Monthly Archives: November 2007

Completely useless Christmas gifts: felt pebbles

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Completely useless Christmas gifts: Taser C2

OK, this is so not “com­pletely use­less”, I hear you say. Espe­cially since the

Terror on war: worst disguise award

Either no one told sus­pected Iraqi insur­gent Haider al-Bahadli that Hal­loween was over, or he was gun­ning for the World’s Worst Dis­guise Award. He and his “groom” were picked up at a secu­rity check­point who sus­pected some­thing was amiss with the “wed­ding con­voy”, because the con­voy car­ry­ing the “wed­ding party” were all men, bar al-Bahadli,

Hello, fine snack, please to meet you

We vis­ited a newish mall called The Cen­tral, not to be con­fused with Cen­tral Mall, a cou­ple of days ago, because unbe­knownst to us, Liang Court was being ren­o­vated when we went there to take din­ner. It’s absolutely ok if that was the clunki­est sen­tence you’ve ever read, because at The Cen­tral Not To Be

The librarian tried his darndest

The Ask The Librar­ian ser­vice emailed me with his team’s find­ings, and found the most likely site of Tan Seng Poh’s man­sion: You might find this use­ful. Excerpt from: Title: One hun­dred years’ his­tory of the Chi­nese in Sin­ga­pore / Song Ong Siang ; intro­duc­tion by Edwin Lee. Author: Song, Ong Siang, Sir, 1871–1941. Pub­lisher:

Completely useless Christmas gifts: The Back Up

When I was in the Army, some­one gave me a gift which was sup­posed to be the China Army ver­sion of the Swiss Army knife. We know the lat­ter to be chock full of use­ful tools which you might need, like a fold­away mag­ni­fy­ing glass to look for the tiny screw which you’ve strug­gled to

An open sandwich to the Prime Minister

If any­thing the lat­ter half of this year has been remark­able for, it’s been the “open debate” we’ve heard about but rarely expe­ri­enced. There’s been more “open let­ters” lately than I care to remem­ber. Even the doyenne of Sin­ga­pore Lit has set up a web­site for such a pur­pose. Sure, prices are going up, and

The librarian’s on it

If only Michael Faye did this instead…

I don’t keep my car well. I don’t like wash­ing it, and it’s not a good thing that it’s a black car, because it’s usu­ally so dusty it’s more like a shade of dark grey. I’ve had peo­ple fin­ger paint on my car the usual epi­thets — “wash me”, “dirty fel­low”, and “www.washme.com”. But a cou­ple

iPhoney Christmas

Christ­mas is nigh, and if you’re won­der­ing what to get your loved ones for Christ­mas, keep think­ing. There are too many things to buy, and very lit­tle money to go around. The iPhone’s been launched in Europe, but because the rest of Asia’s the back­wa­ter of the world, it’s not here yet. It’s the very lat­est