I've been to a professional basketball match (like those you see on TV), talked to Mark Burnett face to face (creator of survivor and father of reality TV) and interviewed a US cowboy on the phone.
On top of that, i've also got a free one week gym membership and a very nice lunch at a chinese restaurant, courtesy of all the press conferences etc.
Despite the crazy working hours, i must say it has been rather enjoyable so far, with all the interesting people and places my work brings me to.
And on quiet days when i have lunch at the sph canteen, at least i can entertain myself by spotting all the Straits Times journalists there. That's some sort of entertainment i guess..haha.
Thursday, 17 January 2008
Monday, 14 January 2008
Sunday, 13 January 2008
Suharto
I was horrified to read in yesterday's copy of Today that doctors revived Suharto after his heart failed.
What did they revive him for!?
To stand for his corruption trial? To feel the pain of all his organs failing him one by one? To let all the foreign leaders visit him so that they can see how frail he's become?
haiyoh that poor guy. Just let him die lah.
What did they revive him for!?
To stand for his corruption trial? To feel the pain of all his organs failing him one by one? To let all the foreign leaders visit him so that they can see how frail he's become?
haiyoh that poor guy. Just let him die lah.
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
Toilet theories
Let's aim to come clean, gents
The Straits Times
By Teo Cheng Wee
THIS being my first column of the new year, I thought I would make a few wishes.
So peace and goodwill to all mankind. Aston Villa to win the English Premier League. And better toilet habits for all men.
I know, you're looking at one of the three wishes above and thinking: Man, that's really wishful thinking.
Better toilet skills for all men? Pfft. Good luck, buddy.
After all, a Sunday Times report last month revealed that a heart-stopping 10 per cent of Singaporeans don't wash their hands after going to the toilet.
I'm guessing that the number of handshakes in Singapore nosedived that day.
And while the article didn't break the numbers down by gender, I'd bet my bottom dollar that many more men were at fault than women.
If anyone wants proof that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution needs a whole lot of refining, just visit the men's toilet. You would think monkeys were using them.
Here, people not only don't wash their hands, they also don't flush and they don't bother to aim either.
I'm not saying that all men are Neanderthals at the gents. My own estimate is that 10 per cent of them are, but that's 10 per cent too many.
Take the toilet at my workplace. There are six urinals but the first one is most heavily used because it is the closest to the door. It is also the most gross by far.
At the bottom of the urinal lies an ever-present puddle. Its size, depending on how long ago the cleaner did his rounds, varies from that of a 50-cent coin to a fried egg's.
How we men can let go so carelessly that we can collectively form a puddle is beyond me.
Needless to say, I often find myself heading for the last urinal.
A male colleague has another pet peeve - men who throw toilet paper into the urinal.
He has seen the evidence a few times but he felt particularly upset when he once saw a cleaner doing the very unenviable job of scooping the paper out.
'Yah, why are men so disgusting?' a female friend spat at me when I related these stories. Her voice was laced with the kind of venom usually reserved for people who beat up the old and the handicapped.
Women, I am told, live by a whole different standard of toilet hygiene.
They flush, they don't create puddles and they certainly wash their hands after each visit - and with soap too. Goodness, they even wipe their hands dry with the paper provided before they leave.
Women who don't go through this whole process apparently get the evil eye from other women.
It's in their genes, I suppose. It's part of their make-up (and I'm not talking about the make-up they put on while they're in the toilet, which is more proof to me that women have better loo habits given how they have no qualms spending plenty of time in there).
My female friends cannot fathom the idea of using a dirty toilet.
One still carries the scars of seeing the deplorable state of public toilets in China when she visited it more than 10 years ago.
She remembers being so disgusted that she didn't dare to drink water for fear of having to go to the loo. If the urge came, she would hold it in until she got back to the hotel. And nothing could sway her, not even when she was on the 'brink of bursting' once.
'I couldn't talk. I couldn't laugh. I was just staring straight ahead. All my will power was aimed at holding it in,' she recalls.
So when she decided to go back to China last year, she actually contemplated wearing adult diapers. This, by the way, is a 37-year-old career woman, not a 73-year-old granny.
So, as my friend asked, why are men so disgusting?
My theory is that it all stems from complacency.
Because men can do it standing up, we think we can do it quickly and just about anywhere.
And guys being guys, we just want to get through the whole process as quickly as possible - never mind the puddles we leave behind.
Besides, who even has time to wash hands?
But, yes, I know, it's disgusting.
So this year, let's aim to clean up our act, fellows. It's AD 2008, not 2008 BC, after all.
Whenever i see girls heading straight for the toilet exit straight after coming out of the cubicle, i'll cringe involuntarily. And there was always this suspicious, nagging feeling that guys had a tendency to do this more often, given that they don't even have to go into a cubicle.
The above column confirmed my suspicions.
My theory is that NS does this to them. All the handwashing routine that mummy had droned and drilled into them for the first 18 years of their life is quickly undone and thrown out the window the moment they've to start doing it in the forest.
Otherwise, my other guess will be the smelly theory. Guys try to get out of the stinking loo as soon as they can, forgetting to rid their hands of all that germs and bacteria in their desperate rush for the exit.
And as we all know, theories are there to be proven. So guys, be prepared for some uncomfortable wiggly-squiggly questioning.
You've been warned!
The Straits Times
By Teo Cheng Wee
THIS being my first column of the new year, I thought I would make a few wishes.
So peace and goodwill to all mankind. Aston Villa to win the English Premier League. And better toilet habits for all men.
I know, you're looking at one of the three wishes above and thinking: Man, that's really wishful thinking.
Better toilet skills for all men? Pfft. Good luck, buddy.
After all, a Sunday Times report last month revealed that a heart-stopping 10 per cent of Singaporeans don't wash their hands after going to the toilet.
I'm guessing that the number of handshakes in Singapore nosedived that day.
And while the article didn't break the numbers down by gender, I'd bet my bottom dollar that many more men were at fault than women.
If anyone wants proof that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution needs a whole lot of refining, just visit the men's toilet. You would think monkeys were using them.
Here, people not only don't wash their hands, they also don't flush and they don't bother to aim either.
I'm not saying that all men are Neanderthals at the gents. My own estimate is that 10 per cent of them are, but that's 10 per cent too many.
Take the toilet at my workplace. There are six urinals but the first one is most heavily used because it is the closest to the door. It is also the most gross by far.
At the bottom of the urinal lies an ever-present puddle. Its size, depending on how long ago the cleaner did his rounds, varies from that of a 50-cent coin to a fried egg's.
How we men can let go so carelessly that we can collectively form a puddle is beyond me.
Needless to say, I often find myself heading for the last urinal.
A male colleague has another pet peeve - men who throw toilet paper into the urinal.
He has seen the evidence a few times but he felt particularly upset when he once saw a cleaner doing the very unenviable job of scooping the paper out.
'Yah, why are men so disgusting?' a female friend spat at me when I related these stories. Her voice was laced with the kind of venom usually reserved for people who beat up the old and the handicapped.
Women, I am told, live by a whole different standard of toilet hygiene.
They flush, they don't create puddles and they certainly wash their hands after each visit - and with soap too. Goodness, they even wipe their hands dry with the paper provided before they leave.
Women who don't go through this whole process apparently get the evil eye from other women.
It's in their genes, I suppose. It's part of their make-up (and I'm not talking about the make-up they put on while they're in the toilet, which is more proof to me that women have better loo habits given how they have no qualms spending plenty of time in there).
My female friends cannot fathom the idea of using a dirty toilet.
One still carries the scars of seeing the deplorable state of public toilets in China when she visited it more than 10 years ago.
She remembers being so disgusted that she didn't dare to drink water for fear of having to go to the loo. If the urge came, she would hold it in until she got back to the hotel. And nothing could sway her, not even when she was on the 'brink of bursting' once.
'I couldn't talk. I couldn't laugh. I was just staring straight ahead. All my will power was aimed at holding it in,' she recalls.
So when she decided to go back to China last year, she actually contemplated wearing adult diapers. This, by the way, is a 37-year-old career woman, not a 73-year-old granny.
So, as my friend asked, why are men so disgusting?
My theory is that it all stems from complacency.
Because men can do it standing up, we think we can do it quickly and just about anywhere.
And guys being guys, we just want to get through the whole process as quickly as possible - never mind the puddles we leave behind.
Besides, who even has time to wash hands?
But, yes, I know, it's disgusting.
So this year, let's aim to clean up our act, fellows. It's AD 2008, not 2008 BC, after all.
Whenever i see girls heading straight for the toilet exit straight after coming out of the cubicle, i'll cringe involuntarily. And there was always this suspicious, nagging feeling that guys had a tendency to do this more often, given that they don't even have to go into a cubicle.
The above column confirmed my suspicions.
My theory is that NS does this to them. All the handwashing routine that mummy had droned and drilled into them for the first 18 years of their life is quickly undone and thrown out the window the moment they've to start doing it in the forest.
Otherwise, my other guess will be the smelly theory. Guys try to get out of the stinking loo as soon as they can, forgetting to rid their hands of all that germs and bacteria in their desperate rush for the exit.
And as we all know, theories are there to be proven. So guys, be prepared for some uncomfortable wiggly-squiggly questioning.
You've been warned!
Mumble Grumbles
My colleagues and i were walking past this group of people while looking for potential interviewees when one of them whispered to me: "Eh why don't you try interviewing the girl? I've talked to the guy just now."
I did a double take. "What!? I've talked to him too!"
Argh some people just don't have the sense to tell reporters when they've already been interviewed.
And i can't believe that i actually worked 13 hours today.
Strangely, for an intern who's supposed to be in the home section, i've made more overseas calls than local ones. I called this Malaysian Indian guy for another story, and the conversation went like this:
"Hi Mr V, i'm andrea from my paper in Singapore."
"What's this? Your paper?"
"No, my paper."
Hahaa yeah what a clever name for a newspaper it is.
I did a double take. "What!? I've talked to him too!"
Argh some people just don't have the sense to tell reporters when they've already been interviewed.
And i can't believe that i actually worked 13 hours today.
Strangely, for an intern who's supposed to be in the home section, i've made more overseas calls than local ones. I called this Malaysian Indian guy for another story, and the conversation went like this:
"Hi Mr V, i'm andrea from my paper in Singapore."
"What's this? Your paper?"
"No, my paper."
Hahaa yeah what a clever name for a newspaper it is.
Saturday, 5 January 2008
First Day of Work
If you randomly throw a stone in a newsroom, there's a high chance that you might hit an SCI graduate.
Yeah met my colleagues for the first time today, and quite a few of the journalists in the My Paper newsroom are from my school :)
Feels good to have nice seniors who invite you to have lunch with them, tell you "feel free to ask me if you've any questions", and ask you to go off and not do too much OT because "they don't pay you enough".
Haha anyway, here's a desperate call for stories. If there's anything about Singapore that you absolutely think should be highlighted, feel free to tell me. My internship grade will depend on you!
Yeah met my colleagues for the first time today, and quite a few of the journalists in the My Paper newsroom are from my school :)
Feels good to have nice seniors who invite you to have lunch with them, tell you "feel free to ask me if you've any questions", and ask you to go off and not do too much OT because "they don't pay you enough".
Haha anyway, here's a desperate call for stories. If there's anything about Singapore that you absolutely think should be highlighted, feel free to tell me. My internship grade will depend on you!
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
A Prayer for the New Year
God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the Courage to change the things I can,
and the Wisdom to know the difference.
Happy New Year everyone! :)
the Courage to change the things I can,
and the Wisdom to know the difference.
Happy New Year everyone! :)
What If Jesus Isn’t the Answer to My Question?
by Anna Aven Howard
12/28/2007
I must confess, I have a contrary and sarcastic mind at times (okay, a lot of the time). I was driving down the freeway in Nashville and I saw a billboard proclaiming: “Try Jesus: He has an answer for everything!”
This struck me as odd because a few days before I had seen an eighteen-wheeler driving down the freeway with the words “It’s the answer you’ve been looking for” written on the back. Curious, I pulled up alongside it and discovered that it was an ad for a low-carbohydrate bread, the answer to how to have bread on a low-carb diet.
I actually had the same reaction to both of these signs. My thought when I saw the ad for the bread was, What if I was wondering what to do with my life? and when I saw the Jesus billboard, I thought, What if I was wondering what to have for lunch? I don’t think Jesus is the answer to that question.
I don’t think that “Jesus is the answer” is actually in the Bible. Gasp—I know! We’ve talked before about the fact that Jesus is the way to God. This is actually in the Bible, affirmed in many different places, the most famous of which is John 14:6: “Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.’ ”
But I would argue that there is a vast difference between Jesus being the way, and Jesus being the answer.
Perhaps I’m leaning too much on my own experience here, but I’ve had many questions to which Jesus was not the answer. I’ve experienced hard times when Jesus wasn’t a quick fix, as that whole “Jesus is the answer” thing tends to imply. Jesus has always been there to walk me through them, but sometimes there just weren’t any answers.
I think this is an important distinction to make. If we buy into the whole concept that Jesus is the answer, and we try to make him the answer to everything, or think that he somehow should be the answer for everything, we will be frustrated. Either we will find ourselves disappointed in who we thought Jesus was, or we’ll be convinced that somehow, we’re not doing this whole Jesus thing right.
It’s sort of like that all-in-one tool you can order from the home shopping network—you know, the one that’s supposed to slice, dice, cube, chop, and cut. Then you get it and either it doesn’t do all of those things as well as the infomercial claimed, or it doesn’t do them for very long before breaking. And we feel as if we have been sold a false bill of goods.
That’s the problem with treating Jesus as the answer. If we buy into Jesus as the answer to all our problems, then we haven’t met the real Jesus. You see, you can’t “buy into” Jesus because Jesus isn’t a commodity. He’s not the latest and greatest labor-saving product to simplify your life.
But this is actually good news. For those of you who have tried Jesus as the answer to everything and then were let down, it wasn’t Jesus who let you down; it was simply the faulty view of Jesus that you’d been sold.
There are always going to be questions with no answers and times of difficulty, sorrow, and darkness. But while Jesus might not promise to be the answer to every problem, we find him telling us, “And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
And when we’re in the middle of trial by fire, or feel that we’re treading water, barely able to keep our nose above the surface, we find him saying:
“Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” (Isaiah 43:1-3).
Jesus never promised that it would be easy. But He promised to be there. Always. So if you have encountered a situation where Jesus wasn’t the answer, it’s okay. He might not be the answer, but he is the way, the truth, and the life. And he is ready to lead us through this journey of life until we’re safely home with him one day.
12/28/2007
I must confess, I have a contrary and sarcastic mind at times (okay, a lot of the time). I was driving down the freeway in Nashville and I saw a billboard proclaiming: “Try Jesus: He has an answer for everything!”
This struck me as odd because a few days before I had seen an eighteen-wheeler driving down the freeway with the words “It’s the answer you’ve been looking for” written on the back. Curious, I pulled up alongside it and discovered that it was an ad for a low-carbohydrate bread, the answer to how to have bread on a low-carb diet.
I actually had the same reaction to both of these signs. My thought when I saw the ad for the bread was, What if I was wondering what to do with my life? and when I saw the Jesus billboard, I thought, What if I was wondering what to have for lunch? I don’t think Jesus is the answer to that question.
I don’t think that “Jesus is the answer” is actually in the Bible. Gasp—I know! We’ve talked before about the fact that Jesus is the way to God. This is actually in the Bible, affirmed in many different places, the most famous of which is John 14:6: “Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.’ ”
But I would argue that there is a vast difference between Jesus being the way, and Jesus being the answer.
Perhaps I’m leaning too much on my own experience here, but I’ve had many questions to which Jesus was not the answer. I’ve experienced hard times when Jesus wasn’t a quick fix, as that whole “Jesus is the answer” thing tends to imply. Jesus has always been there to walk me through them, but sometimes there just weren’t any answers.
I think this is an important distinction to make. If we buy into the whole concept that Jesus is the answer, and we try to make him the answer to everything, or think that he somehow should be the answer for everything, we will be frustrated. Either we will find ourselves disappointed in who we thought Jesus was, or we’ll be convinced that somehow, we’re not doing this whole Jesus thing right.
It’s sort of like that all-in-one tool you can order from the home shopping network—you know, the one that’s supposed to slice, dice, cube, chop, and cut. Then you get it and either it doesn’t do all of those things as well as the infomercial claimed, or it doesn’t do them for very long before breaking. And we feel as if we have been sold a false bill of goods.
That’s the problem with treating Jesus as the answer. If we buy into Jesus as the answer to all our problems, then we haven’t met the real Jesus. You see, you can’t “buy into” Jesus because Jesus isn’t a commodity. He’s not the latest and greatest labor-saving product to simplify your life.
But this is actually good news. For those of you who have tried Jesus as the answer to everything and then were let down, it wasn’t Jesus who let you down; it was simply the faulty view of Jesus that you’d been sold.
There are always going to be questions with no answers and times of difficulty, sorrow, and darkness. But while Jesus might not promise to be the answer to every problem, we find him telling us, “And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
And when we’re in the middle of trial by fire, or feel that we’re treading water, barely able to keep our nose above the surface, we find him saying:
“Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” (Isaiah 43:1-3).
Jesus never promised that it would be easy. But He promised to be there. Always. So if you have encountered a situation where Jesus wasn’t the answer, it’s okay. He might not be the answer, but he is the way, the truth, and the life. And he is ready to lead us through this journey of life until we’re safely home with him one day.
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