How do restaurants make you choose the more profitable option on the menu? A look at the cunning ploys that menu designers employ. Some dos - puting unprofitable items away in some corner, giving two pricing options. One don't - putting items and their prices in a column where the prices can be easily compared.
Problem is - if we know these tricks we think we can outsmart the restaurants, but what if they've already outsmarted us by pretending that there is an art to menus and pricing? What if everything is overpriced?
21 January 2010
19 January 2010
Science, Superstition, and Soccer
Earlier this evening I was at the Science Center attending the launch of two new titles in its natural history guidebook series. Many of the familiar faces from the biodiversity scene were there, but an interesting experience was standing in a circle with scientists and science educators and listening in on the following conversation:
Given that the various numbers of True Singapore Ghost Stories have been consistently been bestselling (fiction!) titles in this country, shouldn't be too surprising that these stories are always circulating in some form.
*****
The other great Singaporean pursuit being soccer, I also heard about this great short film called Tak Giu (link to filmmaker's website with YouTube video), via Siva. The story is about three young guys and their quest to find an open field to play their game of football, without being harassed by the 'mata' (police) for trespassing. Neat social commentary too, and one should keep an eye out for its director/producer, Jacen Tan, who seems to be an up-and-coming talent.
"...and when I was resident at Eusoffe Hall in NUS, some of the students said that they looked into the bus terminal and saw things. One guy was so spooked out by it that he moved out. Another told her mother, who hired an exorcist who did the whole ritual at the hall one day when I was away."
"Yeah what about Ulu Pandan camp? That's where they took the soldiers who were killed in combat during the emergency, right?"
"At least the Science Center doesn't have any of those things."
Given that the various numbers of True Singapore Ghost Stories have been consistently been bestselling (fiction!) titles in this country, shouldn't be too surprising that these stories are always circulating in some form.
*****
The other great Singaporean pursuit being soccer, I also heard about this great short film called Tak Giu (link to filmmaker's website with YouTube video), via Siva. The story is about three young guys and their quest to find an open field to play their game of football, without being harassed by the 'mata' (police) for trespassing. Neat social commentary too, and one should keep an eye out for its director/producer, Jacen Tan, who seems to be an up-and-coming talent.
15 January 2010
Mistake/Corrective
Mistake: Making a rude comment on someone's facebook status that you later regret.
Corrective: Make more rude comments on everyone else's facebook statuses, and a few ads for Rolex watches, and then blame it all on your account being hacked.
Corrective: Make more rude comments on everyone else's facebook statuses, and a few ads for Rolex watches, and then blame it all on your account being hacked.
14 January 2010
Dashing Doggies!
Sir Aurel Stein was a Hungarian-British explorer and scholar of Central Asia, best known for his rediscovery of the famous Dunhuang Caves along the Silk Road, and the manuscripts and paintings contained within. On his expeditions he was always accompanied by a dog, and there were in total seven of them, all named 'Dash'. Reading about their fates (run over by bus, killed by pack of dogs, killed by leopard (!)) gives some idea of the danger of travel in that era, and really makes me want to name any dogs I have 'Dash' too.
13 January 2010
Lesson 2: Population
There are lots of people on this island, and the best way to see a good cross-section of society is at the shopping centre. When I was a kid, Tampines had one small one, with a Japanese supermarket as an anchor tenant. Now there are three big shiny malls, one of which is built on the site of the old one, the sheltered area between the MRT station and the bus interchange is filled up with shops that have seemingly spilled over from the row of shops in the older building beside them, and it teems with people. They have come to shop, to see the many colorful ways in which their money can be parted from them.
Being a neighborhood shopping center, they come dressed in the Singaporean uniform: t-shirt and shorts, or sometimes jeans, and usually slippers. L told me: "someone commented that Singaporeans dress too casually, but what can you do if you're not in an air-conditioned office all day - it's too hot to dress up."
There are categories of people easy to recognize because their kind is so ubiquitous: the young families going out, schoolkids in uniform, army boys, aunties doing their auntie thing. There are other categories which are easy to recognize because they are not themselves numerous, but because we have trained ourselves to spot and strenuously ignore them: old people peddling tissue paper, people in wheelchairs peddling more tissues, more old people scavenging for aluminum cans out of rubbish bins, buskers playing a tune with their laminated permit clipped to their music stand. Walking out of an MRT station I saw an old man, neatly dressed, asking passers-by for money. My mother commented, as we walked by: "more and more of these old people standing outside and asking for money." Begging, in other words.
One problem with trying to ignore such 'problematic' people is that you'll never quite know how to react when directly accosted by one. 'Problematic' here has two meanings: the first being the economic problems that force a person to scrounge for money on the streets, the second being the purely social problem of how to interact with such a person without insulting him or your own conscience. With people peddling things, it's easy to reason away a rejection: "I didn't have small change", "I didn't need more tissue paper", "I politely declined", "I'll buy something from him next time", or maybe "if you buy then more of them will start to harass you." What if he's just begging? To say (or think) "he isn't working productively so why should he be given money" is satisfactory when the beggar is a fit young man, but what about some frail old woman? Some time ago while out at lunch with some of the younger guys from church, we were approached by an older man, eyes bloodshot and obviously a bit disturbed, who had gone from table to table asking for "rokok" - a cigarette. No one really knew what to say, we turned him away, someone piped up "don't smoke, it's bad for you." We all need some kind of reason when we turn people away.
-----
On the weekend I went cycling with a bunch of friends, we cycled overnight seemingly all over the island. We rented bikes from East Coast park, went down to the city, through Clementi, up to Bukit Timah, down to Little India, Kallang, and then back again to Bedok Jetty to catch the sunrise, before returning our rented bikes. At night one sees all sorts. There were the pretty young things lining up to get into some nightclub by the bay, the construction sites for the casinos spotlighted and still buzzing with workers close to midnight (and possibly beyond), other fitness fanatics in their more expensive bikes with lights and tights and everything.
We cycled down a row of new condominium buildings near Keppel Island, the name was something Caribbean. The metal drain covers on the sidewalk made a huge racket as we cycled past them, but it seemed deserted, one of us thought that it wasn't occupied yet, so I didn't feel too bad about it, until I saw the lights on in some units, some windows with curtains in them, then I felt a twinge of guilt at making so much noise at 1 am. No one leaned out to shout at us, or if they did, we were soon gone.
At night in East Coast park there are lots of tents, we didn't notice them at first, but then we started seeing one in the bushes, close to the thick vegetation, one pitched under a rain shelter, and once you start spotting a few you soon see them all and they were everywhere, in some places only a few meters apart from each other up and down the beach line. So many people camping. But not all of them for the sheer pleasure of it. By the time we reached them we were too tired to make much noise, and it was just as well. Between the time the revelers and barbequers go home, and the time the sun comes up and the morning joggers turn out in force, they don't have many hours to get a decent night's sleep.
In Little India, we passed through a bus stop with a man sleeping on each of the three benches. Near the Kallang River, we saw people on the benches. Couples making out, we thought at first, but they weren't, for the most part. They were mostly men, some reclining fully, some sitting up with their heads resting in their hands or on their propped-up knees. Passing under an underpass lit up with painfully bright fluorescent light (for safety, presumably), we saw posters on the wall, some belongings stacked up in a miscellaneous assortment of crates and boxes, and two hammocks strung up, one with a sleeping body twisted around as if to shield his eyes from the unrelenting light. There were metal drain covers mounted on the ground, but we took care not to ride over them this time. To have woken him up would have been cruel.
Being a neighborhood shopping center, they come dressed in the Singaporean uniform: t-shirt and shorts, or sometimes jeans, and usually slippers. L told me: "someone commented that Singaporeans dress too casually, but what can you do if you're not in an air-conditioned office all day - it's too hot to dress up."
There are categories of people easy to recognize because their kind is so ubiquitous: the young families going out, schoolkids in uniform, army boys, aunties doing their auntie thing. There are other categories which are easy to recognize because they are not themselves numerous, but because we have trained ourselves to spot and strenuously ignore them: old people peddling tissue paper, people in wheelchairs peddling more tissues, more old people scavenging for aluminum cans out of rubbish bins, buskers playing a tune with their laminated permit clipped to their music stand. Walking out of an MRT station I saw an old man, neatly dressed, asking passers-by for money. My mother commented, as we walked by: "more and more of these old people standing outside and asking for money." Begging, in other words.
One problem with trying to ignore such 'problematic' people is that you'll never quite know how to react when directly accosted by one. 'Problematic' here has two meanings: the first being the economic problems that force a person to scrounge for money on the streets, the second being the purely social problem of how to interact with such a person without insulting him or your own conscience. With people peddling things, it's easy to reason away a rejection: "I didn't have small change", "I didn't need more tissue paper", "I politely declined", "I'll buy something from him next time", or maybe "if you buy then more of them will start to harass you." What if he's just begging? To say (or think) "he isn't working productively so why should he be given money" is satisfactory when the beggar is a fit young man, but what about some frail old woman? Some time ago while out at lunch with some of the younger guys from church, we were approached by an older man, eyes bloodshot and obviously a bit disturbed, who had gone from table to table asking for "rokok" - a cigarette. No one really knew what to say, we turned him away, someone piped up "don't smoke, it's bad for you." We all need some kind of reason when we turn people away.
-----
On the weekend I went cycling with a bunch of friends, we cycled overnight seemingly all over the island. We rented bikes from East Coast park, went down to the city, through Clementi, up to Bukit Timah, down to Little India, Kallang, and then back again to Bedok Jetty to catch the sunrise, before returning our rented bikes. At night one sees all sorts. There were the pretty young things lining up to get into some nightclub by the bay, the construction sites for the casinos spotlighted and still buzzing with workers close to midnight (and possibly beyond), other fitness fanatics in their more expensive bikes with lights and tights and everything.
We cycled down a row of new condominium buildings near Keppel Island, the name was something Caribbean. The metal drain covers on the sidewalk made a huge racket as we cycled past them, but it seemed deserted, one of us thought that it wasn't occupied yet, so I didn't feel too bad about it, until I saw the lights on in some units, some windows with curtains in them, then I felt a twinge of guilt at making so much noise at 1 am. No one leaned out to shout at us, or if they did, we were soon gone.
At night in East Coast park there are lots of tents, we didn't notice them at first, but then we started seeing one in the bushes, close to the thick vegetation, one pitched under a rain shelter, and once you start spotting a few you soon see them all and they were everywhere, in some places only a few meters apart from each other up and down the beach line. So many people camping. But not all of them for the sheer pleasure of it. By the time we reached them we were too tired to make much noise, and it was just as well. Between the time the revelers and barbequers go home, and the time the sun comes up and the morning joggers turn out in force, they don't have many hours to get a decent night's sleep.
In Little India, we passed through a bus stop with a man sleeping on each of the three benches. Near the Kallang River, we saw people on the benches. Couples making out, we thought at first, but they weren't, for the most part. They were mostly men, some reclining fully, some sitting up with their heads resting in their hands or on their propped-up knees. Passing under an underpass lit up with painfully bright fluorescent light (for safety, presumably), we saw posters on the wall, some belongings stacked up in a miscellaneous assortment of crates and boxes, and two hammocks strung up, one with a sleeping body twisted around as if to shield his eyes from the unrelenting light. There were metal drain covers mounted on the ground, but we took care not to ride over them this time. To have woken him up would have been cruel.
03 January 2010
Lesson 1: Geography, Part 1
My old school friend M and I agreed to attend the Online Citizen's End-of-Year Review for 2009. We met up at the MRT station, and followed from there some brief directions that I had written out on a scrap of paper. Walking from Lavender into Little India, we soon got disoriented among the shophouses and other low buildings which all looked alike - this wasn't the well-labeled HDB heartland we're accustomed to navigating. Old men, in shopfronts smelling of machine oil, watched as we picked our way through the cluttered five-foot-ways. We stopped at a hawker center so M could use the bathroom, and noticed that the ubiquitous old men, looking much alike in either graying striped polos or neatly pressed white thin cotton short-sleeved shirts, were having their evening beers in glasses poured from big dark quart bottles.
We got our bearings easily from there on, and at the event met a school senior, C, who we had not seen since leaving secondary school. He's since graduated, and wants to be a journalist. After leaving, and having a long lingering talk with one of the guests at the front door of the venue, we decide to catch the last train and have dinner closer to home. But it is dark and the road looks completely different. We decide to start walking anyway, and pass several KTV lounges instantly recognizable by their lurid neon signs, blown up pictures of cognac bottles in the windows, and heavily made up women sitting pretty by the door. I glace inside one and see a row of them singing and gesturing on a dark stage, and hurry on.
Soon enough we're lost again, and M does what I'd been resisting for a while, and whips out her iPhone to look at the map. It turned out that we were on the right path, just so uncertain that we didn't even know it. We keep walking and she glances at a road sign and says, "Pe-ta-in Road, wonder what it means." It sounds like a Malay name. C corrects us, "Marshal Petain, the French World War I hero who later was a Vichy collaborator - a taboo name in France." Why would someone name a road in Singapore after a French traitor? "It seems like there are several roads named after World War I commanders in this area," he went on, "Kitchener Road... that's the guy in the British 'I want you!' recruiting posters, the ones that inspired the Uncle Sam posters." And there's Haig Road too, I added, and strained to remember any more. C points out Foch Road, too. If these houses were built just after the war, it might explain why the roads were named this way. Strange that they never changed Petain's road, though, after what he did. Perhaps people just didn't remember it was there.
Would LKY get his own road? we wondered. Not anytime soon, but eventually, for sure. But what road would be suitably proportional to his influence? Maybe Orchard Road? The road that leads to Parliament House? Some new road in a new HDB estate? Some time ago, Goh Chok Tong had suggested having some of the roads now named for 'minor colonial officials' renamed for prominent locals instead; perhaps this was sometime after S Rajaratnam's funeral when people were briefly paying attention to the past. Who gets to choose, though? We'd just spent the whole night listening to people talk about politics. Perhaps when they name a road for one of the Barisan Sosialis leaders we'd know that the political scene has finally changed - or would that just be tokenism, domesticating the past? In the course of this debate we walk past some more shophouses, some funeral parlors, small businesses, an eclectic mixture on the outskirts of the city center. We enter the underground MRT station, and C remembers an old story: "What about that old tunnel that was supposed to connect Sentosa with the main island?"
---
From my bedroom window on the 18th floor, facing South over the broad low plain of Bedok, Katong, Marine Parade, and beyond, I can see glimpses of the sea from between the highrises that sprout up to take advantage of their coastal vantage. Most of the other blocks in my direct line of sight are lower than mine. And in the horizon of those bits of ocean, I see green hills and islands far away. It is shameful then that I don't know exactly what they are, except vaguely that they're Indonesian. To me, and most people, I suppose, the maritime heritage of this country is more imagined than inherited. There is a sign somewhere on Kent Ridge, on a nice lookout point near a shed built by NParks, which labels all the features to be seen on the horizon. From that ridge one can also see Pasir Panjang, the Long Beach, today a mass of cranes and containers, but previously a pretty piece of seafront property. No wonder all those big old houses were built where they are, like in Katong too, holiday beach villas marooned by land reclamation.
As Singaporeans, we shouldn't be too surprised by now at the change wrought by development, but it's always a bit jarring when one looks into the landscape and suddenly can read the traces. At least as human beings, we can potentially move around and not be smothered by change when it comes, unlike the corals which used to fringe Sentosa, which are now, ironically, smothered in white coralline sand imported from Indonesia, to create a simulacrum of a tropical beach for our enjoyment.
We got our bearings easily from there on, and at the event met a school senior, C, who we had not seen since leaving secondary school. He's since graduated, and wants to be a journalist. After leaving, and having a long lingering talk with one of the guests at the front door of the venue, we decide to catch the last train and have dinner closer to home. But it is dark and the road looks completely different. We decide to start walking anyway, and pass several KTV lounges instantly recognizable by their lurid neon signs, blown up pictures of cognac bottles in the windows, and heavily made up women sitting pretty by the door. I glace inside one and see a row of them singing and gesturing on a dark stage, and hurry on.
Soon enough we're lost again, and M does what I'd been resisting for a while, and whips out her iPhone to look at the map. It turned out that we were on the right path, just so uncertain that we didn't even know it. We keep walking and she glances at a road sign and says, "Pe-ta-in Road, wonder what it means." It sounds like a Malay name. C corrects us, "Marshal Petain, the French World War I hero who later was a Vichy collaborator - a taboo name in France." Why would someone name a road in Singapore after a French traitor? "It seems like there are several roads named after World War I commanders in this area," he went on, "Kitchener Road... that's the guy in the British 'I want you!' recruiting posters, the ones that inspired the Uncle Sam posters." And there's Haig Road too, I added, and strained to remember any more. C points out Foch Road, too. If these houses were built just after the war, it might explain why the roads were named this way. Strange that they never changed Petain's road, though, after what he did. Perhaps people just didn't remember it was there.
Would LKY get his own road? we wondered. Not anytime soon, but eventually, for sure. But what road would be suitably proportional to his influence? Maybe Orchard Road? The road that leads to Parliament House? Some new road in a new HDB estate? Some time ago, Goh Chok Tong had suggested having some of the roads now named for 'minor colonial officials' renamed for prominent locals instead; perhaps this was sometime after S Rajaratnam's funeral when people were briefly paying attention to the past. Who gets to choose, though? We'd just spent the whole night listening to people talk about politics. Perhaps when they name a road for one of the Barisan Sosialis leaders we'd know that the political scene has finally changed - or would that just be tokenism, domesticating the past? In the course of this debate we walk past some more shophouses, some funeral parlors, small businesses, an eclectic mixture on the outskirts of the city center. We enter the underground MRT station, and C remembers an old story: "What about that old tunnel that was supposed to connect Sentosa with the main island?"
---
From my bedroom window on the 18th floor, facing South over the broad low plain of Bedok, Katong, Marine Parade, and beyond, I can see glimpses of the sea from between the highrises that sprout up to take advantage of their coastal vantage. Most of the other blocks in my direct line of sight are lower than mine. And in the horizon of those bits of ocean, I see green hills and islands far away. It is shameful then that I don't know exactly what they are, except vaguely that they're Indonesian. To me, and most people, I suppose, the maritime heritage of this country is more imagined than inherited. There is a sign somewhere on Kent Ridge, on a nice lookout point near a shed built by NParks, which labels all the features to be seen on the horizon. From that ridge one can also see Pasir Panjang, the Long Beach, today a mass of cranes and containers, but previously a pretty piece of seafront property. No wonder all those big old houses were built where they are, like in Katong too, holiday beach villas marooned by land reclamation.
As Singaporeans, we shouldn't be too surprised by now at the change wrought by development, but it's always a bit jarring when one looks into the landscape and suddenly can read the traces. At least as human beings, we can potentially move around and not be smothered by change when it comes, unlike the corals which used to fringe Sentosa, which are now, ironically, smothered in white coralline sand imported from Indonesia, to create a simulacrum of a tropical beach for our enjoyment.
Optional Winter Session Course 65r - Singapore, an Introduction (Field Course)
Intensive (re-)introduction to Singapore, its past, present, and possible futures. Students will be taught immersively and phenomenologically, living and interacting with Singaporeans and other dwellers in the island city. Topics to be explored include geography, society, environment, and the state. No formal assessment is required, but students are required to discuss their experiences with their peers. Prerequisites: some prior familiarity with the subject; this course is suitable for Singapore residents who have been away for some period of time.
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