Random Discourse – ‘Softie’ NSFs

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I guess this may have been funny had it been an April Fool’s joke. Even though it is his own fault for asking his maid to carry his full pack, I felt a little sorry for the attention this full-time National Servicemen [NSF] got. I remembered that when I was doing my National Service [NS], some of us were ‘given a hard time’ by our seniors (i.e. NSFs who are enlisted earlier) simply because the SAF made it a point to improve the conditions an NSF has to go through. (Sadly, the SAF’s attempt to build up the morale and the pride NSF has in NS was not well received. That is in spite of the fact that every Singaporean son only gets NS as his ‘reward’ while foreigners gets our jobs and a good life at our expense.)

Let me talk about the kind of ‘hard time’ some of us got. When I was enlisted in 1992, some of my older poly classmates who had already completed their NS were appalled that I was actually given nights-off and long weekends as a recruit! By the time I passed out of Basic Military Training [BMT] and posted to the unit, our seniors told us we had it easy because they had to go for 5km runs every morning while my batch only had to do so every other day. Doesn’t matter they also enjoyed the same benefits we had! To make up for our allegedly ‘good life’, we were made scapegoats for mistakes by our seniors and ended up pulling extra duty or suffered confinements on weekends.

By the time I am about to complete my full-time stint, the SAF was serving catered dinner in some camps. And while some people still complained about how bad catered food from the Singapore Food Industries [SFI] is, its food was markedly better compared to cook house food made by NSF cooks! Anything the SFI served was better than the hard boiled eggs which we can use as rocks to kill enemy troops, noodles that has the tensile strength of rubber bands, lumps of cooked rice that individual grains are not identifiable, and Milo that taste like muddy water in the longkang (aka drain). That’s not mentioning unappetizing looking vegetables with worms. My platoon mate consoled me saying that this simply means the vegetable is safe to eat because no the worms would have survived if there is an overuse of pesticides. He even reasoned we should treat the worms themselves as extra protein as long as we didn’t notice them.

It was ironical that we were told SFI supplies food for SIA on their planes too, but I was grateful that SFI at least conduct surveys to find out how we felt about it. I was happy no one will single me out for special treatment – such as ‘extra ingredient’ in my food or drinks (e.g. Eno to help cleanse my bowels, saliva to show their brotherly love, or water boiled with their unwashed socks soaked in them) – if I complained a little too much. That is why these days the armed forces have aunties serving food in the cook house on a plate with a smile, and she would gladly to give the NSF more food compared to the dour-faced NSF cook who would verbally abuse soldiers with Hokkien comments which never failed to mention the privates of our mothers. Such verbal abuse are also common place from our Non-Commission Officers [NCOs] and officers when they mete out punishments! While that would be considered as abuse these days, back then it was treated as a form of character training.

Being posted to the Armor formation in ulu (i.e. remote) Lim Chu Kang, we were driving 30 year-old American equipment like M113s (rumored to be leftovers from the Vietnam War) or AMX-13s, which are essentially Israeli rejects from the Six Day War. It doesn’t matter what improvements Singapore Automative Engineering [SAE] has put into those antiques. Not to mention, we can still remember those World War II looking Mercedes 3-tonners which we suspect were given as war compensation by the German government to Israel, and subsequently given to us by the Israeli government out of good will. These equipment made us felt closer to soldiers from the wars before and not that of a glamorous high-tech defense force we see on TV advertisements. After all, we were picking off targets at 300 meters which looked no bigger than our thumbnails using M-16s with iron sights and wore tin pots (WW2 looking steel helmets). We can only dream about state of the art equipment like the Bionix, Leopard 2s, the Primus, SAR-21s complete with a scope and laser… and Kevlar helmets!

So what is the point I am making here with regards to this NSF who asked his maid to carry his full pack? The point I am making is, we are all considered ‘soft’ compared to the batches that comes before us. In fact, when compared to the Israeli trained hell-troopers with their hellish NS stories, we are all ‘wimps’. At times, it makes me wonder whether those guys opened can food with rocks, has teeth that cuts like high-speed steel and kill enemies in one blow with fist that are harder than diamonds. It probably won’t be far-fetched if we compared them to Space Marines in the Warhammer 40,000 stories.

As far as I am concerned, as long as the training programs are up to date and there is no downgrading of the physical fitness and weapons proficiency level required of our new soldiers, there is really nothing for me to complain about. That is also part of the reasons why I object to any further reduction of national service duration or calls for its abolition.


Picture: courtesy of Terence Foong

Some may talk about how this guy looked like a wuss (or a p*ssy) and this may present an image to our potential aggressors that Singapore’s NSmen are soft city boys who will prove a walkover in combat. But the fact remains that our soldiers are nothing more than ‘holiday soldiers’ (not even weekend ones) who are called up to train up to 40 days every year. We can only hope that our advanced military equipment will give us the edge, and our Operationally Ready NSmen (or reservists) remember enough from their 2-year full-time and sporadic 10 in-camp training that will kick in during combat, so that they can be an effective deterrent to our potential enemies and hold up long enough for UN intervention.

Face it, we are no Israel even when some considered certain political realities between our nations. It is perhaps the hope of everyone of us that in our lifetime we will never experience war, and the SAF will continue serve nothing more than a deterrent to potential enemies who might consider military adventurism as ‘an extension of state policy… by other means’.

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Commentary – Post 80’ers and Tin Pei Ling

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It is baffling why Tin Pei Ling is getting more attention than the other new candidates introduced. I dare say she is probably the most talked about person, and has more attention online than all the cabinet mini$ter$ put together.

Frankly, I didn’t really cared about the candidates that the Tali-PAP have introduced. Why do I want to care about more of the same shit? Had her name not flooded my news feed on Facebook, I wouldn’t give a damn about her either. Anyway, my first comment when I saw her picture was this – Singapore is not Japan, the Tali-PAP is not the Liberal Democrat Party (LDP), and PM Baby Lee certainly isn’t Koizumi Junichiro. After all, while Koizumi had sent his party’s pretty candidates as ‘election assassins’ against his opponents and win, Ms Tin probably would have not stood a chance if she ran alone in an Single Member Constituency [SMC]. In fact, it makes one wonder if she would stand a chance even against aunty Lina Chiam. Let’s not forget that this is not 1976 so stop comparing with the respected ex-Speaker Mr Tan Soo Khoon already.

I wonder what goes on in the mind of the those who made the decision to field her. After all, it reflects poorly on those who made the decision to chose Ms Tin as a candidate. No matter good she is, there will be a perception that in part she received the call because of her husband’s connections. If those who chose her thought that she could pass scrutiny, they may have overestimated her ability. Worse of it all – which many netizens felt – they may not have cared if she could pass scrutiny. To quote one of them, “Tin Pei Ling looks suspiciously like the PAP’s way of giving Singaporeans the middle finger.” I am not surprised if it is not too far from the truth, and probably we haven’t seen nothing yet because they might even make her a mini$ter.

On the other hand, there are those who pointed out that the over-reaction is unnecessary. Consider countries like Brazil or Venezuela, where it is not surprising for beauty queens to contest in elections. Or even in Italy or Japan, where a porn star / AV actress managed to win. While these voters may still question whether Ms Tin has the political acumen to be a candidate, they do not really care whether she’s a ‘sweet young thing’ or not. I felt the reaction to her is because that Singaporeans are not only particularly annoyed with the certainty that she will enter Parliament as part of a Tali-PAP GRC team, but over the fact that some good opposition candidates (such as Sylvia Lim) may possibly never made it into Parliament thanks to the thrice damned and accursed GRC system thought out by a dog-mother snake.

I’ll leave it to the other cyber-carrion eaters to pick Ms Tin apart for whatever other reasons they can think of – for e.g. too young, no substance, showing off, or acting cute. Personally I object to some of the things done to drag even the other aspects of her personal life through the mud – such as the attempt which suggests that she broke a previous relationship with another man and be with her husband for political reasons. If the Straits Stooge Times were to accuse anyone of ‘gutter-journalism’, let me remind everyone what it have done to Josie Lau and her team when they attempted to take over AWARE in 2009. Even before the whole affair was over, we knew more about the personal and private life of some of these people – the kids they have, where they worked, their spouse, the church their worshiped in etc. As such, I find it rather hypocritical of Siew Kum Hong to speak in defense of Ms Tin, when he sided with the side that brought the matter to the press in the AWARE affair. Seriously, where the hell was he when the local media drag the privacy of private citizens through the mud? Oh… he was helping Dana Lam and frankly I am not sure how much we know about her.


Mar 6, Hong Kong – Citizens march in protest

But I digress… A friend showed me an old article in 2007 on the Tali-PAP site and I do not really like what I read. On what basis can she justify that the poor have not gotten poorer? I doubt her perspective has changed in the past few years, and I wondered how is she going to position herself in the position of the people and serve them with this kind of perspective? That’s not forgetting a recent video where she said that healthcare costs is ‘low and manageable’. Seriously, was she aware of the hoops of fire we need to jump through to attain Khaw Boon Wan’s ‘$8 bypass-operation healthcare nirvana’?

I believe it was Mini$ter Ng Eng Hen ‘Eng Eng’ who said that the party isn’t looking for ‘Yes Man’ when they select their candidates. So far Ms Tin has failed to show us that she is anything but. In fact, while some Tali-PAP backbenchers would at times speak eloquently and even passionately (such as Lily Neo) against certain issues, when have they voted against or even abstained when their votes are counted? Frankly, all this talk about serving the people are empty promises to me, when Tali-PAP MPs would vote for policies that are forced down our throats.


Post 80’ers lying on road in protest

I also recalled that one of the Tali-PAP ‘old birds’ – can’t remember who, since I can’t find that article – who said that the online flaming of Ms Tin isn’t helpful and it will deter young people from coming into politics and to serve the people. At the age of 27, Tin Pei Ling would classify as one of the “post-80’ers” [八十后]. As far as I am concerned, I personally don’t think she is too young to dabble in politics since it is a trend in this part of Asia – in Hong Kong in particular, and even in China for the young to step forth and fight for greater equality and better future for themselves.

Globalisation and unfettered capitalism rapidly marginalises not only the ageing, but even the young. The entire economic climate has been made worse by ‘Quantitative Easing’, in which the U.S. simply just print money without any backing and export its inflation to the rest of the world. The young are looking at a bleak future in which they would find it almost impossible to obtain a roof over their own heads, and also to bear the ever increasing burden in the form of high costs of living while wages remained stagnant or even depressed just to stay employed. But compared to those in Hong Kong who needs to lay down on the road in their political struggle (in the recently protests on March 6), Ms Tin’s political path is a paved, unobstructed 4 lane expressway. At least she didn’t have to go on the streets and brave water cannons or the truncheons of riot police compared to some of her contemporaries in other parts of the world. Stick and stones may break my bones, Ms Tin. If someone needs to speak up for you over all these nasty comments, then go back to your comfort zone and stop trying to amuse us.

All said, it is my considered opinion that it is not Ms Tin who need to see a trauma specialist. But rather Singaporeans in her ward who needed one because she would get a free ride on Senior Senile Mini$ter Goh’s shoulders into Parliament and earn at least $15,000 a month, while many fresh graduates would have to struggle with getting a starting pay of $2,500. That reminds me of someone who actually scoffed a year back when a fresh graduate talked about how he has been struggling for almost half a year or more looking for job because he can’t obtain even that starting pay on Plurk. Personally, I have no idea why this person would think that requesting for a starting pay of $2,500 would be too much, when a new HDB flat would cost $350K, and it would take up $1000 a month just to service the loans!

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Random Discourse – Elitism rears its ugly head

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… Samantha, caller on 91.3 FM’s The Married Men show): “I live in Holland Village, and I just can’t understand why people from the heartlands want to come here. We people are cultured, and you heartlanders are definitely not cultured,” she said.

She defines heartlanders as being “people from Ang Mo Kio, Yishun, Toa Payoh and the nearby Bukit Batok” who “have no manners”, “talk loudly” and wear “cheap clothes from Bugis Street”.

“People who come here are cultured. So if you want to come here, you know, when you’re in Rome, behave like a Roman. When you’re in Holland, behave like us – cultured people. “

Samantha also questioned heartlanders’ ability to afford the things that people in Holland Village enjoyed, such as a bowl of laksa, which she claims is more expensive in Holland Village than in Bedok.

But before I proceed, I would like to thank Senior Senile Mini$ter Goh for coining this word and creating a class divide among Singaporeans. Terms like these, along with “quitters” and “stayers” creates nothing more but division among the people. While Goh has the respect of many Singaporeans with his allegedly more consultative style of leadership, this ‘divide and conquer’ strategy (which I considered his modus operandi) has never endeared him to me.

I have no idea wat gave Samantha Salamander the idea that heartlanders are all boorish. It is fortunate (for her) that heartlanders generally refer to just HDB dwellers. Otherwise, her ‘people from…’ comment would then include even those living in landed property as long as they are outside Holland Village, and in fact even include some of our mini$ter$ who lived just a stone’s throw away near Sixth Avenue in Bukit Timah. I can’t help chuckle at that when someone pointed that out.

The Straits Stooge Times wrote that “one of her qualms with heartlanders was that they liked to ‘shove and push’ everybody. She added that some Caucasians along Orchard Road had also complained of the same thing.” It certainly appeared to me that to her, the only people who are cultured and mannered are white. It doesn’t matter we have all encountered ill-mannered people from all races and cultures. I am amazed that after so many years after we broke free from British rule, some people haven’t gotten it into their heads that white people are not any more superior, well mannered or cultured! Well done, Salamander!

There was so much outrage to Salamander’s comment that someone even organised a ‘walk about’ at Holland Village, specifically in sandals and singlets on a particular day just to make a point. Salamander had managed to unify Singaporeans when many of those so-called nation building programs have failed. The government gahmen should perhaps give her an award for contributing to Total Defense! Well done, Salamander!

As if all of these isn’t already bad enough, Salamander then apologised and she said she was just ‘slightly insensitive’ when she made those comments. Now, that was an exemplary lesson on how to apologise and yet ensure everyone remained pissed off. Well done, Salamander! Though I wished she would have done a video apology, so that I can put a face to it just like how ‘Boomz!’ goes with Ris Low.

Now, there is talk on several social media platforms on whether this is 91.3FM’s idea of being funny. Some people mentioned that it is rather rare that a listener would be able to call up and get through to the same radio program two days in a row. If this was indeed a prank, it is too early because it is more than a week before April Fool’s. While in general the idea to package something as entertainment to attract listeners is a good one, stomping on the sensitivities of many people is definitely not funny at all. Had this been a real prank, I would expect those who are responsible to not only publicly apologise on TV, but also resign. Do they sincerely expect us to let them get away with this as being ‘slightly insensitive’ after many of us are now riled up?

Rants aside, this episode has spawned a whole lot of discussions among netizens and some interesting comments. I’ll quote one of the interesting exchange below, and indicate them by acronyms to indicate that they came from two different individuals.

Cultured is as cultured does. To claim one is cultured and another is not, is already being pompous. I’d rather be with a so called uncultured person who doesn’t make disparaging remarks to make another seem inferior, than to talk to one who is ‘cultured’ and yet clearly or subtly puts down anyone he or she feels like. – TF

I am not surprised that there is a group of such elitists.. In fact I’ve seen these happening at ‘elite’ schools in Singapore. Such is the failure of segregating our education systems to ‘gifted’ and ‘normal’ streaming. – ET

Actually being in a better stream, doesn’t really make a person look down on those from the “normal” stream, I remember how we used to mix around despite being from different streams. I believe the difference lies within the way our leaders behave. Being the highest paid (thus viewed as extremely successful) and having that ‘better than thou’ attitude with a huge dollop of self-proclaimed ‘we are the elites’ image, many in society are turning into soulless selfish money-comes-first individuals. Thus when people who behave somewhat differently comes into the picture, they are viewed as a lower form of class or culture. Unless you’re wealthy, then the hypocrites will just pander you and say you’re eccentric and true to self and down to earth. Then of course there are the rascists who ironically look down on their own heritage and race, by placing foreigners as those with the de facto class of aspired culture. – TF

… Many would never openly admit but Singaporean society has all along been moving towards worshipping the successful, looking down on the lower group.
… Singaporean educational system have forced emphasis on subjects that will get you to uni/ poly in view of getting great jobs in future and less on personal development. We need to break this. – ET

Sentiments such as those of Salamander are heard time and again (such as those of Wee Shu Min. I cheekily mentioned somewhere in between the above exchange that if I wanted to stretch the truth a little too far, I would have called this some kind of structural discrimination instituted by the Tali-PAP gahmen. It is the social engineering of the Tali-PAP that created this ‘class divide’.

Elitism is not the only problem this country faces. We are now facing the side effects of the Tali-PAP’s ‘Two child policy’ and the de-emphasis of the importance of Chinese education which includes the dissolution of Nantah and the marginalisation of the Chinese educated of that era. These policies of the Tali-PAP definitely play a part in our current predicament whereby we face economic stagnation without an influx of foreign labour or immigrants, and also the seemingly irreversible degradation of Chinese standard among the local born ethnic Chinese in Singapore respectively.

I am not saying we pin the full blame of the side effects of those policies on the gahmen. Unfortunately they are rarely discussed even by opposition candidates. The media of this country has so successfully engineer the false reality of an infallible Tali-PAP gahmen, that even if the opposition candidates were to bring it up they would be summarily dismissed.

Current Affairs – Opposition Disunity

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The famous story of Top Horse, Middle Horse, and Weak Horse

Sun Bin (孫臏) was a master strategist who served General Tian of the Kingdom Qi (齊國) in the Warring States Period (戰國時代 476-221 B.C.). General Tian raced horses with the princes of Qi as a hobby, often wagering large sums of money. One day, General Tian came up to Sun for advice on an upcoming horse race, which seemed to be at a draw. As the usual practice went, the contest consisted of three races. The traditional strategy for victory was to pit one’s best, middle, and worst horse against the similar horses of his rival. Sun Bin advised General Tian to race his worst horse against his rival’s best horse, to pit his best horse against his rival’s middle horse, and finally to use his middle horse to compete against his rival’s worst horse. General Tian followed Sun’s advice; after one loss and two wins, General Tian was declared the final winner of the contest. As a good strategist, Sun Bin saw the larger picture and understood that the goal was to win the contest, not each race.

I thought I saw the light at the end of the tunnel when I read that the National Solidarity Party [NSP] is ‘prepared to make way for the Workers’ Party [WP]’ in the Moulmein-Kallang GRC. That was before I read the conditions that Goh Meng Seng (NSP’s Secretary-General) set for the WP, and that is – the NSP will not contest ‘only if the WP sends its top guns there’. By ‘top guns’, he was specifically referring to WP’s Secretary-General and Chairman, Low Thia Kiang and Sylvia Lim respectively.

Goh Meng Seng says that he ‘wants to help the opposition realise its dream of winning a GRC at the coming general election’ and that he wants ‘to see a GRC fall at this election, so that PAP MPs and ministers know there is no safe fortress in GRCs’. As netizen and regular opposition critic ‘Bryan Ti’ suggested – It is probable that Goh Meng Seng is implicitly suggesting to the WP to concentrate its fire power in the Aljunied GRC where their winning chances are higher. If that was the case, the image of Goh Meng Seng with an itch on the left of his face but scratching it with the right hand going behind the neck comes to mind.

Most people would have read the story of the Top Horse, Middle Horse and Weak Horse (see story on right). It is an old example of strategy that many of us would have heard of. Why is Goh Meng Seng fielding his ‘best horses’ – the two former government scholarship holders – in Moulmein-Kallang in the first place? They are going to run up not just against the Tali-PAP, but also against the WP – which would possibly be the most popular opposition party right now. As ‘Bryan Ti’ pointed out, wouldn’t it be better to use them to shore up his own team in Tampines GRC? In fact, that would allow him to concentrate his firepower on the much hated Mah Bow Tan Mabok Tongue on the matter of public housing. Hazel Poa has definitely written on the topic of public housing privately, and also when she was a RP member. Not to mention that I seem to recall seeing a video of Tony Tan (Hazel’s husband) speaking on the matter of bring the cost of public housing down at the RP Rally and Picnic in Hong Lim Park as well. Of course, Goh Meng Seng can’t just say he give up and let WP walk away with this without a considerable loss of face, and thus he throw this outrageous challenge in the face of his former mentor.

It is my opinion that this is an offer that the WP should simply ignore. To abandon either Hougang SMC or Aljunied GRC offers no advantage to the WP at all. (Alternatively, it can just be treacherous and agree to it and then field something else on nomination day.) While this seems like an offer that is beneficial to the opposition as a whole, and setting the stage for the other parties to ‘settle their differences’, it is nothing more than a third rate political ploy that benefits no one other than the NSP itself, and does nothing to cultivate democracy in Singapore.

Most have pointed out that a 3-corner fight benefits the incumbent and does nothing to benefit the voter. But neither does this ‘masak-masak’ (Malay: loosely translated as child’s play) way of deciding who would contest benefit the voters at all. I strongly object to such undemocratic political horse trading and ‘black box’ negotiations. On what basis do the opposition parties decide who should contest which constituency? I had objected to the By Election Effect Strategy (BEES) in which the opposition has for too long abandoned voters in the west side of Singapore, and allowing us ‘no choice’ by giving the Tali-PAP a walkover. The decision to avoid 3-corner fights and deciding on which party would contest is the next worse thing – since a party which I favored might not show up in the end. It annoys me to no end that the opposition parties at times shamelessly talk about how Singapore lacked democracy when they resort to picking the alternative candidates for us without even asking for our opinion in the matter!

Frankly, an opposition party cannot justify that it has worked the ground long enough and the other party asan interloper simply because it has more photos to show on its website or a Facebook page. Take for example Pioneer SMC where I stayed, the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), NSP and RP have all shown their interest to contest. The RP has done the most walk abouts in the area, but that does not mean I would vote any RP candidate that contest here. In fact, I don’t even know who the RP will be putting up to contest here. Kenneth Jeyaratnam – its Secretary-General – is perhaps the only face I know. That’s not mentioning, should a SDP candidate ends up as the opposition’s choice to contest in Pioneer, I will be so pissed off that I might deliberately cast a rejected vote even though I may have intended to vote the opposition in the first place. It is a wasteful exercise to make me go to the polls when most of the other people would rather not vote the SDP. However, if there is some form of poll showing that the majority of the voters in Pioneer SMC prefers a particular party’s candidate, I might actually rally behind this candidate as long as I have no reservations about the candidate and his party.

A friend pointed out that the fact that some opposition parties feared a 3-corner fight is that they never in the first place even believe they can win. I agree with this friend, and I do not say this lightly. After all, it is evident that only 25% or less of voters vote indiscriminately in favor of the opposition throughout the years and the middle voters are generally not easily swayed. One simply need to look at the past election results to see it for themselves. So what about 3-corner fights that really spooked some of these opposition parties is the fear of vote dilution. They seem to believe that presenting the voters that it’s either us or those ‘Tali-PAP frakkers’, the voters would happily vote for them as long as they are pissed off with the Tali-PAP. At the very least, even if they lose, they don’t end up losing their deposits. It wouldn’t be stretching it to say that these opposition candidates go to the polls with the same mood as a punter who bought a Toto ticket, hoping that by chance they get lucky with a win. At the same time, they hope to get their bet back even when they don’t win at all!

Thus, it would actually be better for the voters and our election culture to allow 3-corner fights to occur. In Taiwan, multi-corner fights are so common that if there are more than one candidate from the same ‘color’ (be it Blue or Green – the colors of Kuomintang [KMT] and Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] respectively), their voters will simply rally behind and endorse just one candidate of that ‘color’ and ‘discard’ the rest. In Chinese it is called 棄保效應 in which I loosely translate as the ‘Discard and Protect’ Effect. In short, if the opposition parties cannot come to terms (even through non-democratic, ‘black box’ negotiations) and avoid 3-corner fights, let it happen so the candidates who hope to get lucky lose their deposits. Let some of those people who have always been also-rans (and clearly will never get elected) quit because they can no longer afford to run. Otherwise, we will never hear the end of such dogfights between the opposition parties before every election. What purpose does it serve other than to cause voters to lose heart over the lack of the ever illusive (and non-existent) ‘opposition unity’?

Let’s face it, there are no friends forever in politics. Imagine the day when one opposition party comes into power, does anyone think it would actually treasure the past good relationship and so-call ‘camaraderie’ with the other parties?

Tech Review – BlackBerry OS6

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BlackBerry OS6 is finally available to non-touch devices like the 9700 Bold 2 in Singapore some time last week. I have been dying to get it loaded onto my Bold 2 since the Torch was released, for the simple reason that it comes with the new WebKit browser. Once Ridzuan mentioned on Plurk he was installing OS6 on his BlackBerry, I immediately proceed to Starhub’s download page via BlackBerry’s site to obtain a copy.

Other than the fact that it took a little bit of time downloading it, upgrading over the previous version was a breeze for me, though I am not really sure whether it was really a quick install or I was simply too busy doing other things to keep track of the time that day. Once it has completed booting up, the BES [BlackBerry Enterprise Server] Activation kicked in on its own to reactivate after a while. After that, I began to explore the features.

BlackBerry OS6 has added two main new features, such as ‘Trays’ and the ‘Universal Search’ – which allows me to quickly search items on the device to find what I want. This is way better that the previous versions of the OS, in which searching for items can sometimes be a real pain.

However, I start experiencing some odd issues the next day. For the whole of the next morning, I was forced to repeatedly restart the handset because it always appear to be busy loading some thing – a little timer icon keeps appearing (much like Windows’ annoying hourglass). The set’s performance became so sluggish to the point of being unusable and I had contemplated wiping it using Javaloader to reload the previous OS version. I checked the remaining space and I ruled out a memory leak issue because that number remained fairly stable. However, the set miraculously recovered in the afternoon and it has since been behaving. I have no idea what caused that period of sluggishness, since I had made no changes on the set to make it go away.

The browser is nice, and now there are separate icons for the BlackBerry Browser and the Internet Browser (at least for this version for StarHub, since Ridzuan informed me that there was only one browser icon on his). If I recalled correctly, the user has to go into the options to set it so the handset ‘knows’ which browser to go through in the older version. It took me a while to understand the difference between the two, and that is the BlackBerry Browser loads data through BES (or BIS, depending on what the user subscribes to). In the case of the BES, it allows companies to block out undesirable sites and grant access to the company’s intranet on the handset. My understanding is that all data going through the BlackBerry Browser is via the BES (or BIS), and thus ‘free’ for a user with an unlimited BlackBerry access plan.

On the other hand, the Internet Browser loads sites via the ISP instead, and if a user is not careful he will incur a whole load of data charges. This simply means anyone can buy a BlackBerry and use it without the push mail services, though I wonder what is the point of doing so. However, please do not just take my word for it on this matter and make sure to check with the telco. I will not take any responsibilities if anyone incur a large phone bill as a result of the data charges! (I also noticed that the WAP Browser icon is missing and I don’t miss it, since it is my opinion that WAP is obsolete.)

I put the webkit browser through the Acid3 test and it scored a nice 100/100. That was way better than the one on the previous OS which scored just 92 (and even better than that Windows Phone 7 one on the Samsung Omnia7 which never gets past 12/100). It also has tabbed browsing which means I can open several pages and toggle between them. Unfortunately, there is one thing about the browser I didn’t like – and that is I keep getting the message that some sites are too large to load and the tab has to be closed which became very annoying.

Even so, I liked the OS way better than all the versions before. For those who are supporting BlackBerry smartphones in the corporate, it will take a little getting used to. As far as I am concerned, the items under the ‘Options’ icon has changed rather drastically. My recommendation is to get OS6 on at least a set used by those providing support simply to learn how to navigate around it and guide users over the phone.

The following are some screen shots I took from the handset using a 3rd party software… and talking about that, will Research In Motion [RIM] put in that nifty feature which allows me to just press a few buttons and capture the screen like the iPhone iCrap? I thought that would be neat!

[portfolio_slideshow]

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