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Have a (free) great time at the Marina Bay Singapore Countdown 2008

As the official blogger of the Marina Bay Singapore Countdown at the Esplanade, I hereby inform you that there will be loads of fun down at the waterfront, on the 31st of December 2008.

In addition to the fireworks, there will be a lovely light installation on Marina Bay, made up of wishing spheres. You write your New Year wishes on the white spheres, at Wishing Stations (locations here), and your sphere will join 9,999 other spheres on the waters.

This is twice the number of wishing spheres they deployed last year, so I think the bay will look even more spectacular when viewed from the Esplanade, Theatres on the Bay (the name very long hor?).

There will also be bands playing from 7pm to 1am at the Esplanade Outdoor Theatre (now twice as big after their renovations), which you can enjoy in addition to the fireworks and wishing spheres installation.

And it is all FREE. You know me lah, always game for the free and good stuff.

I did my wishes on my sphere already. It's not my usual Leonardo Da Vinci standard of art, I admit, but I had only a marker to work with, ok? Note the subtle artistic flourishes and drop shadow shading (actually it is because the first marker dried up and I had to write over the original text with a new marker lah).

Over the next few weeks, I will go behind the scenes and talk to people involved in this countdown, so stay tuned.

That's why in Singapore, you must not rock the boat

Excerpt from The Washington Post, A Public Enemy in Singapore, by Fred Hiatt:

Ambassador Chan [Heng Chee] says that her country must have a "tighter democracy" than America's, because it is a small, multiethnic city-state in a challenging region -- a rowboat next to America's aircraft carrier.

"In an aircraft carrier, you can be playing soccer in one corner and have jets taking off in another, and the carrier remains stable," she told me. "In a rowboat, it makes sense for everyone to row in the same direction."

I hope this clarifies the kind of democracy we have in Singapore, the everyone-row-in-the-same-direction kind of democracy.

Afterthought: Is tighter democracy something like a looser dictatorship?

The Beautiful Face of Autism

Sometimes, you take a photo that takes your breath away and shows you a side of your kids you never noticed.

This is my Faith, seven and autistic, in a beautiful moment. Autism or not, that is a beautiful girl.

I had to stick her tongue back a few times to get this shot (she has a habit of biting on her tongue) but she kept still long enough for me to capture her.

The beauty is profoundly ironic, in that autistic children usually know not vanity. There is no guile or malice in those eyes that sometimes seem like they are looking at a world within that is not accessible to us.

And we, from the non-autistic spectrum of life, struggle when we see this association between beauty and impairment.

I am baffled by this all the time. And as we run ourselves ragged dealing with her challenges, it is easy to forget to stop and notice beauty like this.

Thank goodness for cameras.

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Town Council investments saga: Minister tells TC Manager not to reveal any more info

Sometimes the finger is faster than the brain, when it comes to hitting Reply in email.

The Online Citizen has a post about a Roland Soh who sent an email to his MP, Dr Ahmad Magad of Pasir-Ris Punggol GRC, and received a reply that I suspect was not meant for his eyes.

Here is the email Mr Soh allegedly received:

Wei Kin

Further to this, at the meeting with Minister yesterday it was decided that we will NOT disclose any further details beyond what we have already uploaded on-line and will be publishing in our Vibes newsletter.

Additional follow up queries should be replied with politeness, indicating that our disclosures are and will be consistent with Corporate Governance Standards. Pls follow up accordingly.

Thanks.
Best Regards,
Ahmad Magad

The General Manager/Secretary of the Pasir-Ris Punggol Town Council is a Ms Kwok Wei Kin, so perhaps that was who Mr Magad was referring to. But hmmm, who is the "Minister" ah?

I think we can classify this email as "Epic Fail".

To my son, Isaac, aged five

My son, Isaac, I know it cannot be easy to understand why your older sister, Faith, is different from other older sisters.

You are only five years old and I cannot expect you to understand the complex developmental barriers that keep your Big Sister from speaking with you, playing with you, and doing big-sisterly things with you.

One day, I am sure I will be able to explain autism to you and your younger three-year-old sister, Joy.

One day, both of you will be able to understand and accept why your 姐姐 sometimes grabs your toys or food without asking, making you cry.

One day, both of you will be able to understand and accept why your 姐姐 likes to sit at the corner, lost in her own world, playing with her plastic bag and giggling to herself.

One day, both of you will be able to understand and accept why your 姐姐 needs to have her hand held in public places, while we let you walk by our side on your own.

But today, you made your Papa very proud when I told you to help Big Sister put on her shoes, and you did it willingly and without question.

It gives us, your parents, hope that Faith will grow up surrounded by the love of her siblings, long after we are gone.

With lots of love,
Papa

P.S. This does not mean the "No crying in shopping centres when Mommy does not buy you the toy you wanted" rule has been changed. And Joy, if you are reading this, the rule applies to you too.

Bangkok Post article: Riding the middle footpath in Singapore

Don Sambandaraksa who writes for the Bangkok Post rode his bicycle in Singapore and concludes Singapore drivers are crazy. He also draws a connection between his ride and our programmed society being unable to cope with circumstances outside our neat existence.

First of all, I am not sure what road he rode on, but riding in Singapore is not THAT dangerous. There are crazy drivers in any part of the world, and bicycle riders need to learn to adapt to traffic conditions wherever they are. Not to say we can't improve cyclist safety measures here though (yes, I am referring to you, LTA).

Secondly, I found the connection he drew rather tenuous. Sure, we have rules, regulations and orderliness but that does not make our society less resilient. It takes a resilient people to survive and thrive under a government that is always trying to tell you what to do, ok?

Hey, at least our airport is still open.

Read his whole piece at the Bangkok Post. Thanks to reader dokistar for this link.

Excerpt:

In a nutshell, the usually boring, law-abiding, orderly Singaporean that is famous the world over turned into an aggressive, horn honking, engine revving crazy driver that is more fit for rush-hour Bangkok or Bangalore than Singapore. Moreover, it was an aggression that was totally uncalled for. I biked a lot in the UK, in Manchester, and have never seen this level of road rage before. Odd.

"They don't like others on their space," one of my local friends later told me over dinner. The drivers do not like anything different. They like the predictability, the order of being told exactly where they can go and what they can do.

Introduce something different, something without any rules and regulations, and the usually strict, orderly driver breaks down and reverts to his native, aggressive state, honking, revving and just displaying road rage at the poor biker because they do not know what else to do.

It was fun to infuriate these people, and to slowly cycle past them later as they got stuck in traffic. Strangely enough, there were almost no cyclists on the road apart from a few poor Indian cyclists on rickety old bicycles.

But it was after nightfall when the local bikers did come out and I began to realise how chaotic Singapore's biking scene can be. Almost nobody had lights on their bikes. Nobody was on the roads and nearly everyone was cycling on the footpaths. Some were cycling against the flow of traffic. Few were watching the cars around them. It was almost total chaos. Something was obviously not right.

There are two frameworks of law and order. One tells people what to do, the other tells us what not to do. Sounds simple. One tells us the centre path where we should walk and expects us not to stray far from it. The other shows us the limits of acceptable behaviour and we are free to do anything we please as long as we do not cross those limits.

Both sound reasonable, but in practice there is a lot of difference between a society that functions because it is programmed to, and another that functions freely within set boundaries. The difference lies in what we usually refer to as self-immunity.

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