I can see you...NOT!

Since when is a camera a "Urine Detection Device?"

I was searching high and low for a camera in the 1.5m by 1.5m by 2m box but couldn't find any. i suppose the little circles near the bottom of the lift walls were the "Urine Detectors" but it doesn't take any photos.

Did they really have to put the symbol of a camera there? I wonder. The newly upgraded estates actually do have cameras in their lifts. Where the signal actually goes is a mystery to me though. Imagine 1 block of flats having an average of 2 lifts. And within a smallish estate, there are 80 blocks. So, some poor dude's gonna have to look at people doing the previously mentioned things in the lift.

The guy'll be heading for therapy after a few years of that for sure.

Gone are they days when the lift was private enough for a quick smootch in. Now, they have windows on the doors so at almost every floor, people can take a peek inside and see what's going on.

Well, public housing is becoming just exactly that. Public.

Commerce...

Trust human beings to try to capitalize on everything.

Now, even blogs have ads...and I'm not talking about ads which the bloghost companies are putting up. More along the lines of ads whereby the bloggers themselves are getting.

This so-called "sponsorship" is now putting limitations on what the blogger can or cannot say. I guess they're just marketing on the fact that such and such a person is getting loads of hits/page-views so lets put one of our ads there and support him/her financially for the work done.

But on the other hand, if he/she says something that goes against our company interest or is not widely accepted by the public, we have to pull out. Oh man! So now, the blogger has to go "I'm thinking of what to write and while I'm doing that, I'm sipping my (popular soft-drink brand) - and I'm thus making the choice of a new generation of what to put on my site"

Riiiiiiiiiiight. I guess sooner or later, we'd all be sponsored.

I stumbled across this a few years back and looks like it's gonna be true...just take a look at the picture below:



Well, for a preview of what I'm saying about blogger's sites a good example is here.

Wasting Time

Here's one for the cut waste panel set up by the Singapore Government.

I spend 3 minutes a day taking the lift in and out of my house. So, in a week I spend 21 minutes in the lift (that excludes waiting times and I'm basing this on 1 up and 1 down trip per day on average). In an average month, I would've spent 90 minutes in the lift. That means that every year, I spend 18 hours taking the lift just to get to and from my apartment.

Lets take it that I'll live for another 35 years (I'm being optimistic here). I would've spent 26¼ days in the lift. That's almost equal to an entire month!

No wonder people multitask while they're in the lift...

They dig their noses (evidence of that is usually found on the wall with left-over booger stains), pee (whenever there's no "Urine Detector", smoke, eat, drink and take photos (like the one above).

So, what do you do in the lift?

Under pressure

For the 75% of Singaporeans that live in public housing, water pressure must've been one of the banes of every day routine. Taking a shower this morning, I realised that once the washing machine is chugging water in, my nice lovely stream of water become barely a trickle.

There I was halfway through rinsing shampoo off my head and there issn't enough water for me to do anything much less get the shampoo off. There's nothing you can do as well cause there are "standard diameter pipes" that you have to install...I guess otherwise, you'll deprive your neighbours of any showering experiences. HAHA!

Just heading to the loo and doing the big business before showering can be quite exasperating as well. Imagine after flushing the goods down the bowl, it takes another 5 minutes before the cistern fills up and water starts getting redirected back to the shower head. And if you've got skid marks in the bowl that requires additional flushing, you won't be taking a shower for the next 10 minutes at least.

Well..that's one of the daily banes that us public housing dwellers have to go through. At least the lifts are bearable now.

Zed's dead baby...Zed's dead

I've been noticing this.

Ever since the internet exploded in Singapore circa 1994, the English language as it is here has been evolved in to "netsspeak". At the same time, companies began using "z" in replacement of "s" bacause it just sounds cooler.

For example:

Brewerkz
Bakerzin
Werkz Photography

Just to name a few of the more popular ones. Just out of curiousity, does it necessarily make it sound better? What's wrong with Breworks? or Bakersin <-- okay this one I can understand after spelling it out...Works Photography????

Even now, our kids in school are abbreviating their essays. Very soon, I'm going to be writing my blog using nothing but abbreviations and weird (so called wired) spellings.

I shall coin the term for how we speak on the internet (IRC, IM, etc.) as "Wired Speech"

IMHO /me thinkz itz nort badz n idea.

Confessions

I have a confession to make. I do on occasion, when I'm alone at home parade around in my underwear. Yes, you heard right. I'm guilty of a little exhibitionism. Now before you go about thinking to yourself "I didn't need to know that", I'm saying this because apart from the fact that I live on the top floor (yes, it's a penthouse - at least by my standards...okay okay...a public housing penthouse), I also have a pretty unblocked view. However, I do suspect that if a neighbour really wanted to look hard enough, he/she might find a way to do so.

So, just out of curiousity, would parading around your own house in undies constitute exhibitionism?

Anyway, I just thought I'd get that off my chest.

Nevermind. I still have no idea what constitutes what here. Soon, even chewing gum will be illegal. Oh hang on...IT IS! Can you imagine if the internet was as popular back in 1992 as it is now? What would happen? I'd shudder at the thought. I remember hearing about the news when I was still in Canada. Most of my Canadian friends were saying "What the heck?" except that the "heck" was usually an expletive.

Yes, "what the fuck" did not originate from Singapore.

Oh...one last thing...(I have to end the post with this)

Tammy, try to look at the flipside of the hoo-haa that's going on about your video. At least you'll have a heck of a story for the grandkids. ;)

Sin Singapore

Sin City...it's about an imaginary city called BaSIN City somewhere in the US (probably East Coast). Well, if you've read the comic and seen the movie, good on ya.

And now, back to the real world...

Singapore..Hmm...the name is pretty provocative don't you think? What's been happening here in this little island state. Well, we've had bloggers jailed for racist comments which is not necessarily a bad thing; we've had peeping toms with pinhole cameras jailed; we've had a scandal of a couple of poly students video-filming themselves having sex using the handphone and losing the said handphone only to find that the video has been splashed all over the internet.

So we have our share of sexy, scandelous and downright disgusting activies going on...yet, men here are still at it. With the prospect of being publicly humiliated if they're caught, they still risk it. With the the prospect of being flogged, jailed and fined, they still do it. Is there nothing that will stop these men from doing it?

No...there issn't. That's the way nature has always been and that's the way nature will always be. Procreation is the single driving force of any animal (and yes, humans are animals as well). The debate of elevating ourselves from other animals has been going on forever and I won't start one here. Just take it that that's what we are for the sake of arguement. Now, the main difference between humans and animals is that we have morals, we are intelligent (though there are some people out there that might prove me wrong), and we are capable of creating things.

Well, the nature of man is that procreation is made pleasurable. We've gone slightly beyond that and have experimented with various styles, use of props, visuals, scents and sounds. Basically, making full use of all our 5 senses. Well, whatever it is, we will always be slaves to sex. That's the way it's always been, that's the way it'll always be.

World Wide whirlwind...

I've signed up to so many different websites, online forums, email accounts, photo galleries and what-not that I'm beginning to lose track of all my different personas. Apart from having usernames of my choice not being available, I suffer from occasional bouts of "online schizophrenia" as well so that doesn't help any.
Even in instant messaging, I have 3 different ways to keep in touch with people from Yahoo to MSN to ICQ. Being an early adopter of ICQ, I started with having a 4 or 5 digit ICQ account number (I forget if it's 4 or 5) and now, I've settled on a 7 digit account which hopefully, I will remember for the rest of my life.
I should start a service which allows people to consolidate all their different accounts into 1, simple webpage. Maybe that'll earn me some cash. But the prospect of having to travel continents is rather daunting. Perhaps I could suggest to Microsoft to start something like that and perhaps get a 9-5 deskjob out of it...NOT!
Getting lost in information is becoming common these days. Trying to find information via the internet is another daunting task. This is the world we live in today. The age of MTV, Video and radio is a thing of the past. We've moved on. It's now interactive or inactive. Even with television, they're trying to integrate websites of some form or other. Is it really that worthwhile? Is it productive or counter-productive? People spend more time on the internet bantering idly more often than not.

We don't really live in a global village. At least not yet. We are still separated by borders, culture, language et al. eBay for example may be global but there's still country specific sites, shipping to within a country etc. Japanese websites are still, well, in Japanese; the same goes for Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese websites. In order to be truly global, we as humans have to come up with a language that's easy to understand, is able to describe everything and is adobtable by everyone. So far, it seems to me that English is the popular choice. What have we learned from the internet? Nothing much except that it gives terrorists another way of telling people that 'They did it' and 'They'll do it again'.

Has it really made life easier? I don't know. Email has helped speed communications up a little but what's an email compared to a phone conversation? Where does it bring us? A little convenience perhaps cause now, instead of having to send in the warranty card for my recently purchased LCD TV, I can just register the bugger online. Ah...the convenience of not having to walk to the postbox. I'm not surprised that in the distant future, humans are all gonna evolve into 500kilogramme slugs with no arms and legs since computers and speech recognition's gonna handle everything.

Oh well...

Journal Entry #120

I make a terrible businessman.

I hate 'entertaining' clients and whenever someone entertains me (as a client), I feel obliged. I'm probably most suited to be the client instead of the businessman who's trying to wring every cent out of your pocket which is the intention of the so-called 'entertainment' in the first place.

Mother has always said that I was too soft. Soft is good isn't it? After all, that's where compassion comes from. Alas, that's also where misplaced compassion comes from. I've been told time and again to be at least a little more firm. Well, I can't help it if I'm a total sap. Blame it on the gene pool that I came from.

With a family history of aristocracy & academics in ancient (and I really mean ancient) China, I feel cheated; as though I was born a couple of hundred years too late. At least back in those days, they were somebody.

Now, just to make a name as a photographer, I have to sell my soul and plead with Lucifer himself. Not that I wouldn't have done it anyway. I am, however, totally bribable. Geez, if I was a girl, I'd probably end up as a hooker. But, fortunate as it may seem, I'm spared the option of the oldest profession. I might make a good Geisha though. After all, I am quite rhythmic.

I'm no idea why but whenever NH is around, my lips just seal shut. Probably due to all the post-mortems that he does of me once we're alone. He gets overly critical sometimes but I'll have to admit, there are times when I am quite "off" as well. Completely missing the point, subject matter at hand and going way off course. Which brings me back to the beginning which is, I make a terrible businessman.