censorship

I actually drafted this in reply to the previous email, but Wendy says the tone not only burns bridges, it decimates the surrounding area and renders it uninhabitable. Without further ado, my drafted reply to Anjash:

"
To note: '...if the statements made in the email is...', 'is' should be replace with 'are' as the subject preceding it is plural.

I'm also not sure about the point you are making about Mr Lee concurring with you. Is he concurring because he has seen the research questions or is he concurring because of the prior funding agreement? So as per the funding agreement, if NCSS requires the number of left handed clients with one pimple on the right cheek, we are required to give that to you? I'm not sure about you, but usually in my arguments, I like to use logic and science.

Allow me one nuance of fallacy: despite my learnings and qualifications in mass communications, social work, psychology, sociology and philosophy, I fail to see the point of these and previous and current stats NCSS requires of us. Perhaps you can enlighten my feeble mind?

Lastly, I want to add that meeting after meeting, networking session after session, various Home Help providers have voiced out the same opinions after observations, some rather passionately, and each time, their voices are ignored and nothing has changed. The stats we have contributed over the time all seems to meet the same fate. Is that in the funding agreement too?

"

the empire strikes back

Dear Lingshen,

I wonder if you have consulted Ms Lee or Mr Lee before replying to NCSS. I also wonder if the statements made in the email is your personal view or that of Moral Home Help (West).

We have spoken to Mr Lee and he concurred with the need for such data to be made available to assist in the review of Home Help Service. We would also like to highlight that the funding agreement requires all service provider to provide additional information beyond PES, where necessary for service review and planning purposes.

My colleague Peng Peng will be of help if you need any further clarification.

Thank you
Anjan K GHOSH | Director
Service Management Division | National Council of Social Service
170 Ghim Moh Road #01-02 S 279621 · DID: 62102622 · Fax: 64624608 · http://www.ncss.org.sg/
Privileged/Confidential information may be contained in this message. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately

resigned

Dear Ms Lee

I hereby tender my resignation and give 2 months notice with effect from Sep 11 2008.

In recent months, I have been finding my position increasingly untenable.

I have not been making a difference in anyone's life, other than NCSS/MCYS, and their course, I feel, often sprints the other direction from serving mankind.

I also feel that in its current structure and organization, Moral Home Help West is not fully appreciating and developing my skills.

I have come to this decision with a very heavy heart. I am very grateful for the patience and understanding you have shown me, and I know that I have been a rather difficult subordinate to manage.

I wish you and Moral Home Help West all the best in years to come and I regret that I will not be part of this.

ls last stand

Dear Peng peng

We thank you for graciously getting an extension of the deadline for us.

However, Home Help West will not be providing that figures you need this time around.

We cannot continuously provide you with the incessant and unnecessary stats that you and your organization needs.

We can however, provide you with our database and you can sieve through it for the stats that you need.

Cheers

Lingshen Chen
Moral Home Help West

PS. When you mention Home Help's comsumption patterns and direction, I believe all the various Home Help organizations have been making very excellent points and suggestions, seeing how they are on the ground much more than NCSS or MCYS combined.

eat shit

From: TANG_Peng_Peng@ncss.gov.sg

Dear Home Help Service Providers

As part of the Eldercare Masterplan Review conducted by Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS), the Ministry is currently reviewing the Home Help Service (HHS).

MCYS has requested for data on the consumption patterns of HHS clients in FY07/08 (1 Apr 07 - 31 Mar 08). This data is not part of the PES data that NCSS has requested you to track and monitor. Hence, we understand that it would be tedious for you to gather the information. We have requested MCYS to give a duration of 2 weeks for you to provide the information. We seek your assistance to provide the information as it would ultimately help to chart the future directions of Home Help Service.

A) Information Required
There are 2 areas:
1) Overview of the Consumption Pattern - How many clients are using 1/2/3/4/5 HHS service components
2) Breakdown of Consumption Patterns - Number of clients who are using the follow service combination(s)/ type:

Meals + Escort + Housekeeping
Meals + Escort
Meals + Housekeeping
Housekeeping + Escort
Meals only
Escort only
Housekeeping only
Personal Care Hygiene only
Laundry only

Impt: There should be NO duplication of client across the various categories.

Pls use the template below to submit the information:


B) Suggested Steps and Pointers
List out the clients the agency had served as at 1 Apr 2007, note down the service component(s) that they had utilised
Add in the new clients who joined the service and had activated the service(s) over the next 11 months (ie: May 07 - Mar 08). We are not looking at clients who had only been registered, they must have used the service in FY07/08.
Even if the client had only used a particular service once in the FY, pls count the person in
Pls include closed cases whom you have served during the FY

Here is a suggested template for those of you who may need one:
Fill up the template, put "1" under the service component(s) that had been utilised by individual client
Eg (1): To find out the number of clients who uses "meals + escort", click "1" on the drop-down arrow for "meals" and "escort", click "blank" for the rest of the services. You would then get the name of clients who use these 2 services, do an auto-sum on the number of clients.
Eg (2): To find out the number of clients who use 1/2/3/4/5 HHS service component(s), click "1/2/3/4/5" on the drop-down arrow for "Total no. of services"

We would require the information latest by Wednesday, 24 Sept 08.

Regards
TANG Peng Peng (Ms) | Service Management Manager | Eldercare Services
Service Management Division | National Council of Social Service
170 Ghim Moh Road #01-02 S 279621 · DID: 6210 2453 · Fax: 6462 4609 · www.ncss.org.sg

oh what fun

So this morning Apple released yet more new iPod products: a blah iPod Nano that looks like a zune, brighter iPod shuffles, and a new uber-cool iPod Touch which is even thinner than its already very thin predecessor and comes with all the goodness of the apps store and even a built in Nike running sensor. My resolve not to buy the iPhone momentarily weakened and once again I was engulfed by all those alluring demons of desire. I think not even Plato would have withstood such temptations but I have since momentarily suppressed it with the demon of 'everyone who has an iphone 3G looks like they need one to look human'.

iTunes 8 also came out. Besides a layout which I think is improved, despite not having explored it much [note: everything Apple does is an improvement; everything Microsoft does is something they should have/could have did the first time round], the newest feature is the Genius feature. What the Genius does is you choose a song in your library, and the Genus creates a playlist of songs that are similar to the choosen song. Cool shit.

Apparently since I heard it on Prince Caspian, the song sung at the end [the calling by regina spektor] seems to have become popular. Geniusing that, better matches included 'Say it's possible' by Terra Naomi, 'When she loved me' by Sarah McLachlan and 'The Heart never lies' by McFly. Strangely, also included 'Hips don't lie' by Shakira, and really dubiously, 'We're going to ibiza'. Not cool.

I did Kit Chan's Home and I ended up with believable matches like 'To build a home', Kaira Gong's 'My Island Home' and very weirdly, my podcasts on homeostasis on the digestion & nutrition, circulation, respiration, the immune, and osmoregulation systems.

I tried Majulah Singapura [don't ask] next and I got interesting matches like the Darth Vader Imperial march, 'Beyond the wasteland' from Final Fantasy and very fittingly, 'The Plagues' from the Prince of Egypt. I like the new iTunes already.

chronicles of narnia: prince caspian

Yah, I know the dvd has already been released, but it's only on the SQ flight yesterday that I managed to catch The Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian, or otherwise known as 'that darn lion saves the day again', which is supremely ironic given the premise of the whole show hinges on that darn lion refusing to save the day in the first place like he did in the first movie, or as he himself so succinctly puts it, twice in fact, that 'nothing ever happens twice'.

The movie is alot like Growing Pains meet The Lord of the Ring. Besides the requisite epic battles, which are rendered quite competently, although a tad too much in the flavour of the good guys, there's also the other requisite items: i.e.

Mean melee arrow using dude, usually lanky and feminish [i.e. Legolas]. Check.
Cute small little furry creature who's really deadly [Shrek 3]. Check.
Marauding treefolk [Ents]. Check.
A variation of Gandalf's 'You shalt not pass' scene. Check.
Rushing river slamming onto enemy troops. Check.

And the list goes on.

While the Lord of the Ring had the suicidal wisdom of Gandalf, the anguished valour of Aragon, the boorish chivalry of Gimli or the reluctant responsibility of Frodo as centre pieces, what we get in this movie is teenage angst, just as suicidal, or anguished or boorish or reluctant, but teenage angst nonetheless; rebellion immature adolescence deciding the fate of thousands and thousands amidst the intricacies of acne, identity confusion, crushes, sibling rivalry, and fatherly acceptance [from the lion].

The movie ends like your typical secondary school essay; like it's all a dream and everything's back to square one and nothing really happens, which is really crappy when used in the essays, but actually meaningful and believable coming at the end of the mindless slugfest.

In the end you realize the movie is about letting go: as tempting as integral as something is to you, it's not you and you have to let it go and stop doing silly silly things.

I have to let go too.

Guru Pitka says:

Why do you hurt yourself?

Why do you hurt yourself?

Why are you still hurting yourself?

the love guru

damn :)

new round of mac ads

Called the M1 tech support yesterday and was berated by him for trashing the program folder in Vista to remove the program ['how can you do that? do you know you can't do that?!!!]. Not my fault the program didn't show in the applications list, the uninstaller doesn't work and plus us mac users have been dragging programs off to the trash to uninstall programs for like I don't know, since the mac was born?

Here's Apple's latest round of mac ads, to quell the rage in me:

Throne:


Off the air:


Note that I don't think the apple stores here do the 'transfer your files for free' thingy mentioned in the ads since they are just shitty apple franchisees who can't make it selling windows stuff although you can try the Mac Shop at Funan; they have very nice people there who actually knows their mac [not the apple store].

Pizza box:


Calming teas:

wad the hell 2

It's actually kinda fun when for once, the object of complaint is not me:

From the ST online forum:

MY MOTHER lives in Block 31 Toa Payoh East in a flat meant for senior citizens under the administration of the Thye Hua Kwan welfare organisation. I understand caretakers posted to the centre on the ground floor are meant to ensure the welfare and safety of the elderly residents, as well as distribute public donations fairly to those in need, but I regret this superior care is not what my mother has experienced.

First, on the issue of welfare. On one occasion, a drunken stranger parked himself right outside my mother's door. She asked management to call the police, but they insisted she settle the matter herself and insisted she went back up to use her own phone. While it was eventually resolved, this not the way a charity should function. That is only one of numerous occasions on which the elderly were made to feel neglected. The operator also criticised my mother to her face, in English (which she does not understand), and we found out only later from the maid who understood.

On the issue of donations, I hope resources will be allocated equitably to those in need. However, my mother often tells me donations in kind, such as food, are distributed according to the whim and fancy of the centre's operators, with leftovers discarded, which leads me to wonder if those in need actually get them. Furthermore, my mother has also witnessed the centre throwing away an item of donation, new and unused, in a spurt of temper.

Those are only a few incidents, and isolated ones. Perhaps we should re-examine how charities are run to ensure, if nothing else, the hours our children spend fund-raising do not go to waste.

Hopefully with my rich complaint-rebutting experience, I won't be called upon to rebut this. I'm not very good at arguing; I just always happen to be right. Don't think I can argue this.

what the hell

Probably I will not be long for this job, and hopefully this world too, so I won't hold back on the names.

Background: When I joined this job more than a year ago, I actually joined Tanjong Pagar FSC. On the first day of work, I was seconded out to where I am currently. I was to learn a good half year later that the TPFSC actually earned money from this arrangement: my salary and CPF contribution came from them, but apparently they charged Home Help that amount plus plus. My Home Help manager said TPFSC claimed the plus plus was for training me; that's a load of bull. I only ever saw the TPFSC boss three times: once because I requested a meeting, the second time when he came to do the exit interview with Odie, and the last time at some Moral event. I have since left TPFSC and come under the payroll of Home Help. The Home Help boss is in charge of many many things other than Home Help, so the other time I have seen him is, once again, at official functions. But all's good until this week.

Some time ago I rejected a client on the grounds that he wasn't very homebound, to put it mildly. The client was referred by Moral Case Management, and the person who did the referral, let's call her SL, wasn't too pleased. She called the office repeatedly to request for a review. Now, usually I'm not in the office, so my colleague handles such calls and queries for me. My stance was clear: at his current functioning, the client is not eligible for home help services and any further assessment would be fruitless. My colleague communicated this to SL all the times that she called. Oneday SL called and demanded a written explanation.

I seethed. But I wrote the letter. And it was polite. And I thought that was the end of it.

But I was wrong. She wrote another letter, requesting for service on the grounds that client has COPD and some other heart conditions. And cc-ed to our boss. I called her to clarify with her, but apparently nothing got through her thick skull. She followed up with the following email to our boss:


"
Dear Boss,

Good morning. I have received a phone call from MSW Ling Shen (Moral Home Help West) at 12.14hrs while i was on home visit yesterday.

Ling Shen claimed that he has repeated many times to me that he has already discharged client Mr XXX and he would not consider opening the case. Reasons being client is not a home bound patient. When i checked with him that how come some cases who are also not home bound could receive the home help service such as escort service but he claimed that he did not know the previous cases as it was approved by other MSW as he only came 1 year ago. For him, he would not accept cases that are not approved by him. I requested him to consider escort services in view of client's medical condition but Ling Shen claimed that he would only consider re-opening the case if i could provide him with medical report and proved that client's condition has deteriorated. I have requested him to tell me the date of his review with client but he refused and said that he has seen him 2 to 3 weeks ago. Lastly, i requested Ling Shen to reply me with a letter again on the reasons but he claimed that he did not have such practice all along and also did not have the habit of reply since he has done once previously.

I have called the client later and client claimed that he had asked his friend to help him buy food sometimes and he could manage his laundry so far.

Please advice me on the whether i should refer client to home medical and home nursing services since the escort service from Moral Home Help West has been rejected?
"

-


The boss emailed me and my manager asking for an explanation so it's obvious whose side he's on. My manager is the easily ruffled sort so she decided to just offer the client our escort services anyway. I went down to see him, and here's my email reply:

"
1. Client was initially rejected because he was not homebound; Client himself mentions that he is always running around. I understand that he has a whole litany of heart problems; however, these are simply medical labels that say nothing about functional status.

2. Out of goodwill, I was instructed by my manager to offer him our escort services. That I did, but client was not home. I called him and learnt from him that he was at Potong Pasir, and he indicated that he did not need our services.

3. My manager has also called him this morning to offer him our food and escort services. Client rejected them as he indicated that our food usually comes at around 1 pm and he can't wait so long as he has to go out. He also indicated that he has a direct bus he can take from his home to the hospital.

4. I stand by my assessment. I am actually bewildered why client is even a candidate for home services.

5. With regards to written exposes detailing rejection, I hope you can understand that it is not practical or logical for me to have to answer to every rejection. I see so many clients every week it's hardly enough for me to catch my breath. Rejection is always hard for me, and already I am very liberal in my interpretation of home boundness, so you can be assured that rejections are not made wantonly.

6. With regards to approval, all cases need to be approved by me to be accepted into the service as I am the only social worker here. SL mentions a discrepancy where certain clients that seems to match disputed client's status were accepted into the service while Mr XXX was not. Indeed, those clients were assessed and approved by me, and I apologize for that, as I was lax in my assessment.

I wish to assure you and SL and the Moral Case Management team that I shall strive to be more rigid and stringent in my assessments.

Sincerely
Lingshen Chen

[addendum]
1. If SL would read the letter carefully, it states 'repeated numerously', which in no way implies I spoke to SL directly. What it does imply is my stand was made clear to her quite a few times.

2. I would also like to clarify if I have the right to reject clients.
"

-


Summary: Someone made a lousy referral, and was not willing to accept the subsequent and expected outcome which is actually kinda disrespectful to me, expects me to play by her mangly rules, and kicks up a ruckus about it.

sad song

back from manila

Back from the Philippines, as the title implies. Will post more tomorrow as it is late and it seems that my eyesight deteoriates with the time of the day.

Nothing against the Philippines, but I am utterly and really disgusted in myself for going there.

It's like you can be educated lots which means you are supposedly intelligent and you still do silly silly things, silly self destructive things, and seeking the thrill of the solace from the brief occasional respite of repeated head-bangings. Blerdy stoopid fool.

the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs

I recently heard this song and I only listen to this song now.

A quick aside. One of the comments says

The littlest birds do sing the prettiest songs, as they are small they have to sing pretty songs to attract mates!

Not sure what that means. Is the guy saying small birds need to sing nice nice to attract mates from say big birds? Like maybe finches are in direct competition with eagles? I like eagles btw.

sex education

I lost count of all the euphemisms for the 'raised scepter of love' Uncle Andy used.

PS. This is the first time I've seen the banana trick.

PPS. The above scene was from Weeds, which is a great show, which means you'll never ever see it in Singapore.

little boxes

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes, little boxes
Little boxes all the same

There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same

And the people in the houses all went to the university
Where they all were put in boxes, little boxes all the same
And there's doctors and there's lawyers and business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same

And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp and then to the university
Where they all got put in boxes, and they all came out the same

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
In boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same
There's a green one, and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same

LS' news in brief

MM Lee says one freak election results and 5 years is all it takes to ruin Singapore.

He worries needlessly seriously. We survived 40 years of his PAP's rule, we can survive 500 years of anything, even a worst case scenario where we orang utans become our ministers and they plan policy by deciphering the way thrown banana peels land on the floor which introspect may actually be a better form of government than what we are having now. At the very least, bananas are cheap.

-

After the guy passed through at least 3 rounds of passport checks with his son's passport at the Budget Terminal, the latest precaution is to have a guy stationed beside every automated clearing machine.

I would think since the automated clearing machine was the only one that did his job on that fateful day, the extra guy should be stationed beside the checkpoints people instead.

Or use orang utans.

-

MOH to probe possible lapses in living donor transplant programme

My money's on Yes.

-

S$2.8m Active Ageing Centre to be built at Ang Mo Kio

Rumor has it it will be built on the Dragon's Vein which will harness the energy there and distribute it around the centre via the air-con.

-

MM Lee's wife in critical condition.

Good riddance [although it's the wrong one].

manila: overall impressions

Generally I get that my travel logs always denigrate into anti-Singaporean expressionism. I promise I'll keep that in, right after I bash Tiger Airways.

Lousy, deceptive, fradulent airline that sent me to Manila (Clark), which is 2 hours away by hot bumpy bus ride from Manila, and which the locals don't consider to be part of Manila. I know, I know, buyer beware, but when you go to some airline webby and choose Singapore to Manila, you really expect them to take you to Manila, that Manila (Clark) is part of Manila. I know I know, I should have done some research, but I'm complacent, as is the trend here: I'm a seasoned traveler afterall, not the sort that carries a Lonely Planet around and reads up on every detail, but the sort that trusts the airline to keep their word, and that for everything else there's Mastercard. I've not even started on the ride experience: I can do hardship, but you cannot separate me and my hand carry bag which is what Tiger did by insisting I put my bag in the stowaway compartment and not block the passage way at the emergency exit. Like, wei? My hand carry bag is literally a handbag the size of my hand. If it blocks anyone at the exit, it means that person is really obese and probably deserves to be blocked. And ok i get that no outside food is allowed on the plane. But you don't have to constantly announce it like we are dogs who deserve no better because we can only afford to fly Tiger [and can't afford your overpriced food]. In any case, if people are still flouting the rules despite your multiple announcements, it's probably because your guy needs to go back to language school. And what's with the spastic announcement: please switch off and keep off all handphones, including those handphones with airplane mode. Why else do we call it airplane mode? In any case, said Tiger staff with language impairment should also learn how to differentiate iPhones with iPod Touches if he wants to enforce the rule.


In any case, this was the nice airport I landed in: DMIA. The temp looking structure with alot of people waiting under is a very permanent waiting area for people waiting to check in. Apparently, DMIA won some airport of the year award last year and rightly so too; all airports should seriously be like this.


Very straightforward. No need to waste time waiting for the plane to berth properly, or for the tunnel thingy to attach itself to the door, or for the feeder bus and the people slowly streaming into it and once in the airport, there's none of the convoluted twisty cavernous labyrinths to actually get to somewhere.

Ok, the truth is I went to Manila for surgery, so most of the time I was confined to my room so I didn't see much, so this post is quite limited.

The people here seems quite friendly though, like naturally from the bottom of the heart friendly. On the strange bus from Clark to Manila, I started appearing all touristy by taking out by map and staring at it. Immediately 2 locals sitting opposite came to my aid and even came me their numbers. After we got off the bus, they helped me get a cab and even told the cab driver not to cheat my money, which he actually totally disregarded, but which a very helpful security guard helped settle. My doctor and his wife brought us to a nice local restaurant where we were pleasantly entertained by a live band with a singer who sounded better than Norah Jones; when she was tired, the waiter filled in for her with a rambunctious song and dance item.

Being a tourist gives us the leeway to look like idiots. Obviously common ones like wearing the ethnic but inappropriate garb and lugging around a mean looking camera I avoid but we end up committing all new ones. Like frantically looking for our seats in the cinema. I never stopped to think 'FS' is a weird way to label your seat numbers, that both stubs had FS. In the end, FS = free seating. Or how not being able to squeeze into the MRT the 3rd train in as many minutes, I noticed the first few cabins were consistently almost empty, so promptly headed for it the fourth time only to feel chilly daggers at me throughout the whole ride. Looking around the cabin I had some weird suspicious something was terribly wrong; checking a rather concealed signboard after getting off confirmed it: the first few cabins were reserved for women, children and elderly folks. If anything, I was ready with the excuse 'we all like the same things'.

So I watched Fillipino TV most of the time. Channel selection was great: so many great movies like Narnia, Mr Bean's Holiday, 21, Mission Impossible, and drama series as well as talk shows. For example, I managed to catch Grey's Anatomy Desperate Housewives and it seems in Manila, they're almost through with latest seasons of both series [season 4]. I think in Singapore, we're still seeing Drs Burke and Addison. They also had some nice cartoons that I've never seen before, like one called the Avatar, about a world made up of common people and people who can command the elements. But 4 days gets boring: I saw Aladdin and Hercules twice, and there was the Kung Fu fighting MTV trailer for Kung Fu Panda that played in between every show. I even turned to Sellavision for long periods of time; it was somewhat refreshing: they sold products that would take you to the ends of the earth and more in the backdrop of very cheesy acting and even cheesier selection of music. For example, they had a drink that would make you grow taller and they interviewed lots of people unhappy about their heights, or this drink that increases your bust size, or this drink that grows hair back to the song 'here now, there now'. And wait, there's always more of course.

The only place we really went to was Glorietta, on the first day pre-op and last day when I snuck out.



It's not so much a shopping centre, but 4 shopping centres joined together in the middle by a vast concourse and interlinked to one another. Like I'm pretty sure you can find everything here; in case you can't, there's 2 departmental stores nearby, one shopping centre at the Shangri-La hotel, and one more series of mega shopping centres just across. We never got to exploring the whole area. What I did find fascinating was this bookstore [what's with bookstore chains and the colour red?]. They had shelves and shelves of medical, nursing, and psychology textbooks just going for $20 SGD. The interesting thing is many of them are printed in Singapore.

And so I want to end my limited exposure to Manila by talking about the food: simply fabulous.


This is hallo-hallo, a simple dessert consisting of yam ice cream on top of yam paste filled with fried fruits and lots of red bean and atapchee. Very nice.


I forgot the fillipino name of this dish but it's simply a big juicy chunk of pork that's deep fried, then you slice off abit and eat it with some savory soy sauce. Besides that there was also kare-kare, which is some fish in peanut stew you eat with prawn sauce and a beef broth dish which I'm rather ashamed at forgetting the name and not taking any pics because it was best dish I had in Manila. At Glorietta we ate at the foodcourt where I had this rice with sotong stuffed with diced vegetables served with pork bits at the side. Another day I had adobo, which is simply meat marinated in some sauce served with rice, brought to me. How do I know I really liked the food in Manila? The Krispy Kreme test - out of the dozen krispy kreme bought on the first day, there were still 3 left at the end of the trip.

It's really quite a pity that I didn't get to see more of Manila. I would have loved to have gone to the university belt, which is a district filled with universities, quite possibly the birthplace of Fillipino excellence. I'm quite sure it wasn't just nationalistic sentiment when my doctor bemoaned the fact that the Phillippines has so much talent but all of it is either not nurtured, or those that are nurtured are taken by other countries. There's also the night life, which judging by the day life, I'm sure would be excellent too. And the Bay Walk. And all the many many offshore islands and their natural wonders.

I think I should have to go back again. And definitely not by Tiger.

general youtubing

The iPhone really is a wonderous device: for all its supposed flaws and lack of high end tech features everyone else is cramming into their phones these days, it does the one thing it's supposed to do very simply and very nicely: it squeezes in my laptop, iPod and handphone into one device and just works. True, I won't be spreadsheeting or photoshopping or dreamweaving or garagebanding with it, but I can IM, check email, surf the web and even youtube

While I was stuck in Manila recuperating after my surgery, my trusty iPhone saved the day against boredom.

Some notable youtube things I saw:

-



Very cool very hot pair of contestants from this reality show Britain's Got Talent. I'd be darn happy if I can be half as good as them.

-



Manila's got talent too!

This is their take on promoting Kung Fu Panda. shown on local Manila TV after every show. I quite like his rendition of the song. In terms of effectiveness, I risked sepsis and certain reprimanding when I sneaked out of recuperating on the last day to catch the movie. I also bought the soundtrack [limited Manila edition for 350 pesos or $10SGD].

I just saw the Singaporean attempt at promoting the show: Gurmit Singh [yet again] attempting to appear witty as he interviews the voice actors of the show. Singapore's only got gurmit singh? And what's with the Ch 5 is the official channel for Kung Fu Panda. Is there any chance Vasantham Central could be the official channel?

I'm particularly reminded by something my doctor in Manila said: that the Philippines is simply teaming with talent and it's very very sad the government is not able to harness it. As if on cue, the waiter who was serving us broke into a rapacious song and dance item; his performance easily can win any one of our [un]talent shows here.

-



Very catchy lyrics:
There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
And the vermin of the world inhabit it
And its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit
And it goes by the name of London

At the top of the hole sit a privileged few
Making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo
Turning beauty into filth and greed

I find this stuck in my head and repeating itself quite constantly, with the word 'London' replaced with 'Singapore', usually during morning rush hour, and reaching a climax in a meeting with employees of NCSS [note that I don't see people who work for NCSS or any government organization as dignified human beings; these top few who turn beauty into filth].