack. And throughout the wait I looked around at all the faces of the different people from all walks of life who had come to put themselves through this. They were normal people, just like you and me. The only difference was, they had decided that on this morning, they were going to run up the hotel, and they would not stop till they were on the helipad atop those 73 floors. I told myself I wouldn't stop either.

The race itself seems unreal, now that I've finished it. I sprinted up the first 10 floors, and by the 20th I realised that maybe this was going to be a lot harder than I'd thought. And at that point, there were still 53 more floors to go. Every 10 floors, I had just one thought on my mind. And that thought was simply to quit and just take the lift down to the first floor. The urge to quit was like an itch that wouldn't go away, and it only intensified with each floor I climbed. At one point I literally felt like the voice in my head was screaming.

By the 40th floor, I couldn't breathe because the stairwell was stuffy and I'd been running at full speed. And to give a sense of scale, 40 floors is running up the average HDB flat maybe 3-4 times. And after another 10 floors, my legs and my brain were literally sending mixed messages. In my mind I would be telling my legs to climb, but somehow lifting them felt like moving blocks of lead. And sometimes, I could feel myself willing my legs to move, only to see them remain stationary. But at that point that was no way out but up. I saw many other tired guys around me, all pushing themselves a step at a time, some of them panting heavily, others leaning hard on the railings. Some of them even puked. And there were others who stopped and sat on the stairs, prompting the race marshals to ask if they were okay.

I realised that this was the part of the race that no one saw. Every one sees the happy faces at the start line, and the relieved ones at the finish, but no one sees the pain and suffering of the runners in between. And in this stairwell, stuffy, hot and seemingly neverending, I was coming face to face with pure unbridled suffering, that of my own, and the hundreds of others who had decided to run this punishing course with me. In a way, it was like a metaphor for life itself, for any journey worth undertaking. You sign up to do something, you do it, suffering like shit along the way, and at the end, it's a massive relief and you feel like you've accomplished something. Sometimes nobody notices, but hell it feels massive ticking that thing off your bucket list.

Indeed, reaching the top was a relief, but it was nothing like I'd expected. I'd always imagined myself running past the finishing line with a big smile and arms raised, but the actual event itself was very different. All I could think of was "this is almost over", and all I could feel was pain. But the amazing thing was, the pain disappeared when I saw the finishing line itself. Somehow my legs started listening to me again, which was amazing considering they'd not been doing so for the better part of 10 minutes, and I sprinted past the finishing line into the ridiculously strong sunlight atop the helipad.

One of the female marshals put a medal on my neck, and I ran towards the edge of the helipad thinking "What a wonderful view" before making a quick getaway back down into the shade. You might be wondering why the hell I ran all the way up there just to get right out of the place, but I can tell you, after a run like that, the last thing you really want is to be under sunlight so strong you can hardly open your eyes. The sunlight made me feel so faint I thought I was going to do so right on that rooftop, and if I had done that it would probably have made the papers and I would never have heard the end of it from my family. So all I could think was, even if I'm going to faint here today I'm not going to faint up here where the whole world can see me. I will run into some dark corner of the swisshotel and faint. It was amazing that even in a time like that I could still think of saving face.

And so that was it. The whole run took just 18 minutes, a little slower than I'd wanted, but finishing it was what really mattered. And the funny part was, after I did the run, my family members couldn't stop telling other people about it. Well, at least it wasn't about how their son ended up passing out on the rooftop.

"This medal certifies you as a veritable pain lover. Some people love lasagna, others love prata, you fucking ran up 73 floors. Congratulations. You're batshit insane, and you have a chunk of metal to prove it. Booyah."

Now, for #2.

makan monster.

Imagine this. You are a bored cubicle dweller. You've spent the last half an hour refreshing your email inbox, but nothing is coming in. Which is good news. There isn't anything in particular to do either. Which is also good news. Then you spot that packet of prawn keropok sitting on your colleague's desk. It begins calling out to you. You can smell it. You can see the mist of keropok bits as you snap it into two, with that satisfying "krak" sound.

Next thing you know, there is a plastic keropok-less packet on your table. Soon to join it are a packet of muruku that a colleague made herself for Deepavali, and some chocolate bar wrappers from several dark chocolate and raisin bars that another colleague bought from her Euro trip.

You eat because you're bored. Then lunch comes by and you eat again. Someone should do a study on workplace snacking. They will find that there's a strong correlation between boredom and overeating.

But it gets worse when you're stuck in office working overtime. You have to call in deliveries, and guess what's always the first option on the menu. McDelivery! To be honest I hate eating McDonalds these days but there really is little else at the hours I work. Or you could skip dinner altogether but doing so renders me comatose and unable to function after like 9pm.

One good thing does come out of doing nothing in office though. You get the time to surf the net nonstop, and you uncover musical gems, like the three I'm about to feature here.



The first features Clara C, a Los Angeles based singer-songwriter. A friend just notified me that she's about to be in Singapore on Nov 28 at the Esplanade recital studio, so if you're a fan of open-mike sessions and intimate acoustic sets, this could be for you. She'll be performing all her best songs, so if you're a fan you have to catch this.



The second is Neverending Summer by Dayplayer. I got this song off a criminal forensic drama that I watch called Bones. Don't watch that really unless you can stomach death in all its forms. Even now I still get disgusted looks from people who steal glances at my phone while I'm watching it on the MRT. It brings a chuckle when I realise the number of breakfast appetites I must have ruined every morning on the way to work.



The last is Shake It Out by Florence and the Machine. I can't believe how long it took me to discover this crimson-haired siren, but now that I have I can't stop listening to her stuff. Guess I have a weakness for musical red-haired girls. And no you do not want to know how many such girls I have on my playlist. If I'm bored enough I may feature more of them.

Jayesslee!

My biggest guilty pleasure of the week. They get me at the "Hi!" every time, with those ridiculously blindingly white pearly whites. I've seen all sorts of debates about whether Sonia or Janice is hotter, but honestly I think they are both hot in their own ways. And putting them both together in a single video should just be illegal.

This is what they mean by when God decided the world wasn't awesome enough he made a singing guitarist in the form of a hot Korean chick, and then decided to clone stamp her so you get two for the price of one. As Chris Brown would say, double your pleasure, double your fun!

lol they are so right about this.

I really love musical mashups where they take the same few chords and sing like twenty different songs, but I guess I'm weird that way. Or maybe I just like musical comedy acts like the axis of awesome.

On another note, here's a Singaporean/Filipino musical collaboration that really deserves more eyeballs. It's called the Kitchen Musical, and their cover of "Unwell" really blew me away, amongst other songs. If you have cable and the AXN channel, its worth catching this musical, which follows the story of a young chef trying to establish herself. It's like Glee but with food.

Showing on AXN on Sat 2.40pm, 8.00pm, Sun 3.15am, 9.20am, Fri 9.05pm



Now who says that Singapore can't produce awesome shows. Maybe we're just looking in the wrong places *cough* Mediacorp *cough*

Excuse me sir, would you like eternal life?

"The Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again."
-Achilles, Troy (2004)

Today, a young man approached me with a survey that he urgently needed me to fill. As was the case with most such people, one would dismiss them quickly, as they would usually be insurance agents asking if you were interested in one of their new policies.

However, this guy was a little different. Before I rushed past him, I stole a glance at what he was holding. It was a bright yellow survey form, definitely not something from an insurance company. Sensing that he was losing me, he tried his best line.

"Do you want eternal life sir?"

My answer, simply, was no. I thanked him, and walked on. I have a reason for that, but I did not have the time to share it with him.

But I might as well share it here, since this is my blog and anything shared here is not unnecessarily fettered by the constraints of time.

Humanity is easily tempted by greed, to the extent that they do not always see that too much of something is necessarily folly. Why would anyone with a rational mind desire eternal life? What would one do with it?

The quote I shared above from Troy illustrates this point. The reason why the ancient Gods of Greece were so prone to human folly was simply that they had grown bored of their lives in the high realms of Mount Olympus. When you live forever, with the same people, doing the same things, you grow bored of their company. In fact, to have eternal life would be something I would shudder to comprehend.

Assuming that one had many things to do with one's life, many of which are not accomplishable in a single lifetime, one would desire more time. I could understand that. Personally, I find myself wishing that there were more than 24 hours in a day, because I can never get enough time to sleep. There will always be insufficient time to get to another corner of the world you haven't seen, or to eat something you haven't tried. One will always wish for more time to spend with the one they love. And one will always wish for more time to see one's children grow up and become good people.

As for those of us who were more motivated, who sought more out of life, there will come a point when you have done everything you want to do, or seen everything that you want to see. What meaning would life have to you then, beyond that? You would become bored, but you would also be trapped in a state of living where nothing new excites you anymore, where another day would be more of the same. You would become a creature who stuck to the same monotonous routine, over and over, to try and use up time that you could never finish using up.

That to me, would honestly be the worst thing there could ever be. Have you seen those science fiction films where people are trapped in suspended animation in a parallel universe? To me, eternal life would eventually become akin to that.

With infinite time, no one would have to die. There wouldn't be a need for new lives, or a need for renewal, in every sense of the word. Life would become very simply, stagnant. People would lose their sense of urgency for anything at all. And eventually, the world as we know it, it would change, but I don't think it would be for the better. A world where no one dies is unsustainable. The eventual outcome, whether you like it or not, would be a very destructive war.

It is also the reason why scientifically, organisms are made to age by chemical processes.

Even if scientists were to find a way to reverse aging, which is becoming possible because it is still after all, a chemical process, they would be much harder pressed to reverse mutations as they occurred, as those occur randomly during cell division. It is arguable that the reason why all life has to eventually age and die is to prevent it from reaching a stage where the body will become so riddled with errors from genetic mutations (e.g. cancer) that it becomes impossible to function, or that it will pass on such traits to offspring. It is also the reason probably, why there is a reproductive window that favours the young.

For those who would argue that eternal life is one that is spent with God, and that a life like that is fulfilling in itself, I guess they have a point. I just wonder about this. If you had to spend eternal life with God, how awesome could it be? Isn't it funny that despite how eternal life is promised as the ultimate end in itself, no one has actually sat down and thought about what eternal life really means, or actually tried to parse it out in detail so more people would desire it as the end to aspire to?

It is almost as though people are actually afraid that they will just fade away into oblivion, so to assuage this fear, they try to convince themselves that maybe, somewhere, their consciousness will live on in an alternate realm.

But really, what would you even do with eternal life, even one spent with God? Sit at his feet every day and look at him? Bask in his love? In his glory? Drink and make merry every day? I guess that might do it for you, but I wouldn't desire it because it would quickly become meaningless to me.

I guess part of what makes God awesome is, nobody has to actually spend any real time with him. He's like that priest in the confession box. He's there to absolve your sins, but you don't have to hang around him once you're done doing so. You can get on with your life.

Or maybe those who are living eternal lives are too busy reveling in its awesomeness to make their way down to show you how awesome it is. But really, since it is eternal, couldn't they just spare some time to come down and tell us that it's really so awesome? I would love to hear about that. Darn selfish gits.

iPhone 4S with 'SIMI' voice control with 中文字幕 (Chinese Sub)

I want this SIMI more than I want a Siri leh. It is much funnier.

The Siri also quite retarded one. I tried asking it "Where can I find the best bachormee"
It went "I don't know what you mean by... back stroke me."

much ado about halal pork

I read a news report recently about a picture on halal pork making the rounds on the internet. Well, everybody knows that the words halal and pork don't go together, but I have to admit it stoked some form of morbid curiosity. So I found the picture. Apparently, it's an old picture from 2007, which has resurfaced now for some strange reason.

As much as I want to appear aware of cultural sensitivities, I couldn't help laughing. As a practical joke, this has to be one of the best ones I've seen recently. And by putting it on the national press, I guess they just made it a lot more visible to people like me.

It reminds me very much of this video about nasi babi.



I guess my sense of humour falls squarely within the middle category, as seen from this Venn diagram I took off 9gag.

Totally worth it.

I swore never to work in a 9 to 5 job. I got my wish

The title says it all. I swore never to work in a 9 to 5 job. Sometimes, you get what you wish for, with a twist. Not only did I not get a 9 to 5 job, I got a 9 to 9 one.

I've spent so many days working my ass off in a small cubicle partitioned off from the rest of the office, when I actually knocked off work today and realised it wasn't dark, my brain actually took a while to adjust and realise that there was still sun. It was then that I realised that for the first time in weeks, I had just knocked off before 7pm. It doesn't help that my office has blue glazed windows, so it permanently looks like late evening, even if its 2pm in the afternoon, which only adds to the whole dissociation from reality.

And in such an environment, you find that certain aspects of you change. For one, you start to get really really lame jokes. Today, my colleague cracked this one. He went "What is the oldest place in the world? Got the most old people one. From the name you also can tell."

Well, we tried several lame attempts. I tried a good one, the old folks home, but obviously the joke wasn't meant to be logical.

The answer?

"A-ma-zon" (pronounced ah-ma-zone)

I actually loled like a bloody idiot at this and felt so stupid after, because everyone turned around to see who was the guy who was laughing out loud in the middle of lunch. My other colleague turned to this colleague and asked "what about all the grandfathers?", but obviously that wasn't the point of the joke.

I've also started to notice that I sing to the photocopy machine. I didn't notice it before, until I had this really long print job that was taking ages, it was something along the lines of printing 30 copies of some 20 page document, when I realised that I was actually serenading the photocopier with my best rendition of "The lazy song" by Bruno Mars. In a sense, I think I was actually channeling my subconscious - "Today I don't feel like doing anything, nothing at all", but it all got really silly real fast when I saw a colleague standing behind my left shoulder grinning.

And my colleague has that same grin no matter when I see him, whether its at the photocopier, or in the tiny men's toilet where it gets awkward real fast because there is but one urinal and two guys. Or three. I usually choose to go to the pantry, if only to escape the massive awkward turtle moment.

And of course, in an office this small, there just had to be a TNP fanboy. The moment he realised I was a former TNP reporter, he started asking me all sorts of questions. "Do you know ___? What stories did you write?" When I told him the stories I actually did write, he was like "Wow that was you? Really? You're a legend man! I keep all the page one covers of TNP you know, if only for the TNP dollars. And I remember your stories!"

And during the house visits that are a part of my job, he went "Wow you're a natural man. You always know how to find the right house. And you aren't scared of talking to all these strangers at all, even those that look like gangsters. And you always know what questions to ask. You're damn steady man!"

Me (trying to play it down because his eagerness was kinda freaking me out): "I used to be a reporter for TNP."

Fanboy: "Yes yes no wonder you're so good at this!"

Sigh. Way to associate yourself with a colleague who will never leave you alone now, because you worked for his favourite newspaper. Now he gives me this knowing look whenever he sees me that I have yet to figure out how to respond to, because it touches on this very uncomfortable line somewhere between admiration and creepiness.

Frustrations of an office dweller

In the corporate jungle, there are some things you quickly learn. Like how to handle awkward conversations that usually happen when you're about to enter the toilet and someone comes out of it, and you're supposed to hold a conversation because you've seen each other and you can't pretend you didn't, but you can't really hold a long one because you're holding something else, which was why you needed the toilet in the first place.

Usually I just make it a plain and simple affair, like "hey you also using the toilet ah", which I have to admit is pretty lame because of how rhetorical it is. But hey, anything to diffuse the tension and awkwardness. And this is also the time when I notice sometimes that my colleagues have extremely dry hands. Which means only one thing.

They didn't wash.

Yes, very disgusting. I make it a point not to ever shake hands with such people.

Other things that happen are the unwritten laws that I observe seem to pervade the workplace. Just last week I had to settle disagreements that went along the lines of something like this. That something that has been done in a certain way for a number of years is in fact codified as law, and cannot be changed, even if you cannot remember the reason it was done as such in the first place.

It gets extremely annoying when you realise you have to push for the change because it streamlines work processes, but some obdurate old donkey who refuses to let go of his methods of doing things insists on keeping the status quo. Soon it becomes apparent that what is really transpiring is the fundamental conflict of every workplace, the new replacing the old. The old dude is using his "experience" to try and influence the new guy, who will have none of it because times have changed and well, the old guy is becoming increasingly irrelevant and knows it to be so, and he fears it because he can feel the blade of the chopping board hovering ever that much closer to the hairs on his neck.

I'm not saying that I'm being a petulant upstart who insists on having his way, upsetting all the old staff. That would pretty much ensure a quick and painful exit from any workplace, because seniority still matters. However, much of the time, the onus for the change is driven by market forces, and I'm just the person who has to do the unpleasant task of communicating it to the comfortable ones who don't wish to see change. The market is unforgiving, and those who don't move along with it will inevitably get left behind.

The most important thing I've learnt so far though, is how to make an exit from the workplace when you are done for the day, but your colleagues still have work to do and are hence working overtime for no extra pay. Because in the name of solidarity, you should be offering to help, but honestly, it's not really your work. Sometimes you've just got to know when to avoid work that isn't supposed to be yours.

I just shut down my computer, and scoot off quickly. And make sure you say your goodbyes real loud and clear, and throw in some crap like "see you tomorrow" with a big smile, so it seems like you're being cordial and not trying to escape. Always works like a charm.

An unintentional advertisement

I found this off Wikipedia on Steve Jobs. As old as his death is, I couldn't help but note this was one of the best advertisements for LSD I've ever seen.

"During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life"."

I decided to distill the essence of the wisdom that he'd imparted - If you want to be great, you gotta take a trip down rainbow lane.

Come on, you know you want to. What could be better than tripping on acid and prancing around in a world of unicorns and ponies shitting rainbows right? And if you do it enough, you might eventually invent an iPad.

the grammar conundrum that was impossible to solve

Sometimes at work, your boss calls you in, and what seems a relatively routine request quickly spirals out into a realm where common sense takes a backseat and you are expected to perform miracles.

So here goes. The boss wanted to show that a customer complaint was being investigated, so she wanted to use the word "investigation", in the context of "investigations were conducted into the complaint". However, the word "investigations" was plural, and apparently since it was plural and not singular, it reflected badly on the company as it implied that "many investigations" were being conducted into the same complaint, which meant it was probably very serious.

I suggested a grammatical alternative, "an investigation was conducted", but that was quickly rebuffed with "it doesn't have the same effect", apparently because having the word "an" in front, making the sentence grammatical, blunted the action word within the sentence. That option was quickly rejected.

I tried to convince the boss that good grammar indicated a high standard of professionalism which was more favourble than a perception problem, but her argument won the day. She simply went "when you write investigations, the people upstairs will always think that there was a lot of investigations, so it looks bad on your company anyway." Okay, but you can't just take away the "s" in the word and still expect the sentence to work correctly.

The more pertinent point that the rules of English simply forbade a sentence being constructed in such a way held no water because "the impact was lost". The same sentence had to have the word "investigation" without the grammatical article "an", and it also had to be grammatical.

So, the final sentence went like this. "Investigation were conducted into the complaints..."

So, what is the moral of this story? You can't make fried chicken from ducks. If you try to make a duck a chicken, without actually observing rather pertinently that it's a duck, you end up with a fried duck, and no one eats fried ducks for a reason. It tastes like shit, doesn't leave a good impression, and you wasted all the time you spent in the first place trying to fry it into a chicken.

Now, if you had simply tried to braise it, maybe it wouldn't be as awesome as your fried chicken, but you'd still have a good duck. Unfortunately, in some cases, the people upstairs eating fried ducks are willing to accept it as fried chicken because they have no standards, but that's another story.

workplace truths from an office dweller

1) you will get no work from 9am to 3pm. you will even have time to get a nice long lazy lunch. then all the shit comes in at 4pm and you end up going home at 8pm, when work officially ends at 6.

2) you spend way too much money on lunch, and on coffees, sandwiches and other random snacks you don't need. and you are compelled to buy bubble tea you don't want to drink because the office needs 15 for a free delivery and well, you're always the 15th person they ask.

3) you go to the toilet more than you need to because it is the only place you can be yourself, and it is also the only place where work cannot find you. but you measure the time between toilet breaks so it doesn't become too obvious.

4) you daydream about the next public holiday all the time, and about how to "chope" the long holidays before the rest of your department does so you won't be that sad sack in the office when everyone else is in the Bahamas.

5) you hate your office chair. you think about how you can swap it with the unsuspecting twit next to you, all the time. one day, you finally do it. and you find out that his chair is just as shitty as yours. and the search for the perfect chair goes on.

of temples and scalpers - Cambodia (19/9/2011 - 24/09/2011)

"You want tuk-tuk sir? You want cold drink? You want scarf? You want postcard sir? Three for one dollar..."

Before I went to Cambodia, I was told that it was short for Scambodia, and for good reason. As much as the sights were one of a kind, the people were too. Apart from the hundreds of street urchins trying to sell us all sorts of paraphernalia, we also met a motorcyclist who claimed that he knew where our hostel was. One hour later we were lost in Phnom Penh after he conveniently took us for a ride, and the motorcyclist wanted double. We refused to give him more than the equivalent of 60 cents, and he ended up ripping the notes in anger. Well, sucks to be you.

But we met great people too, like the owners of the hostels we stayed in. While in Phnom Penh, it was a group of sisters, one of which even let us play with her seven-month old baby, that we had a little fun with atop the bar counter. And at Siem Reap, it was a Canadian couple that were great people to talk to. They shared their knowledge of Siem Reap with us, which made the trip a lot easier for two dudes with minimal planning.

I loved every minute of the trip, from sitting in a blacked out room in the hostel at Siem Reap because of the crazy flooding, to wading through water mid-thigh level high to get to a temple in the Angkor grounds, to trekking around the countryside in squishy wet boots because everything in Siem Reap and around was wet.

It wasn't just wet, nothing would dry, not even if you left it out for two straight nights. I have to admit that after visiting over 10 temples I got so sick of rocks that at one point, I started taking pictures of cows. When you start taking pictures of cows in Cambodia, you know you've seen enough temples for the day.

And now, the story of a wet week in Cambodia.

It was common to see entire families atop a single scooter, like this one all throughout Cambodia. Some even had 5 people on them.I was pleasantly surprised to find out that our hostel in Phnom Penh served lunch with onion rings this size. Everything there was upsized, even their rooms.
We took the better part of an hour finding this bar, Sharky's. Apparently an institution in Phnom Penh, it was surprisingly tucked away in a rather nondescript location. Getting away from it though led us to the idiot who liked tearing money.
The area around Siem Reap was filled with temples like this one. Mostly ruins, slowly being reclaimed by nature.
It's not every day that you see people walking on water.
Banteay Srei. The city of women, according to local folklore, because the carvings were too intricate to be carved by the hand of men. We had to pay a group of corrupted guards four dollars to see the inside of this temple, because it is apparently closed to tourists.

This was the temple that got on Singapore news for having tourists airlifted out. Apparently the day after we visited, it became flooded two metres deep. I hope the guards drowned.Pub Street in Siem Reap. It offered great Western and local cuisine at affordable prices. The heart and soul of the city, let's just say even Singaporeans would have little complaints here. It reminded me of Holland Village, but better.
We were at the Angkor Wat waiting for the sunrise, but it never came because of the rain. I started shooting the fellow tourists also waiting for the sunrise. And I got this.The imposing stone structure that was the Angkor Wat.
And a couple sharing an intimate moment amidst the rain in that very doorway. If you look carefully in the previous picture, you can see something white. That was his back.
Bayon. The temple of a thousand faces. Ta Prohm. Where Angelina Jolie filmed Tomb Raider, and where a tree shows the temple who is boss.I forgot which temple this was, but I like this shot.Climbing up a temple where we would watch a sunset that also predictably, never came. What did was a busload of Japanese tourists, many of them young ladies. So we ended up watching a nonexistent sunset with them. Time to brush up my Japanese.
The flooded road outside our hostel in Siem ReapTravelling throughout the countryside around Siem Reap on the way to another templeBang Mealea. We visited this temple on our last day, and it was definitely one of the must visits. It had not been restored, so the temple was one huge ruin that you walked through on a wooden platform, admiring the devastation from above.A boy cuts a desolate figure as he sits in the shade of a monastery watching the rainWooden bars indicating restoration work being done on some of the templesA makeshift wooden altar I found next to a temple. Donations always welcome.One of the street urchins around the temples. This one wasn't trying to sell us anything, which was a relief.I forgot the name of this temple, but I like the lion.
Nothing will stop tourists. Not the rain, not the muddy roads, nothing.An extremely photo-friendly monk I found while wandering the village around the temple. Before I took this shot, two whole tour groups already took his picture. And he was still game for more.
A pair of children that I met. The girl said hello to me, and proceeded to pose for a picture. I didn't want to disappoint.On the way out of the temple, I caught these two girls on a scooter stuck in a pothole. This was them after they had somehow figured a way out of it.The view of Siem Reap from inside our tuk-tuk in the evening.And the view outside. As you can see, I wasn't kidding about the floods.The floods eventually took out the power generator, so this was Siem Reap plunged into darkness on our final night. It was actually darker, it looks lighted because this is a five second long exposure.

Father and baby at Washington Square Park

I loved watching this video. It was just three minutes, but parts of it felt timeless.

the fear

It has been two years since this song coloured my exchange, but even now, the words still ring true, even if they inform my life in an alternate universe where I ate hamburgers every other day and washed that down with beer.

When I got back, the honest reaction of almost everyone who met me was "Hey, you got fat." Now, as the friendships and relationships improve, it gets even better, they don't even bother to hide it anymore. "Hey, I got a pair of pants that I wore till the elastic got loose, but I think it would suit you perfectly, you want them?" Or this. "I can't eat anymore, so would you like some? It wouldn't really make a difference on you anyway, you're already fat." Ouch.

I actually find this annoying sometimes, because I am not fat. According to the BMI index, I am in the healthy range. I just need new jeans because the old ones don't fit anymore. And if I had to choose between being fat and never drinking beer again, I'd be fat.

But these days, it isn't just the battle of the bulge you are fighting. As you get older, it seems like there isn't much more to life than earning money. Everyone is obsessed about how much everyone else is earning. And I find it really funny, because I realise that even if I were to earn a lot of money, I honestly wouldn't spend much of it on myself. Maybe I'm a retard that way, but I really need a few lessons on how to spend money. And no, this is not an excuse to pass my number to insurance agents, I swear I will gut them first, and then feed their innards to you.

I don't intend to get a car, because I think Singapore is getting so damn crowded these days, a car actually makes you travel slower. Sure, it is convenient when you need to get to some of those out of the way places, but finding parking these days is always a bitch. Sometimes you spend more time waiting for a lot than the journey itself. And before you even meet your friends, you're already down several dollars from the carpark charges. Not to mention those bloodsucking ERP gantries.

A cabbie actually dropped me right in front of one of those because my destination was just inside the gantry and he thought he'd help me save a buck because he didn't want the government to have it, and proceeded to U-turn so he could avoid going through it himself after he'd dropped me off. I mean, I know they hate the government, but to begrudge it like one dollar? The conspiracy theorists would have a field day debating just how deep the resentment is towards the PAP based on that example alone.

But such sums are really paltry compared to the amounts I'll soon be wrestling with in a few years, if life goes according to plan. A big if, but it will eventually. I read a statement somewhere that debt was the chain that bound you to something you hated. And I realised that it was really true. Before you take on anything big ticket, always think about what the loan you need to finance it really means.

A 30-year housing loan effectively means you can't stop working for 30 years, because you have to cough up cash every month to repay it. Sure, you can't avoid it, but be careful to buy a home within your earning capacity, because if the majority of your salary is used for debt repayment, you could have a nice house, but your family would live like paupers. And it's the day-to-day living that really kills people, because if your family is constantly squeezed for the most basic of necessities, and if money is always tight, it makes for a stressed and tempestuous household. How would I know? I grew up in one.

Most people don't get rich not because they don't earn enough, but because they don't manage their equities and debts well. If all the money you earn is constantly being used to finance your debts, with little left over to leverage on investments, you can't grow your retirement nest egg. Or your children's education funds. You can't even go on holidays, or quit your job even if your boss is a bastard. And somehow, it is always when you have the most debt that you get the mother of all bastards for a boss.

Because hell is really on Earth, but most are too blind seeking a heaven beyond to see that both heaven and hell are really in the same place, here. It's just how you live that decides whether you live in heaven or hell.

The time value of money means that the amount of money you need for your children's education is actually more than what you think you need. Think you only need $30,000? Do you have any idea what $30,000 is in twenty years, assuming 4% inflation per year, in today's money terms? It's about $65,700, more than double that amount. And how much would $30,000 earn in a bank when you leave it in there for 20 years, assuming a very generous bank interest rate of 1%? $36,600. Gosh, that leaves you $30,000 short, even if you had enough in the first place. Go figure.

I was conned into playing a game of Cashflow 101 by a bunch of network marketers once, but it did teach me something. I played as a lawyer, but I lost the game. The person who eventually won started as a lowly nurse. The dude won not because he had the highest salary, on the contrary, he had the lowest. He won because he had the lowest expenses as well, so he put all his spare cash into investments, and eventually, he was outearning us all comfortably. He didn't have credit card debts. He didn't have expensive ballet lessons for his kids. He didn't even have a car loan.

I'm not saying that life is necessarily that easy, that investments will always net you money, because I'm studying financial theories now and I can tell you that investing is anything but an exact science. All I'm saying that maybe it is time to look at how to manage our lives, so we don't kill ourselves servicing debt we don't need. It is not how much you earn that impacts your quality of life, it is really how much debt you choose to take up that does.

from the land of the rednecks

This is a weirdly hilarious commercial. I didn't for a moment think that any of those animals were alive but the part about the bear in the bed has to take the cake. Apparently, an old man hanging around the edge of your bed is still better than a taxidermised bear.

You passed the test. Wait, no you didn't.

In what must be one of the better parodies of job interviews out there.

The REAL story of taking a bus in Singapore

Finally, a video that tells it like it is.

Common interview questions and how I wish I could answer them

Having done more than a few interviews over a few months and getting rejected time and again, I've come to the conclusion that each one is really just an exercise for me to sharpen my interviewing skills. I no longer go in with the expectation of getting employed, because employment has become that magic factor that does not really exist. If it happens, it means that I can go buy 4D because I will win the first prize, and Singapore will be in the World Cup next year.

It becomes really easy after that, because you become real chill about everything. I've rehearsed my practiced answers so much, I've even had time to come up with an alternative set that I wish I could say to these interviewers.

So here goes.

Tell me about yourself
I'm actually an escaped circus monkey who assumed human form after meeting a genie that someone rubbed out of a lamp. The genie was feeling generous, so he gave me three wishes. I told him that I wanted to be a human, and poof, he granted the wish. I was a fully formed human, even decked out in clothes from the recently opened H&M.

I still had two more wishes, so I told him that I wanted to know what life as a human was like, and that I also wanted to meet more people. I ended up in this job interview.

Why did you choose (this company)
I'd really love to say that your company is the best in the world, but I bet you couldn't say that yourself with a straight face. Fortunately for you, I am a first-rate masochist. I don't just love pain, I'm actually willing to put myself through this interview so you can feel it too. And if I actually make it, I'm signing myself up for even more of it. There's so much gratuitous pain to be had, it makes me turned on just thinking about it.

Why made you decide to move away from a job in communications?
I love to write, but I wrote so much that I developed a tremor in my left hand. After doing a CT scan, I was told that I had developed a rare autoimmune disease, caused by the unconscious reaction my hand was having to all the shit it was writing. My hand was trying to destroy itself, because it realised that it wasn't creating quality journalism.

They told me that if I continued writing, I would only have three months to live, because the disease would spread to my heart and brain and destroy it too. I don't profess that this new job will necessarily be any different, but at least I'll have money to pay for my treatment.

What is your greatest weakness?
Legend has it that five thousand years ago, a golden beam from the sky shone upon the Earth, and the ground rumbled and shook. The beam fixed upon a rock, and behold, a little furry cat was born. But this furry cat wasn't just any cat, it was a special cat called Nyan that had the power to fly through space, while shitting a stream of rainbows behind it.

It sang a neverending ballad on the mysteries of space and time, and I listened to a six hour recording of his song once. At the end of it, my ears were shitting rainbows too, although I gained enlightenment in a certain sense. I learnt that there were better things to do with my time.

Oh, I tend to ramble on about stuff that's irrelevant. Sorry.

Where do you see yourself in five years?
On the cover of Forbes magazine, smiling next to Oprah and the Queen.

Do you have any questions you would like to ask us?
Sure. Do you think you could prove Fermat's last theorem and explain it to me? I have a very inquisitive mind. If that's too difficult, then could you explain to me why is it that when I mix fruit juice, anything that I mix with papaya tastes like nothing else but papaya. Lastly, I'm allergic to bullshit. Do you have anything that can alleviate that? I really need it because after every interview, I break out in rashes. It's quite the problem.

Tidying up art?

Something I found very intriguing while surfing the web. A Swiss artist and comedian Ursus Wehrli tries to apply his philosophy of tidying up art into the constituent colours or shapes to all sorts of art pieces. Critics have called it unnatural, but I think it's just another form of expression.

Reminds me of those days when I was in a PAP kindergarten and all the kids had to share a box of crayons. I always got the black crayon because nobody wanted it and I was the smallest kid there, which kind of ensured you always got the leftovers.

I coloured everything black, and when the teacher asked me why the fish I was colouring was black, I told her my crayon was black. She didn't get me a new crayon. It was also kind of hard to colour between the lines, because after awhile, there weren't any lines.

My positive association with art teachers didn't end there. There was a session that consisted of knitting with woolen threads. On the materials bench, there was a whole assortment of woolen threads in many different colours. Most kids just took one. However, in what was perhaps an unconscious manifestation of my colour deprivation complex in a PAP kindergarten, I went ahead and took a few threads of every colour.

The teacher's retort: "You knitting a multicoloured underwear ah?"

The moral of the story, as it appeared to a 8 year old kid:
You don't need many colours to create an artwork. You need just one.

On some metaphilosophical level, that is probably true, but I think most people realise that crayon and colour pencil sets have a selection of colours for a reason.

If someone were to submit something like this for a primary school art class and tell the teacher it's because colours aren't meant to mix and everything needs order in this world, I'd love to hear what kind of comeback the teacher would come up with.

Do it for the dude who had to use a black crayon. Just do it.

murphy is a bastard.

Ever heard of Murphy's Law? I don't know who he is, or was, but there are times in your life when it will seem like life is working against you.

As of now, I'm still gainfully unemployed, and to support myself, I've taken to finding a plethora of part-time jobs, in a variety of professions, from assisting with photography, to writing up on events and advertisements, to manual labour. And I'm also applying for jobs.

The good thing is, I'm not having problems with cashflow, because these jobs actually pay quite well because there are quite a few of them. Obviously I can't live large, and I haven't shopped in ages because I'm just earning enough to cover my food and transport expenses, but I've finally saved up enough to take the small grad trip I never had.

It almost makes me resentful that some get to go on grad trips sponsored by their parents while I have to grind out every cent for mine, but such is life. The sooner you accept that there is no such thing as fairness in the world, the easier it gets. I worked and paid my way through school as well, so its really nothing new to me.

Of course, with the way life is, it will always happen as such that your best opportunity will come when you end up with a part-time job you cannot reject.

It all started like this. Being open for something to take up my free time, I signed up for a stocktaking job at a factory in Tuas, for a chemical company. It was a one day gig, and I thought since it was one day, it probably wouldn't affect anything much. The only catch is, being a chemical company, their jobs come with a safety briefing that cannot be skipped. My cousin recommended it to me last minute, as his friend needed urgent vacancies to fill the positions.

I attended the briefing this morning, and guess what. In the evening, I get a call for the bank job at a private bank I applied for 3 weeks ago, to go down for the initial interview. And it so happens that it's on the same day as the part-time job.

And now, I can't quit on the part-time job, because the company won't do another briefing, and because of the briefing, I can't do a one-for-one swap, which anyone in the right mind would have done. And then I get a call from my cousin's friend scolding me for being irresponsible in trying to push away the job last minute.

Offer for full-time job from a good bank vs. part time job of no consequence, I think it's pretty obvious what to choose? But because of this word called integrity, because I've given my word that I'll be present for the job, I have to give it up.

It really puts into perspective the value of this word called integrity. When you give your word to something, and on the other hand is what could turn out to be a huge pot of money and an opportunity of a lifetime, which would you choose?

Your word, or a pot of money? I'd love to say that you always take integrity because opportunities will come again, but we all know the job market is hardly that forgiving.

8 -2, Arsenal?

I've been a proud Arsenal fan since like forever, way back in secondary school so long ago I can't even remember why I was a fan in the first place. I think I was drawn to their stylish manner of playing, bolstered by a rock solid defence. Yes, Arsenal used to have a good defence. Hell, Arsenal used to be a defensive and physical side. Much like Bolton is now. And it used to have a good goalkeeper. Now, why are these concepts so alien?

Maybe its because since the retirement of Tony Adams and David Seaman, since all those years, Wenger still hasn't found anybody to replace them. He's had a few pretenders, sure, but since those years, only Vermaalen has stood out as a real replacement. In between we've had clowns like Gallas. To Wenger's credit we've had very good fullbacks, Sagna and Cole, then Clichy, but some are gone now, because the club is in stagnation.

I really think Wenger is out of ideas. And even as the loyal fans stick to his track record, "In Arsene we trust" they say, the sad truth is this. He inherited a good goalkeeper and defence. He made one brilliant purchase at the point of his takeover, the midfielder Patrick Vieira, whom most Arsenal fans still remember fondly because he was such a phenomenal figure in the middle of the park. And Arsenal already had Bergkamp, all he had to do was buy Overmars and Petit, and the team was more or less complete.

But since then, since their retirements, he's been unable to figure out how to replicate it. It's been one way traffic. Wenger's renewal system has not worked. And despite the emergence of promising talent, it might seem that Wenger doesn't really get it right in the transfer market most of the time.

It's hardly his fault really, it is just that he hasn't figured out that maybe, the reason why his club were so successful in the start was because it was built on both old hands and new. And when a new generation of youngsters, most notably of them all Fabregas stepped up to the fore, there was still a solid core of veterans behind them.

A look at the current squad reveals just how much the youth policy has failed. The youths aren't stepping up enough, and there aren't any established old hands around to share their experience. The older players, like Arshavin, he was an unknown until he shone in Euro 2008, and the rest don't even earn a mention because they've been frankly, quite mediocre.

Fabregas has left, but he should have anyway because he would never have won anything here, not when he was expected to carry a team when he's barely 24. And Nasri, once the French player of the year, has ditched Arsenal for Man City.

This is effectively what Arsenal is left with. No senior players, youth players who are only too happy to hop onto other clubs when the big paychecks and a chance to win real trophies come along, and a manager who continues in his belief that he's still got it, when he hasn't had jackshit in six years, soon to be seven. Arsenal has become a feeder club, like Everton was for Man Utd, but even Everton's players like Phil Jagielka don't want to sign for Arsenal anymore.

The Arsenal fans often say things like "If not for Wenger, who else can we sign? Do you see a replacement?" They think that Wenger is Ferguson. Every club has changed managers, except for Man Utd, when results are not forthcoming. Just because Wenger has brought success, just because he's been around for a long time, doesn't mean that he's immune to being replaced.

The only manager who deserves not to be replaced is Ferguson, because he's still got it. I'm not saying that Wenger wasn't a good manager, he was, but perhaps, the modern game is moving too fast for him, and persisting with his style of managing isn't working. There are plenty of managers to sign, look at what Daglish is doing for Liverpool. It's just whether Arsenal is willing to break faith and sign them. And of course Ferguson doesn't want Wenger to leave, it would mean one less threat if he stays. He's such a wily bastard, don't you think he knows Wenger hasn't got it anymore. He's nice to him precisely because he doesn't see him as competition.

For one, Wenger isn't good at the transfer market in an age where the best teams all buy their best talents. Wayne Rooney isn't a Man Utd born and bred player. Neither was Ronaldo. Neither was Van Der Sar. Neither was Vidic. Most of Man Utd's best players were bought.

And look at Chelsea, or Man City, or Liverpool. They are all buying players. Top clubs buy good players. They don't save their cash, because there is no point in doing so. If you don't win, you don't bring in cash, and it becomes a tale of diminishing returns. If you keep winning, you never have to worry about cash.

Secondly, he's really bad at substitutions, but that may be because he doesn't have a deep squad to choose from, which is also his fault. But lastly, which may be perhaps the most fatal flaw, he seems immune to his own failings. The squad has been lightweight for a long time now, but he hasn't made the most obvious replacements to its spine. There is a reason why the changes are apparent, it's because they are actually needed. I find it amazing that Wenger was able to sell Fabregas and Nasri while staunchly believing that he didn't need to sign replacements for them. Those were the club's two best players. Where does Arsenal go from here?

Frankly, I don't know. I am a fan, but it's become too painful to support them anymore. I'm not quitting because they've stopped winning, I'm quitting because they look like they have lost themslves.

CNA Twitter fail

email lol-fest

Here's what the email account brought up this week.

Dear Wei Li

Welcome to ClassACT, a monthly e-zine by Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

This month, we read about a new ratings system which awarded NTU 5 stars, making it the only local university to achieve this stature. With this new achievement, NTU enters the same league as other internationally acclaimed universities.

But that's not the best part. The best part was the article lead.

A new QS Stars rating system places the University in an international league of acclaimed universities such as Cambridge and Stanford...

Right. NTU's a fine university, but please do not compare it to Cambridge or Stanford. It's like trying to say the S-League is on the same level as the Barclays Premier League.

And it went on to make this assertion

NTU has been consistently ranked within the top 100 universities of the world in the last seven years.

Really? I seem to remember a recent Straits Times article that made the front page, about how NTU slipped to 174 in rankings. I'm pretty sure that wasn't seven years ago.

But of course, to be fair, I actually went on to do some background research on the QS Stars system. And I found out on the webpage itself - http://www.topuniversities.com/qsstars/home that the QS Stars system is not impartial at all!

Here's what the webpage writes

"QS Stars is the innovative new ratings system for academic institututions from QS. QS Stars was designed in response to institution’s needs requesting an evaluation that assesses all their strengths, using more comprehensive indicators in addition to those used in the rankings.

Learn how QS Stars is shaking up the global university ratings system and why universities are signing up to get their QS Stars."

And of course, NUS and SMU aren't in the system because they simply haven't signed up to get themselves accredited. NTU is the only university from Singapore that has been rated, not the first. Well, it is the first, but that's only because it was quick to buy in, not because of merit on its part whatsoever.

So actually, I'm not wrong at all in saying that NTU bought this rating to make themselves look good, and there's more than a little vested interest here in rating NTU well, because NUS and SMU would then scramble to get similar ratings too, resulting in more business for QS Stars.

By the way NTU, you didn't make the top 5 list of universities in Asia on the QS website. But NUS is at 3.