(Above image taken from TOC)

While this is indeed the hottest topic in town until 7th May 2011, people have been posting updates on twitter and facebook on their opinions and adding on issues that should be addressed during the GE (General Election).  Many debate why suddenly Singaporeans are so into politics, like a baby suddenly transformed into a young child and request for a change (quoted from US president, Mr Barack Obama) in the managing of the gahment.

Frankly speaking, political issues are a taboo to be mentioned in the state.  At any point of time if you are in public and talking bad about the gahment or its policies, rest assure you can be caught.  For whatever reason it was, you will be detained or go behind the bars like instantaneously.   Not to mention, if you had a group of people who are strongly bond with your thoughts against the gahment, the whole group can be detained as well.  Thus this IS THE ONLY TIME WE TALK POLITICS.  Not that we don’t in usual coffeeshop sessions but we are not allowed/supposed to.

KIASI

Like a said, this isn’t an overnight thingy.  The management and policies are way overboard but noone dares to voice out.  Remember the 3 KIAs in Singapore: Kiasu, Kiasi, Kiabor.  Everyone is Kiasi.   Dont lie to yourself.  We all know that to go against the gahment/the ruling party is like giving a death sentence to yourself.  Media writes nasty stuffs about you, people gives you the weird look like ‘why do you want the attention?’ and things like that.  After the election, when you return to work, you will find a totally different environment and might have to keep switching jobs because of your previous unwelcomed media attention.  So we all just want to be normal.  Whatever the ruling party wants, they can have it because they HAVE the power.

The man who deserves the respect and huge applause

Mr Chiam See Tong, is a man who I respect the most other than Mr Lim Bo Seng in Singapore History.  Never in my life, was I told the exciting story about this man.  The media coverage always made him look like the ugly duckling among the white swans.  When people told me about him, I laughed.  I was naive and ignorant.  Blame me then but not now.  I watch his rally for the past week and teared in every single rally.  He didn’t have to say a word.  The crowd loves him and he loves the crowd.  He addressed them as the TRUE singaporeans and I think they deserved the credit too.

Sudden Fame

While Ms Tin Pei Ling was been announced as 1 of the youngest candidate to contest for the GE2011, I was surprised.  I watched her interviews amusingly.   Like seriously?  The way she answers and put herself in public, I think its not how a politician should behave.  Then NSP introduced Ms Nicole Seah, which I think, was to ride on the negative wave caused by TPL and so that she looks even more positive as a candidate.   The both of them with only 3 years age gap, yet the younger one could empathise the natives more and communicate better with them.  TPL on the other hand resorted to declaring trauma-ism, seeing a shrink and have the senior members to talk for her behalf.  This proves that she is unable to handle stress and communicate with the people.  I watched Nicole Seah’s rally too.  Not as touching as CST’s but is able to capture the attention from a singaporean.  I hope she gets in (although the chances are low), because I can see that she has a passion and will serve the nation well.  Her name might also appear in Singapore History!  It all depends if she can win this election or the next.

Social Media Power

One cannot neglect the power of social media to influence a person’s thought.  With TOC and TR available, there are news on the Internet that are not written on our daily newspapers which is biased against some parties.  We may have grown up with the newspapers but we didn’t expect it to be disgustingly filled with positive comments.  While a propoganda should be started, one should always stop buying biased news and refer to news online.  Its up to date and its not that biased.  Facebook, Twitter and Youtube also led to a larger audience for the parties to share their news and manifestos.  They know that their news will not appear in the newspaper most of the time so they are able to their information on the platforms that are not controlled.

Why now?

This is the only first time I’m able to vote since most of the time it was a walk over.  Ask around who really had the chance to vote earlier on?  If they had, they would also vote for WP or SPP.

Ingrateful Bastards

This is got nothing to do with been grateful anot.  Look at the surroundings around you, yes its beautiful, yes its built by our forefathers and foreigners, etc.  Then look carefully again, why are there handicaps selling tissues at MRT or coffeeshops?  Why people like to mess up my void deck’s dustbin to find trash to recycle and earn money?  These are the old people who watched the rise of the nation and contributed to the society, one way or another.  Did gahment reward them?  Did gahment say no working to these people and give them a daily allowance from our reserves?  Perhaps no working is overstated but give them a break, the challenges they have to face in their life in more than us.  Who are we to judge?  Thanking the ruling party for their past contribution has already been done.  Their salary says it all.  Besides, they got dominant control all the time and this is their vision and part of their work!  Shall they had not done a good job, I believe more opposition parties could have been grown!

An overly-crowded country without a passport

I bet those who dont see a problem in the nation’s management are those who gets to drive/gets driven around all the time without going onto the trains during peak hours just to go to work/home on time.   Or probably the people who dont have to work outside and blog at home everyday, then go out take some good photos and photoshop themselves to satisfy them then criticize the ingrateful bastards.  Its a very big phenomenon that many locals cant get into local unis because of FTs.  They took most of the placings available in the higher education sector.  Besides, they have a lower pay rate which allows many employers to save money on compensations.  Some even say that they can perform much better than a local!

Complacence

We all know complacency kills.  So do arrogance.   The way the ruling party answers to the public and media is very biased and totally unliked what I have been pledges for years.  There is no equality.  People who voted for ruling party gets everything whereas people who didnt, just sit aside and watch but pay the same fees =)  waddafug?

Smearing tactics

Shameless really.  Desperate for win.

Apologies

It came too late.  Yes, a line must be drawn somewhere among the non-ministerial position but should he have stepped up and apologize when the mistake was made, instead of avoiding the topic?  Unlike gossips about celebrities, we don’t forget these things.  Gossips and rumours can be forgotten but mistakes, once re-invocated, people will start to question all over again.

Thats your nation

Sorry but every nation should defend and put its own citizens first.  My forefathers didn’t come to this fishing village to let work so hard and let people from other land to take our fruitful resources.  I love my nation and I want it to be Singaporean-filled, not FTs and I will vote wisely tomorrow.

Conclusion

Your debate is rightful but keep it to yourself.   I just want to highlight some issues brought up by other bloggers who wants the attention to themselves.

Heres a short video on a TVB drama on local property prices:

I want an IPA Sunny 16 Dog Tag!

I hope my dad have a speedy recovery.  He kinda had a crack at the base of his foot and he can’t touch the floor, so my sister got him a pair of crutches.  Please bless him god!  He’s the sole breadwinner for the family and we can’t do without him =(

He was supposed to have a surgery but he postponed it because he had to work on a few projects before he can go into the hospital for the operation.

Yes he’s my idol and my number 1 dad no matter what silly thing he does =)

My Behringer X-vamp finally mets its doomsday.  Initially I know it was just the power cable that was faulty (it was really fault) but after I manage to get another replacement power adapter, the input pin couldn’t fit into the pedal and I made another trip down to the guitar shop to get the input converter.

Finally, just when I thought it should be working fine because it has power already, it failed me again =(  The effects can’t seem to render any output at all.  So I switched to the tuner and hope that it could detect my guitar pickups at least but no, it didn’t.  Waste my time and money running to several places to get the adapter, bloodly idiot.

So after much consideration (since I have some extra moolahs on hand), I get to choose between the cheapest, cheap and the expensives.  I could just get a cheap pedal like the behringer x-vamp but I didn’t like its feel.  It feels cheap, plastic-ish and the effects are really, noisy instead of pleasing.  I can’t do proper covers using that crap so I need something better.

So the shop I chanced upon was selling this Korg-AX3000g which is a legendary good effects but been around in the industry for 5 years and alot of online shops have discontinued this product, I reckon Korg might be releasing something newer in time to come but not sure when.  I tried it and it feels good but psychologically, I just feel that I am using old tech and I shouldn’t waste money to buy old tech.  Who buys pentium 4 3ghz single core when there’s quad cores?  We rather pay that extra little more since its newer and doesn’t phase out in the next 2-3years.

Another effects I tried was the Zoom G7.1ut.  The feel and overall was good but same thing, its pretty much old tech since it was selling back in 2006s.  Again, I won’t want to pay my $3xx.00 on an old tech gadget.  Zoom g9.1 looks good too but its slightly costly ($46x.00)  although I can afford it, but I told myself no, try another one.  I said, the one with HD.

Line6 came out with a new multi-effects with HD series; revolutionary HD modelling with 16 amps modelling and m-class effects like:

It has a built in looper, a USB sound card for listening and recording (the output from the soundcard is really awesome!).  Although the model HD400 & HD300 only allow up to 4 simultaneous effects, it should be sufficient enough for me as a learner.

My gig bag with power adapters and my beta aivin acoustic simulation pedal.

The knobs for adjusting the amp, effects and equalisers.

The buttons on pedalboard.

I know the pictures quality are pretty low but the effects and guitar is in my dorm while my DSLR is sitting in the dry cabinet at home =/  I will definitely upload a high res photo of it.  Meanwhile, let me jam and admire this state-of-the-art multi-effects.

Oh.. for those of you who wasn’t born yet when I was watching Under One Roof starring Moses Lim, this is Vernetta Lopez who co-stared in the series as Moses Lim’s Daugher =)  Haven’t seen her on the screen for a long long time until that day, during my friend’s Solemnization, she was the emcee for them and this is how I got the chance to get this close up shot with her

She is a very friendly and approachable person.  If I wasnt carried away by my friends solemnization I might have sat down right beside her table and start asking her questions like ‘OMG! I haven’t seen you on the screen for a long long time! Whats keep you busy lately!?’ etc.

So I came back home and started googling about her (since I didn’t get my chance to ask her) and came upon an article that has her interview with questions I might wanna ask.

So for those of you who are getting married soon, you might considering hiring her services (or visit www.eternallyyours.com.sg)

And this is not an advertisement.  This is out of goodwill my friends!

I was actually looking forward to this day a long time ago because the couple had been in the relationship for quite some time.. At last they got married =)!

The theme for the ceremony was ‘Alice in Wonderland’, preset by Adeline.  So I bought some stuffs back from Bangkok hoping that I would use them all today for a good and memorable scene back in their mind but apparently, when I reached the venue.. I’m shocked.  Looks like I was the only odd 1 out.  My hair is not styled, my shirt is so retro, and so is my brown camera bag.. I was wearing jeans instead of pants and the only thing I did right, was to wear a pair of white shoes.

Basically, most of my friends ignored the theme and went on with their preferred traditional costume; a black shirt with grey vest, pair of black pants and pointed leather shoes.   Yes I was the only 1 who wanted to go along with the theme; how despairing I felt.  So I kept the hideous orange wig and silverish glittering hat all the night, just in case they would want me to wear the whole night but luckily they didn’t!  Else I would really be the odd 1 out!

Nonetheless, here are the photos that I have taken & processed using Lightroom..

It seem that the restaurant had very limited library of songs that can be played and the songs were not very romantic either.. they were playing songs like Waka Waka (hello? world cup is over and this ain’t african wedding?), and this 60s top chart a-go-go song:

Went to the newly wed house for drinking + sabotage session but ended got sabotaged instead.  Think I lost my mojo for drinking spirits already!  I used to be a good drinker =/ better than most of them but now I got wasted so early before them!  Im the weakest among all of them now!  Shit..  The game we played:

TEXAS HOLDEM!

• My ipod touch had inevitably rebooted itself a few times due to low memory
• There is a latency in between the switching of songs in the music player
• Battery life really sucked to the max
• Lagginess in playing games
• And many other more…

So about 4 weeks ago, I was looking for a cure in Google to downgrade this highly anticipated OS back to 3.1.3 but to no avail.  All of the methods found in Google required me to have the SHSH of the ipod touch before flashing it to iOS4.  This was a no-return step.  If you have not backed up your SHSH to saurik’s server after u jailbreak in iOS3.1.2 or 3.1.3, you will never ever be able to get the SHSH back.  I was fucking cursing and swearing.

Then a white holy light came and gave me an optimal solution for this situation.  It is STILL POSSIBLE for you to downgrade your iOS4 back to 3.1.3 WITHOUT YOUR SHSH if you can find the custom firmware to flash it.  You need to have LibUSB installed (64bit go google for a tutorial), then google for a custom firmware and flash it.  If you encounter error 21 or 16xx, dont worry.. just keep on trying to flash!  (thats what I did).  You can find a full tutorial in redmondpie..

And a disclaimer yet, although I have used the method.. it was at my own risk as well… im not responsible for your bricked device if you did not follow the right instructions.