Thanks to the powers that be, the banner has been fixed and Singapore once again says a tearful goodbye to Malaysia. Makes one appreciate one’s independence :)

Does that mean Singapore Metblogs has to celebrate its independence day on April 14 from now on? :P

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At least “not since 1965″!

Recently a metblog singapore reader and friend of mine pointed out something which has been eating at me for a while as well. He asked me, “if it’s ‘melbourne, australia’ on the Metblogs Melbourne header, shouldn’t it be ’singapore, singapore’ on ours?”

Of course if you looked at the Metblogs Kuala Lumpur site, it does say “Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia”. It seems to follow a city, country format. However, being one of 3 modern city states in the world, shouldn’t we be SIngapore, Singapore?

We’re not a part of Malaysia, not since 1965! And for those who are wondering, we’re not a part of China either.

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Found this on Gizmodo. What can I say. We’ve embarrassed ourselves on the international stage again? At least she liked the asian version of the iPhone.

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This photo of the old cinema at Clementi, beside the MRT station was taken on Sunday, 30 March 2008. At that point in time, there was already a gapping hole in the wall of the building. Yesterday night at 11pm on 31 March 2008, The whole entire wall down the front was a giant gapping hole. I wonder if they are only renovating the exterior or are they pulling the whole building down? Here’s a last glimpse before the new Clementi of tomorrow rises from the ground.

This cinema building is one of those rarer few that have survived from the 70s-80s although the cinema itself has ceased to function since the last 5 years. But today, most have been torn down or replaced by multiplexes like Golden Village with 10 small cinemas in 1 place. Soon the next generation wouldn’t even know we ever had such “antiquated” cinemas with 1 or 2 giant theatres, booklets of paper tickets where seating was 100% manual and the ticketing auntie (or uncle) will write your seat number on it with a “crayon pencil” before tearing it out from the stack and issuing it.

This is how the ticket used to look like. Image taken from National Archives of Singapore

Is the recent past really not worth treasuring at all? Onwards with modernity then!

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I can’t think of a better way to describe this piece of art but I shall instead borrow anonymously the following eloquent description. “Basically its’ a giant egg-plant purple replica of a Greek statue - David. The naked statue of David, to be specific. And there is NO FIG LEAF. :)”

An art installation at the National Museum of Singapore to promote the now-over Greek Masterpieces exhibition, I wonder if the giant … “egg plant” is still there. It greets visitors the minute you enter the sanctum of history and heritage that is the National Museum of Singapore. It did not fail to draw the lenses of Singaporeans who just could not resist capturing this egg plant on film. Less blatant than the sex convention, these exhibits from the Lourve’s Greek collection also comes with a smattering of nude forms. Perhaps that explained the long queue on the second last day of the exhibition when I visited.

Is this also perhaps the only time I can put NSFW content on Metblogs in the name of art, history and culture? *grin* Alas if you didn’t catch the exhibition while it was still on, perhaps you’ll just have to wait till the next sex convention, visit the Lourve in Paris or check out my limited photos of the exhibition.

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At 8pm on the 29 March, 2008, millions of people in some of the world’s major capital cities, including Copenhagen, Toronto, Chicago, Melbourne, Brisbane, Tel Aviv and Manila will unite and switch off for Earth Hour.

This year Singapore will be part of this global effort organized by the WWF to attempt at making a statement in energy conservation. Apparently Sydney did it in a big way in 2007 by going as far as switching off all the lights on the Sydney Harbor Bridge for 1 hour! The efforts in 1 hour on 1 day reduced Sydney’s energy consumption by 10.2% for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for one hour.

Earth Hour is not the only such effort in the world where you have Lights Out America in various cities in the United States and Candle Night Project in Japan and Taiwan.

Now Singapore’s organizers are calling for more people, businesses and government from Singapore to be involved in Earth Hour and get them to turn off their lights for one hour at 8pm, March 29, 2008. In fact, their efforts even appeared in the press today! What more, to join the ranks of Sydney Harbour Bridge, Singapore’s Suntec City is going to turn off the multicolored lights on top of the sails above the convention center from 8-9pm! So don’t be surprised. There’s no black out. It’s Earth Hour!

Of course you don’t have to sit in the dark. Here are some ideas for things you can do for one hour without light:

1) Join a lights out party!
There are several held around Singapore. Turn off all the lights in your house, grab your family and head on down to these venues to join in the fun. An hour away from the computer is an hour with humanity!

2) Go for a night walk
There are several nature areas and parks in Singapore where you can go for a nice stroll with your family, children, friends or partners. Quite romantic! How about just take advantage of all the street lights we have and read a book in the void deck for an hour while enjoying the night breeze?

3) Stargazing
Enjoy the darkness and admire the stars with a group that has organized a stargazing session at the field in front of Chinese Garden.

4) Go camping!
Grab your children and family and go on an adventure camping on the beach! There are many islands and beaches in Singapore where you can camp at for free. If not camping, maybe you can grab a big group of friends and have a BBQ or campfire on the beach while getting them to turn off all the lights in their homes!

Here are more things individuals can do. Find out more on the Earth Hour Singapore blog. Many of the metblogs cities are also responding to this call for Earth Hour. Check this list out.

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The search for Singapore’s happiest person is on.

In conjunction with “The New Science of Happiness & Well Being Conference” being held from 16 - 17 April 2008 at Singapore Expo, a leadership consultancy firm, Global Leadership Academy, is looking for the happiest person in Singapore.

Global Leadership Academy Pte Ltd (GLA), a Singapore-based leadership-consulting firm, is launching the first-ever Search For Singapore’s Happiest Person, a two-week campaign starting on 16th March and ending on 30th March. The Search is held in conjunction with The New Science of Happiness and Well-Being conference which is taking place on the 16 - 17 April 2008 at Singapore Expo and Convention Centre.

If you meet the following criteria, you may just be this person!

1. Singapore citizens above 18 years of age.
2. Happy smiling disposition – others feel good to be around them
3. Ability to be happy no matter what life presents them with
4. Has a strong sense of community and belonging – family and friends
5. Stays consistently happy – not up one moment and down the next
6. Contributes to society by bringing happiness to others

Any Singaporean, Singapore PR or resident of Singapore of any age, can nominate a Singapore citizen for the title of Singapore’s Happiest Person 2008. Anyone nominating a candidate should write a short description (300 and 1,000 words) on why their nominee is a model of happiness. Nominations via email should be sent to happiest@simply-happy.com by midnight 30th March. More information can be found here.

According to the official press release, Singapore being voted one of the most stressful places to live in has prompted them to search for this search for happiness.

Meanwhile the conference will be open to public via ticket sales but unfortunately I am unable to find any such details online. Even the Singapore Expo link is display errors. What can we learn from a conference about the science of happiness and well-being? Perhaps a lot. I am very curious to find out who the happiest person in Singapore is. Surely not one of us who’s caught up in the rat race. Which enlightened soul would this be? Some how I imagine a white haired grandpa or grandma who lives the simple life. What do you think the happiest person in Singapore would be like? I can’t wait to find out!

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It’s been 2 months since the last post on Singapore metblogs and you may have realized that Metblogs has gone through a total revamp. During this time, lots of big dramatic happening have taken over Singapore.

Cranes crashing, terrorist escaping, and the first extensive and prolonged manhunt all over Singapore. Has anybody not seen the infamous wanted poster of Mas Selamat yet?

The day he went missing, I saw the wanted posters being distributed around Singapore

It didn’t help matters that for the first time in many Singaporeans’ lives, they heard a gunshot fired in public. At an MRT station no less! A man was shot inside the Outram MRT station, on the platform. When many first heard, the first thought was, is it connected to the wanted fugitive? Well it wasn’t related but I can’t forget how my colleague was relating to me when she saw the covered corpse on the platform as she alighted from the MRT. Yikes! In Singapore where it’s illegal for civilians to own fire arms, much less witness a gunshot in public, added with escaped fugitives, my little shell of a world is definitely cracking. Alas.

On less traumatic news, this monkey was on the Singapore Flyer, the (soon to be former) Biggest Observatory Wheel in the World. I was there on its opening day on 1 March and the queue was incredible. Then again, enough people have also complained about its poor service that I won’t harp on it anymore. Nonetheless kinks are always to be expected in all new ventures. Personally I’ll give it a while to work these things out. After all, my nephew was excited to go on it again the minute he came out of the 30 minute ride but we simply couldn’t afford another $40 to send him on yet another 30 minute ride again. If anybody is interested, I posted a video from the Singapore Flyer capsule. Sadly it was at night and that’s not much to be seen.

View from Singapore Flyer

There must be some bad luck streaking across the island for even the F1 ticketing site crashed on its first day of offering and there were even news of people complaining about the poor Singapore Air Show management.

On the brighter side of things, Singapore has won the hosting rights of yet another mega event - the inaugural Youth Olympics! This is exciting news indeed. What more it is going to coincide with the opening of the various integrated resorts in Singapore in 2010. With all that buzz, hopefully Singapore can pull it all off with grace and its prided efficiency.

There’s definitely been a lot of uproar in little Singapore over the last 2 months. This brief news roundup hardly does it justice. Hopefully Metblog Singapore will see more contributing authors in the coming days.

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Did anyone realize that the train station is using a new announcer on the trains? There’s something very awkward about the way she says “doors are closing”, or the way she pronounces the names of some of the train stations. Perhaps it’s just me, but I can’t seem to put a finger to it. Accent perhaps? I once read an article by a lecturer which spoke about how Kallang (pronounced : Car-Lung), was being pronounced Care-Lang, a result of certain socio linguistic forces that led to the shift in pronunciation towards the American accent.

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Quite a sobering sight to see workers removing the Christmas decorations from the trees along Orchard Road. A stark reminder that the new year has begun and the whole rat race will begin again quite soon. If the general crowd on the streets are an indication of this, the town area was strangely quieter than usual even during the lunch hours.

Heads up, people!

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If this are a sign of things to come from our media industry for the year 2008, I gladly welcome the new openness towards issues. What a wonderful way to start a new year!

Happy new year everyone.

[hwz via public education]

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They finally managed to package ‘love’ as well

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Some of these days, it’s going to flood real bad. The rain has been coming in random and unpredictable flash storms. Almost five or six of them in the past few hours or so. Crazy stuff.

On the hindsight, the weather has cooled down considerably. Welcome December.

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Bak Chor Mee + Sambal Stingray, originally uploaded by jeremyfoo.

Nothing beats food like Singapore food.

A most awesome supper, albeit on the other side of the island. My tummy doesn’t care though, its just happy.

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Its so ironic that everything that’s said in the video is being totally refuted by the absurdity of the video itself. Its like a huge oxymoron. I have never been more ashamed to be working in the technology sector than it is to be a Singaporean.

For all the good of the government here, information technology apparently seems to be their biggest downfall. From the really ridiculous contracts they hand out to companies that provide substandard work, to the trends that they want to promote, to the policies that they implement, they don’t seem to get it right. Even worst, they don’t seem to factor in the fact that its not always the academics that get it right.

Maybe its the lack of knowledge in this particular field of social technology that is fast becoming the mainstay of many, or the plain ignorance of the fact that its not something that you can just glean off academics, or it could just be the old fashion ideas that the screw ups, or the ones who don’t follow in their ideal way of becoming successful, actually would be the ones they have to contact in this field.

The worst part about this video is that it has been featured on TechCrunch. And reading the comments that has now been associated with this particular video, you get the general idea that perhaps to the public, MDA is just making a video for the fun of it. However, when you realise that its actually something that’s serious, it just becomes a very sad affair.

The world is changing, so please, change with the times. We’re still stuck, like MediaCorp, in the Under-One-Roof era.

Updated: More comments here and here.

Updated 2: In the spirit of social media, parody here.

[Article on Techcrunch]

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