Two stars of hit British TV show “I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!” are facing animal cruelty charges for killing and eating a rat during filming in Australia, activists said Monday.

Celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo and soap star Stuart Manning were charged over the incident at the weekend, an RSPCA official told AFP.

David O’Shannessy, RSPCA chief inspector for New South Wales, said the maximum penalty for “aggravated animal cruelty” was two years’ jail and a 22,000 dollar (20,000 US) fine under state laws. “There’s no doubt that animals are killed every day for human consumption, but the legislation provides that that occurs in a manner that causes no unnecessary pain, distress or suffering,” he said. O’Shannessy, who did not say how the rat was killed, quoted state legislation that bans “the staging of any act that intentionally endangers, kills, injures or abuses an animal”.

Police said two men aged 33 and 30 were charged with “the offence of animal cruelty” and were due to face magistrates on February 3. The show’s website lists the special skill of D’Acampo, the competition’s eventual winner, as “getting creative with jungle rations”.

The Italian-born chef served the rat with rice, describing it as “the best recipe I ever did”.

The programme pitted 13 celebrities in a jungle endurance test where they were forced to eat “bush tucker” such as witchetty grubs and kangaroo testicles. “To me it’s a nonsense that they’ve been charged with killing a rat, which people hate,” British TV chef Antony Worrall Thompson told Sky News.

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My contention here is that the treatment of camels (where were eventually being culled) due to the drought in the same country.

I had a schedule running in my head… every now and then, I will call up those people whom I have been out of touch with.  Its not really difficult these days with all the social network tools available on the net.  Without being too intrusive, we can share our lives with people of whom we really have no reason to call and ask ‘hey, what you do recently?’ but we really have no reason to unfriend them.

On my Facebook, I have 237 friends.  Only a handful of them that I have no idea who they are.  On my other Facebook, I have 1,387 friends.  I had no idea who any of them are.  They are just my gaming friends.  The problem with these games is that they require you to have a large network.  But I really do not want to sort through the updates of my real life friends and my virtual friends….

So its December already.  The horrible month of Chrismas.  I hate Christmas.  I absolutely hate the connotation of it.  All the presents and the materialism that is associated with it.  All the false feeling of friendliness.  Really.. I do not need Christmas to have the Christmas spirit.  In December, I am just as friendly, or grumpy, as I am in June.  I do not need a date to be mushy.  So do come celebrate Christmas.  But please leave the presents behind.

So what do I have in the coming week?  I am meeting my wow gaming friends tomorrow.  Along the week, I need to meet with Lisa, Ling x2, William and my bro.  On different timing of coz…since they pretty much had nothing to do with on another.  Oh ya..that reminded me.  Someone aeroplaned me again last week.  We made plans to have dinner.  I was waiting for that call that never quite came.  Sorry for being faithless about this appointment being kept…But at least I was not disappointed and I was right (again).

So I am into the second week of December.  2 more weeks and I will be done with work for the rest of the year.  That sound so nice.  I promised to bring my boy to go swimming.  So I will do that once my leave starts.

I need to think of how I want to do my things during my leave.  Otherwise, it will just be crapped away.

My wife went for lasik day before.  I took some time off from work to accompany her through the process.  I was doing what I thought was appropriate for a husband to do.  To be there when she needs me.  Well, I may not make it every time, but I am sure going to try.

I am just surprised by the number of comments that I got on my Facebook about ‘how loving I am towards my wife’.  I mean.. Dun your spouse or partner does the same for you?  Well, I admit that some of them are just praises for me.  So I thank you for them.  I know because I am aware that their spouse or partner are just as such.  They make time for each other in time of need.

Recently, a lady friend of mine was confronted with the issue of her domineering husband having an affair.  In summary, she has made her case with the third party, who had been misled by the guy.  Both ladies met the guy.  The couple made up and the third party left.  The guy is now going through her phone messages and msn messages.  I received a message to ‘not contact (her) unless she contact me’.  Err..ok..can’t even say ‘hi, whats up?’.

I really dun know.  I dun meet her much.  In fact, in the last 5 years, I only met her twice.  We just say ‘hi’ to each other once in a while over online messaging.  I really want to be a supporting friend, but I really dun see a point.  So today, I promptly deleted her from my list of contacts.  I have no need for contacts whom I do not contact on my contact list.

I just think that couple should be there for each other.  Family needs to be there for family.  And friends need to be there for their friends.  Otherwise, if we could delete them from our contact list, then we should delete them.  We only have so much time in our lives.  I rather we keep it for people who deserves it.

There are probably not a lot of worse off places in the world.  This is a tiny spot of desert.  Someone decided to build a city in the middle of nowhere.  Property prices will be cheap when it first started.  As it grows, its businesses decided to borrow more money to build the place.  Its a show piece to the world.  What man can build.

It is hardly a new idea.  Look at Las Vegas.  Only that the guy who first thought of this idea was ruthlessly murdered for spending money into this ridiculous idea of building a hotel in the middle of nowhere.  It took a long time before success came to that place.

Then here we have this bright idea again.  People and businesses started lending money to this idea.  The only reason is that they thought that it has the unlimited backing of rich neighbours.  Hence greed took over good sense.  Also, the perceived value of a worthless piece of land is becoming a overpriced piece of land.  With technology and money pouring into maintaining the place, it is more like a sink hole.

How did this idea ever took off again is beyond my understanding.  Sure it is all a grand idea of building an oasis out of a dust pot.  Wake up… this is a diaster waiting to happen.  Maybe it will be the greatest commercial center of all time in the future.  But then again, its a risky business at best.

You telling me that you didn’t see it coming?

I found this little summary on the web.

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Nov 30, 2009
Fight alternative values

Archbishop tells them to recognise family as cornerstone of faith
By Yen Feng

THE leader of Singapore’s 30,000- strong Anglican community yesterday called on his followers to unite against ‘alternative cultures’ and recognise the family as a cornerstone of faith-building.

‘There’s hardly any consensus on mainstream values,’ Archbishop John Chew said in a sermon to about 10,000 people during the Church’s centenary service at Suntec City, citing the spread of ‘alternative’, ‘fringe’ and ‘fundamentalistic’ values.

Speaking to The Straits Times after the service, Dr Chew, who is also president of the National Council of Churches of Singapore, said he was referring to the erosion of mainstream culture by homosexuality, rampant materialism and religious extremism.

He spoke on the need for ‘classical compositions’ of family structures – father, mother and children – instead of non-traditional ones consisting of single, divorced or same-sex parents.

He said the West has had to face the consequences of the rise of non-traditional family structures and ‘alternative’ cultures.

In his sermon, he also spoke on the importance of procreation within the family structure. Referring to the low fertility rate, he said if Singaporeans do not produce enough babies, ‘the danger is that the mainstream population, its socio-cultural norms and ethos, will dwindle and diminish down the generations.’

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I do not know who this Doc Chew is.  What’s up, doc?  But I found this article being very disturbing.

Firstly, it smells of intolerance.  Secondly, it smells of generalization.  Thirdly, it just smells.

Homosexuality and same-gender parenthood – Right or wrong, I do not know.

Putting ‘Single, Divorced and Same-gender parenthood’ as one category – Right or wrong, I do not want to discuss either.

So…I skipped the discussion of all the above.  What else are there to talk about?  Well, the not so obvious.

Putting blame on erosion of mainstream culture due to other factors – It sounds like pushing the blame.  There are enough problems of families WITH classical compositions.

By putting emphasis that we derived the upkeep of our moral values from classical compositions of a family, it will cause a lot of stress to the children of the UNclassical compositions.  The children have no choice. They are the real victims. They will (if not already) get discriminated against.

So what if a family has classical compositions?  What if the father figure is a drug addict?  What if the mother figure is a compulsive gambler?  What if the only way to feed the baby brother is to steal milk powder from the store?  Just having a classical composition does not mean anything, Doc…  Try to live in the real world for a while, won’t you?

If the society is starting to be dominated by the not-so-mainstream-now culture, then it will become the dominating mainstream.  Such is evolution, Doc…learn to accept it.

I do not know who you are or who you think you are.  You may be the nicest guy in the world, but you are so full of **** from what this article said about your thinking.

Edited Additions:

I happened to chance upon the full article.  I must add… Doc, you are really a weird piece of work.  So if your faction in this country is united and so unlike the faction of the same name in the west.  They are divided.  Err…. you are part of the same faction, whether you like it or not OR whether you are in the East or West, your faction is divided.

Besides, this faction is hardly the MAINSTREAM of the chinese culture that you have obviously descended from… so much for having some standards.

‘Live for nothing. Die for something.’ – John Rambo

When we talked about Rambo, we often associate the series of movies with violence, muscles over brains, blood and gore. Maybe we had been selective. Maybe the dialogues are too little. But there is actually a lot of issues faced by soldiers returning from wars. We are confronted with personal issues at every point in our lives. We put a lot of blame in our surroundings.

Recently, I was talking to a number of my younger friends, who are still schooling. One of them is talking about the lack of options in his choice of studies. He is being put into a course which he has absolutely no interest in. And he is collecting failing in each semester. He said that he would like to do Mass Communication and possibly do Public Relations work. He said that he could write. As my usual self, I was being very harsh with him.

I asked him how much time is he spending to review his studies and does he know what is PR work? His reply was 2 hours a day as a lot of time is needed to travel to school. He feels that PR work is interacting with people and writing in a positive way of the companies engaging a PR company. That is a lot of excuses and a very shallow understanding of PR work.

Unfortunately for him, I have a bit of experience in PR work, which consists of a lot more writing than he expected. It also consists of a lot of ‘studying’ into areas that he may or may not be interested in. So I told him to write a summary of each module that he attended every day. He was shocked and came with a lot of excuses of how tough it is for him.  Furthermore, I cannot imagine having two hours every day to review his schoolwork as sufficient. Given school is 9 hours, sleep is 8 hours, travelling is 3 hours (which is ridiculous in this country in my opinion), there is still 4 hours left. He should have another 2 hours to spend on his school work. When we told him that there should still be free time in between modules, he came up with the lame excuse of not feeling like looking at his studies to ‘clear (his) mind’.

To me, these are issues that he has to come to terms with. If he cannot graduate from his course, it also mean that he will not be able to cope with the PR work that he so desire to work in. We all have personal issues and surrounding pressures. We have to come to terms with them by ourselves. Sure, it will be great to get some external help. But if we do not use those help to propel us towards the direction we want to go, then its just wasted effort. Then again, who the hell am I to advise him? But I do not have the compassion to comfort him. To me, he just need to face up to the harsh reality. That’s life, pal.

I do not support excessive physical punishment.  But my belief is that physical punishment has its place in the education of one’s child.

When I was growing up, visible physical marks of a cane is enough to shame me from doing the wrong things again.  Times have changed.  But is it for the better?

The newspaper reported this:

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A MAN was charged in a district court on Wednesday with ill-treating his year-old son.

The 36-year-old coordinator, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the child, allegedly slapped the toddler’s cheeks and hit his right arm, causing him unnecessary physical pain on Feb 18.

His lawyer, Mr Lai Kwok Seng, told the court that he would be making representations.

The case is scheduled for a pre-trial conference in a Community Court on Dec 7.

Anyone convicted of ill-treating a child under his care and custody can be fined up to $4,000 and/or jailed for up to four years.

–

We need to know more details than what is offered in this summary report.  But if  a light slap is considered as ill-treatment…..we will be looking at more problems in near future.

In another perspective, I have observed that I will need to break into a smile to greet my 1 year old.  Even on days when I am beat and tired.  The kid could not care less that I had a lousy day.  Just to get his attention, I have to put up an exaggerated greeting.

Baby Xavier is 1 year old. We decided to throw a party for him at our new home.

We prepared most of the food by ourselves.  Everyone put in at least a dish.  So its a lot of preparation while trying to keep away from getting into each other foot.

Baby Xavier was in a fantastic mood that day.  He got lots of gifts, hugs and carry carry.  To people who say that we should not babytalk to babies….well, its just too bad coz even between my wife and I, we babytalk.

Thats the baby cheering to you.

Here’s a photo of great grandma and baby X.

That’s our little family.

Baby X’s Godfamily.

Baby X’s birthday cake.

We are getting ready form a family party for Baby X first birthday party. We have decided to prepare the food by ourselves. The biggest issue is keeping the food warm. So I have contacted a number of catering equipment rental companies for that.

As we are preparing the food ourselves, I need to come up with the list of food that we will be serving. So here’s the list:

- Sotong Ball/Fish Ball
- Fried Rice (Luncheon meat, mixed peas, eggs, dried cuttle fish, prawns)
- Fried Bee Hoon (Milly is cooking this)
- Sambal Eggs or Devilled Eggs
- Fish Cutlet (I am buying these)
- Fried Chicken Wings (Ordering these as well)
- Curry Chicken (My Milly has a hellish flavored recipe)
- Satay (Ordering as well)
- Otah (Ordering too)
- Mixed Veg with Tofu
- Friut Jelly (My younger sister-in-law making these)
- Cake (Whats a birthday party without cake?!)