2008 In Review - TV

Continuing the 2008 Review with the TV shows and games that made my year.

TV Shows
2008's the year I discovered and thoroughly enjoyed Doctor Who and its spin-off Torchwood. :~ So much that many other TV shows now pale in comparison.


But one that has in no way paled is Dexter. In fact, Dexter's had a much better season in 2008 than last year. For me, this is the best US TV show by far.


My other favourites in 2008 include Burn Notice, Lost and Pushing Daisies. I'm especially sad Pushing Daisies is on its way out, I feel this was one of the gems of US TV.

The new US fall TV season has been a big disappointment. The only 2 shows I'm enjoying are Life On Mars and Eleventh Hour. I'm not sure whether the fact that both are remakes of British shows has anything to do with it.

Another Thailand screwup

You just had to know it was coming. PAD started it all. And now we've got a group of Thaksin followers, dubbed the Red Shirts, staging a protest in Bangkok.

This all has the potential to turn into a never-ending story that will send the country spiralling out of control.

Apparently the current government granted a five-day-long holiday to the working people to celebrate the New Year. At this rate, there won't be a lot of working people in Thailand pretty soon.

Fun Bit 009 - Stealing handbags after sex

News:

Yew Kin Wah, 39, went to Geylang and picked up a 34-year-old China woman for sex on Sept 4. He drove her to an open carpark at Aljunied industrial estate where they had sex outside the car. After sex, he drove off with her handbag containing $600 and a cellphone.

Five days later, he approached a 33-year-old China woman for sex. He took her to the open carpark at Geylang East industrial estate where he made off with her handbag with about $520 after sex.

On each occasion, he had agreed to pay them $50.

His lawyer, Mr Laurence Goh, said his client was having sex with the victims when he did not know that his $1 condoms broke. When the Chinese prostitutes realised that they had had unprotected sex, they were very angry and demanded $50 to a few hundred dollars more as compensation.

When Yew refused to give as he had no more money, the victims started to assault him and refused to let him leave, said the lawyer. So Yew drove off and tossed out their handbags while driving off. But in the case of the two victims, Mr Goh said they had apparently not seen the handbags being hurled and presumed Yew had taken them.

Fun:
1. Not sure who's more pathetic here: Yew Kin Wah or his laywer Laurence Goh for telling this crock of shit in court (and probably coming up with it too).

2. Those Chinese prostitutes are either very careless about carrying a lot of their money around or doing very well every night. Gotta be 10 pops each before they even met up with Yew Kin Wah. That's some loose pussy.

2008 In Review - Trips

As 2008 comes to an end, it's time to reflect back on some of the good stuff it brought. I'll start with my great trips of 2008. This excludes 2 short trips to KL in January and August.


08-16 June - Hua Hin and Bangkok, Thailand
Stayed At:
08-11 - Hua Hin Marriott Resort & Spa, Hua Hin
11-13 - Hilton Hua Hin Resort & Spa, Hua Hin
13-16 - Eastin Hotel and Spa, Bangkok

Background:
All thanks to a Team Conference held in Hua Hin. In my first visit to my favourite country since Chiang Mai in Feb 2006, happily extended the company-sponsored 3 nights with 2 more nights to fully explore Hua Hin and surrounding attractions and 3 nights in Bangkok.

Impressions:
A new destination to explore + an old favourite, good value hotels, free booze, Iron Man in a Bangkok cinema and a total of 8 nights in Thailand. Overall, a great fun trip.


09-13 August - Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Stayed At: Blue Lime. It had opened just days before we arrived, so new in fact that there wasn't a sign at the front door - that cost me some walking around with luggage. But nice hotel with pretty much all the furniture in concrete, loved the pool, great value for money at US$40 per night.

Background:
Booked this trip just 2 weeks before the departure date. Had considered Phnom Penh for the trip in November but dropped it in favour of HCMC. But when the long wait to November and a Jetstar promotion gave me itchy feet, Phnom Penh it was! Then dropped Jetstar because of their crappy schedules and this ended up as our first time flying SilkAir.

Impressions:
Was fun to visit a new city, a new country, even one with such a sad history. The motorcyclist taxis constantly hounding us and the beggar kids were a pain. But it was a beautiful place, easy to get around, easy to book sightseeing tours, with plenty of great and reasonably priced food.

Big fan of Cambodia's e-Visa system. Easy to use, pretty fast processing and it only cost US$25. This definitely makes it very attractive to visit Cambodia.


01-05 November - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Stayed At: Blue River Hotel. Continuing our trend of staying at cheaper but good hotels. This one cost US$27 a night. Will be hard to find a cheaper hotel anywhere else that's as good as this one.

Background:
Booked this trip way back in early July, before even the Phnom Penh trip. Our first time flying one of the budget airlines went to Jetstar. Our flights were alright and on time, so will probably use them again.

Impressions:
Again a city in a country I hadn't visited before, always fun to explore. Had read and heard a lot about how hard it is to cross the streets because of all the motorcycles but didn't really have that much trouble.

Loved Pho 24 and their Yoghurt dessert drinks, the excellent coffees available just about everywhere, the majestic Jesus statue and sunbathing in Vung Tao, the water puppet shows.

Not a big fan of the tour companies in Ho Chi Minh City. Limited tour choices, the prices really aren't that great and they're just too happy dumping 40 people in a coach instead of having smaller groups. It got even worse at the Cu Chi Tunnels, where our group got merged with at least 3 others. The tour guide, although funny with this $3-note jokes, didn't get a tip from us.

Also definitely not a fan of the hefty Vietnam visa fees which cost more than my plane ticket. Vietnam is a beautiful country but those visa fees will make me think twice before heading to Hanoi, Da Nang or any of their many places of interest.

Pussy Generation

News:
From Clint Eastwood's interview to Esquire a bit more than a week ago:

We live in more of a pussy generation now, where everybody's
become used to saying, "Well, how do we handle it psychologically?" In
those days, you just punched the bully back and duked it out. Even if
the guy was older and could push you around, at least you were
respected for fighting back, and you'd be left alone from then on.

Comments:
Pretty damn true. I'm sick of the constant over-analysing and resulting hypocrisy and ass-licking this world has come to.

Thailand Situation

For more than a week, the just-short-of-terrorist but short-sighted and terribly stupid PAD sent their idiot followers to Suvarnabhumi Airport. And stopped what is essentially the biggest source of revenue for the whole country. And paralysed and dirtied the name of my favourite country.

The main problem is that greed is ruling the minds of the guys in charge and the guys who want to be in charge. Too bad both sides have plenty of idiots around to follow their orders.

And I wish Thaksin would shut the fuck up too. He's only making everything worse. Doesn't he realise by now that there's no way he'll ever get back in power?

Anyway, since the siege stopped, there have been reports of the hotels in Bangkok running at 30% capacity, some luxury hotels even at 10%. Weirdly though, no mentions of discounts anywhere or I could have been tempted.

Requiem for a Dream

Fun Bit 008 - Babes Suffering

News:


Fun:
Obviously just a typo but the image of 432 babes getting sick off contaminated milk is funny. All that talk about Microsoft buying over Yahoo must have had the staff pretty distracted.

Fun Bit 007 - Gong Li looking for freedom

News:
News broke out about 2 weeks ago that Gong Li, the famous-to-Chinese-speakers actress, had become a Singapore citizen. And last Sunday, the Sunday Times ran an article about how Singaporeans are supposedly divided over this bit of extremely important news.

Extract from this gem of an article:

A Sunday Times online poll reveals that only 36 per cent of the 33 respondents think she should give up her China citizenship.

One netizen, Ramzi, wrote on a forum: 'She probably prefers Singapore because we have more freedom and a better quality of life. I have worked in Hong Kong and China and seen life there. It's definitely much better here.'

Fun:
1. More freedom here than in Hong Kong and China? Ramzi must surely not be referring to media freedom and freedom of expression. So fucking blatantly obvious and transparent.

2. 33 respondents?! That's all the people the Sunday Times could get in a week to respond to their online poll and they think it's worth running a second story? Pathetic.

Fun Bit 006 - Andy Murray the Bitter Idiot

News:
Andy Murray is mad that no Brit has won Wimbledon since 1936 and says nobody will own up to what's happening.


Fun:
Freaking hypocrite. How about him owning up to continuing the poor record since 2005? That's the year he turned pro and he only got to the 3rd round that year. Then he made it to the 4th round in 2006 but missed 2007's Wimbledon, supposedly because he was injured.

And what's this crap about having an autobiography when he's only 21 and hasn't won a major despite being in his 4th year as a pro? Underachievers shouldn't get autobiographies.

Fun Bit 005 - Mickey Roddick

I don't like Andy Roddick. He's a loud-mouth bad loser who really is only semi-funny when he loses. But I'm putting him up on here anyway because I derive great fun from seeing people that I don't like looking like dumbasses.

News:
Andy Roddick attending his own birthday party about a month ago.




Fun:
Seems the photographer thinks as much of him as I do.

Fun Bit 004 - ST puzzled

This is from the Straits Times frontpage two weeks ago. Can't really seem to make up their minds, can they?

MHA had to bail them out a few days later by writing to the ST Forum and clarifying exactly what the Minister meant.




And in that article about how some details about the escape will not be revealed, this gem from Minister of Prison Breaks Home Affairs:

Exposing these details in public will compromise the confidentiality which is necessary for ISD's security and intelligence operations to remain as effective as they have been.

Effective? Didn't seem to me that they were very effective on 27 Feb.

The Singapore brand betrayed

MM Lee commented not long ago that the Singapore brand is about efficiency, integrity and rule of law. Maybe he should have been asked whether he felt the Singapore brand has been betrayed by the debacle of Mas Selamat Kastari's escape on that one Wednesday afternoon.


Efficiency was sorely lacking when Singapore's police force allowed Mas Selamat Kastari, supposedly the most dangerous terrorist in their custody, to escape. The details about how he escaped were only made available on Thursday nearly 24 hours after the escape and those details are absolutely stupefying, ridiculous and hilarious. Especially for Singapore.

It was by no means a clever and intricate Prison Break-style escape. Mas was supposed to be escorted to a visit room because his family members came to visit him. He was allowed to go to the toilet (we will assume he was unsupervised) and escaped from there.

Everybody has watched dozens of movies and TV shows where the bad guy is allowed to go to the toilet on his own and then either commits suicide or escapes. But apparently, the Singapore Police Force did not.

Since the escape, the newspapers have been running stories about the measures being put in place to find Mas, presumably in an attempt by the Government to reassure Singaporeans and show how efficient they are now being. But if they really had been efficient in the first place, we wouldn't be hearing about this on a daily basis for almost 3 weeks now.


Integrity is still lacking. Nearly 20 days after the escape, the Minister of Home Affairs Wong Kan Seng has only offered a short statement of apology.

When it was time for the Ministers' pay raise last year, we heard about how supposedly the Ministers are the sole reason why Singaporean women aren't being exported to other countries to work as maids. They said, forget the thousands of people who work in the Ministries, forget the highly-paid consultants they employ, Ministers are the ones who do it all. If I was working for the government at the time, I'd have been pissed.

But apparently their supreme Minister taking-other-people's-credit attitude is not a "for better or for worse" kind of thing. Because oddly enough, we still haven't heard Wong Kan Seng take personal responsibility for this major screw-up and offer his resignation.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer not only has pretty good taste in women but has more integrity than Wong Kan Seng. He screwed (literally) up and has resigned, all in less time than has passed since Mas escaped.


Rule of Law is what is saving and will save Wong Kan Seng though. In any other country, the newspapers would have been on his back, pointing out what I pointed out in the previous section of this post.

But in Singapore, the newspapers are just a sad tool wrapped around the government's little finger. They won't ever say anything bad about the government and won't even publish any letter that directly criticises the government.

And that's the price to pay for a stable government.

Fun Bit 003 - Another Gaffe from ST

News: The picture posted on the front page of The Straits Times website on Sunday 3rd Feb 2008. Look closely.


Fun: When they are not making shameless amendments to their own headlines (see Media Freedom) to mislead the unsuspecting public, The Straits Times certainly is a very educational newspaper. In this case, a tit bit too educational.

One day later on 4th Feb, The Straits Times announced an editorial reshuffle supposedly meant to "streamline, strengthen coverage". Funny coincidence?

Media Freedom

Another bit of news reported and later shamelessly amended by The Straits Times, truly an independent and free newspaper.

Before

After

Can you spot the differences?

More ERP gantries - Government stupidity or greed?

Pasting below the contents of an email that I have just sent to: raymond_lim@mot.gov.sg; janice_quah@mot.gov.sg; mot@mot.gov.sg; cindy_lim@mot.gov.sg; soffy_hariyanti@mot.gov.sg; harold_lim@mot.gov.sg; lok_hong_leng@mot.gov.sg; neo_lay_yiing@mot.gov.sg; jasmine_tan@mot.gov.sg; verene_cheong@mot.gov.sg; evelyn_quek@mot.gov.sg; nazrana_zainuddin@mot.gov.sg

Rather than implementing ERP across the board like what you are doing, you should conduct an in-depth study of what exactly causes the slowdown on the roads and expressways or take a drive around the roads of Singapore.

You would find among other things that:
1. "clever" drivers who continuously zigzag their way through the expressways and other roads cause a significant slowdown behind them as other drivers have to slow to avoid the inconsiderate ones.
2. vans and lorries that jump without much warning into the middle lane of expressways slow down other people behind them.
3. motorcycles that can be seen in virtually every lane of expressways slow down bigger vehicles behind them because the motorcycles often drive in the middle of the lanes, thus overtaking a motorcycle ends up being as much work as overtaking another car.
4. the right-most lane is often not the fastest as vehicles have to use these lanes when they have to turn right into smaller roads. Not all roads in Singapore have a special right-turning lane and often that lane is too short.
5. the biggest slowdowns every morning along the TPE happen:
- from Exit 10 to slightly after Exit 9 due to merging from "clever" drivers who find it faster to take Exit 10 and rejoin the traffic further ahead
- and right after Loyang mostly due to poor road planning as the entrance to the PIE is way too close to the Loyang exit, thus ending up in a big slowdown with drivers along the TPE seeking to join the PIE and drivers from the Loyang exit worming their way to join the TPE towards Changi Airport and the ECP.

Lion Love

Fun Bit 002 - Tom Gay Cruise a Nazi

News: (extracted from an AFP article)
German historian Guido Knopp has compared a speech by Tom Gay Cruise to the Church of Scientology with a call to war by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

Mr Knopp, an expert on World War II history, said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag newspaper: 'Tom Gay Cruise's manner calls to mind Goebbels'. The historian was commenting on a video recording of a rousing sermon Cruise delivered to fellow Scientology members four years ago that was recently posted on the Internet.

The Mission Impossible star is seen asking fellow members of the church: 'Should we clean this place up?' Mr Knopp said it was bound to remind Germans of Goebbels' notorious call for 'total war' issued in Berlin on Feb 18, 1943.

'It is possible that the way in which Cruise speaks is common in many empowerment circles in the United States,' he said. 'But the scene in which Cruise asks if the Scientologists should clean up the world and they all respond 'yes' will remind any German with an interest in history of Goebbels' infamous Sports Palace speech.'

Fun:
When will this stupid idiot Tom Gay Cruise learn that his Scientology crap is causing him tremendous damage? Or is the fact that they cover up his gay penchant enough?

I Am Legend sucks

I wasted 90-100 minutes of my life last night watching I Am Legend. Boring movie with a pretentious title to boot, Will Smith only went into this one for the money.

If this movie had been released during the summer, it would have struggled to make even half of what it has made so far. But since it was released in the shit-but-profitable December dumping ground, it made tons of $$$. Like that other piece of crap Night At The Museum did in 2006.

No mistake about it though, this movie is not worth anybody's time and certainly not worth the increasingly expensive cinema ticket price. Good thing I didn't pay a cent to watch it. Now if only I could get those 1.5hrs of my life back.

Fun Bit 001 - Abe's shit

News:

Japan's former prime minister Shinzo Abe said earlier this week that he quit the post because of severe diarrhoea.

Fun:
So we can finally all agree that he was shit.