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Singapore National Education
Part 38
by mr brown
Week of 21 March to 30 March 1998
(Feel free to distribute for non-profit and non-commercial purposes but keep my byline, email address and URL intact please. Thanks)
I have also learned lately:
1. That a study from the National Institute of Cancer in Washington has revealed the scientific reason for the promiscuity in some men. It is in their jeans.
2. That the Haze may cripple tourism in Singapore. The Great Singapore Sale has been extended one more week in anticipation of the millions of Tourist Arrivals from "a Neighbouring Archipelago who is a member of ASEAN". Apparently, the boats that these tourists are using to come to The Great Singapore Sale are slower than the usual Cruise Liners.
3. That, in a bid to attract more tourists into our country despite the Haze, the Government may consider allowing seedy hotels to charge by the hour again. The URA is also rumoured to be building a chain of boutique hotels in the Geylang and Joo Chiat area under the name "Hotel 69". The choice of this name is, of course, to reflect its competitive pricing (S$69 per hour).
4. That many illegal workers from "Indonesia" (not the country's real name) are having second thoughts about coming to Singapore to find work because of the stiff penalties (jail and caning) and worse, local employers holding out in anticipation of hiring jobless locals for about the same money, given the present job market in Singapore.
5. That my wife is supportive of my efforts to go The Full Monty in the midst of Singapore's growing unemployment. She says when I boogie to Disco music, "your butt comes alive".
6. That local cinema operators, who are not bringing in The Apostle, Ulee's Gold and Kundun, are bringing Leonardo DiCaprio's Romeo+Juliet to the big screen again. This brings the total number of Leonardo movies screening at the same time to 3 (Titanic + The Man Who Looked Like a Twelve-Year-Old Girl + Romeo+Juliet = Obscene Amounts of Money).
And you thought these cinema operators were just a bunch of greedy, money-grabbing, mercenary opportunists.
7. That just when you thought no one would seek to exploit the Titanic disaster and movie hype, Proodental Insurance comes along with a "Yes Titanic sank but thank goodness some of the passengers had Prudential Insurance" press ad. So tasteful and sensitive. Can't wait for the ad about Silkair MI185 ("Yes MI185 crashed but thank goodness some of the passengers had Proodental Insurance").
8. That once more, we have the privilege of hearing Sonny "Larry King" Lim ask one of his open-ended, probing questions (in the same sense that a depository is probing). In his interview with Bill Gates, he asks, "You are probably the richest man in the world, does that make you feel proud or slightly embarrassed?"
Hence, there can only be three ways Bill can answer this:
a. Yes, I am proud to be rich.
b. Yes, I am slightly embarrassed to be rich.
c. Why am I wasting my time talking to you when I can be buying another
company whose products I cannot compete with?
9. That SBS posted a S$22 million profit this year, in contrast to the crippling losses reported over the last two years that were used as a rationale for raising fares. In gratitude, they will not raise the present fares for a few months, at least. Some buses will have magazines and newspapers to read and take home.
10. That we should enjoy our New Look Straits Times as much as possible now, because we will probably get a New Look Price Hike soon (with a 7-page special on how they arrived at the exciting new price).
11. That it is going to cost landed property owners S$2352 to wire up their homes for Singapore Cable Vision. Let's see, that works out to be 168 movies for two (S$14 per movie per couple), or enough money for you and your loved one to watch a NEW movie every week at the cinema for three years. No reruns. If you watch JB VCDs instead, then that would mean approximately 470 new movies, or roughly a new movie a week for 9 years.
Then again, you might be fond of the 1-900 telegames on SCV, then I say go for it and cough up the cash.
12. That there are an increasing number of neighbour bashing incidents in HDB-land. According to an Urban Sociology academic from NUS, people are changing homes more often to maximise their capital gains from the HDB market, usually staying in one place no more than the mandatory five years, and so they have no time to be neighbourly and warm. (Thanks Excellent Chap)
I do not know about you, but I took a lot less than five years to befriend the Malay family next door. We were chatting even during my renovations, way before my wife and I moved in.
13. That there is a Starbucks in the new-fangled Orchard Road fitness centre for members to grab their healthy caffeine fix after they are done exercising and sweating in the Aquarium-style glass gym in full view of the Orchard Road shoppers.
14. That I will probably need to get in shape first before I sign up for these new-fangled fitness places where everyone already has tanned, sculpted butts of titanium and (D24) durian abs of concrete.
15. That Singapore school kids will be enjoying a 10% to 30% cut in syllabus to accommodate Extra-Curricular Activities and lessons in Information Technology and Creative Thinking.
I wonder if these are counted in the ST School Ranking system. Look what happened to Literature as a subject after it was discovered that, gasp, it is a fuzzy, subjective subject without straightforward answers and, gasp, difficult to get As in!
Watch out for extra tuition in Extra-Curricular Activities and lessons in Information Technology and Creative Thinking, kiddies. ("My marder say I must study hard so dat I can be in the Gifted Scheme and score A-Star in Creative Thinking")
Shameless plug: Find out what students from a local girls' school cannot do in their uniforms.
16. That when University hostel rules require their hostelites to be active in Extra-Curricular Activities, they probably did not mean gambling, drinking and bunking girlfriends/boyfriends.
And whoever says our University students are not Creative obviously has not tried keeping a bunking girlfriend/boyfriend from detection by the Hostel Gestapo and Assorted Hostel Squealers.
Shameless plug: Read about some important lessons learned from our University and Hostel policies.
17. That UOB Choa Chu Kang Invest Shop has a 24-hour Automated Banking Lobby that is open from 10am to 10pm.
18. That despite the assurances of M1 and Singtel (who suspiciously declined to participate in the Straits Times free handphone calls test), people are still convinced that a certain handphone model and a certain key combination will bring handphone heaven.
If anyone wants to do something really useful, design a CashCard that is not only Sun-Resistant but also Deduction-Resistant. Better yet, design a CashCard that INCREASES in value every time you drive through a gantry. Young Designers' Award stuff, this.
19. That your ERP IU unit sends an identifying signal to the gantries that corresponds with your car registration number, each time you drive through a gantry. When you sell your car, the ERP IU unit must NOT be removed because the technician installing the unit says that the IU unit is for this car only and you must not remove it under any circumstances.
So much for privacy issues that were supposedly resolved with the use of the CashCard instead of GIRO deductions. Big-Brother Is Still Watching You Despite What You Might Think. If you want to rob a bank in Singapore, steal a getaway car that has no ERP IU unit installed and do not use the highways.
20. That if you lose your GSM handphone, the local Cellular Network companies, Singtel and M1, can trace the use of your stolen handphone via its unique IMEI code each time the crook uses it with his own SIM card.
But they will not. This is part of their ongoing Customer Service policy called Screwing Customers Over (ASO 9002). So if you lose your handphone, tough. Just buy a new one at one of our outlets with our new special offers (free leather cover!). As they say in Hokkien, "Don't have broken, where got new?"
21. That savage butchery of tragic proportions took place during the Oscars movie promotion on TCS5 sponsored by Citibank. Mindlessly butchered were scenes from Braveheart (eg. any scene involving blood and Scottish warriors mooning the English), Rain Man (eg. the airport scene where Dustin claims that Quantas is the only airline that has not had a plane crash) and even the Oscars presentation itself (Billy Crystal's traditional song-and-dance at the beginning of the Awards).
Police are investigating. Watch for developments in the next Crimewatch, because "Low Crime Does Not Mean No Crime, But I Will Send My Man Over From the Police Post When They Are Free, Loh!"
22. That pictures of the dead Indonesian illegal immigrants who died rioting at Semenyih detention camp, Malaysia, showed the corpses handcuffed. This might have been to prevent the dead rioters from further rioting. Or they were already handcuffed before they died.
23. That Virgin Cola will mark their United States launch with a bottle named after former Baywatch bombshell Pamela Lee Anderson. The bottle, named Pammy, will be slim in the middle and top-heavy. I am not making any of this up.
The launch also marks the first time in a long while that the words "Virgin" and "Pamela Lee Anderson" are used in the same sentence.
24. That Dan Quayle has called the Clinton administration the "most corrupt" in US history. He threatened that he was considering running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. This spells DANGER (P-O-T-A-T-O-E) for the Clinton team.
Shameless plug: Read Quotes from the Moral Voice of America in Browntown!
25. That lorries using the Second Link have to pay M$120 compared
to M$8.20 at the old Causeway, and in a Dan Quayle moment, Malaysia's Works
Minister Datuk Samy Vellu was reported to have expressed surprise that the
Second Link has yet to catch on with drivers.
By Lee Kin Mun (Copyright 1998)
All fan mail and soft toys may be directed at mrbrown@mrbrown.com
Other writings may be found in the Website "BrownTown" at http://www.mrbrown.com
