Conquer your fear…

and I promise you, you’ll conquer your death!

RARRRWWW!!

Big words spoken by Colin Farrell’s Alexander. Lame movie btw. Trailer promises big battles. In truth, the whole movie sucks. Battles? 20 minutes max, total. Anyway I digress.

My topic of the day is about losers and winners. Alexander was a BIG winner. He conquered the known world by age 25. However, despite his prowess, he couldn’t muster it in bed and died of grief after his gay lover succumbed to typhoid. So he was both a winner and a loser. Local news this week featured quite a few winners and losers. Let’s start with Singapore Idol.

It was finally revealed that Taufik beat Sly by 200,000 votes. Big Whoop. The big winner? SingTel at 50c per SMS vote, about $1.5mil. The runner-up? Sly. HUH? What, didn’t I say Taufik beat Sly by 200k votes? Yep, but picture this: One singer gets to perform cover songs at a popular world-renowned Taiwanese singer’s concert, the other performs at a local charity show. Who’s the bigger winner here? Seriously tho, in the world of pop idolotry, Sly works, Taufik doesn’t. Think Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken. Loser and winner.

Next on the block, the full impact of the Mediacrap-Mediawerks merger has been revealed. SPH glaringly shifted allegiance by assessing each and every ex-SPH celeb like so much cattle. More’s the pity, esp Lynn Poh’s assessment of being a dime a dozen. Wasn’t she together with luminaries like Ix Shen and Ericia Lee the next big things? Speaking of Ericia Lee, another BIG loser, with her boytoy and sister getting jobs but not she. What’s she gonna do now, model underwear? Two things for sure, each and every ex-SPH star likely got contracts with big caveats, ie no more limelight (eg Kim Ng and Bryan Wong) and Mediacrap got a whole stable of talent for cheap. Winner? Status quo circa 4 years ago.

Of coz there’s the Star awards and ST’s fashion hits and misses. Boring.

Big loser, MOE. It was discovered that a Chinese language teacher for 5 years actually faked her credentials and whatnot. The Chinese Embassy verified that the teacher’s creds were fake after an investigation by the Immigration authorities. The big loser part? After the creds were <b>already verified as fake</b>, the MOE statement (sorry can’t get a quote) was that its next move was to verify the teacher’s credentials. WTF? Where are the brains “moulding the future”? Come to think of it, if TVD could find the quote, it’ll make the Stupidometer quote of the year.

Finally, the big losers of the week: 2 bank robbers and a dead body in Balestier.

http://www.newsintercom.org/index.php?itemid=201

Bad News Good News

Whoa, after a brief stint overseas I’m finally back to this balmy land we call home and I’m raring to go! Was catching up on the local news scene and one particular issue stuck in my head like a painful thorn up my arse.

I was intruiged (at best) to read that GLCs like MediaCrap and Media(doesnot)Works have merged. SPH (the parent company of MediaWorks cited “big” losses in the TV (Channels U and I) and small print (Streats) business. Other GLC news include yet again SPH posting huge $500 mil profits for the last fiscal year (I think, or was it quarter?) and Temasek Holdings coming out of their shell to post financial figures for the last 30 years.

You know, everytime I read news about our GLCs posting profits, I never feel a sense of pride or joy, which should have been the proper (or patriotic?) emotions. Instead I shake my head. It’s been a seemingly Singaporean thing to do this two-step mambo: step one, announce cutbacks, price increases, layoffs, bad news; step two, announce huge profits, print pictures of grinning CEOs, write platitudes on the financial genius of the running manangement, good news.

I caught a glimpse of this new comedy series called The Office, where the boss is this sex-maniac loser called Brent. In this trailer I saw him announcing, “The bad news is, some of you will be getting the sack. The good news is, I’m getting promoted!” This follows a sheepish grin from Brent, camera pans to the employees’ glum faces then he continues, “You’re still thinking about the bad news aren’t you?”

Hell yeah!

As a supposed commercial entity, SPH made $500mil but lost $40mil on the TV and free-print biz. 10%. As a whole I feel it’s a pittance. As Singaporeans we desperately want variety in our TVs and news print. 10% doesn’t seem like a very strong justification for selling off the bad bits to MediaCrap. However, as a supposed commercial entity it makes financial sense to sell off bad bits, like what most real big companies do.

Unfortunately this brings into the fray the whole idea of commercialising all our essential services like TV, print, transport, etc. Singapore is just too small to even contemplate this, much less create fake competition amongst the GLCs. Please stop the fat-cat privatisation business, bring back government-run services with balanced fiscal sheets. Return government fiscal/budget surpluses to the masses instead of annually fattening the bank accounts of the super-rich.

http://www.newsintercom.org/index.php?itemid=162

Singapore Idol: The ratings scandal

Appeared as an article in the Weekend Today (I think) but it doesn’t seem to be widely discussed online.

One of the biggest draws of the 2nd episode of Singapore Idol was the masked man known as Banana Man (or more correctly called Watermelon Man). Singapore Idol episode one was a smashing success judging by ratings and everyone expected more of the same with episode two. Afterall, everyone loves to see people embarrass themselves in public (come on admit it, after seeing all the “malu” cases, we quickly lose interest).

When episode 2 came along, it was, shall we say, mildly entertaining at best. Nowhere near the 1st episode. But the appearance of Banana oops Watermelon Man made it worth it. In fact the show devoted about 5 minutes of airtime on him (talk about your 5 minutes of fame!).

Then it was exposed that Watermelon Man didn’t even make it past the 1st round and never got to see the 4 judges! Then how did the infamous line by Ken Lim (roughly “take the mask off or get out”) happen? Well, apparently the studio made a recording and let the 4 judges watch it, then record their reactions and manufactured the whole scene!

If Mediacrap is capable of this, makes you wonder if they are capable of more, such as plants, to jack up the ratings. Afterall they must have paid mucho pesos to get the franchise rights, they are definitely wanting to get the investment back.

Really puts so much doubt into Singapore’s attempt at reality TV, when in reality, it’s not.

http://www.newsintercom.org/index.php?itemid=106