Opposition MPs from Workers’ Party and the ruling PAP last Friday in a show of unity came together to form a Parliamentary soccer team to compete against a combined team comprising of media staff and representatives.
The parliamentary soccer team was formed by MOS Teo Ser Luck in August which comprises of Parliamentarians as well as Parliament staffs. Last Friday’s match up with the first game the team played.
MP for Aljunied GRC, Pritam Singh, one of the Workers’ Party players, shared his experience in a Facebook note which tickled our funny bone.
The game was played in good spirit and friendly banter. Before the game, I informed MOS Tan Chuan Jin I was a leftie (both in terms of my kicking foot and my general ideological leaning) and that I would be happy to play anywhere on the left side of the pitch. He responded noting that the WP appeared generally rather centrist, to which I agreed to play in the centre if need be, but not before adding in jest that I could be “right-winged” on some matters. A round of laughs ensued. On the bench at the start of the second half, Ag Minister for MCYS MG Chan Chun Sing jokingly noted that if the Parliament team won the game, the media probably would not report the story since we were competing against a combined Singapore media team. I jokingly retorted that such non-reportage would prove the mainstream media was biased! Speaker of Parliament Michael Palmer in good humour, promised me an extra minute of speaking time in Parliament after I scored a consolatory penalty.
Now if this is the direction that the new Parliament is heading, it only bodes well for Singapore. After all, regardless of party affiliation, we all bleed Red and White.
Tan Chuan Jin (MOS) has a photo album of the game on his Facebook page.
We’ve been following the first sitting of the 12th Parliament last week and boy, was it interesting to watch. It appears that the one speech that got most people online excited was MP for Aljunied GRC, Mr Chen Show Mao’s English and Mandarin Speech.
I’ve watched it and boy, the last time I’ve ever watched a brilliantly executed mandarin speech (full of quotes, history and culture) in our Parliament, was, never!
Fast-forward to his mandarin speech at the 13 minutes mark.
6 years after being conceived at a Dinner Party in San Francisco, the famous video-sharing platform has finally officially launched in Singapore. What does this mean for us video-hungry Singaporean dwellers?
Besides being able to access Singaporean Content directly via Youtube.SG, it probably means that Singaporean Youtube channels can now apply to be a Youtube Partner and can start to put up advertisements before their videos.
Which also means that we are probably going to be pushed with more ads when we watch videos.
The last Eastern and Oriental Express (E&O) train left Tanjong Pagar Railway station for the last time on the 5th of June 2011. The railway station will be closing its doors on the 1st of July 2011 after a landmark landswap agreement between the governments of Singapore and Malaysia.
Giving away used ground coffee to its customers for gardening, collecting rainwater for lavatory use and switching to LED bulbs for energy conservation are just some of the very cool green initiatives being spearheaded by one of Starbucks Malaysia’s Setia Alam outlet.
Judee Tan, popularly known in most mainstream circles as “Kim Bong Cha”, the eccentric North Korean newscaster from the TV series, The Noose, has been raising a lot of eyebrowns online with buzz over her performances on the stage after videos circulating around the Internet have been picked up by Netizens and reposted on popular forums like Hardwarezone.
We too are really impressed with her bi-linguistic command of English and Hokkien as well as her stage flair and charisma that we had to share those videos here.
“Kim Bong Cha” Debut
Rendition of popular Hokkien favorite ‘Na Si Wa Wu Ji Pa Ban’ and ‘Billionaire’
Did you also know that she also sings?
Just do a simple search for ‘Judee Tan’ on Youtube and you’ll probably find much more videos.
As for us, we can’t wait to see what else she has to offer, but so far its pretty darn good.
NTUC Fairprice Co-operative, the supermarket chain under the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), has announced plans to roll out more self-checkout systems into its other stores in a bid to improve productivity and reduce costs.
According to this article by the Straits Times, it is being reported that hawkers who signed up under the Government’s Retail Price Watch Group program which started early this year, are now facing a situation of being unable to cope with the rising operational costs.
Under the program, hawkers had pledged to hold their prices for 6 months but many hawkers that The Straits Times interviewed have expressed concern that they are not able to cope as the prices of raw material have been on the increase.
This may see these hawkers who originally volunteered under the program to pull out of the program prematurely.
Straits Times wrote a report today about how for each eligible credit card holder in Singapore, they would each on average own 6-7 credit cards. Combine that information with another seemingly unrelated forum post by Mr Kuo How Nam, President of Credit Counselling Singapore, who writes that consumer loans has grown over 18% over the past 3 months compared to just 10% for the previous year, is a worrying trend for the state of debt in this country.
Mr Kuo explains that the sharp increase is probably due to the increase in housing loans figures (which I infer, could be correlated to the rising property prices) which he continues by also highlighting that credit card rollover figures (money that has not been repaid by cardholders and are as such charged typically around 24% per annum) have been growing at an average rate of 11.5% every year for the past two years.
In November 2010, the rollover balance has crossed the $4 billion mark.
Is Singapore moving away from its traditional ‘save for rainy days’ mentality which has helped spurred on the country’s extraordinary economic growth over the past few decades, towards the United States’ style of increasing consumer debt, and subsequently foreclosures and bankruptcy?
