my experiences; ur free read

Nuffnang Giveaway: Gala Premiere Tickets to “PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES”‏

2011-05-05T13:59:00.003+08:00

I should win the pair of tickets to "PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES”‏ because....

IT WILL BE AN AWESOME BIRTHDAY GIFT FOR A JOHNNY DEPP AND NUFFNANG LOVING FAN!

PLS LET ME WIN NUGGNANG! YOUR THE BEST! :)

“Catch Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides movie starting from 19^th May 2011 and join the official Disney Studios Singapore Facebook & Twitter page!”

1 more day to 23!

2010-05-24T16:55:00.001+08:00

:D but not much difference now adays.

saturday

2010-05-22T11:11:00.000+08:00

hi everyone. this is my weekly (hopefully) update. :)

well.......

i got carried away :P

update next time!!

BACK TO BLOG

2010-05-18T23:35:00.000+08:00

WOW. it's been damn long eh.

yeap. life has been real busy now that I'm at CPD and studying for my degree.

So far in my third semester. Just 2 more semesters to go before i graduate.

WEEEE!! that mean another 8 more months aka Apr 11 for me to be a BCOM graduate :D

updates updates: i have become real busy, real fat, real ugly.

photo as proof. sigh.

on a lighter note. 1 more week to my 23rd birthday :D

okayyyy, tata for now!

If you have a dagger that turns back time, what event/danger would you change?

2010-05-18T23:25:00.000+08:00

If I had a dagger that turns back time, what event/danger would I change?

Well, I would change my primary 6 times. I would work as hard as I could to erase the fact that I got into Normal Academic class and try to do even better. It was a regret I had for all my life and it is what made my mom to think I am useless....

So yeah.... My PSLE days are what I would like to change. If you had a dagger, what would you change??????

Watch Prince of Pesia too!!!! :)

“Catch Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Movie starting from 27th May 2010 and join the official Facebook and Twitter page!”

vote for meeeeeeee!

2010-01-21T13:45:00.000+08:00

http://www.facebook.com/notes/vpost/valentines-day-contest-entry-by-kala-asokan/176591204998.

Voting will commence from now for the next 5 days. The entry with the most number of "Likes" wins.

so please help meeeeeeeee,

:)

CHICKEN POX!!

2009-12-09T00:26:00.000+08:00

I HATE IT! I HATE IT! I HATE IT! I HATE IT! I HATE IT! I HATE IT! I HATE IT! I HATE IT!

=(((((((

in a mood for nickelback

2009-12-07T01:31:00.000+08:00

BEAUTIFUL SONG BELOW! :)

"If Everyone Cared"

From underneath the trees, we watch the sky

Confusing stars for satellites

I never dreamed that you'd be mine

But here we are, we're here tonight

Singing Amen, I, I'm alive

Singing Amen, I, I'm alive

[Chorus:]

If everyone cared and nobody cried

If everyone loved and nobody lied

If everyone shared and swallowed their pride

Then we'd see the day when nobody died

And I'm singing

Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive

Amen I, Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive

And in the air the fireflies

Our only light in paradise

We'll show the world they were wrong

And teach them all to sing along

Singing Amen, I, I'm alive

Singing Amen, I, I'm alive

(I'm alive)

[Chorus x2]

And as we lie beneath the stars

We realize how small we are

If they could love like you and me

Imagine what the world could be

If everyone cared and nobody cried

If everyone loved and nobody lied

If everyone shared and swallowed their pride

Then we'd see the day when nobody died

When nobody died...

[Chorus]

We'd see the day, we'd see the day

When nobody died

We'd see the day, we'd see the day

When nobody died

We'd see the day when nobody died

bun making day

2009-12-07T01:29:00.002+08:00

yes, i made bun today.

mediocre results though. will improve my skills. plan to use NON-premix. :)

will post pic later k

black is always nice

2009-12-05T22:50:00.002+08:00

i love the black colour for my blog.

simple. neat. nice.

only thing is i miss all my links!! =(

PS: studying is tough and bread is not made

obsession for cereal

2009-12-05T22:45:00.001+08:00

i love to eat cereal for the past few days..

this is YUMMY! please try it!

planning to make this for the weekend..

2009-12-02T09:57:00.000+08:00

BREAD! GLORIOUS BREAAD!!

Hmm, maybe i should consider a breadmaker

technical errors

2009-11-29T11:59:00.000+08:00

sorry all. lost my prev template. argh

2009-10-13T10:09:00.002+08:00

1) My favourite cooking experience!

would be the time when i did my cookie business :D it was messy but fun!

everything was everywhere..

you can read it here!!>>

http://alternateturquoise.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html

the ugly truth

2009-09-04T21:21:00.002+08:00

hmmmm,

The disgust during a date would be as follows.

Dear gals,
Women should avoid discussing finances, unless their date brings up the topic. A man might feel that a woman is more interested in how much he makes if she asks how much his car cost, how much he earns, etc. Men want to be valued for who they are, not just as a potential wage earner.

Dear guys,
On the same note, do not try to impress her by detailing your car’s multiple features. The woman is interested in getting to know you, not your car. She will decide whether she wants a second date–not because she’s impressed by what kind of car you drive but based on whether she’s impressed with you.

I want to watch “The Ugly Truth” because...

1) the story is interesting :

A romantically challenged morning show producer is reluctantly embroiled in a series of outrageous tests by her chauvinistic correspondent to prove his theories on relationships and help her find love. His clever ploys, however, lead to an unexpected result.

2) its funny :

from an online review - My husband and I saw this at a sold-out sneak preview on July 17. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time at a film and the audience seemed to find the film as funny and bawdy as I did. My husband was happy to watch a romantic comedy from the male perspective as well as the female for a change. The leads are attractive but not the usual "perfect" specimens we usually get in these films, and the situations, while often over-the-top, are quite humorously portrayed. The typical fairy tale elements seem to go by the wayside here and we're left with a harsher but very funny battle-of-the-sexes comedy for the times in which we now live.

3) the actor/actresses are good :

Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler

:)

4) good date for me and my bf! :D

5) I love moviesssssssss

6) I love nuffnang...

and I hope nuffnang will let me to do so. :)

anyway..,,,,,,,,
Be a fan at the official Facebook page and catch The Ugly Truth when it opens in the cinemas on the 17th September 09!

school is opening soon

2009-08-20T10:39:00.000+08:00

with the completion of 4 bridging modules ( 1 more will end by this saturday) and with the timetable out.. i am pretty anxious about school.

timetable tells me that i need to take 3 modules per semester.
friends advise me to try most scold me and tell me dun do stupid things.

sigh so confused.

well, by default i need to take 3 modules if i wanna lessen the burden need to ask boss to write letter. quite troublesome.

oh well, i will wait till 1st september. no not teacher's day. but welcome orientation.

i hope to have a clear path. sigh...

i need $$$!

2009-08-18T14:47:00.002+08:00

haiz. was looking at the number of bills i have to pay and stuff like tt..

it never seems enough.

i wish i have a money tree.

my future. a wedding co-ordinator

2009-08-12T13:47:00.003+08:00

you know actually, i aspire to be a wedding co-ordinator one day. Running up and down to make a couples' wedding P-E-R-F-E-C-T! i see myself as that for many long and good years. I don't know. It may be tiring, stressful and all but I LOVE IT! it keeps me going up and down. it makes me smile.. it makes me happy.. especially at the end of the whole event. a sign of happiness :)

will i ever be one?

The Proposal

2009-08-12T08:00:00.002+08:00

The following movie will be out soon!!!!!!

and the best part is Nuffnang is giving free tickets to catch it.

I really wanna get the pair of tickets because:

I LOVE NUFFNANG AND I LOVE ROMANTIC COMEDY MOVIES!!

A little about the movie :

When high-powered book editor Margaret faces deportation to her native Canada, the quick-thinking exec declares that she's actually engaged to her unsuspecting put-upon assistant Andrew, who she's tormented for years. He agrees to participate in the charade, but with a few conditions of his own. The unlikely couple heads to Alaska to meet his quirky family and the always-in-control city girl finds... See Full Description

Genres:
Comedy and Kids/Family
Running Time:
1 hr. 48 min.
Release Date:
June 19th, 2009 (wide)
MPAA Rating:
PG-13 for sexual content, nudity and language.
Distributors:
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
U.S. Box Office:
$148,964,741

The Proposal opens in cinemas 20 August 2009

Waiting to watch UP!

2009-07-22T16:56:00.002+08:00

I can’t wait to watch UP! The movie trailer can be viewed here:

"UP" trailer (click to view trailer)

This is the story line of “UP” the movie:

By tying thousands of balloon to his home, 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream to see the wilds of South America. Right after lifting off, however, he learns he isn't alone on his journey, since Russell, a wilderness explorer 70 years his junior, has inadvertently become a stowaway on the trip.

The 2 main characters: Carl and Russell are very much interesting to me after viewing the trailer because of the following reasons:

1) They are cute.
2) They are funny.
3) I love how life like they are as animations.
4) Carl’s character and Russell’s character somehow don’t match and this makes me wonder how they can put up with each another.
5) Basically they are made by PIXAR, one of the BEST animators!!!

This is how the characters from the movie look like:

Carl - cute grandpa

Russell - the cuter wildness boy

Dough - the brown dog

Kevin - the birddddddddy

Can’t wait to watch this show! It will help me to decrease the stress I have after my exam! =(

“UP in Singapore Cinemas opening 7th August 2009”

a little prayer for confidence

2009-06-19T13:50:00.003+08:00

Dear god,

I completed my accounts bridging the other day. its amazing how from knowing nothing about accounts i can become an account just in 4 days! how cool is that right..??

oh well it is really difficult to juggle school and work. studying full time and working part time is easy but not the other way round. it tires u out totally. after my accounts i really felt relieved. because during the 4 days of lesson i had to absorb as much as i could so that 5 days later i could do an exam of 3 hrs long. tough life man. atleast now i am resting and having my 1 week much needed rest. hopefully business law wouldnt be as bad as accounting. my accounting module was bad because i over stressed myself studying every little time i got..

Please grant me good grades for accounts. I put in my best effort. Please don't fail me. I don't want to lose hope in studying.

thank you and love ya!

Love kala.

ups and downs of working life

2009-05-21T12:33:00.003+08:00

oh well, there's certainly ups and downs of working in my workplace and I am just gonna talk about one of the ups.

Siting at the counter, you not only meet pesky and irritating people who seem to be idiots to you, you also get to see nice bouquets and gifts delivered to staff/students.

Some from hubbys, some from friends, some from families some from lovers....

Seeing pretty flowers and chocolates do make my day and put that smile there no matter how shitty i feel.

its so nice to receive flowers right?

watches!

2009-05-18T11:19:00.007+08:00

i love love love to wear watches.
but i am kinda weird.
i only wear watches that are:

- unique
- have a big frame ( i hate small and lady like watches. wat's the point of wearing something u cant see)
- mainly manly ones

so recently.. i was busy doing a watch hunt.
stuck in between two types of watches that i wanna buy.
first is LED watches from Japan.

see link.

these watches will not last long obviously but its really pretty.
i particularly like these watches.

Pimp Star Performer

The all new Star Performer from the Pimp series is a truly beautiful LED watch design. This is the Pimp watch, re-engineered with a new way to read the time and a sleek, modern look.

Made from solid stainless steel with a double spring clasp and mineral crystal lens, Star Performer features mirrored digits on the face through which LEDs shine to display the time.

Press the button and the lights animate like fireworks before presenting the time, a single digit in each column lighting up to show the time. For example, 1-2-5-3 would be 12:53.

The four icons across the top indicate the mode. From left to right, the icons read: clock, Sun, $ and Martini glass. Press the button to cycle through the modes.

The clock icon means time mode has been selected. If the watch is in 12 hour mode and it is PM then the Martini glass will also light up - this is to indicate drinking time! The Sun icon represents the day and date, the digits 1-7 in the left column indicating the day; Sunday = 1, Monday = 2 etc., the digits in the right two columns indicating the date. The $ icon represents the year, and reminds you to keep making money year after year.

The light-up feature also animates once a minute for 12 minutes after the button is pressed and automatically turns on between 7 pm and 1 am, giving a very cool malfunctioning look, a setting that can't be turned off.

Available with white or blue LEDs, you'll be pimpin' in style with your Star Performer.

For detailed product information a pdf instruction manual is available to download below.

· Displays the time, day, date and year

· Original light-up feature

· 12/24 hour mode

· Maximum wrist size: 210 mm (approx.)

· Case Dimensions: 31 mm x 54 mm x 12 mm

· Weight: 130 grams

· Water resistance: 3ATM

· Japanese and English instructions

· One year warranty

the other one that i really love is.......

Tokyoflash Negative. (red)

With an 'Always-On' Liquid Crystal display, and a stylish, solid case, Negative is one of the most sophisticated designs available from Tokyoflash. Negative will look as good on your wrist at a business meeting as it will on the dance floor.

Seven colors in one watch!

Available in polished silver or polished black, Negative's LCD screen is always displaying the time, allowing the wearer to read it at a glance. What really brings this design to life is its multi color LED light guide. At the touch of a button, the display can be backlit with one of seven user selectable colors, a feature which is most impressive at night.

With the style and luxury of a solid stainless steel band, Negative also has an abundance of features, including a vertical or horizontal display option, several alarm functions, 12/24 hour mode and multi-color mode, sending all LED colors into a frenzy when the backlight is activated.

The display presents the time in negative space, the unlit squares on the screen showing digital numbers, highlighted by the bright squares around them. This creates a subtle optical illusion effect, giving the watch a unusual mystique, unlike those using standard digital displays.

Negative is a classic Tokyoflash design and will keep you looking cool for years to come.

A Quicktime movie of the watch in action is available here. [1.4MB]

For detailed product information a pdf instruction manual is available to download below.

· Displays the time and date

· AM/PM and 12/24 modes

· Daily and date alarm modes

· LCD "always on" display

· User selectable LED color backlight

· Vertical/Horizontal modes

· Maximum wrist size: 210 mm (approx.)

· Case Dimensions: 30 mm x 55 mm x 13 mm

· Weight: 180 grams

· Water resistance: 3ATM

· Japanese and English instructions

· One year warranty

i also kinda love winding watches........

something as classy as this....

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

REALLY HAVE NO IDEA.

what do u think i should do? which should i buy?????????????????

welcome to a new work-weekday

2009-05-18T09:48:00.004+08:00

Who's to know if your soul will fade at all,
The one you sold to fool the world.
You lost your self esteem along the way.
Yeah.

Good God, You're coming up with reasons.
Good God, You're dragging it out.
Good God, it's the changing of the seasons.
I feel so raped.
SO FOLLOW ME DOWN.

And just fake it, if you're out of direction.
Fake it, if you don't belong here.
Fake it, if you feel like infection .
Woah, You're such a fuckin' hypocrite.

And you should know that the
lies won't hide your flaws.
No sense in hiding all of yours.
You gave up on your dreams along the way.
Yeah.

Good God, You're coming up with reasons.
Good God, You're dragging it out.
Good God, it's the changing of the seasons.
I feel so raped.
SO FOLLOW ME DOWN.

And just fake it, if you're out of direction.
Fake it, if you don't belong here.
Fake it, if you feel like infection.
Woah, You're such a fuckin' hypocrite.

Woah, Woah.

I can fake with the best of anyone.
I can fake with the best of 'em all.
I can fake with the best of anyone.
I can fake it all.

Who's to know if your soul will fade at all,
The one you sold to fool the world.
You lost your self esteem along the way.
Yeah.

Good God, You're coming up with reasons.
Good God, You're dragging it out.
Good God, it's the changing of the seasons.
I feel so raped.
MAN FOLLOW ME DOWN.

And just fake it, if you're out of direction.
Fake it, if you don't belong here.
Fake it, if you feel like infection.
Woah, You're such a fuckin' hypocrite.

Fake it, if you're out of direction.
Fake it, if you don't belong here.
Fake it, if you feel like infection.
Woah, You're such a fuckin' hypocrite.

- fake it by seether

good day all!

Headphones!

2009-05-14T11:43:00.007+08:00

I am an avid fan of headphones! I hate to stuck earpieces into my ears.. It’s painful and I wonder how people can take it. I love my first good headphones by Audio Technica. I love it so much because it fits perfectly to my already small ears. The sound is clear and loud! I love clear sound. It is so nice to hear songs with clear sound. You feel as if you are there at a concert when the band is playing right infront of u as u close ur eyes and imagine. HEAVEN! Oh well, since my headphones spoilt/lost, I am yearning for a good one. Not cheap to invest on headphones. Good ones go up to $100 plus. My pair of Audio Technica caused me $38 if I am not wrong. Right now $48.. but I am thinking of trying some other headphones. Philips high end ones are quite good. I love anything with good and clear sound. I tried iluv ones.. not too bad..

For those who want to buy headphones and are unsure what type to get, you can check out this link:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-computers/audio-video/headphones/headphone-guide/types/headphones-types.htm

My preference is the following:

- Over-the-ears (circumaural)
(picture can be found here: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/resources/images/electronics-computers/audio-video/headphones/headphone-guide/types/type_headphones_over-the-ears-models.jpg)

These models cup your ears, sealing in sound and muffling ambient noise. But they might also block out some things that you want to hear, such as a doorbell or a child's cry.

- Active noise-reduction headphones
(picture can be found here: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/resources/images/electronics-computers/audio-video/headphones/headphone-guide/types/type_headphones_active-noise-reduction.jpg)

Noise-reducing headphones are a good choice for anyone who doesn't want to be disturbed by outside noise. Any headphones with a closed design that fit tightly over your ears or inside the ear canal will block some noise by creating a seal. This is called passive noise reduction. Closed design over-the-ear and insert-style earphones tend to block more noise than do open design, on-ear, and ear-bud-style headphones.

Models with active noise-canceling technology go a step further. These battery-powered headphones use tiny microphones to monitor noise frequencies, and then produce those same frequencies out of phase in an effort to cancel them. We've found that the effectiveness of noise reduction technology can range from very good to poor. In general, we found the most effective noise-reduction in models that combined passive noise blocking with active noise cancellation. Some models let you turn off noise reduction; these will work without batteries. Others work only with noise canceling activated, and thus they can't be used for listening to music if the batteries die. And in some cases, you can use the noise-canceling feature even when you're not listening to music, simply to reduce outside noise.

~.~

I NEED TO BUY ONE SOON. DYING OF GOOD HEADPHONES!

university admissions

2009-05-13T13:26:00.005+08:00

its not the end of the world when you get rejected from all 3 local universities.

for the second time.

there's always hope for people like me.

u always can look up the private schools for a place to go.

some of the universites offer good degrees from really good places.

well, here's a really good link for those in search of a place to study :

http://www.webometrics.info/top6000.asp

u can find top 6000 universites all around the world.. i did a google search and OMG NUS is top 30 man!

or u can try Dr. Money:

http://www.askdrmoney.com/university_rankings.htm

hahaha...

welll..... if u are undecided what would suit you (like me for the past 1 yr), you can try things like this:

-googling all the different schools

-read the courses available

-think what job u want to work as and find what u can study

- think where you are right now and what u want to do in life

- ask a teacher/ talk to course cordinators/counselors/talk to parents/friends

~.~

anyway i am decided on the study aspect of my life and i wish u all out there all the best for yours too!!
Murdoch is the place where free-thinkers come to succeed. We’re proud to have staff and students who have a desire to discover, use their imaginations, think independently and ultimately make a difference. We actively support and encourage our community to share ideas, pool knowledge and find new ways of thinking.The way we embrace free-thinking at Murdoch is being recognised by an increasing number of people and industries around the world. We have received a five-star rating for graduate satisfaction for 13 of the past 14 years (Good Universities Guide 2009 Edition), and more industries are investing in our thinking to provide our researchers with the support and resources they need to make amazing discoveries.

SUBWAY - EAT FRESH!

2009-05-08T12:16:00.002+08:00

this is so addictive!!!!!!!!!

Just Like Heaven

2009-04-30T10:57:00.002+08:00

i finished reading this book 1 month ago. ya i know, kala reads? As astonished as u are, I myself can't believe i read the whole book finish. Its really a good read. Adapted from the movie, the book is full of love and magical moments.

But when I read the review for the movie, its 2 different things..

if you can, grab the book and read.

take care all!

its a friday

2009-04-24T11:01:00.003+08:00

life's really is like a bed or roses.. soft and sweet when its the happy times..

sad and painful when it is the bad times.. well, life for now its not exactly smooth sailing..

i'm worrying about my current job. feel like doing a job hop.. but i love the environment here.

nice people... but the pay... it has no form of increment. =(

i'm worrying about school.. i need to pay my wonderful mum back her 6k.. everyday she is killing me by repeating the amount i need to pay.. actually i applied for the payment.. but i dun have much cash.. haiz... and if i were to pay her. oh how am i to study for my degree. which i need to finance all on my own.... =(

life's really hard.. what can i do?

god bless me..

sian!

2009-04-23T09:31:00.000+08:00

I know my friend is a Shopaholic because...

2009-03-17T17:45:00.002+08:00

I know my dearest friend Hanim is a shopaholic because........

SHE SHOPS AND SHOPS AND SHOPS..

hahah..

look at her blog man, full of shopping adventure.

another person i know of..

not very close one..

MARLENE!

super shopaholic..

hmmm..

lots of $$$$!!

lucky people!

"Catch Confessions of a Shopaholic on 26 March!"

dead tired

2009-02-24T08:17:00.001+08:00

i woke up at 6.15am today and reached work at 7.30am!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i think i walked to work, eyes closed.

i NEED sleep!

WTC?! (What The Cookies?!) Valentine's Special

2009-02-06T09:25:00.007+08:00

Have u tried our cookies....???

well we didn't start after getting a Phd in baking nor did we start 100yrs ago....

but we sure will make u crave for more and make u go WTC?!!!

~*~

Big cookie

1 cookie = $2

Normal / heart shape

Basic icing (1 base and 1 design) included

Individual wrapping with tagging included (eg: dear xx,)

Delivery included

*Minimum order = 2
(If below minimum order, there is a $2 surcharge for delivery, self collection can be done)

Delicious heart shaped sugar cookies decorated for Valentine's Day? A real treat for anyone at any age. A great way to say "Happy Valentine's Day." say I love you with WTC?! today!

~*~

Small cookies

5 in 1 packaging = $1.80

Normal cookie shape
Chocolate chip flavor
No decoration
Individual wrapping with tagging included (eg: dear xx,)
Delivery included

* Minimum order = 5

(If below minimum order, there is a $2 surcharge for delivery, self collection can be done)

Basic icing (1 base and 1 design) and anything additional = surcharge applies

Somehow bombarstic words don't compliment the taste of these cuties and many testify to them. try a mini cookie today.

~*~

So how to order??

Here's the information I need -

name:
contact details (hp):email add:
Total Quantity (#):
Size (big/small):
Frosting (colour):
Designs (colour):
Wrapping (yes/no):
Tagging and Message (to who?):
Price (Small 5 for $1.80) / (Big 1 for $2):
Dateline:
Delivery/Collection Address:

kindly send all requests to alternate_turquoise@hotmail.com

you may sms/call 94564197 if its urgent or for clarification!

thank you.

What will you do to find out if your crush is into you?

2009-02-04T16:19:00.002+08:00

well..

the logical answer is...

ASK HIM/HER DIRECTLY!!

but not many of us are too brave to do so right?

so the next do-able set of answers will be:

1) ask his/her friends
2) stalk his friendster/facebook/blog/msn or wat have u to see if there is any changes or updates
3) give hints
4) send him quizzes on love to do
5) follow email advises to tell if he/she is into you

Here's one example to tell if a girl likes you:

(If they stop and look at you ... if they look at you a lot ... if they laugh at your jokes ... if they gaggle and act like drunk crazy girls.)

6) post questions in yahoo answers.
7) check his/her hp on how they saved your name
8) force them to like you
9) joke about you liking him and wait for a response
10)hypnotise them to like you.

ok enough of fooling around..

the right way that I sincerely suggest for you to find out would be:

Asking him or her out

I always recommend that you simply ask the person out, before it drives you crazy. It at least shows that you are serious.

If they say no, then it is their loss.

And if they say yes, then, well it can be the start of something beautiful.

Asking them out via their friends is simply a cowardly way to do it.

So go on, bite the bullet and ask her/him out today!

Its valentine's day around the corner.. so bring your potential date out soon..

who knows what will happen :)

catch He's Just Not that Into You in the cinema's near you.

Click here to watch trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kIoZoxYB3Y

a pair of tickets to city alive!

2009-01-28T11:06:00.006+08:00

hey guys.. i am selling a pair of tickets for city alive on this sat (31st Jan) for only $30.

City Alive!, held in conjunction with the annual Chingay Parade, promises to be the BIGGEST and FUNKIEST street dance party in Singapore!

The high-energy extravaganza will unite thousands of party revellers and music enthusiasts from around the world at the entire street at the City Hall Front which will transform into a mega dance floor.

Party-goers will expect a night of adrenaline rush as they witness the city coming alive. Open top buses will usher in International DJs in style and kick off with Funkamania - Battle for Hip Hop Dance Supremacy in its 14th year.

The party gets hotter with international DJs such as DJ Sassy Pandez, DJ Sarasa, Singapore’s very own DJ KoFlow, and Celebrity Dance Choreographers from Hong Kong will keep the beats flowing all night long. A host of fringe activities such as Strike Force Percussion, Mega Stilt Walkers, Dance Ambassadors & Party Mascots to take pictures with party-goers will enhance the party engagement.

view the site here for more info: http://www.cityalive.sg/

tickets if you were to buy before event will be

$20 per ticket and on the event day itself it costs

$28 per ticket.

(each ticket includes one drink!)

Minimum age of entry at 18 years, photo ID required to gain entry..

sms/call me if u are interested.

number to be contacted : 90291587

or leave me an email at : alternate_turquoise@hotmail.com

thanks

hi world!!!

2009-01-21T23:20:00.003+08:00

YES! I AM BACK!
Well.. life's been real busy at work.. argh
no time to blog at all..
=(

anyways,
let's see wat's my horoscope for the day:

Are you worried about a friend or family member but afraid to say something because you fear they will get defensive? Have more faith in them -- they are waiting for someone to reach out to them. So get some quiet alone time with them today and share all your concerns. You know that preaching will not get you anywhere with them, so just state what you think and ask them what they have to say about it. This is the best way to start a very productive conversation.

hmm... interesting!

oh anyways...

gong xi fa cai to all the chinese frenzy..

please bring ang paos my way..

thank you.

:D

LOVE,

- kala

The storybook I would love to be trapped in

2009-01-09T17:47:00.010+08:00

The storybook I would love to be trapped in would be....

ALICE IN THE WONDERLAND!

So, why Alice In The Wonderland????

First let me tell you what is the story of alice in the wonderland...

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) is a novel written by author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar and anthropomorphic creatures.

The tale is filled with allusions to Dodgson's friends (and enemies), and to the lessons that British schoolchildren were expected to memorize. The tale plays with logic in ways that have given the story lasting popularity to adults as well as children. It is considered to be one of the most characteristic examples of the genre of literary nonsense, and its narrative course and structure has been enormously influential, mainly in the fantasy genre.

Here's the story (sypnosis) :

Chapter 1: Down the Rabbit Hole

Alice is bored of sitting on the riverbank with her sister, who is reading a book. Suddenly she sees a white rabbit run past wearing a coat and carrying a watch, lamenting running late. She follows it down a rabbit hole and falls very slowly down a tunnel lined with curious objects. She lands in a long hallway lined with locked doors. She finds a little key sitting on a glass table. Behind a curtain on the wall she finds a tiny door that opens with the key and leads into a beautiful garden. The door however is too small for Alice to fit through. Looking back at the table she sees a bottle labeled "DRINK ME" that was not there before. She drinks and it causes her to shrink to a size small enough to fit through the door. Unfortunately Alice has left the key high above on the table. She finds a box under the table in which there is a cake with the words "EAT ME" on it. She eats it, thinking that if it makes her smaller she can creep under the door and if it makes her larger she can get the key.

Chapter 2: The Pool of Tears

The cake makes Alice grow so tall that her head hits the ceiling. Getting frustrated, she cries. Her tears flood the hallway. The White Rabbit runs by and is so frightened by Alice that he drops the gloves and fan he is holding. She fans herself with the fan and starts to wonder if she is still the same person that she was before. The fan causes her to shrink again. Alice swims through her own tears and meets a mouse, who is swimming as well. She tries to make small talk with him but all she can think of talking about is her cat, which offends the mouse. The pool becomes crowded with other animals and birds that have been swept away. They all swim to shore.

Chapter 3: A Caucus Race and a Long Tale

The first question is how to get dry again. The mouse gives them a very dry lecture on William the Conqueror. A dodo decides that the best thing to dry them off would be a Caucus-Race. The Dodo marks out a race course in a sort of circle and the racers begin running whenever they feel like it, and everyone wins. Alice reaches into her pocket and finds a box of comfits which she distributes among the winners. The animals then beg the mouse to tell them something more and he recites a tale about a mouse and Fury. Alice mistakes his tale for his tail. This insults him and he leaves. She starts talking about her cat again, which frightens the rest of the animals away.

Chapter 4: The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill

The White Rabbit appears again and orders Alice to go back to his house and fetch him his gloves and fan. Inside, she finds another bottle and drinks from it. Alice grows so large that she has to stick one arm out the window and her foot up the chimney. The horrified Rabbit orders his gardener, a lizard named Bill, to climb on the roof and go down the chimney. As Bill slides down the chimney Alice kicks him out with her foot, shooting him up into the sky. Outside Alice hears the voices of animals that have gathered to gawk at her giant arm. The crowd hurls pebbles at her, which turn into little cakes that shrink Alice down again. She runs into the woods, where she decides that she must get back to her right size and she must find the lovely garden. Suddenly Alice is confronted by a giant puppy. She picks up a stick and teases him with it until he is tired and she can run away. She comes upon a mushroom and sitting on it is a caterpillar smoking a hookah.

Chapter 5: Advice from a Caterpillar

The Caterpillar questions Alice and she admits to her current identity crisis. He asks her to recite "You Are Old, Father William". She does so, but it comes out with many errors. She insults him by saying that three inches is a wretched height to be (he himself is three inches tall). The Caterpillar crawls away into the grass, telling Alice that one side of the mushroom will make her taller and the other side will make her shorter. She breaks off two pieces from the mushroom. One side makes her shrink smaller than ever, while another causes her neck to grow high into the trees, where a pigeon mistakes her for a serpent. With some effort, Alice brings herself back to her usual height. She stumbles upon a small estate and uses the mushroom to reach a more appropriate height.

Chapter 6: Pig and Pepper

A Fish-Footman has an invitation for the Duchess of the house, which he delivers to a Frog-Footman. Alice observes this transaction and, after a perplexing conversation with the frog, welcomes herself into the house. The Duchess' Cook is throwing dishes and making a soup which has too much pepper, which causes Alice, the Duchess and her baby (but not the cook or her grinning Cheshire Cat) to sneeze violently. The Duchess tosses her baby up and down while reciting the poem "Speak roughly to your little boy." The Duchess gives Alice the baby while she leaves to go play croquet with the Queen. To Alice's surprise, the baby later turns into a pig, so she sets it free in the woods. The Cheshire-Cat appears in a tree, directing her to the March Hare's house. He disappears but his grin remains behind to float on its own in the air prompting Alice to remark that she has often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat.

Chapter 7: A Mad Tea Party
Alice becomes a guest at a mad tea party, along with the Hatter (now more commonly known as the Mad Hatter), the March Hare, and the Dormouse. In the course of the party, Alice reveals that the date is May 4 (which happens to be the birthday of her presumed real-life counterpart, Alice Pleasance Liddell). The other characters give Alice many riddles and stories, until she becomes so insulted that she leaves, claiming that it was the stupidest tea party that she had ever been to. Alice comes upon a door in a tree, and enters it, and finds herself back in the long hallway from the first chapter. She opens the door, eats part of her mushroom, and shrinks so she can get into the beautiful garden.
Chapter 8: The Queen's Croquet Ground
Now in the beautiful garden, she comes upon three living playing cards painting the white roses on a rose tree red because the Queen of Hearts hates white roses. A procession of more cards, kings and queens and even the White Rabbit enters the garden. Alice meets the violent Queen and pacifying King of Hearts. The Queen orders "Off with their heads!" when she sees the work of the gardeners. A game of croquet begins, with flamingos as the mallets and hedgehogs as the balls. The Queen condemns more people to death, and Alice once again meets the Cheshire Cat. The Queen of Hearts then debates chopping off the Cat's head, even though that is all there is of him. Alice suggests talking to the Duchess, so the Queen orders the Duchess out of prison.

Chapter 9: The Mock Turtle's story

The Duchess is brought to the croquet ground. She is now less angry and is always trying to find morals in things. The Queen of Hearts dismisses her on the threat of execution and introduces Alice to the Gryphon, who takes her to the Mock Turtle. The Mock Turtle is very sad, even though he has no sorrow. He tries to tell his story about how he used to be a real turtle in school, which The Gryphon interrupts so they can play a game.

Chapter 10: The Lobster Quadrille

The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon dance to the Lobster Quadrille, while Alice recites (rather incorrectly) "Tis the Voice of the Lobster." The Mock Turtle sings them "Beautiful Soup" during which the Gryphon drags Alice away for an impending trial.

Chapter 11: Who Stole the Tarts?

At the trial, the Knave of Hearts is accused of stealing the tarts. The jury box is made up of twelve animals, including Bill the Lizard. The judge is the King of Hearts. The first witness is the Mad Hatter, who doesn't help the case at all, followed by the Duchess's Cook. During the proceedings, Alice finds that she is steadily growing larger when she is suddenly called as a witness herself.

Chapter 12: Alice's Evidence

Alice accidentally knocks over the jury box as she stands in alarm. She argues with the King and Queen of Hearts over the ridiculous proceedings, eventually refusing to hold her tongue. The Queen shouts her familiar "Off with her head!" but Alice is unafraid, calling them out as just a pack of cards. Alice's sister wakes her up for tea, brushing what turns out to be some leaves and not a shower of playing cards from Alice's face. Alice leaves her sister on the bank to imagine all the curious happenings for herself.

---

So why do I love to be trapped in Alice's Wonderland??

Simple...

1)there are 12 chapters of adventure in this book.

2)there are cute characters in the story.

3) Alice is very sweet and pretty girl and I always admired her.

4)Imagine getting advise from a catapillar (How cool is that? - thats wat i thought when i was young! hehe)

5) Its my favourite bed time story when i was a kid.

Everyone has crazy wishes.. mine is to be in Alice In the wonder land..

Anyways...........

Catch Inkheart in cinemas from 22 January 2009!"

PS: I HOPE I GET TO WATCH THIS MOVIE! I LOVE IT ALOT....

ANOTHER FREE MOVIE PLS NUFFNANG?????????

YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST EVER.

I SWEAR. =D

something to test ur IQ.

2009-01-07T15:07:00.001+08:00

can u solve this??

look below for ans....

a new goal for the new year.

2009-01-07T14:55:00.001+08:00

i will try to post once a week.

yummy yummy christmas treat

2008-12-24T10:18:00.003+08:00

wee. had a baking mood and finalllllllllllllly........

I baked cookie for this year's christmas.

alot of cookies for him

rest that cant fit in the big tupperware, for colleagues (LOL!)

see pictures and drool everyone!

LOL

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

astrology

2008-12-22T14:13:00.002+08:00

My dad paid an old man to come home to forsee the future.

Every single one of us had our future read.

Each person mounting to $50 (that means $250 for my family of 5).

that wise old man (claimed to be)

told me that i was in a bad period of time from my 10th to 18th birthday.

my studies were bad and i din have much of a good name or luck.

from my 18th birthday to my 27th birthday,

i have a good studying life

and its not advisable to marry or fall in love till then.

he asked me to go overseas and venture into economics or business.

well astrology is astrology.
nothing is certain.

meet baby shanna

2008-12-16T16:11:00.000+08:00

my masterpiece!

i love christmas

2008-12-03T10:18:00.003+08:00

haiz,

will i ever get to experience snow one day?

not the one in snow city.

i wan real snow.

i wan to see snowflakes.

i wan to make those angel shapes.

yay yay yay!

2008-12-03T08:31:00.000+08:00

Congratulations Nuffnanger!
As our valued Nuffnang Glitterati member, you've just won yourself a pair of tickets to catch Nick and Norah.!
The movie screening will be held on Wednesday, 3rd December 2008 @ The Cathay, 7.15pm
There will be a booth set up for ticket collection and you will see friendly Nuffnang staff dressed in Nuffnang T-shirt!
Ticket collection starts from 6.30 pm and will end at 7:00 pm, SHARP
Kindly RSVP by replying a simple 'yes' in your subject column of this email sent to you together with your full name, email address and contact number.
Deadline for RSVP: 10.00 am, 3rd December 2008, Wednesday
As this event is over-subscribed, please ensure to turn up at the event if you replied a 'yes'. Failure to do so will be black-marked for future community events.
Kindly note that this movie is rated NC16, please ensure that you fulfil the age requirements.
In any case of an emergency and you are unable to attend, you may call me, Charis @ 90306295/ Raine @ or drop me a message with your full name and reason.
Thank you and congratulations once again!
I look forward to seeing you at the theatre! :)

Best Regards,
Nuffnang team

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist Movie Premiere‏

2008-11-28T14:31:00.003+08:00

I dedicate this song playlist to you my dear.
Music has always been part of our love life.
I dedicate to you, your second love (hopefully i'm first :D)

OUR MUSIC PLAYLIST

1) My Love - Justin Timberlake
(the song that brought us together. i introduced this song to u and you became a justin timberlake fan, which at the mean time without me realise I became your fan :))

2) Way I Are - Timberland
(the song that tells you how I love you, just the way you are. :))

3) Afrodisiac - Brandy
(you made me love this song)

4) Suga Suga - Baby Bash
(you liked this song when we were dating and you loved it more since i was humming it out, not realising you were looking at me :))

5) Treat me right - Backstreet boys
(the most recent song we both like and you plan to remix. cant wait :))

6)Give it to me - buster rymes ft. mariah carey
(the tune caught both our hurts and made us closer)

7) Summer Love - Justin Timberlake
(our song. we started our lovely relationship in memorance to this song)

8) seve days - craig david
(your favourite song. makes me smile when u used to sing it. :))

9) Give it to me - Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado
(you love the three artists in this song and i remember hating this song but loving it jus cos u love it so much. made me remmeber u all the time when i hear this song. :))

10) Number one fan - Dima Bilan
(i am always your no 1 fan jus like this song where dima is crazy over the gal. :) )

11) maybe - jay sean
(our song. you played it a million times in ur mp3 thinking of me. reality is i do the same :) when i miss u badly, this song came in handy. :))

12)four minutes - madonna and justin timberlake
(i hated this song but loved it cos of you. :) love the way you react when u hear this song. you would hear it so many times. jus like a small boy who loves his toy so much and will nvr let it go. :))

13) because of you - Neyo
(because of you, i understand true love. love i nvr felt before! and its real nice. :))

14)Baby Love - Nicole Scherzinger
(how i feel for u. even though nicole gets on my jealous nerve (you think she's hot and i think she's stealing my man.. argggggggggh) i realise the words of this song relates to my love for you.)

15) Last Night - P Diddy ft. Keyshia Cole
(i know u love this line so much "i love you so much" when keyshia cole sings it. yes, infact i really do love u so much. :))

16)Here without you - three doors down
(when i feel lonely or hurt. this song soothes my emotions. i cry and i feel your presence when i need you.)

17) What goes around comes around - Justin Timberlake
( i helped to heal you when you were broken with this song. made a beautiful friendship which blossomed into love begin.....)

All the songs here are memories. part of our lives.
Music may or may not tell you how much i love u
but the fact is the true love we share is always

special.

i love you..

everyone catch Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist Movie.

http://nicknorah.com.sg/

“Movie opening 11th Dec!"

David Archuleta - Crush

2008-11-27T15:03:00.001+08:00

quite nice a song.

view video here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8phK_YIRNs

lyrics goes something like this :

I hung up the phone tonight,
something happened for the first time, deep inside
It was a rush, what a rush
Cause the possibility that you would ever
Feel the same way about me
It’s just too much, just too much
Why do I keep running from the truth
All I ever think about is you
You got me hypnotized, so mesmerized, and I just got to know

Do you ever think, when you’re all alone
All that we could be, Where this thing could go
Am I crazy or falling in love
Is it real or just another crush
Do you catch a breath, when I look at you
Are you holding back, like the way I do
Cause I’m trying, trying to walk away
But I know this crush ain’t goin away, goin away

Has it ever crossed your mind when we were hanging
Spending time girl, are we just friends
Is there more, is there more
See it’s a chance we’ve gotta take
Cause I believe we can make this into
Something that will last, last forever, forever

Why do I keep running from the truth
All I ever think about is you
You got me hypnotized, so mesmerized
And I just got to know

Do you ever think, when you’re all alone
All that we could be, Where this thing could go
Am I crazy or falling in love
Is it realor just another crush
Do you catch a breath, when I look at you
Are you holding back, like the way I do
Cause I’m trying, trying to walk away
But I know this crush ain’t goin away, goin away

november babies.

2008-11-14T09:26:00.002+08:00

its the time of the month for birthdays

2nd Nov - Luan Wei
3rd Nov - Chye Hong
15th Nov - Dazhini
22th Nov - Wei Ling
26th Nov - Hanim
4 to 8Dec- Pricilla's birthday chalet

happy birthday guys. god bless.

i'm gonna be broke soon.

sigh lol.

We know we're getting old when the only thing we want for our birthday is not to be reminded of it.

dad can i borrow $25?

2008-10-20T11:03:00.002+08:00

A man came home from work late, tired and irritated, to find his 5-year old son waiting for him at the door.

SON: 'Daddy, may I ask you a question?'

DAD: 'Yeah sure, what it is?' replied the man.

SON: 'Daddy, how much do you make an hour?'

DAD: 'That's none of your business. Why do you ask such a thing?' the man said angrily.

SON: 'I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an hour?'

DAD: 'If you must know, I make $50 an hour.'

SON: 'Oh,' the little boy replied, with his head down.

SON: 'Daddy, may I please borrow $25?'

The father was furious, 'If the only reason you asked that is so you can borrow some money to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. Think about why you are being so selfish. I don't work hard everyday for such childish frivolities.'

The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door.

The man sat down and started to get even angrier about the little boy's questions. How dare he ask such questions only to get some money?

After about an hour or so, the man had calmed down , and started to think:

Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that $25.00 and he really didn't ask for money very often The man went to the door of the little boy's room and opened the door.

'Are you asleep, son?' He asked.

'No daddy, I'm awake,' replied the boy.

'I've been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier' said the man. 'It's been a long day and I took out my aggravation on you. Here's the $25 you asked for.'

The little boy sat straight up, smiling. 'Oh, thank you daddy!' he yelled. Then, reaching under his pillow he pulled out some crumpled up bills.

The man saw that the boy already had money, started to get angry again.

The little boy slowly counted out his money, and then looked up at his father.

'Why do you want more money if you already have some?' the father grumbled.

'Because I didn't have enough, but now I do,' the little boy replied.

'Daddy, I have $50 now. Can I buy an hour of your time? Please come home early tomorrow. I would like to have dinner with you.'

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little son, and he begged for his forgiveness.

It's just a short reminder to all of you working so hard in life. We should not let time slip through our fingers without having spent some time with those who really matter to us, those close to our hearts. Do remember to share that $50 worth of your time with someone you love.

If we die tomorrow, the company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of hours. But the family & friends we leave behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives.

canon ixsus

2008-10-10T09:24:00.005+08:00

EOS 450D

2008-10-10T09:18:00.003+08:00

D80

2008-10-10T08:55:00.002+08:00

hi world

2008-10-10T08:42:00.003+08:00

sorry sorry sorry for the lack of updates. work has been real hard to cope with.
been incharge of websites and also staff counter and soon bus hiring.
i am like dying i tell u.

need to revamp 3 websites, edit and update the contents as well.

have been implementing lots of new stuff like msn widget, advertising column etc...

haiz..

atleast my efforts paid off too.

haha was shocked to receive the current assistant of the month title.

nvr expected it.

this was the email that i received :

Dear all,

I am pleased to inform that the abovementioned is awarded to Kala Asokan for her good performance. Please see below for positive comments from OSC officers on the good work of Kala,

Kala Asokan
· Had zero “no shows”
· Were not more than 15mins late for duties without reason
· Had no “serious” customer complaint
· Displayed initiative, reliability and sense of responsibility
o Positive attitude – organized, meticulous, responsible and dependable
o A helpful and friendly colleague.
o Kala wins my vote for her initiative in doing work.
o Kala had been very helpful. She even help out in issuing the polo-tees when the logistics person is not at the counter, she uses initiative most of the time and I have witnessed it myself.
o Very initiative and responsible in her work, able to come up with good ideas, display good leadership, even though she was not an expert in website matters, she is always willing to learn and pick up the skill quickly.
o Kala is quite responsive and responsible
o Kala has been independent.
· Displayed willingness to “go the extra mile”
o Willing to assist ETS team whenever she is asked to e.g. to fold letters and assist staff with cards issues when my team is not ard.

OSC Officers unanimously voted to award $80 NTUC vouchers to Kala for her good performance. The vouchers will be handed to Kala once ready.

On behalf of OSC I thank Kala for her contribution to the department, keep up the good work!

Hi Jasmine,

Please update display in Plasma and the table stand at OSC counter.

Regards,
Darren Ng
Manager OSC

other then that i had tuition almost everyday and

weekends were spent with him.

managed to borrow cameras like EOS and DSLR.

super super nice!

especially the EOS. will upload the pictures okay!

so how's everyone else doing?

nice right?

2008-10-10T08:37:00.000+08:00

sorry for the lack of updates.

2008-09-19T17:22:00.002+08:00

i am quite busy.
will update soon!

new terrapins for hanim

2008-09-12T10:06:00.000+08:00

since labi got stolen

happy friday!!!!!

2008-09-05T16:53:00.005+08:00

For your viewing entertainment!

DON'T LAUGH TOO MUCH!
HEHE.

happy friday

in case your wondering,

this is the original photo :

link : http://www.yearbookyourself.com/

BAD BAD News!

2008-09-05T16:46:00.000+08:00

WALL-E

2008-09-03T09:21:00.008+08:00

i caught WALL-E two days ago.

so what is it about? :

The year is 2700. Planet Earth is one giant trash heap, and an incompetent corporation called Buynlarge has the contract to clean up the mess. Buynlarge sent thousands of robots, called Waste Allocation Load Lifters - Earth Class, to do the job but unfortunately they all broke down over the past 700 years. Save for one.
The last robot has developed a few bugs of his own. This Wall-E became self-aware and curious about humans. He, along with his pet cockroach Spot, has amassed a bizarre collection of human artifacts including a VCR and a VHS tape of Hello Dolly!, which he watches incessantly. Wall-E toils away at his thankless (and endless) job until another robot, named Eve, suddenly arrives. Wall-E follows this new robot around like a little puppy and, when she finally leaves Earth, he finds a way to tag along. Which is where the real fun starts.

Babylon A.D

2008-09-03T08:50:00.002+08:00

What's the movie about :

In the near future, Toorop (Vin Diesel) is a mercenary who takes the job of escorting a woman named Aurora from Central Asia to New York. While he thinks this is just an ordinary mission, he gradually finds out that his guest is carrying twins that have the potential to become the next Messiahs - and everybody wants to get their hands on them.

Here's the movie trailer :

Visit the movie site at :

http://www.babylonadmovie.com/

top 5 reasons why i wanna watch the movie :

1) VAN DISEL

2) I love nuffnang

3) Its my off day

4) I love movies

5) A nice way to spend time with my love,

and many more..

SO NUFFNANG. PICK ME!!!!!!!

auction house pics.

2008-08-27T10:15:00.002+08:00

national day rally 2008 speech

2008-08-21T08:58:00.002+08:00

TRANSCRIPT OF PRIME MINISTER LEE HSIEN LOONG’S NATIONAL DAY RALLY 2008 SPEECH AT NUS-UCC ON 17AUGUST 2008

Our Economy

Tonight I’ll start by talking about the economy. I haven’t done so in detail over the last few years because the economy was doing well. So we were focusing on social issues, the income gap, ageing population, and CPF. But it’s timely to pay some attention to the economy now because conditions this year are more difficult. Over the last few years when conditions were good, we surged ahead. We did the right thing, we planned, we pushed, we built up our momentum, restructured and upgraded our economy and brought in a pipeline of good projects – F1 Grand Prix, the IRs, our financial services, banking doing well, major investments brought in by EDB through very hard work. Now these projects will sustain our momentum and keep our economy going. But dark clouds have gathered around us in the external environment. The US faces very serious problems. Their house prices had a balloon, bubble, crash and are still falling. Unemployment is going up, consumers are losing confidence, spending less and it’s affecting the rest of the world as has to be expected. In Europe, the major economies have gone into negative growth and we must expect impact on Asia also. These global economic problems will continue at least into next year and some experts think it may last even longer. We are starting to feel the impact in Singapore.

“In the second quarter, our growth has slowed down, our manufacturing sector has been affected, our exports are weak this year, tourist arrivals are down. Even Asian tourists are travelling less partly because airline fares have gone up with fuel costs. Retail stores say that customers are more careful and restaurants have also fewer guests now in Singapore. Singaporeans are more careful with their money. This year I think we can get four to five per cent growth. It’s not bad. Next year we expect slow growth and more uncertainties. I’m not predicting a crisis. We are competitive, investors still want to come to Singapore and we have a strong pipeline as I explained. But we have to be vigilant and we have to be psychologically ready in case of trouble. We also must be on our marks so when the global economy recovers, we can bounce right back up.

Right now, the hottest issue for Singaporeans is the rising cost of living. Inflation is not just a problem for Singapore, it’s a worldwide problem because oil prices have gone up, food prices have gone up. I show you a graph of oil prices over the last few years and you can see how in 2000, we were paying about US$20 a barrel. Gradually it went up US$60 and in the last one year it spiked all the way up, nearly US$140, now back to about US$115 a barrel.

Food is an even more dramatic story. I show you rice because that’s what affects Singaporeans and you can see the price has been very stable for a very long time, gone up a bit, two years ago and in the last one year, tremendous spike, now come down some to US$800 per ton. Maybe it will stabilise there or maybe it will come down a little bit and similarly with oil there are some signs that maybe it will come down a little bit. But even if it does, it’s still high and it’s quite understandable why people are agitated all over the world and demonstrating, rioting, protesting, blaming their governments. I show you some slides from around the world. This is Europe, these are truckers in France protesting about diesel prices, so they’re blocking the roads. This is Spain, farmers put all their tomatoes on the road because their fuel prices have gone up. Indonesia, the government raised prices for kerosene, demonstrations and riots. Pakistan, they are not having a dance, they are showing their displeasure at the government because food prices went up. Philippines, they sell their people subsidised rice, ran short of supply, there was a scramble, mad scramble, the government had to scramble internationally to buy rice, domestically long queues, big problem.

Fortunately in Singapore we have plenty of rice. So you don’t see riots. All you see is Iswaran, SMS( MTI), inspecting our rice stockpile but I know that people are unhappy still about the price increases. I have read a lot of the interesting things on the Internet. Some are quite good. I don’t have time to show you all of them but I’ll just show you one tonight. This one says “Wah Piang Eh! the ERP has reached Pedra Branca”. I sent this to Raymond Lim. He says that’s his favourite one too.

I completely understand how Singaporeans feel and why Singaporeans feel like this. But we have to react rationally to understand what’s happening to us and what we can and cannot do about it. We can’t prevent prices from rising in Singapore. We import all our food except for a few eggs and Mah Bow Tan reminded me a few fish. We import all our fuel and all our electricity is produced from imported either fuel oil or natural gas. When the world prices go up, how can we keep our rice prices, our petrol prices, our diesel prices, our electricity prices down? It can’t be done. In terms of dollars, your wages have not gone down because most workers are earning more dollars this year than last year. Last year was a good year, people got good increases, got good bonuses, so you have more dollars. But when you spend those dollars, you find that they have shrunk and with inflation, what that means is some of your wage increase went to you, some of that wage increase went to the people who sell us oil. So, to put this in a very over-simplified way, the oil producers of the world have got rich. The Russians, the Arabs, they’ve got rich. The oil consumers of the world like Singapore, therefore, we have got a little bit poorer. That’s what it is. They are richer, we are poorer. How has it happened? Not by taking dollars away from you but by shrinking each of your dollars a little bit smaller when you spend it.

Singaporeans wish that the government would do something to stop these prices from going up, just order them to stand still, control them, don’t let them go up. Some governments try to do that but the subsidies cost huge sums of money. All the governments which try to do this have a very serious problem on their hands. And even those who produce oil and gas find this very hard to sustain. You look at Malaysia, they subsidise oil but what happens? Singaporeans go to Johor Baru to top up. Thais go across from Thailand into Kedah to top up, not your petrol tank but a huge special tank in a truck so as to get maximum benefit and they are oil producers. They’ve had to cut their oil subsidies and push up prices recently. Malaysia, Indonesia did that, also an oil producer. China produces some oil, India also, no oil, but they were subsidising. It’s untenable. We can’t do that but we can help Singaporeans and the way we help Singaporeans is to let the electricity price go up but to top up your SingPower accounts with U-save and give more U-Save to the poorer households, three room flats, two room flats and what that means is we are helping you directly because U-save really is cash. We are putting it into your account, up to you to spend. If you use it for electricity, it helps you to cover your bill. If you use less electricity it will last longer. But it’s a lot of money because for the lower-income households, three rooms and below, it’s worth three to six months’ worth of your utility bills. So that’s a lot of money. We can help but we have to help in the right way. This year, we’ve done more to help Singaporeans.

We foresaw this spike in inflation last year, towards the end of the year as prices started rising. We knew that Singaporeans would be worried. We started planning what we could do to help them, what we could do to reassure people and when it came to the Budget, fortunately we had a surplus last year. We were able to make a significant distribution in the Budget to help all Singaporeans but especially for the middle-income groups and even more for the lower-income groups, the needy. So we have growth dividends, Medisave top ups, U-save, so many measures, such long lists but all to give help where the help is needed.

Besides the Budget, we have many other measures to help the needy. For the lower-income workers, we’ve got Workfare to top up their income and savings. This year in the National Wages Council deliberations, we made a special one-off payment to the low wage workers. We recommended it and many employers have done it because we knew that they would be pressed this year. For the destitute, we have higher public assistance rates which we have revised up this year. I think it’s now $330 per person. We’ve got Comcare, we’ve got Medifund and for retirees, we have pushed up the CPF interest rate which was one of the things we discussed here last year at the rally. One extra per cent interest on the first $60,000 of your balances and it’s come into effect this year and it will help to preserve the value of your CPF savings for your old age. So it’s helpful to retirees, it’s helpful to the young people and not so young but not yet old. Overall, it’s $3 billion from the government this year and I think that’s not a small sum of money.

I know that many Singaporeans who are not so poor but also not so well off feel that they are pressured. Middle-income Singaporeans and they feel that they’re the sandwiched class, stuck in the middle. But when you ask who is the sandwiched class, all the way from quite low down to quite high up, it’s a very fat sandwich but they feel sandwiched and we haven’t forgotten them. We have got growth dividends extended to them. We’ve helped them with their education costs, for example, polytechnic and university bursaries have been extended, so a large proportion of students are now eligible for bursaries. We’ve topped up the post secondary education accounts for all school-age children and that includes all of the middle-income groups and that’s a big sum of money.

I know that the middle-income put a lot of emphasis on education and this is one way to build up, so when your kids go to poly or university, that little kitty, that nest egg is there. But overall, I think our most important strategy to help the middle-income group is to keep our taxes low and therefore minimise your burden. If you look at our personal income taxes, actually they are already lower than most other countries and for middle-income Singaporeans, in fact, our income tax is lower even than Hong Kong by quite a lot. On top of that, this year we gave a generous 20 per cent personal income tax rebate in the budget costing us nearly $400 million aimed at this middle-income Singaporeans. I think if you look at it in perspective, we have done a great deal to try and help the middle-income Singaporeans.

I know there’s one item which middle-income Singaporeans worry a lot about and that’s cars. Car related taxes are something which the government studies very carefully. I would acknowledge that at one time the car-related taxes were a significant burden on car owners, and many of them are middle-income. Because our car ownership taxes had become so high, we needed to control the number of cars, we pushed up the ARF, excise duty, so many items and the amount per car was very high and was disproportionate. Hence, we discussed this when we had the Economic Review Committee a few years ago which I chaired and we decided to make a major policy shift to shift from ownership to usage so that we could bring down the ownership taxes, ARF, excise duty and so on. We could issue more COEs so that they’ll be more affordable, then we could enable more people to afford cars. But to do all these good things, we would have to push up ERP so that we can control traffic jams on the roads.

In fact, we have moved decisively on that. I put together some figures to show you. It’s easiest if I show you on a graph. But if you compare 2000 before we moved and 2008, where we are today, you will know how far we have come. In 2000, the government collected S$6 billion in vehicle-related revenues. S$6 billion, it’s a huge amount of money, it’s like two or three times the amount of GST we collected in that year. Because we have changed policy by 2008, the amount has come down. Halved – S$3 billion. So we have effectively saved Singaporeans about S$3 billion of tax and this includes everything. But to do this, we have had to push up the ERP. By how much? In 2000, that’s all the ERP there was – S$80 million. This tiny sliver at the top of the whole stick. This year, after a lot of ERP adjustments, we have doubled it. It’s S$160 million but still very small compared to the total amount of car-related taxes which are collected. Despite this, we have still made this big reduction in the taxes which we have collected, which is savings to Singaporeans. And because of these savings, therefore, more households have been able to own cars. In 2000, there were about 320,000 households owning cars. Since then, in the last eight years, the number has gone up. Now 430,000 households have owned cars, which is about one-third more, 100,000 households. I think this is something which is worth trying to do because many Singaporean households want to own cars and we have been able to enable more of them to do so. How have we been able to do that? By bringing down vehicle taxes and how have we been able to do that? This little red sliver here by pushing up the ERP. This is in terms of overall growth numbers, billions. But if you are buying an individual car, one household, one car, you can see the difference. So I have chosen as an example of 1.6 litre car, typical Toyota Corolla, it was there in 2000, it is there this year. In 2000, how much do you think it cost to buy a Toyota Corolla all in? S$110,000. This year, for the same car, in fact the salesman will tell you it’s a better car, the price has gone down to $64,000. This is mainly because the government taxes have come down because the OMV has remained about the same. It was about S$19,000 before, now it’s $16,000. So basically the Government taxes have made the cars a lot more affordable. So the result of this is that there are more cars around us, you can see it HDB car parks getting more crowded, you can see it on the roads. Therefore, because of this, this year we have had to increase ERP charges.

I know many people are upset by these ERP charges. But we have to see the bigger picture because in fact, the ERP charges are enabling us to benefit Singaporeans so as to reduce the burden on you and to enable more Singaporeans to own cars. So when we had to make the adjustment this year, we considered it very carefully, how should we do this without increasing the burden on Singaporeans and we worked out an ERP package, not just raising the ERP or putting more gantries, but reducing road tax at the same time so as to offset it and overall, to bring down the costs. Let me show you how this works. Before the package, let’s take the 1.6 liter car again, probably a Toyota but could be another one. Before the package, the ERP was $122. After the package, it’s gone up nearly $200. So it looks very frightening but in fact, if you consider the road tax which you have to pay and which we have adjusted – you used to pay $874 of the road tax, and now it’s come down to $744. So the net effect is that you have a saving. In fact, you’re saving money rather than out of pocket because of the ERP changes. How much? Let’s do the sums. ERP increase $76; road tax reduction $130; net savings $54. So overall, there is a net saving from this package. So we have not increased the burden on Singaporeans. We have actually reduced the burden on Singaporeans by some. The trouble is people may not realise or remember how much road tax they are paying or even worse how much road tax they paid last year. Sometimes they may not be the ones paying it. I asked one driver how much road tax she paid because she was complaining about the gantries she went through and the beeps which she heard. So she thought for a while and then she said to me, “I am not sure, I have to ask my husband”. Because she didn’t pay the bill, her husband paid the bill and I am not sure even when the husband paid the bill, he noticed that it was smaller this year. Furthermore when the husband pays the bill, there is no beep-beep but when the wife drives the car, each gantry, one beep. So that is the problem and I think that’s part of the reason why people are not happy. So we have to draw the connections and get people to understand that actually the middle-income Singaporeans have benefited from government policies.

But we haven’t only thought about road tax and car drivers because the point of all this is to have a system which will work for all Singaporeans and that means improving our public transport. So together with pushing up the ERP, we are building more rail lines, we have more trains running, about 800 more trips every week. So the waiting times have come down, the overcrowding during peak hours has come down. Bus services are getting improved. We are making the transfers more convenient and cheaper because the transfer rebate will go up. So we are doing many things. We can’t in the end have every household in Singapore own a car like in America, that’s not possible. But what we can do is to have the roads free flowing and a first class public transport system for everybody.

Besides cars and public transport, we also have to pay attention to the wider needs of the public and you can get a good sense of what the public is worried about by looking at the mix of the Meet-the-People session cases which the MPs hold. I do my own MPS from time to time, the MPs do regularly and I can tell you what we find. Not many job-seekers unlike during the last recession because there are a lot of jobs to go around. There are some hardship cases but we have a lot of schemes to help them – you have got vouchers, you have got ComCare, you have got CCC schemes, CDC programmes and so on. I talked about some just now. But there is one worrying trend in the MPS cases and that is, there are more and more people looking for HDB rental flats. And in one year, the number of applications has gone up, tripled and now they form the bulk of our MPS cases – the biggest group is people looking for rental flats. Many, many reasons. HDB is building more rental flats but if you look into the applications, not all of those who apply for rental flats are truly needy. And HDB gave me some examples. I show you one where a woman aged 60 was applying for rental flat and she had three children. Two of them live in private property and the children wrote down don’t worry, we will jointly hire a maid to look after our mother. Please, can she have a rental flat. I think families must have their problems otherwise they would not go and look for MPs or HDB for help but I think that for this group of people, rental flats are not the right solution. Instead, they should look for other viable alternatives. They can rent out a room, they can even rent out the whole flat, move in with their children. We are going to have the lease-buy back scheme for the two-room and three-room flats which is going to be implemented next year. Or they could sell their flat and move into a smaller flat or move into a studio apartment, also with a short lease and therefore, free up some money. So there are various ways they can solve their problems but I think we have to manage this rental flat problem. MND and HDB will be reviewing the scheme for rental flats so that we can keep an effective safety net for the people who need this, the minority of genuinely needy families who have not only no income but also no assets and also no family support.

So I have talked about the poor, I’ve talked about the middle-income, I’ve talked about those who need housing rentals. I think for the vast majority of Singaporeans, we have provided comprehensive measures in the budget. Most people do not realise how much they are getting and as I said in the Chinese speech just now, if you take a three-room flat, a low-income household, say an elderly couple with one child working. They are getting from the government $5,000 this year, all in which is much more than any increase in their cost of living and if you take a middle-income household, five-room, let’s say middle age working parents two children which is a typical profile, they get not a small sum either about $3,400 and that’s not counting any personal income tax rebates which they may be getting. So I think we have done a fair amount to help Singaporeans but inflation has turned out higher than expected, especially electricity and fuel prices and the economy is a bit more uncertain than the outlook at the beginning of the year. So I think after looking at the budget position, we can do a little bit more.

There is a second instalment of the Growth Dividends coming on 1^st October. We will increase this by 50 per cent. And because energy electricity is such a heavy bill now, and some people’s bills have gone up by 100 per cent even more. So this year’s U-save rebates, we will also push it up by 50 per cent. Which means for a three-room household like the one I mentioned earlier, they get about $500 more all in and a five-room household will get about $200 more. Overall this is going to cost us $250 million to the Government, a quarter billion dollars. If you add it to all the other things we are doing, I think it will help Singaporeans see us through this period. But I would say please don’t think that hong baos are going to solve this problem. We can’t give hong baos all the time and giving ourselves hong baos does not help address the problem of the oil producers becoming richer and Singaporeans becoming poorer. To address that problem, we have got to keep our economy competitive, we have got to produce more, be more productive, therefore, earn more for ourselves. Then we can raise our standard of living despite increases in oil and food prices.

Our Society

The well-being of Singaporeans depends not just on bread and butter issues but also on our human and social environment which means on how we behave, how we relate to one another as Singaporeans. How can we make Singapore a more gracious society? We have done many things over the years to improve ourselves. We have got all sorts of campaigns and initiatives. Queue up, be courteous, no spitting, please flush toilets. Most recently service excellence, go the extra mile for Singapore. Sometimes people laugh at us but actually these are things which we can work on and improve and if we make people aware of their behaviour and conscious of the impact on others, we can educate them and gradually they can learn new habits and they will respond and our social norms will upgrade and we have made progress. For us living in Singapore, seeing one another day by day, you don’t notice. For people who come here once in a while and see us at long intervals, it is like a one of these speeded-up movies. They can see the difference.

There was a letter in the Straits Times forum page recently which was very interesting and I was very moved reading it. It was from a Sri Lankan lady who had visited Singapore 40 years ago when she came here on her way to America to be a postgraduate student and she came back again recently. Now much older and she needed a wheelchair at the airport and she spent a few days in Singapore and she was sufficiently moved to write this letter which the Straits Times published. Let me read a little bit of it. “From the moment I landed until I left, the city impressed me. Everywhere I met only kindness. I was in a shopping centre and asked a young girl the way to the MRT station. She offered to show me the way and taking my shopping bags, led me to the station. Shopkeepers gave me water to drink. People waiting for a bus walked with me to the correct bus stop and people helped me cross the street. I have never experienced this sort of kindness anywhere else in the world. “

I think she must have been a very nice lady but the people who behaved so well to her flew the flag for Singapore. We don’t know who they are but we should thank them. We can do even better, of course. We have a Singapore Kindness Movement and it conducts surveys of social behaviours that Singaporeans consider important and not important and they showed me a list of the different things. Quite interesting – not important, or considered not important doesn’t mean really not important but considered important at least shows me where some of the problems are. So some of the things we are good at are sitting properly at the cinema. Don’t put your feet on the chair in front of you. Very difficult for tall people like me. Say thank you after being served – that people remember, But other things we are not so good. Say please is not so common. Clear tables and return food trays – we need to improve. We are trying to inculcate this habit. I don’t understand. Every national service man knows exactly what to do in his cookhouse. Maybe we need more reservists training. But at Suntec City, no reservists, no NSmen, it’s going to take time to change the mindset because the mindset is I go to the food courts to eat and not to clean tables. So I got a letter recently from somebody, a lady, an email, talking exactly about this, about how we should make Singapore a more happy place to live. And she mentioned this. She said “Actually we should feel quite embarrassed to leave our dirty plates and dirty tables for the next diner. In my Mum’s house, after eating we will clear our plates and clean the table. This is a good habit we should adopt outside the home”. Then she went on to add, “Oh yes, most importantly, no fines, no fines. Dishing out fines hurts relationships and no good image for PAP Government.” So I thank her for her good wishes. We shall try and find some ways before thinking about fines.

One of the ways we’ve thought about, which MediaCorp thought about was to hold a contest on Morning Express, Class 95FM. And we have the deejays, famous people, Glenn Ong and the Flying Dutchman, who are here tonight. They invited listeners to send in their videos of the best and the worst Singaporean habits. Tremendous response. So I asked Mediacorp to compile some highlights. Good and ugly, to share with you.

(Video clip)

So there you are. I think the filmmaking is outstanding, the conduct can be improved. I think the best way to focus our efforts is when there’s a major event and we are put to the test. And we have done well before. The International Olympic Council meeting in 2005, the IMF/ World Bank meetings in 2006 and we put on a really good show, not just to impress people, but because that is the way we want to be. And now we have to prepare for other major events. F1 next month, APEC next year, Youth Olympic Games in 2010. Let’s use these opportunities to improve our social graces. This is how other countries have done it. The Olympic Games, Sydney 2000. It set a very high benchmark. The show was very good, but what really impressed visitors was the genuine warmth and sincerity of the Australians. There were 47,000 volunteers. They cheered, they drove buses, they manned checkpoints, they greeted visitors, they were friendly, effective, polite. They said “Good day mate” and after a while you know what that means and you feel welcomed, created a whole atmosphere of friendliness and hospitality.

China is now hosting the Olympic Games. They’ve made a huge effort to welcome the athletes and the visitors. And you watched the opening ceremony, that’s spectacular, but you may not have noticed that they had launched large scale civility campaigns to educate people and they designated special days of the month for special movements. So the 11^th of the month is queuing up day - 排队日, because 11, one one. The 22^nd of every month is “Give your seat to others day” (让位日) because 22 look like two chairs side by side. For the Games, they mobilised 100,000 volunteers, mostly young men and women, university students, and others. Tremendous pride in their country. Every willingness to go the extra mile, to impress the visitors. That here is a people who are proud of their country and who want to make visitors feel welcomed.

So we too should mobilise ourselves for the YOG. It’s the first time ever the Games are being held. So let’s make a special effort to make sure that it is an outstanding YOG. We mobilised very successfully to support the bid when Teo Ser Luck went around. He’s not here, he’s in Beijing tonight. And Singaporeans from all walks of life spontaneously organised themselves to participate, schools, youth groups, companies, taxi drivers and I think this grassroots participation impressed the IOC and so we won the bid. So let us rally together again. Show what Singapore is about and welcome the world with our spirit and our warmth. But we mustn’t just stop at the YOG. We’ve got to work consistently at this, patiently over many years, strive for higher standards and a permanent improvement in our behaviour, not for other people, but for ourselves. So that we can be proud of ourselves and make Singapore a better place for all of us.

I’ve just got an update on the game. Singapore 0, China 2. Game is still progressing.

Our People

We are creating a better Singapore for future generations to enjoy. So my next topic is babies. This is a very long story. So I’ve prepared a special slide which captures the story. Let me show you. This is a slide which shows our total fertility rate (TFR), which means the average number of children born per woman over her lifetime. This shows the TFR from 1960 all the way to right now, 2007 last year, coming down like this and this single slide tells us about our history, about our economy, about our culture and about our policies.

Let me show you. The history is this graph. From six children per woman in 1960 coming down to the mid-70s to 2.1, which is the replacement level, because you need about two children per woman to replace herself and her husband. And then continuing to go down till it’s about 1.3 today. It’s the same story which we see in Korea, in Taiwan, in China, all over Asia. As the economy developed, as we educated our people, as women got jobs and they were liberated, they stopped just having one baby after another at home and the numbers came down. That is our history.

But if you zoom in to the last 30 years, you will see more interesting details, starting with the way our economy is, because actually people have control over when they want their kids. So when the economy goes down and times are uncertain and people worry about where they’re going to get their next meal, they put off having children. So we look at the graph coming down, but the times when it comes down sharply, like here in the mid-1980s, it’s usually because the economy is not doing well. There was a recession in 1985 where there was quite a problem. In the late 90s, it’s gone down again and that was the Asian crisis. Then if you look down here, comes down again, 9/11 and SARS. So each time there’s a crisis, people put off having babies. Crisis passes, numbers bounce back up, but never quite go back to where it used to be.

But you can see something else very interesting in this graph. Look at the peaks rather than the low points. Take this one. 1976. Why is that? You take this one, another peak, 1988. When you look at the next one, 2000. Dragon years. But each dragon smaller than the next dragon. So 2012, I worry for the little dragon.

You can also see our policies in this chart. Family policies. In the 1960s, the policy was two is enough. Fabulously successful. In fact, over successful. We had a poster, you remember this girl or boy, two is enough. Two little girls. We achieved the target, we over-fulfilled our plan. Went down, late 80s we had to change our message. Three if you can afford it. So this was after the dip here. We got alarmed, we changed, three kids. And it worked. There was some effect, quite successful, went up, the dragon helped, but it stayed up for quite long and then unfortunately it came down again and then we decided we needed some more policies so we had baby bonus in 2001 and child development co-saving scheme. That’s the proper name, but actually we call it baby bonus. And that unfortunately didn’t work because we were hit by 9/11 and SARS and come here, 2004, this was my little contribution, my first Rally. Marriage and Procreation Package. You see, we’ve given up having a lot of pictures, just one little infant. And if you study the graph very carefully, you can see that in fact there were some improvements, just a little bit, but you really can’t see it very well, we need a magnifying glass. So we zoom in with a magnifying glass. 2004, 1.26, 2007, 1.29. So, improvement, but the target is 2.1. So 1.5 is here, 2.1 is here. We’re going to have a problem.

So the question is, what more should we do? I think, first, we should encourage people to get married. And second, we should encourage couples to have children. The first step is to get the right partner and get married. I’m not an expert in this. So I consulted the experts, those with experience and I talked to some of the matchmakers.

We have SDU, we have SDS, we have quite a number of private dating agencies now which have come along. So I talked to several of them and we had a very lively lunch exchange. I learnt a lot from them and it’s fabulous material for a TV studio discussion, which one day they will do. They told me so many interesting stories which put it graphically in real people’s lives, the practical problems and how it works and what the difficulties are.

So let me just summarise the main learning points. First of all, and encouragingly, many singles want to get married. They’re not happy to be single, they want to get married, they’re serious, they’re not just out to have a good time, but they face difficulties. What are these difficulties? Some have never dated. They didn’t date in school. They started work, once they settled into a routine, they’re older, no chance, no social circle at all, no opportunities to meet new people. So one matchmaker told me one conversation he had. He talked to this lady. What do you do after work? First of all, what do you do? She says I work. After work what do you do? I go to the gym. Weekends? I stay at home with my parents. You go out? Yes, I bring out my nephews and nieces. So he says oh dear, everybody will think that these are her children and will not chat her up. So have you met any new friends last week? Dead silence. How about last month? Again, dead silence.

So they have a problem. How do you break out of this? Some people date, but they start too late and the dating agencies tell me that the women in their 30s have a big problem. They join up, they sign up and there are men in their 30s too who sign up. But the men in their 30s want to look for women in their 20s. Why? They make a very practical calculation. You see, I’m 30 something, supposing I marry a woman who’s 30 something, takes me a year to get to know her, we get married, we want to enjoy ourselves for a couple of years before we think about having babies, then we think about having babies, you add it up, I’ll be 40 something, my wife will be 40 something. How? So therefore the 30-something-year-old looks for the 20-something-year-old girl. And the 30-something year old girl has a big problem and I feel for her because I had a dialogue with some women. The women’s wing organised it for me and one such lady stood up. She had great courage and she stood up and she spoke and she explained her problem. That she started off putting her career first. She worked, she built up her career. After she got her career sorted out in her 30s, she started thinking about looking for a partner. She joined, signed up dating agencies, tried, no joy. And she was sharing her experience with us and with the room. She still hopes to find someone, but it will be quite hard.

So that’s a real problem. The good news is that more people are prepared to seek help from the dating agencies and the women are more willing to look for help than the men. The men are macho, sensitive about their ego, they don’t want to be seen going for help. The women are more prepared to go. So most dating agencies have more women than men, 60-40. That’s an encouragement to the men to sign up. But unfortunately, sometimes their social graces are not up to scratch. So the dating agency told me another story. They arranged for a guy to meet a date and the setting was a romantic dinner in a nice restaurant. The guy turned up in slippers. So he counselled the guy. The guy says, that is me, I work in slippers, I walk in slippers, I come in slippers. So they talked to him, finally persuaded him to buy a pair of shoes, keep the shoes in his car. So before getting down at the date, he puts on his shoes, he meets, he goes for the date. And it worked.

So it went a little further. Next thing he knew, the man gave him a call. He says, what’s happening. He says “I’m outside my girlfriend’s house”. So he said, “Are you stalking her? Why are you there?” He says “No, no, no, she has invited me to meet her parents”. That’s good. So he asked him, “Did you bring a present? He said, no. So he was directed, ran around, bought a present, came back, knocked on the door, went in, eventually it worked, got married and then the lady said to him, “Quite interesting, very unlike you to have brought a present”. So I thought to myself, “Wow, I was lucky, when I was invited to meet my girlfriend’s parents, I didn’t bring a present either”. Fortunately we got married.

But you also need to have realistic expectations. You have to make an effort for the relationship to work. You mustn’t be carried away by what you see, romantic images on the movies. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl instantly, madly, married, lives happily ever after, maybe have twin babies. But we are real people, ordinary people in real life. You may not have instant sparks the first time, but you take your time, discover the person for who he or she is. Nurture the relationship and then maybe love may blossom. That’s how many Indian couples do it. They’re match made, they don’t know each other very well before they marry, but they develop the relationship and it works. So when I told this story to the women’s group, there were two Indian women sitting in the front row, nodding vigorously. I talked to them afterwards, they turned out to be immigrants. Both had lived here quite some time. Both had been match made to their husbands, both happily married. And they said yes, this is the way, this is one good way to do it.

I think that we have to take a practical approach to this. We’ll do more to help singles get married to the extent that we can. We have the SDU, we have the SDS – Social Development Unit, Social Development Service in the PA. They’re working on this, they’re doing a very good job. Now they’re catering to different markets, graduates, non-graduates. SDU graduates, SDS non-graduates. I think we shouldn’t be so rigid. We should merge the two. Have one, more critical mass, more activities and hopefully more pairing ups, more weddings and more children.

A lot of people want the SDU, SDS because they are government. So they know this is real. They know this is serious. They know this is not some escort agency. It is respectable. But there are also young people who don’t want the government to know that they are dating and would like to use private agencies but want quality assurance because just in case, the private agency is not respectable, they don’t want to be trapped. So we are going to try to give them the best of both worlds. SDU will go into a new business to certify private agencies that meet quality standards. We have Case Trust. We will have SDU Trust. Put a logo down there (referring to slide).

Young people themselves should take the first step. Don’t leave it to too late. Make time, go out, meet new friends, join a dating agency, doesn’t matter whether it’s SDU or whether it's a private one. You may find someone you are attracted to, then you can marry the person you love and then you can love the person you marry.

Once couples are married, we like them to have children. We used to think this would follow naturally but this is no longer always the case because couples are having fewer children, having them later. Some prefer not to have any children at all. Why?

We look at other countries, we see it happening all over East Asia. I told you just now earlier. Confucian societies with similar cultural values undergoing very rapid transformation, social and economic change. So there are powerful social and cultural forces at work which are pushing us in the wrong direction. But it's not just happening in the east, Asian societies. It is happening in western societies too. In Australia, the government is working hard to encourage couples to have more kids. They have had the baby bonus, they've had tax incentives. They are introducing them now. They have quite a good slogan, “One for dad, one for mom, one for Australia”. Europe has this problem. Many countries facing a dearth of babies but there is something interesting in their experience. If you look at southern Europe, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, the countries with more macho culture. The women are less liberated. They are more likely to stay at home, less chance to work, fewer babies. But in northern Europe, Netherlands, Scandinavia, where the gender roles are more equal, the women are more likely to work and yet there are more babies. This is very interesting. Gender roles and working are something which modern women put a lot of emphasis on.

So what's happening in Singapore? I discussed this when I met the women, married, single, young and not so young. They agreed that gender roles and helping mothers to work are important and they gave me many ideas on what we could do to facilitate this. So let me share some with you.

First of all, we have to share responsibilities for child-raising. Traditionally the husbands go to work, wear the pants, the wives stay at home, have the babies, take care of the babies. And it's true that the women have a better touch with children. But the situation today is different and the men can make the effort. If husbands leave everything to the wives, or the women are forced to choose between working or having babies, they are going to go on baby strike. So the husband has to share duties at home. I was discussing this with some MPs, including a lady MP and I said, you know, nowadays, I see men carrying babies in the markets when they go out. So she says you think carrying babies is enough? You have got to wake up at night, feed the baby, change the nappies. I used to change nappies. In the days before pampers, you’ve actually got to fold the cloth, you got to put it on, you got to put the safety pin and I haven’t pricked any baby yet. If I can do it, it means everybody can do it and I think that you have to change these attitudes.

We can't change these mindsets by making speeches but I think we can shift the ethos and spread it, maybe in schools, when it comes to domestic science, we must teach the boys also some of these skills. Try to influence them to have the right expectations. And share the responsibility. But in terms of things we can do and in terms of incentives, I think there are couple of small things.

We introduced childcare leave a few years ago which can be claimed by either parent. It's now only two days a year, I think we can push this to six days a year. I see that women are cheering. The men ought to cheer too. We will introduce one new thing. One week unpaid infant care leave per year, either parent until the child turns two years old. So first two years, if some things you need your infant to go for inoculation or some emergency, well, you can take some time off.

This is the first thing I learnt from the ladies. The second thing is that we must have a good work-life balance. You must have flexible work arrangements so that it's easier for women to have both, to work and to have children. And you must have family-friendly employers who will make this happen. So they make the practical arrangements and their attitudes when you go – they don’t make a sour face and they don’t make you feel like there is a little black mark recorded in your annual confidential report. It makes a big difference and with a bit of effort and imagination, you can do a lot. You can provide nursing rooms so that mothers who are lactating can express their milk and store their bottles. You can allow telecommuting and be flexible about it so long as the work is done. In fact, one company I know of actually allowed one employee to go all the way to Australia with her husband and telecommute from Australia and continue to be paid and do the work and then she came back and she resumed her job. You can find ways around having them physically present. So one catering company which has a lot of outdoor catering over weekends, outside catering, supplied their staff with walkie-talkies and with Blackberries so that they don’t have to be physically there, they can be with their family, they can go out but they can keep an eye on the catering arrangements, make sure things don’t go wrong. I think such employers we should recognise and thank publicly and MOM and MCYS will make a special effort to do that.

The government will help to share some of this burden of the employers. For example, maternity leave. It used to be eight weeks, we extended it by four weeks, now it's 12 and the extra four weeks, the government pays. I think it’s been very much welcomed by people so now about three quarters of women actually take 12 weeks maternity leave. But if you ever manage a baby, you'll know that actually 12 weeks is not very long. So I think what we should do is to increase it to 16 weeks. And this last four weeks, I think we give some flexibility. Don’t make it necessarily all at the beginning, it can be any time in the first year and the government pays for this four weeks also.

But I would say whatever the leave arrangements and whatever the government carries, ultimately the woman or the man must make a personal choice. Do you work 110 per cent on your career or do you set aside time for other activities for a balanced life? I think each person has to decide his or her own point of balance.

I remember my own experience. I am a beneficiary of this. My mother was a lawyer but everyday, she came home to have lunch with us. So everyday we come home from school, three of us, my mother is there. We have lunch. Nowadays you would call it quality time. This was before people invented such big words. All it meant was she had time for us. We had time to talk to her and it was a tremendous help. She avoided going out at night for functions. She had to go to accompany my father but business functions very seldom. What it meant is less takings as a lawyer, less work, less conveyancing but she decided that her children were more important to her and she acted on that. And I think she was happy with that and we are definitely very grateful for that. Today, it's harder to do this. The office hours are longer, the pace is more intense, people call them ‘office hours’, you must put quotes there because it starts in the morning but it doesn’t finish after dinner. And at home, you are working. On holidays you are working too on email or Blackberry or whatever.

Despite this, I think you have to maintain a balanced fulfilling life and you have to keep a pace which is sustainable not just for one or two years and you burn out, but for a lifetime and you are in balance, equilibrium and at the end of your life or when you retire, you say I'm satisfied, I've had a good career, I've taken care of my family, I've brought up children. This is what life is about.

Work-life balance also applies to the children. I know a lot of parents complain about stress on their children and especially complain because they say the education system causes the stress. We have trimmed the school syllabi – teach less, learn more. But parents still want their children to do that extra little bit more. So enrichment classes, tuition classes, all sorts of programmes and before exams, they feed the children chicken essence. So I see advertisements for chicken essence with kids in school uniforms, prominently displayed outside schools. I think some pressure is inevitable. It's part of Singapore's competitive spirit. Other East Asian societies are even more ruthlessly competitive. You look at the Koreans with their crammed schools or the Japanese, they have jukus I think they call them, the Hong Kongers, I just read one article about the Koreans. They go there, they inspect your bags, no frivolous magazines, no handphones, no lipstick. You go in, no making friends with boys and girls, it's like a prison. And everyday they have one hour of rest, every week they have two hours on the weekend to get into the right university.

We are not like that. We have some stress but we should manage it, we should take it in our stride. It's natural for parents to worry about children and to encourage them to work hard and do better. But we also need to understand them, to know that every child has different aptitudes, different talents, to give them space to grow up, to let them learn and mature in their own time. Press them to do better but also know them and let them develop the way their nature inclines them to develop. In many directions, may not be academic, may be sports, may be arts, may be music but let them go with their nature.

Third thing which I learnt from the women is about the financial cost of having kids. Actually I didn’t need to learn this from women, I knew about this. It is a significant expense to bring up children. First the direct child-raising expenses, the milk powder, the pram, the paediatrician, all those things cost money. But on top of the direct cost, you also have to think about the opportunity costs for working mothers particularly and for professional mothers especially. What do I mean by opportunity costs? When the mother is working, she's earning money. When she is looking after the child and she has to work less or less intensively, she has to forgo some income there to look after the child. So her income has come down some so that's called opportunity cost. Less work, sacrifice their careers. And that is why often it is the professional women, the most successful ones who say that it is expensive to bring up children. So paradoxically, the lower-income women feel less opportunity cost but higher income women feel it so and say so.

Financial considerations cannot be the motive for having children. I think if you suggest to a couple that I give you a bit of discount, how about having more kids, I think many would be very indignant at this and rightly so. But it's right for us to help women to lighten the burden of having children and that's why we had the baby bonus, that's why we had a tax incentive and we will enhance these schemes. I don’t have the details tonight, so you watch the next instalment but for the baby bonus we will improve it for the first time parents. For the tax incentives, we will do more in order to encourage mothers to work.

The fourth thing which the women asked me to focus on is early childhood arrangements. This is a major concern of parents especially if both parents are working. The critical period is from birth to six years when they go to school. Because after they've gone to school, they are in primary one. Well, they are mostly taken care of and also a little bit bigger able to look after themselves. But before they reach school, the first six years, those are critical and you want to have that peace of mind that they are being looked after well. Most families take care of children at home, either the grandparents keep an eye on them or they have extended family or they have maids. But many working mothers depend on formal childcare arrangements and one quarter of children of this age are in childcare centres and the most popular centres have got queues. You wait one year, sometimes more before you get in.

I visited one, NTUC childcare in Jurong which is one of the popular ones. Very impressed with what they were doing. Talked to some of the parents who came in the evening to pick their kids up and to meet me. They were very happy to have their kids there. Good environment, they will socialise, they learned skills, social skills, dancing, they were preparing for national day, they were making models, learning to interact with other kids, get along with other kids, and the parents had peace of mind while they were working. So I think that we should do more to build up the childcare sector. It is important. I think we should do three things. Make it more accessible, that means more centres. Make it more affordable, that means bigger subsidies per child. Make it higher quality, raise the standard, so that we can work with this. That way, we will have a better quality childcare centre and we will able to work.

The kindergartens are another thing which we must do to improve. Not everybody goes to childcare centre but nearly everybody goes to kindergarten. And we have a very lively kindergarten sector in Singapore. At the high end, I think they can look after themselves, at the middling end, mass market, the PAP Community Foundation centres, standards have improved but I think they can do better. I think that we should put a lot more effort into enhancing the kindergarten sector as well because it is important for our kids to have a good kindergarten preparation when they go to school. You don’t want the kindergartens to be a pre pre-school. So when you go to primary one, you are already pressured before you reach primary one, you have pre-pressured. You have competition to get into the kindergarten but you want a good kindergarten environment. And I think that we should be able to do that. We've got already government spending money on the kindergartens because qualifying institutions are getting subventions and help from MOE. I think we should push this up substantially. So that we can raise the standard, we can raise not just better teachers which we are doing. We can have better syllabuses, better run institutions, higher quality environment so the kids grow up much more confident and particularly for those whose backgrounds aren’t so ideal at home, they will be able to make it in kindergarten and start from a more equal starting point when they go to school.

This is a big move. We have deliberated this over a long time. We didn’t decide because our cut-off point was at primary one. I think our cut-off point mainly should still be at primary one but we should begin to do more before kids reach primary one so that we can prepare them for life and for school. Those are four big things which we need to do.

There are two more small things which we will also do which don’t affect a lot of people but I think we should do. It's right. One, couples who want to have children but can't conceive. They go for IVF but it's expensive. So we will offer financial support to lower the costs of the IVF. Secondly, couples with many children. There was a letter in the Straits Times, I think there were five mothers each of whom had five kids, who said remember us and we have five children, your incentives stop at four. So I think we should remember them and I think we should extend most of the incentives like tax relief, childcare subsidies and so on to the fifth and the subsequent child. There are not many of them. But I hope the incentives will encourage those who can afford to have more.

These measures all add up to a very significant package. We are talking about maybe $700 million a year. If more babies are born, it is going to be more than $700 million a year but even that is about double what we are spending today on child incentives. And altogether we’ll have about $1.6 billion spent a year or 0.6 per cent of GDP. Wong Kan Seng is in charge of population policies, so he will have a press conference later this week and he will give you the full picture, including the numbers which I think many parents will be anxiously waiting. But please don’t wait for the press conference to pay attention.

This package will make a difference to many couples but I can’t guarantee that it will solve our problems because this is a deep problem. We have to come back to this, revisit it periodically. Finally it’s about mindsets, personal choices and values. Please put emphasis on marriage, on family, make these your priorities, have a full and happy life.

I’ve got a message. We have lost 0-3. We were up against a very strong China team. I think they have done us proud. We should congratulate them and we should rejoice and celebrate.

Our Future

Our children will grow up in a completely different world and we have to prepare them and Singapore society for this world. One of the biggest changes that will affect us is the Internet. The new media is pervasive and fast moving. Everyone is plugged in and connected. People are blogging, engaging one another, organizing themselves online, doing politics online. We used to talk about grassroots, now we have to think about Netroots, people on the Internet and it’s happening worldwide.

You look at America, the current election campaign. John McCain says I don’t know how to use the computer, I have no email but he has a website on the Internet. He has to, John McCain.com, This is John McCain’s website.

Barack Obama. He uses a blackberry, constantly texting, communicating, emailing and the Internet is a key part of his campaign. He has got a powerful simple homepage, “Change we can believe in” and he’s used it effectively to reach out to younger Americans to get them highly energised and participating and rooting for him and helping him to run the system. He’s got Chris Hughes, Chris Hughes is one of the founders of Facebook, 24 years old, I suppose must be worth a few hundred million dollars now, dropped out of university. He joined Barack Obama to help, used Facebook technology to organise his campaign, his volunteers, his events, his donations, his activities, his appearances, his emails, the whole lot. Therefore Barack Obama has a Facebook presence which you can see and like all of his pages, there’s one very interesting button on it which is bright red – Donate now. And very powerful because people are taken up by this and 1.5 million people have clicked that button and each one donates small amounts but altogether adding to about a hundred million, maybe more by now. Cumulatively, a huge boost to his campaign, so much so that he can say I don’t want government money, I’m going on my grassroots money. But it’s still money. But Barack Obama also runs into trouble on the Internet because all sorts of stories go on. Like he is a Muslim or he didn’t do this or he did that and he can’t go around fighting untruths all over the Internet everywhere. What he has done is to collect all these untruths together to make one website which is called Fight the Smears. John McCain attacks him for not visiting wounded troops and then there’s a rebuttal. And if you go in, a whole list of all the things which are untrue and all the explanations according to Barack Obama’s campaign. He is using the internet but he is also running into some of the difficulties of using the Internet. This is America.

Let me take another country nearer here, Korea, in Asia. It is the world’s most wired country, mostest broadband, mostest usage, people do everything on the Internet and it’s had a huge impact on Korean politics. It’s empowered new groups because they mobilise and they activate on the Internet. So it helped President Lee Myung- bak in his election campaign last December to win a resounding victory because on the Internet people could mobilise and new groups could form but on the Internet you also have rapidly changing moods in the population. So within a few months after being elected, President Lee was under siege and there were mass demonstrations. They said million man demonstrations, maybe a slight exaggeration but if you look at the picture, it looks huge. This is a candlelight picture in Seoul. What were they agitated about, Mad Cow Disease. Facts? Actually rumours, fantastic rumours. The first rumour, 94 per cent of Koreans have a special gene. When they eat beef, they will get mad cow disease. That went around. Everybody got excited. Calmed down, next rumour – Cow products are used to make pampers. Babies wear pampers, babies will get mad cow disease. Videos and pictures circulated online. This is a real event. Here’s another one. There are some even ruder which I thought I shouldn’t show you tonight but you can find them. Then from the internet it comes back, people get agitated, demonstrations go back on the Internet again. President Lee Myung-bak calls this info-demics. Anonymous false information, create discontent and unhappiness, spread like an epidemic in the real world. But President Lee calls it info-demics. One Korean newspaper who doesn’t have to be so careful with its words, calls it mad cow madness. That’s Korea, that’s a negative example.

Malaysia is another interesting example where the Internet has become an active space for information and engagement. There is lively debate, serious contributions but also more doubtful stuff. There are blogs, chatrooms, there are alternative news sites, like Malaysiakini which is very popular and I know many Singaporeans visit it and it has quite a lot of news. The politicians themselves actively participate in cyberspace. Dr Mahathir has a blog now. He uses the name Che Det. He started in politics and he went in to have a blog. Other people start with blogs and then go into politics. You heard about Jeff Ooi? Famous blogger, stood for election, elected. In the recent elections, there was a mass of material circulating, Blogs, SMSes, Youtube and the public went to cyber space to get what they couldn’t get from the mainstream media. The opposition was there, all over. I show you Anwar Ibrahim’s website, pictures of him, videos of him. BN also has a website like that and so the battle went on in cyberspace. It wasn’t just cyber space, of course. There was also real life politics in Malaysia because the opposition raised many hot issues in their ceramahs, in their meetings, rising cost of living, poor public service delivery and perceived inequalities in the government’s policies, to put it delicately. But these were issues which were picked up in the new media and then virally distributed, one shares with two, two share with four and it multiplies and everybody gets the message and the result was 8^th March when the elections were held.

Even in China, which has the world’s largest number of Internet users, more than America, the Internet has become an important factor. After the Sichuan earthquake, Netizens mobilized to raise funds and show support for the victims. I show you one slide “重建家园，中国力量” and it had an impact on the mood and the sense of patriotism and unity which the Chinese developed after the Sichuan earthquake. Their leaders are now engaging on the new media and President Hu Jintao had his first web chat recently, answered a few questions.

These are other countries. In Singapore, the new media is also quite a big thing. I talked about this two years ago but in two years we’ve moved on since then. Today more than 80 per cent of households have broadband. There are six million handphones in Singapore. You think about that, 4.5 million people, six million handphones, more handphones per couple than babies. No wonder no time to have babies. But the young people are totally immersed in this medium. They are reading the print newspapers less, they are getting information, discussing issues online. The Straits Times website, people are participating, CNA website, same. Zaobao has OMY, also very interesting, new approach to presenting the news and engaging the audience and people are writing their own contents, sharing it with others, organizing interest groups.

All this has changed the way the government works. Our services have gone online 24/7. You want a passport renewal, you can do that, you want to incorporate a new business, set up a new company, 20 minutes, it’s done. You want to pay your taxes, IRAS, no trouble. And the government is also communicating and engaging with Singaporeans online. We’re not just pumping out stuff, we have some quite interesting stuff which we are pumping out, we have some video clips, I think MDA is showing the way. Some of you may remember Christopher Chia, who is a CEO, turns out he’s a very good hip-hop dancer. But also two-way engagement and participation. And REACH is at the forefront of that. They need to engage people. So they’ve got a website which is popular and they’ve got blogs, online chats and so on and they also participate on Facebook. And you get quite a lot of participation. For my rally today, I got a lot of feedback from REACH and the subjects which I am talking about are the subjects which are hot on REACH. So we look at their homepage, what do you find? Rising costs of living. Hot topics.

So that’s the way the government works, that’s the way Singaporeans work and that’s the way we will have to adjust in order to conduct our politics. We have to adapt to this, get used to this, turn it to positive effect, use it to inform, to educate, engage people. And each of us has to learn. It’s not something which you learn to mouse click, you’re there. You must learn how to be savvy, cyber citizens. Don’t get taken in, be discerning about what you see on the internet. When people say click here, check first before you click. When people say this is true, don’t just send it to all your friends. Ask first, is this true? Set prudent limits so that we can flag problems and we know where the dangerous ground is. Participate actively by all means, but don’t get swept away and please don’t catch mad cow madness.

Our rules governing politics also must keep up to date. First of all party political films. That means films about political matters. Right now they’re totally banned and for a reason because politics is a serious affair. We want voters to consider issues, rationally, coolly, detached, think through decisions which affect your future and make a considered judgment. And our worry is that firms are an emotive medium. The impact of seeing something on a film is quite different from reading something in cold print. It hits you viscerally, it affects you, engages your emotions before your thinking processes can kick in and if you’re watching it in a crowd, even more powerful. Then, passions can get stirred up and people can get carried away. I think this is a valid concern, but I don’t think an outright ban is still sensible because this is how people communicate on the web in daily life. They make videos, they pass clips around, you saw the clips just now from the Flying Dutchman, even my NDR, National Day Rally Speech, it is now National Day Rally multimedia super show. Has to be because that’s the way you have to communicate and after the speech, videos, blog responses and people make these things. Anybody can do this any time, anywhere.

Let me show you. I have a handphone here, it’s an ordinary Nokia handphone. It’s a handphone which has a little programme loaded in it called QIK. And what QIK does is to turn this handphone into a video camera. If I click it, it will turn on, become a video camera and furthermore it will stream the picture immediately onto the Internet, onto my website. So if I turn on the camera now, I’m filming you now, you look on my website, you can see yourself. I think we must make sure we see the upstairs people too. Slight delay, but it works. So please wave, you’re on candid camera. There you are, simple as that. I’ve just made our first non-political video.

So we’ve got to allow political videos, but with some safeguards. Some things are obviously alright, factual footage, documentaries, recordings of live events, I think National Day Rally, surely no problem. But I think some things should still be off limits. If you make a political commercial which is purely made-up material, partisan stuff, footage distorted to create a slanted impression, I think those should still be off limits. In between, what is okay and what is not okay, there will be grey areas, but I think we can deal with this, just as we deal with it for non-political films, we have censorship, we have classification standards, it depends on subjective judgments, but we’ve worked out a workable system, a panel applies their minds, they make a judgment. I think we can work something out, but the overriding consideration is to preserve the integrity and the quality and the honesty of our political discourse. Keep it straight, keep it serious, think carefully about serious matters which concern our lives.

The second thing we should change are the rules for political material which can be put on to the internet during elections. The rules we now have were settled before the last general elections. So for example, and they’re very restrictive, no podcasts, no video casts and most people can’t post materials during the election period. Only the parties, only the candidates, the agents can do that.

By the next general election, five years will have passed. Now, cyber years are like dog years. One year in cyberspace equals to seven years in real life. That’s the pace at which things change. So five years times seven means 35 years in the real world, means our old rules are way, way out of date. That means we have to change to new rules, liberalise to allow people to participate more actively and flexibly. So we must allow podcast, video cast, must allow others to post election materials also, but we have to maintain or try to maintain accountability and responsibility, somehow. It’s not easy to do this. Do not think that other countries do not face these problems, they do. The Koreans are very exercised about this. Every time I meet them I exchange notes with them. They ask us how we intend to deal with it and I ask them how they are dealing with it. They don’t have an answer, but it’s a real problem.

We have an advisory council on the impact of new media on society, AIMS. Mr Cheong Yip Seng is chairing it and they’re studying these issues in detail, they’ve been thinking about this I think for quite many months now. I look forward to seeing their recommendations. But let me say that beyond cyberspace, politics is about people’s lives in the real world. You can’t vote for an avatar on second life. You’re talking about real life, not second life. You have to get a direct feel for the person. Do you trust him, is he capable, is he honest, will he wilt? So you’ve got to talk, you’ve got to argue, you’ve got to persuade. And then you’ve got to mobilise and work together for what you together believe in and you can’t just do this online, reading emails or even listening to podcast or watching vodcast. You have to do it face-to-face and we do this all the time. Grassroots sessions, dialogues, meetings. We are a small society, so it’s possible for us to interact and get to know one another well. You cannot have make belief because the prime minister is just an image on the screen, everybody will know he is just an image on the screen. He has to be here in real life and you have to feel the person and then you will know. So that’s how politics has to be done. We have a few restraints because we cannot afford to take chance with race and religion but by and large Singaporeans are free to engage, to talk, to mobilise, to influence one another, to do nearly everything, especially indoors where we lifted the limits a few years go.

There is one remaining restriction and that is on outdoor demonstrations. We still do not allow this and our concern is law and order and security. It comes back to race and religion again because one incident could undermine our racial harmony and confidence in Singapore. But again like political videos, valid concern but we have to move away from this total ban and find ways to allow people to let off steam a little bit more but safely. How?

We have Speakers’ Corner at Hong Lim Park. While they find the location accessible, near the MRT, not so many speakers but if you want to go there, there is place. Just put your name down and you can speak. So I think we should allow our outdoor public demonstrations, also at the Speakers’ Corner still subject to basic rules of law and order, still stay away from race, language and religion. I think we will still call it Speakers’ Corner, no need to call it demonstrators’ corner but we will manage with a light touch. So I think there is no need for the police to get involved. We will hand this over. Mah Bow Tan has agreed. NParks will take over. NParks, you know they have green fingers, everything will grow nicely, it will be well in hand. I think we should look into online registration for Speakers’ Corner. So you don’t have to go to their office.

The overall thrust of these changes is to liberalise our society, to widen the space for expression and participation. We encourage more citizens to engage in debate, to participate in building our shared future and we will progressively open up our system even more. If you compare today with five years ago or ten years ago, it’s much more open today and we will continue to feel our way forward. We can’t just progress by copying others blindly. We have got to think through our own problems, ourselves, find the right path for Singapore, crossing a river by feeling for the stones step by step, as Deng Xiaoping said. But please remember, even in the cyber age, some things don’t change. In 50 years’ time, Singapore will still be a little red dot. To thrive as a nation, we will still need the cohesion to stay united, the ability to outperform others and the will to survive and excel and occasionally, win medals. That means a hardworking and well-educated population, a capable effective government, outstanding people at all levels, totally committed to Singapore. Then however the world changes, our children will still have a bright future. Before I leave this subject on new media, I want to do one more demonstration.

PM: “Hello Team Singapore”.

Mr Tan Eng Liang: “Good evening, PM.”

PM: “Hello, Eng Liang.”

Mr Tan: “Yes, I am the Chef de Mission of the Singapore Olympic Team in Beijing. Sorry PM, we just lost the gold medal to China. They are a better team with better skills and techniques but our paddlers tried their best and they did play well.”

PM: “Thank you, we heard the results earlier. I shared it with my audience earlier. Our paddlers have done very well and they have done Singapore proud. Please thank them from us. Jiawei, Tianwei, Yuegu, but also the whole Team Singapore in Beijing. You have done us proud, you have carried our flag high.”

Mr Tan: “Yes, they will do that. Thank you Prime Minister for we will I think carry on with flag of Singapore and I think with this silver medal, we have achieved the objective. Thank you for your messages.”

PM: “Thank you, send our greetings and congratulations to the team.”

Mr Tan: “Yes, I will do that.”

PM: “Good night, Eng Liang.”

PM: That was my last special effects for tonight.

Conclusion

I have discussed some key issues that affect our future. Immediate concerns like inflation, cost of living, long-term issues, living graciously, raising families, opening up our society. We have got to get these right to keep our economy growing year after year. Sometimes, people criticise us for putting too much emphasis on economic performance because GDP growth, employment, productivity and so on, they appear just as so many statistics, so many numbers, decimal places but actually growth is critical. It gives us the resources to solve our problems. It creates opportunities for our workers to secure better jobs, for our young to receive a first-class education, for all of us to improve our lives and fulfil our dreams. So it’s not just abstract numbers, it’s changing people’s lives for the better. It’s about the Singapore story as lived in the lives of all of us.

The older generation of Singaporeans have experienced this. So take for example, Mr Arumugam Jeyapal who works for PSA. He’s had PSLE plus two years of vocational training, that’s all. He started as a prime-mover driver earning $250 a month, worked his way up over the years, now he’s 58 years old, mentor to yard crane operators, earning $3,000 a month and active in the union. Over the years, he has upgraded from a three-room flat to a five-room flat. He has three children, and they are doing well in different fields. One is a soccer coach, one is a lawyer in the AG Chambers, a DPP, a daughter is studying in NIE to become a teacher. He’s now 58. So he says “I have lived the Singapore Story, I am grateful for what the government has provided.”

Middle-age Singaporeans have also seen this. I give you another example, Madam Lim Hwee Bin, who is a wafer fab specialist. Here you see her all togged up. Her face is uncovered because otherwise you can’t see but she is working in the Clean Room. She quit her job a few years ago to help her daughter who wasn’t doing well in school. Then her daughter studies improved, she returned to work full-time as a machine operator at Seagate, night shift, OT to supplement the wage but her friends told her she could get a better job at the wafer fab but she didn’t have a lobang. So how to find the job at the wafer fab? So she resigned, she responded to an ad for e2i. e2i is NTUC’s Employment and Employability Institute. And she went there and the e2i helped here to equip herself with new skills and she joined ST Microelectronics as a wafer fab specialist. Now, she’s earning $1,400 a month, nearly a third more than before. So at 45, it is not so easy with children but she has made the career switch successfully to a new job with brighter prospects. Her daughter is doing well, now in Singapore Poly studying to become an optometrist. That means learning to measure eyes for spectacles. I think there is a brilliant future in Singapore. So many of us are speckies.

Young Singaporeans are writing their own Singapore Stories too. They enjoy far more opportunities than their parents ever did. I have this group - Crystalline Tan, Neng Abdul Rashid, David Aw – three of them. SMU graduates, fresh out of school, gone to Dubai, recruited by Fullerton Financial Holdings (a Temasek company). And they are taking risks venturing seizing opportunities and launched off onto an international career.

Or this young man, Mohamad Fadzuli. He is not here this evening. He’s a computer games enthusiast. He was addicted to computer games as a boy. So I think he must have caused his mother a lot of stress but he went to Nanyang Poly, he did a diploma in entertainment technology, he topped his class. He applied to Carnegie Mellon University in the US, which is the one of the best universities for computer games. And they took him, they gave him advance standing, they waived the undergraduate degree, he has gone in to do a Masters. And he got an MDA-ST Electronics Scholarship. So now he is on a three-month attachment at Disney. He is not on holiday there. At least I don’t think so. He‘s at Disney because Disney has a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon and he’s helping them to develop a new computer game.

Or take this young lady, Brenda Tan. She is a marketing manager. In school, she was playful and lazy. ‘O’ level results not so good but she went to ITE, then she went to Ngee Ann Poly for a Diploma in Business. She got a job at Citibank as a tele-sales officer. She did well and was promoted. She was posted to Malaysia to set up a new unit there and she became the manager of the unit, managing 80 people on her staff. She came back to Singapore and now she’s progressing in her career. And she says, I should read this because you should hear this. “ITE has given many opportunities to people like me who are less academically inclined. This is something unique about our education system and about the openness and acceptance of our society.”

They are not all here but several of them are here – Mr Arumugam, Brenda and Madam Lim. Some of them are overseas so I think that we should thank them for living the Singapore Story. This is what we mean when we talk about growth, about investing in our people, about thinking long-term. This is what drives us to do the best for Singapore whatever the uncertainties and difficulties. So let’s look beyond our immediate problems, let’s work hard, grow our economy, transform the nation, then we will create even more extraordinary opportunities for the new generation and together, our children will write more chapters of our Singapore Story. Goodnight!”

================

this is for those who missed it.

my comments will be in the next post!

photography, a new hobby

2008-08-21T08:39:00.003+08:00

very bad accident, outside rp

2008-08-15T16:49:00.001+08:00

yay! adverts!

2008-08-13T16:20:00.000+08:00

marketing@nuffnang.com

Hi, Srikala D/O Asokan, Congratulations!

An advertiser has chosen to advertise on shanna says hi.

The advertisement details are as follows:

Campaign: Safra SS 8 WKs
Week(s): 1. 17 Aug 2008 to 23 Aug 2008
Ad Unit: Skyscraper (Top)

Please do not remove the Ad Unit from your blog during the period(s) of time above or you will not be paid the full amount for the ad. If you have a Skyscraper Ad Unit, please ensure that it is placed high up in the sidebar or the advertiser may choose to withdraw the ad.

Thank you. The Nuffnang Team

THIS IS A COMPUTER GENERATED E-MAIL, PLEASE DO NOT REPLY.

i've found out who u are

2008-08-12T16:20:00.000+08:00

so don't mess with me, KELVIN!

picture update

2008-08-07T11:10:00.004+08:00

at kovan.
at kovan 2!
still kovan!
RP! MY FAV SHOT.

yes yes rp
and more rp
RP!
RPPPPPPPPPPP!
check this out. RP reserved the handicap toilet for president's visit! HAHAH!

and here's some fact that you would never know about president.

1. President Nathan has opted to stay in his private residence.

For the record, each President of Singapore has the option of residing at The Istana and only President Nair has done so. All other previous Presidents had chosen to stay in their own home.

2. At an age of 84 years old, President Nathan still makes it a point to go for a daily morning walk at East Coast Parkway.

i'm having some probs

2008-08-05T17:18:00.001+08:00

thus the lack of update.

sorry i need mood to blog

will be back soon!

hello everyone

2008-07-28T15:35:00.000+08:00

well,
i started my tuition job!
2 kids.

1 is pretty slow.
need to teach phonics
1 is just naughty.

well i see how it goes.

=)

life's boring

2008-07-24T13:57:00.000+08:00

nothing much.
only work work work for now.
i got something to update.
but i am pure lazy to upload the pictures.

tomorrow perhaps?

lol.

tc everyone.

back to work!

The Dark Knight

2008-07-21T16:06:00.002+08:00

Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the city streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as The Joker.

This movie is well written and well acted especially the joker role.

Everyone should catch it.

I bet you will be at the edge of ur seats, wanting to know what's next!

updates

2008-07-21T13:38:00.001+08:00

well my days are so far so good!
i got to do so much stuff.
got myself a new phone.
yipee its 3.2MP!

bf's bday in 2 weeks time.
i'm so excited.

gals when are we meeting?

oh ya,
am gonna start a new blog shop!

support me yah?

Why God allows pain and suffering

2008-07-18T11:11:00.002+08:00

A man went to a barbershopto have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things and various subjects. When they eventually touched on the subject of God,

the barber said: "I don't believe that God exists."

"Why do you say that?" asked the customer.

"Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn't exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain.I can't imagine a loving God who would allow all of these things."

The customer thought for a moment, but didn't respond because he didn't want to start an argument.

The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop.

Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy,dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and unkempt.

The customer turned back and entered the barbershop again and he said to the barber:

"You know what? Barbers do not exist."

"How can you say that?" asked the surprised barber.

"I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!"

"No!" the customer exclaimed.

"Barbers don't exist because if they did, there would be no peoplewith dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside."

"Ah, but barbers DO exist! That's what happens when people do not come to me."

"Exactly!" affirmed the customer.

"That's the point! God, too, DOES exist! That's what happens when people do not go to Him and don't look to Him for help. That's why there's so much pain and suffering in the world."

did i get you thinking?

lame jokes/riddles

2008-07-17T15:44:00.003+08:00

#1

Char Siew Pao and Mee Kia got involved in an argument.
Char Siew Pao got very angry and shouted at Mee Kia,
"I'm going to find my gang to hantam you!"
So Char Siew Pao went to round up Leng Yong Pau and Tau Sar Pow.
Just then, Maggi Mee walked around the corner.
Immediately, the Paos started to beat him up.
As Char Siew Pao was punching Maggi Mee, he shouted,
"Don't think just because you perm your hair, we can't recognize you, ok!"

#2

Q: One day (you yi tian), Xiao Ming and Xiao Hua went to eat at the restaurant.
After they finish, Xiao Ming and Xiao Hua left the restaurant without paying and the manager didn't mind. Why?

A: Cos their friend "you yi tian" pay alrd......

#3

y is superman shirt so tight??
=> cos he's wearin S size

y is batman shirt so tight too??
=>cos he asked superman to buy one for him..

y is spiderman's shirt so tight too ?
=>cos buy 2 get one free n superman gave one extra one to spiderman....

#4

An ant knocks the door of a HDB flat. House owner opens the door. "I want a place to stay", said the ant . "I have a vacant room which you can occupy for free of cost", said the owner. Ant went inside and occupied that vacant room. After some days, the ant brought in another ant and requested the owner "Can you please allow this ant to stay along with me". "Oh sure, you can do so without paying any rent" said the owner. After some days the ant brought one more ant and requested the owner to allow that ant to stay with it. Owner agreed to it without asking for any rent. This continued i.e ant brings in one more ant and owner agrees for it. On one fine day, the ant brought in tenth ant and requested the owner to allow that tenth ant also to stay with it. The owner said "Ok, you all can stay here but you need to pay rent". Now the question is Why did the owner ask for rent when the tenth ant came in?

Ans: Because they are now Tenants (Ten ants)

tuition job

2008-07-16T17:17:00.000+08:00

anyone knows what's a good price for a tuition job?

terrible week.

2008-07-16T17:16:00.000+08:00

have been sick for some time
took mc for two days
and now back to work with heavy overload.
gonna take work home.
sigggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!

yesteday i went joggin

2008-07-10T11:07:00.001+08:00

yes, i went jogging.

i myself can't believe it.

and it went well.

just one problem.

i'm more sick then b4.

=(

parenting skills are SO important.

2008-07-10T10:22:00.006+08:00

I read online about this little girl and I thought of sharing it with you guys.

this is the article: LINK

This little girl, only 11 years, wore her first set of false eyelashes at eight, and her beauty treatments cost £300 a month. A sick abuse of an 11-year-old? 'No', insists Sasha's mother, 'I just want her to be famous...'

i guess, she got the famous treatment that she wanted. because her daughter is a living barbie doll now.

Jayne, the mother of Shasha, is talking breezily about how Sasha had her first set of false nails glued on at eight, and now enjoys the sort of rigorous beauty regime - hair extensions, fake tans, pedicures - that was once the preserve of porn stars (YUCK!) and Dolly Parton, not school children from Burnley in Lancashire.

'Perhaps it's different in country areas, where they don't need to grow up so fast. But, around big cities, girls have got to be more forward and act older than they are. That's just the way it is.
'I don't understand why people get so upset about it. None of it is permanent. Tans wash off. Hair extensions come out. Why all the fuss?'

Just over a year ago, there was fuss galore when Jayne entered Sasha (then ten) in the junior Miss British Isles competition - Britain's first adult-style beauty pageant for children.

Earlier this year, Jayne was given free rein with the blusher when Sasha became the first British child to dip a scarlet-tipped toe into the American pageant scene.
Jayne was at her side, helping her practise her sashay.

The pair took a documentary team with them, and found what you'd expect at a U.S. beauty pageant held in a down-market-looking Texan hotel: mums parading their daughters like prize poodles, kids who look disturbingly like mini Celine Dions, and enough lipgloss to pose a drowning risk to the tiniest entrants.

There was a jaw-dropping moment in the film - Sasha, Beauty Queen At 11, to be shown on July 14 on BBC3 at 9pm - when the pageant veteran charged with showing Sasha the ropes demonstrates how to walk like a beauty queen.

She explains how to turn your body round while holding the judges' eyes, before flipping your head round at the last minute 'like that Exorcist child'.

Sasha might not have won, but Jayne loved the process, describing it as 'the best fun ever'. 'It was just fantastic,' she says.

'What you see in U.S. pageants really is what you get. It's weird, but brilliant. They take it so seriously, which can only be good for someone like Sasha.
'All the mums were up at 6am so they could get started on hair and make-up.
'And everything is just the best. No expense is spared. You have to spend £2,000 on a pageant dress over there. I thought £500 for one here was a lot. The one we bought Sasha was out of this world.

'We went to this huge shop where there was every colour and style you could imagine. Sasha just ran through all the dresses, she was in her element.

'Back home, we have to buy an adult dress and get it altered to fit, but there they are totally geared up for girls her age.

'The pageant was like a dream. The girls are encouraged to put on masses of make-up. It was just like a big theatrical event, like being transported to another world.'
Underpinning the fairy tale, though, was a deep desire to win.

'I fell in love with a pink dress that made her look like a princess, but the people advising us told us you should always match the dress to the eyes - so we went for green.

'That was OK, though. I wasn't there to have the dress I wanted. I was there so that Sasha could win. I was amazed at how much there was to learn, but I knew I was in the hands of the experts.'

It seems that the main lesson learned was that her darling daughter could look like a plastic Barbie, and be rewarded with a sash to prove it.

'People always said she looked like a Barbie in Miss British Isles, but the girls in Texas truly did,' enthuses Jayne.

'It was wonderful. I watched them on the catwalk, with their arms held so precisely, walking slowly and turning just so. They reminded me of little ballerina dolls.'

What sort of mother wants her daughter to look like a doll? The image I have in my head is of Exorcist Barbie, but Jayne sees something else entirely.

Her response to the pageant pictures of Sasha - looking shocking with deep red lips and heavily smoked eyes - probably says more about her than her daughter.

'The pictures are amazing, and Sasha is such a lucky girl to have them. I'd love to have those sort of pictures, nice pictures, rather than ones you hide away because you can't bear to look at them.'

It was about the same time she started dabbling in beauty pageants that Jayne declared she wanted her daughter to be the next Jordan. She still does.

'Of course. Jordan is her idol and I fully support her in that. She's a great role model, this really down-to-earth woman who has made a big success of her life. She's a better role model than Britney Spears - any day.'

Jayne always saw the public parading of Sasha as crucial to this goal, so maybe it's not surprising that she pushed the child Stateside, into a world few in Britain understand.

She chatters away about Sasha's media 'career', believing her daughter is a bona fide celebrity, and is proud to have been instrumental in making that happen.

'She's been on TV with Lorraine Kelly. What girl of her age can say that?

''I'm really proud that I've helped her get to this stage by giving her all the opportunities I can. Going to the States was just the next stage in all of this, and it's been worthwhile.
'We've been told she could have a really good future in American pageants, but anything is possible - film, adverts, mainstream modelling. I want Sasha to have all the options.'
In the forthcoming documentary, Jayne takes Sasha to a major agency, in the hope that she will be signed up.

The model booker says a vehement 'no', horrified by her portfolio, and tells Jayne that clients want their child models to look like children, and that for this sort of career success she would have to stop bleaching Sasha's hair and encouraging her to wear plastic nails. Jayne refuses to comply.

It comes as no surprise that Jayne used to be a model herself, and one who worked in the 'glamour' side of the business.

She started at 23 - which, she explains, was 'far too late' for real career success - and now believes that earlier is better, in order to maximise profit and notoriety.

One of her own happiest memories is of entering a beauty pageant and winning the coveted sash. 'I was on top of the world. One day I was an ordinary clerical worker, the next everyone was looking at me. It was wonderful.

'I'd never been a particularly pretty child. I was always short and fat - not like Sasha - but I did OK with the modelling. Who knows what would have happened if I'd started earlier?'

Is it a coincidence that Jayne would have been working as a promotional model when Jordan came along and changed all the rules about how restrictive such a career can be.

She boasts she has met the pneumatic queen of the glamour world, and was even photographed with her.

They were both products of their time. As she watched Jordan achieve extraordinary mainstream success, Jayne tried to forge her own path in the new world, where everything crass and ostentatious was celebrated rather than shunned.

She set up a limo hire business, and tried to get a foothold in the reality TV world, appearing on Wife Swap. Then she turned her attentions to Sasha - getting her in front of the cameras became paramount.

When I ask whether this latest pageant business is just about her trying to realise her own thwarted ambitions through her daughter, she is offended - but only because the question assumes her career is over, which she denies.

'I might go back and do some more modelling. Who knows? If something comes up. I'm not past it yet.'

She maintains it has always been Sasha who has driven her own 'career' forward. Even as a baby she was a 'total poser', playing up for the cameras and basking in the attention.

'She's always wanted to be a model, 100per cent. I'm just helping her do what she wants, like any good parent would. It's not pushing her into anything. I hate it when people say I'm a pushy parent. I'm not. I just want the best for her.'

Yet can 'the best' really involve holding her hand as she steps into a terrifyingly sexualised world? It is Jayne herself who says that her daughter looks 'about 18' when she has full make-up on.

'But, even without make-up, she looks about 13 or 14, certainly older than her age.'

She thinks this is a good thing and brushes off questions about unwelcome male attention.

'People go on about the paedophile thing, but they've got that one wrong. Paedophiles don't want girls who look 18. If anything, it's the fresh-faced younger ones they want.

'And so what if she poses in a bikini? There are plenty of 11-year-old girls on beaches in bikinis. If people have a problem with it, I'd say it is their problem, not mine.

'Besides, as I keep saying, this is what Sasha wants.'

And what Sasha wants, Sasha clearly gets. Last Christmas, Jayne and her husband, Martin, a builder who works all over the UK and is barely at home, spent £26,000 on Sasha's presents, which included a swimming pool.

Martin seems to exert no influence at all - 'I leave all that to Jayne,' he says.

Has Jayne ever stopped Sasha doing anything? 'She wanted to get her belly button pierced and I said no,' she says.

This is puzzling. Sasha clearly has her belly button pierced, and is happy to display the evidence in her photo shoots. What happened? She sniggers. 'Maybe I gave in. Yeah. I'm not always that strict with her.

'People can say what they want. I know there is nothing bad about what I'm doing. I'm just helping my daughter make something of her life. Any good mum would do the same.'

After our interview, Jayne will be taking Sasha to cheerleading classes, in a further bid to realise that all-American dream.

She makes Sasha practise her cheerleading wherever she goes - even pushing her into the middle of the floor in restaurants. Why?

'You have to be out there, being noticed, even at a bus stop. What if Andrew Lloyd Webber walks past?'

What will become of the child, who turns just 12 in two weeks? We might hope for a reverse teenage rebellion - one in which she dyes her hair mousey brown and professes a desire to study political science at university - but it's unlikely.

Ask Sasha how she sees herself and she replies: 'Blonde, pretty, dumb - I don't need brains.' Her mum laughs her head off at this, proud that the child is so like her.