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RIP Mehran Karimi Nasseri. Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the man who had lived inside the Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport for years and inspired Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film “The Terminal”, died Saturday at the same airport. Nasseri was pronounced dead by the airport medical team at Terminal 2F and had died of natural causes, a spokesperson for the airport told CNN. Nasseri, an Iranian refugee, was en route to England via Belgium and France in 1988 when he lost his papers and could not board a flight nor leave the airport and was stuck in limbo until 2006. He had “returned to live as a homeless person in the public area of the airport since mid-September, after a stay in a nursing home,” the spokesperson said. The spokesperson added that Nasseri was an “iconic character” at the airport and that the “whole airport community was attached to him, and our staff looked after him as much as possible during many years, even if we would have preferred him to find a real shelter.” While Nasseri’s story inside the airport was memorialized by Tom Hanks in the movie “The Terminal”, the spokesperson for the airport noted that: “The Spielberg film suggests that he was stuck in a transit zone at Paris-Charles de Gaulle. In reality, he spent several stays there, but always in the public area of the airport, he was always free to move around.”

It's a condo, not a refugee camp 60Share By Gabbie Yeap The New Paper Friday, Oct 14, 2011 I READ with great interest the article, "Why aren't others doing the same?" (The New Paper, Oct 1) on an American woman here letting foreign workers stay in her condo unit for free. I must applaud Ms Debbie Fordyce for the good work she is doing, for having a heart of gold and helping foreign workers in Singapore. I agree that we should have more people engaging in such activities to help the needy. But when a noble cause is achieved at the expense of others, it is no longer so noble. In this instance, I wonder who the victims are - the foreign workers or her neighbours in the condo. In the course of achieving her goal of helping the foreign workers, she has inadvertently created a new group of aggrieved parties - her neighbours. While she is praised as a "Florence Nightingale in Singapore", her neighbours are depicted as unkind and unsupportive of her work by talking behind her back and giving the foreign workers nasty looks. But the fact that she has housed more than 100 foreign workers in her unit over the last three years and is still allowed to do so indicates that her neighbours are possibly the best condo neighbours one could hope for. I am surprised to read that there is a condo here that allows the housing of so many foreign workers in a unit. It is like a dormitory. Aren't there regulatory requirements to be complied with when you are housing so many foreign workers? I, for one, will no longer be enjoying a peaceful living environment if there is an influx of so many foreign workers in my condo. It's not that I am unsympathetic to the foreign workers, but the issue here is different, and it is not as simple as being a "class issue". It is something more personal. It involves the shared living space that one has paid such a high price for. Noble work with great intention, yes, but in this context, I would think it is also rather inconsiderate to interrupt the peaceful living of the others in the condo. The presence of so many foreign workers in my condo would definitely give me unnecessary anxiety and undue stress that I would not have expected when I decided to buy and live in a unit there. One would expect condo living to be different in terms of the quality of people living there as well as the standard of safety and security. Obviously, the quality of the people or the standard of safety and security varies according to the category of the condo and the individuals living there. But I would not expect any class of condo to become a humanitarian centre or refugee camp or even a dormitory for that matter. While it is great to know that there is a Florence Nightingale in Singapore, it would have been better if the same noble work could have been done without usurping and invading other people's rights of peaceful living and the space they had paid for. If I have the same ability and means, perhaps I will think of better ways to do this good deed. I will definitely not be doing what she is doing in a condo as I own only a portion of that shared living environment and space. One needs to respect the wishes of the other people sharing that environment and space. http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne+News/...012-304633.html So whats your view on this?

Went to Someone BBQ Birthday party (Have not been one since almost 20 years ago) last night at Downtown East. To my horror, that place is very difficult to park, waste time and testing patience. Once in, it was damn crowded and the actual chalet area is like a refugee camp, which I have visited one long time ago. Everywhere is people, so smokey since every units have party going on. That place probably is overcrowded and need some crowd control lah. What to do, Singapore damn small and everywhere so expensive, which ever cheaper will tend to attract crowd. This explained why I find shopping and putting up at holiday chalets in MY, much less stressful than in SG. Regards,