the(new)mediaslut

themediaslut was in the early train to work this morning about 630am.

At Bugis MRT station, a guy just drop to the floor in front of her.

Typical of Singaporeans, many sort of side stepped the guy but continued to stare at him.

themediaslut had to do so something and she quickly turned the guy around.

However, the guy started to shake as though he had fits. Knowing that she couldn’t anything else, themediaslut sprang to press the emergency button to inform the MRT driver that a guy has fainted in the cabin and of his current condition.

Fortunately, it happened in a station stop. A Civil Defence guy boarded the train and was able to assist the guy. The guy soon gain consciousness and was back on his feet. At the same time, the train station master was already in the cabin and helped the guy out to check on him.

Hopefully, the guy is doing well now.

themediaslut is worried about two things that happened though.

When themediaslut was about to press the emergency button, she say a couple of passengers staring at it. The looks on their face told themediaslut as if they were wondering in their minds if they should press the emergency button or risk a fine.

Pressing the emergency button for non-emergencies can result in a fine of SGD500 and there is a sticker above the emergency button that clearly states it.

Is this fine acting so strong a deterrent that even in a true emergency, passengers are worried about getting a fine that they do not press the emergency button?

Secondly, what if themediaslut was the one the fainted or the other passengers that stared at the guy fainted? Wouldn’t they want somebody to help them too?

Kudos to the Civil Defence National Service personnel for helping and to the SMRT station master for his quick response.

From Google Analytics, themediaslut found out that this site has gotten 121 hits as of today from a Maple Story forum called www.sleepywood.net.

themediaslut can only assumed that its about the post of Lenovo’s tie up with AsiaSoft which Lenovo will include tokens from MapleStory with purchase of Lenovo PCs.

The good news is that 121 unique readers who might not have read the mainstream media news about it read it on themediaslut.

The bad news, however, is that the demographics may not be hitting the Singapore audience that Lenovo hoped to achieved with that PR campaign.

Hence, when hitting a blog for PR and marketing, the masters maybe should be aware they are hitting on an international audience too.

This is one cartoon that will never appear in Singapore’s media.

Source: Bangkok Post, 16 Dec 2006 

Telcos in ASEAN region are looking to emulate the success of mobile wireless in Korea and Japan but so far has failed to do so.

themediaslut, however, has dawned upon a "freakonomics" hypothesis that the demand for mobile wireless is somehow related to the quality and efficiency of the country’s public transport.

Based on themediaslut’s assumptions and discussion with friends, it seems the use of such mobile wireless are on the trains from home to work and vice versa.

High property prices force white collar Koreans and Japanese to live outside the city area where it usually take about 1-2 hours of traveling time from home to office or vice versa.

Hence, the train rides give them the opportunity and the need to make use of such mobile wireless technologies.

Public transport in the capital cities of Malaysia and Thailand might not be as efficient as that of Japan and Korea and these provide the working white collar workers incentives to own private transport.

Similarly, most of them live outside of the capital city which requires the same 1-2 hour ride like their Korean and Japan counterparts.

Hence, how can they use these mobile wireless when their hands are on the steering wheel?

Rather than looking for that killer mobile wireless app, these telcos should consider working with public transport companies to improve the efficiency of the country’s public transport.  

But themediaslut feels it would be hard for telcos to accept this hypothesis  though because public transport is in nowhere part of their portfolio.  

Singapore is an exception to this hypothesis though. Singapore is small and with its efficient public transport, it takes less than an hour, on average, to reach from home to office, or vice versa.

themediaslut thought of a solution before , but then again, it requires the telcos here to change their mindsets.

Changing mindsets deserve another entry.

Tony Henderson, for the Humanist Movement C-209 in Hong Kong, send his wish list to themediaslut for Christmas.

Tony’s wishes are in italics, themediaslut’s wishes for Singapore are in normal text.  

Wish List for Hong Kong:

That the air pollution is cleared up.
No more haze from Indonesia from Aug - Nov!.

The economy remains strong but more diverse.
Yes, but being the kiasu Singaporean, themediaslut wishes the economy to be stronger.

Speculation in property ceases.
Singapore govt has looked into by changing the law on estate stamp duties. Previously, buyers need only pay upon completion of the property, now they have 14 days to pay.

Future infrastructural developments stop and what’s already there is tidied up and Green’d.

Privatisation efforts cease in all sectors impinging on public services as per welfare state – especially in health and education – both need to be free of charges.
Increase in govt expenditure means the money has to come from somewhere. In Singapore, its a proposed 2% rise in GST to 7%.

Participatory democracy (with proportional representation) is implemented in whatever form, the western model or under the Beijing preferred system based on what we have now.

District Boards given real authority in local affairs and be responsible for handling the local budgets.

Co-operative forms of business get preferred investment instead of the top-down capitalist models.

Integration with the SAR given more attention, to share resources and facilities and prevent duplications.

The population stabilises.

Town centres made traffic-free and vehicle-free streets are made common-place.
themediaslut supports this totally. Why bother travel through Orchard Road during peak hours? Singapore should make Orchard Road a vehicle-free street.

Privately owned areas around commercial centres allow the public to use those surrounding places to while away the day according to social need and security staff not allowed to chase people away when they are not a security risk.

Hawker licenses are made available again and more freely issued to allow small businesses to reappear on sidewalks.
Singapore back to the 60s.. why not?

Busking is allowed.
Busking is allowed in Singapore, but do away with all those "rules"!

No more western-style cultural halls – instead, places where local bands and theatre groups can perform and practise, in every area of population density.
themediaslut wonders if the Esplanade is a western-style cultural hall? By the way, wouldn’t it way cool to have the Esplanade organise a Durian festival?

Widespread use of local species for green growth, to support habitats for local creatures, instead of re-cycled potted plants of foreign flowers and out-of-place palm trees.
Singapore love potted plants especially when we have foreigners in the county for meetings like IMF.

Concreting minimised.

Land use laws tightened to disallow conversion from agricultural-recreational to industrial-commercial use.

That Hong Kong moves nearer the proposed ideal of ‘Asia’s World City’ by simply recognising the full rights of non-Han Chinese citizen’s rights, including those marginalised thus discriminated against such as the Nepalese. Visa-free entry re-instated for presently restricted Asian nationals – Bangladesh a recent case.

Tony Henderson can be contacted at tonyhen(at)humanist(dot)org(dot)hk.

What is edelmanqqspace.spaces.live.com ?

Why wouldn’t they let themediaslut in?

Passing through the new Bangkok International Airport, formally known as Suvarnabhumi, Smartbrain couldn’t help but notice how one of the depature annoucement signs looked a bit different.

Obviously someone had plugged in a new device to the wrong PC, one which was actually driving the sign boards.

We immediately know that they are in fact generic PC they use rather than some embedded, special purpose device, and that they also use ATI graphics cards.

The fact that all the other screens were normal means that each screen (or perhaps bank of screens) is in fact run off one PC, rather than simply have one PC replicated over the dozens of displays across the airport.

Interesting, and one heck of a waste of computing power.

Take a look at the Windows Vista ad and the classic Mac ad below..

Now you know why Microsoft is such a bore and Apple is hip!

Microsoft Vista Ad 

Apple’s Ad 

Singapore’s telecom provider Starhub recently terminated the service of one of their contracted staff because of the staff posted a YouTube video "goofing" around in office.

From AsiaOne :

Singapore firm fires worker for YouTube videos of "horsing around" in office

The news has been syndicated via AP and thus Starhub is now a YouTube unfriendly company.  

Starhub then went on the defensive to say that the article was rather inaccurate because of a slight technicality; the worker wasn’t a Starhub staff so he wasn’t fired which equated to Starhub didn’t fire anybody because of posting the YouTube video.

From Today Online :

It was clearly stated in our email response to Today on Dec 7 that Mr Terence Tan was a temporary staff member engaged by an appointed manpower agency and assigned to StarHub to promote and sell StarHub products and services to corporate individual sales customers. He was never an employee of StarHub.

However, there was no mention of the manpower agency in the article, and your readers will inevitably deduce that Terence was an employee of StarHub and that he was dismissed by the company which was not true.

themedislut wonders which was more damaging to Starhub’s reputation - the Youtube Video or the news story about Starhub firing the YouTubers?

*Fry your fish is translated directly from a Chinese saying that you have be fired!