Dreamer of the Year
TODAY (29 Dec) letter writer Mayur Vora -- who is probably not a local -- has obviously not encountered enough Singaporean drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, bus interchange and train station queue-cutters, and (scariest of all) mall zombies who walk INTO you like you don't exist, to imagine that dystopian locals will co-exist in public spaces in an orderly and efficient fashion. Here's his Utopia-inspired letter headlined "A 'Keep Left' campaign for pedestrians?":
I refer to the letter "Cyclists hold the key to their rights in S'pore" (Dec 23) and suggest that there should be a "Keep Left" campaign for pedestrians.
As a pedestrian, I have had bad experiences with cyclists, especially at East Coast Park and also at MRT stations, where many pedestrians criss-cross the footpaths.
When I was in Kuala Lumpur, many pedestrians kept left. In New York, they kept right (like it is traffic). We need to educate our public, so that pedestrians and cyclists may have a smooth walk/ride.
Simple signs along the footpaths and at MRT stations would convey the message. Cyclists could then overtake on the right.
Seniors who use the railings for support at overhead bridges would not need to struggle with oncoming pedestrians, too, if there were "Keep Left" footprint signs.
All I can say is... dream on!
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Dork of the Year (Male category):
If your family name is Weiner and you are a politician in America, and even if you are a cocksure fella, you won't want to go public with your pubic, and thereby feed the media frenzy. But there's got to be at least one contrarian. TODAY's writer (28 Dec) had so much fun with the topic below, headlined "Twitter is for twits", I'll let the write-up speak for itself:
Former New York Representative Anthony Weiner provided the, well, biggest gift to the political sex scandal pool by providing a visual aid to everyone. Weiner publicly tweeted a picture of a weiner to a 21-year-old woman by mistake, when he had meant to direct-message the photo.
Realising his mistake, he then lied about his Twitter account being hacked. The ploy worked... until a blogger announced that he had more sexually explicit photos of Weiner in his possession.
The gym-toned politician eventually admitted the appendage in question was his. Bowing to pressure, he resigned from Congress. His pregnant wife, however, stood by him and gave birth to a little Weiner, Jordan, on Dec 21.
Weiner note: Google for the slang meaning of this word if clueless. Likewise, Google for the original meaning of "Dork", which is most apt for the next award, below.
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Dork of the Year (Female category):
These words above were attributed to one Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, who appeared on a US television reality show called Jersey Shore. In response, Mr Simon Boxall, a marine expert and oceanographer, came forth to spew out: "It would take a lot of whale sperm to make the sea that salty."
This ST story highlights the "bad science" gaffes of other celebrities as well. The London-based Sense About Science (SAS) campaign had named them on its annual list of what it considers the year's worst abuses against science.
SAS has a very informative website. Click below for more on the celebrity gaffes, as well as other nuggets from the site:
http://www.senseaboutscience.org/resources.php/82/2011-celebrities-and-science
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Dorks of the Year (Clueless Singaporeans category):
This next award is dedicated to the amazing folk who gave weird answers to this question, "Who sculpted the original Merlion statue?", posed to people out on the streets in a recent episode of The Noose television show ("We are Singaporeans" segment).
I too did not know the answer (it is Mr Lim Nang Seng, who completed the famous tourism icon in 1972) but I would not hazard answers like "Sir Stamford Raffles" or "Construction"! Sigh.
But, come to think about it, one should not be too surprised, since two of the top three leisure pursuits of Singaporeans are eating and shopping. In third place is surfing the Web, which might potentially make us all smart Alecks, if we were trawling for knowledge... Haha! Here's insing.com's story on the survey of more than 10,000 Singaporeans on their preferred leisure activities:
http://news.insing.com/tabloid/top-s-porean-pastimes-unveiled/id-bd233f00
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Final award....
'Die, Die, Dividends or Bus(t)!'
This headline is from an ST report on Wednesday (28 Dec). The timing for SMRT is unfortunate, given the recent series of train line malfunctions.
Incidentally, I was going through my collection of older newspaper cuttings when I came across this (undated) TODAY blurb:
Finally, here's another insing.com item, headlined "Company sells MRT survival kit". Have a good laugh:
http://news.insing.com/tabloid/company-sells-mrt-survival-kit/id-03243f00
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