Joecities

Listening to Placebo’s Meds Album. Not bad, but not fantastic either. The track “Pierrot the Clown” is quite catchy for some reason, maybe it’s because in my mind I visualise “Pierrot” from Yakitate Japan being in the music video for this song.

Did a little shopping this past weekend. Picked up a Digital Set Top box for our TV. It’s like TV on steroids. DVD-quality picture, program synopsis and program guide, captions, even a pause button (albeit only good for screen shots). The way I see it, I could spend $50+ getting someone to come and optimise our antennae (we’ve been getting some ‘ghosting’ on the screen) or I could spend a little more and go digital. It wasn’t a tough decision to make.

What was a little tougher to decide on, was whether I should buy a snowboard. From a cost-benefit perspective, it was a no-brainer. The cost of the board would be recovered after two trips to the mountain. But still, it's not easy to part with $200+ for something primarily for fun. So after doing a bit of research about what kind of board I should get, I found a guy who was unsuccessfully trying to sell his snowboard on ebay. It turned out that it was one of six snowboards he had. He bought it two years ago and decided it was too short for him (the longer the snowboard the faster you go).

Will put up pix of the snowboard some other day, have to get it serviced and tuned first. Apparently, snowboards require a fair bit of work too but being a newbie, I’ll just let the shop do it the first time round so I don’t muck it up.

Shirley’s picked up a pair of skis for the astronomical price of $17 ! We’ve got an apartment booked at Falls Creek the last weekend of June. Can’t wait !

Friends elsewhere - Got a surprise call from Glenn yesterday. He’s popping by this week for a short holiday. Will be a nice break to the week. Henry from school also recently made the move back to Melb but on a permanent basis. His wife works in Melb (he was in Jakarta) and he missed her too much.

Was trying to get updates on the elections in Singapore and I stumbled on the hoo-haa surrounding James Gomez’s error in some paperwork. Maybe I’m only reading the bloggers’ perspective but there’s a tremendous backlash against how the mainstream media has apparently been treating this guy.

Having had a few chats with him in a previous life (prior to him joining politics that is), I think he’s actually a credible PAP opponent in that he’s able to receive others’ opinions, defend his position and be a nice guy in general. I remember during one occasion where we were talking about press freedom and while I was ranting on about how media was stifled in Singapore, he received my view but melded it into an optimistic vision of how things would eventually change with the younger generation growing louder, with stronger and bolder opinions.

Contrast that to the smile-when-you-shake-their-hands-but-quickly-wipe-off-the-icky-substance-after type of politicians (I know, I shouldn’t generalise) and I think that Singapore has a chance for a rousing political landscape after all. But the important thing to remember, is not to seek opposition for the sake of opposition, but to strive for the common greater good. Whether it’s packaged in an all-white suit, or whether it comes in the form of a ‘hokkien-peng’ done good.

Side note: I wonder if “Progress Package” or “PP” has any subliminal implications hinting that an “A” was missing. After all, the last two were called “New Singapore Shares” and “Economic Restructuring Shares”. Or is Singapore really making Progress? and where to?