Oceanshaft

Just found out that the new Japanese animated film by Studio Ghibli ゲド戦記 is based on the third book of the Earthsea series written by Ursula K. Le Guin. Wow, I read those so long ago... in primary school? Can't remember much of the plot right now, though I remember the main character sailing from island to island and then off somewhere towards the end. My mental image of the series doesn't fit the trailers which I saw. In fact, my mental image of the series is more in shades of grey, almost like a black and white movie, where they say very little and a sad mood underpins the film. With thin trinkling music, not full orchestra stuff. (I wonder why?) Definitely not the colourful fantasy worlds that Studio Ghibli creates. Probably that's why I didn't make any connection even upon seeing the trailers and having my friend tell me it was based on an English book.

Try this flash game called Grow. It's quirky and great fun. First found out about it from Jay is Games. Hope you have fun with it.

I used to read his posts, but now he is gone.

Goodbye, Singapore Serf.

Ok, I've been tagged by Takchek. Actually, I don't usually bother to do memes and such, but I was quite interested in the idea brought up by Mr Brown. Furthermore, Takchek has already told us some random facts about his past, so why not.

Here goes:

• I am a Christian.
• I am Cantonese in almost all respects but technically (ie. paternal lineage) am not. As I am a stickler for details, this results in an overly long answer for people who ask. I have learned to get by with "mostly Cantonese".
• As a result of certain government policies back then, my parents could not use their CPF to pay for a HDB flat. My family has never stayed in a HDB flat ever since.
• We proceeded to live in a HUDC flat, a smaller HUDC flat, a terrace house, a rented bungalow and a condominium - in that order.
• I still feel slightly upset when people think my family is rich because we never stayed in a HDB flat.
• I have only stayed in the west side, and almost entirely in Bukit Timah. I refer to the area around Bukit Timah Plaza and Beauty World as Seven Miles.
• I feel left out when people talk about Bedok, Katong and Serangoon and expect me to know those areas inside-out, then look at me strangely when I refer to "Seven Miles".
• I remember seeing old Chinese graves along Bukit Timah Road. They disappeared over the years. I also watched as Yeo Hiap Seng and other factories became condominiums.
• I am a bus person. I remember the old bus tickets - green, purple, pink, with columns of numbers on them. I prefer TIBS to SBS. I was upset when the number of services plying the bus stop I use dropped from 9 and continued to drop. I like to stand in the open space on the left side of TIBS buses, right under the air-conditioning vents. Sometimes I do this even when the bus is empty.
• I did not feel particularly nostalgic for the old National Library because my favourite is Queenstown, with the old carpark and birdshops opposite. Bus number 5 used to go there.
• I was in the GEP but never say so in conversation unless asked directly. The same applies for being a PSC scholar.
• I went to Ghim Moh JC. It was old and rundown and you reached the back gate from a HDB void deck. I remember the barley water and lemon tea sold in the canteen, as well as the laksa sold only once a week.
• I was a private during NS but was promoted to lance-corporal just after I disrupted. I don't feel like a lance-corporal even though letters from Mindef are addressed as such.
• I never really liked Old Chiang Kee, my favourite curry puffs were from Queen's Confectionary in Hillview, next to the aquarium shop. Hillview HDB estate is a ghost town now - everyone has moved out because it is slated for destruction.
• I like the carrot cake at Seven Miles. I also remember the hawker that ran around serving customers barefoot. Also like the mutton soup at Beauty World. I feel like a minority because I don't know the good stalls at Bedok, Serangoon Gardens or Tiong Bahru.
• I live near an electoral boundary, which changes often. I have never gotten the chance to vote.
• When back in Singapore on holiday, I once bumped into three people I knew from school at Takashimaya on the same day, all by chance.
• Compared to when I was a child, I think the proportion of common mynahs (brown and black colouration) to the ones that are fully black (crested mynahs) has dropped in Singapore. It bothers me.

I have lots more to say, but sometimes old people ramble too much.

I await Takchek's full posting, but I won't hold my breath. :)

On a whim, I decided to count how many bookmarks I have in my web browser. More than 180! I have bookmarks that I use all the time : maps, television schedules, weather; I have listings of blogs and webpages of friends; I have collections of sites that I use roughly once or twice a year but I doubt I would ever find again, so I bookmark them. And to think I already try to keep myself from bookmarking needlessly.

I'll have to get round to reorganizing them again. The different folders and categories are getting messy, and the "misc." folder is growing...

Here's some news from the Japan Times about travel firm H.I.S.

Tuesday, July 4, 2006

THE ZEIT GIST

Travel firm rapped over foreigner ticket policy

Top travel agency charges foreigners more for 'discount' air tickets

By VANESSA MITCHELL

The nation's largest discount travel agency, HIS, which also runs foreigner-friendly No.1 Travel, has based the price of some air tickets from Japan on the nationality of the traveler, possibly in breach of Japanese law, The Japan Times has learned.

Foreigners trying to buy discount tickets through the company were quoted higher prices than Japanese customers purchasing discount seats on the same flight.

The policy came to light when the company offered a discount ticket to Los Angeles over the telephone to a Japanese caller, but said it was no longer available at the quoted price after finding out a Canadian was the intended traveler.

It then informed the caller that the price for the ticket would be higher for a non-Japanese customer.

However, Japanese Air Law, Article 105, Paragraph 2, clearly states that "no specific passenger or consigner will be unfairly discriminated against."

The company, which has acknowledged the ticketing policy, has defended its actions, denying ticketing pricing discrimination and suggesting foreign customers pose a threat to profits.

Jason, a Canadian resident of Japan, wanted to fly on All Nippon Airways to Los Angeles just after Golden Week and asked his Japanese girlfriend to check for cheap tickets online.

She eventually found a return ticket to Los Angeles listed on the HIS Web site for 57,000 yen.

Jason's girlfriend called HIS in Shinjuku to find out if the tickets were still available and was told that they were. She relayed this information to Jason in English.

"She was speaking to them in Japanese and then talking to me in English," he said.

Soon after, the sales assistant asked if the ticket was for her, and, having been told it wasn't, asked about the nationality of the person who wanted to buy it.

Jason's girlfriend explained that the customer would be Canadian, and was promptly told that the ticket "is not available, and (that) the price for a non-Japanese person is 70,000 yen."

Surprised, the couple confirmed that this was the case by contacting No.1 Travel in Shinjuku, an affiliate of HIS. They then reconfirmed the company's policy with HIS in Iidabashi.

"With corporations as big as HIS there's a lack of communication and one person will tell you one thing and another person will tell you another. That's why we checked it three times," he said.

When the couple asked why the prices for foreigners and Japanese nationals were different, they were told that the tickets were part of a package tour which had been canceled and that HIS was now selling the tickets to Japanese people only.

The couple are baffled at the explanation given.

"This is a strange story. There is no reason for these tickets to be cheaper for Japanese people than foreigners.

"They're boarding the same plane, eating the same food and getting the same service. There's no way that foreigners treatment would be any different to that of Japanese."

"They're reasoning or their justification doesn't make any sense, it doesn't satisfy me," says Jason.

"I live and work in Japan, and I pay the same taxes, I should be entitled to that ticket price," he said.

But Yukie Kinokuni, from the Corporate Planning Department of H.I.S. Co., Ltd., argues that business concerns, not discrimination, dictated the pricing policy.

According to Kinokuni, foreigners buy return tickets because they are cheaper than one-way tickets. They then return to their countries and don't use the return portion.

"In this case the airline may charge us the full fare which means low profits or a loss.

"So in order to avoid the risk we restricted the tickets to Japanese only customers, who will definitely return to Japan."

In doing so, they don't feel they were being discriminatory.

"We have never thought of ourselves as being discriminatory," said Kinokuni.

The ticketing policy has surprised both ANA and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, who both claim they had no prior knowledge of the company's actions and have demanded it be stopped.

Although HIS sets ticketing policy, it is ANA that is liable under the law for fines associated with ticketing discrimination, according to a spokesman for the Aviation Industries Division of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

But ANA has denied any prior knowledge of the practice, describing the ticketing policy as "hard to understand" and pointing the finger of blame at HIS.

"The first time we heard about this was when you contacted us and asked us about it," said Toshiki Yamamoto, Manager of Public Relations for All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd.

"We fix our prices, as far as we know according to the law. We can't control the retail end and what price they are setting.

"If they are selling in that manner, we are going to have to tell them that they can't do that, but as to where the responsibility lies, if they're selling it at a price that they are fixing, I think the responsibility lies with them," said Yamamoto.

HIS confirmed that ANA was not aware of the policy, saying the company does not report back to ANA and is wholly responsible for setting prices and the conditions of their own tickets.

But it was also quick to deny responsibility, with Kinokuni stating: "We don't recognize that we sold prohibited tickets. Therefore we are not liable for a fine."

France...

Followup regarding my previous post on Mr Brown. According to his blog, his column in Today has been suspended. Ah. Sigh. What can I say?

I read Mr Brown back in the days of SNE and browntown, then stopped for a while, rediscovered him again one or two years ago and watched as he expanded to www.mrbown.com, so even those it's a little late, here's the infamous article and the response to it from the government. The original article was a humuor column.

For reference, here's the original article from TODAY.

Friday, June 30, 2006

S'poreans are fed, up with progress!

Moving ahead is great but it would be even greater to be able to make ends meet

THINGS are certainly looking up for Singapore again. Up, up, and away.

Household incomes are up, I read. Sure, the bottom third of our country is actually seeing their incomes (or as one newspaper called it, "wages") shrink, but the rest of us purportedly are making more money.

Okay, if you say so.

As sure as Superman Returns, our cost of living is also on the up. Except we are not able to leap over high costs in a single bound.

Cost of watching World Cup is up. Price of electricity is up. Comfort's taxi fares are going up. Oh, sorry, it was called "being revised". Even the prata man at my coffeeshop just raised the price of his prata by 10 cents. He was also revising his prata prices.

So Singaporeans need to try to "up" their incomes, I am sure, in the light of our rising costs. Have you upped yours?

We are very thankful for the timing of all this good news, of course. Just after the elections, for instance. By that I mean that getting the important event out of the way means we can now concentrate on trying to pay our bills.

It would have been too taxing on the brain if those price increases were announced during the election period, thereby affecting our ability to choose wisely.

The other reason I am glad with the timing of the cost of living increases and wages going down, is that we can now deploy our Progress Package to pay for some of these bills.

Wait, what? You spent it all on that fancy pair of shoes on the day you saw your money in your account? Too bad for you then.

As I break into my Progress Package reserves to see if it is enough to pay the bills, I feel an overwhelming sense of progress. I feel like I am really staying together with my fellow Singaporeans and moving forward.

There is even talk of future roads like underground expressways being outsourced to private sector companies to build, so that they, in turn, levy a toll on those of us who use these roads.

I understand the cost of building these roads is high, and the Government is relooking the financing of these big road projects.

Silly me, I thought my road tax and COE was enough to pay for public roads.

Maybe we can start financing all kinds of expensive projects this way in future. We could build upgraded lifts for older HDB blocks, and charge tolls on a per use basis.

You walk into your new lift on the first floor, and the scanner reads the contactless cashcard chip embedded in your forehead. This chip would be part of the recently-announced Intelligent Nation 2015 plan, you know, that initiative to make us a smart nation?

So you, the smart contactless-cashcard-chip-enhanced Singaporean would go into your lift, and when you get off at your floor, the lift would deduct the toll from your chip, and you would hear a beep.

The higher you live, the more expensive the lift toll.

Now you know why I started climbing stairs for exercise, as I mentioned in my last column. I plan to prepare for that day when I have to pay to use my lift. God help you if some kid presses all the lift buttons in the lift, as kids are wont to do. You will be beeping all the way to your flat.

The same chip could be used to pay for supermarket items. You just carry your bags of rice and groceries past the cashierless cashier counter, and the total will be deducted from your contactless cashcard automatically.

You will not even know you just got poorer. And if your contactless cashcard runs out of funds (making it a contactless CASHLESS cashcard), you just cannot use paid services.

The door of the lift won't close, the bus won't stop for you, taxis will automatically display "On Call" when their chip scanners detect you're broke.

Sure, paying bills that only seem to go up is painful, but by Jove, we are going to make sure it is at least convenient.

No more opening your wallet and fiddling with dirty notes and coins. Just stand there and hear your income beeped away. No fuss, no muss! I cannot wait to be a Smart e-Singaporean.

I also found out recently that my first-born daughter's special school fees were going up. This is because of this thing called "Means Testing", where they test your means, then if you are not poor enough, you lose some or all of the subsidy you've been getting for your special child's therapy.

I think I am looking at about a $100 increase, which is a more than a 100 per cent increase, but who's counting, right? We can afford it, but we do know many families who cannot, even those that are making more money than we are, on paper.

But don't worry. Most of you don't have this problem. Your normal kids can go to regular school for very low fees, and I am sure they will not introduce means testing for your cases.

We need your gifted and talented kids to help our country do well economically, so that our kids with special needs can get a little more therapy to help them to walk and talk. And hey, maybe if the country does really well, the special-needs kids will get a little more subsidy.

Like I said, progress.

High-definition televisions, a high-speed broadband wireless network, underground expressways, and contactless cashcard system — all our signs of progress.

I am happy for progress, of course but I would be just as happy to make ends meet and to see my autistic first-born grow up able to talk and fend for herself in this society when I am gone.

That is something my wife and I will pay all we can pay to see in our lifetimes.

mr brown is the accidental author of a popular website that has been documenting the dysfunctional side of Singapore life since 1997. He enjoys having yet another cashcard, in addition to his un-contactless one and the ez-link one to add to his wallet.

And the letter from MICA.

Voices, TODAY newspaper, Monday, July 3, 2006:

Distorting the truth, mr brown?

When a columnist becomes a 'partisan player' in politics

Letter from K BHAVANI

Press Secretary to the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts

Your mr brown column, "S'poreans are fed, up with progress!" (June 30) poured sarcasm on many issues, including the recent General Household Survey, price increases in electricity tariffs and taxi fares, our IT plans, the Progress Package and means testing for special school fees.

The results of the General Household Survey were only available after the General Election. But similar data from the Household Expenditure Survey had been published last year before the election.

There was no reason to suppress the information. It confirmed what we had told Singaporeans all along, that globalisation would stretch out incomes. mr brown must also know that price increases in electricity tariffs and taxi fares are the inevitable result of higher oil prices.

These were precisely the reasons for the Progress Package — to help lower income Singaporeans cope with higher costs of living.

Our IT plans are critical to Singapore's competitive position and will improve the job chances of individual Singaporeans. It is wrong of mr brown to make light of them.

As for means testing for special school fees, we understand mr brown's disappointment as the father of an autistic child. However, with means testing, we can devote more resources to families who need more help.

mr brown's views on all these issues distort the truth. They are polemics dressed up as analysis, blaming the Government for all that he is unhappy with. He offers no alternatives or solutions. His piece is calculated to encourage cynicism and despondency, which can only make things worse, not better, for those he professes to sympathise with.

mr brown is entitled to his views. But opinions which are widely circulated in a regular column in a serious newspaper should meet higher standards. Instead of a diatribe mr brown should offer constructive criticism and alternatives. And he should come out from behind his pseudonym to defend his views openly.

It is not the role of journalists or newspapers in Singapore to champion issues, or campaign for or against the Government. If a columnist presents himself as a non-political observer, while exploiting his access to the mass media to undermine the Government's standing with the electorate, then he is no longer a constructive critic, but a partisan player in politics.

Sigh.

Some commentary from

• Mr Wang
• Heavenly Sword
• Xeno Boy
• Singapore Angle

Argentina lost. Sigh* Italy played really well. Zambrotta, Gattuso, etc. Not like the passive defensive Italy of old. Portugal beat England, but I didn't watch this game. Brazil lost! Actually, I was rooting for both teams, so this was a really emotionally-confusing match for me. Zidane reached his peak again. Can't believe the way he moved and the way he seemed to be everywhere. And he's supposed to be retiring? Brazil tried an experiment in formation and then switched back - this should have been done much earlier, it was rather obvious that they could not find their rhythm. Should have substituted Cafu earlier too. Much as I like him, his passes weren't very accurate. Henry, Henry, always so classy, smooth goal.

Let's hope for a France-Italy final. I have fond memories of watching the Euro 2000 final at Osaka Gaidai... Italy's leading and half the dorm is cheering as the final minutes tick away. Supporters of France are looking grim but not giving up hope as those buffoons prance around the table-tennis room. Trezuguet scores at the last minute to bring the game to extra time! Euphoria erupts. It's our day now, and nothing will stop us. Morning light creeps in as we head into extra time. Golden goal by France, yesssss!!!! Japanese lessons that morning are just so delightful.