Pulau Ubin villagers paying rent to SLA

Posted on April 13, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘No plans to evict Pulau Ubin residents’, 13 April 2013, article by Eugene Neubronner, Today online

Contrary to online speculation and some media reports, the authorities yesterday clarified that “there are no plans to evict the households currently residing on Pulau Ubin or develop an Adventure Park on the island”. Issuing a joint statement, the Ministry of National Development (MND) and the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) reiterated: “The planning intention is to keep Pulau Ubin in its rustic state for as long as possible as an outdoor playground for Singaporeans. Given this, there is no need for the residents to move out.”

The speculation started after some residents on the island received a notice signed off by an official with the Housing and Development Board’s (HDB) Land Clearance Section, which carried the header “Clearance scheme: Clearance of structures previously acquired for development of Adventure Park on Pulau Ubin”. The authorities clarified that on March 12, the HDB, acting on behalf of the SLA, informed the residents of a census survey in Pulau Ubin. They added that these households had been informed as far back as 1993 that they would be affected by a public development project, which included the development of a recreation park.

“To align with the rustic nature of Pulau Ubin and its planning intention, outdoor adventure elements were included in the recreation park, for example, trails for cycling and hiking, campsites and amenities like shelters and toilets,” the MND and the SLA said.

…The MND and the SLA said that the affected houses sit on what is now state land, and the households were now residing on state land without the required Temporary Occupation Licence (TOL). If they wish to stay on, they would need to obtain a TOL and pay rent — generally pegged at market rate — to the SLA.

If you want a taste of true ‘kampung’ spirit, look no further than Ubin, often cited as the ‘last bastion’ of rustic, indigenous wilderness. 10 years ago you could spot leopard cats, hornbills and wild boars and bask in the nostalgic Old-World smell of chicken droppings. Thrill-seeking lovers could elope there to set up campfires, cook meals in mess-tins and get lost in mangroves without being marauded by eco-tourists and moutain bikers. But perhaps not for much longer, based on the revelations of the White Paper, as we are already seeing the gradual transformation of what was once an idyllic stone quarry sanctuary into Sentosa in one of her pre-casino incarnations, a ‘fun-in-the-sun’ getaway for fans of outdoor adventure.

The selling point of Ubin has always been a ‘rustic CHARM’, a ‘throwback’ to old Singapore, but history tells us that our relentless march towards progress will somehow squeeze every last drop of its kampung soul dry. Today it may be a bike park or OBS school, tomorrow a luxury beachside villa, and you could still call Ubin ‘rustic’, ‘raw and untouched’, even when this ‘charm’ has been reduced to a puny saltwater pond in some rich man’s backyard and the only fishermen you see on the island are the ones charging you for prawning rod and bait at a spa resort, or giving urban folk a demo of how to toss a fishing net in the visitors’ centre. A far cry from Ubin’s strange, astounding natural and social history, one that boasts of temple devotees of Barbie dolls, straying elephants from Johor, sightings of dugongs, monitor lizards as well as the site of a 1920′s Chinese secret society ritual.

According to Infopedia, an ‘expressway road and a Mass Rapid Transit rail system linking the mainland’ was planned for after the year 2030. As it is, Ubin already boasts a couple of resorts, including the Celestial Resort owned by Marine Country Club which aims to ‘give glitzy Sentosa’ a run for the money, where Singaporeans and can go unwind, enjoy lush greenery, and frolic around in wild lallang for a staycation . A 100 year old kampong house has also been refurbished as a Lonely Planet endorsed Cookery Magic culinary school, where you can make Nasi Kerabu with ‘jungle herbs’. Plans for an adventure park comes as no surprise really; it’s just a sweatier theme park with no rides, air-conditioning or Wi-fi, and has been talked about for decades. In 1996, then Minister of National Development Lim Hng Kiang announced that HALF of Pulau Tekong would be turned into a ‘recreational’ centre. I remember drinking fresh coconut from a dishevelled hut along one of the bike trails some years back. On my next trip to the island there could very well be a Gong Cha outlet in place of it.

Although the government hasn’t forced their hand YET, the slow creep of modernisation and tourism overspilling onto Ubin because of our mainland exploding at its seams may drive residents away from the maddening crowd sooner or later, with or without the additional rental fee. In 1989, S Jayakumar said that Ubin residents were ‘not immune to the law’, and if they were, ‘drug addicts and other criminals’ would be headed for the island. Ironically, the island once housed political detainee Lee Tee Tong in 1980, as well as a boatload of Vietnamese refugees in 1978.

So urban dwellers, time to grab your tumblers, hiking boots and mess tins, relish the last remains of a kampung island, and let’s all sing Dayung Sampan, shall we?

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Filed under: 1920s, 1970s, 1980s, 2000s, 2013, Bureaucrats, Environment, Fun and games, Tourists | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Go Away MDA bypassing porn filters

Posted on March 1, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Web add-on bypasses porn censors’ filters’, 28 Feb 2013, article by Lim Yan Liang, ST

A WEB browser add-on that lets surfers bypass the Media Development Authority’s Internet filters to access pornography and other sites has been gaining popularity online. The free tool, for Google’s Chrome browser, has been downloaded more than 6,300 times since it was made available to the public in the browser’s Web store on Feb 16.

It lets users access sites that would normally be blocked in Singapore by masking their true location. The MDA maintains a list of 100 websites that Internet service providers have to block. The creator of the browser extension, a National University of Singapore (NUS) computer science graduate, said usage figures have been growing thanks mainly to word of mouth.

While he had dedicated the tool to users of the popular Eat-Drink- Man-Woman forum of the HardwareZone discussion portal, forum threads discussing his creation have since been deleted or locked.

“There is no need for the word to get out, I can barely manage the traffic as it is,” said the 26-year-old, without giving specifics on the amount of traffic. He does not want to be named, citing previous run-ins with the law. “And it’s running off a server that I’m paying for.”

He added that the tool was “merely a fun hobby project” he set up during Chinese New Year as he was learning about a set of Web development tools.

Soon to be a thing of the past

Soon to be a thing of the past

While your run-of-the-mill hacker defaces government websites and replaces them with porn, the creator of Go Away MDA (you can download the tool for free at http://getgom.com/) hands you the golden key to online forbidden fruit. If the MDA hadn’t themselves went on a limb to declare war on the 100 objectionable sites, there wouldn’t be a need to device a tool to smash their firewalls down, nor would we proceed to satisfy our natural curiosity to see if unlocking Playboy.com with this actually works (It does at time of writing). There are many hidden treasures yet to be picked up by MDA’s internet sniffer dogs which are far more gratuitous than the softcore goodies of the Playboy empire. The complete list remains a mystery, but the folks at MDA clearly missed out the nefarious CHURCH OF SATAN (google it) website. The horror!

Porno material is generated so effortlessly maintaining a ’100 banned sites’ list is like fencing up a grapevine to keep out the starving foxes but leaving the rest of the sprawling bush unscathed. They haven’t even got a list started on mobile sex apps yet. To many men who spent their formative cyber years journeying through erotic utopias, this is a godsend, like a reunion with an old flame which they’ll greet with an euphoric  ‘Come to PAPA!’. Some would laud this anonymous ‘hacktivist’ the equivalent of porno Wikileaks, tearing down the barriers to the revolutionary ideal that is ‘internet freedom’.

In 2005, two gay sites were clamped down by MDA. They banned one featuring explicit sex and photography while fining another gay dating site called ‘Meet Gay Singapore Friends’ (no longer exists). Three years later porno versions of Youtube were added to the list. When queried about the usefulness of keeping this blacklist when it’s near impossible to block out undesirables without killing the Internet completely, an MDA spokesperson replied that this ‘mass-impact’ censoring was a ‘SYMBOLIC statement of our CORE SOCIETAL VALUES’. In 2010, then acting Minister for Information and the Arts Lui Tuck Yew regurgitated the same reasoning, that the ban ‘serves as a reminder that there is a significant body of material on the Internet that is unsavoury and unedifying’. That’s as enlightening as telling people there are wild plants and mushrooms out there that you shouldn’t be putting in your mouth. It’s like a clueless puppy chasing its own tail; the hydra of porn is always leaps and bounds ahead of you. Nobody goes to Playboy for their fix anymore. A random amateur sex video from a couple of local students may score more hits than all 100 banned sites combined.

Now that the banned sites are being liberated by a tinkerer’s electronic Get out of Jail Card, this ‘symbol’ of all things good and moral about our society has come crashing down like the terminal stage of a badly played Candy Crush game, though our spate of sex scandals has made enough mockery of this surface gesture of moral policing. It’s like putting a helmet on a baby strapped with explosives in a bid to protect it from harm. The more likely reason that this ‘symbolic’ banned list still exists, even if you could find SEX.COM on it, is that it would be an admission of utter failure to take it back. If there’s one consolation for MDA, it’s that their eagerness to ban stuff has given rise to talented, enterprising, rebellious individuals with this inventive drive and mad skills to crack smutwalls, a skill that would make you a top draw for secret military projects, or for hacking into our Ministers’ accounts to see what they have been doing with their million-dollar salaries.

Victory for the high-priests of Internet activism, for Google Chrome, tech geeks and anyone who feels that MDA deserves to be embarrassed for its vile treatment of artists and filmmakers all this time. MDA, you got ‘pwned’. Big time.

Filed under: 2000s, 2013, Bureaucrats, Censors, Nudity, Sex | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Nursing a low skilled job hard to offshore

Posted on February 8, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘ DPM Teo issues correction to Footnote in Population White Paper’, 8 Feb 2013, article in Today online

Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean today issued a corrigendum to the Population White Paper in Parliament to delete a segment of a footnote that classified nursing as a low-skilled job. Mr Teo said, in the Notice of Corrigendum, that he intends to delete the part of Footnote 12 on Page 40 of the White Paper, which said: “Certain low-skilled jobs like personal services, retail, and nursing are hard to offshore. They will still be needed even as the economy upgrades.”

“This classification of low-skilled jobs is not correct. I would like to apologise to those whose professions have been unintentionally misrepresented,” said Mr Teo. He said he was alerted to the matter by “our friends in the nursing profession and unions”.

Adding that he has the “greatest respect” for the nursing profession, the DPM said it is a “noble and caring profession, which all of us and our loved ones depend on and appreciate”.

A ‘corrigendum’ is a fancy term for a ‘correction’, as in ‘Notice of Correction’ according to the White Paper website. It’s the kind of word you use to lessen the impact of a terrible mistake in Scripture, like saying that God made the world in 5 days instead of 6, although it sounds like an unused part of the large intestine. Having a longer word to substitute ‘error’ doesn’t make it any less heinous. It’s like the Emeritus of ‘sorry’.

The footnote now reads: ‘….slower growth in low skilled (e.g caring and cleaning) jobs’. I’m not sure if that was adequately ‘corrigendummed’. Anyone in the business of ‘caring and cleaning’, like a social worker in a hospice for example, would resent being labelled as ‘low skilled’. ‘Skill’ traditionally refers to how one performs a task with his hands. If we still lived in villages, the resident blacksmith would have been among the most ‘skilled’ of the lot. Today, a manager could be described as ‘highly skilled’ without having the slightest clue of how to forward or bcc emails. The difference is that one bangs a hammer to create fine artisan craft. The other bangs tables and chairs to frighten people into doing his bidding.

Changing diapers as social workers/babysitters/caregivers do for a living seems like an example of a proper skill to me, but perhaps all this boils down to a fundamental problem of semantics. We have low-skilled, unskilled and semi-skilled workers, a form of categorisation which replaced the blue-white collar distinction. How have the various scales of skill been defined, if at all? Am I unskilled if my ONLY task is to load and unload wheelbarrows with bricks and move them from one place to another? What if I’m a doorman at a really posh hotel whose only job is to open and close doors for guests? And why protest over nursing only, what about ‘retail’ and this ambiguous ‘PERSONAL SERVICES’? Is this a euphemism for PROSTITUTION? Patrons of sex workers would argue that some of their ‘service providers’ are more ‘skilled’ than their own wives.

And since when did OFFSHORE become a verb? Is this appropriate language for a Population policy paper, or was it edited by a business guru? Are we sending our low skilled workers to the Maldives? As expected, there were no names listed as to who authored or edited the White Paper, just a list of anonymous scribes from various ministries and government bodies who contributed to its publication under the ‘Acknowledgements’ page (like the Bible, perhaps). Among them was the Ministry of Manpower, who could be behind the footnote fiasco being the authority on labour. I wonder what level of skilled workers they got to write this rubbish.

But I don’t want to speculate. Corrigendums seem like hard work. I may have to OFFSHORE my corrective actions to another party.

Filed under: 2013, Bureaucrats, Foreign workers, It Should Have Been.., Politicians | Tagged: , , , | 4 Comments »

MDA banning Elangovan’s Stoma

Posted on January 9, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Media Development Authority bans Elangovan’s play Stoma’, 9 Jan 2013, article by Huang Lijie, ST

Singapore playwright Elangovan’s first play after a three-year hiatus will not be staged. The play, Stoma, which tells the story of a Catholic priest defrocked over sex abuse charges, was denied a performance licence yesterday.

It was originally slated to run at The Substation in Armenian Street from Jan 17 to 19. In a letter to Mr Elangovan, artistic director of theatre company Agni Kootthu (Theatre Of Fire), the Media Development Authority said a licence was not issued because the play contains “sexually explicit, blasphemous and offensive references and language which would be denigrating to the Catholic and the wider Christian community“.

This is the third time that a play by Elangovan has been denied licence to be staged here, after Talaq (2000), a play about a Muslim-Indian woman’s experiences of marital violence, and Smegma (2006), which comprises 10 mini plays that explore the control and exploitation of disadvantaged groups of people.

Elangovan’s earlier banned work Smegma sounds like a biography of a punk metal band or a sex-heavy meditation on puberty secretions, but it’s actually drama composed of 10 vignettes, including:

  • Three men in a prison cell making fun of  the Singapore flag
  • Kindergarten children calling their MP a PIG
  • Singaporeans sexual escapades with underaged girls (How prescient, this Elangovan)

But it was the Arts Consultative Panel’s fear that it would ‘create unhappiness and disaffection amongst Muslims’ that pulled the plug on Smegma. Interestingly, Smegma was initially granted a licence under a RA(18) rating, but got banned less than 30 HOURS before it was scheduled to play. 6 years later you would see MDA pulling the same last-minute stunt on a film that allegedly mocks Indians called Sex. Violence. Family Values. This followed a consultation with a similar panel of ‘experts’ AFTER MDA had made the more forthcoming decision of granting M18 instead.

The synopsis for Smegma contains the following line: “When the comfort zone is shattered, ugliness rears its head like SMELLY SMEGMA”, and so it is with MDA coming down hard on Stoma for its priest-sex associations, like a libido-killing, shameful splotch of spermy grime on a male porn stud’s scene-stealing manhood. What is the difference between Stoma and another similarly-themed production Doubt (performed here in 2006) anyway? Does Jesus Christ cameo in it totting a shotgun? Or perhaps it features sexy nuns showing more leg than habit?

The controversial Talaq (Divorce), which earned the playwright and even its lead actress Nargis Banu DEATH threats, was based on true stories of Indian-Muslim women getting battered and raped by their husbands.  The theatre company clashed with the National Arts Council (NAC) for inviting two deeply religious Muslim men from the South Indian Jamiathual Ulama (SIJU) on their panel, one of whom, Haji Marican, reportedly objecting to the play not so much that it depicts Muslim husbands as violent rapists, but that involuntary sex  should NOT be considered rape in the first place:

In Islamic law, a husband cannot rape his wife as long as the marriage continues. He need not ask permission from his wife for sexual relations each time he wants to have it. Even if she is angry or not in the mood, he has the right to it. In any event, a husband can have sex with his wife without her consent and that will not be rape

I’m no scholar on religious matters, but I wonder if these guys were intimidating the NAC into making an unfavourable decision not with choice religious words, but with wooden clubs that could beat off the most rabid sabre-toothed tiger. Elangovan’s wife (S Thenmoli) and president of his theatre group also got arrested for trespassing after holding a private rehearsal of Talaq in 2000. Maybe if I had threatened to nail Stephenie Meyer shut in a coffin and bury her alive, and MDA intervened accordingly, disgruntled boyfriends and husbands in Singapore would have been spared the torture of sitting through 5 soppy, draggy vampire movies which also promulgate bestial-pedophilia love between wolfmen and little girls. And all that got was a PG rating!

If there’s anything that should be banned, it’s this promo rap video below which MDA produced in 2007; for giving the arts-loving public the false impression that they’re cutting-edge and cool. I rather scrape dried smegma off a rapist’s corpse with my fingernails than listen to this. They just don’t stop, y’all.

Postscript: Barely a week after this ban, a sex scandal involving a pastor from an unnamed church and an underaged girl surfaced. Oh the irony. Elangovan’s fiction is eerily close to the inconvenient truth. Looks like the year of the Scandal is stretching past the Chinese New Year.

Filed under: 2000s, 2013, Art, Bureaucrats, Censors, Religion, Sex, Violence | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

PRCs unlawfully remaining on cranes

Posted on December 7, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Arrested PRC workers had contacted MOM before acting on their own’, 6 Dec 2012, article by Goh Shi Ting, ST

Police on Thursday arrested two workers from China in connection with a case of unlawfully remaining at the place and intentionally causing alarm. This after both men had allegedly climbed up to the top of two 10-storey high tower cranes in a Jurong worksite in protest over a wage dispute with their employer.

…The Police Crisis Negotiation Unit was activated to get the two men to come down to safety. AT 2.20pm, after more than four hours of negotiation, one of the men came down from the crane escorted by Singapore Civil Defence Force officers. The second man followed suit an hour later.

The two men were arrested for unlawfully remaining at the place and causing a public order disturbance. If convicted, they may be imprisoned up to a maximum of three months, or fined up to $1,500, or both.

N.B: Both were charged of Criminal Trespass on 7 Dec 2012, with the intent of causing alarm to their project manager by ‘threatening behaviour’.

King of the World

If Simeon the Stylite (390 – 459) were alive today and climbed up the highest structure that isn’t a pillar where he could be seen, like a crane tower for example, he’d probably be slapped with the same charge of ‘unlawfully remaining at the place’ and being a ‘public order disturbance’. In the old days, we used to admire such feats of asceticism and defiance, and send up nourishing bread and goats’ milk to the aspiring martyr. When they die on pillars we make statues of them. In Singapore, any foreigner standing in one place for a prolonged period of time risks arrest or ‘repatriation’.

Anyone trying to make a bold statement by climbing up towers or bridges, be it protesting over wages, government policies or attaining religious epiphany, will be coaxed down by sweet-talking police and then arrested for their trouble before they could make it past a day of rigorous fasting. Unless he’s David Blaine performing an endurance stunt, or crazy French ‘Spiderman’ Alain Robert (who got arrested for trespassing in 2000 when he tried scaling the UOB Building, but eventually got commissioned by the STRAITS TIMES, of all people, to crawl up Suntec City.)

Without a permit this is trespassing

This isn’t the first time that China workers have taken to the skies in displeasure. In 2011, a lone PRC climbed to the top of a 30m crane and was ‘rescued’ within 2 hours. He wasn’t charged for ‘unlawfully remaining on a crane’, but rather TRESPASSING. The same charge was dealt to another who climbed up seven storeys of scaffolding and threatened to jump if he wasn’t paid. In 2009, one climbed onto the rooftop of the MOM building, feet dangling over the edge, presumably upset over multiple rejection by MOM officers. Instead of trespassing, this was ATTEMPTED SUICIDE. Yes, we have held a squeaky clean ‘strike-free’ record for so long, but that’s because the unhappily unpaid who resort to doing something spectacular have been classified not to be ‘striking’, but ‘trespassing’, ‘causing public alarm’, or just ‘trying to kill themselves’.

In fact, there’s an entire movie about a man pulling off a similar stunt getting everyone worried sick. In Man on a Ledge, it’s not a crane that sets the stage for protest, but the edge of a building. There’s something about death-defying heights that attract unhappy workers. Having a sit-down ‘industrial action’ on the steps of the ministry, or on an open field in the hot sun, even if you’re in a force of 100-200, is NOTHING compared to one sensational sky-high solo or duo symbolic act to capture our attention. Today it’s a crane, tomorrow it could be straddling the Singapore Flyer, or the rooftop of the Pinnacle@Duxton, all of which are proud monuments borne out of our dependence on migrant labour. Tweeting on Weibo to express your displeasure and incite your coworkers to fight for their rights is kids’ stuff.

I think there’s still room for our foreign workers to air their grievances ‘legally’ yet creatively if their employers or unions won’t listen. It’s called ‘flash mob’. And even if they lose their jobs, there’s still a market for acrobats in some Las Vegas casino out there.

Foreign labour: Our unsung pillar of strength

Filed under: 2000s, 2012, Bureaucrats, Justice system/Lawsuits, PRCs, Public works | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Liquid nitrogen cocktails not relevant anymore

Posted on October 21, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Liquid nitrogen cocktails passe’, 21 Oct 2012, article by Melissa Kok, Sunday Lifestyle.

…In Singapore, liquid nitrogen cocktails – a popular novelty beverage two to three years ago – seem to be hard to find these days. SundayLife! contacted several leading bars and restaurants believed to have served cocktails prepared with liquid nitrogen but they said they had stopped serving such drinks a while ago, or had never served them.

The Tippling Club in Dempsey Hill used to serve cocktails that were chilled with liquid nitrogen instead of ice to keep flavours potent, such as their nitro-chilled dry martini, back in 2008. But its general manager Marcus Boyle, 30, says it stopped serving such cocktails about a year ago, long before the UK case happened because there was “basically no relevance” anymore.

…Mixologists use liquid nitrogen in small doses to keep cocktails chilled. Of course, there is also the novelty factor in serving a drink with swirls of white vapour wafting from the cocktail glass. Mr Mac Lee, 54, honorary president for the Association of Bartenders & Sommeliers Singapore, says bartenders here are not required to undergo formal training or be certified to serve drinks containing liquid nitrogen. In fact, he says many mixologists who incorporate the chemical in cocktails are self-taught or learn the art from fellow bartenders.

However, experienced bartenders say such cocktails are safe to drink, as long as the bartender is familiar with the chemical properties of liquid nitrogen, and knows how to prepare and serve it with care.

…It is unclear which government agency regulates the use of such chemicals in the preparation of food and beverage items. The National Environment Agency, which regulates food and beverage outlets, did not respond to SundayLife!’s queries by press time.

A spokesman for the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore, which oversees food safety, says nitrogen gas is a permitted food additive under the Food Regulations.

Heaven in a glass literally sends you to Heaven

The death-defying thrill that comes with consuming industrial refrigerants may lead to a comeback of the ‘nitro’ alcoholic beverage. Liquid nitrogen is the ‘fugu’ of alcoholic drinks, except that I would rather trust a certified chef who has trained for years dissecting poisoning fish than someone who claims to be a ‘molecular mixologist’ who may not even know offhand how many protons, neutrons and electrons the Nitrogen atom contains (I know it’s number 7 on the Periodic Table).  A ‘molecular mixologist’ sounds more accomplished than a ‘chemist’, though the closest the mixologist has probably come to conducting a proper science experiment is seeing litmus paper turn from blue to pink. He may not blow up a lab, but a novice may feed you something that will probably explode your intestines, like what almost happened to Gaby Scanlon. It would be the perfect way of assassinating someone important at a cocktail party.

Liquid nitrogen infused drinks is more spectacle than science, and I have to admit it looks pretty cool in a Sorcerer’s Apprentice sort of way. Who wouldn’t be tempted to sip from a glass that has chilly fumes swirling out of it? A smoky drink is mysterious, magical and alchemical all at the same time, and has been portrayed in fable and pop culture as Pandora’s elixir. If Man weren’t attracted to misty potions, Dr Jekyll wouldn’t have turned into Mr Hyde, witches would have nothing to brew, a ‘cauldron’ would just be a big ‘pot’ and Harry Potter would have been shortened to 3 movies instead of 7.

A life-changing aperitif

But can’t you achieve the same effect with dry ice, you say? Solid carbon dioxide has a sublimation point of -78.5 degrees Celsius, while liquid nitrogen ‘boils’ at -196 degrees, but I believe eating both can kill you anyway. Dry ice is probably cheaper, since you could get it for free whenever you buy ice-cream cakes from Swensens, and in fact some mixologists do use it for the same ‘misty’ effect. City Space’s resident ‘cocktail ARCHITECT’ uses dry ice in his ‘Bubble Tea’ concoction, which creates a ‘bubbling effect’ as well as keeping the cocktail chilled. (Side note: I’m quite a good sandwich ‘architect’ myself. I stack layers of food between bread without my ‘work’ collapsing). Not sure how safe this is, but you can get ‘burned’ as easily from biting cold as scorching heat. More ‘Bubble Lava’ than ‘Bubble Tea’, I think. The F1 in 2008 brought us TURBO SHOTS, which consists of ‘grenadine syrup, Midori, Baileys and vodka served with dry ice’. The only thing ‘turbo’ about this is how soon it’ll get you to the AnE if you gulp it down a bit too hastily.

Such an ‘experimental’ approach to the once humble profession of bartending gives new meaning to the term ‘cutting edge’ when you risk perforating your stomach. Bartenders no longer wipe glasses with the towel around their necks or discuss football with customers when they’re not preparing drinks, they’re toying with ‘flavour-enhancing’ inert gases and Frankenstein goo with fancy instruments modelled after those used in Dr Evil’s cryogenic laboratory. They’re taking the phrase ‘too cool for school’ rather too literally.

Soon they’ll be wearing labcoats instead of bowties, naming their bars after gas scientists like Robert Boyle (the Tippling club’s GM is called Marcus BOYLE. Coincidence?) or Fritz Haber, and instead of being the surrogate uncle that you can confide about marriage problems they’ve become as aloof as nuclear scientists at an alternative energy convention. If you’re the kind of mixologist who would rather play it safe but still wants loads of attention from the ‘It’ crowd, you can wow them by ‘garnishing’ your creations with expensive pretty jewels instead. Drinking the Jewel of Pangaea does seem pretty shameless of you, but at least you wouldn’t end up like the bad robot from Terminator 2 below:

Nothing like liquid nitrogen to break the ice

There haven’t been reports of people here having their guts ripped apart by dangerous cocktails so far, though bartenders playing fast and loose with chemicals and describing themselves as ‘architects’, ‘mixologists’ or  ‘consultants’ needs to be looked into. How about a ‘cocktail pharmacologist/chemist’ for a change, you know, someone who actually knows what is safe enough to entertain your taste buds but not toxic enough to send you to hospital?  What’s wrong with being a good ol’ fashioned blue-collar bartender like Ted Danson’s Sam from Cheers, a man who handles beer mugs and not test tubes and liquid nitrogen generators that look like high-end ice-kacang machines? A man who’s committed to serving you an actual drink and not an entry for a primary school science competition?

Cheers to non-smoky beer

Tippling Club’s Nitro Martini has been described as a ‘nice’ punch in the face. If I wanted that feeling I’d run into a wall without having to pay a single cent. A variation of the Tiger Crystal beer cocktail ‘cooked’ with liquid nitrogen is supposed to deliver a ‘mega brain freeze’. Purveyors relish such frosty drinks as BDSM fans enjoy having hot wax dripped down their nether regions. I would never trust anything that is described as ‘cooked’ in quotation marks. It’s like drinking ‘chlorinated’ water, or driving a ‘safe’ car. Unless you’re into that sort of thing, like the JACKASS crew.  Perhaps this little medical nugget will turn people off liquid nitrogen for good: It’s often used for the removal of GENITAL WARTS. So before your dip your nose in a ‘little bit of heaven’, think of the crackling fizz that comes with the application of the same ingredient to mushroom-like growths around someone’s anus.

If you want the kick of a brain freeze without losing a vital organ, have a Mr Slurpee instead.

Filed under: 2012, Bureaucrats, Clubs, Local food, Nightspots | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Curious mynahs scaring off cowardly hawk

Posted on October 14, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Hawk no match for pesky mynahs’, 14 Oct 2012, article by Jessica Lim, Sunday Times

Orchard Road’s hawk patrols have failed. It turns out that the bird of prey is no match for the pesky, noisy mynahs plaguing the shopping strip….The birds moved from that roosting spot to the area near Cathay Cineleisure Orchard and The Heeren, and an estimated 2,000 to 5,000 descend at dusk, especially between 6.45pm and 7pm.

People have complained about noise and droppings that strike pedestrians, cars and walkways. So far this year, the authorities have received 13 reports about the bird nuisance.

…Jurong Bird Park was happy to help, and provided a hawk and handler for three test runs from September last year. Alas, the big bird was found to be intimidated by the large flock of mynahs, said park general manager Raja Segran. He thinks there are other reasons why the idea could not take off, though some might suspect these are just a hawk’s excuses:

The mynahs’ new surroundings meant the hawk needed a long time to adjust;

The thick-canopied trees made it difficult for the bird handler to keep contact with the hawk;

Vehicles could knock down the hawk.

“The movement of the crowd and noise from vehicles along that stretch made the hawk very distracted,” he said. “The flow of traffic on Orchard Road made it too risky to fly our birds there.”

In the trials, which included releasing the hawk onto a tree, it was found that at first the hawk frightened the mynahs off. “But after a while, the mynahs were seen coming back to the tree where the hawk was, as if very curious to see what bird it was,” he said.

No surprise that neither NEA nor AVA was mentioned in this article, with the writer using the annoyingly vague ‘the authorities’, since none of these agencies actually want to take charge of mynahs. Pigeons (AVA) and crows (NEA) yes, but nobody wants their hands full with these rascally birds. In 2008, the NEA did shoot down some crows, but seemingly left most of the mynahs alone since these birds are not ‘in their purview’. Maybe the selective extermination of a bigger ‘competitor’ bird boosted up mynah numbers and made them more fearless since.  So what do Orchard Road tenants do then if the authorities have gone cuckoo over pest control? Take matters into their own hands, of course. By hiring a Jurong Bird Park veteran who trains hawks more for entertainment than stalking and eating smaller nuisance birds. You wouldn’t hire Sylvester the Cat to catch Tweety Bird would you?

You can’t blame the hawk or its handler really. Not only is the force of 5000 mynahs too much to bear, but having led a good life in captivity as a pet, mascot or performer for the Bird park, you would have no incentive to hunt down an unruly flock of squawking, pooping mynahs.  You would rather put on a ‘King of the Skies’ show and awe little children with your gliding prowess and extend your lethal talons ready to strike like you’re plucking a python out of a bush, even if you’ve done nothing with them other than clutching for dear life to some falconer dressed like Mulan.

Glam hawker

Falconry is apparently a noble, majestic sport of sorts that has existed since the Mongols, where raptors are trained to specifically hunt game or impress royal guests at a party. Today falconry is also employed as a natural pest control system, but no one even in medieval times could prepare a hawk for a thousand-strong army of swooping birds, creatures who have no qualms about stealing food from the Apex predators themselves or even go banzai on them on the streets. According to the article, there has been modest success of using hawks to chase off seagulls at a shopping mall in Exeter. Either our mynahs are a formidable guerilla force to be reckoned with, or hawks and their handlers can’t deal with the concrete jungle that is Orchard Road, a jungle where a black bird is king.

If poison, sonic devices, big birds or scarecrows don’t do the job, perhaps ‘the authorities’ should install giant fans in the vicinity of the birds’ roosting areas, which are known to sever bird heads every now and then. Alternatively, you could just take the underpass instead, just to avoid a uniquely Orchard Road weather forecast of Cloudy with a Chance of Droppings.

It’s a bird..

Filed under: 2000s, 2012, Bureaucrats, Environment, Noise, Orchard Road, Pedestrians, Pesky animals, Shopping malls, Tourists | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

No peeling of pineapples allowed in Geylang Serai market

Posted on October 1, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Fruit sellers upset over NEA regulation’, 1 Oct 2012, article by Eunice Toh, TNP

…Fruit sellers at the market said they were verbally warned by a National Environment Agency (NEA) officer on Thursday last week that they are not allowed to skin or cut the pineapples they sell. They said they were told that anyone who violates the regulation would be slapped with a fine, believed to be $200.

The New Paper understands that the move is part of licensing regulations. Stallholders at markets are not licensed to sell peeled or cut fruits. These can only be sold at hawker centres and coffee shops under a different licence, and you need to go through the Basic Food Hygiene Course to get it, says NEA on its website.

…The enforcement of the regulation means a loss of customers, said the fruit sellers at the Geylang Serai wet market. Said Mr Ng Ah Bee, 62, in Mandarin: “Have people fallen ill from eating my fruits? We haven’t received any complaints all these years. “How do we do business like this?”

…Regular patron C. C. Choo, who visits the Geylang Serai market every Tuesday, said: “I live at Changi Road and I come all the way to buy pineapples because the stallholders peel the fruit for me.” The 79-year-old retiree added: “I can’t even cut an apple. How am I supposed to peel a pineapple?”

Another customer shocked by the news was Madam Bebe Seet, 62. She said: “I thought the stallholder was joking at first. I couldn’t believe it.” She is also worried about how this would affect her 15-year-old business. She owns a Peranakan heritage shop along East Coast Road, which also sells pineapple tarts.

She said: “I usually order about 80 to 100 pineapples at one go. Pineapple tarts are my speciality. Where am I going to get cut pineapples now?”

It may just be a coincidence, but another ‘SEET’ complained to STOMP about being deprived of this ‘buang kulit’ service, though this person claimed that the fine was not $200, but $1000. There haven’t been cases of people dying of pineapple poisoning in recent memory, but there have been deaths from consuming rojak in Geylang Serai in 2009, that’s excluding 150 others who fell sick from it. Which may explain why NEA officers are picking on Geylang Serai stallholders rather than those in other markets, with its infamy of being the site of the WORST case of food poisoning in Singapore’s history. It was also a PR disaster for NEA, otherwise known for their rigorous maintenance of hygiene standards. And asking people to clear their trays after eating.

Leaving the skin on a fruit doesn’t necessarily mean it’s ‘cleaner’, as anyone who’s been to a supermarket and seen aunties probing fruit with their grubby fingers can testify. It would be interesting if someone decides to send a random unpeeled NTUC apple and a Geylang Serai peeled and cut pineapple for microbial testing. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the apple having a higher bacterial count than the doorknob of a People’s Park toilet, a result by which you can toss the NEA’s case against cut fruits out of the window. I haven’t personally peeled a pineapple myself, but from the looks of its hard, spiny exterior, I wouldn’t call it so much ‘peeling’ as it is ‘deshelling’. You’d probably need a blade sharp enough to pry a tortoise’s carapace off its back. If you force pineapple fans to bring these armoured fruits home WHOLE, they may end up contaminating the fruits themselves if not done in a surgical manner, with a chopper or on a chopping board that has remnants of raw meat on it. If you’re in a mad rush to prepare stacks of pineapple tarts for CNY however,  a chainsaw would be the only viable option.

So what does one make of this ‘Basic Food Hygiene Course’ then? Turns out it is 7 hours of training followed by 1.5 hours of ‘assessment’, which I’d imagine to be nothing more than a T/F or MCQ test. After which you’re a certified food handler, though that doesn’t stop creepy crawlies from finding their way into your dishes, whether you’re slogging it out at a wet market or a fancy restaurant. Unless the NEA can justify how a cut and sealed pineapple is more hazardous than a bunch of manhandled grapes in a supermarket, my take is that this crackdown is excessively erring on the side of caution than anything else, based on nothing more than a legacy of contaminated rojak, the kind of rojak that traditionally doesn’t use pineapple too.

Filed under: 2000s, 2012, Bureaucrats, Environment, Hawkers, Local food | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Personalised taxi service is a happy buyer, happy seller situation

Posted on October 1, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From various letters, 1 Oct 2012, ST Forum

(Sng Kee Chuan): I AM surprised such a practice exists (“No taxis? Some offer extra cash to get a ride”; last Friday). Some taxi drivers already take their taxis off the road to wait for call bookings, or for peak-hour surcharges to kick in – a common complaint among commuters. Allowing illegal booking services only provides an opportunity for more cabbies to take their taxis off the road – further reducing the supply.

(Jack Chew): GOVERNMENT Parliamentary Committee for Transport vice-chairman Seng Han Thong and transport expert Lee Der Horng appear to be advocating a free market system for taxis That is tantamount to agreeing that it is all right to let a commuter at the back of a taxi queue flash a $50 note to get to the front and into a taxi. What if there are others, including seniors and unwell commuters, who are in front?

(Ng Kei Yong):…Of greater concern were the responses of National Taxi Association president Wee Boon Kim and National University of Singapore transport researcher Lee Der Horng, which seem to imply that there is nothing wrong with the practice of offering extra cash to get a cab.

Taxis are a public transport service. The drivers are licensed and must provide the service to the public fairly and responsibly. In return, concessions are given to taxi operators by the authorities. If this practice of providing services only to the highest bidder is allowed, one might as well allow taxis without meters and cabbies to choose whom to provide their services to.

In the original article, GPC member Lim Biow Chuan and vice-chair and MP Seng Han Thong seemed to be at odds regarding this practice of paying more for jumping the queue. Lim said it would be unfair to commuters, while Seng responded that ‘this is the reality on the ground where some passengers prefer a personalised service..It’s a HAPPY BUYER, HAPPY SELLER situation.’ Transport expert Professor Lee Der Horng had the impression that if the passenger is offering to pay more, and there was mutual agreement, then there’s nothing illegal about it. Not a regular taxi commuter myself, I’ve nonetheless had first-hand experience of being late for an appointment and getting distressed over the fact that despite waiting for a good half hour and finally getting to be first in line,  I’d still see ‘On Call’ cabs come and pick up people who had come out of NOWHERE, passengers who might as well thumb their nose at you and go ‘Nyah nyah’ as they scoot away, though most of the time they avoid eye contact in fear of getting shopping trolleys flung at them.

People who wish to scrimp on booking fees will be forced to wait needlessly, and can no longer use ‘There was a long Q at the taxi stand’ or ‘There were no taxis in sight’ as an excuse anymore. You should have call-booked, or get assistance from a independent radiotaxi service like Lakeview. If I had to rush to the hospital to see a dying relative, I would appreciate some backdoor assistance pronto. If a cabbie is willing to offer priority service and I make it worth his while, my $50 ‘tip’ in exchange to get where I want on TIME is pittance, even if it meant leapfrogging over someone in a wheelchair or a woman about to give birth. The downside is such desperation is liable to abuse, with cabbies conspiring to make themselves scarce, so that all involved in the network would benefit from a forced ‘premium’, which puts the more ‘public-spirited’ cabbies at a disadvantage, cabbies who waste fuel patrolling the streets looking for damsels in distress, while his peers park somewhere and have forty winks while awaiting a forty dollars fee from anyone desperate enough to pay.

Such practices are nothing new. In 1989, if you asked for a ‘Code 3′, you will get exclusive access to a taxi even if none was available initially. This means paying a measly $3 extra on top of the meter value, which the Registrar of Vehicles considered as ‘overcharging’. It’s like asking for a ‘special’ after a sleazy massage, or giving a waiter something extra to play along to a surprise wedding proposal. It’s undisclosed and agreed upon, in other words, a FAIR deal, but you don’t accuse the service providers of ‘overcharging’ if you know exactly what you’re in for.  Then there’s the issue of whether taxis are a form of public transport. In 2007, the same transport researcher Professor Lee described taxis as such:

‘Taxis are not public transportation… (but) should be considered as a complement to public transport because it offers door-to-door transport services to those who need car-like transportation but do not own a car.’

That’s assuming of course, that our REAL public transport system is up to par. The ones suffering from mixed perceptions are the taxi drivers themselves, who are torn between running the show like businessmen, or as an accompaniment to buses and trains. If you have children to feed and send to school, and everyone you know is plying the illegal trade of pandering to ‘big-spenders’ or living off call booking, why not join ‘em if you can’t beat ‘em? Chances are cabbies who follow strictly ‘by the book’ are a dying breed. So there either must be an incentive to loyal drivers who abide by the ethic of ‘first come first served’, or a deterrent for those benefiting from under-the-table premiums. LTA decided that imposing a penalty would be the easier way out, compared to say, suggestions to make flagdown taxi-driving more profitable or scrapping call-booking altogether.

Taking cabs in Singapore is still a frightful ordeal at times, and though there may be still some who persist in being ‘public service providers’ and serve Singaporeans without the ‘income opportunity’ mentality, there should be still some wiggle-room for operators to cater for those dire moments when you REALLY need a ride and are willing to pay extra for it. There are services where you pay more to get urgent parcels sent from point A to point B. Why not the same for taxis when that parcel is you?

Filed under: 1980s, 2000s, 2012, Bureaucrats, Money, Politicians, Taxi drivers | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

NS man killed by tree in freak accident

Posted on September 30, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘NSman’s death: Tree was checked in April’, 29 Sept 2012, article by Jalelah Abu Baker and Lim Yan Liang, ST

The site where the fallen tree killed an operationally ready national serviceman (NSman) on Thursday was checked during a routine inspection in April.

The inspection was carried out by the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), which said in response to The Straits Times’ queries last night that such checks included the pruning of trees on state land in populated areas.

“For forested state land next to populated or high-traffic areas, SLA carries out periodic and cyclical checks of trees, and will prune them when necessary,” said an SLA spokesman.

The spokesman did not say how often these checks were made, and declined to comment when asked what the authority thought had caused the tree to fall, citing ongoing police investigations.

On Thursday, Lance Corporal (NS) Tan Tai Seng, 23, was waiting to enter the military grounds of the Ama Keng Training Area in Lim Chu Kang when the tree fell and pinned him to the ground.

When a tree falls by the roadside and no one is there to see it, who do you point your fingers at? SLA, NParks or GOD? April is a good 6 months since this tree was maintained, and according to NParks’ Tree Management Programme, inspection along ‘major roads or parkland’ is done at least once every 18 months, to check ‘health and stability to ensure that trees are safe and stable under NORMAL weather conditions’. Which suggests that the authorities have little control over ‘healthy’ trees still succumbing to ‘tree failure’ in the event of storms. Of course when someone’s life is at stake, it’s no longer ‘tree failure’ anymore, but a ‘freak accident’. In the Garden City, when the bough breaks, it’s not just the cradle that will fall. Vehicles are a favourite target for killer trees. Other hits include houses, hikers, covered walkways and even the NTU hostel. One death is too many still, no matter how much pruning or hi-tech tree tomography the authorities deploy to keep our 800,000 roadside trees (in 2009) in pristine condition.

In 2000 alone, there were at least 3000 cases of trees falling apart, and NParks maintains that the number has been reduced over the years. So how did SLA suddenly get involved in tree management? Earlier in March, one particular huge tree in Upper Bukit Timah which crushed a couple of cars was reported to be ‘managed’ by SLA (after a clarification by the media that it was wrongly attributed to NParks’ charge) with one of the motorists describing it as more than ‘FLIMSY’. It seems that the work to look after our trees is split between these agencies (though they would call it ‘tapping on mutual resources and expertise’), with SLA taking charge of a tree bank consisting of 11,000 trees in 2008. But even SLA may refer you to someone else if you try to seek damages when a giant tree crashes into your house. In the case of a near-fatal bungalow incident in Seah Im Road in 2008, it was EM Services, a property management company. If a tree falls and hits your car in a HDB carpark, a lawyer may tell you to claim damages against your TOWN COUNCIL, though the latter will tell you to speak to your insurance company. Sometimes, the town council may pin the blame on a ‘horticultural contractor’, and even the URA may be answerable to trees falling in their carparks. Like pesky birds, it seems that we’re facing the same accountability problem with toppling trees, and no one knows if they should call the HDB, NParks, URA, SLA, property agents, insurance companes, third-party contractors, your MP or the Archbishop if something unforseen and terrible happens.

Most of our trees were part of a LKY-led ‘green rage’ to artificially landscape Singapore into a tropical paradise, and instead of just focusing on post-mortem fingerpointing, one should think about the tree’s history too, whether it was indigenous to the area or one of those ‘instant trees’ that was erected in a hurry, like a clumsy prop on a shaky wooden stage. Any attempt to sue NParks, SLA or your town council with negligence in the event that a tree murders a loved one would be countered with the ‘Act of God’ defence, unless you could prove beyond a canopy of a doubt that the authorities have not been diligent in their inspections. But just how efficient are these ‘checks’ anyway? In the recent case of a tree crashing a metal roof of a walkway in Sentosa, it was checked merely 3 WEEKS before the incident, though the inspection was managed by Sentosa’s ‘environment and landscape’ team and there was no mention of any agencies’ involvement. If so, SHOULD NParks have been involved? Or is it a case of ‘your tree, not mine’? Are victims of killer trees condemned to resigning themselves to just ‘bad luck’ and endless rounds of ‘passing the parcel’ over which tree belongs to which agency?

It would be unfair to blame the SAF for not training our soldiers how to defend themselves against uprooted trees, but if history prevails, the likely answer given to the distraught family of the deceased is probably a botanical (fungus infection, bad soil) or a meterological one (bad weather, strong winds). Mother Nature already took the blame for being the mastermind behind our flash floods, and now she’s orchestrating death by trees too.  I think it’s time we have an NParks App that alerts Singaporeans to any tree that is ‘due for inspection’ so that we can watch out for falling branches or whole trees going ‘timber!!’ on us if we’re anywhere near. They could call it Angry Trees or something. It could save a few lives and cost much less than a bunch of overpriced bicycles.

Filed under: 2000s, 2012, Bureaucrats, Environment, HDB, Motorists | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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