que pasa

I'm one of those silly consumers who wants to be lied to.  Like, "if you use this product, you will become such and such."  Or "if you sign up for this program, you can such and such."  "Look at me, I used this, and here are the results..."

Hence my surprise when I saw this picture of a gym instructor on an adidas roadshow, the woman wearing a mike and in the orange tank top.  She was fat!  Ok she wasn't overweight, but I always imagined that if you were going to be a fitness instructor (or even pretend to be one), you would have none of those tell tale fats... like a belly, or the lack of waist.  I mean, there's a difference between muscle bulk and fats.

Maybe she just gave birth.  You know, I don't even know why these things get to me.  Sigh.

Tried to load a video link from youtube this morning.  Don't work.  Realized the powers-that-be have gone and cut off access to youtube.  WHY WHY WHY????  argh.

So some of you may know that Singapore has these government-related dating services.  It's supposed to be for the good of society you know, encourage marriage, likely have more kids.  And if marry of same intellect, then maybe good genetic base for smarter kids. 

Anyway, the government knows if your marital status.  And they do try.  Like so.

My dad emailed me the other that I had received a letter from the newly combined entity that was SDU and SDS (those government-related dating services).  He even went as far as to email me the website, my userID and password as well as the letter reminder to change my password in 30 days.  (I guess that's his way of hinting to me)

So I couldn't resist, I logged on.  It's like Personals for Singaporeans, on government money.  They require me to fill out every single field when I register, as if they didn’t know enough about me already.  Didn't spend too long on the website, but my first reaction was, "Ugh, so tacky." Perhaps it was the name that put me off - Lovebyte. 

But you can't fault them for trying.  Gotta respect them for their perseverance, keeping up with times and all that.  Can you imagine if your KPI was the number of weddings net of divorces, or something similar?  I don't want that job.

Oh, the website is lovebyte.org.sg.  So if you're single, Singaporean, and haven't received your account information yet, you should go sign up.  Maybe you'll meet someone nice.  All the best!

This is for Jukebox who still hasn't gotten into Facebook.  This is also for myself as I wonder why I'm still on Facebook.

Click here to read article.

It's rare to see miracles attributed to Papa and publicly announced too.  How marvelous!

For once as part of my work I actually get to test games.  I always thought that would be cool.  Except that I seem to have to do this after office hours because that's when most of the players come in to play.

I'm trying to find out more about teenage/kid virtual worlds.  Like Club Penguin, Habbo in the states.  In China, like Club Mole and Club Fish. 

The concept with these virtual worlds is that you enter them as an avatar, and then you just walk around exploring the various scenes available, play games (either vs the system or against another player) to earn points/currency, pick up treasure chests, and then use the game currency to enhance your gaming experience.  Not quite the same as MMORPGs because these are non-violent, the target age group is 7-15.

I spent 4 hours playing Club Mole and Club Fish this weekend.  With exception of the fact that they're in Cfinese and it takes me longer to figure out how to play games and do things, I actually enjoyed it.  Somewhat addictive actually.  These virtual get updated with new content/games and upgraded with new functions regularly. 

If you guys ever have the time, and want to know what I will be preoccupied with from now on, go check them out.  They're great for time-killers too.  Besides, I could really use extra feedback.  Thanks!

Honestly, I wasn't surprised this was going to happen – that the original intention to have unrestricted internet access in China during the Olympics was an incredible notion and would soon be overturned.

I must admit though, that I don't know what the big deal is.  Perhaps it's because I come from a country where the press serves the government and there’s censorship, so you could say I'm already used to such "oppression" and "limited rights".  But I don't feel particularly oppressed, ignorant or feel that my rights have been violated.

I can see why China feels that it must control the internet, but I am not condoning it.  I just don't see why the foreign press seriously thought they would have unrestricted internet access in the first place; and second, why they think that they shouldn't be subject to the nation’s laws, including the rules and regulations of the internet. 

Isn't it conventional wisdom that "In Rome, do as the Romans do?"  You wanna get into somebody else's territory, then you should be prepared to play by their rules.  Welcome to China.

Ok, sorry if I seem insensitive, but this girl's name is really funny.
But it was so bad that I support her for fighting for a name change.
She won by the way.

I guess it's kinda clichéd for me to put up an article like this – that marriage isn't for everyone and everyone shouldn't feel like they need to get married.

The article says, "There is... a commonly held notion that to get married is to 'settle down', in contrast to being unmarried suggesting that the latter is to be saddled with an 'unsettled' state of life."

A friend and I were talking yesterday a bit about settling down and I think this quote describes pretty well how we felt.  I've always thought that marriage is very hard work and a big transition. (But lately I'm thinking that having kids is an even bigger change and takes much more effort to cope with.)

I think that it's worth the time and process to find (or wait) for the right person, instead of settling for who you obviously know to be less than the key criteria you really want. Granted, we don’t know who we’re going to meet in the future and it’s very possible that we might never find that "right" person. But when it comes to the human with whom you expect to find rest, comfort and support, I think we should give due respect and serious consideration to nagging feelings (i.e. your gut) that today's decision to get hitched is going to come back and haunt us later.

Have relationships, by all means, because that's how you know somebody. But don't get married until you know you want to come home to this person everyday for the rest of your life, because reversing that decision is very painful and hurtful.

After I read this article, I'm starting to wonder if I'm mucking things up for myself by blogging.  Will you please let me know if I've gone too far?  I might not like what you say but I will appreciate your checking me.

And for you momsies and pappies who blog about your kidsies, beware your kids eventual ability to read and search the internet.  I suppose one way of working around this is to restrict who can read your blog.