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Singapore National Education
Part 41
by mr brown
Week of 18 April to 1 May 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 Mynah from Usenet asked "How to tackle a girl?" I say go for the legs. Brings them down every time.
2. That Bill Gates got more than a pie in his face at Comdex recently. I will let the press release speak for itself:
"CHICAGO, April 20, Monday: Gates, the featured speaker at the opening of the Comdex Spring computer show, was demonstrating the new Windows 98 operating system set to debut in June when the system crashed." (Thanks Brad Pitt)
I hear that they might delay the release date of this OS by two more years and call it Windows 00. It should be ready by the year 1900.
3. That in a desperate move to counter his nation's economic slide after the apparent failure of his advisors' suggestions, President Suharto has turned to a time-honoured economic remedy. He has asked some Feng Shui (literally Wind Water) masters to come down to his country and rearrange his furniture.
His country has an imbalance that needs to be corrected. Too much hot air and too little liquidity.
4. That the picture is not rosy when your son Jonah (name has been changed to protect his hapless parents) comes home from preschool and you ask him what he has learned from teacher so far and he says "Jonah please don't talk".
And the picture gets fuzzier (like Straits Times colour photos) when another parent says to you, "Oh, so your son is The Jonah. My daughter has been saying 'Jonah please don't talk' since she started attending this preschool."
5. That I may have been wrong to make fun of that banner that said "PRE-NUSERY" in my recent Gallery section. A reader pointed out that it might have been spelt correctly, because it might have been affiliated to NUS.
But that would make it "P-NUS" (Pre-Nursery of National University of Singapore). And does this also mean that the Alumni of National University of Singapore should be called "A-NUS"?
6. That I may have been wrong in my facts about Malaysia's Works Minister in my last SNE (Part 40). His name, according to a more-informed source on Usenet, is not spelt "Samy Vellu" but "Semi Value".
7. That when big business makes a mistake, it is usually a big one. Communications Minister Mah Bow Tan had announced at a press conference that the P2P consortium, along with StarHub, had won the licences to launch two new mobile phone networks, each costing some $600 million, on April 1, 2000. Hours after Mr Mah's announcement, GTE, a Connecticut-based company, stunningly denied it was ever a partner in the P2P consortium.
It is reassuring to know that with so much money invested, so many highly-paid bureaucrats, so many high-flying executives, we managed to find out that US telecoms giant GTE Corp was not part of the P2P consortium, after the whole tender was awarded and announced by a Cabinet Minister.
Rumours say that P2P might change its name to ?2?. Some have suggested that P2P stands for "Prepare2Pay" and "Pretend2Participate".
8. That companies inviting quotations for a $1000 computer would ask for a demonstration or presentation, but the tender evaluation committee for the multi-billion-dollar phone licences did not see a need to ask for any presentations from the tenderers.
"They said GTE is their partner, what. So we believe them lor."
9. That aside from losing their licence and their face, the consortium partners of P2P, Natsteel and Teledata, may also face black-listing from future government tenders. If found guilty of misrepresentation, they will not even be allowed to tender for supplying past-due-date cans of Army foot powder to our new recruits. This may be the first time a Government-linked company (GLC) faces black-listing from Government projects.
Executives involved in the tender from both companies and maybe even some from TAS may also have one testicle removed as punishment for this fiasco. Most of the involved will be probed, probably from behind.
10. That many years from now, when our little grandchildren ask us endearing questions like, "Why do we only have three cellular network operators when our handphone penetration is far from reaching saturation?", we can wisely tell them the fairy tale of "P2P and the Screwed-up Tender Exercise".
11. That families of the Silkair victims have yet to receive any real compensation, unlike the China Air families who got S$423,200 each. The Silkair families have been asked to fill out 12-page questionnaire detailing the income and expenditure of the deceased for the past three years, although it does not look like the payout and Silkair's liability per passenger will exceed the standard S$118,200 as stipulated in the Warsaw convention for the death of a ticketed passenger.
That should cover about three years of each passenger's salary I think. I figure the longer we drag this out, the more people will forget this whole thing ever happened.
12. That Singtel mobile has an ad in the Straits Times on the 27th April 1998 touting its incoming call rates as the lowest in town (8 cents per minute).
The lowest rates in town end on 30th April 1998.
13. That prices of crude oil have dropped and all we get from the local petrol companies are packets of tissue, scratch-and-win cards and small bottles of soft drink.
13. That if breast enlargement creams work as they claim, does that mean the hand I use to apply it with will swell too? What if I touch my butt? Will it work on men's, um, assets too?
"Caution! Do not use this gel as lubricant"
Girl: "With my new bust gel, no breast implants for me!" (smiles while hunching over and squeezing breasts together for some serious cleavage shots)
Guy: "And no more Swedish pumps for me too!"
Shameless plug: For more on toys for adults, read my newest Musings article, "Toys is Us".
15. That there are plans by two companies to build a replica of Titanic and offer cruises on the luxury liner. This is so people can pay good money to sail on a ship that was famous because it sank.
Incidentally, the makers of the new Titanics say that their ships are also unsinkable. James Cameron may have his sequel yet.
16. That the same people who will pay to sail on a replica of the most famous shipwreck will probably also pay to stay in the new Hilton on the moon. It will probably cost about $1000 a night to stay there and $5 million per pax for the air ticket. Water sports facilities are said to be limited.
Tourists have the option of flying to this new destination in a replica of the US space shuttle Challenger.
17. That the new trailers for the long-awaited TCS sci-fi flop-before-it-even-airs TV series, starring James Lye -- VR Man -- has the tagline "He is not a man..."
I wonder if it has anything to do with his shaved armpits in his recent 8 Days cover shoot.
18. That this has been one of the hottest years in the last 600 years, I hear. That explains why I walk into a wall of heat each time I walk out of my bedroom. They tell me it is because of El Nino. Now La Nina is involved too and soon, her brother Ka. I understand that it is partly because of Global Warming and The Greenhouse Effect (you know they are important terms when they are always first-letter capitalised).
And Singaporeans responded to this phenomenon with typical never-say-die gusto, turning up their air-conditioning.
Shameless plug: If you think hot is bad, read this little diary of a Minnesota winter.
19. That it is really difficult to tell customers where to get some books.
"Well, the idiot books are over here and the books for dummies are on aisle 2. And yes, sir, The Beach has arrived today."
20. That influential talkshow host Oprah Winfrey has been sued by another group of cattlemen over her negative remarks about beef. She supposedly gave beef a bad name.
Funny, I always thought she made cows look good.
21. That in view of the haze affecting tourism and other important aspects of Singapore life (like red-light, speeding and ERP gantry cameras taking fuzzy photos, which are donated to the Straits Times), the government has decided to convert some of the uglier buildings in the CBD area into giant air cleaners. I vote the phallic Westin Stamford bunch of towers.
22. That the Environment Ministry has taken to grading food establishments for hygiene, ranging from A to D. I have been told by some hawkers that D is for Delicious, C is for Can-Eat, B is for Bad and A is for Alamak. (Unrelated Facts #156: There is a new dance track called Alamak by the group 666)
Strangely, many hawkers and restaurants have yet to put their grades up, especially those who got a C and below. Some put them up but in some obscure corner of the stall, near the plumbing or behind the ventilation shaft (you could say that they are shoving that grade up where the sun don't shine).
23. That our wonderful cashless society comes at a cost. You have to pay to use the CashCard and pay to use cheques. I say give these "improvements" a miss and pay with cash as much as possible. Then you do not need to pay to use your own money. And no one need know what you spent it on.
24. That our great new proposed E-commerce law is said to help E-business by requiring unique electronic identities to be given to users through the use of proprietary smart cards and proprietary smart card readers. That should really integrate us into the world of global cyber-trade. It should also give a nice boost to government E-surveillance, E-tax-collection and E-Big-Brother-is-watching-you.
The authority that will hold the public and private keys to your cyber-identity and cyber-movements is called Netrust.
25. That it is not a good idea to use your new E-commerce Smart Card to buy naughty VCDs from Ah Seng Cat 3 Video Cyberstore and sign up for membership in the Lusty Lorna's Cyberhouse of Naked Camels.
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
