Apparently, they ‘dolled up’ the Merlion for the F1 event but they haven’t remove ‘the decorations’ until now. Just like all that rubbish that’s left over after the event, which I read recently, was still being cleared.
And what do I think about the decoration? Freaking ugly. This is the equivalent of dolling up your daughter as an ah-kwa and then trying to sell her as one at Changi Point. And you wonder… what’s the point?
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This photo (see below) was taken somewhere near my office along Collyer Quay on the evening of Sep 29th, 2008 – one day after the Singapore Grand Prix.
I called it the F1 Hangover – a lingering headache. As motorists are unaware of of the road closure of the stretch after Fullerton to the Nichol Highway is still not cleared, all of them were forced to make a turn into Battery Road for a detour resulting in the congestion in this photo. I wonder just how much more fuel is wasted and how much more carbon dioxide is dumped into the atmosphere as a result of this.
Personally speaking, I am sick of the fact even almost a week after the night race is over, there are still people who talked about it and there are still news on the matter. From some guy calling the race track a circus because of the lack of overturing opps… overtaking opportunities to another blaming their gear box problem on static discharge which is caused by our MRT trains passing under race tracks.
Now, just fxxk off and die ok? Singaporeans haven’t even talked about just how much inconveniences you fxxkwits have caused for everybody over the days leading up to it and the day after it. And have they fined that fxxker who threw his gloves into the Singapore river yet? Look, fxxkwit, that’s going to be our reservoir in the future and I don’t take it very well when some bad ass F1 driver foul up my water supply. He should be fined and made to do CWO along Orchard Road. And ya, fine him in Euros but make him pay in Singapore dollars too.
I have been fairly muted regarding this matter even when the percentage increase – almost 22% ($0.0538 per kilowatt per hour) – has definitely shocked and riled everyone. This is up from $0.2507 for July – September 08, which means we pay $0.3045 per kilowatt per hour from October – December 08.
Understandably, it drew a wave of protests. Some bloggers have even called for the opening up of the energy market in Singapore to keep Singapore Power honest.
I would have been reasonably outraged previously whenever I hear about tariff increments. And if you asked me why I am cool now that is because when I posted the post titled ‘Friday Morning Craps’, I already had the idea that while energy tariffs may appear to rise in tandem with crude oil prices, they might not rise in the same proportions.
On top of that, our energy production is by naturally gas. And though the prices will be affected by that of crude oil, I suspect it would already have mitigated the effects somewhat. Anyway, I just didn’t have the figures to prove it… and all I did last Friday was pull whatever figures out of the Internet to make my point.
So I was trying to look for some hard facts to prove what I have been thinking about all along and I discovered that Singapore Power have published all their press release on their website since the year 2000. You can just go there and click on newsroom to check it out.
They have what I was looking for all along right here (see below). I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.
That being said, it doesn’t mean I have to accept this rise lying down. On a separate discussion with another blogger, we talked about other possible means to lower our energy consumption level, not only at the household level, but at the national level. It is our opinion that whatever we pay for per kilowatt per hour in household usage, some of that amount would have been used to cover all that public lighting we enjoyed.
So looking beyond solar energy – which we agree may cost a bit to implement – we talked about the reduction of street lighting which we felt is too much especially when the cars have their own headlights to illuminate the road ahead of them. We even mentioned that if it costs too much to remove the lamp posts already in place, then we might need to look at a way to have alternate lights powered up on alternate days. In effect, it would also save us a lot of money in maintenance, since we would have fewer light bulbs to replace. On top of that, new roads built should have lamp posts spaced further apart. Fewer lamp posts to maintain would also save us a lot of money in the long run, no?
Next, public corridor lighting. When you go for your clubbing and come back in the early morning, you will notice that all our HDB flats and light up nice and pretty. But is there a necessity in doing so? While it did concern us in our discussion that muggers may hide in the shadows to waylay someone coming home late or going to work for an early shift, there is no guarantee that one wouldn’t get mugged under bright light anyway since help is hard to come by.
Our idea is to have the corridor lighting be linked to the lifts, so when a lift lands on a particular level, the lights for that particular level will turn on. There should also be a manual backup for the resident to thump and turn on the lights should the lift’s sensors fail. In fact, we even go on to discuss how we can finance this because it would be ridiculous to ask for the people to pay for this. And guess what, the money is already there – the town council’s sinking funds – which they have happily used for investment. And considering the current market conditions, they might as well use the money in some infrastructure works to aid the economy.
I am not even talking about aggressively going green here. But basically, we have to admit we are not making enough effort on a national level to cut down our carbon footprint and we are also wasting a lot of energy. I suspect that maybe the reason why our electricity is one of the most expensive in the world.
So, if this is not a good time to do something about it, when will we ever start?
This is perhaps once of the worst Septembers in my life. It’s been nothing more than one bad news after another.
Firstly, melamine contaminated dairy products in China caused harm to some 53,000 people. Some of that harm is permanent. I read that some babies will be subjected to kidney dialysis for the rest of their lives when they grow up. And this is not the first time we heard of Chinese food products that is hazardous to our health. Here are some other incidents I can actually remember:
I felt so let down and disappointed because I grew up eating some of these Chinese food products. In fact, you can give me 5 cans of SPAM for the price of 1 can of Ma Ling Luncheon meat and I wouldn’t have traded it away. The reason being I have grown to love the familiar taste of some of these brand names and I felt sad because their products are now no longer available on the shelves in supermarkets.
Now, Chinese food products have become synonymous with ticking time bombs. You basically won’t know which one will be next. I am appalled and disgusted when I looked at the list of dairy products taken off the shelf here in Singapore.
White Rabbit Milk Candy too?! Damn those unscrupulous mainlanders who introduced this infernal substance into the milk. Is there nothing you would stop at just to make a few more quick bucks? Is getting rich so important for you that it doesn’t matter to you another fellow human being will be consuming this crap? Stop that bullshit about this being some kind of Western conspiracy simply because the same has been practiced in America or elsewhere… that argument is as good as it is safe to eat shit because you seen another animal ate it.
The Chinese consider years with the number ‘8’ are good because the pronunciation of the word ‘8’ in Chinese is almost the same as the word for striking it rich ‘发’. But to me that word also has the meaning of fungal Bloom in Cantonese [‘fatt mold’] which to me isn’t really a very good thing since you can’t eat your moldy stuff, can you?
I am convinced that my view of ‘8’ is the right one because in the past 10 years, both years ending with ‘8’ have been nothing but disasters. In 1998, there was the Asian Currency Meltdown. In 2008, we are confronted with this financial mess in the U.S. that has caused financial markets worldwide to fall as if down a bottomless pit!
Since early March this year when Bear Stearns went bust, one financial institution after another went belly up. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers. Even AIG, a famous insurance company, is threatened.
Now, investment banking is history in Wall Street – both JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley have become banks. But is this the end yet of the woes yet? Or is there really more to come? Just only a few days ago Wachovia was driven into the arms of Citibank and even now I read about the problem spreading to Europe. It makes one wonder at times if the light at the end of the tunnel is not actually an oncoming train. Just don’t be surprised that when you wake every other morning, you hear news about trillions of dollars wiped out in the financial markets overnight and yet another financial institution going bust.
If you think this doesn’t affect you, then you are terribly wrong. There is going to be lesser money moving around, or money is going to be moving around slower. Jobs are going to be lost because these financial institutions are going to cutback on spending. It is going to be harder to get loans and investments are going to fall which means that less new jobs are going to be available. Finally, if you have investments in unit trusts which you haven’t been looking at for awhile, don’t faint when you see that half of your money had been vaporised over the past 10 months!
I was thinking that it would be the last day of September 2008 would past uneventfully but it has one last ‘fxxk you’ for us all. The U.S. House of Representatives failed to pass the US$ 700-billion ‘bail-out’ bill and for us in Singapore, one of our main opposition figures, Mr. Joshua Benjamin Jeyaratnam passed away in the hours of the early morning.
Personally, I have seen Mr JBJ selling his party newspaper (when he was with the Workers’ Party) and then his books at either Raffles Place or the exit of the MRT near the Starbucks at Raffles City. It is to my eternal regret that I have never spoken to the man, though I did buy the WP papers off him when I was either a kid or a teenager.
There’s not much I could remember of the man, except the intensity in his eyes and that determined look on his face. While I have written my disagreement with his methods on some of my blog entries and also with some of the things he championed, I nevertheless respect the man’s tenacity and his ‘never give up, never say die’ attitude in doing what he believed is for the best for Singapore’s political landscape.
There will be some of us who will miss you, Mr Jeyaratnam. Rest in peace.
Ah Beng met Ah Seng for breakfast this morning. One of the things spoken about was the failure of the U.S. House of Representatives to adopt a financial bailout plan and the crashing Asian stock markets.
Ah Beng: Ah Seng ar, got see the news or not? The USD 700-billion plan finished leow. They reject leh.
Ah Seng: Ya lah. The kanninah Republicans purposely one lah.
Ah Beng: Izzit?!
Ah Seng: You never read meh? The McCain say the Obama and Democrats dunno what shit ‘putting politics ahead of country’ . Say what this lao chabor Nancy Pelosi kong jiao wey then make the Republicans angry and voted against.
Ah Beng: Nancy Bo-loh-si? No screw? Tiang lai eh?!
Ah Seng: Simi no screw? Screw your backside then you know! Ask you read more papers never read. She the Democrat’s Speaker in the U.S. House of Representatives lor.
Ah Beng: Orh. Like that also can? Simi lan man, country going to die leow still like that? What she said man?
Ah Seng: Ya lor. This Republican assholes do asshole thing leow then say ‘I do lang jiao thing because all you lang jiao lang make me do one’ . Anyway, the Bo-loh-si say ‘this is the costs of the Bush administration’s failed economic policies’ lor.
Ah Beng: Diew.. that’s the facts what! Money anyhow spent go fight all these lan sai war in Iraq and simi ah-foo-han until bankrupt.
Ah Seng: Ya lor.. I also say.
Ah Beng: But Ah Seng ar… they doing good for their own people what. If not they vote for it then end up American people pay money to save the world. You ask me take my money save my neighbour I already don’t want already!
Ah Seng: Lan jiao, understand?! All along the rest of the world subsi-die the Ang-mo-ni-kans one. All these other countries like China and Japan buy their debts so they can enjoy life. Now got some of their people after enjoy life don’t wanna pay… like that you agree or not? Don’t let the chow angmoh bluff you man. If they don’t pay up you and I may also kenna because hor, some of our unit trust investments dunno got buy their stupid debt or not.
Ah Beng: Nabeh.. macam like eat leow don’t wanna pay!
Ah Seng: Ya lor. But this is actually called raising debt to pay debt.
Ah Beng: Har? Liak boh kiew leh.
Ah Seng: Nabeh… I explain to you. For example, I borrow $1000 from you at interest $50 a month for 10 years. Then as long as I pay the $50 interest a month to service the loan will always remain $1000 mah. But half way I no more money even to service the loan… so I go and borrow $3000 now from Ah Lian to pay the interest. Later 10 years up leow, I go and borrow from Ah Hway to pay your $1000 at another interest rate. You say like that can pay finish or not?
Ah Beng: Jialat man… $1000 debt become… wah I math fail bway hel lah… But then where all that money go?
Ah Seng: Wah lan eh! Why other chow ah beng so smart you so kamlan one? Use your blain lah. Because I spend all the money go tour, buy car buy house, chiong KTV and kio kway and enjoy life lor. Sometimes I buy new parang go bia jwee with Hussein, go and kaypoh in Ah Tiong’s family business, or purposely make other people family quarrel and break up also need money what. All that F-22 and aircraft carriers you think no need money to pay? Go everywhere beat people up and how lian show off also need money what!
Ah Beng: Ya lor these kanna sai Ang-mo-ni-kan, always go everywhere kaypoh and ya ya papaya. Now then I know they take our backside as face skin go and show off.
Ah Seng: But the Ang-mo-ni-kan people dunno lah. They will be not happy because they think they are using their money to save the world when their country already so much problem.
Ah Beng: Diew man. Clinton balanced the budget… but almost kenna impeached for a BJ. Hopefully he got a BBBJ man. Anyway why this ceebai Bush screw up big time kenna nothing? Should impeach him man.
Ah Seng: I also like that say. After impeach leow should also trial him for war crimes at the Hague too. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis boh dai boh zee die because of this.
Ah Beng: * looks at watch * Ya… hey man I gotta go for work leow. Tomorrow same time same place, ok?
Ah Seng: Ok man. I better rush too… our MRT more and more world class. World class packed. Bye!