Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Marina Bay "rebranding"

Well, I had to follow up my last entry with more details on this. AFP says:

SINGAPORE: After spending S$400,000 ($240,964) to come up with a suitable new name for the revamped downtown Marina Bay, Singapore has decided to stick to, well, Marina Bay, media reports said yesterday.

The city-state’s urban development authorities and global branding company Interbrand spent months deliberating over 400 potential names before settling on the original moniker, according to the Today newspaper.

The S$400,000 financed a massive branding exercise that involved market tests, focus group discussions and consultations with developers and the general public, Today said.

Finding the right name for the city-state’s revised downtown, which will include the much-debated resort casino, a new business district and swanky retail outlets, was a process akin to parents deciding on a name for their child, National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan.

“We started off with (the name) Marina Bay and after looking at everything, the name that really tugged at the heartstrings was in front of us,” Mah said.

“The name itself is not new, but what has been used informally so far has endeared itself to all parties.” Not suprisingly, many Singaporeans were quick to lambast the government’s latest publicity efforts as an utter waste of public funds.”

Singapore National Education

Continuing with his hilarious series exploring Singapore's bizarre policies (and its makers), trends and events, mr brown presents Singapore National Education #108.

Excerpts:
#23. That Singapore may not be able to win any Olympic medals worth a damn, but by golly we are great at getting ourselves in to the Guinness World of Records, like for bursting 3,137 balloons in 10 seconds on 24 July 2005, beating the previous record set in Hong Kong, of 2,477 balloons in 10 seconds.

and
#25. That Singapore should try to be the Peanut Hub. Based on the Singapore peanut exchange rate, 1 peanut = S$600,000.
So the $400,000 rebranding exercise for Marina Bay (part of this project resulted in Marina Bay to be renamed... Marina Bay), it only cost 2/3 of a peanut.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Back to Sailing

Ok - back to sailing. Last week, I blogged about how I started sailing. Unfortunately, the sailing pretty much ended there as well, until 2 weeks ago.

My boss planned a small get together on his small yacht for my team, so on a nice warm Sunday morning, the 7 of us went to Raffles Marina, dressed for a day out on the water. After a relaxed lunch, we climbed onto the boat around noon, and made our way out of the harbour, and into the calm waters off the west of Singapore.

Piloting a yacht is quite different from a dinghy such as a Laser. The principles of sailing are the same (the Bernoulli Effect), but it takes a little more to run a family sized yacht.

The first difference (aside from the size and the cabin) that I noticed was the impressive amount of instrumentation - a GPS, depth gauge, wind speed and direction meter, radios etc, and an iPod hooked up to a stereo. Gotta have some tunes. Another difference was the way the yacht was steered: on a dinghy we manually steer using the tiller connected to the rudder, but here there was a large steering wheel. Makes sense since it's probably hydraulically linked to the rudder - you'd need a lot of strength to steer a boat that large. The rudder could also be controlled by auto-pilot; cruise control for the high seas!

But the biggest difference by far was the fact that this boat had a total of 3 sails - the mainsail, a genoa and a gennaker. We started out with just the mainsail rigged, and using the motors to maneuver ourselves out of the harbour, but once clear, relied completely on the wind.

Well, to cut a long story short, we had a great early afternoon - walking around the top of the boat, learning the ropes and the winches. I really enjoyed the experience. But around 4 in the evening, it started getting cloudy and the wind completely stopped. For a few minutes we were completely motionless. Even when we rigged the gennaker, there was hardly any lift or drag generated, and we stayed put. Meanwhile, the clouds had been creeping up, and we started feeling a slight drizzle.

That drizzle suddenly and dramatically escalated into a full scale rainstorm, and over the next five minutes, visibility dropped to 20 meters, lightning nearby took out our depth gauge, and we had to scramble to pull down and stow the sails (lest the wind and rain catch them and the boat capsize), start the motors and try and find our way back home.

By now the rain was penting down, and for us sitting up top in our thin vests or t-shirts, it got very wet and painful very fast. Most of the crew (us!) took refuge in the dry cabin below while a couple of adventurous souls and the captain stayed up top. Myself? I chickened out for a while, but then returned up top.

We eventually did find land, and the rain did ease up slowly, but for about 30 minutes, it was quite scary - with thunder all around, and bolts of lightning threatening to strike us every minute. The fact that the mast was one solid piece of metal did nothing to ease our minds :)

And when we pulled back into the dock and were nice and tied up, all heaved a sigh of relief. It was scary, but a really exhilarating adventure. Time for me to restart my sailing lessons and move on.

Anyone with a spare boat to sell?

Lost

I've just discovered 'Lost'.



Yes yes, I know it's been showing on Channel 5 and AXN these past few weeks, and I'm horribly behind the times. But in my defence, channel 5 was showing it at 10 pm on Thursdays - a time when I was on my way back home from the gym so I never did watch a single episode.

And everyone and their dog has been telling me that it's a great show (or that they've heard it's supposed to be a good show). So much so that I've been going round saying that it's supposed to be a good show.

So when I woke up on Saturday morning at noon (after a late late late night out) and turned on the TV, AXN had just kicked off its weekly 'Lost' marathon - 5 hours of 'Lost'. So this Saturday, I spent 5 hours in front of the TV, and watched episodes 11 through 15, and got hooked.

I also spent a large amount of time on Sunday reading synopses of the previous 10 episodes here. And I must admit, I did take a peek at the rest of the upcoming episodes too.

In my opinion, what makes 'Lost' good viewing is:
  • An interesting plot (castaways on a deserted island)
  • Characters with a tortured past (all revealed as the show progresses)
  • Lots of inter-character dynamics (for instance: love, hate, suspicion, pity - all between the same 2 persons!)
  • Incredible suspense on the nature of the threat on the island
  • Some supernatural (and religious?) imagery (which would work very well after the success of Dan Brown).


Can't wait for next Saturday.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Haiku Reviu: Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya

Felt obliged to write a haiku.

Anticipation built...
A lousy lousy movie.
Waste of twenty bucks.

Maine Yeh Film Kyun Dekha?

When I walk into a Hindi movie, I'm usually prepared for the worst.

Fortunately, we appear to have had a pretty good screening mechanism, relying on a combination of online reviews and reviews from friends; our "signal to noise ratio" has been quite good this far. There have been a few stinkers - "Jaanam Samjha Karo", "Yaadein" and "Gadar" spring to mind, but on the whole, I have been enriched and entertained.

And then we went and spoiled our record.

One of Sa's friends sent her an SMS message on Saturday evening, highly recommending the new Salman Khan starrer - "Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya" (the title was probably a take on his debut hit - "Maine Pyaar Kiya"). This was the first time she was recommending a movie to us, but her review was so glowing, we decided to check it out. Not to mention the fact that online reviews seemed to suggest it was worthy of a watch.

So on Monday night, after hastily gobbling down our dinner, we rushed down to Bedok, to see what everyone was talking about.



In short, the movie was a disaster. Remember, I'm usually prepared for the worst - this came close. The acting was over the top, the lyrics for the songs were ridiculous (more on that later), and the plot was, well, never mind. There has been only one movie that I've walked out of. This came close to becoming the second.

I rate Hindi movies on a scale of 1 - 10, starting at 0, and add points. This movie got 3 points: 2.5 of those for some rather silly jokes (add one brilliant one) in the first half of the film, and a half point for Sushmita Sen, looking amazing as ever.

And now the songs. You can check out the music here: Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya.

Sample lyrics:
"Teri meri love story ka angle yaad karegi duniya pal pal,
Hey ruk jao sambhal jao, is angle mein hai triangle."

Of the 44 lines in this song, a full 32 (or 75%) are composed of these 2 lines. Song-writing must be the easiest job in the world.

Please don't watch it.

Friday, July 15, 2005

On learning to Sail

I picked up sailing on a whim almost 2 years ago.

I had this image of windswept hair and rugged tanned bodies toiling away at ropes and winches, mostly garnered from watching shots of the Americas Cup. And I naturally thought - "Hmm, what better way to get legions of women looking adoringly in my direction?" Getting from that point to actually signing up for a course didn't take too long.

Three buddies of mine and I signed up at the Pasir Ris Sailing Centre and over a weekend, sat through classes, learnt about ropes and knots and winds and the rules of the sea. And at long last, we unloaded our 'Topper' class boats and sails, learned to rig them appropriately and headed out into the water. I must say it was one of the best experiences of my life.

It was also somewhat suicidal and foolhardy - I can't swim. I can't even float. So naturally, my life vest became my best friend as we went through the capsize drills and the three times that I capsized over the weekend.

Me sitting on my first boat (the Topper). As you can see, it's pretty small.


Of course, the realisation later that the 'Topper' class boat was made for 8-10 year olds did prick my ego somewhat. I dare say I picked it up pretty well (probably because I'm almost 3 times that age), and a few months later, the same buddies of mine and I attended a conversion course for the 'Laser' class.



The Laser is what is used in Olympic and competitive solo sailing, and we could see why. For a single mast boat, it was amazingly fast and I can't fully describe feeling of the wind and spray on your face and through your hair as you catch the wind and hike over the edge of the boat.

All this was 18 months ago, and since then a few things happened. I got married, and so did two of my buddies. And all of a sudden priorities changed. I still wanted to go sailing again, but didn't have the guts to go it alone (I can't swim, remember?).

But now, we will probably go sailing next Sunday again. And that was because of an mind-altering experience I had this weekend (and also because our memberships to the sailing club expire in August).

More on that in my next post.

Back to the blog.

Again a long break from blogging. I've been travelling a little, and been busy a lot.

This morning I received the perfect SMS to break my exile from blogging. This was after a friend of mine told me he was on his way to work, and followed that up with this gem:

Taxi approaching slows inexplicably to a crawl. He's within 25ft of me and is deliberately slowing to a snail's pace. I get in and realize why. He's just farted.