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Singaporeans are world-class complainers. Not Olympic-level and not championship-level. Mind you, it’s world-class. If there was a Complaining World Cup, we’d host it, complain about the crowd, complain about the transport arrangements, complain about the weather, then win the tournament anyway. The remarkable thing is that we often complain when life is, objectively speaking, pretty good. Really? Like what?!? Take air-conditioning. Singapore is one of the hottest and most humid places on Earth. Step outside for three minutes and you’ll discover body parts producing perspiration you didn’t know existed. Yet the moment we enter a shopping mall, what do we do? We make comments like, “It’s too cold.” Five minutes earlier, we were melting like an ice cream abandoned at East Coast Park. Now we're searching for a jacket. Then there’s food delivery. A miracle of modern civilisation. Someone will collect your lunch, battle traffic, navigate endless HDB blocks and place your food directly into your hands. And what’s the complaint? "Why take 35 minutes?" Well, because my friend your laksa did not teleport. Oh… I see where you’re coming from Parking is another national pastime. Singapore has parking lots everywhere. Basements. Multi-storeys. Open-air carparks. Parallel lots. Season parking. Hourly parking. You get my drift. And yet every driver firmly believes there are never enough parking lots. The irony is beautiful. We’ll spend 10 minutes circling a carpark looking for the perfect lot near the lift, while ignoring 20 perfectly acceptable lots that require an additional 30 seconds of walking. Walking, apparently, is where we draw the line. Then there’s the MRT. One train arrives. Another arrives. Then another. Miss one train and, statistically speaking, you’ll survive. That’s how efficient our public transportation is. Yet the moment doors close in front of someone, there’s an expression usually reserved for major personal tragedies. You’d think the next train was scheduled for next Thursday. But nothing, absolutely nothing, comes close to Singapore’s relationship with queues. On that note, we also complain when there is a queue. We complain when a place becomes popular because the queue is too long. And then, incredibly, we join the queue. A queue, in Singapore, is not a warning sign. It’s a recommendation. If 20 people are standing in line for chicken rice, our immediate assumption is that it must be extraordinary. We then spend 40 minutes waiting before complaining about the waiting time. It’s a self-sustaining ecosystem. The weather deserves special mention too. When it’s sunny, we complain it’s too hot. When it rains, we complain it’s too wet. When it’s windy, we worry something is wrong. Deep down, many Singaporeans appear to be searching for weather that does not actually exist. Drivers, of course, have their own category of complaints Don’t even get me started on the ERP gantry, the traffic light that stays red for an eternity, the driver who doesn’t move within 0.4 seconds of the light turning green and the person who parked slightly crooked. Or perhaps even the fact that petrol is expensive, or the fact that COE is expensive, or the fact that everything related to cars is expensive. To be fair, they're not entirely wrong on that last one. But perhaps that’s the secret ingredient behind Singapore’s success. I reckon we complain because we care. We complain because things generally work, and when something doesn’t, it feels unusual enough to notice. So the next time you find yourself grumbling that the mall is too cold, the MRT is too crowded, or the food delivery took five minutes longer than expected, take a moment to appreciate the absurdity of it all. Life in Singapore isn’t perfect. But if our biggest problems involve air-conditioning that’s too effective and chicken rice queues that are too long, we’re probably doing alright. ~ Julian (Images from Unsplash)

http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/stomp/sg...in_youtube.html

From CNA: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp...1197405/1/.html North Korea marks Army Day, vowing war against South Posted: 25 April 2012 2014 hrs SEOUL: North Korea's military chief of staff accused the United States and South Korea on Wednesday of plotting war but said his country's own weaponry could destroy their armaments in "a single blow". Vice-Marshal Ri Yong-Ho also repeated threats of war against South Korea, vowing to "cut the throats" of those seen as defaming Pyongyang's leadership. The North has made a series of increasingly strongly worded threats against the South in recent weeks. On Monday its military threatened "special actions" soon to turn parts of Seoul to ashes. Some analysts believe the new young leader Kim Jong-Un is trying to bolster his military credentials and divert attention from a failed rocket launch this month. Ri, in a speech marking Army Day, credited Jong-Un's late father Kim Jong-Il with strengthening the 1.2 million-strong military in the nuclear-armed state. Because of this, he said, "our military is now equipped with strong modern weapons capable of destroying what the imperialists call highly sophisticated weapons by a single blow". The launch, which attracted UN condemnation, was to have been the centrepiece of celebrations in mid-April marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of founding leader Kim Il-Sung. The North bridled at comments by the South's President Lee Myung-Bak and conservative media, who said the money spent on the launch could have bought food for the perennially hungry nation. "Our military and people are full of rage against the Lee Myung-Bak's traitor groups, who dared to commit such an extreme criminal act as defaming our system and the top leadership," Ri told a national meeting in the April 25 House of Culture. "Our military and people will launch a retaliatory war in our own way... to cut the throats of the reckless provocateurs and crush the source of provocations without a trace." The US and its ally the South were making "ever-intensifying plots for war", he said. The ceremony attended by Kim Jong-Un and other top leaders marked what the North calls the 80th anniversary of the military's founding, during the guerrilla struggle against Japanese colonial forces. The North says its rocket launch was part of a peaceful bid to put a satellite in orbit, and not a disguised missile test as the US and its allies maintain. Some analysts believe it will now stage a nuclear test, as it did in 2006 and 2009 following international censure of its rocket launches. A former chief US nuclear negotiator said on Wednesday any third test would be "somehow different and bigger" than the previous two. Christopher Hill did not elaborate in an interview in Seoul with Yonhap news agency. Some analysts believe it will use fuel from a uranium enrichment programme disclosed in 2010, rather than plutonium as previously.

Man loses $910,000 lottery card suit against Singapore Pools 28 March 2012 Straits Times A man who sued Singapore Pools, demanding prize money of $910,000 on lottery cards he had bought, lost his case in the High Court on Tuesday. Mr John Berchmans had bought 91 Scratchit! cards for a dollar each, and his winnings amounted to $263. But he claimed that he had been misled into buying the cards because he took the words on them to mean that he would automatically win the top prize of $10,000 if he got three identical symbols in a row. The 69-year-old part-time housing agent lost the gamble when the High Court on Tuesday dismissed his misrepresentation suit against the lottery operator and ordered him to pay costs.

Yahoo News report : Malaysians gamble

damn tulanz.. just now go pick up my son from childcare, got one CS lancer park in front of an empty lot.. me honk him slightly while behind and on signal light asking him to move ahead so i can park.. nbz ignore me, so i drove up abit and signal with hand saying i wanna park the lot.. ccb walk down car and say he wan to park.. phua cb.. me since come in from carpark see him park there never indicate he wanna park.. just sit in the car as if waiting for someone nia.. nbz still tell me to relax la, dun honk him.. f--king inconsiderate.. dun wan to park still wan to stop others from parking.. pui

You pump 98 for a non-tuned ride which says it only needs RON 95 or RON 91... You pump 95 for a non-tuned ride which says it only needs RON 91 Let's all pump the lowest RON for our rides. Instant discount and no terms and conditions some more! Of course, if u already doing that, then LPPL la. For me, i stay pretty near causeway. I refuse to pump ANY petrol in singapore ICA, lai, lai, come and dipstick/x-ray/ultrasound/pump out my tank/strip search me... . of course, always go in 3/4 tank and no meter.. but no harm checking.. Petrol companies are unscrupulous. time to be unscrupulously thrifty and stop giving the 4-wheeled slave better food than it needs. it can't thank you: "master, thanx for the V-power u fed me today!!!" End of rant.