Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog

Category: General Updates

Commentary on people, places, things, the news, current events, etc.

  • Al Jazeera English Is Still Available in Singapore

    I was reading a blog post on Al Jazeera’s ‘The Asia Blog‘ about a correspondent’s experience in Singapore in 1994.  He was saying that though Singapore has grown in leaps and bounds, some things don’t change in terms of media censorship.  He questions whether or not the removal of Al Jazeera English was truly a commercial decision and whether or not StarHub would be allowed to make its own decision about whether or not to carry the station.

    I’m not an expert on this, but just from my general impressions there is still an atmosphere of self-censorship for fear of lawsuits and other legal actions here. I think it’s mostly due to the government’s zealous use of libel laws to maintain a pristine image. So, people still tend to be very very careful about what they say in regards to the government or any government entity.  I’m not writing this post to debate whether or not the practice of libel lawsuits is a valid method of ensuring government stability.  I’m merely responding to what the correspondent said in his blog post and affirming that, from a foreign perspective, the atmosphere is still a bit like what he said it was in 1994.

    That being said, it’s very easy to get outside news in Singapore through world-wide traditional news networks online. News via internet is not censored here, and Singapore is one of the most ‘connected’ countries I’ve ever seen. Internet service is very affordable here.  Not having access at home is also not a deterrent to connecting to the rest of the world.  Anyone who has a device capable of browsing the internet can gain access for free through the wireless@sg initiative, which places free public wi-fi in almost all public facilities, including malls and libraries. So, if people want an outside view it’s very easy for them to access it, including Al Jazeera content online.

    I was first exposed to Al Jazeera English in Qatar, when I was stationed there as a US Soldier. I was a little skeptical of the station at first, due to its name, but after getting over my bias, I’ve recognized it as one of the best news stations available. It offers a unique perspective on the world and while I don’t subscribe to the idea of believing everything from just one station, I use it as a balance against the other news stations I consume.

    In short, I love Al Jazeera English. I love the stories it covers. I love the diversity.

     

    I also love how I can still watch AJE streaming live via its iPhone app, even though it has been taken off the air in Singapore.  It looks a little fuzzy blown up in this image, but on my iPhone screen it’s clear.  The sound is clear.  It streams easily over home wi-fi.

    So, if you love AJE programming and have an iPhone, you can still watch it.  The app is free.  Just make sure you’re using wi-fi or you might go over your monthly data allowance.

  • Why Such A Light Sentence For Vicky Herman Quek Bee Lan?

    Vicky Herman Quek Bee Lan, a 44 year old woman, was recently arrested for spiking the drinks of male targets and then robbing them, racking up a total of over 21k in stolen goods and cash between August and December of last year. This woman has a long criminal record, having been arrested for theft in 1994 and 1996 as well as serving a 6.5 year long sentence in 1999 for similar crimes to what she’s being charged with now.

    The prosecution said this woman has no remorse for her actions and an evaluation said that she is likely to engage in similar criminal activities in the future, since her previous 6.5 year sentence didn’t act as a deterrent.

    This is a woman who has stolen tens of thousands of dollars from victims, most of which has remained unrecovered, since it was used for services like botox treatment and laser surgeries.  This is a woman who is sure to strike again.

    So, what I want to know is, why was she sentenced to a lesser sentence this time around than she was in 1999?  If the 6.5 years didn’t deter her, why would 6?  Shouldn’t the time she spends in jail, thinking about where her crime landed her, increase, rather than decrease after repeat offenses?  The article I read on the Straits Times said that she could be imprisoned for up to 14 years, so I wonder why it is she received such a light sentence?

  • Heathrow Airport Body Scanner Abused; Employee Takes Picture of Woman’s Scanned Image

    Back in January, when talk of putting body scanners in airports was running at full steam, I posted my opinion on the whole matter, which is, in short that it’s a horrible idea that offers up way too many opportunities for abuse of the system by less than ethical employees and the government.  I pointed out how accurately the body scanners portray people’s forms and how some countries had even banned the use of body scanners on children because it was a violation of child pornography laws that state that nude images of children cannot be created.  Additionally, I pointed out ways in which the images could be removed from the area, and even how simple photo editing could reverse the colors to create accurate color nude images of people.  Here are the example images I posted:

    There were a lot of naysayers in that debate, talking about how it could never happen, how there would be preventive measures put in place to keep people from abusing the imaging system.  As with all systems, there are always holes, and the first one just cropped up.

    A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “Police received an allegation regarding an incident that happened at Heathrow Terminal 5 on March 10. A first-instance harassment warning has been issued to a 25-year-old male.”

    The BAA employee took a photo of his co-worker, Jo Margetson, when she inadvertently went through a scanner.

    “I can’t bear to think about the body scanner thing,” she told the Sun. “I’m totally traumatised. I’ve spoken to the police about it. I’m in too much of a state to go to work.”

    via guardian.co.uk

    I’m not going to drag this out, because I’m sure most of you have read both sides of the argument already, but just keep this in mind the next time you’re taking your wife and young daughter through the airport.  One last thing I’d like to reiterate though, is that these body scanners would not have detected the bomb that was used on the December 25th, 2009 attempted airplane bombing that these scanners are being installed as a reaction to.  That’s all of our tax dollars, hard at work buying things that wouldn’t even have solved the original problem.

    Update: This is my favorite quote from the news article (linked to from the quote above):

    “Air passengers already tolerate a large invasion of their privacy and we do not feel that full-body scanners add greatly to this situation. Privacy concerns should not prevent the deployment of scanners.”

    Essentially this guy is saying that because they already violate your privacy, it’s absolutely ok for them to continue violating it. Get ready for invasive probes after the next terrorist hides a bomb inside their rectum or vagina. It’ll be ok, because they’ve already invaded your privacy greatly by virtually strip searching you, so why not go a bit further?

  • MyTransport.SG: Why LTA Really Killed the ‘Park-a-Lot’ iPhone App

    A few days ago I wrote a post about how LTA had told Park-a-Lot developer, NiiDees, that his wildly popular iPhone app could no longer access real-time parking information from garages.

    The reasons cited were that the information leased to LTA was only allowed to be shown on its site, and not through iPhone apps.  They also said that they would consider leasing the information out, for a hefty price I’m sure.  Thinking about it now, that in itself is a contradiction.  If the information was only licensed for their site, how could they license it out?

    From an article in today’s online edition of the Straits Times titled “Mobile service for commuters”:

    “There is also information on premium buses, Electronic Road Pricing gantries and rates as well as updated information on available car park lots, among other things.”

    via StraitsTimes.com

    I suppose the truth of the matter is that they were blowing smoke.  It seems as though they were killing free competition in advance of their release of a new web portal called MyTransport.SG which was launched today and will provide parking information, among other things.  If LTA were a public company I could understand if they wanted to limit competition or use of public data that’s being paid for by citizens, but that’s simply not the case here.

    MyTransport.sg standard browser incompatibility message
    MyTransport.sg standard browser incompatibility message.

    Regardless, I took a look at the new mobile site, which is only accessible via a mobile browser, and it looks like they did a fairly good job with it.  The design looks like an iPhone home screen (lawsuit pending?) with the functionality of a native iPhone app, including a “Home” button and a “Location” button along the bottom of the screen.  Here are some screenshots:

    MyTransport.sg Homescreen
    MyTransport.sg Homescreen
    The Parking Guide
    The Parking Guide, and probably the reason why LTA shut off Park-A-Lot’s Access
    MRT LRT Station Search
    MRT LRT Station Search

    You can use it to find the nearest MRT or LRT station.  If you don’t want to enter a search term, you can press the location button towards the bottom of the screen (crosshairs icon) and then allow your location to be broadcast to automatically get results.

    Allow MyTransport.sg to use your location pop-up.
    Allow MyTransport.sg to use your location pop-up.
    Nearby Bus Stops
    Nearby Bus Stops

    The results are really accurate.  It gave a good list of all the bus stops near to where I am.

    I’m not sure I like LTA’s questionable business practices, but I have to say they did a good job with their web interface for this data.

  • LTA Trying To Scam Singaporeans’ Money?

    The Park-a-Lot Lite app, developed by local developer NiiDees, has removed its live parking data feature which displayed which carparks had vacant lots, following a notice from the LTA.

    via zdnet asia

    Park-a-Lot Lite is an iPhone app that was previously able to pull data from the LTA’s website, which then showed Singaporean drivers, through a convenient interface, what parking garages around the city-state had open spots.

    However, LTA ordered the developer to disable that function of the app, which more or less killed the app’s usefulness.  It was one of the most popular iPhone apps in Singapore prior to this move.

    So, what’s LTA’s reasoning?  Money.  They want more of it.

    That said, the LTA is open to licensing the data out, the spokesperson added.

    via zdnet asia

    LTA says that this data is collected from garage operators to be displayed only on the LTA website. I assume that means they have a contract set up with these garage operators, paying them citizens’ tax money to have this information made available for display on their government website, which is itself also funded by citizens’ tax money.

    Now, this offer to license out the data is where I think LTA is trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes in an effort to create a double-taxation. You see, citizens are already paying for this data to be made available to them via the website.

    When you think about it that way, you could in fact say that LTA has failed the public and is misusing tax money.  I looked over the LTA and OneMotoring sites briefly and didn’t see any prominent links to this service, and until now I didn’t even realize it was available.  I wonder how many other people in Singapore were in a similar situation?  Doesn’t that mean the revenue that was being used to license that data was being misused by LTA?  Doesn’t that mean they failed to make the data properly available to the public when the public was paying for it?  This is a useful service that was being paid for and that the public obviously wanted easy access to, yet they were denied.  And now they’ve been denied again.

    What Park-a-Lot Lite did was package that information into a convenient, easy to use interface that allowed citizens to use data that they were already paying for with their tax money.  There’s really no difference between an iPhone app accessing the data on LTA’s site, and a web browser accessing the data on LTA’s site.  The same amount of data is transferred.  Less actually, since only the data is requested, which puts less strain (not that there was much strain before) on LTA’s web host and any bandwidth limitations it might have.  One could argue that the data was only licensed to be shown on LTA’s website, and I would argue that the App isn’t a website and is merely acting as a window to LTA’s site.  Additionally, I would argue that with the rapidly changing tech scene in Singapore, and with more and more people going mobile, LTA should have taken the initiative to amend their contract to specifically allow for mobile access to the data from their site.

    Instead, what’s going on here is that LTA has recognized an opportunity to try to shaft people out of more of their hard earned money by making them pay for something they’ve already paid for and is moving quickly to capitalize on it.

    Shameful, and it should be illegal.

  • Blood Trail Leading Through Downtown East and E-Hub (Pictures)

    My wife and I were in Downtown East tonight when we noticed this trail of blood leading past the entrance to Sakura.  At first, I thought that perhaps some poor girl was having an unfortunate night, but then I realized it was way too much blood for that.  The trail led to the door going out of the mall.  In the other direction, it headed down the stairs into the lower level of the mall.

    As I started taking pictures, three police officers walked by, following the blood trail out the door.  I went the other way, following it further into the mall.

    This is the handrail on the steps that go down from the entrance of Sakura into the mall.  You can see blood splashed on the wall and on the metal railing.

    This is the post on the wall by the ATMs, just past the Indian restaurant towards the sliding glass door where the long escalators are that go to the 2nd level of E-Hub.

    These are pictures of the stairs that lead up to the 2nd floor of E-Hub, between the escalators.

    At this point I ran into a guy that was wearing a mall uniform who was taking pictures of the blood trail. I asked him what had happened.  He said there was an incident outside the mall.  He also kept saying “8 plus” “8 plus”.  I couldn’t quite understand him, but what I’m thinking is that 8 kids attacked a 9th kid, who fled into the mall for safety after sustaining heavy wounds.  The photos only tell a bit of the story.  There was a LOT of blood on the ground and walls the whole way along.  I wonder, can this much blood come from a broken nose, or is it a knife wound?

    These three photos are from the landing at the top of the escalators, where you enter the E-Hub mall.

    This is inside, in the “alley” area where the walkway skirts the children’s playground.

    This is right in front of the virtual reality arcade game that sits under the escalator that goes to the movie house and arcade on the third floor.

    This was the last bit of blood we saw.  I wonder if this was another incident of gang violence, like the gang fight masked as a lion dance reported in the news, or if it was “schoolyard” bullying taken to an extreme.

  • To My Dearest Wife, On Valentine’s Day

    We’ve had so many good times together and made so many wonderful memories, like getting caught in the rain on the lift at Sentosa, walking along Patong Beach at night in Phuket, and you chasing me around the dining room table in the Philippines with ‘balut’.  These are memories that I’ll always cherish and, even more, I’ll cherish the fact that we have a lifetime together to make new ones.

    I couldn’t have asked for a better wife.  You’re kind, loving, beautiful and patient.  You’re good to animals and hard working.  You have a great sense of humor and you’re fun to be around.  Whether I want to watch a movie and pig out or go jog for 3 miles you’re up for it.  You let me have my choice more often than you have to.  You’re always there beside me, supporting me and motivating me to do better, whether my goal is to learn another language or gain the next level in Cafe World.

    Even when times have been tough, we’ve stuck it out together.  No matter how grim the situation, I always knew that things would be better because you were there beside me.  At the end of a hard, stressful day you were there to lay down next to.  In the morning, you greeted me with a smile.  Oh, and you always had cheerful words to keep me going like, “Stop complaining.  Life is harder in the Philippines.”  Ha ha!  So true!  You always remind me of what it is we have to be thankful for and it helps me to focus.

    So, on this day, and every day, I want you to know how much I love and cherish you’re being in my life.

    Happy Valentine’s Day darling.  I love you.

    You’re my best friend, my love, my life.

  • Misquoted By The New Paper

    Relax – An inconvenient fee: “Another frequent budget airline traveller, Mr Bradley Farless, 28, a US citizen who is visiting Asia for work and leisure, had bought a pair of tickets from Tiger Airways for a flight from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur earlier this month.

    He said: “It is not a small amount when you add it all up. And who is stopping them from increasing this amount in the future?””

    When I read this I kinda just pulled one of these numbers:

    Last month I was interviewed by phone by Veena Bharwani, a reporter for The New Paper.  She had initially contacted me by e-mail because of a Tweet I made expressing dissatisfaction with the amount being charged as a ‘convenience fee’ by Tiger Airways.

    I have no problem with what she quoted me as saying.  I just wanted to point out that journalists should be bound by a sense of integrity, to not put quotation marks around a summarization of the writer’s views and then attribute it to another person.

    Yes, I do agree that the fees are high when you add them up.  We paid a 6 dollar convenience fee per person per direction, or 24 dollars in total.  But, I didn’t use those exact words.

    I never made the second statement, even passingly.  That’s the writer trying to attribute a quote to me to validate her own opinion.  It’s not even correct English.

    I do agree with her assessment, because what is to stop them from raising the fees in the future, on the vague grounds of processing fees and some other such nonsense?  I want to just use Amazon.com as an example.  When’s the last time you made a purchase on Amazon.com and had a 6 dollar fee added onto your purchase for ‘convenience’?

    The convenience of shopping online is that there are supposed to be less fees and less hassle.  It seems to me that these fees the airlines are charging are their way of milking customers for a few extra dollars to help them edge their bottom line higher into profits.

    Here’s the fishiest part of it:  If you go to a ticketing office you can get tickets without paying the convenience fee, but you aren’t allowed to take advantage of online ‘deals’, meaning you pay more.  But, if you go online to get the ‘deal’ you have to add in the ‘convenience’ fee, which means that you’re probably paying the same as what a person at the ticket counter is paying.

    In the end, what’s the difference?

    But, back to the matter at hand, it would be good if people who make a living off of journalism learn to do it right.  Learn the art of paraphrasing.  Don’t put words in people’s mouths, even if it’s something positive.

  • Cats and Singapore HDBs

    Cats and Singapore HDBs

    In Singapore, most housing is government subsidized and have been nicknamed HDBs by locals.  Since these units are government subsidized housing, there are a lot of rules and regulations regarding them.  Those rules extend to pet ownership beyond the laws that already exist in Singapore regarding what types of pets are legal to own.  I’ll go into that in another post.  For now I just wanted to draw attention to one particular issue.

    Cats aren’t allowed to be pets inside HDB housing.  Some of the reasons for this is that cats are supposedly noisy and dirty.  Really that just boggles my mind.  Cats are required to be spayed or neutered in Singapore at around six months of age.  If this is done then house cats rarely make any noise at all.  The majority of the noise a neutered or spayed cat will make is when it’s confronting another cat in its territory.  That’s not likely to happen inside of a home, is it?  Unless you’re just in the habit of letting random cats come in and out at their leisure.  Dogs, which are allowed in HDBs, will often bark very VERY loudly for little to no reason at any given hour of the day or night.  Also, cats are not dirty.  Well, not any dirtier than dogs anyway.

    It all comes down to responsible pet ownership.  Bathing your cat and cleaning its litterbox regularly are just something that a person should do, and if it’s being done the house won’t be any dirtier than a house without cats, or a house with a dog.  In fact, cats always use a litterbox.  Dogs on the other will crap and pee all over the floor if not let out and that will sit there all day if no one is home.  To me, a pile of crap on the floor, with a breeze blowing the odor to other homes, is a lot filthier than a covered litterbox.  That’s just me though.

    This weird obsession with cat persecution extends to outside of the HDBs as well.  One complaint is that cats rifle through garbage and make a mess.  I don’t see how.  The HDBs use a garbage chute system, where the garbage winds up behind a locked door on the ground floor for collection.  There are a few regular trash cans under the buildings but they rarely have food waste thrown into them to start with, and I’ve never seen a cat in or even near one.  I suppose part of that is that even outdoor cats in Singapore are well cared for by people in the community.

    The animals that do make a mess of the ground floor of HDB estates are actually people.  It’s insane how disrespectful and prone to littering people are here lately.  When I first moved to Singapore it was usually spotless, but over the last year and a half or so it’s been getting progressively worse.  I’ve posted a photo of the mess people typically leave behind before.  It’s usually kids and young people doing it, but even still you have to wonder what their parents are teaching them that make them feel it’s ok to make this sort of mess.  There are very poorly paid foreign workers that go through the HDB estates every night, cleaning the areas, but is that an excuse to simply toss your garbage on the ground?  Especially when you’re right next to a trash can?

    Anyway, what made me think about all this is that I was downstairs and saw this disaster below where I live:

    Mob Photo 26-Jan-2010 AM 12 31 50

    It’s like this on a nightly basis, and usually worse.  I’m pretty sure it’s not cats that are doing it.  The difference here is that this goes unremarked, while cats are rounded up and killed at the slightest provocation.

    It seems to me that the HDB rules need to be revised to allow cats into the buildings. There’s no logical reason why they shouldn’t be there.  And instead of fixating on rounding up and routinely killing cats, they should focus on rounding up and routinely fining people that are actually ruining the cleanliness of HDB estates.

    There are groups here in Singapore, like Cat Welfare Society, that regularly take the time to try to educate people and Town Councils about real cat behavior and that’s great.  I, like other bloggers who like cats, am just doing my part in pointing out an ongoing issue.

  • Avatar Used To Justify The Belief That 9/11 Attacks in NYC Were Staged

    Avatar Used To Justify The Belief That 9/11 Attacks in NYC Were Staged

    “In September 2001, the World Trade Centre was attacked allegedly by terrorists. I am not sure now that Muslim terrorists carried out these attacks. There is strong evidence that the attacks were staged. If they can make Avatar, they can make anything,” said Dr Mahathir during his speech at the General Conference for the Support of Al-Quds here. Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem.

    For those of you that don’t know, Dr Mahathir was the Prime Minister of Malaysia from 16 July 1981 to 31 October 2003. He gave this statement, and others that will be in this entry, on January 20th, 2010.

    Now that you have some background on this guy, let’s dive right into the heart of the matter. This guy is either senile, crazy, or both, but he’s most obviously a racist and should no longer be allowed to get near a reporter or microphone. How the hell can you say that because the US can make a 3D movie, we were capable of staging the September 11th attacks that killed around 3000 people? It’s absurd. Guess what, Dr Mahathir? Those holes in the ground in NYC aren’t special effects. They’re real. The people that died weren’t extras that shared a beer and laughed about the film later. They were real too. And they’re dead. Al’Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack. The last time I checked, Osama Bin Laden wasn’t the Commander in Chief.

    And, as if this weren’t enough, he went on to make plenty of off-color comments about the Jewish people and Israel.

    “The Jews had always been a problem in European countries. They had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred. But still they remained, they thrived and they held whole governments to ransom.

    “Even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world. The Holocaust failed as a final solution,” said the outspoken Malaysian leader who was noted for his anti-Western and anti-Zionist stand while in power for 22 years, until October 2003.

    Nice job projecting your racist views about Jews onto the entire European population. He seems to imply here that all Europeans wanted to get rid of the Jews all along and that, given the opportunity, would have sanctioned their mass extermination. I must have missed that page in my history book, and I certainly don’t recall World War II playing out quite that way.

    The only sensible thing to come out of his mouth was what he had to say about Obama:

    “Well, I am a bit disappointed because so far none of his promises have been kept. He promised to get out from Afghanistan but he ended up sending more troops there instead. He promised to close down Guantanamo but he has not closed down Guantanamo. Even other things he has not been able to do.

    “It is quite easy to promise during election time but you know there are forces in the United States which prevents the president from doing some things. One of the forces is the Jewish lobby, IPAC,” he said.

    I wonder why he went easy on him? It might be because he feels like Obama is a fellow Muslim being oppressed by supposed Jewish powers in Washington.  This guy’s paranoia runs deep.

    There should come a point in all of our lives, famous politician, rock star, or whatever, where we realize that we’re no longer competent to speak to the public. If we can’t see it in ourselves, someone should tell us, because obviously Dr Mahathir’s time has long since come and gone.