Monthly Archive for March, 2008

School Annual

Pada hari Isnin, saya bertemu Edwin, kawan sedarjah dari Sekolah Lelaki St. Anthony’s.

Ok, I give up.

On Monday, I met my St. Anthony’s Boys’ School classmate, Edwin.

I asked him to bring our one-and-only school annual produced during our six years there. I confess, I believe I threw away my copy. I can’t recall if it was deliberate or accidental. Either way, it was plain stupidity.

Thankfully, he has his copy and willingly lent it to me. The annual covered 1984 to 1986, which was our first three years in primary school.

I showed my colleagues the annual, asking them to guess where I was in my class photo, as it wasn’t labelled. The ladies in my department got it right the first time round. My male colleague took two guesses!

What I didn’t count on was my boss flipping through the entire annual.

She came across something I did not remember at all.

One of my Malay compositions - karangan - was published!

I was surprised because I was hopeless in Bahasa Melayu.

Immediate reaction: They must have got the name wrong! It must have been someone else’s. After all, one of the Malay Language teacher’s sons was in my class. Another confession: I copied answers from him. (How this was possible in a tiny classroom remains a mystery.)

So, another colleague challenged me to write a blog post in Malay. It’s truly beyond me now. One line was all it took to make my head ache.

For readers who understand Malay, take a look at what allegedly wrote when I was in Primary 3. I’m very sure I had significant help.

Nasib Seorang Penjual Sate

Pak Kasim seorang penjual sate. Dia mesti pergi ke bandar untuk menjual sate. Pak Kasim membawa banyak barang. Barang itu berat.

Pak Kasim berangan-angan hendak membeli basikal roda tiga. Dia pun berjimat. Dia simpan duitnya dalam tabung.

Apabila tabung itu penuh dengan duit, Pak Kasim menggali lubang dan menanam duitnya. Nasib Pak Kasim tidak baik. Seorang budak nakal nampak apa Pak Kasim buat.

Lepas satu minggu dia hendak ambil duitnya. Dia mengorek lubangnya. Tabung itu pun tidak ada duit lagi.

P.S. The gist of the story is: A satay seller wants to save up to buy a tricycle (don’t ask) but saves his money by burying it in the ground. He loses the money because a boy spots him doing this, and (this part is implied) the boy steals the cash.

P.P.S. I will be scanning the annual and uploading to Flickr.

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World Cup 2010 Qualifier - Singapore v Lebanon

Singapore vs Lebanon

Singapore 2 Lebanon 0.

That scoreline might come back to haunt us. Qualifying for the 2010 World Cup is still a very distant dream.

But to make it happen, we need to punish teams when we can.

I’m not being boastful when I say that we could have easily won this game 6-0.

We were in control. The Lebanese, on the other hand, were content to fall and writhe at the slightest touch.

The ref, bizzarely, recognised that most of this was playacting. And yet he failed to card any of the Lebanese players for simulation.

Instead, our keeper got an undeserved yellow for time-wasting toward the end of the first half.

Dodgy refereeing notwithstanding, we had ample opportunity to cause a different sort of deluge.

Neither came on a cool evening at Kallang.

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The old voice of MRT

Please mind the platform gap

She’s almost gone.

The lady who announces which station you are approaching.

Her voice is commanding yet soft.

Never intrusive.

Informing passengers when they should prepare to alight.

Warning them not to get caught in the gap between train and platform.

SMRT, in all their wisdom, have decided to update the announcements.
In her place, a younger voice.

One that has strange enunciation, intonation and rhythm.

One that grates the ears.

An announcer that makes me want to reach into the speakers and yank the wires out.

There have been online complaints. (Ask Google.)

Even a letter to ST.

If SMRT replied, I missed it.

Thankfully, this new girl hasn’t ousted the dame completely.

She can still be heard… for now.

Just in case they decide to do away with her entirely, I recorded a few of the announcements.

Here they are for your downloading and listening pleasure.

(.wav files, all less than 300 kb)

UPDATE Alvinology posted a video clip, a deleted scene from Tan Pin Pin’s excellent documentary, Singapore Ga Ga. If you’ve wondered what the old voice of MRT looks like, take a look.

But if you want the voice to remain faceless, watch the documentary instead. (Actually, watch it in any case. It’s fantastic!) Tan Pin Pin interviews Juanita in the film, but you only hear her voice either on a black screen or over scenes on the MRT.

You can get Singapore Ga Ga at OBJECTIFSfilms. I’ve also recently seen it on sale at Kinokuniya at Takashimaya.

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Singapore, we grew up here…

Singapore, we grew up here...

Recently, I was asked to add a photo to the Flickr group, Singapore, we grew up here…

It’s an amazing collection of photos of Singapore in days gone by and of hidden pockets of our past in Singapore’s ever-changing landscape.

Flickr user Smurfiechowchow hunts down these photos and gets the owners to add them to the group. Even though anyone is free to join and contribute, I’m hoping that some moderation will be implemented.

There is a certain quality to the photos and mass-adding of photos just won’t do this group and Smurfiechowchow’s efforts justice.

So, enjoy the photos. If you’re on Flickr and you have some gems to contribute, join the group and add your best photos of our heritage.

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Theory.isthereason’s been hacked!

Snow crash (by waffler)

Yikes… Kevin Lim’s blog went down recently, one of among 200,000 affected web pages.

I’d have a mini-meltdown if that were to happen to me.

Then again, I’ve ’survived’ losing my hard disk.

At times like this, you have to become detached from worldly goods, which many religions advocate anyway.

It’s just a bunch of ones and zeros.

Still… a little prevention can go a long way.

Like many people, I’ve thought about how to back up my blog.* Like most of this group, I’ve put it on the backburner, thinking that it will never happen to me.

Complacency. It’s all the rage these days.

I do have a rudimentary backup, just in case this blog ever decides to give up the ghost or if my webhost decides to up and leave or if some malicious person destroys it.

It is at Google Reader. I subscribe to my blog’s feed, and share the post every time I update.

Yup, that’s why my contacts who are using Google Reader see that my ’shared items’ are my blog posts. I started doing this before they enabled users to see their contacts’ shared items.

It’s manual. I’d like something more robust and automated. But it’ll do for now.

Kevin, as you commented recently here, I feel your pain.

* I’ve also thought about how to keep the blog alive after I’ve left the building. The moment payments stop, this blog will go down. No solution as yet. Perhaps one of the advantages of having a blog on Blogger or Wordpress.

Original photo by Adrian Sampson, from here, reproduced under a cc by 2.0 license.

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