Sales, Social and Tech

On the rare occasion of reading The Straits Times on a Saturday, I came across this rather amusing news of how an ATM was stolen from the Malaysia Subang train station in 3 minutes.  It has been shared on Facebook and retweeted on Twitter couple of times, so I decided to put it up in the blog here for immortality or as long as Google keeps blogspot alive.  One friend commented, "And it was done in 3 minutes! How on earth could they do that? A simple ATM transaction would take longer than that."  My reply was that the bank should hire the thieves to speed up the transaction time. 

Must be a first for 2011 as SPH’s online site, AsiaOne, publishes rumours about President Obama announcing UFO visits in February 2011 as news. Wrote AsiaOne , American paranormal website All News Web said that US President Barack Obama would be making comments soon about US contact with aliens. The comments about UFO visits and other extra-terrestrial contact would be made within the next month, it claimed. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research and development office for the US Department of Defense, was said to have given the go-ahead for the announcement. As one reader commented, “And seriously, you're running the risk of...alienating your readers who expect real news”.

I wonder if this is just a coincidence but “one-third” is a favourite fraction used in announcing everything Singapore. In the recent news about Singapore transportation , But Dr Lim was disappointed the public transport fund to distribute vouchers to low-income families to cope with fares rises, is not being activated since one-third of commuters will see an increase of 31 cents a week. Of foreign service staff passing English proficiency test , Only one in three foreigners pass the Service Literacy Test (SLT) started by the Manpower Ministry in May this year to “improve” the standards of spoken English among foreign workers in the service industry, according to a Sunday Times report. However, it seems like “one-third” isn’t Singaporeans’ favourite number. I did a Google search and found that “half of Singaporeans” is more popular than “one-third of Singaporeans”. One third of Singaporeans came in second but slowly catching up with   “half of Singapo...

Were you travelling on the West bound SMRT train 1048 on May 18, 2010? Did you see the graffiti on the train? It is now reported that a vandal/s broke into the SMRT train deport at Changi Depot a day before and sprayed their work of art on the train. To make things worst, the graffiti was first sited and “Youtubed” before it was identified by SMRT officials to be the work of vandals. This can be seen that the police report was made on May 19, 2010. SMRT passengers are always bombarded with an advertisement on the announcement screen for the need to be vigilant and to keep Singapore MRT safe from terrorism. Ironically, it was SMRT that was not keeping its train and Singaporeans safe from terrorism as seen from this vandal incident. What if the break in of the depot were made by terrorists instead of graffiti artists? The consequence would also been worst. Also, the discovery of the graffiti was given noticed after the Youtube video went viral. Is this also against SMRT reg...

Burma’s reported intend to build a nuclear weapon is scary news. I can only hope that Singapore leaders take a leading role in ASEAN to ensure that we do not have a Cold War or have to face a nuclear holocaust in this region. This news greatly concerns me and my children’s generation that I have decided to take a break from the usual blogging of social media news. Assuming that Burma accidentally pressed THE button and somehow directed a nuclear missile at Orchard Road, the effects would be disastrous for Singapore. The nuclear simulator (below) shows the radius of damage if a 140kt hit the heart of Singapore. Almost a 1/3 of Singapore would be gone. If it is assumed that the Burmese government have no intention to target Singapore because of our friendly relations, any accident or testing of nuclear bombs in Burma itself will have sever impact to our food sources. This is seen from the Chernobyl disaster which was highlighted in Wikipedia that after 24 years since th...

The news broke in The Jakarta Globe yesterday that Thailand has blocked US social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Thanks to syndication and RSS feeds, this news spread quickly across the cybersphere. It even appeared in the Singapore online news site Today . When I read of this on Twitter, I asked a friend in The Bangkok Post if this is true. According to this journalist friend, a fire at an Internet gateway in Thailand caused sites to be slow or even redirect users to Thailand’s Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology (MICT) website and clarified with the Today journalist who tweeted about the news above in Today. Though the Jakarta Globe has clarified that the there is no evidence of censorship, the clarification has not been posted on these sites. Here lies the problem which I read in the book “ Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media ” by Nick Davies of the reliance of syndicate...