Sunday, June 25, 2006
BroadcastAsia is surprisingly informative, but sadly flat on new ideas. While there was certainly an exchange of information, this blog believes that most of these presentations are in fact rather stale and rehashed, far from the dramatic revolution that it heralded. Poignantly, one of the most prescient observations was that Singapore’s broadcasters are national broadcasters, they are hampered by the legacy of traditional trade, while at the same time burdened by the bottom-line. The juxtaposition of these two characteristics seems to combine the weakness of both a free media industry and a government funded industry.
Singapore media may not be the worst in the world, but it is still a long way from the best. Its Chinese channels of 8 and U simply cannot match up to the programs offered by China and specifically Hong Kong. The shows are increasingly drab and the flagship productions by Jack Neo and crew and becoming literally a very bad joke. The Channel 5 productions do not fare much better either. CNA is supposedly a regional best, but the series of informative programs offered by it belie its ranking. Since this blogger is a Chinese, this blog shall not comment on the Suria and Vasantham Central channels. The latter also airs Arts Central which is relatively interesting, due mainly to the lack of locally produced shows on that channel. Kids Central seems to the only exception (Gundam Seed!).
This unfortunate state of affairs is sadly mirrored in the Singapore movie industry. With little more than Raintree Productions to show for all its efforts, the Media Development Authority (MDA) seems increasingly to be running on an empty tank. While there is loud trumpeting on the millions that are being spent to bring the media industry to the next level, this blog believes that perhaps, the money is actually detrimental to the film in the end. This is due to several reasons, including but not limited to,
First, the money provided is normally not enough to film the entire movie. Thus the efforts of the production crew will include crevassing for funds. Even if we argue that this will not impede the development of the movie, the quality of the show may in fact be negatively affected by the need to use cheaper production methods, which may not produce the most desirable outcome.
Second, the MDA with its grants may crowd out investment from private investors. This is especially important when unproven directors start out with their first productions. Why should private investors want to aide these directors and at the same time compete with the MDA for a slice of a very small pie?
Third, productions are not only about money. Equally important are the creativity and script writing aspects. Given the bounds of government censor and societal paradigms in Singapore, there really is not much space to push the limits.
On the whole it is heartening to see that Singapore broadcasting today is not longer limited by the hardware aspects. If anything at all, the infrastructure is mostly present. The biggest problem is finding a balanced policy of competition and funding that is sustainable and able to reach a wide audience. Unfortunately, these are precisely the problems that are not tackled by BroadcastAsia.
9:36 PM
Friday, June 23, 2006
This blog wonders where has all the opposition parties in Singapore disappeared to. Barely two months has passed since the elections, and apparently all the hype about the opposition working the grounds seems to have vanished.
If for no other reason, everything seems to have gone downhill since the elections in May. Boisterous predictions of the STI climbing another 10% have instead seen the index plummet more than that amount in the opposite direction. The job market is tightening again, as the government attempts to curb inflationary pressures on the economy. And as always, the education system has gone through another round of change.
Where is the opposition? Unless this blog is quite mistaken, Singapore is still a democracy where the powers of the legislature, executive and judiciary still hold. So where are the debates on the present state of the economy? Where are there dialogues on how the education system should be run? Here, clearly the true caliber of the opposition is exposed. Unfortunately the picture is not a pretty one. The opposition has put itself in a tight corner, purposely drawing the battle lines such that the field is narrow and sadly becomes a mockery of the whole idea of an alternative voice in parliament. In fact, the situation has deteriorated to such an extent that the average blogger has more complaints about the government and is far more eloquent than the average opposition member.
We have all heard the reasons for why the PAP cannot be a single party government, just as we have all understood why the strength of a single party is better than a government that is splintered and fractions. But increasingly, the feeling of ineptness on the part of the opposition makes for a convincing argument on why the PAP must continue to rule. It is no longer about choice, because simply, the choice is better the devil and the deep blue sea. This do not make the PAP anymore capable or anymore competent, it just means that by default, Singapore has no alternative to the voice of the PAP. This blog has argued before that the PAP cannot rule as a single party because simply there must be more check and balances, more ideas from different facets of society, more input from the grassroots, but these argumentation are based on the assumption of at least a plausible opposition. This opposition is today non-existent.
A start will be to question. Not on when the lifts will be upgraded or other superficial issue. Ask the real questions, at the right stage at the right time. This blog believes that grooming of the next generation of opposition politicians cannot occur until that happens. And for heaven's sake being a Chinese-ed do not exempt you from speaking good English.
2:32 AM
Monday, June 19, 2006
http://www.youtube.com/results?search=hard+gay+english&search_type=search_videos
An introduction from Weiliat. This blog remembers reading sometime about it in the papers sometime ago. Seriously disturbing and yet highly entertaining. Kudos to the translator, but the fact is that in a nation like Japan, where everything is so prim and proper, any deviance from the norm gains popularity until t becomes the norm. Witness the 'cute' fever that is sweeping the country now.
Anyway, do enjoy the laughter at the expense of gays. They are actors by the way.
10:31 PM
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
1:30 AM
Monday, June 05, 2006
Myanmar, 'Land of Pagodas', 'The Golden Land', is really a nation torn apart by years of misgovernment by the military junta and is marked by a gradual but steady free-fall into a dismal state of affairs. Again and again, stark reminders of the lack of provision of basic amenities can be witnessed all over the city of Yangon. From colonial buildings that have been destroyed in World War II to the daily power cuts, from the limited portable water to the inadequate water drainage facilities, all showcasing the ineffectiveness of the government and the sad decay of a great nation.
However, this does not translate into a nation that is unhappy. The people may lead a difficult life, having to cope with a rampant inflation with declining wages, and a government that is incompetent and corrupt, but ultimately, they do try to make do and are generally far more cheerful than the average Singaporean. This begets the question of why.
The first and most superficial justification is that these people are poor, uneducated and are unable to pull themselves out of the poverty cycle. In essence, they have grown to accept, and in the process found some happiness in the situation. This blog asserts that this is a far too simplistic generalization. To classify everyone under one category and arguing that they are unable to better their lot is not representative of reality. Quite on the contrary, Myanmar has a people that is yearning to progress, the schools are packed with students, although the government has only allocated two percent of GDP in to education, while relocating universities to the outskirts to deter further education. These people are determined to improve, and in a strange twist, it is the government that is pulling them back, holding the whole nation hostage so it can remain in power.
Perhaps a more plausible argument is that Myanmese, is far more tolerant and generally more joyful because of a mixture of culture, circumstance and religion. In a nation where Buddhism is by far and away the most prominent religion, it seems this nation of fifty million follows the precepts of Buddhism as far as possible. Every morning each household cooks for seventy, not to be eaten, but to donate to monks going door to door begging for alms. Everyone tries to make it a point to attend mediation centers or even being a monk for a week or two. Temples and pagodas scattered all over the nation serves as constant reminders to keep your behavior in check. While it will be difficult to compare with Singapore, and senseless to assert that Singapore is an antithetic society, clearly, the serenity of the place of worship has some calming effect on the body and mind.
While Myanmar maybe one of the least developed countries in the world, it is still the proud builders of the Shwedagon Pagoda. A massive sixty tons of solid gold, it is really quite inconceivable that a nation that does not have enough power for residential use can build such a colossal monument. Perhaps, the will of the Myanmese people is manifested in this Pagoda, and testament to better days ahead.
11:57 PM
Thursday, June 01, 2006
This blog wonders what is the potential of the ClustrMap system that is there in the left margin of the blog. A very useful application of the system is to survey how many people from how many countries have access to the internet and thus realize how many people are well-off enough to own computers that havw access to the internet.
A simple manner to conduct this survey is by subscribing a ClustrMap for a popular search engine, say google. Since there is a high probablity for an internet user to use the search engine to find information on the internet, a ClustrMap will thus be able to simply identify the number of people from each region by size of circle.
However, there are numerous limitations to this approach. The first and most important is the limitations of ClustrMap itself. The program may not be able keep track of the large amount of persons streaming into google, leading to a problem of breakdown of the system. Assuming this technical problem can be fixed, there are other intrinsic problems as well. First is there will be under-reporting in non-english speaking countries, especially China and Japan, who have native search engines and will not rely on google. In addition, it is not unforeseeable that severval different persons maybe sharing the same computer, leading to a under-reporting in the number of IPs, and thus number of users.
The most interesting question however, is what is the use of this survey. Will there be any use of such a survey? This perhaps can be seen as an alternative to government census where such census is not available or cannot be trusted. However, it is a very roundabout manner of getting information, considering that as of now the internet is not considered an essential good. Perhaps one day, the census will consist of some sort of electronic survey, such as the one discribed above, which is much cheaper than current surveys.
10:39 PM
