Merry Christmas, SSO!

An excerpt of a post I wrote for SEA Youth Say So.

“On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, 12 adfherahfkajsdbf, 11 asdjflhadfha, 10 asdjfhadjfh, 9 asdjfhaldhf, 8 akdjfaldjfhaldj, 7 adjhfadjhf, 6 adjfhadfah, 5 GOLD RINGS! 4 adhfadfhkh, 3 adfhaldfalk, 2 hajdhfafdhk… AND A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREEEEEE!!!”

That’s how I sing The Twelve Days of Christmas. Luckily for everyone tonight I was only singing along to the Singapore Symphony Chorus and Singapore Symphony Children’s Choir. Only the lady next to me had to be subjected to my warbling.

When I was a kid, I used to hang out backstage a lot while Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) concerts went on. After staying with my grandparents all week, being with at work with my parents was a real treat, and as I got older I derived a lot of satisfaction from being “in charge” of all the younger kids, making sure they didn’t make so much noise that the audience would be able to hear them. This was in the days when performances were still in the Victoria Concert Hall (VCH), and the backstage area was so accessible you could stand right at the doors to the stage to watch.

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The Shrinking Spaces of Singapore

An excerpt of a post I wrote for SEA Youth Say So.

I guess it’s official – Old School at Mount Sophia is closing down. In a statement the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) said that it would be impossible to preserve every former school, in a response to the Save Old School campaign led by alumni of Methodist Girls’ School. They will therefore go ahead with closing down the site, which has been marked for residential development.

Apart from the obvious red herring – no one is saying that every former school building in Singapore should be conserved, and neither has there been campaigns for each and every such building – the statement ignores one glaring fact: that Old School is not just any old former school building, but a community space for everyone in Singapore.

At Old School, artists and filmmakers come together in that space to develop, display and share their work. According to its website, the venue plays host to groups such as New Asia Records, 2902 Photo Gallery and the Philharmonic Chamber Choir.

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Advertising, Hits and Me

Last Wednesday, I had the very interesting experience of being on Channel NewsAsia’s BlogTV.SG on an episode entitled ‘The Bold and The Beautiful’ (which really should have been entitled ‘The Bold, The Beautiful, and this other girl named Kirsten’) to talk about my experience as a blogger, and how far I would go to get hits. Also on the panel were Peggy Heng, Aussie Pete and Shalu Wasu.

I can’t embed iframes in WordPress, so if you want to watch the episode just visit BlogTV.SG and click on Last Week on BlogTV. (Unless, of course, you’re reading this entry in more than a week’s time, in which case you’re going to have to scroll down a little and look for the episode under their ‘Previously’ section.)

I wasn’t sure if I was going to blog about it or not, but I’ve had a couple of days to think a bit and thought that it might be worth an entry, just to elaborate and work through some of my thoughts.

Netizen? That’s not what my passport says…

“Netizen”. You hear it all over the place these days; everyone is tossing the term about. The mainstream media seems to especially love it, as do various politicians and government figures. But how correct is this term, really? What does it actually mean?

According to my incredibly deep and scientific research using useful academic tools like Google and Wikipedia, this is the background of the term:

The term Netizen is a portmanteau of the English words internet and citizen. It is defined as an entity or person actively involved in online communities and a user of the internet, especially an avid one. The term can also imply an interest in improving the internet, especially in regard to open access and free speech.Netizens are also commonly referred to as cybercitizens, which has the same meaning. The term was coined by Michael Hauben.

There are worse things to be than fat.

It’s no secret that women are often objectified in the media and in public, and that a woman’s body shape and weight are often discussed and judged. Just look at all those tabloid magazines highlighting actresses’ cellulite or comparing bikini bods in their “Hot or Not” columns. Just look at all the beauty products being hawked in department stores. It is a sad truth that one does get judged based on one’s physical appearance. And everyone knows that marketing and advertising campaigns exploit that to a certain extent.

But this television commercial from London Weight Management has taken it way too far.

NOTE: To make matters worse, if you were to open this video in its YouTube page, the description reads: “You can now have a better solutions to learn to be a perfect woman. With London Weight Management, We Care, We Share.”