Today’s Reads (May 01)

• Island sits in an ocean of economic turbulence

  from Chemical Generation Singapore

• No Sir! I Don’t Think You are a Talent! Sir!!

  from Stressed Teacher

• The wisdom of the crowds

  from theonlinecitizen

• The Problem With Error Messages

  from Mr Wang Says So

• The Spirit of Mambo Jumbo

  from Perspective Unlimited

• When the shit hits the fan

  from Two steps from twilight

• Sexism Watch #4: The Singapore Government Thinks Mothers…

  from SingaporeSurf

• Thai Information Minister Says Singapore’s Temasek Should Not Be Prosecuted

  from SingaporeSurf

Advertisement

The Great Debate in Chernobyl! This Sunday at 8.00 pm.

Dear Valued Readers,

I have good and bad news for you. The good news is that another great debate will be held on the 6th of May this coming Sunday at an earlier time of 8.00pm (Singapore time).

The bad news is we have been kicked out from the “Great Hall.” I will not elaborate further except to say it is in part due to darkness colorful usage of language and Dr Chandra’s personal references.

But I am sure Chernobyl will do quite nicely to accommodate us all. We in the brotherhood did not encounter any problems making a booking in the town hall in Chernobyl. We have the whole town hall to ourselves (not that we needed any advance reservations).

In Search of Noah (Travelogue)

The skipper of the “Petrov” blared out.

“What can you boys do?”

“Anything providing you take us in your boat to Istanbul for our connecting flight.”

I try out my Jedi mind trick, by repeating the words,

“There is always a need for hands.”

Yahn, the Cypriot skipper looks at me strangely as if he just realized he talking to mad man. He eyeballs us sideways and tips his fifth vodka down strokes his stubble and lights another cigarette – it seems to be working he’s mulling over the offer.

“It will be hard work and only food and lodging…but you can eat as much as you want.”

Then pausing for a while Yahn turned to us,

“Only one rule…no questions…do you understand?”

We shook on the deal. I repeated the words,

“No questions.”

The following morning before dawn we loaded up on the Ukrainian research vessel called the “Petrov.”

Weekend Bulletin (Apr 29)

• Kuan Yew In The Spotlight

  from SCN @ Star

• In Defence of Our Education System Part 3

  from Stressed Teacher

• Budget 2007 Debates: Ministry of Community Development,…

  from Siew Kum Hong

• Questions for Oral Answer: 10 April 2007

  from Siew Kum Hong

• Lee Kuan Yew’s Laughable Matter

  from Mr Wang Says So

• Lee Kuan Yew on Emigration

  from Mr Wang Says So

• Magazine Asks To Use British Counsel In Defamation…

  from SingaporeSurf

• Digging into foundations is mischief

  from Yawning Bread Sampler

• Socio Economic Demographics and Political Discourse…

  from The Craftsman’s Forge

• One is not born a bigot but becomes a bigot

  from To Fix a Mocking Peasant

• The treaty

  from My sketchbook

Wow. I Didn’t Know Dick Lee could get so Political.

Dick Lee @ His 30th Anniversary Concert, 2004

“Count On Him, Singapore”

 

The video should be understood in the context of this and this.

See also Dick Lee’s “Rasa Sayang”

Today’s Reads (Apr 26)

• What is CPF really for?

  from this lush garden within

• The Malaysian brain drain

  from Hear ye! Hear ye!

• Alan Johnston: BBC Journalist

  from nofearSingapore

• Make it a fair game for all

  from Siew Kum Hong

• Straits Times article on 14 April 2007 on ministerial…

  from Siew Kum Hong

• Singapore-Indonesia Relations

  from BEYOND SG

• Pilots denounced for demanding pay hikes!

  from Diary of A Singaporean Mind

• Our extraordinary politicians….

  from My sketchbook

• Highly paid moral weasels

  from Yawning Bread Sampler

One Afternoon at Uncle Joe’s (Travelogue)

Everyone knows where Josef Stalin was born, in the republic of Georgia in Gori, but I bet you didn’t know where he spent most of his time when he was puffing his pipe. The location was kept a secret till sometime in the late 1980’s for fear that it would be transformed into a post Stalinist shrine. You be glad to know in this travelogue special, we the brotherhood press managed to ferret out Uncle Joe’s hide out. It’s not easy getting there, like all sensible dictators Stalin was intensely paranoid so even the location isn’t featured in the local maps and its smack in the middle of no where.

Some 10 miles from the Black Sea in Abkhazia just next to a corn yellow Byzantium domed monastery is a heavily camouflaged double storey building surrounded by a thicket of cedar trees. Even from this distance of less than 200 meters we could have easily missed it, but our gypsy guide Anatoly insist its there. “Where is it?” I ask, “There! Cant you see it” he blares out – we stop and peered with field glasses, nothing. Suddenly a shape appears followed by another angular form, the invisible house surfaces.

This was where Stalin worked, lived and played.

Today’s Reads (Apr 24)

• Singapore Relents To Sign Extradition Treaty

  from Singapore Angle: Perspectives

• A tale of two companies

  from Singapore’s Land Transport

• Ba Chor Mee Part 2 : Time to arrest Mr. Brown!!!

  from Diary of A Singaporean Mind

• The oracle from St James

  from Yawning Bread Sampler

• Lee Kuan Yew on Homosexuality

  from Mr Wang Says So

• The Economics Of Singapore’s Future Politics

  from Celluloid Realities

Today’s Reads (Apr 23)

• Extraordinary Leaders + Island = Singapore!

  from Diary of A Singaporean Mind

• moving pebbles

  from Fearfully Opinionated

• Danish citizen responds to MM Lee’s “mediocre government”…

  from this lush garden within

• Leaving without a Conscience or Leaving for a Conscience?

  from To Fix a Mocking Peasant

• Idealism vs Realism

  from The Hammersphere

• In Defence of Our Education System Part 2

  from Stressed Teacher

Today’s Reads (Apr 22)

• Politics Of A Different Hue

  from SCN @ The Star

• Time to move up the ladder

  from Hear ye! Hear ye!

• MR4 Benchmark – Is Retaining Talents in the Civil Service the only reason?

  from Singapore Angle

• In Defence of Our Education System

  from Stressed Teacher

• Fiscal Finagling or Journalistic Bollocking?

  from Perspective Unlimited

• Gobsmacking days

  from Yawning Bread Sampler

• Interesting news report

  from Hear ye! Hear ye!

• The Unnecessary Pains of Learning

  from Mr Wang Says So

The Reason Why You Write…..

Have ever asked yourself why you write?

These thoughts clung to me like seaweed throughout the course of the morning when I woke up earlier than usual to ride my bike in Bukit Timah. It was quiet, dark and a slight mist hung over the jungle – then it came again – the question – this time in whispering rush,

“Have you ever asked yourself, why do you write the things you do?”

I brushed the question off, clipped into the pedals, felt the tug. The chain settled over the sprockets; soon the familiar feel of the meshing, followed by the forward glide – man and machine barreled into darkness, spokes cutting against the wind, the give of crushed leaves, a rattle and shake – then it came again:

“Why do you write the things you do?” The jungle whispered.

The Road to Radomyshl’ (Travelogue Special)

In the village of Radomyshl’, a neighborhood in the periphery of bordering Kiev and Zhytomyr, a small community of Rhoma (Gypsies) carve out an existence in an abandoned mining town. The local town council has offered them a piece of land where a scrap yard once stood, but the farmers are preventing this offer – they want them out. It’s a tale that’s retold again and again throughout Russia – no one wants the “Chernyi” – a derogatory term that simply means, “black.” Not that they are black of course, some of them even have green eyes and blond hair which they insist on dyeing black.

In Russia, as in many places in the Balkans, race is constructed culturally in a way that overlaps it with other categories of social life which may not refer only to one’s complexion.

“Blacks” also can be marked as a style, by a certain kind of dress code or manner of behavior. The Rhoma we met up with do not dress in the fashion of Gypsies in films but they do stand out with their wide brimmed cowboy hats and elaborate jewelry.

A Russian kiosk operator told us,

“You can recognize those scum, they speak with their hands and fingers and through their pet monkeys not like us Russians, be careful where those fingers end up, better hide your wallets when you see them.”