TODAY: AND SO SAYS SINGAPORE

Sin­ga­pore­ans, it is time to pod­cast your views to mark this National Day

I KNOW it’s a lit­tle way from Aug 9, but my friends and I stum­bled upon the idea of mak­ing use of pod­casts (which, as I’ve pre­vi­ously explained, are audio files stored and dis­trib­uted via the Inter­net), to cre­ate a lit­tle buzz in the lead-up to National Day.

We hope to make this a viral meme, where read­ers and blog­gers fol­low our lead, cre­ate their own audio files and put it on the Net for other peo­ple to download.

Think of it as one of those gov­ern­ment agency ini­tia­tives such as the hugely pop­u­lar Fab­ric of the Nation project (www.channelnewsasia.com/fabric/), only this one’s on the Internet.

And you don’t need any sewing skills.

Read more at TODAY­on­line: [pdf][text]

Tech­no­rati Tags: iam­sin­ga­porean, Nation­al­Day, NDP06, pod­cast, pod­cast­ing, sin­ga­pore, TODAY

I par­tic­i­pated in a sim­i­lar National Day meme last year, called One Sin­ga­pore Minute (www.flickr.com/photos/tags/onesingaporeminute/), where a series of pho­tographs had to be taken within a minute, then uploaded and shared. That lit­tle cam­paign gar­nered more than 700 pho­tos in the month’s lead up to National Day.

This year, our pod­cast project will be titled I Am Sin­ga­porean, with each per­son voic­ing around a minute and a half’s worth of what being Sin­ga­porean means to him or her.

Each pod­cast should end with the line “I am Sin­ga­porean. So say we all” and be tagged “iamsingaporean”.

The files should then be uploaded on the Net for all and sundry to enjoy and maybe shed a patri­otic tear or two.

Here’s an exam­ple: You could start by say­ing some­thing such as “I chope seats at the hawker cen­tre by putting tis­sue paper on the table”, and “I join any queue I see, even though I don’t know what it’s for”.

Try it and you’ll prob­a­bly end up jot­ting down things about being Sin­ga­porean you hardly noticed previously.

They could be heart­warm­ing, seri­ous or down­right silly.

What­ever it is, you will, like us, sud­denly realise how much or how lit­tle you love this coun­try. Patri­otic back­ground music is optional. (Please check for copy­right issues before you flout Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty laws.)

Okay, so it’s not exactly an orig­i­nal idea.

We were inspired by a tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial enti­tled I Am Cana­dian for a Cana­dian brand of beer called Mol­son (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Canadian) which was so pop­u­lar it spawned sev­eral spoofs avail­able on YouTube (youtube.com), includ­ing one fea­tur­ing William Shatner.

Already, we’ve had vari­a­tions on our theme, with one con­trib­u­tor pen­ning this ver­sion: “I pay income tax. I pay CPF. I pay fines — and I am a Sin­ga­pore PR.”

If, how­ever, you’re a lit­tle bit on the pas­sive side when it comes to Inter­net activ­ity but still care enough about the coun­try to want to find out what peo­ple are say­ing about it, there’s this revamped blog called www.singaporeangle.com, pre­vi­ously known as From A Sin­ga­pore Angle (singaporeangle.blogspot.com).

Cre­ated last month by Huichieh Loy, a recently returned over­seas grad­u­ate, the blog is the group effort of eight con­trib­u­tors, includ­ing blog­gers Kway Teow Man (kwayteowman.blogspot.com) and The Void Deck (thevoiddeck.org).

These are what I would call “seri­ous blog­gers”, and they write in a seri­ous man­ner about the seri­ous issues that affect Sin­ga­pore and Singaporeans.

And by seri­ous I mean … well, here’s how Mr Loy describes the blog:

“Our indi­vid­ual moti­va­tions for cast­ing our lot in the project — I am sure — are as var­ied as our choice of monikers. But (if I may haz­ard a div­ina­tion of a mood) each is drawn by the pos­si­bil­ity of rea­soned dis­course and civil dis­cus­sion on mat­ters to do with Singapore.”

Rea­soned dis­course, as opposed to what appears more reg­u­larly on blogs, could be what works for singaporeangle.com in terms of audi­ence num­bers (at last count more than 300 per day) — because satire, sar­casm and humour, as some peo­ple say, might be lost on read­ers who are not accus­tomed to them.

Or as the mod­er­a­tor of pop­u­lar local Inter­net forum Sammyboy.com’s Alfresco Cof­fee Shop puts it: “I have learned from expe­ri­ence that humour, satire, para­bles, sar­casm et cetera are absolutely wasted on 99% of the patrons of this cof­fee shop.

“Mes­sages here must be in sim­ple straight­for­ward Singlish with some Hokkien exple­tives thrown in for good measure.

“That’s the only way you can ensure that you’ll get your point across to everyone.”

Mr Miyagi aka Ben­jamin Lee has been enter­tain­ing read­ers at miyagi.sg for over two years.