Viswa Sadasivan seems to be hitting all the right buttons, at least for now. Despite being very adamant about the need for the Singapore Government to change its deeply ingrained (and unfortunately outdated) perception of the attitudes of its own citizens and relinquishing its hard-handed control over the mainstream media, he provides balance to his argument by giving credit where it is due. Kudos to him for providing a breath of fresh air in the local political scene as a non-partisan figure who has (so far) spoken with a great deal of wisdom.

Mainstream media needs to rebuild broken trust ( theonlinecitizen.com )

the original article from which this quote is retrieved has been removed from theonlinecitizen,
the reason for which is this. a related article is available here.

Since being lambasted by the MM (Minister Mentor) for having ‘highfalutin’ ideals, Viswa Sadasivan, Nominated Member of Parliament and former senior manager of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) has been transformed into the darling of the online world. After all, it is not everyday that the ageing MM becomes agitated enough to personally intervene in parliament. [2] Even so, Viswa, an admittedly non-partisan politician, does not appear to relish the limelight, nor does he take a stand against the MM.

Recognizing the tendency for some sections of the internet readership to mercilessly engage in government-bashing, he views his exchange with the MM not with fear, but with a healthy respect that one might give to one’s grandfather… …

kami warga negara Singapura
sebagai rakyat yang bersatu padu
tidak kira apa bangsa, bahasa, atau ugama
berikrar untuk membina suata masyarakat yang demokratik
berdasarkan kepada keadilan dan persamaan
untuk mencapai kebahagian, kemakmuran, dan kemajuan bagi negara kami

I’m Chinese, not Malay. But does it matter? I am Singaporean, and despite the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies which I stand against, this is my country, and this is my pledge. Our pledge. Ikrar kita. For a reason unbeknownst to even myself, I have preferred to recite the pledge in its Malay form for a couple of years already. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? Perhaps it’s the way my favourite phrase in the pledge invokes a strong wave of emotion – “kepada keadilan dan persamaan” (based on justice and equality). Maybe it’s the powerful visions of hope it contains – a hope that the nation we live in can yet be so much better. I’m no constitutional law expert, but I know what my pledge means, and I believe in it.

Read the rest of this entry »

For those geeky enough to remember the BOFH, here’s a modern-day (or Web 2.0 if that’s what you want to call it) variation on the same theme of dispensing evil, catastrophe-inducing advice to mind-numbingly stupid support requests.

For all that’s been said about Youtube’s massive content delivery infrastructure (in it’s post Google acquisition days), here’s a light-hearted look at what they were, or might have been like prior to that. From the days of yore when Youtube was still a (relatively) smallish start-up, Serverbeach bids a fond farewell to one of their biggest accounts.

The Preamble - It’s been more than a month since I last wrote a journal-style blog entry, and more than two months since the last entry that was decently substantial and coherent enough. Many things have happened, many circumstances have changed, and there is so much that I’ve been thinking about. Having had little opportunity or motivation to write in prose for a very long time, it is evident that many of my sentences tend to be short and disjointed. At times, I struggle to find words that allow me to express myself. It is a seemingly impossible task to organize these thoughts, but I’ll try.

Read the rest of this entry »

I saw this youtube clip on topgear.com today. I can’t say that I like the Soul, especially the awful rear-end; but the combination of precision driving and formations are quite amusing really – it ought to be worth 90 seconds of your time.

I am a free man. For now.
There is so much I would like to write, yet so little that I can put in the public domain.
The heart tells me to be verbose, yet the mind restrains such impulses.
Perhaps my freedom is but an illusion.

Morning – Woke up to the sun shining into my room. It felt good to wake up to the natural lighting of the morning sun instead of the glaring fluorescent tubes that have rudely shocked me into consciousness each morning for the past 15 days. Had mee siam for breakfast at my own time and pace. The experience of doing something I wanted to do, at my own time and pace felt odd, something like a sense of deja vu where there is a nagging feeling that you’re doing something that you’ve done before, yet that recollection feels so distant and remote. Being isolated from the outside world for a considerable period of time can play tricks with your mind.

Noon – Had JC percussion batch lunch or simply, lunch with jh, 41, dx, christal, andrea, mel and myself at Aston’s. It was something that I’d been looking forward to for 16 days. Decided to splurge on a nice steak. It was good, but for some reason, my tastebuds seem to have dulled. There wasn’t that sense of ecstasy that usually occurs when I taste something good. I’ll have to work on regaining my sense of taste after all this is finally over and I regain some sense of normalcy in life.

Afternoon – After lunch, we walked from Dhoby Ghaut to 记得吃 at Bugis for dessert (as usual?). I had a combination of mango and tauhuay, which was pretty good, but not particularly special. We then ended up walking around Bugis and for some reason, ended up at Raffles City where jh, 41 and I had Fried Mars Bars at Chippy’s. Yes, as you’ll probably have realized, our outings involve a lot of food. We continued to stone at the basement of Raffles City (in the food section obviously) for awhile and the girls left, presumably bored by our inability to talk about things beyond the scope of the cocoon that we are trapped inside for most of the time. jh, 41, dx and I then walked back to Dhoby Ghaut where jh left for dinner. 41, dx and I then went up to Best Denki to get earphones for dx.

Evening - Ended up going back to Raffles City for dinner. The 68 class dinner (I missed the marina barrage outing in the afternoon) was supposed to be at some place in Central but we ended up at Shokuden in Raffles City instead. Had this salmon-omellete-and-fried-rice thing. I don’t know what it’s called since I don’t speak japanese but it was pretty good. Lunch and dinner today wasn’t exactly cheap, but when all you know is the sweet taste of freedom, you tend to lose all sense of practicality. Most importantly, it was good to see the class together again. A good portion of it at least. I can only say that I hope we can continue to get together every now and then, just to talk, eat, play, and relive shared memories. After dinner, a handful of us headed to the Civilian War Memorial just opposite Raffles City to sit around and talk. We weren’t there for very long since it was pretty late. I took the mrt home with eric. He told me about life in ocs. It seems like last week or just last month when I was talking to him on the mrt the weekend before he relinquished his freedoms as a civilian. And now, here I am, being assimilated (willingly or not) into the island while he’s somewhere in jurong going through certain things that I cannot even begin to imagine.

Thoughts – Ideals and constitutional values of freedom are just words on paper until you truly understand what it means to be free. My spirit will not be broken. I will be free again some day. For now, I’m just glad to have had this day and the chance to meetup with these people, most of whom mean much to me in life. I am thankful.

I’ve reskinned my blog once again. No, it isn’t suffering from a case of identity crisis, unlike the topic of my previous post. It’s just that the previous theme wasn’t too shabby but the color scheme made it look really bad on low-contrast monitors (think dull, gloomy and despondent). This one ought to look a lot simpler, more light-hearted, and just better.

For those of us who are (still) on Facebook, almost all of us that is, the not-so-recent changes in the structure of it’s homepage have probably changed the way we use and think of Facebook, whether we realize it or not.

Read the rest of this entry »