Domestic helper carrying soldier’s knapsack

I was reminded about this very shameful picture, showing a foreign domestic worker carrying a soldier’s field-pack. This made the news on social media about 6 years ago but I only just was reminded of it today. Sad really. Some of our kids are really pampered and if this is the state of them now, I wonder how in the hell they are going to defend Singapore when the need arises. You can still see school kids with their school bags carried by their domestic helpers. I wonder if this kid was one of them!

The SMRT (Formerly TIBS) bendy bus

It has been quite some time since I sat in one of those long “bendy” buses so I was very privileged to sit in one a few weeks back. I remember asking myself, whenever I sat in one, how skillful the bus-driver must be to steer and maneuver this long bus in traffic. And if you want to know what it looks like, here is a picture of it, courtesy of Public Transport SG:

Soteco industrial vacuum cleaner

I have been using this industrial vacuum cleaner these past few days. I am the project manager of a project and the interior decorator cum main contractor put this vacuum cleaner there for our use. It is a good vacuum and does the job exceedingly well. It does not need S-Bags like the Philips vacuum cleaner I have at home. All it has is one conical filter under the blue “head” there which houses the motor. The greater part of the white enclosure is just that…an enclosure to trap all the rubbish.

When I started using it yesterday, the suction was very weak. So I took the blue head off, extracted the conical filter and proceeded to give it a good dusting down. I tell you, the amount of dust that fell off it was simply mind-boggling. Anyhow, after dusting off the filter, I put it back in the white housing, latched the head back on and what a difference! It was working like a charm!

I really have to see if I can get an industrial vacuum for the house. Given the high cost of those bloody S-Bags that my vacuum uses, I bet I could pay off the cost of one of these!

Water heater in coffeeshop

Whenever we want to have a hot cup of coffee at home, we always put the kettle on to boil the water for it. That is all well and good but how about coffeeshops? Well, they use a water heater, a heater that keeps the water piping hot. I have been to some older coffeeshops, like Heap Seng Leong, where the water is kept on the boil always by a slow fire under a container of water. This coffeeshop uses a water heater which is in fact a big, rectangular kettle. You can also see the “coffee socks” that the guy that makes the coffee uses. Because of the heat of the heater, the socks are washed and put near the heater to try, making use of the heat emanating from the heater. I wonder what the electricity consumption of this heater is. Heaters consume copious amounts of electricity.

Lawrence Wong and the HDB issue

This fellow Lawrence Wong is a real work of art. He warned people not to assume that all old HDB flats will be automatically eligible for the Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme, or SERS. Apparently, he said that for the vast majority of HDB flats, the leases will eventually run out, and the flats will be returned to HDB, who will in turn have to surrender the land to the State.

So much for the political party he is a member of. Didn’t they say that owning a HDB flat was to own a slice of Singapore, or something to that effect?

Never mind that. This fellow also stated that public parking charges in Singapore were lower than in other cities worldwide, and might have to be raised.

Yeah buddy. Other political figures have lower salaries. Why don’t we start by lowering your salary to match theirs?

Sometimes you have to wonder into how people like these ever get elected. To those fellas who voted for the PAP and are complaining, see below:

How Singapore telco M1 rewards you after 16 years

That is the reason why I have no loyalty to Singapore telcos. I do not jump from telco to telco but I will not praise them to the skies either. M1 started out by being a very good telco and then it slowly collapsed into shit. Look at what my friend shared with me after being with M1 for 16 years. $50. That is all he gets. And this goes towards offsetting the cost of a new mobile phone. Loyalty bonus my ass

Seven Star chicken rice at Zion hawker centre

I had a pleasant surprise the other day when I went down to Zion hawker centre. It was pretty late and I went to drop off some stuff around the area of Havelock Road. So I had almost given up hope of getting a decent dinner when I came across this chicken rice stall named Seven Star. The chicken rice was pretty affordable and very nice. They had a generous serving of vegetables too with the chicken rice. Looks like this is not the first time and last time for this stall. definitely going back again!

SingTel and their unethical business partner Mobitrans

My mother called me up yesterday, feeling all anxious. Apparently, she received an SMS telling her she was subscribed to an online games service named VIP Games. Now my mum is not young. She is not tech-savvy. She does not subscribe to games and the like. Why should she subscribe online? I thought it may have been the 3G smartphone I bought for her. All telcos will stop using the 2G spectrum in Singapore on April 1st. Not exactly an April Fools joke but there you are.

In any case, when I reached back home (my mum called me during office hours) I did some research on this company VIP Games. Apparently, the parent company is named Mobitrans, operating out of Dubai. That is when the alarm bells started ringing. They also run some other subscription services like the one from the screenshot above, which I got online, named Mobile Academy

In any case, I called up the useless SingTel hotline and asked them why was my mother getting all this? They said she must have subscribed to it. I told them that there was more chance of a one-legged blind man winning an arse-kicking contest than her subscribing to online games. Finally, after much reluctance, they said that she will be reimbursed for what she was charged. I told them that if my mum gets another one of these SMSes, I will change providers immediately

Bloody SingTel idiots. You bastards had better not cause my mum, who is a heart patient, anymore anxiety. If she takes ill, there will be HELL to pay.

The letter to Chuck Berry from Carl Sagan

The world, I feel, is still reeling from the news that Chuck Berry passed away. Just today, while going through my Twitter feeds, I found this one. This was a letter written by the late, great Carl Sagan (remember Cosmos?) to Chuck Berry on his 60th birthday. He had me at this:

When they tell you your music will live forever, you can usually be sure they’re exaggerating. But Johnny B. Goode is on the Voyager interstellar records attached to NASA’s Voyager spacecraft — now two billion miles from Earth and bound for the stars. These records will last a billion years or more.

I will just leave this here and let it sink in

Opticis Spider OVD18 DVI distributor

Just the other day, a distributor of these fine Opticis products, brought this down to the office for a demonstration. I liked what I saw and for the price, it sure beats any offerings Extron can make. For those of you reading this and do not know what it is, this Opticis OVD18 Distributor makes one (1) digital DVI video source split into eight (8) DVI displays, respectively without any signal loss or digital noise. Also, HDMI source and displays are compatible by using HDMI-DVI cable.  Th only thing I have an issue with is the 5V power supply. That is pretty proprietary and you would be hard-pressed to find a compatible supply in the sea of 12V power supplies I have at my disposal. But all the same, as I said, the price cannot be beat and so I am going to place an order for some of these.