That pretty much sum up my feelings for the production of local tv drama.

Take this show for example.  Here’s a strong cast.  Good storyline to develop.  Relevant and compelling.  But what did the production team do?  They freaking ruin it by watering the content down to being a half-fa*k love rivalling story.  What they should have done is just pay the copyright to the story of Dr. Kumahige, and produce that.

They should have given more background information about the treatment use.  Explain what each needle & acu-point.  Give the names of the herbs, its property and what it can do.  Define the legal implications of the situations.  Basically, its the production team’s homework.  They are just too freaking cannot be bothered with their own production.  The whole show rest on the shoulders of the actors.  The problem with local production, they are too afraid to extend it out.

Do not do it like Taiwanese drama, where one good bye scene and drag on for 2 episodes…..

All the talks about looking into the grand scheme of things and weighing out the positive and negative are purely rubbish to appease the affected public and commerce that the event disrupted and not compensated for.

The street circuit that is to become of F1 race track.  It is worthy of a F1 event.  I just think that the event in itself has lots of rooms for improvement.

The race itself:  The driver that impressed me most is Lewis Hamilton.  Despite all the setback, I thought he finished strong.  However, he is becoming a driver that I love to hate.  Come on Lewis, be a villian.  Come back strong.  I like underdogs and you are becoming one.  I want you to be a Champion.

Disciplining the kid is a tough thing to do.  I dun want him to hate me, but I really see no choice since he is so freaking cute that he gets away with so many things.  He can be so cute when he is bordering between tears and controlling himself.  Its inevitable that my boy will decide not to listen to us at some point when we bring him out.  I decided that I will show some disapproval at that instance but not so much as to scolding him in public.  When we reach home, I will talk to him about what he has done wrong.  In the worst case scenario, I will give him a time out as punishment.  I really do not want to start physical discipline if I can possibly avoid it.  One thing that puzzled me is how my mother can maintain the anger that she had when she was disciplining me as a kid.

—

Seven Stages of Dementia
Stage 1:
No cognitive impairment

*Individuals lose the ability to walk without assistance, then the
ability to sit without support, the ability to smile, and the ability to hold their head up. Reflexes become abnormal and muscles
grow rigid. Swallowing is impaired.

—-

In conclusion, I have dementia.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/story/2011-09-13/white-castle-ny-lawsuit/50390006/1?csp=34news

Wait til he goes to Hong Kong.

I remember this building. By my time, the ground floor lobby is a traditional bakery.

I am disappointed with ah Ramsay in that he pointed out that Shark fin soup is nothing. I agree with the slaughter being cruel. But then who is to say that the cruelty is real and not created to intensify the scene. Also being a chef first, he should know that ‘texture’ is part of tasting food. Not just sweet and salt.

Also, the whole shark is usable. It is those fisherman who want to profiteer out of their own region that creates this cruelty.

While I am no fan of the current views of the Ex-Prime Minister, I must say that what he said is pretty universal in that it can be applied to a male as well as female. He could have easily tell a guy not to waste his time. But I have said it many times, people at his age should just retire and enjoy life. If his thinking is anything similar to my grandmother, it is tough to get any new facts into their world view.

In any case, if a guy in Singapore is given any more leave for having a child, he would be fired as he would be deem uncompetitive, expensive to hire and unproductive for the amount of time he would be gone from the office. The AWARE is probably unaware or does not want to be aware of the fact that male citizens have what we called national service here. Most of the combat fit personnel will be required to serve their reservists. Imagine if a guy is given paternity leave, how often he would be not in office? Maybe if AWARE should argue equal rights and responsibilities for women in this country. All females should have the rights to serve their country in national service, then we can talk more about equality.

-http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/ve-never-felt-prouder-singaporean-023104102.html

—-

Yahoo! Singapore reporter Jeanette Tan shares her experience spending two weeks in August in various parts of Spain for Catholic World Youth Day, an annual  gathering of  youth from around the world that culminates in a mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI.

COMMENTARY

Gratefulness and relief washed over me when our plane touched down at Changi Airport Terminal 3 last month.

I was grateful that my 13 friends and I were back home safely, health and belongingsmostly intact. Also, we were able to clear customs and baggage claims within 20 minutes, versus the full hour we spent waiting for a faulty conveyor belt to spit out our bags inBarcelona just a fortnight earlier.

More importantly, I was relieved to be back in a country without protests or unrest, with significantly lower risk of crazy weather, and where police officers knew where things were.

The opposite of these were precisely the challenges we faced in Madrid, the host city of this year’s Catholic World Youth Day (WYD). We dodged anti-Pope protests, were victims of last-minute program changes and were even locked out of the main area for the WYD mass, celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI, because organisers had grossly underestimated — by at least 200,000 people — the space required for the event.

That night, two girls in the group I was travelling with succumbed to exhaustion and almost suffocated from major overcrowding — one became dizzy and the other completely blacked out.

Shortly after both of them recovered, we were hit by a severe sand storm, and after it subsided, our attempts to approach nearby police officers for assistance to escort our friends back to our college came to naught (for most of the officers were on horseback or on motorcycles, and they all lacked blankets, knowledge of where the nearest medic tent was, or any practical means of helping us). The two girls ended up spending the night with us in the cold outside.

During that time, all I could think of was if such a major event had been hosted in Singapore, none of this would have happened — all pilgrims who were duly registered and had passes would not only have been able to gain admission to the main area, they would also have been able to access their allocated sectors in the area where mass was held. Toilets would not be choked and flooding, and volunteers and police would know how to get things done right.

I do understand, though, that global events are not the simplest things to organise, and I certainly salute the Spanish government for its bravery in hosting this celebration amid a stormy European economic climate. Unemployment in Spain, in particular, is at an all-time high. In August, it stood at 21.3 per cent, while youth unemployment was even more alarming: 45 per cent.

To give some perspective, that’s 4.9 million jobless Spaniards, according to the BBC – nearly the entire Singapore population of 5.08 million. In comparison, Singapore’s unemployment rate is below what some economists have termed “full employment“: 2.1 per cent. And it’s not just Spain — its neighbours Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Italy are also creaking under the weight of billion-dollar debt.

That said, it is true that our freedom of speech and expression may not be as liberal as it is in Spain, but I personally am thankful that we don’t see protests or city sit-downs anywhere near as often as they do. I think back to the Singapore-hosted Youth Olympic Games (YOG), a global event held at the same time last year that many Singaporeans denounced for poor organisation. And to be perfectly honest, I challenge anyone to dispute that Singapore did a better job with the YOG than Madrid did with WYD.

At the same time, I realise this year’s elections (both general and presidential) have shown that Singapore is at a crossroads now more than ever and that many of my fellow countrymen are grappling with a host of issues: rising cost of living, the steady influx of foreign talent, overcrowding and exorbitant housing prices, to name just a few.

But truly, I am glad to be Singaporean. My time in Spain has opened my eyes to the larger problems that the rest of the world faces. While there, all I heard about in the news was ofprotests in London, the rising death toll in Tripoli, and the ravages of Hurricane Irene. In contrast, our presidential elections, while important, just did not seem like a matter of life and death.

That is not to say that I don’t understand or acknowledge that all is not well in Singapore. The reality of life in this city-state resonates in me — I returned home to the very hefty $38,000 debt I still have with the bank from my four years of university tuition fees, a two-room flat in Sembawang I share with my elder sister, and endless concerns about how I will be able to afford what I will need to pay for in the forseeable future.

I, too, squeeze myself onto trains every morning, and cling to handrails on buses jammed in the central business district in the evenings. As a recent graduate, the competition with foreigners for jobs and opportunities is, and will be, a real life-long concern for me. Living on my own with my sister, the rising costs of food and household items have hit me harder than most for a person my age.