What I saw at Sitex yesterday

Please excuse my crappy iPhone photography.



It's Gandalf enjoying the view.



I think he's there because of some sort of Dell tie-in promotion with The Hobbit, although I don't see the connection between computers and Middle Earth.



But the most amazing thing I saw at Sitex yesterday was actually this turntable.



I felt like I was transported back to 1980.

You just have to plug in some computer speakers to play it. Of course you also need some vinyl records, which I believe I still have somewhere.

The price tag is $216. I actually thought of buying it, but having to replace the stylus would be a pain. And then I remembered what an ungainly invention the turntable was.

I was grateful when CD players finally became affordable in the late 80s, although it made my record collection obsolete.

And now my CD collection is obsolete. And they're rubbing it in my face by selling turntables again. It's the circle of life, man.

This is why I enjoy making a pilgrimage to every IT show four times a year despite the crowds, even when I'm not planning to buy anything. There's always something to see.

Actually, I bought an iPhone 5 cable ($17!) yesterday along with another set of earphones just because of the unusual braided cabling.



Unfortunately, one of the earpieces has already fallen apart out of the box. I thought of exchanging them, but I did not want to travel all the way from Yew Tee to Expo again. So I just glued them back together.



Fortunately, the sound quality is good enough for $48. Bassy!

(A salesman at Sitex yesterday asked me what kind of headphones I was looking for. I guess he expected me to say good bass or something like that. I said I was looking for headphones with unusual cabling and he just turned away.)

The embarrassing thing about testing headphones on my iPhone with the sales people watching is that some really old uncool songs would show up in the shuffle mode, like Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep by Middle Of The Road or anything by Abba.



So I quickly skipped through the songs to find something unembarrassing and yesterday, I discovered that Moby Dick by Led Zeppelin is ideal for testing headphones. It has a heavy bass and it's not Abba.



Incidentally, Led Zep referenced Lord Of The Rings in a few of their songs.



Gandalf lives!

We are the centre of the universe after all

Singapore is to blame for the latest Israel-Arab War?

How cool is that?

I'm, of course, referring The Huffington Post article by Jim Sleeper headlined Blame the Latest Israel-Arab War on... Singapore?, which is the latest time waster my Facebook "friends" (and probably yours too) have felt compelled to share along with "rebuttals" to the article.

It's like me getting over-excited that Singapore is mentioned in US movies and TV shows, such as Pirates Of The Caribbean and Suburgatory.



Or the Singapore press re-reporting that a Singapore actor had joined a US TV series without pointing out that the series had been a ratings disaster and would most likely be cancelled, which it was a week later.

For The Huffington Post to mention Singapore is almost as exciting to some Singaporeans (like me) as MC Hammer dancing Gangnam Style to the Koreans.



And not only is Singapore mentioned in The Huffington Post, we are discussed in connection to the biggest international news of the week apart from US president Barack Obama hitting on the female leaders of South-east Asia.



The headline "Blame the Latest Israel-Arab War on... Singapore?" alone is worth the price of admission. The inference is that our little island could be the cause of the Middle East conflict.

It's like a headline from The Onion.

Hey, if Singapore is not the villain in the next James Bond movie, I'm throwing out my 007 DVD boxed set (and replacing it with Blu-Ray).

Ken Watanabe can play Lee Kuan Yew and Chin Han can be Oddjob.



The article itself is a fun alternative history thing, sorta like War World Z but without the zombies.



If nothing else, along with Captain Jack and Tom Waits, Mr Jim Sleeper has reaffirmed what I long suspected - we in Singapore are indeed the centre of the universe.



Who needs Psy?

Fly Air Singapore & meet the queen of Singapore in Suburgatory

Remember the third Pirates Of The Caribbean movie At World’s End?



Remember how thrilling it was that Singapore was featured so prominently in a big-budget Hollywood movie?

Remember how disappointing and surreal it was, yet somewhat expected and amusing, that the Singapore depicted in the movie bore zero resemblance to the real Singapore?

I mean, Chow Yun Fat is married to Singaporean. Couldn’t he have thrown in some lahs and mehs in the movie?



He could’ve said something like: “Aiyah, Captain Jack, why you so like that one?”

Anyway, I was thrilled, disappointed and amused that Singapore was mentioned in another US show this month, this time the sitcom Suburgatory.

It was in a scene where a character named Dahlia was talking to her high school friends.

Here is the dialogue.

Dahlia: My dad is getting remarried, you guys, to a super cool air stewardess on Air Singapore. Her name is Wan Er.

Friend: Wan Er?

Dahlia: Wan Er is like the name Dahlia over there. All the hot bitches have it

Friend: Is Wan Er really pretty?

Dahlia: No. She’s gorgeous. She’s basically a Singaporean supermodel and I’m going to be maid of honour at the wedding. And we’re going to sell the pictures to the Asian Internet for $10 million.

Friends: Ooh... wow ...

Dahlia: And I’m going to go with them on their honeymoon and there’s a fairly good chance that shortly thereafter I would be named queen of Singapore.

I think that’s the most anyone on a US show has talked about Singapore without actually coming to Singapore.

Okay, let’s go through the departures from reality one by one.

The name Wan Er is plausible except that it was pronounce “One Air” on the show, which made it less plausible.

But the line about all the hot bitches in Singapore having the name is clearly a joke because all the hot bitches in Singapore actually have the name Jane.

The queen of Singapore line is obviously also a joke because the only Singapore royalty I know is Zoe Tay, the queen of Caldecott Hill, and Kumar, the queen of queens.

But the most glaring mistake, of course, is that there’s no such thing as Air Singapore.

I mean, even if you Google Air Singapore, you’re going to get Singapore Airlines.

Could TV writers be even too lazy to Google? I know I was, but then I wasn’t paid as much as TV writers in the US.

With the Internet and globalisation, Hollywood just can’t get away with this sort of isolationist ignorance anymore.

On the other hand, it may not be a mistake. It could be that the producers intentionally chose to make it a fictional airline to avoid legal problems.

Then why not make it a fictional country too? Like Singalasia or something.

Then the writers could make up whatever they want about the country.

They could have hot bitches named One Air. They could have a monarchy-based government.

They could have fluffy clouds of foam drifting onto the roads on Deepavali morning. No, wait, that actually happened.



But I guess the writers decided on Singapore because it’s a country that American viewers have heard of but don't know enough about to know that there’s no such thing as Air Singapore.

What was weird was another scene in the same episode of Suburgatory where Dahlia spoke in English to Wan Er on Skype, who replied in actual Mandarin, not fake Hollywood chong-chong gibberish Mandarin.

So the producers were diligent enough to hire an actress who could speak Mandarin (but looked nothing like a supermodel, by the way), yet not enough to find out that a Singaporean air stewardess would most likely reply to Dahlia in English - lahs and mehs are optional.

On Suburgatory, it seemed that Singapore is still in China.

And what’s this about the “Asian Internet”?

All is forgiven, Chow Yun Fat.

- Published in The New Paper, 18 November 2012