Monthly Archives: January 2008

Beyond Words

Spain should be the coun­try with the tourist board tagline we wear so proudly. OK, not so proudly, but with a befud­dled expres­sion and lips mouthing a “har?” (Only jok­ing, don’t take my link off your page) As I was say­ing, Spain. She doesn’t have words to her national anthem. How bizarre. Imag­ine if we

Twinkle, twinkle little star, turn on the lights of your car

Naomi and I are pleased to announce that it works! The sig­nal works. Ear­lier tonight, an MPV dri­ver was bar­relling down the ECP, along with his MPV of course, but with­out the MPV’s head­lights on. For­tu­itously, I was bar­relling down the ECP on the out­side lane close enough to him to pull along­side safely and

Well done mates

Pic­ture: New Zealand Her­ald Some­time in August 1991, my kayak­ing part­ner and I tried to keep a watch out on the hori­zon for any sign of land­fall as we sought to reach Tioman Island in Pahang State by kayak. It was the twelfth day of our trip, and we’d just endured what we felt was

Another world first

Now, where did we keep the park­ing coupons? Cos we’re gonna be here for awhile… — Photo by Tel­star Logis­tics Sin­ga­pore Air­lines now holds the record for the first Air­bus A380 to be stuck on a grass verge. None were hurt, except for Sin­ga­pore Air­lines, who also suf­fered the ignominy of hav­ing this piece of

Less useless

Now you can par­a­lyze would-be assailants to your own beat! The

Espire” already, are you sure can use?

Unfor­tu­nate name for a con­dom, given the local vari­a­tion in pro­nounc­ing cer­tain words: Tech­no­rati Tags: con­dom, name, engr­ish, singlish, sin­ga­pore, 7–11, <a href=“http://www.technorati.com/tag/it” onclick=“javascript:_gaq.push([’_trackEvent’,‘outbound-article’,‘www.technorati.com’]);“s a store and more” rel=“tag”>it’s a store and more, branding

Highway codes

Photo by ohad* The other day while dri­ving home, Naomi asked me what the uni­ver­sal sign for “your head­lights are not on, please turn them on because it’s night­time and you’re being a com­plete idiot if you don’t turn them on right away”? was. I told Naomi that I didn’t know, but that I had

The lengths some go to get their ang pow

Photo by @Dmateur Chi­nese New Year must be near if “Boy falls while per­form­ing lion dance on poles”. I laughed out loud, and kept laugh­ing until I stopped. OK, I know it’s bad to laugh at the mis­for­tune of oth­ers, but a head­line like that is funny in so many ways. Not least, because it’s

Battling the news

I don’t know what a “laissez-faire atti­tude towards weight” means. Does it mean the gov­ern­ment doesn’t care whether you’re fat or not? Or does it mean that you shouldn’t inter­fere with the weight of oth­ers? These are the first of the dif­fi­cult issues of the new year one finds in one’s nation’s pre­mier news media

With a bang (and a slight dent)

I wished a total stranger Happy New Year in Man­darin, even though he had just crashed into the front pas­sen­ger door of my car right after he rode his bicy­cle on the pave­ment against the flow of traf­fic that was on the road out­side the entrance to my apart­ment blocks. In response, he said, “対不起対不起対不起対不起新年快乐対不起対不起対不起対不起対不起対不起対不起”