choongyong.koh January 30th, 2009
Seen at the lift landing of a block of flats in Aljunied GRC. In this times of belt tightening, and amongst the many publicly annouced ‘Green’ schemes to save energy, we see another example blatantly going against these principles.
This electronic noticeboard replaced the usual static noticeboard found at HDB void decks, and I believe the block that I see this is not the only block with this. The usual notices that used to be displayed uses A4 pieces of paper are now rotated after the message from the MP (Cynthia Phua), and some repetitive fireworks images, so I guess in terms of effectiveness to convey events in the community, this electronic noticeboard is even less effective that the old one.
I wonder at what time this screen is switched on and off everyday, or is it left on for 24 hours?
Who foots the bill for the purchase of the screen? Who foots the bill for the electricity to power it?
Going by conventional wisdom, it is either the RC (since the noticeboard declares its name so prominently) which in turn gets funding from PA, which in turns gets funding from the taxpayers; or it is the Town Council, which gets half of its funding from the S&CC charges paid by the residents, and another half of its funding from the taxpayers. No matter what, the taxpayers seem to be the ones footing the bills for this, unless someone tells me the MP herself is paying from her own pocket.
Some civil servant was chided for spending 45K on his vacation, but that has an end to it. Does this installation has an end to it? Or will it continue to waste the money that is funding it until some enlightened folks say enough is enough?
choongyong.koh January 26th, 2009
祝己丑年快乐！
choongyong.koh January 25th, 2009
I was typing a blog post in happyeternally.blogspot.com and was thinking of the verb for the word “diarrhoea”. However, searching a few online dictionaries only yielded the noun, and there was no mention of the verb for this word.
Anyone knows?
choongyong.koh January 25th, 2009
Received 2 SMS past midnight yesterday. Both were friends wishing me a happy and prosperous Lunar New Year. Nice little messages, but the timing could be better. Imagine being woken up from a deep slumber by the beeping of the phone to see a non-urgent message. During the Christmas seasons, I received some messages even at 4 or 5 am!
Some might say I can always switch off the phone if I don’t want to be disturbed, but nobody knows when an emergency occurs that might require friends/relatives to contact me via my mobile phone in the middle of the night.
Not really blaming my friends for the late night SMS, since they might not have control over the actual time I receive the messages. From what I know, SMS messages can get delivered hours after they are sent due to the high traffic over the festive seasons, especially one or two days before the actual ‘Big Days’ like Christmas, New Year and Lunar New Year.
However, some time ago I ticked off a friend who was sending me messages after midnight, during off-peak seasons. His reply to me was that in his circle of young people, sending SMS to people in the wee hours of the day is a common practice.
Maybe I am getting old, but I belong to the group of people that will think twice before calling/SMS people after 11pm, just in case I disturb their rest. Corresponding via email / facebook / twitter is another matter though, since all these communication channels do not usually cause an alert (unless one enables the alerts) upon receiving them.
So during this Lunar New Year season, I hope to receive less of the almost-heart-attack-inducing-midnight-SMS and more Wall Posts / Twitter talk / Email / Blog comments from my friends. 
choongyong.koh January 16th, 2009
Just went for another round of house visit last evening. As usual, some of the residents’ response upon seeing us coming is “要大选了？” (“Elections coming?”). There has also been some speculation among observers and internet bloggers on the possibility of snap elections.
The same topic is a recurring theme in a lot of my conversations online and offline with friends recently, since they know of my heavy involvement in WP, and so they ask me if I think a snap election is possible.
My responses so far to my friends is that, to me, it does not really matter whether elections is called 3 months from today, or in 2011 when the full term of the current parliament is up. Basically as a volunteer to a cause I believe in, I just put in the same amount of commitment to help contribute in whatever way I can, in a consistent and sustainable way. My foray into local politics since 2006 is not a long one, but it is enough for me to understand one thing – a consistent level of contribution is always a lot better than burst-mode enthusiasm that comes quickly and goes equally fast.
In any case, the changes I hope to help create are long term goals, which do not materialize overnight. Be it the goal to have Singapore wean off its dependency on fossil fuel, or the vision to see Singapore moving away from being dominated by a single party, my dreams will take a long time to materialize.
So does it matter whether there are signs that things are heating up? I will still work as hard as before to fulfill my dreams.
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