Singapore National Education Part 22
I have also learned lately:
1. That some people are willing to join some MacDonald's contest to win a phone shaped like a packet of French Fries.
2. That some people want to be seen using a phone shaped like a packet of French Fries.
3. That it is a good thing that the Ministry of Education "Teach" ads did not say "Teach: Nothing Else is Worthwhile". But "Do Something Worthwhile with Your Life" comes pretty close.
4. That people are fighting to buy a product which you stick on your nose for 15 minutes, so that you can see your blackheads sticking out on the sticky side when you pull it off.
5. That in the old days, evil triads used threats, pig heads and violence to force hapless home owners to sell their homes. These days, all one needs is minimum consent in an en-bloc sale.
6. That Singapore property owners used to enjoy luxuries like deciding when to sell their homes. Now they may have to sell when enough of their neighbours vote for an en-bloc sale.
7. That when you want to sound out the populace on unpopular policies like property market intervention, you should get someone else to make the suggestion first, check out the public reaction to see if they are for or against the idea, then go ahead and do what you want anyway.
8. That when you can't convince people to subscribe to your crappy PCN Cellular phone network, the correct thing to do is to change the name of the service from "PCN" to "GSM 1800".
9. That in some circles, the PCN network is known as "Pui Chao Nua" (Hokkien for, literally, "Discharge Smelly Spittle", not a compliment).
10. That when you can't convince people to buy your crappy "Liberty" series of handphones because of all the bad press, you sell it as the "Nokia 8148".
11. That when we finally get an official word from Singtel about the cause of the islandwide cellular and paging network failure, in the form of an explanation from "Senior Director J S Goh" in the News at Seven, we do not hear a single "Sorry" or even a "We Regret the Inconvenience" from her. Instead, we are told how wonderful Singtel is for activating some interconnect switch ahead of schedule in order to alleviate the congestion problem.
12. That Singtel had to wait for a massive failure like this to know that our cellular and paging networks are near capacity, and need new interconnect switches sooner than they expected.
13. That the new GSM 1800 slogan was rumoured to be "GSM 1800: A New Name for Same Lame Game".
14. That after the bad name that Singtel has gotten from their recent fiasco, they may have to change their name too. I suggest "SingHell" (as in "SINGapore HELLo") or "Tel-Gro" (as in "TELEcommunications GROwth", a name-style made popular by fertiliser products for unattractive plants).
15. That apparently, the new Singapore Bus Service name, "DELGRO", is not a fertiliser product nor are the logo colours of green and brown supposed to suggest that.
16. That the SBS change of name to "DELGRO" was apparently an in-house project. That figures.
17. That my favourite Vampire-slayer babe, Buffy, wore a white, long, albeit fashionable, dress to fight The Big Bad Dude of Doom in the season finale of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer". She gets bitten by said Bad Dude, which goes back to what I keep trying to say, "You can't beat Vampire Kings wearing a long white dress."
18. That in a recent serial "Rising Expectations", when Zoe Tay and Wong Lilin jump from Lilin's yacht into the open sea to snorkel, the underwater scenes show an ocean with straight walls and aquarium-looking fish, not unlike Underwater World in Sentosa.
19. That Zoe Tay as in the serial "Rising Expectations" has got to be the best dressed fishmonger in Singapore, possibly even in South-East Asia.
20. That the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (MMPR) have upgraded themselves to become the Zero Rangers. Or Zeo Rangers, or Zoe Rangers, I forget which.
21. That Courts Mammoth Superstore has this new Mammoth SuperSpace-age ad that features TCS Stars Fann Wong, Andrew Seow, Diana Ser and Christopher Lee as four Mammoth SuperDodos With Too Much Makeup (MSWTMM), codenamed the "Powder Rangers".
22. That someone ought to tell that new weathergirl in News at Seven that there is no "r" at the end in "Korea". Someone could hurt from the falling "r"s.
23. That much as I love my M1 handphone, that latest M1 TV ad where the narrator refers to the guy looking for his wife's correct dress size as, come on now, "Mr Paul TAN" (as in to rhyme with "man" and "fan") is a little too much.
24. That in the latest "Shiver" episode where a Romance Novel Dude comes alive, they dressed Mark Richmond in a wussy white blouse with puffy sleeves and a wig (on him not on the blouse), because he was doing a Fabio. Man, did he look pretty.
25. That Mark Richmond's long-hair wig was probably glued on because it hardly moved, even when he was doing those sweeping romantic things that Fabio-types do in Romance Novels.
Copyright 2004 by Lee Kin Mun
