Category: Info

River HongBao 2009

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Went down to River Hongbao on the first day of the Chinese [Lunar] New Year. Met my friend Xander at UOB Plaza to have dinner at Burger King before we took a slow walk down along Battery Road, down the Fullerton Bridge and past the Esplanade. Admission is free and there was a huge crowd.

This year’s River HongBao is held the floating platform in Marina Bay. It’s the first time I’ve been there even though 2 National Day Parades have been held there. I must say they should do something about the entrance even though I understand they want to control the flow of people into the platform, but it is like just 10 – 15% in width compared to the exit and the movement is so slow you end up sweaty (even when the nights are pretty cool lately) by the time you get in.

The lighted displays are nice, consisting of the 12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac, a ‘Terra Cotta’ chess set, a large statue of the ‘god of wealth and prosperity’ and even a wishing well. There are also other displays which I have sort of forgotten but you can see them in the slide show below. I saw a number of people setting up their cameras with stands along the Esplanade pointing at the platform so I believe this is a good place for you to go to get the worth out of your camera, or practice night photography if you are a photography hobbyist.

In the center of the platform there is a stage, where some traditional Chinese arts are performed. You can also check out the photos of the stage taken by EastCoastLife here.

Apart from all these, there’s also a small section for food called the ‘Food Street’. I personally think it is too much a misnomer since compared to size of the platform, this covers a even smaller area, perhaps a result of lower take up of stalls due to the worsening economic conditions. There’s also a small tent where Singapore Pools is set up, so I guess a lot of people would have gone to pay their homage to the ‘god of fortune’ and then went on to try their luck there.

I personally think it’s a good place to bring your family out and enjoy the Chinese New Year atmosphere. That’s not mentioning the weather the past few days has been cool so it really gives you that Spring feeling. However, my personal advice is, don’t bring your animals or your babies in prams. I have seen people cuddling their dogs, and pushing their baby prams along. Not that I have anything against people with pets or babies, but please consider that the area is already congested and not everyone likes to rub against dog fur, and the tram takes up space which make the congestion worse than it already is.

Recommended Reads:
James Seng’s: Association of Bloggers (Singapore)

Current Affairs: Association of Bloggers Singapore

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I was sort of surprised to see on Monday [19 Jan 2009], posts about the Association of Bloggers Singapore (ABS for short) from some of the friends I have been following on my rss reader – namely DK, Eastcoastlife, Endoh, nicole, xinyun, and xtralicious.

I know I am 2 days late in reporting this, but I have my own concerns and misgivings about it originally. All that time I was trying to get through to some of the members in the committee pro tem to answer some of my queries.

Meantime, criticisms came as fast as (if not faster than) the news of its birth and blog articles reporting it. Some of the most common criticisms are: the need for a subscription; the lack of a proper website giving details on what it is about; an attempt to define who can be a blogger and impose guidelines to what can be written; and * gasp * the government’s gahmen’s first step in controlling blogosphere!

Let us look at each of these controversies and analyse them. Are they facts, just allegations or straw man?

  1. The need for an entrance fee and a subscription

    This is a fact and one of my primary concerns. My personal opinion is that ABS should reconsider the position of some student bloggers who can write well. I also reflected to several of their members the importance of proper accounting to the public and members as even non-profit activities like Social Media Breakfast (SMB) came under the scrutiny of a blogger.
    From what I gathered, the money collected will be used to cover activities in the event no sponsors are found, and none of it is used as salary or allowances for the committee for their roles. Money that is not spent will most likely be donated to charities. There seems to be some dissenting voices within the committee itself, whereby some have requested that for a trial period the fees should be waived until a year later. If you have any queries here, it is really best to direct it at the committee.

  2. The lack of information on the website

    This is a fact. Anyone who has visited the site can see that for himself and I consider it as public relations fiasco until I understand from some of the committee members, ABS has a pre-matured birth.
    The official launch will be in late February. DK told me they did not intend to announce the moment it becomes officially registered and had originally intended to announce it’s official launch date maybe later in the week and open to questions from the general public. Unfortunately, the article on TODAY forced their hand, and they have to reveal it before time. They are now working hard to get an FAQ up.

  3. An authority to issue guidelines on writing and to disqualify non-association bloggers

    Among one of the most ludicrous speculations. Just how does one expect ABS to enforce their guidelines? By confiscating your member fees? Taking you to court? I brought up the matter of whether ABS intends to negotiate a better deal with advertisers like Advertlets, Nuffnang or Blog2U on behalf of bloggers and I was told that is never an objective of ABS as it cannot enforce anything on its members.
    As to the matter of disqualifying non-association of bloggers, Xtralicious has put it across to me: Can the Chinese Association disqualify you from being a Chinese simply because you are not a member? One is a blogger simply by setting up a blog on any of the blogging sites or self host using a blogger software. It will take gahmen legislation to disqualify a person as a blogger and that takes me to the last point.

  4. Gahmen Control

    Chairman Pro-tem EastCoastLife seems to me to have many contacts in high places. At least that is the impression I have from this blog also authored by her. In my opinion, this has always been a convenient straw man. I recalled the days I used to post on soc.culture.singapore when people who didn’t like a pro-gahmen post will label its writer a gahmen lackey.
    But consider this: If endorsement or having close relationship with gahmen bodies and officials is justified as a step leading to gahmen control, then it is equally convenient for anyone to label collaboration with foreign talents justifiable as being disloyal to, or engaging in subversive and hostile activities against our nation!
    Whichever way the allegations go, they all have only these objectives – to inspire fear and to polarise – and then have you decide that the decision they want you to make is the best for yourself. I must point out that one shouldn’t be over-zealous in their nationalistic fervor before it becomes distorted as xenophobia or facism.

The above is my personal opinion on the formation of this association. I am not rallying for anyone to join, but I would plead with everyone to give the founders and committee some time to come up with the official answers.

As bloggers, some of us may not like the personality or the writing style of another person, but let us all refrain from having old skeletons dancing out of the closets and revisit old hatreds. While no one can force you to abide to this and remain civil, it will only make yourself look bad in the eyes of stalkers readers. Don’t forget that we bloggers are not all to blogosphere, our readers whom we somewhat influence with our thoughts makes up the other part. It would do us some good to remember that some of our readers may have even more clarity of thought than some of us do.

Shalom Aleichem. Peace be with you.

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Challenges to the Evolution Theory

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Since Charles Darwin published ‘On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection’ on 24 November 1859, the world has believed that this is the only plausible explanation for the origins of life and the bio-diversity of our planet.

In it, Darwin himself said this:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

Once, I have shown such an example – The Eye – by a scientist showing why the theory should already have been discarded. And this is only just one of the examples.

Unfortunately, challenges to the evolution theory is often just written off. If you are a scientist, you end up as an outcast, ridiculed by your own community. If you happen to be religious (usually Christian) and not a scientist, you are disregarded for being unlearned and disqualified to debate the issue, much like a priesthood would have disregarded the heathen or the infidels for not knowing better. The layman is generally expected to accept the theory as truth and never to question it.

But why are we denied our right to question it? If it is truly science and the purpose of science is to explain things by means of examining the evidence or through experiments, then anyone should be allowed to examine the evidence and ask questions. Now, consider even something like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A rap – technically a simplify version to explain the purpose behind its construction and what it is trying to prove – was made. And was it that hard for you to understand that?

A lot of science we learn it class can be proven with experiments – e.g. the deflection of light when moving through a denser object, the relation of mass and volume etc. Yet a lot of the alleged proves and support to the evolution theory are rarely examined if true. For example, some bones of a small creature the size of a mouse deer was discovered, and promptly called the ancestor of a whale. Where are the facts that the layman can examine to verify its truthfulness?

So, let us examine the evidence further. The following series of Youtube videos shows another such objection and challenge to the evolution theory. (Please refrain from watching them if you object to the Intelligent Design theory.)

  1. Unlocking The Mystery Of Life #1
  2. Unlocking The Mystery Of Life #2
  3. Unlocking The Mystery Of Life #3
  4. Unlocking The Mystery Of Life #4
  5. Unlocking The Mystery Of Life #5
  6. Unlocking The Mystery Of Life #6
  7. Unlocking The Mystery Of Life #7

Glory to our Paralympic Athletes

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Our Paralympic Athletes have done our country proud. Without much fuss over the issue of monetary awards and their nationality, these unsung heroines have won our country 1 gold, 1 silver, and 2 brone medals. And that trumped our able-bodied athletes’ pathetic one silver medal.

Here’s the record:

  1. Laurentia Tan: 2 bronze in the equestrian events; and

  2. Yip Pin Xiu: 1 silver and 1 gold 50m swimming freestyle and backstroke respectively.

Also, Yip hold the world record for both the swimming events – 57.04s for 50m freestyle and 57.92s for 50m backstroke respectively.

Let us congratulate these daughters of Singapore for doing us all proud… even prouder than our Summer Olympic team ever could. It certainly showed the world that we Singaporeans are made of sterner stuff and not everyone of us are a bunch of whiners!

RSAF 40-Year Anniversary Open House

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I went to the RSAF Open House today. The second one I’ve been to, since a long time ago… I think that was like 20 years ago when the Hawker Hunter and A-4S Super Skyhawks are still in service and the F-16 was the brand new state-of-the-art new addition.

I went with Chillycraps and he was a little upset everyone was late ranging from 10 – 20 mins. The queue for the free shuttle bus service was damned long and somewhere in between Chillycraps asked me why I did not express unhappiness with the RSAF wasting costly fuel for the Open House while I make noise about the NDP. And frankly, I am not really sure why and I simply told Chillycraps that’s simply because I am an axxhole and I personally thing it wouldn’t be right to me to complain about something I wanted to see.

Anyway, we reached around 1130hrs, after a long wait for the bus @ Eunos MRT. And by the time we cleared security checks, the air show is long since over and the next one is scheduled at 1700. * sigh *

To further dampen our spirits, there was a short downpour which kept us hiding under the wing of the KC-135 for 10 ~ 15 minutes. With nothing much further to see – which is no fault of the Air Force, as they have put up quite a big display of stuff – we just took photos of whatever interests us of the war machines on display and left around 1320pm… to yet another long wait for a bus back to Hougang Interchange this time (because the queue was shorter).

Below is a slideshow of the few pictures I have taken…

1 … 6 7 8 9 10 … 27