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bert's blog v1.21 Powered by glolg Programmed with Perl 5.6.1 on Apache/1.3.27 (Red Hat Linux) best viewed at 1024 x 768 resolution on Internet Explorer 6.0+ or Mozilla Firefox 1.5+ entry views: 2856 today's page views: 124 (11 mobile) all-time page views: 3242722 most viewed entry: 18739 views most commented entry: 14 comments number of entries: 1214 page created Wed Apr 9, 2025 08:43:36 |
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- current events - Correction Notice I was minding my own business, sweating over experimental methodology, when a strange-yet-familiar-looking hamster approached me.  I beg your pardon Me: I haven't seen you around, are you one of Mr. Ham's friends? Unknown Hamster: Pray let me introduce myself; I am Esq. Pants O'Sue, honoured to be the attorney-on-retainer representing the eminent political commentators Messrs Ahm A. Hoffhamm and Jambon Cabotin-Cuisse. Me: They haven't been around. Is anything the matter? Esq. Pants: *flings himself to the ground and starts kowtowing* They retract everything they have said about the ministerial salary review, life, the universe, and everything, and unreservedly and sincerely apologize, along with eighteen generations of their family hence and thence! Please don't sue them until they are bankrupt, or get them to go under the knife for a lesser sentence! Me: Wait, wait, I think you've got stuff mixed up - I'm their sometime broadcaster, so I would more likely be a co-defendant if anything. *Uncomfortable silence* Esq. Pants: *dusts himself off* Nothing happened and you didn't see anything, did you, sir? Me: Nothing at all. So what have they gotten themselves into? Esq. Pants: Well, strictly off the record, they might have insinuated, or have been construed to have, ah, wrongly misinterpreted to perhaps suggested that the ministerial salary review committee worked backwards from political need in coming up with the new payscales, which Messrs Ahm and Jambon in fact didn't, and actually never said at all. Me: Yes, yes, get on with it. Esq. Pants: Just last week, it was revealed in Parliament that, as a matter of fact, the committee paid S$860 000 to a human resource consultancy to come up with the 30% cut, and therefore it is factually impossible for the committee to have invented the figures by themselves. Once again, my clients offer their most humble apologies. Uh, not to you. On an entirely unrelated note, Herr Ahm would like me to pass you a stack of his namecards, and wonders if you might be as good as to drop his name as and when other salaries would be reviewed, or sprawling waterfront areas renamed. His firm charges about S$200 000 only on average, but I'm sure a large discount can be negotiated on a case-by-case basis. Herr Ahm would also like to state that one can certainly get a two-room flat on S$1000 (or even less) a month*, in contradiction to what the online peanut gallery is unfairly saying, thanks to the foresight of the incumbent government, about which he never said anything bad about, ever. [*Small print: Must get lucky in the ballot, have retirement savings completely wiped out, never fall sick, and then subsist on bread and plain water for the remainder of one's life]  What the guy said (Source: Somewhere on the Internet) This includes the completely necessary and over-the-board billion-dollar public transport subsidy, which is totally not nationalization of costs with privatized profits, apropos tearing down of vile Opposition scams like creating a more inclusive society and decisiveness in holding by-elections to uphold the representative basis of democracy - like they would ever pussyfoot around on an issue of principle - which are all well-reasoned visionary plans and totally not populist U-turns. They won't be taxing capital gains, for example, for good reason as the really rich will just walk out with wallet in hand, and the billions made from the integrated resorts, a large chunk from struggling locals, was a clairvoyant decision that surely won't become a lose-lose situation when the bigger boys roll out their own dens of iniquity! Me: Erm, the man in the article went from paying $44/month in rental, to cleaning out his CPF and paying nearly twice that monthly, without factoring in other homeowner fees, for equivalent lodgings, which he's more or less also renting in practice since it's on a 99-year no-promises lease anyway, and which he may have to pay a hefty levy on if he ever wants to sell up. I'm not sure that's an improvement. And what's wrong with doing popular things if they happen to be right? Esq. Pants: *gets off handphone* Herr Ahm is considering suing you for your seditious comments, but is willing to hold off if you wire the stated amount of funds to this offshore account. Good day, sir! Fake It Till Make It Passed the time waiting for my brother's 21st birthday party (held at NSRCC) to begin in earnest by flipping through the first few of my latest loans, The Fake Factor, Confessions of a Conjuror, Aces and Kings and Behind The Brushstrokes: Tales from Chinese Calligraphy. Given that I've been paying late fees to the library without fail for months on end, I intended to be entertained, and entertained I was. I was soon reminded my my poor photogenic qualities, though the cake was rich, the balloons big (and dear - maybe I should have tried to pilfer some helium from the Physics dept... just joking) and the fried rice quite acceptable (Yangzhou fried rice happens to be mentioned on page 119 of Calligraphy - it's nothing short of amazing how many connections one can inadvertently make between random works!) [N.B. After taking the term "抛锚" for granted for so long on the radio in relation to car breakdowns, it struck me that I didn't know exactly what it meant, which turns out to be "drop anchor", applied metaphorically. Chinese can be hard.] It would probably have been natural for FAKEBERT to drop in for The Fake Factor, but as he firmly reminded me, he doesn't do reviews. Six pages in, I was heartened to find a first reference to Singapore, which I am proud to announce, happens more than one might think, and sometimes in the unlikeliest of titles - quote: "...a British company killed air travelers by supplying fake aircraft parts to Singapore and the Kenyan coffee crop was devastated by a substandard counterfeit fungicide from Europe..." [N.B. Very interestingly, while a search for that incident brought up nothing specific, Google Books did return an extract from the epilogue of Howes' 1996 book Cross-cultural consumption: global markets, local realities: "Singapore, for example, was sold fake aircraft parts by a British firm, with fatal consequences. Kenya was sold a fake brand-name fungicide by a European company, resulting in a significant loss of the country's coffee crop...", evidence for some unearthly link between local aircraft and African caffeine?] The main thrust that I picked up was that buying fakes generally means either being ripped off on quality (if unintentional) or belittling the priority and contributions of the creators (if intentional) [N.B. Sidenote: Apple has confirmed their positioning as a luxury brand here by not stooping to hawking their wares at IT Shows, where the uncool might get their hands on one with *gasp* bundled freebies; while they have run into some trouble with the iPad name in China, this pales in comparism to the case of Cartier, who sued an entrepreneur who basically imitated their entire range in Mexico, and lost in a wave of partisan support, at least until the mastermind made the mistake of travelling to France, where he was arrested)] Where it gets kind of murky is when the fakes are about as good as the originals, such that even authorised dealers have to pore over the item for minutes before making a judgment on authenticity, possibly as it is actually "cabbage", a term referring to extras made out of leftover material for the originals (which some may have taken too far). Other times, the spirit but not the exact design is copied, which can be taken advantage of with a clear conscience for standard cuts at the right places (which however can go overboard) It may, for example, be possible to order replica football jerseys from Thailand at a quarter the price of the original, even after including postage - I have had the opportunity of handling a few of these in my time, and have not been able to reliably tell the difference from official store-bought wares; this is sometimes even acceptable, with the book revealing that US Government Customs openly allows up to one counterfeit to be imported per traveller per month! It is not that having a name and being outrageously expensive automatically signifies good taste, clearly, and the author mentions a "chunky, silver colored thing with a shiny blue face, a case decorated with hundreds of tiny fake diamonds and three small fishes studded with blue, yellow and pink sparkly stones" which she bought for research, secure in the knowledge that no watch company could have dreamt up such a vulgar and unwearable thing. Well, what do you know? (list price: about US$10000) Mr. Ham: Did I hear the word scam? I rushed all the way back from Mandai, where I was sabotaging my competitors in the cute stakes, after picking that up. Me: Your senses are... preternatural. Mr. Ham: Can't blame me, it's in my blood. Well, all your talk has made me reminisce about the good ol' days when I was an apprentice gangster on exchange in Venice. Made a lot of friends, made a lot of euros, lost a lot of friends from which those euros came... those were the days. We moved those handbags and sunglasses with a speed that would make a Marine quartermaster proud, I tell you!  Mr. Ham with his mates in Venice, in his younger days (Original source: flickr.com) Me: It's actually mentioned on page 51 that the vendors were let off from the offence of "passing off" as genuine goods, as they successfully argued that only an idiot would believe that she was buying the real article at a tenth of the price. Mr. Ham: Tarnation! If I had but known, I wouldn't have had to run away from the police at such pace then! Me: One final tidbit to take to heart: As an experiment, a wannabe writer submitted a 1969 National Book Award winner in its entirety, but under a fake name, to a total of 27 publishers and literary agents, in 1979. All rejected it. Reputation, or branding, does matter, it seems. Mr. Ham: Speaking of scams, there's this little gem which I've always loved - free mail:  Well now (Source: Somewhere on the Internet) Me: I suppose it could work, but is almost certainly very illegal. Mr. Ham: You'll be thanking me the next time you need to send a letter to save the world, but are clean out of stamps. Signs Of Science Me: First off, admission profiles for computer science have steadily been improving, from BCC/B in 2009, to BBB/B in 2010 and now to ABB/B, which I would say bodes well for the subject, or alternatively that games are getting more addictive. Either way, it calls for a pat on the head. I've got to hand it to the professors, they nearly always give near-immediate email replies at 2 a.m. (not taking anything away from those from other faculties) Mr. Ham: A quick quiz: When warm water and cool water are placed in a freezer at the same time, which freezes first? Me: It should be the cooler water by the textbook, no? By common sense, assuming that the temperature of water is memoryless, the warm water should take some time to reach the original temparature of the cool water, and then continue cooling at the same rate - but by then, the cool water is in the lead, one which it will not relinquish. Mr. Ham: Silly human hasn't heard of the Mpemba effect, i.e. common sense is not always what it seems! And you passed your Physics? Me: Allow me to introduce you to a new invention - the vortex ring pepper spray gun. Mr. Ham: Ow ow ow! Ish notch fair! I won't teach you how to generate Pacman sound effects, *achoo* thanks to that. Me: There's always Google (or Bing, or not? I'm still waiting for Excel to make removing formatting when pasting text the default, or at least have it as an easily-accessible option, instead of forcing users to resort to external programs) The latest issue of TIME has an article on "Food that lasts forever", describing how professors of food science and military researchers are feverishly working to extend the shelf life of food. Would they take it badly if they knew that McDonald's has cracked it decades ago?  Research funded by the Ham Foundation Me: And to close this section, Mr. Robo will present his only-partly tongue-in-cheek extrapolation of the smartphone/tablet trend:  Adios Villas-Boas The Chelsea coach has been sacked after 256 days in the hotseat, after being undersold by his senior players (some unintentionally), who were unhappy that they were (rightly) being phased out after casting jealous eyes at the likes at Giggs (38 years old) and Scholes (37 years old) up north. I can hardly see the new guy, if he isn't Mourinho, having a much better time of it against such player power. A happier tale has been brewing up north, with the oft-unjustly-maligned Carlos Tevez nearing a comeback for Manchester City, not even a month after accusing his manager of calling him a dog, which should bring some warm fuzzies to a certain PRC student here ahead of his disciplinary hearing, where loud tut-tuts and much finger-wagging is expected. United are still winning against all odds, nowhere more aptly illustrated than against Spurs, where they conspired to go three goals up despite being second-best in most departments. But hey, it's Spurs, nothing suspicious at all. Arsenal are meanwhile staging an improbable fightback, carried on the back of a certain magical Robin van Persie. They are now just four points behind with 11 games to go, so there may yet be a St. Totteringham's this year. Mr. Ham (2452/2400 seeds): Fulham 5-0 last week, easy peasy! Poor Tottenham need some belief in them, I'll back them to beat Everton (at 2.20) with my full hundred seeds! FAKEBERT (2345.5/2400 seeds): Spreading it out today - 50 on Aston Villa to draw Fulham (at 3.05), 25 on Sunderland to draw Liverpool (3.35) and 25 on Chelsea to draw Stoke (4.50) Next: Like Magic
anonymous said... y u dun put the song she sing in the previous year
FAKEBERT said... what song ching chong ding dong ling long?
anonymous said... ching chong...ling dong..ding dong..
FAKEBERT said... dong... dong... dong fangzhuo... (currently with Hunan Xiangtao)
anonymous said... wtf is hunan xiangtao is that mean chinese schlong
Mr. Ham H. Let said... offhand, it sounds like lakesouth freshpeach
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