SINGAPORE SHORT STORIES

World Cup is over. I believe everyone is feeling slightly depressed these days. We know the score: Spain: 1, Holland: 0. Luckily, we have the "wave song" to cheer us up. To this, Netizens: 1 PUB: 0! Why do I say that? Just view the musical below and you would find out. This wave song is a spoof on the original World Cup 2010 song, which you can view on the bottom video.

If you are one of the many Singaporeans who do mind very much paying around $90 buck to watch the world cup 2010 games, you can refer to this site for a list of places to watch the world cup for free!

Every Wednesday night of this month, I have been keeping up with a travel show on local channel, Channel U where host, popular Hong Kong actor Eric Tseng ventured into the royalty residence of the Sultan of Brunei and introduced to viewers the sheer wealth of the Sultan and his family! Gold has become almost part and parcel of the royalty’s accoutrements and possession. The suits of the Sultan are made of real gold! The immense wealth depicted in each episode is really overwhelming to me! A chair used by the Sultan could easily exceed millions of dollars! The wealth of the Sultan is really astronomical to a poor chap like me! Anyway, I just hope to earn a million bucks in my lifetime, that what I ask for in Singapore which has at least 66,000 people with a net liquidity of US $1 million excluding property asset. Yesterday was the last episode of the travel show and in this last episode, it was highlighted that the wealth of Brunei is shared by the Sultan with its people. The people of ...

Free Stock Photos for websites - FreeDigitalPhotos.net With some time to spend today, I tried a service I have always wanted to try before: ear candling! As I have mentioned in the blog before, I am not really a rich man, however no matter how 'un-rich' I am, no matter how many people despise me due to my 'un-richness', who says 'un-rich' people cannot enjoy life and indulge in a little bit of pampering at times? Anyway the ear candling services I had today was at a discounted price for 30 minutes. Ear candling is touted to rid the wax residing in one's ear, eliminate toxins and possibly sinuses. There is also some skeptism about ear candling, saying that it is just a fad! and worse, some articles even report that during the candling, the wax can drop off into the ear and causes serious injury to the ear! When the ear candling treatment started, I was assured that the ear candle used was not an ordinary candle (not something like you see above). I do not r...

Recently the TV serial drama, "The Ultimatum" has drawn a flurry of negative comments from Singaporeans about the ridiculous storyline as well as the most contentious topic, which is also a tatoo in the showbiz industry; it is none-the-less the nemesis of women: age! In the show, many have commented that though Caldecoot Queens Zoe Tay and Fann Wong each played a woman 34 years of age; Zoe, whose real age is 41 looks much older than Fann, whose real age is 38! Many, especially women have stood by Zoe, saying that childbirth has taken more of a woman (Zoe has 2 kids). I think as I have mentioned in the blog some weeks ago, all this issue has surfaced up due to the 'High Definition' broadcast medium this show is telecast. High Definition is not as kind to Zoe than Fann. Why should we bother about whether Zoe looks old? Everyone will be old one day, shall we always judge an artiste by her looks? In my opinion, both Zoe and Fann have aged gracefully, with Zoe not seeki...

I read an article recently in a newspapers reporting on the trend of HDTVs and their influences on TCS artistes. The local drama, “The Ultimatum” currently showing on National TVs, is made in HD (High Definition). The article goes on to reveal the insecurities revealed by the ‘supposedly’ glamorous artistes. As you see, when you are in HD, any pores, pimples, scars on you will be clearly shown bare to the audience… there is only so much that make-ups can do for the artistes. Hence we can really see the real TCS artistes, not artistes who are powered by powder!

I have always written on the quick passage of time and how time and tide waits for no man. It is always good to finish our work fast so that we have more free time to pursue our own interests. It is with this thought that I decide to buy some personalized ink stamps for my work. One just needs to chop the stamp, saving the time that will be involved in the actual writing of the text required. The personalized ink stamps and psa essentials ink stamp enable one to customize the text he wants on the ink stamps, and there is no other better place to get these ink stamps than at http://www.posylane.com/ . Besides offering these attractive ink stamps, the website also sells nam's bits chocolate chip cookies for chocolate fanatics and lovers.

It has been decades since I have played a real good computer game, so imagine my excitement when I was introduced to a great game gadget: Xbox 360 by one of my buddies just a month back! These days, I have been spending my time these days after work and other commitments playing Xbox 360 . I am now totally hooked on it as the gadget is so, may I use this word, intoxicating! For more details on Xbox 360 , do check it out here ! Just one week back, I introduced this game to another buddy, what transpired next was that he became addicted and now he fared much better at the game than me! Well, I am not sure how on earth did he manage to play better than me, did he rely on cheat codes ? I do want to give him the benefit of the doubt as we are afterall brothers… hehe. The last I heard of him is that he is doing some hacking of the game, I am not sure what that means, till I researched further and found this link ! For now, I am going to play Xbox360 for a little while before I sleep. I am...

The Chinese drama serial, “Little Nonya’ ended its run on Channel 8 last week. It was the Chinese drama serial with the highest viewership in the past 15 years! The whole of Singapore became ‘nonya-crazy’ after the show started to hit airwaves. There was an increased appreciation of the nonya culture overnight and nonya food and related items were selling like hotcakes everywhere in Singapore. The show has its fair share of critics too, criticizing the plot of the serial. I fall in neither the supporter nor the critic camp as I have not watched an entire episode before. The longest viewing time I have ever had was about 10 minutes (as I was figuring out what the craze was about the show) before I decided enough was enough and there went my television …… Off. There was nothing spectacular or dramatic about the show, from what I know. The basic ingredients for the winning formula of a Singapore TV drama is always the same: 1) Great looking artistes as the protagonists or main cast 2) A c...

This was the dashing outfit worn by heart-throb Tony Leung in Red Cliff 2. The outfit is so smart looking that I think you need not look like a Tony Leung to be smart upon wearing it! Lots of people stopped in their tracks to pose for photos with this and other outfits from the movie 'Red Cliff 2'. Want to take a good look at this swooning outfit? Then head down to Plaza Singapura... while the exhibition still lasts.

I do not watch TV dramas unless I am very free, especially local dramas. I was forced to endure watching the 7 pm Channel 8 drama today as I was forced to sit in front of the TV and subject myself to the some plots which I find very stupid and a complete waste of my time! I feel immensely disgusted at the theme, quality, everything of the show, no matter how handsome or beautiful the actor or actresses were. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying Channel 8 makes horrible movies, else TCS (Television Corporation of Singapore) will not have such a good following among the shows. In fact, TCS makes good quality shows and dramas just that I fail to appreciate, I fail to appreciate how watching some people in the drama quarreling with their boyfriends, girlfriends, family members, friends, dogs, cats, etc can bring entertainment to me or relax me after a hard day of work (in fact it can be more irritating). I fail to appreciate how watching a bunch of people in the drama exchanging expletives...

In my childhood days, I have played with toys, toys that belong to the 90s, unlike the electronic gadgets like internet, portable playstations we see modern teens playing nowadays. The toys that I like to play were toy figurines: small plastic toy men and cars less than the size of a palm. Assembling the toy men and cars, I would concoct storylines and these figurines would become my actors during the plays which I direct. The electronic game that I played in my times included an educational game set called ‘Socrates’, an extremely ‘edutaining’ game console my father bought for me when I was in Primary 1, it cost $600, not a cheap amount in those times. Then there was Brick game a game, which made forays into Singapore in 1990 when I was still in Primary school. I could still remember the days after school examinations when the teachers allowed the class to bring toys to school to pass the time: the whole class was busily manipulating ‘bricks’. There was a host of such brick games, spa...

Today’s date is one of the many interesting calender dates that have come to the fore since the millennium marks the resetting of the last 2 digits of the year code to ‘00’. 080808: 8th of August is the date for Olympics and for some couples, it is a blessing to be married on this date though the fact that this day also falls in the Chinese lunar 7th month also scares off some couples on the prospect of being married on this day. 090909 is also a good date for marriage, as the word ‘9’ in Chinese has the same pronunciation as ‘long’, representing longevity. The last such interesting date for this century would fall in 2013 on this date 111213.

WARNING: PLEASE USE THIS TACTIC AS LAST RESORT AS IT MIGHT SOUR FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS Person A: You are stupid! You: So you think everything that I am thinking of, in my mind, is useless? Person A: YES! You: Good, I am thinking of you! Alternative scenario: Person A: You are stupid! You: So you think everything that I am thinking of, in my mind, is useless? Person A: Not really You: Then why you call me stupid when you think what I am thinking of, in my mind, is not useless, you are even stupidier in this sense! The dialogue may end here, or continues further as below: Person A: Okay, you are stupid, whatever in you think in your mind is useless, like rubbish You: Good, I am thinking of you!

Which liquid becomes solid when heated? Ans: Wax and Egg Yolk.

A young man was found dead on a desert. Next to the young man was a package. If he has opened the package, he would not have died? What is inside the package? Ans: Parachute

Yesterday, like many of the Singaporeans who were holed up at home watching the CNY countdown cum celebrations show on Channel 8, i awaited the final defining moment of the countdown to the Year of the Rat. Just before the countdown, as usual and as expected, Jack Neo did a promotion of his flim (to be released on CNY 7 Feb 0 'Ah Long Pte Ltd' with lead actress, Fann Wong. What I felt irritating is that their babble nearly went beyond the defining moment of 0000 hrs and I could see host Quan Yifeng becoming very nervous as Fann kept rattling on how good their movie is...... Once Fann stopped her rattling, the TV footage focused immediately on the few seconds count down to midnight. My New Year mood, was somehow marred by their promotion of the movie on this countdown show. Otherwises ,yesterday's Channel 8 show was excellent. I particularly liked the segment where 12 TCS artisties took to the catwalk, modeling the fashion designs of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac as i...

I still recalled the days when I was an amateur stamp collector in my childhood days; I was always the eager kid who sieved out envelopes after envelopes of letters addressed to my family. My relatives also contributed to one or two dozens of my foreign stamps and the rest were given by my Primary 5 teacher who had a family in China. Returning to class after periodic overseas trips to China, my Primary 5 teacher would distribute the stamps in a balloting fashion, to the students in a ‘mini-sea’ of hands raised. These sources contributed to my growing stamp collection. However as I grew older, my interest in stamp collection slowly and gradually waned. Stamp collection became more and more obsolete compared to other more popular hobbies in the teenagers’ years; e.g. computer games. With the advent of email, postal mail became less popular too and these old-fashioned stamps were very soon replaced by electronic ones.

Have a special dream? This dream may convey some lucky numbers for you to buy 4D. Another nice URL for 4D fans

Though Singapore’s home-made TV productions has come a long way since independence, I believe its contents can be further improved. Often, new local entertainment shows or dramas are of the similar mould or if not, exactly similar to what local viewers had seen of its Taiwan or Hong Kong Counterparts. Chinese serial shows are often of the same genre, focusing on an extended family where the protagonists are often embroiled in a series of quarrels and caught in a complicated web of love and relationships, etc. At least, there is still the broadcast of Hong Kong and Taiwanese productions on the free-to-air channels which is a real breather. Recently, there is a new Chinese documentary showing on Channel U at 2130 hrs on Tuesday where Professor Yu Dan from China waxes philosophical about the Confucian beliefs and melded with the high tech animations to reinforce the messages. It is an extremely educational show. Such shows are sadly to say, lacking in this complex era of changes.