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Home Team Restraint

Like a few others, I’m really impressed that the Singapore Police Force, under quite a bit of danger, what with an estimated 400 people involved, several cars flipped over and burned, did not fire a single shot (of either lethal rounds (metal jackets) or non-lethal rounds (rubber bullets) or teargas) in anger or in defence.

It would have been different  in any other jurisdiction. Good job, guys. That went a long way in diffusing the situation and not escalating it or causing more injuries.

Unthinkable Singapore

singapore-loan-sharks-hdb-community-shaming-owe-money-pay-money

So we might not get to watch the World Cup.

They say you can feel the pulse of the nation on sammyboy.com, and yesterday, a heartfelt plea from “Rogue Trader” summed up the disbelief and desperation among soccer fans around the island.

Dear singtel and starhub,

i writes to you as a football fans. Please show us all world cup matches this year.

Please note that I write only “matches”. We don’t needs any other channels like:
1) “bench area” view for the both sides’ substitute bench and managers,
2) the “tactical” top-down view where we can only see which player is balding.
3) “Beckham” view to show him for full 90 minutes (or “Christiano Ronaldo” view etc).

I know singaporean telco/ISP very high tech can show all this. probably last time you can charge us more for these channels we didnt choose to subscribe.

Just show us the Live game from the match camera view. This way your bid can become cheaper. And then we can all watch the world cup this year.

Thank you!

The other unthinkable thing I read about was how Sassyjan and her family were harassed by loansharks who struck – the usual paintjob, phonecalls and ripping her front gate out – with apparent impunity, because her calls to the police resulted in merely ineffectual advice (install a CCTV) while she and her family cowered in fear, half-hoping that our Home Team would be on the job, and that the Investigating Officer had a very, very good reason not to return her call for an entire week.

Maybe they should change the name of the “The Home Team” to “The Go Out and Protect Our Citizens Team”. That might do the trick.

Shame!

State of the nation

Almost every other blog post this month has been about the baby, so Naomi and I have endeavoured to keep abreast (breastfeeding pun not intended) of current news and happenings here:

1) It is heartening to note that home grown brand Cedele is spelling things as they pronounce them:

Crips!

2) Just as heartening that the “Home Team” is very confident that none of these vehicles pose any security threat to the SGX building as they stop right on the No Stopping multiple zigzag lines on the lane behind it. (Makes sense – no need to sabotage a weak stock exchange):

No stopping behind SGX, or mebbe can...

3) There are monks earning $20K a month!

4) That some nominated MPs aren’t seeking another term.

And I have Naomi to thank for telling me that the Straits Times article talking about this was accurate in calling Eunice Olsen a musician. I was about to make a monkey of myself making lewd remarks about the instruments Miss Olsen might play. Apparently she plays the keyboards and is in a band.

Quite a cool band it looks like too, although I really do have a bone to pick with biographies that go, “Shahn first picked up a guitar when he was 16”, because the next logical line should be, “before that, he was only strong enough to pick up smaller objects”.