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I remembered clearly the night when I read the news about the 8 year-old boy who was knocked down by a reversing truck on Tuesday afternoon. I walked by the accident site 3 hours later that evening, oblivious to the tragedy that happened that day.
Today I went to Eastpoint for lunch with fellow colleagues and when we wanted to get Sweetalk, I turned around to look at the accident area again, and at the spot where the boy died, there was a plate of offerings. It consisted of oranges and the like. So I told my colleagues about it, and after that when I turned back again, the offerings were gone. =\ All of a sudden. I didn't see anyone take it, but of course someone did. I was just spooked la. Haha.
Really feel for the boy's death on that fateful day when his aunt decided to buy something from Old Chang Kee and decided to take a route that they rarely take. That was how the boy got knocked down. I wondered how come they didn't notice something as big as the truck, and wondered how come the truck was reversing there and the driver didn't notice the boy and his aunt when he should be alert for passers-by.
I was reading the news and having dinner at the same time just now, while my dad was watching Variety Big Brother, a Taiwanese variety. Sometime into the show, there was a contestant who was belting out a Hokkien song. He sang only two sentences and the entire performance was cut (obviously by the Singaporean media. The next thing you know, you hear him thanking the audience and them clapping for him.
In relevance to this, months ago there was a primary school which had senior citizens from an old folks' home to teach them dialect. Clips from the lessons were happily shown to the news audience in the evening, and the kids from the all-girls primary school were saying they found the lessons enriching.
These two actions that were shown through the media were obviously contradicting each other. Why cut the parts from the variety when the government want to expose the kids of today to use more dialect, in order not to let the dialect go extinct? Why show the part where one was singing a horrible rendition of Yesterday Once More? They never seem to cut the parts where the Taiwanese were using bad English.
What irony.
I got back my Nokia 6280 today! There were plans for the phone to be traded-in after it is fixed, however when my phone got back into my hands again, I don't wanna part with it! Whaha. After two weeks of using the Sony Ericsson K610i, I prefer my old phone better. Functions that I usually need are avaible within a click of the phone and I think my Nokia is much more user friendly. I doubt I have the cash to get another phone anyway. So I'll stick to it for another year =)
And the repair cost me a bloody $80. T_T
Ah, talks about work. Heh. My colleagues and I were supposed to have slack time today, since there wasn't much work for us to complete recently. We're already done with the project we were employed for. In the end, there was a last-minute huge job that we had to complete.
We had to call employees of the company who haven't done a certain survey, and not only the local employees, but because the HR department that I work in is a regional one, we got to call employees from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia and Taiwan. I was in-charge of the Australian list, one-third of the HK list and one-third of the local list. Calling the Austrailians was quite terrifying, I felt a bit pressurised as I was afraid they wouldn't understand my English (I only had to call two Australian men). In the end I only managed to contact one of them. Whaha. He spoke damn fast.
Calling the locals were fine, just that Singaporeans being Singaporeans, when you haven't done something, you'll just find enough excuses to shun it. I got reasons (valid or not) that I didn't know how to rebut. People were on leave, travelling, preparing for their wedding etc. And they had to go online to do the survey. Thank goodness they were cooperative enough.
The Hong Kongers made me extremely frustrated. You ask me why you got to do the survey when the employees of the entire international company got to do the survey. I don't know the reason why you gotta do the survey! Oh please. Super irritating people. I'm asking you to do a compulsory survey politely which will only take you ten minutes to complete and you're there yelling your voices off.
It was pretty amazing to speak to someone else from another country and I could hear the endless chatting in Cantonese in the background. Ha. I was imagining how the scene was like at the other end of the line.
One thing I learnt today: How to make 001 calls from Singapore to overseas.
Today I went to Eastpoint for lunch with fellow colleagues and when we wanted to get Sweetalk, I turned around to look at the accident area again, and at the spot where the boy died, there was a plate of offerings. It consisted of oranges and the like. So I told my colleagues about it, and after that when I turned back again, the offerings were gone. =\ All of a sudden. I didn't see anyone take it, but of course someone did. I was just spooked la. Haha.
Really feel for the boy's death on that fateful day when his aunt decided to buy something from Old Chang Kee and decided to take a route that they rarely take. That was how the boy got knocked down. I wondered how come they didn't notice something as big as the truck, and wondered how come the truck was reversing there and the driver didn't notice the boy and his aunt when he should be alert for passers-by.
~~~~~
I was reading the news and having dinner at the same time just now, while my dad was watching Variety Big Brother, a Taiwanese variety. Sometime into the show, there was a contestant who was belting out a Hokkien song. He sang only two sentences and the entire performance was cut (obviously by the Singaporean media. The next thing you know, you hear him thanking the audience and them clapping for him.
In relevance to this, months ago there was a primary school which had senior citizens from an old folks' home to teach them dialect. Clips from the lessons were happily shown to the news audience in the evening, and the kids from the all-girls primary school were saying they found the lessons enriching.
These two actions that were shown through the media were obviously contradicting each other. Why cut the parts from the variety when the government want to expose the kids of today to use more dialect, in order not to let the dialect go extinct? Why show the part where one was singing a horrible rendition of Yesterday Once More? They never seem to cut the parts where the Taiwanese were using bad English.
What irony.
~~~~~
I got back my Nokia 6280 today! There were plans for the phone to be traded-in after it is fixed, however when my phone got back into my hands again, I don't wanna part with it! Whaha. After two weeks of using the Sony Ericsson K610i, I prefer my old phone better. Functions that I usually need are avaible within a click of the phone and I think my Nokia is much more user friendly. I doubt I have the cash to get another phone anyway. So I'll stick to it for another year =)
And the repair cost me a bloody $80. T_T
~~~~~
Ah, talks about work. Heh. My colleagues and I were supposed to have slack time today, since there wasn't much work for us to complete recently. We're already done with the project we were employed for. In the end, there was a last-minute huge job that we had to complete.
We had to call employees of the company who haven't done a certain survey, and not only the local employees, but because the HR department that I work in is a regional one, we got to call employees from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia and Taiwan. I was in-charge of the Australian list, one-third of the HK list and one-third of the local list. Calling the Austrailians was quite terrifying, I felt a bit pressurised as I was afraid they wouldn't understand my English (I only had to call two Australian men). In the end I only managed to contact one of them. Whaha. He spoke damn fast.
Calling the locals were fine, just that Singaporeans being Singaporeans, when you haven't done something, you'll just find enough excuses to shun it. I got reasons (valid or not) that I didn't know how to rebut. People were on leave, travelling, preparing for their wedding etc. And they had to go online to do the survey. Thank goodness they were cooperative enough.
The Hong Kongers made me extremely frustrated. You ask me why you got to do the survey when the employees of the entire international company got to do the survey. I don't know the reason why you gotta do the survey! Oh please. Super irritating people. I'm asking you to do a compulsory survey politely which will only take you ten minutes to complete and you're there yelling your voices off.
It was pretty amazing to speak to someone else from another country and I could hear the endless chatting in Cantonese in the background. Ha. I was imagining how the scene was like at the other end of the line.
One thing I learnt today: How to make 001 calls from Singapore to overseas.
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