Various parts of Singapore were hit by flash flood this morning. Exactly one month after the “Worst flood in 50 years” that happened in Orchard we see that the same problem occurred again.

This immediately reminded me of what Prime Minister Lee has to say about this topic. “…but it is not possible to expect Singapore to be completely free of floods. The realistic objective is to prevent widespread and prolonged flooding, and limit the risk to lives and damage to properties, and to have contingency plans.”

In any other countries, for example, Taiwan. The opposition and the media would have scream for blood when the country’s highest leadership blatantly admit that they cannot stop the flooding. Taiwan is an island that’s hit by yearly typhoons, and floods are almost the norm, something to expect every year during the summer season. On the other hand we have Singapore, an island sheltered from almost every natural disaster, barring the haze and the occasional tremors we get.

And we are told that we cannot be completely free of floods. Seriously? No reasons or explanations at all?

So did the contingency plans kick in this morning? Looks to me that they just waited it out.

The PM needs to get some heat from the parliament and the people. The ruthless and aggressive kind.

Remember this during the elections.

Well, the government, or more specifically, the Ministry of Education has decided to suspend all AWARE related sexuality programme because it has found them to be “too explicit and inappropriate, and convey messages which could promote homosexuality or suggest approval of pre-marital sex”.

Happy now? It’s not just the real Christians who are doubting AWARE. The secular government of Singapore has also made a statement about its views.

So tell me do you still think AWARE is pro or neutral? = =

My head is hurting from all the conflicting and stupid (for the lack of a better term) views that people have regarding the recent AWARE leadership shuffle.

AWARE stands for “Association of Women for Action & Research”. It is a non profit organization that advocates “Gender equality for all”. From the name and its mission statement, I think it is clear that it is a feminist organization to all of us. I am all for feminism, in the sense that I believe that men and women should have the same fundamental rights, like the right to vote, the right to employment and such. However the first thing that makes my head hurt is the way that women define equality. The equality seems to only apply to those rights that benefit them. I have yet to come across any feminist demanding the privilege to serve in the army along the men. But let’s reserve that for another post, if I have the time.

What really ticks me off is that AWARE really seem to have been infiltrated. No, I am not talking about the all-Christian, all-Chinese new executive community. I am talking about the previous pro homosexual one. In an organization called “Association of Women for Action & Research” I fail to see the place of a “Male Chapter”. Especially when the leader of the Male Chapter is keen (and I quote) to “deconstruct male gender & male heterosexual hegemony“.  So the male homosexuals are now considered women? WTF?

I can list serveral more examples of how AWARE has gone gay, all the materials and references are provided by the ex-exco of AWARE. It is clear that AWARE does have a pro homosexual agenda. We shall just respect a secular organization’s right to be as gay loving as they wish. After all this is a supposedly free country that still criminalizes sodomy.

Having said the above, I fully understand why the ex-exco bunch of Christians are concerned. By definitions Christians are supposed to be against homosexuals, after all Sodom and Gomorrah were nuked by God for a reason. But by making the showdown public, in a secular country where the number of secular people far outnumber the number of religious faithfuls, this is a battle that they cannot win. Sure enough they were ousted on 2nd of May.

My view has always been that I will respect your fucking rights if you respect my right to view your fucking right as wrong. You have the right to screw with whoever you want (get it? fucking right.) , but I have the right to make a moral judgment on that. Homosexuality is not normal. It is also considered as a sin. Do it if you want.

Now allow my rant to continue. This is directed at the self proclaiming hypocritical Christians who say that they should be against the change of leadership in AWARE. Please fuck off ok? Staying neutral is not the same as going against. I see a bunch of people saying that we shall not judge but they keep forgetting that it doesn’t mean we should just remain oblivious, it just means that we shouldn’t become overtly judgmental. However we should always be ready to stand for what we believe and point out what is wrong. See http://www.biblebelievers.com/jmelton/Judging.html

Any way, as my past experiences show, people don’t like to be wrong. If you manage to prove that they are, they will just deny it. Eventually it just evolve into a huge verbal sparring with no real meaning. I am just glad that I can bitch about it here and forget the next day.

The ongoing pandemic is probably the most talked about subject at the moment. People talk about the spreading virus in different regions of the globe as they watch the news stream in from everywhere.

However today I was at the library and I saw that the authorities have already enforced a personal information collection policy at the entrance. All those who visit the library will have their particulars scanned and stored, in case of a outbreak the individuals can then be tracked down and quarantined.

In conjunction with the government take over of a chalet resort to quarantine the suspected carriers, the Singapore government is really taking this thing as serious as they should be.

Singapore cannot afford another SARS like scare, not when the economy is already doing as badly as it is.

You’d think that the WCG Singapore , being a national level gaming event, should possess a wealth of experience in organizing and holding gaming tournaments and events. It’s sad to say that they are just as prone to common mistakes and errors as any small time events held by cyber cafes.

First of all they cannot even ensure that their hardware runs the game properly. How do you expect any one to take your organization seriously when a PC crashed every five minutes in a national level tournament? Even worse is the fact that there is absolutely no contingency plan at all. All that the “officials” could offer was a weak “erm, can you restart the computer?”. No shit, Sherlock. Of course you have to reset the computer when it shows the blue screen of death. I don’t see how else you can fix that.

The professional way of doing it would have been to actually have people stress test the machines BEFORE the games commence, like a day or two before the actual event. It’s not too hard to find a bunch of eager kids to play computer games when you provide them access to free hardware. At least you’d find out about the graphic card over heating problem wayyyyyy before all your DoTA, CS, Need For Speed games start crashing like the recent share markets. When more time is spent on circumventing the various technical problems than the actual game play itself, you know you are in deep shit. Finally, hire some real qualified people who actually know how to troubleshoot crashing PCs, instead of having a bunch of feeble “I don’t know what the fuck is going on, so just reset and hope it doesn’t happen again.” people hanging around doing nothing.

Ok let’s talk about the “Officials”. They should just take off their lanyards and handed them over to me because as a spectator I obviously know more about organizing DotA events than they did. They didn’t even know which version of the map to play. Some players were told to play 6.52e and some were playing 6.53, even the officials were telling each other that “eh you let them play the wrong map”. Made me feel like as if I was at some dingy cybercafe tournament where the organizers knew little about the game. Yes I know the difference between 6.53 and 6.52e is not that significant, but there were many teams that picked Specter and Terrorblade. Specter’s dispersion AoE was increased in 6.53 and Terrorblade’s movement speed was buffed as well. Not to mention that the buggy river rune model was fixed in 6.53 and remained semi-broken in 6.52e. The differences were there and it was only professional to make sure that everyone were playing the same map.

Further more the officials allowed the teams to decide when to save the game for DoTA(because the PCs crashed so often, they have to rely on save/load to avoid rematch). This might not seem to be such a big issue to the unaware spectators, however it means a world of difference to the players. For example, if I save a game at an intense moment (knowing or unknowingly, of courses) it might have nasty effects on the flow of the game.

Case in point, the onstage DoTA game showed this team who saved while fighting Roshan. Right after they killed Roshan, their opponents found them and killed their Aegis carrier. Normally this is seen as a triumph for the opponent because they have successfully removed the reincarnating advantage of the Aegis. However, the game crashed soon after this and the teams reloaded the game from the time when they were fighting Roshan. Of course, this time round they KNEW that the opposition was coming their way and were ready to engage them. The resulting engagement benefited much from this knowledge since the element of surprise was lost. The Aegis bearer died just as before, but he and his team mates killed 2 heroes before dying and resurrecting. I cannot stress more on how this changed the flow of the game, because from an evenly matched game it suddenly turned in favour of the other team, all because of a BADLY TIMED SAVE. Sure enough the team took advantage of this and broke the mid lane soon after. Had the referees took charge of game saving, this could have been easily avoided by saving only after major battles have already taken place, and not before one is about to happen.

Moving on to the commentators. What is a sporting event without a commentator who incessantly rant about what happened in the game thirty seconds ago with such a thick accent that you have absofuckinglutely no idea what he is mumbling about? Yes that’s what happened today during the DoTA match on stage. Sure we need commentators to spice up the event, but for God’s sake please get one that speaks comprehensibly. Actually I prefer someone who speaks with a local accent, or at least speak in a way that most Singaporean gamers can identify with, after all it’s the Singapore WCG, not the British Council WCG.

I will probably be there again for the Dota finals on Sunday, I just hope that they would have already resolved all the technical difficulties by then and make things less painful for everyone.