mrbrown.com

Insing column: mrbrown and the long talks

Latest weekly Insing column is "mrbrown and the long talks"

Excerpt:

A few evenings ago, the family watched bits of Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (a Steve Martin comedy) on TV, which ended with a baby born to the movie family.

My youngest, Joy, aged 4 and a half, turned to ask me some life questions.

"Papa, did you marry Mommy?"

"Of course, Joy," I replied with firm conviction. I didn't exactly want her to think we had them all out of wedlock.

"Did you make Mommy pregnant?"

"Yes, dear. We made all three of you, starting with your Cheh-Cheh Faith."

"Did you go to the hospital?" she continued.

"Why of course, I wouldn't miss it for the world," I smiled.

"Then how come I did not see you in the photos?" (cont'd)

CNNGo column: Questions abound with President Nathan's literary debut

Latest CNNGo.com "Say What? with mrbrown" column: Questions abound with President Nathan's literary debut

Excerpt:

I love books. I used to sell them, as a bookseller in one of the largest bookstores in Singapore. I remember the fuss when Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs came out. It was like a new Bible was being released.

I recall being told you would never see a paperback version of the two volumes. Only hardcover will be sold (in case you were still waiting for it). And the books must never find their way to the Bargain books section. Not that they would anyway. The memoirs sold like Jalan Kayu pratas, flying off the shelf like hot cakes.

Another senior person has since released his book too. President SR Nathan published his first book, entitled "Why Am I Here?"

This, of course, sent Singaporeans into a nationwide collective giggle. You see, many Singaporeans don't think the President does very much and the title just screamed irony. Responses ranged from, "I also want to know why he is here!" to "He needs to justify his existence?" to "Our President so free to write book, ah? (cont'd)

Insing column: mrbrown and the new 30

Latest weekly Insing column is "mrbrown and the new 30"

Excerpt:

We were at a Bob Fitts concert just recently. Bob Fitts is a Christian singer who was very popular during our time. When I say, ‘our time’, I mean the Eighties. I am not saying he is not popular now but even he is aware of the demographics of his fan base when he asked the audience above the age of 40 to give a big shout, then those below 40.

I looked at my wife after giving my big yell to being above 40 and said "Why you never shout ah?"

She gave me a sheepish grin.

To be fair, nobody believes she is that age even. She is blessed with kiddie looks. When she was in Secondary 4, some Primary 3 boys hit on her and when she told them she was way older than them, they declared "No way! You are at most... Primary 6!" (cont'd)

the mrbrown show: say no to volcano

Singapore acts to deal with overseas volcanos at mrbrownshow.com!

Ministry of Education disinvites top American teacher

Update 2: Alex Au of Yawning Bread weighs in on this.

Update 1: According to the papers, MOE has since apologised for their mistake and reinvited Susan Elliott.

The Ministry of Education has a lot to explain for this fiasco.

It seems that this September, the Ministry of Education is hosting a major education conference and one of the top American teachers, Susan Elliott, was invited.

Then when they allegedly discovered she is hearing-impaired, they disinvited her, citing "miscommunication".

Whether they disinvited her because of her disability or not, this is a PR disaster and fiasco of the highest order.

If you have already invited the person, leave her invited lah. Why retract it unless you found out she is some kind of terrorist or a potential threat to national security?

And if the MOE really disinvited her because she is, God forbid, DEAF, then shame on you, Singapore education officials. You deserve all the international and domestic derision you will get for this.

(A reader suggested the conference may be the Teachers' Conference 2010.)

Read the blog post at Edweek.org

Excerpt:

Singapore will be hosting a major education conference in September and has invited distinguished scholars and teachers from throughout the world to share ideas and presentations. One such distinguished teacher is Susan Elliot, the 2009 Colorado State Teacher of the Year and one of four finalists for the 2009 National Teacher of the Year (I may have pulled the sword from the stone but Susan will always best me as Lancelot did Arthur).

Susan Elliot has spent three decades in education and taught thousands of students. She is bright, articulate, and has a great sense of humor. She teaches social studies and history to mainstream and hearing-impaired students-all in the same classroom. Her unique ability to teach social studies and history to both "regular" and hearing-impaired students in the same classroom is a remarkable display of master teaching. Susan is the perfect educator to help represent America's teachers and deserves a key to this Asian City Upon a Hill.

Susan was excited about traveling to Singapore and sharing her ideas and experiences about methods that could develop the potential of all students to become independent, self-supporting and contributing members of society. And then came her dismissal.

Once the Singapore education officials discovered that Susan was hearing-impaired, they retracted her invitation. The so-called discovery and subsequent retraction of her invitation was an act of disingenuous statesmanship because the Singapore education officials knew all along that Susan was deaf. The official in charge of inviting and then disinviting Susan attributes the mistake to miscommunication. Wait a minute. Singapore is renowned for its academic prowess; surely the highly educated official could read a simple biography that very clearly noted Susan was hearing-impaired. The Singapore education system may be perched on a higher hill than the American system but something is not quite right.

Susan Elliot sent a few emails to Singaporean education officials, hoping the "miscommunication" was itself a miscommunication and the whole matter an innocent mistake. She had to defend her disability and remind conference officials that America's teachers and children are a diverse lot.

How did the Singapore officials respond? Susan was wished a successful future but remains persona non grata at the conference.

The Singapore system of education may be the envy of TIMSS groupies, and from a distance the city appears brightly lit in the night sky. But a peek behind the city walls reveals a flawed and ignorant culture of education. (cont'd)

CNNGo column: Late night observations on the new Circle Line

Latest CNNGo.com "Say What? with mrbrown" column: Late night observations on the new Circle Line

Excerpt:

The opening of Phase 2 of the Circle Line, the latest addition to the MRT network, on the 17 of April 2010, was met with a huge "Finally!" by many Singaporeans.

This is because Phase 2, consisting of 11 additional stations from Tai Seng to Dhoby Ghaut, made the Circle Line finally useful.

Phase 1, consisting of five stations -- Bartley, Serangoon, Lorong Chuan, Bishan and Marymount -- felt like a tease, like the public transport system showing us some leg, but never showing us the rest of her sexy body.

Why were we are so thrilled to see this part of the Circle Line open? (cont'd)

CNNGo column: Hollywood, leave the classics alone!

Latest CNNGo.com "Say What? with mrbrown" column: Hollywood, leave the classics alone!

Excerpt:

The wife and I grew up watching "Clash of the Titans", the 1981 Ray Harryhousen version. The cheesy stop motion special effects of that time was cutting age, and we were easy-to-please kids then.

Then Hollywood had to go and make a "re-imagineering" of the movie. Re-imagineering usually means we will hack a classic to bits and add a ton of special effects to it so that you won't realise we just violated your childhood memories.

The last time re-imagineering a show was successful, it was Battlestar Galactica, the TV series. Most times, newer versions suck.

Sam Worthington — first a cyborg in "Terminator Salvation", alien wannabe in "Avatar" and now demi-god in "Clash of the Titans".

For those unfamiliar with this movie, "Clash of the Titans" is about Perseus and his adventures. Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, slept with Perseus's mother by taking the form of her husband, a king who led a revolt against the gods in the old days.

Perseus, demigod son of a rapist god, leads a bunch of warriors against the Greek gods who were about to unleash their pet monster, the Kraken, on the kingdom of Argos.

You would think that a movie with such a big special effects budget, and with Jake Sully, Voldemort and Ras Al Ghul in it, would be great. But no, not even the line "Release the Kraken!" could save it. God of War 3, the PS3 game where an angry former Spartan General named Kratos goes around killing all the Greek gods with his Blades of Chaos, had better storytelling. (cont'd)

I am on the BBC World Service BBC Radio 4 program, Word of Mouth

Update: Ok! Salah! Rewind! I have just been informed that I was not on the World Service but BBC Radio 4! I should have known from the giant "4" at the top left-hand corner of their website! No wonder I did not hear anything the whole day I waited by the radio at 88.9FM!

Sorry ah, BBC Radio 4 folks! Did not mean to create international incident within the BBC! Please accept my apologies for this mistake. Actually, I think Radio 4 is the COOLER part of the BBC anyway. Those World Service folk think they are so international and everything.

-----

Chris Ledgard. host of Word of Mouth on the BBC World Service BBC Radio 4, spoke to me from Bristol about Singlish and English in Singapore.

No, that is not me in the photo. That is Chris, lah.

Go and listen at their site. Click the Listen Now button (duh).

My bit is after the 18 min 30 sec mark.

Hurry, the England pipples is very ngeow one. Only can listen for seven days after broadcast. Maybe they scared others steal their shows and start a new radio station called The Rest of the World Service BBC Radio 4.125.

Stalling bedtime

I have to say that the kids are very adept at stalling for bedtime. Joy, for instance, would find all kinds of excuses to go to bed later. Her kindergarten starts a little later in the morning, unlike her brother's 5am wake-up call for Primary school.

This time, she opted to draw a comic. I had already read her a bedtime story (about Princess Jasmine looking for her stupid tiger in a book based on Disney's Aladdin) but she was still trying to stay up.

I said, fine, what are you drawing? "A boy and a girl," she replied.

As she drew, she giggled to herself and then spoke her storyline aloud, almost to herself.

"Papa", she said, "Help me to write 'Hey you! You're cool!' for the boy I drew!"

I mumbled grouchily and wrote it for her, in the cartoon talk balloon she drew.

"And I want the girl to say 'Hah!'" she continued.

I told her, no, you try writing it yourself, and she did, as I spelled "Hah!" for her.

Then Joy folded her one-page-one-panel comic and said she was going to give it to Auntie Ning, our helper, as a present. With that, I shooed her back to her bedroom and we said goodnight.

(Photos taken with a Pentax 25mm f1.4 cine lens on a GF-1)

Honestly, who rides a road bike like this?

I am told that this looks like the correct technique to ride over lava.

Or maybe it is just S-League football players who ride like this.

Or it is just another Photoshop Fail.

Our Singapore mascot for Shanghai Expo is a freakin' durian

I suppose you won't be able to take Little Durian Star, our mascot for the Shanghai Expo, on the MRT then.

Is durian even a native fruit of Singapore? I thought all our durians come from the backs of dodgy trucks from JB?

Good thing it is seen by foreigners and not locals. We would rip this durian mascot open to see if the meat inside is good or not.

the mrbrown show: forever young

Gahmen say Singapore must stay young! Stay Forever Young at mrbrownshow.com!

CNNGo column: Is Singapore becoming the land of the unaffordable car?

Latest CNNGo.com "Say What? with mrbrown" column: Is Singapore becoming the land of the unaffordable car?

Excerpt:

Mrs Lim Hwee Hua, Second Minister for Finance and Transport, has had a busy week.

First, she had to come out to declare that the spike in certificate of entitlement (COE) premiums and car prices was not caused by changes to a formula to determine the number of replacement COEs.

To which almost every car seller and buyer said, "What is this woman smoking? She has to stop."

Let me explain to our international readers what a certificate of entitlement, or COE is. It is a piece of paper that Singaporeans bid for which gives us the right to buy a car in Singapore. Not the car itself, mind you, just the right to buy the car. The government releases a fixed number of these certificates a year, as they also de-register old cars to take them off the road. This is how they control the car population and maintain Singapore's vehicular equilibrium.

This piece of paper has to be the single most profitable piece of paper pushing that the Singapore government does. Or any government in the world, for that matter. We are talking millions of dollars a month here. (cont'd)

Insing column: mrbrown and the hadoken

Latest weekly Insing column is "mrbrown and the hadoken"

Excerpt:

I am the oldest person in my office. With the average age of my colleagues at 25, I am an old fart by their standards. This also means that when we play computer games, I am not as good as they are.

That's right. I am hiding behind my age when it comes to computer and console games. How else am I going to explain my level of ‘suckage’ when I play with them?

When I say we game in the office, I mean that the office is a working place by day, and is like a LAN Gaming shop by night. The computers are networked for a reason, and that reason is DOTA and Battlefield.

We also have a PS3, PS2, Xbox, Xbox360 hooked up to a big-screen TV, and pretty much everyone else (except me) has a PSP and/or Nintendo DS Lite (or newer).

It is like a giant toy store, this office of ours. Hey, we have writers, artists and a photographer/videographer under one roof, and creative people need to play, ok?

Every day, someone will either buy a new game or we'd be gathering around someone's computer to watch some HD trailer of an upcoming title. If a game looks promising for LAN-based play, the gang will run out and buy a few copies so that we can kill each other on the network.

Sometimes we get lemons. I still have a pristine original copy of Hellgate: London sitting on my shelf. The company that developed this multiplayer role-playing game went under and it is now only played in Korea where a Korean company continues to develop for it. Without game servers, if you installed the game on your PC, it will be in gaming purgatory, floating in some limbo, I am sure. (cont'd)

CNNGo column: Car modding in Singapore hits a road bump

Latest CNNGo.com "Say What? with mrbrown" column: Car modding in Singapore hits a road bump

Excerpt:

There goes the "Bao Pass Scheme" for vehicle inspections, said my buddy, Ryan, when I told him that the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) had begun a probe on vehicle inspectors for bribery.

"Bao Pass" means "Sure to Pass Inspection".

According to news reports, the vehicle inspectors were suspected of closing one eye (and sometimes even both) to illegally modified cars.

Car modification is very popular here, despite the almost draconian laws we have in Singapore against any kind of Boy Racer mods. I believe the popularity of modding one's car comes from the sheer price of cars here. I mean, if you paid what is the GDP of a small Third World country for your ride, wouldn't you want to customize it to your tastes? After all, you are going to be paying off that car loan for the next seven to 10 years of your life. What's a few thousand more dollars for a bad-boy exhaust or tinted windows, right?

But this is Singapore and we have rules and rules must be followed or the sky will fall and the space-time continuum will rupture, thereby unleashing anti-matter that will consume our very souls. (cont'd)

Teenspeak for dummies (like me)

I was reading a young lady's entertaining blog (she lists Choi Seung Hyun as her husband) after I clicked from her Twitter and found this useful list on her sidebar.

She wanted to provide a dictionary of sorts for readers to make sense of some of the abbreviations she uses. I already knew some of them (GG being almost a daily word for me) but I still managed to learn a few new ones through her.

Here is her dictionary with some of her explanations:

1. HHLL (Hong Hong Lie Lie) 轰轰烈烈

2. IKR - I know, right?

3. F5 - (Maplestory emoticon; google it to see!)

4. (A)- (emoticon; i use it to look innocent~)

5. (Y) - (emoticon; it's a good sign!)

6. TTM - to the max

7. GG- (if ydk this you should go play some games, seriously!!)

8. MGBM - May God Bless Me

9. HTHT - Heart To Heart Talk

10. YKWIM? - You know what i mean?

11. ZSQY - Zhong Se Qing You 重色轻友 (In Chinese) English meaning: BFs (boyfriends) over friends HAHAHA

I thought her list was cool TTM. YKWIM?