my ajumma notes

I was amused to read in this Forum letter (yesterday's ST) the idea that Orchard Road is the 'Champs Elysees of the East'. (painting by this lady ) The only time I've been down the Champs-Elysees was some 18 years ago and unless the place has changed that much, the only similarity I can think of that it bears with Orchard Road is the heavy traffic. How can Orchard Road compare with 'la plus belle avenue du monde' ('the most beautiful avenue in the world' - don't be too impressed; I don't know French at all - cut and past only, lah)? Frankly, Orchard Road does not even come near the historical, political and social significance of the Champs-Elysees. Click and see for yourself what I mean. It seems to me that we sometimes have this habit of celebrating Singapore in such a way that we make it bigger than it is. This Champs-Elysees thing is but one example of that. In today's newspapers, we have the promise of a Universal Studios theme park 

Different perspectives are important. If not, one will end up with tunnel vision, a 'one-track' mind, etc. So I guess having different newspapers in front of you might help you develop the habit of looking at things from different perspectives. Topic for the day: crime statistics for the first half of the year This was front-page news on the ST: 'Cellphone thefts fall for first time in three years' , subtitle: 'Drop due to measures that make it tough for thieves to sell off stolen handsets'. There was also a small box entitled '220 letters sent to parents (telling them their children had been caught loitering beyond 11pm)'. Most of the main article (14 out of 20 paragraphs -- ha ha, so wuliao , got time to count paragraphs) is on the cellphone theft thing, with the last 6 paras on other crimes. On page 10 in TO DAY, you have 'S'pore crime rate declines' , subtitle: 'Fewer teenagers arrested but rise in rape and murder cases'. This art

Wah... from bak chor mee to bak kut teh . The short of the bak kut teh story , if you didn't follow it, was that this Ng Ah Sio Pork Ribs Soup ( bak kut teh ) Eating House refused to stay open for Mr Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of HK. Reason: its operating hours are from 6am to 2pm and he wanted to turn up at night. The New Paper was inspired to follow up on this apparent 'snub' of a big-shot by the bak kut teh (henceforth bkt ) hotshot with a feature entitled 'Singapore's cockiest hawkers' in yesterday's Sunday edition. Including articles by famous foodies KK Seetoh and Toh Paik Choo, no less. From my understanding of what happened, the bkt incident does NOT show cockiness and was NOT an intentional snub and should NOT be taken as yet another sign of poor service. In fact, I think it's unreasonable to expect the shop to stay open for so long or to open specially at 9.30 or 10pm just to entertain Mr Tsang and entourage WITHOUT advance notice a

Singapore is unique because it is multi-racial society. This is one of those things people say or write without really thinking. It is of course not true that we are unique because we are multi-racial. MANY countries in the world are multi-racial, with MANY of these countries home to MANY more than just ‘four races’. In fact, the exact same ‘four races’ can be found in our nearest neighbours, Malaysia and Indonesia. In Singapore, we have four races. This is another statement that is often taken to be a fact. But is it really a fact? The four races live in harmony. Another famous statement, but how far is this true? Tough question. So... what’s unique about Singapore’s multi-racial-ness? One, the proportions (obviously), i.e. the percentage of the population each ‘race’ represents vis-à-vis the rest. Two, how an erstwhile migrant group (read: the outsiders) became dominant (and not just in numbers), thus making for very complicated pathways to achieving ‘racial harmony’. Do we reall

Last week, CNA had this bit of news about some American experts (in something to do with food but can't remember exactly what) advising Singapore on what can be marketed in their part of the world as uniquely Singaporean food. Today, Colin Goh wrote a nice piece reflecting on 'What's so unique about Singaporeans?' My last post was partly about our eating habits. So let me just put a bit of all this here. First, the American guy thought that Hainanese chicken rice and kaya can be 'developed' into recognisably Singaporean food, in the same way sushi is Japanese, kimchi is Korean and tom yam is Thai. Hmmm... wouldn't Hainanese chicken rice be a more suitable choice for Hainan? As for kaya, perhaps not kaya itself but kaya toast (click link for source of pic and info)? Maybe that's what he meant, but he said kaya. Next, Colin Goh, I'm glad, pointed out that: 1. We consider a number of things 'uniquely Singaporean', 'but are Singaporeans real

Slightly over 10 years ago, I had this boss who subscribed to a philosophy that went something like: ‘Since you are the one who knows least about this (the assignment at hand), you are the best person to do it.’ I never quite understood his rationale but there is something to be said about looking at issues from fresh pairs of eyes. Normally, when the issue of health costs is reported in the media, the news is about how they are rising and why or people's complaints (often with valid reasons) or the problem of affordability, etc. In a TODAY article on 12 July, the young columnist Jeremy Lim provides his SOLUTION to that problem: ‘… we can arrest the rising medical costs if we take responsibility for our health. If we do not take care of our body, we must be prepared to pay the price.’ What Jeremy means by taking care of our body is: ‘Adopt a healthy lifestyle, go for regular medical checkups and take our medication when we are not well.’ So simple, and yet, it takes a child (sorr

With August 9th coming up very soon, I have decided to be The Patriot for a bit, and this is the first of my local-topics posts. It also happens to be my historic 150th post, so, how timely. My two cents on two local books I mentioned before: Jason Hahn's Asking for Trouble and Walter Woon's The Advocate's Devil (sorry about the illegible font colours from the old template). If you just look at the covers and titles, you wouldn't naturally put the two books together but strangely, they turned out to have some rather broad similarities. In both, the protagonists, Hahn himself in his book and fictitious Dennis Chiang in Woon’s book, are overseas-educated lawyers who return to Singapore to work. In the course of their work and returning to a familiar yet strange homeland, they both grapple with their identities and their new lives. Beyond that, of course, the two books are vastly different. Well, both are humorous, but Hahn’s is a light-hearted collection of episodes i

I'm sorry to know about the sorry brown saga and I just have one thing to say about it. The brown article was the only one I saw in response to the Household Survey results until today, Day 9 since they were published in both the ST and TODAY. And remember, the ST did say that we are preoccupied with the income gap problem. Now, about what's in today's ST. To quote, 'What accounts for this rising trend in income inequality? Who are the people at the bottom of the income ladder and how do they cope?' These questions being the main thrust of the article, it wasn't really a discussion of solutions . Anyway, I suspect that many of us would have a good idea of the answers to those questions even without reading the article. And, like other people, I'm interested in knowing what solutions there might be so hopefully, more people will be discussing the issue. It is one thing to explain the reasons for the widening income gap but another to do something to help t

Forgive me for going back to the tennis WAGs . I guess you would have seen the little spread they were honoured with in Wednesday's Life! section. If you are interested in these things, I also found these two links: Tennis ladies are on the ball - not dancing on the tables I liked the part in the article where someone said that tennis WAGs are more toned down because 'most tennis players are egomaniacs... They wouldn’t want to share the spotlight with anyone.' Heh heh... More pictures .

I'm re-visiting this topic because of a report on last night's Singapore Tonight . The report was entitled 'Hiring native speakers not the only way to improve English standards' . Sounds promising, right? Ah, but when I watched the report, it was about how 'native speakers' can contribute to improving English standards. It featured a Mr Hamilton who was quoted saying that he was doing 'realistic, authentic and creative activities' with his students, such as 'debating, discussions and presentations' . I'm sorry but I think I snorted when I heard that. With all due respect to Mr Hamilton, who is probably just doing his best for his classes and who maybe didn't realise that what he said would come across the way it did, I'm very sure local English teachers are not doing unrealistic, inauthentic and uncreative activities in class. If he really did mean to imply that, then I wonder what he thought teachers were doing in English class bef

Now that the world-famous WAGs have packed their branded bags and gone home, I've decided to do my own WAGs feature. No, not the French, Italian, German and Portuguese WAGs who remain at the World Cup, even though some of them are really gorgeous. Tennis WAGs. I suppose there must be tabloids somewhere out there which care about the tennis WAGs but I don't recall reading of them behaving outrageously or whatever, although I'm sure they can have wardrobes full of Gucci and Prada if they choose to. Here are some of them. The tennis-p layer WAGs of tennis players: Top left -Mrs Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf , herself a holder of many Grand Slam titles Bottom - Miroslava Vavrinec , Roger Federer's girlfriend, who used to play on the pro circuit, too Right -I was surprised to learn that Radek Stepanek's girlfriend is Martina Hingis ! The glamorous ones who could give the soccer WAGs a run for their money: Top left -Rebecca Cartwright, Australian soap actress, Lleyton Hewi