Update: seems the cameras are installed by a company called B-Eye Academy, which I would assume would be for the Bird’s Eye view it gets of any car attempting a bus lane maneuvere.

If you didn’t already know, the newer SBS Transit buses are also decked with as many as 9 cameras that relay live feed back to their headquarters (of course the additional cameras are also after some idiots thought it would be cool to start punching bus drivers).

Bus Lane Hours
Normal Bus Lanes (yellow)
Monday to Friday:
7.30am to 9.30am
5.00pm to 8.00pm

Full-Day Bus Lanes (red)
Monday to Saturday: 7.30am to 8.00pm

Bus lanes are not in operation during Sundays & public holidays.

16 May 2011, Singapore – For the first time, motorsport fans in Singapore can look forward to a thrilling combination of howling engines, screaming tyres, and an electrifying line-up of party beats and entertainment acts as the fourth edition of the VIP Formula Drift Singapore Presented by Achilles Radial returns on 11 and 12 June 2011 at the iconic F1 Pit Building.

In addition to showcasing the region’s top drivers, this year’s event aims to elevate the spectators’ experience with an exciting mix of the best drifting action and entertainment. Organised by ESPN STAR Sports Events Management (ESS) with the support of Title Sponsor VIP Luxury Inc, Formula Drift fans can expect more than just a motoring spectacle with an exciting line-up of musical artistes, promising to keep everyone’s engines revving late into the night.

VIP Luxury Inc is looking to make an impact with the drifting event, which has already established a strong following in Singapore. VIP Luxury Inc. will be going all out to make sure that guests are entertained throughout the evening, with VIP Rock the Rabbit Festival, pulling out all the stops by bringing down the world famous International Playboy Model DJs, DJ Roxanne Dawn and DJ Diamond to keep fans entertained for the entire night.

Nick Leese, Chairman of VIP Luxury Inc. said, “We are all extremely excited about our new partnership as it combines the energy, attitude and atmosphere that we aim to achieve at all of our VIP Luxury parties. The audience will not be disappointed with what we have lined up for them, and it will definitely set the bar in the sporting scene!”

The Rock the Rabbit – Festival will also kick off with a casting call for all prospective VIP magazine Bunnies, as well as a VIP fashion show, amidst a colourful, activity lined festival grounds. Standup comedian Kumar adds humour to this event too. The festival will also include a special VIP access only art gallery dedicated to the decades of legendary Playboy Magazine Covers, as well as famous interviews with celebrities. VIP guests will have access to the Mansion Hospitality Suites, getting the full VIP treatment serving aphrodisiac food and drinks.

“All of us at ESS are eagerly looking forward to this year’s VIP Formula Drift Singapore 2011 Presented by Achilles Radial and feel it will be the best one yet with this elite group of world-class drift drivers,” said Mr. Harvey Davis, Vice-President, ESS Events Management Group. “At the same time, we have seen how well entertainment and motorsport have gelled together and we hope that our partnership with VIP Luxury Inc will make for a unique spectator experience that will elicit a greater sense of excitement and energy next month, and elevate the Singapore leg into a prominent event in South East Asia.”

VIP Formula Drift Singapore 2011 Presented by Achilles Radial has established itself on the region’s sporting calendar, attracting top drifting talents and interest from all across Asia. This year’s event continues its strong global flair with more than 45 drivers coming from Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, China, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. With top international drivers such as Japan’s Robbie Nishida, Australia’s Joshua Boettcher and last year’s Formula Drift Asian Champion Tengku Djan Ley, the ‘Prince of Drift’, from Malaysia, this year should be one of the most competitive in the event’s history.

The Singapore event is the first of a four-leg series for Achilles Asian Drift Series which will be followed by events in Indonesia in October, Thailand in November and the year-end Grand Finale this December in Malaysia.

For more information on Formula Drift 2011 presented by Achilles please visit http://www.formuladriftasia.com
For more information on the Rock the Rabbit Festival please visit http://www.luxurymediainc.com/

Tickets will go on sale from 20 May 2011, and is available at all SISTIC outlets.

Ticket Details

Package Ticket Sale (Available from 20th May – 11 June)

Grandstand Package
VIP Formula Drift Singapore Presented by Achilles Radial Grandstand – $101.70 (after 10% discount)
Consists of: $55 Grandstand access on 11-12 June + $68 VIP Rock the Rabbit Festival on 11 June (usual price $123)

Walkabout Package
VIP Formula Drift Singapore Presented by Achilles Radial Walkabout – $74.70 (after 10% discount)
Consists of: $20 Walkabout access on 11-12 June +$68 VIP Rock the Rabbit Festival (usual price $88)

Individual Ticket Sale

VIP Formula Drift Singapore Presented by Achilles Radial (Available from 20th May – 10 June)
Grandstand $55
Walkabout $20

VIP Rock the Rabbit Festival on 11 June, from 8pm (Available from 20th May – 11 June)
$68 per ticket for the Festival

Tickets at the Door (11-12 June only)
Grandstand $65
Walkabout $30

About ESPN STAR Sports
ESPN STAR Sports is a 50:50 joint venture between two of the world’s leading cable and satellite broadcasters. As Asia’s biggest sports content provider, ESPN STAR Sports combines the strengths and resources of its parent companies – Walt Disney (ESPN, Inc.) and News Corporation Limited (STAR) – to deliver a diverse array of international and regional sports to fans across multiple platforms.

ESPN STAR Sports features a comprehensive portfolio of multimedia assets including its television networks (ESPN, STAR Sports, STAR Cricket, ESPNEWS, ESPN HD), broadband network (ESPN Player), digital content services (espnstar.com, mobileESPN), and its on-ground Event Management Group with the aim to engage and entertain sports fans anytime, anyplace.

ESPN STAR Sports showcases an unparalleled variety of premier sports from around the globe featuring some of the most iconic sports events to a cumulative reach of over 300 million viewers in Asia through its 21 television networks and 2 broadband network, each localized to deliver differentiated programming to meet diverse needs of Asian sports fans.

About DriftPac
Driftpac Pte Ltd was established with the aim of producing and conducting professional and entertaining motorsports events throughout Asia. The Formula Drift series is currently DriftPac’s main content, but there are plans to expand into the creation of instructional drift sessions and driver management.

About Luxury Media Inc
Singapore-based Luxury Media Inc Pte Ltd is publisher of VIP, a monthly magazine for males. Published under the license form Lake Shore Pres Inc, publisher of Playboy, the magazine is targeted at affluent males 28 and above and is circulated in Singapore through select book shops, newsstands and private database.

In the hustle & bustle of all that, I was attempting to build an affordable dream home in virtuality (read: The Sims), and throwing birds at pigs to quell my pique. Fact of the matter is, it was a preferred & elementary route to evasion, where I could eschew from what I had seemingly never accomplished. The stark reality fazed me, promise & potential never seemed so distant and that the pipped dream was nearly a decade ago.

While quarrying for an urge to pick up the keyboard to pen something, I was grappling whether I should monetize my blog as well – despite never having had any advert on my blogs for the past decade. The remaining forlorn visitors to my blog had evidently been on looking for xxx videos of Shou Shou and with a great mix of Search Engine Optimization, more interesting content, I could be picking up a few extra bucks. Well, with bills to pay, obligations to fulfil & a bitch to feed – every cent helps. Undoubtedly, sex sells and having Pamela Anderson or Paris Hilton xxx videos on sale will definitely net one thousands (idea!)

I somehow came unstuck as I trawled around for a new theme and direction for posts. Should I stick to what I’ve been doing all these while, attempt more foodie dedicated pages, … damn! all these didn’t matter seriously – I just needed to revitalize my brain, get the fingers moving and start working on reviving past glories.

The blog theme could wait, the re-categorization would never cease – I just needed this post to ignite a spark.

In the meantime, I do not rule out sticking some Google Ads because I’m grinning whenever the cheque comes in the post – besides the fact that they are made in USD.

Think Virgin Mobile, and then wait, no other players? The fact is that Singapore’s market is not huge, and for many of the foreign companies to compete here, they have to be sustainable. Unfortunately, the monopoly means these companies would be already coming in on an uneven footing – which explains why no one even bothered to bid for the available license in a saturated mobile market.

Which brings us to the unfortunate consumers who besides already having limited options in the market, have to contend with that the situation will not change in the next 1, 5 or 10 years. It is also deplorable in the sense that if the companies conspire to dictate, we have little choice but to follow – clearly evident in the oil cartels who dictate our pump prices.

Note that this article was actually drafted way back in March (yes I know it’s been that long!), thus please excuse the relevancy of some of the context.

The World Cup Debacle

We are 3 months or so away from the World Cup and our best chance of watching a match is to stream it live, buy an antenna and try to tap on one of the Malaysian or Indonesian channels, or drive over to Johor Bahru. Or we could just migrate to Fiji, San Marino or even Andorra, who all have matches being shown live on free-to-air (which means they don’t even have to pay to watch!)

After protracted negotiations, a joint bid was accepted by FIFA’s Asian sales representative Football Media Services and rumours that a fee between SG$20-25 million was made to secure the rights. Of course, after such a long negotiation process, the most glorious tagline our telcos could come up with was “This One’s For You” or “We Made It A Hat-trick”, haven’t they heard of copywriters?

As for this one about being for YOU, I’m sure the 23,000++ fans on the Mass Boycott Starhub/Singtel Overpriced World Cup Package Facebook group would beg to differ, seeing the costs escalate from SG$15 to S$70 (360% increase) in 4 years in a period where the global economy has boomed and then crashed. I would not delve into all this in this post, but all I would conclude is that when you are trying to get subscribers with less than a month to go before the start of the World Cup, this is the last thing you should be saying to them:

“When you say $66 is high, let me just be clear that they pay about a dollar a game to watch in the comfort of their homes. I think it is reasonable. I think they can afford it. It is less than a cup of coffee“.

Fabulous Infrastructure

Channel 255 has remained distorted for the longest time ever despite changing my cable 259438593 times. Making it play normally requires feng shui placement of the cable & leaving my foot beside the cable. 255 must be too complex for the set top box since channel 175 and below has no such problems. (drafted before April 30)

A channel renumbering didn’t seem to do the trick. With all the numbers changing to 3 digits after April 30^th, and the channel going to 856 – number complexity is obviously not an issue for the hardware.

The red camp obviously can do better, once they figure out the definition of HIGH DEFINITION. Anyone who has watched the quality of the footie they are serving up will know what I’m talking about. Upgrading their modems to retain settings should also be imperative (which can be such a bugbear when you are switching between set-top boxes).

I was pretty surprised when the incumbent Premier League right holders would offer to “host” matches on their network the moment their rivals won the rights to subsequent 3 years. Only after my first call did I understand why there was even such an offer, majority of the island hadn’t even been wired to receive feeds.

After more than 6 attempts since on enquiring when my area would be wired up, I’ve met with the same response – “Your area will be wired up by 31^st July,” was the best they could garner. Somehow or rather, I feel I’m going to miss the curtain raiser to the season come August unless I head to a bar or someone’s house which is wired.

Customer Service

Being a customer for 14 years count for nothing when they decide the best time to cut your TV & Internet connection is when you are watching a footie match at 4am in the morning (which you specially woke up for) and there was no forewarning letter or such. Best part of all is that there was little or no disruption to the normal billing cycle for the decade or so. Getting cut again a couple of days later despite assurances to the contrary by their customer service just makes you want to switch, and I thought they were getting desperate at customer retention?

Of course, even when they offer free home lines for the first time in their history and expect a backlog of customer requests, you would expect them to at least get back to your request. I’m still waiting for a response over a year on (oh wait the promotion has already ended?)

In line with the advent of social media, they actually hired someone to manage the chatter on Twitter (the poor soul manning it might be handling multiple roles for all we know) but a look at the twitter feed highlights the number people airing their woes on Twitter. What then of the people who do not air their grievances anywhere else except to their Customer Service?

The Façade of Competitiveness

The fact that we make all the Premier League stars smirker by throwing in ridiculous bids when there is clearly no need to and no market big enough to sustain it.

The Independent called the bids jaw-dropping, and here’s why: Abu Dhabi Media Company paid £200m+ to the rights a region with nearly 400 million people (202m Middle East, 195m North Africa) and ours paid a reported  £200m for a population of barely 5 million.

Theirs is evidently a market of growth with numbers to reach out to, but in saturated Singapore – it is the consumers who would have to bear the brunt with price increases expected year on year when the telcos realize that they are no longer self sustaining.

At the end of it all, the shareholders & stakeholders are the ones paying out for this ineffectual attempt to outbid each other, and it is worth reminding that plenty of Singaporeans own shares in the telcos. You just have to grasp the fact that the majority shareholders in the telcos are the same parent company, and the losing stakeholders have always been the consumers. The question thereafter is – why do we consummately continue to show the World we have such a competitive market when we evidently do not have?

Inconsequentially, the only thing that distinguishes our telcos is not their price plans, the options we have available, but the colour of their logos. Since we are on the topic of rocking the boat, I would like to thank them for making our mundane lives in Singapore more exciting, you guys totally rock. Peace out.

Contrary to popular belief though, hospitals are not a conducive environment for one to rest. Granted, I was fortunate enough to have the luxury of a two-bedder since all the four-bedders were occupied. Nothing against the wonderful care of the nurses, it’s just that you are never able to get more than 3 straight hours of rest, be it the constant temperature and blood pressure checks, to the marauding Bangladeshi who threatens to walk out before his scope, and the renovations ongoing down the hallway.

PS. I would also like to add that nothing beats living just 5 minutes away form a hospital when you are constantly having the runs.

At the end of the day, nothing beats resting at home – entertainment included!

I hate to see you cry
Lying there in that position
There’s things you need to hear
So turn off your tears and listen

Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No it won’t all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good

You know, it’s nothing new
Bad news never had good timing
But then the circle of your friends
Will defend the silver lining

Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No it won’t all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good

Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
Fear is a friend who is misunderstood
But the heart of life is good, I know it’s good

Well, perhaps I’m clueless about the true value of how much one toilet can collect, but you would need to go through at least 250 pee-ers a day just to cover the cost of the guardian.

But then again, we are the country that brought you the World Toilet Organization (who in turn bring about the World Toilet Summits and World Toilet Expo & Forum), and purportedly fine people for failing to flush the toilet after use (that would be a lot of money for our government if that law actually exists), so we do take a lot of pride in our toilets. If you need further proof of the quality toilets you can use without paying 10 cents, just check out the top 10 toilets in Singapore.

It can only be Your Singapore (where we want to make money, even when you pee)

So am I excited that it opens today? Universal Studios Singapore in Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) officially opens to the public from March 18 (today!) at 8.28am.

Having been to Ocean Park, Movie World, Lotte World, Genting Theme Park (if it actually qualifies as one), I would have to say Universal Studios has been the most wondrous of them all (not that it being the most vivid or the hot gal I saw there has anything to do with it). If their WaterWorld show is anything close to what they have at Universal Studios Blvd., then I definitely would not miss it – though the thought of squeezing the throngs of crowds amidst our wonderful weather of potential rainstorms & heatwaves make me think twice. Can someone please hook me up with a ‘cut-queue’ magic ticket?

Since the USS (that is a terrible acronym to use because it would sound like a warship) is part of an Integrated Resort – actually Casino, we should all be placing some bets, like on when would the following happen:

• A ride malfunctions due to a technical, human fault, or some divine intervention
• How people would die of thirst for not being allowed to bring in water coolers larger than 8.5” wide x 6” high x 6” deep
• How riding the Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure made you all wet despite it not raining
• Complaints about height discrimination due to the adverse height restrictions they collate from the USA
• People realizing that Goldilocks does not serve bear stew with porridge
• Alcoholics complaining about the inability to get high in the USS
• Employees peeved that they can’t refund their tickets because the boss called for a last minute assignment
• Finally, on how Singaporeans would exclaim to LOVE the USS as our national park since Singaporeans LOVE to queue (just think some stupid character in pink!)

Can’t wait to hear all the user experiences, photos & videos once everyone plows through where the Sentosa Ferry Terminal once stood.

About Universal Studios Singapore
Universal Studios Singapore is a theme park located within Resorts World Sentosa on Sentosa Island, on the little red dot called Singapore. The park is 20 hectares (49 acres) in size, occupying the eastern part of the 49 hectares (120 acres) Resorts World Sentosa.

Universal Studios Singapore is divided into seven themed zones, which are all located around a large lake in the centre of the park. The seven themes are Hollywood, New York, Sci-Fi City, Ancient Egypt, The Lost World (Jurassic Park!), Far Far Away (Wayne Rooney! Shrek) and Madagascar. In total, it features 24 different rides and attractions.

Amongst some of the highlighted attractions include:

• Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure
• Shrek 4-D Adventure
• Battlestar Galactica: Humans vs. Cylons
• Madagascar: A Crate Adventure

How to buy your Universal Studios Singapore tickets
You can purchase them online at www.rwsentosa.com, via the Resorts World Sentosa Call Centre (+65 6577 8899), or on-site at a Universal Studios ticket booth.

However, if you have yet to purchase your tickets, tickets for 18 and 19 have already been sold out with RWS reporting limited tickets left for the coming weekend as well, pertinent to the coincidental (not!) opening during the school holidays.

RWS have forewarned that certain attractions may become temporarily unavailable during the preview phase, as Universal Studios Singapore continues its technical and creative adjustments. In the meantime, ticket prices will be partially rebated with S$15 worth of shopping and dining vouchers for use at the theme park.

Universal Studios Singapore Ticket Prices
Regular tickets cost $66 for a full-day adult ticket during off-peak days, and $72 for an adult day-pass during peak periods. I don’t know how much it costs for kids because I’m no longer eligible for a kids ticket.

For more news and rumours about Universal Studios Singapore, head over to Screamscape.

… and here is Megan Fox on Twitter:

Were you expecting this Megan Fox – the one that steamed the Transformers movies?

It is of course Twitter spam, which many spammers have exploited using Twitter’s open API.