ABSOLUT JOURNAL.

The most important thing I wanted to see in Hong Kong

2010-01-03T21:26:14Z

You might wonder why the first photo I'm posting of my recent HK trip isn't of the HK skyline, or The Peak, or Victoria Harbour, or my most favourite building in HK, but of this strange hill with a barely discernible white pattern on it.

This hill, however, is one of the most important things I came to Hong Kong to see. HK, in certain ways, was like a pilgrimage—as a true-blue Cantonese, I wanted to come to a place where everybody around me spoke Cantonese. It was like the equivalent of visiting a hometown! In another way, finally coming to HK was also a pilgrimage to come see one thing: the old Hong Kong Kai Tak International Airport.

Before 1998
Some of you might know that HK is one of those places which I've always wanted to go and wondered why I've never been, so I have absolutely no recollection of Kai Tak Airport. I can't even remember when was it that I first heard that Kai Tak's approach to land was infamously challenging. All I can recall is someone telling me many years ago about how landing at HK was very exciting because the plane will make a sharp turn before landing, and it was so low that you could even see the televisions on in the apartments below. This was before the Internet of course, so I didn't think much about it. My fascination with Kai Tak only began after I found out online why exactly the approach was so difficult!

Basically, because of the topography of Kowloon, unlike other airports, planes could not align with the runway to land from far out. So to land at Kai Tak, the pilots have to approach Kowloon from the west, and the Instrument Landing System does not guide the planes down to the runway but instead of being installed on the runway, it is installed on this small hill that has an orange and white checkerboard painted on it and aircraft are guided down to it (hence it's an Instrument Guidance System, not ILS). Just before reaching the hill, the pilots will then have to execute a sharp 47° turn to align with the runway and land on Runway 13. This turn is normally executed at a height of around 650ft (200m) and completed at just 140ft (43m), upon which you land almost immediately. It's quite hard to visualise this so let me show you through pictures:

Kai Tak closed on 6 July 1998; the new Chek Lap Kok airport is next to the NDB marked Sha Lo Wan

You can see that you basically have to fly down to Checkerboard Hill and then make that sharp right turn. Sounds pretty straightforward, but imagine doing this at night, or in a thunderstorm, where you can't see the runway properly. Also, not forgetting that the winds around Kai Tak are notoriously shifty due to the mountain range directly northeast of Kowloon. Shooting the Rwy 13 approach is already tough enough with constant winds because the crosswind would change as you made the 47° Checkerboard Turn. It would be worse during typhoon season, when the winds would be strong, gusty, and shifting. The winds sweep down the hills towards the harbour and vary greatly in speed and direction, which affects the lift of the aeroplane. Despite this, the Rwy 13 approach was used most of the time due to the prevailing wind direction.

It's pretty telling too that Kai Tak's difficult approach is infamous not only within the aviation community but amongst the general public as well. When the airport was still in operation, hordes of spectators would throng the rooftop of Kowloon City Plaza, the roof deck of the airport car park, or Checkerboard Hill itself, to watch the big jets bank steeply and take big crab angles in strong crosswinds [you can see the video later for examples]. Thankfully, they left us a large collection of photographs to remember this unique airport.

Air Canada A340 and Korean Air B747 doing the Checkerboard Turn

Checkerboard Hill (格仔山), as seen from Cathay Pacific B744
Apparently 格仔 actually means 'checkerboard' in Cantonese

The view from the other side, overlooking Kowloon City

B747 rounding out from the Checkerboard Turn onto short final
See that orange building at the bottom centre of the photo? I'll show you why it's so special later....

Overview of the Kai Tak Runway 13, with B747s coming in for a dusk landing

Checkerboard Hill is on the left, and a B747 is doing the Checkerboard Turn on the right
You can see how low the aircraft is over the city at this stage, and it's still banking!

JAL B747 over densely-packed Kowloon City
Any mistake in the Checkerboard Turn would really have disastrous consequences

Indeed, the approach plate itself reminds you of how important it is to fly this correctly through a couple of terse lines:

Continued flight on the Instrument Guidance System flight path after passing the Middle Marker will result in loss of terrain clearance.

Missed Approach is mandatory by Middle Marker if visual flight is not achieved by this point. ... the right turn must be made at the Middle Marker as any early or late turn will result in loss of terrain clearance. After passing the Middle Marker, flight path indications must be ignored.

I always thought it was really funny how they make it sound so sterile: 'result in loss of terrain clearance', when actually it means 'you will hit the ground or something else similarly hard'!

Basically what this means is that the guidance system will guide you down to the checkerboard even if you can't see anything because of heavy rain or cloud. But once you fly over this marker beacon, you have to be able to see the runway itself and start the turn visually. If you can't, you had better turn anyway but climb up to get away from the mountains, otherwise you'll smash into the ground! But turning any earlier than the marker beacon will probably result in you smashing into the buildings of Kowloon City, because after executing the turn, you come screeching literally over the rooftops of Kowloon City, for scenes like this which were world-famous but will never be seen again....

Street view, Kowloon City
Surprisingly though, for all its difficulty, there were relatively few accidents at Kai Tak throughout its history. In the 24 years since the IGS was installed, there have only been 2 major accidents at Kai Tak because of the IGS Rwy 13 approach, with only 7 fatalities. Of course, this is not including the numerous cases of hard landings, damaged landing gear, engines and flaps scraping the runway, or small excursions off the runway, like this one:

Then of course, there is the matter of stopping the aircraft before you run off the little sliver of runway into the harbour.

Trying to round out the turn before they get to close and too low....

Ooooops!
An example of how the shifting winds can easily make your Checkerboard Turn go awry....
Better press that TO/GA and go around!

On top of the challenging approach, the controllers had to play a delicate jigsaw puzzle as Kai Tak was really a very busy airport
A Dragonair A330 is just departing after the Thai Airways B747 landed, and Tower has cleared the China Southwest B737 for an immediate departure while a Cathay Pacific B777 is already on short final!

A300 thundering in to land over the Prince Edward Road flyover

TRIVIA: Everyone speaks of the "the checkerboard" but in reality there were two checkerboards: one faced west towards the IGS 13 approach, the other faced south towards the runway (presumably this was for the benefit of pilots doing a departure from Rwy 31). Currently only the south-facing one can be seen; I could find no trace of the west-facing one as that side is overgrown with vegetation. :(

My own journey to Kai Tak and the Checkerboard
No pilgrimage is complete without relics, and there were 2 relics of Kai Tak which I had to visit: Kai Tak itself and Checkerboard Hill (plus a third which I serendipitously ran across).

The first full day I had in HK, I went to visit the Wong Tai Sin Temple and the Kowloon Walled City Park. After exiting through the southern side of the Walled City Park, I found myself at Kowloon City.

Looking at the mass of 1970s buildings, I imagined what it must have been like, watching the 747s scream in low overhead....

Those tall buildings could only be allowed to be built after 1998

Then, at the corner of Hau Wong Road and Nga Tsin Wai Road, I came across a building which looked very familiar....

Ahh... this was none other than the lesser-known but equally important Approach Light Building! Basically, the space constraint around Kai Tak meant that there was simply no way the airport could keep an area of 3000ft from the runway threshold free for the approach lighting system, so they had to make do by mounting the lights on top of a building! To be honest, I wasn't sure if this was really the building so I asked a nearby shopkeeper if he knew which one it was and he confirmed it. This is what it looked like when the airport was still in operation:

As you can see, the diagonal indentation on the roof used to mount the approach lights is still there!

After walking down through Kowloon City, I finally crossed a couple of pedestrian subways to find myself looking at an old, rusting fence, beyond which I knew was where Kai Tak used to be:

Some of the original restricted area signs still remain

I went over to the HK Aviation Club, which is the only physical reminder of Kai Tak's heritage as once the most famous airport in the world. Inside, they had this lovely framed aerial photo of Kai Tak taken in 1994:

Sadly, the Rwy 13 end of the famous runway is now nothing more than a giant coach park, but it was in the HK Aviation Club that I realised that I could probably go into the area and possibly find the original runway still remaining!

After trekking in and navigating my way through many barrier fences, I realised that the asphalt I was standing on was grooved, and that only means one thing: this was part of the runway! And then I realised that the thick white bar there wasn't part of the parking lot but instead was...

A GIANT WHITE ARROW!

This was part of the displaced threshold marking for Rwy 13! If you look at the earlier photos you will notice that before the runway threshold 'piano keys' there are a series of white arrows leading up to them; this was one of the arrows!

OMG I'm standing on the Kai Tak runway!

I turned around, and true enough: there was Checkerboard Hill, with the checkerboard still faintly visible

The yellow taxy line leading the planes out from the runway to the apron

This is the furthest in I could go. What a pity, I was hoping to actually be able to stand on the big number '13'....

Before I left, I asked a coach driver to help me snap a photo on the white arrow (he probably thought I was nuts).

Checkerboard Hill
Two days later, I was in Yau Ma Tei when I hailed a taxi and asked if he could bring me to Checkerboard Hill. It took the taxi driver a while to realise where I wanted to go but thankfully, he told me that the checkerboard was next to a park and that was the closest I could get to it!

The closest I could get to the famous checkerboard

People used to be able to climb all the way to the base of the checkerboard itself, but the gate is now locked. :(

Right below the checkerboard now are some tennis courts. The people playing tennis there probably didn't realise the significance of what was directly above them

I was rather sad to see the checkerboard in a bad state of disrepair, but it has after all been 11 years since the airport closed and perhaps I should be glad that it was not removed!

Across the valley (where Junction Road is) is another smaller hill called the Chinese Christian Cemetery Hill. You could also see this easily from the aeroplane window during the Checkerboard Turn

A further view of the checkerboard; this is the south-facing [Rwy 31] one. On the left you can see the inclined slope where the west-facing [IGS Rwy 13] one is supposed to be, but it's too overgrown to see anything

The checkerboard with Lion Rock in the background. You can see why it's important not to fly past the Middle Marker!

For those of you who want directions to find the checkerboard, don't bother telling the cab drivers Checkerboard Hill. Just tell them to bring you to Kowloon Tsai Park [remember: it's Kowloon Tsai, not Kowloon Park, which is in Tsim Sha Tsui]

Go all the way in and at the end of the road you'll see these steps with the yellow railings leading you up to the checkerboard

They're developing Kai Tak into a cruise terminal so it's only a matter of time before the runway itself is torn up. I pray that this will still be here the next time I come to Kowloon....

Kai Tak Videos
Thank God for YouTube, which allows those of us who are too late to go there, to see why Kai Tak was so spectacular....

Kai Tak IGS Rwy 13: the view from Kowloon City (just after the checkerboard turn)

View from a Kowloon City rooftop, this video gives you an overview of the checkerboard turn (which starts at about 0:20)

View from the cockpit (the checkerboard turn is at 3:20; you can see what I mean by the moment you complete the turn, the runway is right there and you land)

Cockpit view in rain (you get a good view of the checkerboard at 1:15, and then the steep bank required for the checkerboard turn)

Cockpit view at night, on the last night of operations, 5 July 1998 (at 6:10 you can see the runway lead-in lights [the ones that flash in a turning line towards the runway] and then the checkerboard turn. Pity you can't really see the checkerboard at night but from what I understand, it's not lit but has a single red flashing beacon to show where it is)

Airport Diagrams and Approach Plates
I'm sorry I cannot lj-cut within an lj-cut, but for the aviation enthusiasts, here are the Kai Tak Airport Diagram and the Kai Tak approach plate (from both the HK Aeronautical Information Publication and Jeppesen). The Jeppesen plate is among my most prized collections, because for some reason it cannot be found online. I got my copy scanned from the original which is owned by a Learjet instructor who used to fly for Cathay Pacific. Apparently on the last day of operations, every pilot got a framed copy of the plate, and it's one of the rare ones which read 'Hong Kong, PR of China', instead of the former 'Hong Kong, BCC'.

Instrument Approach Chart, Hong Kong International Instrument Guidance System Rwy 13 [AIP HK]

Index 11-3A, Hong Kong International IGS Rwy 13 [Jeppesen]

The airport diagram clearly shows where the checkerboard is in relation to the runway and the sharp turn involved

Goodbye Kai Tak. It is my eternal regret that I never flew into you whether as a passenger or behind the controls. And now the only way I can give a shot at one of the hardest approaches in the world would be in the simulator....

§ Technorati tags: all around the world; flying; memorable memories

10 Words You Need To Stop Misspelling

2010-01-01T19:24:53Z

This reminds me of my J-thing Grammar Correction Stickers, and is too good (and important) not to share, so I'm reproducing it here not as a link, but in its full glory.

I know some of you whose offices look like they need this printed out, enlarged, and pasted on the wall of the pantry/common area, so let's start off 2010 with a worthy project: eradicating (far too) common English mistakes!

Also check out this one:

§ Technorati tags: good english

ABSOLUT BILOCATION.

2010-01-01T12:44:58Z

You know, the hallmark of a wonderful night where you have 2 social events, one after the other, is that when you're at the first, you wished that you didn't have to go to the other, but when you reach the second, you wished that you'd come sooner.

Last night I was preparing to go meet burbur and cheshirefeline at Siloso Beach Party when triciaseow called and asked me if I could come to the Eurasian Ball because 2 of her friends were under the weather. So OK I went down to the ball, which was at the Shangri-La. I was having a lot of fun there gorging on the food with triciaseow, mfluder, misawong, and not to mention the many Eurasian babes who were in attendance and dressed to the nines!

At 10 p.m. though, I had to go, so I hopped back into my car and drove down to Sentosa, where I did a quick change from my long sleeves, pants and shoes into my t-shirt, board shorts and crocs, grabbed my 3 bottles of beer and sat at the beach station with burbur and cheshirefeline. After the fireworks celebrating the end of 2009, we went down to Siloso Beach which was like ZoukOut, only better! Yes, lots of beach babes around, but we just sat at the bar with the rest of the Sentosa staff chatting, people watching, and downing beer like anything. There was a band on stage at the main arena, and they were quite good, playing many old school rock hits that I liked, like Don't Stop Believin', Shook Me All Night Long, and Pour Some Sugar On Me.

And so I wished I had the abovementioned ability, for I wished then that I had come to Sentosa earlier! But I'm glad that I spent NYE with 1 of my favourite couples and the early morning of NYD with the other!

After leaving Sentosa, we stopped by our favourite LAN shop to shoot zombies in L4D2 until 6 in the morning. What better way to usher in 2010? :)

Protect yourself in hotels!

2009-12-31T07:09:24Z

When we were KO-ing after ZoukOut, we asked for late checkout but unfortunately couldn't get any. I was telling triciaseow, mfluder, burbur and cheshirefeline that I was so tired that I didn't even mind just knocking out for a few hours in the 'special room', the existence of which I learnt about from this email that was circulating amongst my coursemates some time back. It apparently originated from another division, and one of the guys who crossed over from there shared it with us.

I think Tricia was very amused at the existence of this 'special room' so I managed to dig the email up and now that the holiday season is over and none of my friends reading this should be in hotels at the moment, here it is:

OK, here are some beliefs of the hoteliers:

In every single hotel, there shall be at least a permanent room which should be left vacant at all times. No matter how full the hotel is, they are not to sell that room(s) to any guest. It was said that special room was 'reserved' for those 'special visitors'. So, if you plan to stay in some hotel, always book in advance. Try to avoid walk-ins. If the receptionist tells you there's no more room available, do not insist one any more or try to bribe them to give you a room. If you do that, most of the time the room you have will be that 'special room'.

Sometimes those 'special visitors' might go to other rooms also, so here are some tips on how to protect yourself:

Before entering your room, always knock on the door first, even if you know the room is vacant.

After you enter the room, if you feel very cold suddenly and have "chicken spore" [I think the writer means goosebumps], leave the room quietly, immediately and go to reception to request to change room. Most of the time the receptionist will understand what's happening.

After you enter the room, immediately switch on all of the lights, and open the curtain to let the sun light in.

Before you go to bed, arrange your shoes so that one of them is upside down. Some say this is representing yin & yang to protect you while you're asleep.

Always leave at least a lamp on while you're sleeping, preferably the toilet's lamp.

If you're staying alone and they have give you a twin bed, do not sleep with the other bed vacant. Try to put your things like luggage on the other bed before you sleep. And if you're sleeping on a queen-size bed, always sleep in the middle... and do not sleep by sleeping on either side as this means inviting them to sleep next to you. You don't want to wake up in the middle of the night to find out there is something sleeping next to you right?

Another tip to protect yourself....
When you enter your hotel room, look for the BIBLE. Most hotels place the Bible inside a drawer. However, if upon entering, you see the Bible on the table, DON'T STAY IN THAT ROOM! It means 'special visitors' are there.

If you see the Bible opened up on the table, LEAVE THAT ROOM IMMEDIATELY and request a change of room! It means the 'special visitor' is really creating trouble in that room!

According to my friend, the worst case he has heard of involves 6 of his colleagues who had gathered in 1 of the rooms. Apparently they saw something and went quite berserk. It got so bad they all requested to fly home immediately! It's somewhere in Japan, either Osaka or Tokyo. And apparently Jakarta and LA are high on the haunted list too!

Any comments? vixette7, true or not?

§ Technorati tags: all around the world; trivia

Happy Flight

2009-12-27T15:31:15Z

[This is a long overdue entry; supposed to have been posted 2 weeks ago but busy stuff got in the way, not to mention HK and what happened to me there, owwww....]

I know it's just a movie, but if this is the way ANA command trainees fly, I'd think more than twice before I ever fly ANA! Seriously, if your pilot behaved like that, you will fly meh?

Anyway, since it's a rather obscure film, for the benefit of those who have no watched the movie, there is a plot synopsis here. In short, it's centred on an ANA flight from Tokyo to Honolulu, which goes awry first when the aircraft develops an instrument problem a couple of hours into the flight due to a bird strike, then when a typhoon threatens Tokyo after the plane turns back. It's funny how the online synopses/reviews mention that the emergency is due to a new computer system malfunctioning; in the movie, the pitot tubes broke away so they lost their airspeed indications—it has nothing to do with computer systems!

Anyway the movie is really a good insight into the commercial aviation world, providing a sneak peek into the everyday life of the airline industry: from aircraft maintenance, air traffic control (both tower and terminal), weather forecasters, flight dispatchers/ops centre team, ground check-in team and even to the bird strike man! The bulk of the movie is centred around the technical crew (pilots) and cabin crew of the airliner—which include a First Officer on his last check ride as a command trainee before he qualifies for captaincy and a group of stewardesses on their first international flight flying under a purser with a fearsome reputation—along with some of the challenges and stress that comes with the job.

Being a Japanese dramedy, I was expecting some hilarious exploits bordering on the realm of disbelief, along with exaggerated cutesy antics. I attribute most of the inaccuracies and exaggerations to this reason so I don't exactly regard them as faults or negative points about the movie. After all, it is meant to be entertaining—which it is. However, one thing that I thought was rather inappropriate were the antics of the pilot. I mean, I wondered whether people would actually find it unbelievable that a qualified pilot (on a B744 nonetheless) would be that klutzy, that irreverent, and react in such a flustered manner when put on the hot seat, but I'm surprised that ANA allowed their pilots to be portrayed in that way. I had expected hilarious situations to occur to a hapless crew while still maintaining the poise and decorum of the profession. After all, it is true that in emergencies, pilots are expected to be the calmest and coolest minds on board.

On the whole, the movie is rather entertaining and enjoyable. I know I will probably sound biased (because I am) but I will still rate this movie one of the best that I've seen this year. If you base it on how many movies this year I have voluntarily paid to watch more than once, then it would be the best movie of the year, haha! Needless to say, I will probably get the DVD when it comes out.

I think it's rather cute that Japanese pilots still fly with pristine white gloves

Friends who have watched Happy Flight have commented on how accurate some of the procedures portrayed in the movie seem, especially with regard to jargon, and that the movie gives the impression that they appear to be very faithful to what happens in reality. So they have asked me to watch it and provide a breakdown of what is true and what is not. Of course I was more than happy to do that, being ever eager to dispel myths and increase awareness about what actually happens in my most misunderstood profession! I must stress again that what is not true should not be regarded as mistakes, but more along the lines of dramatisation for the purposes of making the movie more entertaining and engaging. Also, some of the points that I have marked as not true may in fact be due to differing procedures by ANA which I am obviously not familiar with. If anyone is familiar with ANA procedures, comments are more than welcome! In addition, since I do not have any experience on the B747-400 aircraft, if anyone knows this aircraft well, please feel free to correct me!

[Info crosschecked with the following B747-400 documents that were in effect today: Flight Crew Operations Manual Vols 1 & 2, Flight Crew Training Manual, Flight Planning & Performance Manual, Quick Reference Handbook, Minimum Equipment List. Most links are to photographs or Wikipedia articles to provide additional elaboration.]

True

Callouts from the pilots are accurate, e.g. V Speeds ("V₁, V_R, V₂"), "Positive", Approaching Minimums", "Minimums", "500 feet, stabilised". We actually call "Rotate" instead of "V_R", but I think Japanese airlines call "V_R". "Positive" refers to positive rate of climb, meaning that the wheels have left the ground and the landing gear can be raised. I was rather surprised that they call "stabilised" at 500 feet above the airfield (in such bad weather it would be more prudent to ensure the approach is stable by 1000 feet). However, I was very impressed with the "80 knots... check"—it's a level of detail not commonly known.

The aural warning sounds used, such as the master warning siren and master caution beeper are correct.

Jargon is correct, e.g. terms such as "to avoid CB" [CumulonimBus or thunderstorm clouds], "request right heading 360", "vectors for ILS 34 Right", "RVR 800 metres", "autopilot centre command", "received ATIS Bravo".

ILS refers to the Instrument Landing System airliners use for landing guidance at major airports. ILS terminology, such as "Localiser captured" and "Glideslope captured", along with their associated indications on the Primary Flight Display, are accurate. RVR is Runway Visual Range, a measurement of visibility along the runway. ATIS is the Automatic Terminal Information Service, a radio frequency where an automated voice constantly reads out current weather conditions for the aerodrome. In the scene where the Ops Control Centre (OCC) is checking the weather for Haneda, the dispatcher punches in 'RJTT', which is the correct ICAO code for Haneda Airport.

Depiction of crew ranks is accurate: 3 stripes denote (Senior) First Officer, 4 stripes denote a Captain. Usually the captain sits on the left hand seat, but in this case, the First Officer is undergoing command training so it is possible for him to sit on the left.

During takeoff, the captain's hand remains on the thrust levers until V₁ (takeoff decision speed, above which the takeoff must be continued) so that he can reject the takeoff immediately if needed (kind of like an emergency brake on the runway). The captain takes his hand off the thrust levers at V₁ as a physical reminder that the thrust levers cannot be retarded and the takeoff must be continued from that point onward. BUT, rejecting the takeoff is solely the captain's prerogative so the First Officer should not be doing it even if he is a command trainee.

The concern about crosswind and tailwind limits for landing is correct: every aircraft has maximum takeoff and landing tailwind as well as crosswind limits. The standard tailwind limit for the B747-400 is 15 knots and maximum demonstrated crosswind is 30 knots.

The scene where the pilot makes a PA announcement over the radio: due to the many different people pilots have to speak to (ATC, pax PA, cabin crew, OCC, ground engineer) there is always a possibility that they might accidentally transmit on the wrong frequency or on the wrong channel if they don't take the trouble to check which transmit switch is pressed. That is why we always use the cabin handset to make PA announcements, never the headset!

Speaking of radio calls, most of the RT in the movie was accurate, such as "request pushback" and "contact Tokyo Tower". BUT, when transferring aircraft to another agency, the frequency must always be read and must also be read back by the pilot; the correct radio call should be "All Nippon 915, contact Tokyo Tower 118.1" and the response should be "118.1, All Nippon 915".

Most technical details of the B747-400 aircraft are correct.

In the takeoff scenes, the thrust levers are advanced slightly until the engines stabilise at 1.1 EPR/55% N1, and this switch called the TO/GA switch is pushed, which activates the autothrottle and automatically advances the engines to takeoff thrust. BUT, after TO/GA is pushed, we only follow through the levers instead of pushing them. This is not apparent in the movie until just before the end, where we actually see the pilot pushing the TO/GA, so the other takeoff scenes give the impression that the thrust levers are manually advanced. TO/GA stands for 'TakeOff/Go Around'.

The scenes where the landing runway is programmed into the FMS are correct, as well as the setting of the autobrakes to max, and the arming of the spoilers to automatically extend on touchdown. In the landing scene, the spoiler lever moving automatically to 'Extend' on touchdown, as well as the operation of the thrust reversers, are correct. BTW, the spoiler lever only moves automatically in Boeing aircraft; nothing in the Airbus cockpit moves.

In the scene where the engineer brings a pitot tube to the OCC, the description of how a pitot tube works is accurate.

The scene in the dispatcher's office is quite real: pilots do check their flight plans and get a detailed weather briefing of the departure and arrival airports, along with enroute weather.

Engineers cannot leave tools lying around and any single missing item could be potential FOD so it must be found. There is therefore a culture to place tools only in their proper holding receptacles.

What the station manager said is true: the chances of being involved in an aviation accident are statistically really once every 400 years! (But do remember that this is also largely dependant on how good the pilots in front and the maintenance on the aircraft are! :P )

In the scene where the aircraft doors are closed, the ground crew does have to ensure that the door seals as well as the handle are flush against the fuselage.

When the aircraft doors are armed, the thumbs-up sign is correct. The cabin crew will arm the doors, then crosscheck that the opposite door is also armed, and then flash the thumbs-up to the purser to indicate that the door has been armed.

In the scene where the terminal ATC control room (the dark room with many radar screens), the depiction of the display is quite accurate. Also, the ATC strips shown in the Terminal Control and the Tower are accurate: controllers use these strips to keep track of which aircraft is where and what they are supposed to be doing as they guide them through controlled airspace. The part where the controllers are lining up the chocolates and one mentions to ensure 5 miles of in-trail separation in between planes is true. This is due to the wake vortex caused by large aircraft and it is not strictly 5 nautical miles but dependant on what category of aircraft is following which.

The report given by the pilots of the preceding flight on narrowly encountering birds is accurate; pilots will usually update ATC on such abnormalities on departure/approach, such as near birdstrikes, windshear, or any other hazards so that any aircraft following them are warned.

The duties of the Pilot Flying (PF) and Pilot Monitoring (PM) are mostly accurate: the PF is responsible for the aircraft flight path (even when autopilot is engaged) while the PM monitors all other aspects of the aircraft, assists the PF with secondary controls such as flaps and gear, and is responsible for handling all radio calls.

When hand-flying, the PF flies the aircraft while the PM will set the Flight Director on the Mode Control Panel. The crew will also crosscheck all changes/settings on the MCP, BUT usually it is the pilot making the change who will call the changes he has made and the other pilot will crosscheck, unlike in the movie where the captain changed the heading, the FO called the change, and the captain responded, "Check".

In the scene where the right pitot tube froze over after flying above the freezing level, it is correct that switching the air data source to the left when the right pitot tubes are feeding false data to the air data computer will restore correct air data indications, BUT the proper solution is not to switch both Captain's and FO's air data to LEFT but rather the left hand seat should switch to CENTRE and the right hand seat to LEFT.

The scene which showed the flight controls check prior to takeoff is correct: before every takeoff all flight controls (elevator, aileron/spoileron/flaperon, rudder) must be checked that they move in the correct sense to their full traverse without obstruction.

For taxying on the ground, big jets use a tiller for nosewheel steering; as shown in the movie, it is a rotating handle used to steer the aircraft.

Airports do use a bird scarer whose job is to scare away birds with blanks and other pyrotechnics, not to shoot and kill them.

For the scene just after the birdstrike, it is accurate for the captain to consult the cabin crew at various doors for a status update. This is known as Crew Resource Management. It is also accurate for the purser to be seated at Door 1L (as Yamasaki was). However, the captain's dictatorial style of management makes for rather poor CRM in my opinion!

Inflight, it is true that both members of the technical crew cannot eat the same meals, in the event that one of the meals causes food poisoning, they will not both be incapacitated.

Cabin crew are indeed expected to do a walkabout in any kind of non-normal situation to check on the status of pax, e.g. in turbulence, even after an emergency decompression! It is true that airsickness pills are available in the daily use first aid kit, so the next time you fly, if you need them, do ask.

When the OCC duty manager asks the captain if he wishes to declare an emergency, the entire room suddenly hushes to await the result, and the moment an emergency is declared, they start scrambling. This is correct as a declaration of emergency is very important in aviation. In 1990, Avianca Flight 52 crashed due to fuel starvation, and one of the causes was attributed to the fact that while the pilots declared that they were low on fuel and asked for "priority" to land, they never declared an emergency.

In the scene where the FO is suggesting to descend to a lower altitude to unfreeze the pitot tube (which will work), what the captain says is true: flight at lower altitudes will burn more fuel due to the increased density of the air providing more air resistance. Similarly, what the captain said about increasing speed to melt the pitot tube is correct: increasing airspeed results in increased temperature ram rise.

In the scene where the aircraft is struck by lightning, it is true that lightning does no real damage to the aircraft (maybe unless you're an Airbus, hehehe....)

When the captain is discussing the approach with the FO, he mentions that they will try to descend to catch the glideslope at Kisarazu. There is really a VOR-DME along the extended centreline of 34R called Kisarazu [KZE 114.5]; capturing the glideslope there would be at 3000 feet on the ILS Z Rwy 34R approach and the last possible glideslope intercept point. The glideslope is on a 3° angle. The captain mentioned that they could make it with a 5° descent angle. This angle would equate to 540 feet per nm. At 180 knots this would translate as a 1600 fpm descent. It is strange that he would dive down to try to catch the glideslope from above instead of requesting an orbit to lose altitude and have a better shot at an approach by capturing the glideslope from below (which is the norm).

For the emergency landing scenes: the "Brace! Brace!" call and the constant repetition of "Heads Down!" by the cabin crew is correct. Cabin crew should not stop calling "Heads Down!" until the aircraft has come to a complete stop because the moment they stop doing so, pax will start to look up from the brace position. It is also true that part of the emergency landing preparation is the removal of all hard objects and ties/scarves.

The scenes where the aircraft is on final approach, the depiction of the PAPI lights (mappleleaf's 2 red 2 white) are accurate, as is the crabbing method of crosswind landings, BUT I don't think it takes that long to straighten out on the runway!

It is also true that if the runway is ungrooved, in heavy rain the stopping distance will be significantly increased. According to the FAA, the wet-to-dry stopping distance ratio for an ungrooved runway is 2:1, as opposed to that for a grooved runway being 1.15:1. For info, the maximum crosswind limit for a wet ungrooved runway is 5 knots, not 20 knots.

What the pilot said about "landing it hard and laying on the brakes" is accurate. For landings when the Landing Distance Required is in doubt, the method to bring the aircraft to a stop in as little distance as possible is to land firmly, extend spoilers, apply reverse thrust, and step manually on the brakes as soon as possible as opposed to using the autobrakes (this is known as 'max manual braking'). Especially for wet runways where there is risk of hydroplaning, it is important that the aircraft must be placed FIRMLY on the ground upon touchdown. It is not an often known fact but the best landings are not the ones where "the passengers don't even feel it"; Boeing designed their aircraft to be placed firmly on the ground, not greased on.

I wouldn't be surprised if some cabin crew are really that bimbotic.

Not True

The B747-400 has a 3-way landing gear lever: it must be placed in OFF after being moved to UP, but I did not see them do this in all of the takeoffs.

In the first scene when they were in the sim and the windshear warning came on, the windshear escape manoeuvre involves pushing the TO/GA to get full-rated thrust as well as to aggressively apply maximum thrust, simultaneously rotating to a pitch attitude of 15° nose up. Instead, the 2 pilots freaked out and only manually advanced the thrust levers later. Also, windshear warnings will inhibit GPWS warnings, so we should not be hearing both concurrently.

When they realised that they had unreliable airspeed indications, the pilot mentioned that the alternator was fine before takeoff. Airspeed readings have nothing to do with the alternator. When you have unreliable airspeed readings on takeoff, you also do not reset the circuit breaker (which should only be reset once so the other pilot should not even suggest resetting it again); instead you fly by holding the normal pitch attitude and thrust setting, then crosscheck with your standby instruments to see if you can determine a reliable airspeed data source, failing which you go to your Flight With Unreliable Airspeed Table to determine the appropriate pitch attitude and thrust for that weight and phase of flight. The aircraft would not end up in the ocean like that if they flew by thrust setting and pitch attitude.

The pilot also mentioned that the airspeed was dropping. If the pitot was blocked, on takeoff, the airspeed should be seen to be abnormally rising as the aircraft climbs away; if the static port was blocked instead, the airspeed would indeed appear to drop, but the altimeter would also be stuck as well.

Finally, the pilots should not freak out like that when you have an air data instrument failure (especially in the sim! If I performed like that on my base check, I'd surely fail and be suspended from flying, but this is after all a movie....) The longer you freak out, the more likely you are to die—especially the PM, who did nothing except freak out (instead of ensuring maximum thrust, etc.) and asked if he should make a PA to the passengers. Like... for what??? He forgot the golden mantra of flying: Aviate first, then Navigate, then Communicate, in that order!

When the ground engineer is describing the pitot heater problem, he mentions that the right main pitot heater is unserviceable, but the other pitot on the right is a standby and does not provide airspeed data; later the OCC mentions that this standby pitot input only goes to "elevator feel". There is no such thing as 'elevator feel'; the standby pitot provides airspeed data to the standby airspeed indicator (the centre one of the 3 round gauges). It makes no sense to have a standby pitot that doesn't provide airspeed data at all! Nevertheless, what is true is that according to the Minimum Equipment List, with 1 pitot heater unserviceable out of the 4, it is still a 'go item'.

Given that the standby pitot would have been heated and not frozen over, the entire scenario would not have been half as bad because with both left pitots broken and the right main pitot frozen over, the standby pitot would still be providing accurate airspeed data to the standby airspeed indicator.

It is interesting that the lead actress did not know what her duties were upon boarding the aircraft as the chief stewardess should have briefed everyone on their pre-flight duties during the pre-dispatch briefing. The cabin crew asked each other why the co-pilot was doing the walk-around. The walk-around is usually done by the FO, not the captain. Peak caps should also not be worn on the apron as they pose an FOD risk as well.

When the FO gets nervous and accidentally switches on the wiper instead of the aircon pack, both wipers are observed to come on. However, there are separate knobs for the left and right wipers. In reality though, the right wiper control knob and AC Pack 1 knob are really almost right next to each other.

During boarding, the cabin crew should not be leaving the cabin door unattended to stow luggage, therefore allowing pax to board the aircraft without verification of their boarding passes. Also, whether a hand-carry bag is within size should be checked latest by the departure gate, not at the aircraft door. If a passenger runs out of the aircraft and refuses to fly, what is more plausible is that her luggage will be offloaded instead of the station manager persuading her to return to the aircraft.

When the aircraft was lining up for takeoff, the cockpit could hear the cabin PA announcement given by the purser; this is not possible.

Birdstrike is a very, very, VERY serious event. If an aircraft actually hit a bird, it should turn back and not continue on.

In the scene where the captain remarked that "right is clear", all airliner flights are IFR flights, so there is no need to check clear before turning. Of course, in a busy terminal environment there is no harm in doing so either.

The purser should not be asking the technical crew to switch off the seatbelt sign. The cockpit should not be interrupted until the seatbelt sign is switched off as this is the busiest period for the tech crew (aside from the approach and landing). In addition, the seatbelt sign on takeoff is a safety consideration and cabin crew should not be instructing the tech crew to switch it off so that they can commence their duties. In any case, the seatbelt sign should automatically switch off once the aircraft climbs past 10,300 feet.

When control is handed over for meals, yes the handing-over pilot says "you have control" and the taking-over pilot responds with "I have control", but there is no need for the taking-over pilot to hold the control column because the autopilot is engaged! The phrase "I have control/you have control" is said between both pilots is so that it is at any one time unambiguous who has control of the aircraft.

Drinks should not be served over the centre pedestal to avoid short-circuiting the avionics in event of spillage. Also, whenever 1 pilot leaves the cockpit for a moment, there is no need to don the oxy mask like what the FO did.

When the aircraft uncommanded motion occurs, the airspeed appears to be dropping into the red barber pole (i.e. below stick shaker speed) but the stick shaker doesn't activate. Instead we hear the master warning siren (which sounds in an overspeed condition, not a low speed one).

What happened is probably when the left pitot tubes broke off, the loss of airspeed data caused the air data computer to think that the airspeed has dropped dramatically and thus the autopilot adjusted the pitch attitude to compensate. When airspeed drops suddenly at high altitude for no apparent reason even though pitch attitude and thrust setting are correct, then unreliable airspeed should be suspected. Once again, the autopilot system should be disengaged and flown manually to hold pitch and thrust. However, this should not be at the expense of departing from the assigned flight level, especially in RVSM airspace! Since the air data computer thinks the airspeed has dropped, the autothrottle would increase thrust automatically to compensate, resulting in an overspeed condition. The resultant vibration throughout the airframe is mach buffet, and this is portrayed rather accurately.

As a gauge, the correct attitude and thrust for unreliable airspeed readings for a FL350 cruise would be pitch 2.0° nose up, thrust at 1.14 EPR/83% N1.

These figures need not be memorised but are referred to in a very important manual known as the Quick Reference Handbook (QRH), which is always kept right next to each pilot and contains checklists for handling non-normal situations, as well as important inflight reference data such as these. The QRH is usually designed in a way that it incorporates multiple bookmark tabs, colour codes, and a quick action index to help pilots quickly locate the checklist or data they require. In any non-normal situation, aside from immediate memory items, the first thing pilots pull out would be the QRH.

However, not once in the entire movie did the pilots refer to the QRH. In fact, in the earlier scene when the right pitot tube froze over and caused multiple caution messages on the EICAS such as IAS DISAGREE, instead of simply deciding to switch the air data source to LEFT, the pilots should have taken out the QRH for reference. In fact, it is stressed that any non-normal situation should always be handled with reference to the QRH even if you know how to do it on your own because that is precisely what the QRH is there for, and forgetting something you thought you knew/remembered could have disastrous consequences.

It is interesting that the captain refers to the problem as an air data computer (ADC) error because the ADC supplies not just airspeed data but also altitude and vertical speed. Only airspeed depends on the pitot tube so the altimeter and vertical speed indicator should be working fine, indicating that there is no problem with the ADC.

In the scene where they declared an emergency, no mention was made of setting the transponder to 7700, the code which highlights to ATC and on their displays that this aircraft is in an emergency.

When they started to turn back to Haneda and the water in the glass was seen to tilt, banking that steeply at high altitude will actually stall the aircraft. The lift vector is greatly reduced by bank angles at high altitude due to the reduced density of air.

I find it highly amusing that the FO was so shocked and distressed when the captain asked him to fly the aircraft back to Haneda. As a command trainee, he should know that on his final line check he is expected to act as the commander of the flight. If he deferred to the check captain in an actual emergency even when control was given to him, he would've failed for sure.

Similarly, when lightning hit the OCC and the computers went down, I thought that they were supposed to have a fully redundant computer backup that kicks in within 1 sec. But then again, I'm not very familiar with the airport side of operations....

Nevertheless, I wonder: why on earth did they need the entire airport model for? Surely they could have done the same with a paper map?

In the scene when they were coming in high and fast, the FO was observed to lower his landing gear first before calling for Flaps 1 quite a while later. In the OCC, it is explained that the additional drag from the landing gear would increase their rate of descent. This is true, but it would make a lot more sense to start extending your flaps first before your gear, or at least both at the same time, or use spoilers to slow down before you start configuring.

Later, they lower flaps to 20, but no mention of lowering flaps to 30, which is the normal landing flap setting. When the Landing Distance Required is in doubt, the aircraft should land with fully extended flaps to come in with the lowest possible landing reference speed (V_REF).

For info, the maximum flap placarded speeds (V_FE)are: Flaps 1 - 280 knots, 5 - 260 knots, 10 - 240 knots, 20 - 230 knots; the maximum gear extension speed (V_LO) is 270 knots or M.82. The recommended method for a fully configured approach in the B747-400 is to extend flaps to 10 to intercept the localiser, flaps 20 and gear down when the glideslope comes alive, then landing flaps 25/30 on glideslope capture.

On final approach, the EICAS shows the reference thrust as TO (takeoff) when it should read GA (go around). However, in the takeoff scenes, the EICAS messages are accurate: Pax Signs On, Autobrakes RTO, reference thrust is TO.

On reaching minimums, the FO called "visual". However, the PM (in this case the captain) should be the one calling "visual/no contact", and the PF will give the decision call, either "landing" or "go around".

An aircraft should not be stopped on an active runway unless it is an emergency landing. Although an emergency was declared in the movie, the emergency was not related to anything that would threaten the safety of the aircraft that would necessitate an emergency evacuation immediately upon touchdown. The aircraft was also able to move under its own power, so once it was apparent that they could safely slow down to taxy speed, they should exit the runway and then stop there.

It is really quite impractical to bake dessert on board in mid-air, I think...!

I would also question the crew's decision to return to Haneda. In the movie, it was mentioned that they have been flying for 2½ hours. In still air, this would translate to a point roughly 1150 nm from Haneda (possibly more, given that it was mentioned that there was a 108 knot headwind on returning, so outbound they would have had a tailwind). From this point, it is 900 nm to Wake Island Airfield and 1000 nm to Midway. Granted that repair facilities, along with replacement aircraft and crew, are not available at either Wake Island or Midway, in an unreliable airspeed situation, you would still want to land as soon as practicable. Not to mention too the questionable wisdom of turning back to an aerodrome that is being hit by a typhoon, where cloud base and visibility could well dip below approach minima.

JA8096, the B747-400 used in the movie
Yup that's it! If anyone is curious about anything they have seen or which I've said that they require further explanation, I'd be glad to elaborate! Anyway a lot of this is written from memory so I will certainly be editing this entry should I obtain the DVD one day and realise that I've remembered wrongly!

Happy landings!

§ Technorati tags: flying; reviews

The J-thing goes to Hong Kong!

2009-12-23T18:08:47Z

It took the J-thing 31 years to finally visit Hong Kong, but he is back from a wonderful trip. Good things and not-so-good things happened on this trip, but overall the J-thing has no regrets about choosing HK as the first destination of his free ticket.

But in any case, it will be some time before the J-thing blogs about his HK adventure (those of you who know why will know why lah), so keep a lookout for it later!

§ Technorati tags: all around the world

Gambling with our sons' lives

2009-12-16T15:56:05Z

I read this in the news today:

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_467192.html

Dec 16, 2009
Cheating in SAF contest
Two SAF officers and a specialist convicted; unit was disqualified
By Jermyn Chow

THREE Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) regulars have been convicted in a military court for doctoring their unit's test scores for this year's annual best unit competition.

The two officers and a specialist from the 24th Battalion Singapore Artillery (24 SA) falsified soldiers' results for the standard obstacle course, which requires troops to clear a series of 11 obstacles like a low wall and parallel bars in under 10 minutes.

As a result, the unit was disqualified from the annual competition and the trio - former commanding officer, Major Thomas Wee Swee Tat; operations officer, Major Sim Siang Ju; and specialist, First-Sergeant Lau Soon Teck - were convicted and fined by the General Court Martial on Nov 25.

I spent 6 years in active service with the armed forces, and I am not surprised at this piece of news at all. In the course of those 6 years, I have worked with the Army closely on various opportunities, mostly when I was at SAF Careers Centre. The 2 years at SAFCC really left me with a bad taste in my mouth on how underhanded the Army can get, how to them manpower is merely a resource, and what is it that they really value or care about.

However, the event which left the most distinct and indelible impression on me of all my dealings with the Army occurred before that and what brought it to mind was reading this article, because suddenly I realise that there could perhaps be another dimension to it. I have written about it before in a comment, but I feel this story deserves a top-level entry.

When I was Manpower Officer of an Air Force unit, one of the duties I had to perform was to appoint an officer to sit on the Court Martial Panel whenever a serviceman from my brigade was being court-martialled. Nobody wanted to do this thankless task so on every occasion I was the one who went since, being a CPT, I could sit as both the junior or senior member. During these panels you see cases from all services of the SAF and it was on these occasions that I saw the bottom end of the spectrum, how the system can be so stupidly inflexible that it drives NSF boys to desperation, to do silly things like go AWOL for trivial reasons, just because their commanders did not care enough about them. But the worst injustice of all was the one which I felt compelled to fight.

This was the case of an NSF from an Army unit charged with losing a live round of ammunition during patrol on Jurong Island. Now most courts martial are open-and-shut cases: the accused pleads guilty, and the panel is tasked simply by listening to the statement of facts and any mitigating statements, and then deciding on the appropriate penalty using a pre-determined matrix table as a guideline. So in this case, the NSF boy intended to plead guilty and would be sentenced to detention for a few months. But upon hearing the statement of facts, I started to doubt that he was actually guilty as charged:

The serviceman was part of a platoon assigned to patrol the island.
At the start of his duty, he was issued a SAR-21 rifle and a magazine of 30 live rounds.
Now one feature of the SAR-21 is that the magazine is translucent, with markings on the side to indicate how many rounds were loaded in the magazine.
However, instead of being issued 30 rounds, the NSF was issued a magazine preloaded by the armourer.
He was also ordered by the armourer not to physically count the rounds in the magazine one-by-one because there was no need to; he could just look at the 30-round marking.
As per SOP, he put the magazine open-end down in his magazine pouch so that any rounds which accidentally drop out would fall into the pouch and not be lost.
Throughout the course of his duty, he never fell asleep, and only took his battle webbing off twice, and he was right next to it on both occasions.
When he returned the magazine, they found that there were only 29 rounds in it.
They searched every inch of the island he was patrolling, along with all vehicles and personnel leaving the island, but could not find the missing round.

Upon hearing this, I started to ask the Defending Officer a few questions; what I uncovered made me even more unsettled. It turns out that the round marking on the magazine works by means of spring-action: the spring that holds the rounds in the magazine determines where along the marking the last round lies. If there are 30 rounds in the magazine, the last round would fall squarely on the 30-round mark; if there are only 29 rounds, the edge of the last round would still touch the 30-round mark. Before being allowed to handle any weapon, every serviceman is expected to pass a technical handling course—it turned out that the NSF had never been trained on this technical handling. So it is not inconceivable that the magazine was loaded with only 29 rounds, and since the NSF was told not to count it, he obeyed orders, saw the edge of the last round touch the 30-round mark, and signed out for 30 rounds. What makes things worse was that due to differing spring quality, sometimes you could load a magazine with 29 or 31 rounds and the last would still fall squarely on the 30-round mark—in fact, the Defending Officer himself said he had almost made the same mistake before because of that exact reason.

Now you don't need any form of legal training to realise that the case has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt. So upon conferring with the president of the court martial panel (a trained district judge), I recommended that the case be thrown out. The president agreed and told the Defending Officer (a 2LT from the NSF's unit who was probably arrowed to just write a mitigating statement) to investigate more thoroughly and to prepare a defence for him. When the next trial date approached, I called up the Defending Officer and realised that he had done absolutely nothing at all—because the unit CO and Manpower Officer instructed him to "just get it over with quickly". They didn't seem interested at all to uncover what really happened, but would rather send him packing off to DB for a few months just to close the case without much fuss. I was horrified. This was a few months of a man's life we're talking about here, and they didn't seem like it mattered a lot to them. I told the 2LT that as an officer, it was his job to stand up for and defend his own man from his own unit. You can't be expecting an Air Force officer from another unit to be doing that, I told him.

I didn't want to see a miscarriage of justice, so I called up the Court Martial Centre and requested to specifically sit in the panel on the day the case would be mentioned again. On that day, the NSF wanted to plead guilty because he "didn't want to drag the issue", also I suspect because he was afraid that by fighting for his innocence, he would incur greater wrath from his superiors. The Defending Officer (as expected) did nothing. Unfortunately the term of the judge at the previous mention had elapsed and it was a new judge who was presiding. I told the new president about the facts of the previous case, but apparently, military legal procedure states that if the accused insists on pleading guilty, even if we suspect a miscarriage of justice, nothing can be done. We were compelled to record a guilty verdict and we sentenced him to the barest minimum allowed. Nevertheless, a man went to the Detention Barracks for 3 months because of an offence he most likely did not commit.

This is just one of the incredible things that you will never find in the Navy or Air Force. I'm sure many other ex-regulars will have their own equally disturbing stories to tell. The unit in question was an armour battalion. This incident was seared in my collective memory from that day forth and after many other encounters with people from Armour, of all the branches of the Army, I despise Armour the most.

After reading the news today, I just realised that the evaluation criteria for the Best Unit Competition most likely also includes the number of disciplinary cases, including the number of courts martial the unit is involved in. By throwing the first case out I had made 1 case appear at 2 sittings—if I had thrown it out again, that would probably have been 3. The CO probably told his 2LT to "get it over with quickly" to provide minimum fuss and to contain the damage to the unit's chances at winning the best unit competition.

It is amazing enough that senior Army officers will think nothing of falsifying records in order to win a competition, but it is certainly very distasteful that they gamble with people's lives in order to do the same. It really makes you wonder what is more important on their list of priorities.

For more info on the General Court Martial system in the SAF, you can read this article.
You will notice the line: "The SAF has about 200 trained defending officers." I don't know if the system has changed in the past 3 years, but if it hasn't, these "200 trained defending officers" are merely those who have gone through the basic manpower officers course, where you get a package on the roles of a defending officer and a rough guide on what is expected of you. Don't expect top-notch legally-trained officers skilled in rebuttal. Nevertheless, even this little bit of "training" is better than having an NSF officer of your unit just arrowed to do the job—like the hapless 2LT in this case.

[ X-posted to sg_ljers ]

§ Technorati tags: issues

Mulan

2009-12-14T18:41:46Z

I have wanted to watch Mulan since I heard that Jingle Ma (I can never get over his name) was filming a real life adaptation. Finally there would be a film that would do this tale justice, without talking dragons, crickets and horses (thanks to Disney). Of all the Chinese fables and tales, I have always liked the story of Hua Mulan. Moreover, the fact that Vicki Zhao Wei was cast as Mulan made it all the more appetising.

Before watching the film, I was warned by several reviews not to expect too much from the battle scenes, and that it is primarily a love story set on the battlefield. Also, Yun Huei warned me that it was going to be very emo, even too emo. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a shot.

In the end, I felt that it didn't disappoint on both counts. The battle scenes were filmed quite well. Of course they don't match up if you compare them to Gladiator or Kingdom of Heaven, but it was adequate to the film. The gem of the movie is really the acting. Both Zhao Wei and Chen Kun display very believable chemistry and perform their roles to a very high standard. Even the acting from Jaycee Chan and previous unknown Liu Yuxin were good. The film also had a couple of scenes which if, taken as a snapshot, I liked quite a bit. One example of this is the scene where Mulan regains control of her senses and restarts training of the army. I quite liked the shot where as she walks up to the platform, they show for a moment the fact that she is wearing not just her own but also Wentai's dog tags on her belt.

Perhaps the biggest complaint I have about the film is the jerkiness of the plot advancement in the beginning. It was as though Jingle Ma rushed through the starting just to establish the frame of reference for the events after Mulan becomes a general. One moment she enlists in the camp, the next moment she's in training, then the hot spring scene, then she gets arrested, then suddenly she breaks out and rejoins the army in battle. It's like everything flashes forward in scenes of two minutes or so each. After a while it gets very disjointing. Also, in terms of the plot, the believability of the conclusion is really sketchy. They don't explain what this 'poison dragon' is (I gather that it's a sandstorm of sorts, but why the funky name?) Also, the part about Mulan breaking into the Rouren camp incognito and then killing their Danyu is a little too far-fetched; and after that, how did they break out?

Also, the comment about it being too emo was rather justified. There is a lot of crying in this film, and although at times the emo-ness seemed necessary to the plot, I wish it didn't have to end on such an emo note. It almost leaves you with the thought that in spite of all her achievements, in the end Mulan ends up back to being just a normal girl who loses the man she loves. Also, in the middle of the film, I felt that they could have cut down on the emo bits where Mulan thinks Wentai has died and spent that time on more character development in the parts that they fast forwarded through.

Oh yes, and I totally didn't understand the need for that Vitas Russian fellow in the cast at all!! Like, his character was so insignificant and could easily have been replaced with a Chinese actor. The only contribution I felt he provided was comic relief at his ang moh-accented Mandarin.

I think Zhao Wei especially was very well cast and believable as Mulan, even if it's quite surprising that nobody guessed she was a girl (I mean, since when have you seen someone look so hot in battle armour, and even if she's not smiling?) In fact, she looks better in the armour than in those scenes when she's dressed as a woman! I particularly thought she looked really good in the scenes where she was riding into battle on her horse, in full armour and a stern, determined expression. In spite of that, Zhao Wei is not too fragile that she can't pull off the character properly. I read that the original choice for Mulan was Stefanie Sun and I'm so glad that Zhao Wei got it in the end. Honestly, I think Stefanie Sun looks too delicate to pull off the character of a legendary female warrior, and while Zhao Wei's hoarse voice was already barely believable as a man, I don't think Stefanie's voice would suit a woman masquerading as a man at all. In fact, the voice is very important to the character portrayal. As the film makers state: "Zhao Wei’s voice sounds full of power, it’s in accordance with the character who is a girl poses as a boy. Because Mulan has fought in battlefields for many years, and she always dressed like a man, her voice can’t be so gentle, it's necessary to sound baryphonious."

One theme I liked very much in the story of Mulan is that of female empowerment; in the scene where Mulan convinces the Rouren princess to help kill the bad guy, where she revealed to the princess that the Mulan who was responsible for so many brave deeds and who was so feared by the Rouren army was actually a woman. In the beginning of the film it started off on the premise that women were useful only for domestic tasks, even something shameful or disgraceful to be hidden away and not to be seen, and it ends with Mulan being recognised as a woman that the entire nation can be proud of.

I also empathised with Mulan when she realised that there is nothing glorious about war on the battlefield, and that she never intended to have to shoulder the responsibility of being a great general, when all she intended to do was to save her father from having to go to war. It's another example of Zhao Wei's great acting skills.

All in all, one of the better films that I have watched this year.

Next Chinese movie: The Treasure Hunter. With Lin Chi Ling, mmmmm....

§ Technorati tags: reviews

The Storm Warriors

2009-12-03T17:55:03Z

"The fastest way to build up your powers is to use the power of evil."
Now, hands up who didn't see from the start that that is going to be a really bad idea.... -_-

10 years ago, I watched a Chinese movie that set a certain standard for Chinese movies for me for some time. This was of course, the Storm Riders. The CGI was out of this world, the plot was tight and interesting, and the cinematography, well, okay lah. Of course, it also starred Shu Qi and Kristy Yang, so those were 2 more plus points. Even the soundtrack was really good for a Chinese movie! (We actually used some of the tracks for our Eusoff Hall Dance Production in 2002.)

Fast forward 11 years, and I found myself at GV Vivo courtesy of angeliatay, waiting to watch how Aaron Kwok and Ekin Cheng have changed over the past decade. Before we could enter the cinema hall though, they made all of us deposit our handphones, cameras, PDAs, or any other recording devices. I was like... WTF. Surely they could have told us about this earlier? I would have left my phone in my car lor!

Anyhow, the film started, and I started to watch it eagerly. The Storm Riders/Warriors franchise is not exactly known for their characters' names; okay, at least after they've been translated into English. I mean, the bad guy's name is... Lord Godless, hahaha! Another martial arts master's name is Lord Wicked, and then you have Nameless, Heart, Piggy King, and Second Dream. Seriously.

Unfortunately, Shu Qi did not return for this film; her character, Chuchu, was played by a new actress called Tiffany Tang Yan, who had a more fresh-faced GND look compared to the sultry Shu Qi in 1998.

Initially the movie started out rather okay, even if the scenario echoed the first film: big bad guy who's an unbeatable martial arts master tries to conquer the world. Then the scene where Lord Godless orders his son, Heart, to hunt down our heroes and take out the martial arts schools one by one, the cinematography looked exactly like Sin City or 300. Even the army of Lord Godless looked like the Immortals from 300 lor, with their all black outfit complete with dark metal mask with gaping black mouths and eyes!

Storm Warriors

The Immortals from 300

There was also a scene where Lord Godless is carried by his soldiers on this massive throne in the shape of a dragon's head, which also reminded me uncannily of the golden throne of Xerxes carried on the backs of slaves.

After this scene, I started to notice bits that seemed to be inspired from other films, like the scene where Wind is turning to the Dark Side, I mean, evil side, he has to immerse himself into a pool that turns his skin... black. But somehow, when he actually turns evil, he is no longer black but slightly greenish, crazy, and shirtless. Later, there is a scene between Wind and Cloud where they each stand still and then you see them fighting in spirit, with their physical selves watching on. I think Zhang Yimou pulled it off much better though, with better mood music.

The plot of this film also left much to be desired. I know it's not supposed to be known for the plot but more for the special effects, but seriously... Dragon Bone? Which turns out to be a spine? Which is taken and then fought with? And then when it finally breaks into 2, one half with the bad guy and one half with the general, suddenly they don't talk about it again? Not to mention too that this all-powerful Lord Godless, who can block hundreds of swords with his superpowers, can suddenly just have his arm chopped off and then freeze up to be broken into pieces?

Speaking of special effects, they were good, but the constant use of slow-mo à la John Woo was just too grating. Essentially, after Lord Godless is defeated, the rest of the movie becomes an Aaron-Ekin love-fest for about 30-45 minutes. They just kept on fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting, interspersed with lots of slow-mo scenes accompanied with intense eye close-ups and lots of hair flying around. Then it's back to normal time for about another couple of minutes, then slooooow-moooooo againnnnnn....

After a while I was drumming my fingers just mentally wishing them to get it over and done with already! Then at the end, suddenly out of nowhere, Aaron Kwok dives down an avalanche, saves Ekin and Charlene, and when Ekin awakes from the Dark Side, the only thing he can say is: "Why did it end up like this?! How did it become like this?!" Ummm... duh, didn't you think that after you turn to the Dark Side, you might become too powerful for anyone else to control??? Then the movie abruptly ends.

Oh well, but it wasn't all that bad lah. I did like especially the use of contrast and slight use of Chiaroscuro, especially in that temple pavilion scene. Not to mention that I think Charlene Choi was cast very well in this role as a forlorn damsel in distress. She actually does look very good in period costume! Simon Yam, on the other hand, wasn't very well cast, I felt; he lacks the evil warlord impression that Sonny Chiba gives you. Furthermore, there was no comic relief like Wen Chouchou of Storm Riders.

Ultimately, if you watch this film, it's only for the special effects, because the plot is really quite stupid. I guess the producers knew this too, that's why they keep on doing the effects so much so that it really gets quite draggy before the (abrupt) end.

(Clockwise from top left) Charlene Choi (yum!), Simon Yam, Tiffany Tang, Nicholas Tse

§ Technorati tags: reviews

Gubra

2009-11-29T13:17:53Z

Following how much I loved Sepet the night before, I decided to come for the screening of Gubra, which I had not intended before watching Sepet, but the latter left me inextricably hooked. Now I want to get the DVDs of the Orked Trilogy, and I was recommended Talentime as well.

Like Sepet did, the moment the film started, it started to tell its message. I'm referring of course to the scene where the caller of the azaan walks to the mosque in the pre-dawn darkness, and along the way, speaks kindly to a stray dog, even patting its head. The message is simple: before you start criticising others or making demands because of your religion, make sure you know your religion well enough first. Remember the hooha a few years back when this Malay woman wrote to the ST Forum to demand that dogs be banned from taxis, and similar letters appeared calling for bans of dogs from places like McDonald's and the like? A lot of Muslims believed wholeheartedly that they were not allowed to touch dogs, whereas the correct teaching is merely that if it so happens that a dog's saliva touches you, you need to wash wherever was touched by it. As the scene was acted out, I noticed very carefully what the muezzin did: he patted the dog on the head, stroked it a bit on the back, but he never touched anywhere near the dog's nose. After the dog moved off, the muezzin continued walking on to the mosque, as though nothing had happened.

Other little semi-hidden references included the scene where Alan and Orked are in the pick-up, and she said one thing she loved about Malaysia was the fact that you could switch on the radio, and have a multitude of languages readily available. Then one of them said something about how they could never imagine living in a place where everybody could only speak the same language. I saw this as a tongue-in-cheek indictment of Singapore, of how Singaporeans seem to be losing their ability to speak any dialect other than Mandarin, and in doing so, lose a lot of their colour, culture and heritage in the process. If you notice, the dominant Chinese dialect used in Sepet and Gubra is Cantonese. Yet when Alan switched on the radio, it played a Mandarin channel.

Unfortunately, the use of mood music in Gubra, although good, was not as breathtaking as the Song To The Moon in Sepet (the music used here being the Adagio un poco mosso from Beethoven's Emperor Concerto).

One scene I particularly liked was when Orked discovered what her husband was really up to, and as she went to confront the other woman, Alan and Arif both looked at her walking off. I really liked the juxtaposition of the current husband who betrayed her and the brother of the former boyfriend, her only link to the man who loved her more than himself, and who broke her heart because he was taken from her even though he promised he would never leave.

A scene which made me, and the whole audience in particular, laugh out loud was when Alan was explaining that he was divorced from his Singaporean wife and musing that she never thought he was good enough for her, ending off with "serves me right for marrying a Singaporean". I don't know what the rest of the crowd were laughing at, but I was laughing not because I felt that it was funny how he felt that, yes, he would never be good enough for a Singaporean girl, but because it's a reflection of how many Singaporean women these days tend to aim so high and think so highly of themselves that most men would never be good enough.

A particularly poignant scene I felt was the ending, which juxtaposed Kiah and Mas at prayers together contrapuntally with scenes of Alan and his daughter at prayers in a church. This helped to hammer home Yasmin's pet message in case you have not been thinking too much during the film: that despite our differences in practices, in faiths, in customs, beneath it all, we are all the same. During that scene, Kiah was seen breaking into tears and being comforted by Mas. Was it because of what happened in her room? Or was it because Temah had died? It was never really explained.

Speaking of unexplained loose ends, Yasmin never really explained why is it that the post-credit scene showed Orked snuggling up to Jason and both were wearing wedding rings; this brought comparisons with the end of Sepet, where Orked is seen finally telling Jason she loved him even though he lay dead on the ground with his phone ringing. I thought quite hard about it and came up with a couple of plausible explanations of what Yasmin was trying to say.

One of the comments I received about this not just open-ended but even wide-open puzzle ending was that Yasmin couldn't make up her mind about what ending she wanted and so she gave this ambiguous ending. But if you think a bit more about the ending moments of the film, you'll notice that Yasmin knew perfectly well what she wanted to say. Take the scene where Kiah surprises Mas at her home, what was that thing that Kiah had to do back home? What was she saving the money for? And later, what happened between Temah's former boyfriend and Kiah behind the closed door? Why did Yasmin time this event to occur at the same time as the morning azaan, which calls out "God is the greatest"?

All these things are not something that Yasmin couldn't make up her mind on what she wanted: she deliberately inserted these couple of minutes into the film and if they had been removed, it would not have affected the flow of the film. In fact, inserting these two scenes created more questions than closure, and that is exactly what Yasmin sought to do: to throw us open questions to which we have to figure out her answers on our own.

Yasmin has always sought to compel her audiences to think for themselves, instead of blindly accepting what has been spoon-fed to them. This is a common trait in her films, so in the same vein, it is only natural that she will make you think for yourself to decode and discern her message. And it is always in the smallest details, or even removed entirely from the process of image and sound. If you don't think about what you didn't see or didn't hear, you will never get it.

A good example of this is the short film that she did for 15Malaysia. It may only be 2 minutes long, but the wealth and intensity of the scene fills much more than that. Nevertheless, comments from some people were that it was "boring" and "no action". They just didn't bother to see beyond the image and listen to that message that the pregnant moment of silence was saying:

If you can see only what light reveals
and hear only what sound announces,
Then in truth you do not see nor do you
hear.

The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you,
but in what he cannot reveal to you.
Therefore, if you would understand him,
listen not to what he says but rather to what he does not say.

– Kahlil Gibran –
Sand and Foam

§ Quod vide:
Straits Times review of Gubra, from Yasmin's blog

§ Technorati tags: religion; reviews

Sepet

2009-11-27T19:39:00Z

It was really through a stroke of pure luck, that as I was about to leave Suntec, I checked my Twitterfeed and saw that auntyadele had tweeted that she was on her way to watch Yasmin Ahmad's Sepet! I did a double-take, because of all my favourite films, this is the only one which I have never watched and have always wanted to. Yes, I know it sounds strange to have a favourite film that I've never seen, but from the trailers, the reviews, and the synopsis of the film—coupled with the fact that it was from Yasmin Ahmad—told me that I would love it.

I have been trying to watch Sepet many times since I first heard about it just after it ended its short run in the mainstream cinemas back in 2004. I have been searching for the DVD, even in the DVD shops along KL's Jalan Alor, I have searched online, but the closest I came to watching it was one late night in my hotel room in KL, when I switched on the TV only to see the ending of a film I quickly recognised as Sepet.

Anyway, I quickly saw the time of the tweet and it was only 8 minutes before I saw it, so after finding out where it was screening, I made my way down asap! I still couldn't believe how fateful it was that I decided to check my Twitterfeed when I did. Just 15 minutes later and I would not have been able to make it down. Maybe it was appropriate that one of the themes of the film was on fate and destiny!

Even though I had high expectations for the film, it didn't disappoint. Right from the start, when the opening credits featured Sam Hui's 梨涡浅笑, which was a lovely and nostalgic Cantonese song, I was watching intently. I loved how Yasmin brilliantly interwove the various languages: English, Cantonese, and Malay. There was even a smattering of Mandarin and Hokkien. I loved the fact that Cantonese featured so prominently in the film; needless to say, I'm pretty sick of the inherent Hokkien bias of local Singaporean cinema.

My favourite scene was quite early in the film: the scene where Orked and Jason first meet, at a quite random, chance moment. One thing I find about Yasmin's films is that if you only see what the eyes see and hear what the ears hear, you're missing a lot. She has this way of infusing so much underlying meaning and undertones in a scene that you have to process and decipher in situ to be able to understand. As it is, I know there is some significance to the father's narrative that starts the film, but I'm still trying to figure it out.

Anyway, back to the meeting scene, I really loved how the couple first look at each other, and then the ambient sound starts to slowly wash away, like how it is when you're in love and you become oblivious to the rest of the world... until someone brings you back with a snap. Yasmin managed to take a clichéd scene, apply a cliché, and yet make you really feel as though it was the only right and natural thing to happen. And yet, at that moment, when a young Chinese boy and young Malay girl meet each other's eyes and fall in love, you start to feel the bittersweetness of the moment, for that would bring them both down a path which would lead to a lot of pain and sadness that you start to wonder if it would have been better for each of them if they had never met at all.

One disappointment I felt in the film was that it seemed all too easy for Jason and Orked to fall in love. Being a Chinese boy and a Malay girl, I was expecting and hoping to see a bit more drama on the social pressures/obstacles standing between them, especially from both their families. But it seemed just so easy that it appeared more like an oddity or novelty rather than a taboo that's frowned upon.

I like how Yasmin fitted in social commentaries in small, innocuous places, like the scene where Jason's family is having dinner, and I noticed that while the Peranakan mother spoke Malay and the father and the brother spoke Cantonese, the sister-in-law spoke Mandarin. Moments later, it was revealed: the sister-in-law was from Singapore. It was a simple, yet effective reflection of the reality that Singaporeans are dialect-impeded due to the Speak Mandarin Campaign.

When Orked and Jason met for their first date, I was quite intrigued to note that she interspersed her speech with Cantonese terms. It is really quite interesting to hear a Malay girl utter familiar Cantonese phrases like 'ho doke' [好毒], and she delivered her lines very well. I felt that Sharifah Amani and Ng Choo Seong really had a lot of chemistry in the film, such that you could really believe that they were blissfully in young, unjaded love.

From the initial warm, fuzzy feeling that the budding romance gave, it started to turn dark at the point where Yasmin used the Song To The Moon from Dvořák's Rusalka as accompanying music, which I felt was chosen very well. If you are familiar with this work, you will know that it is a very lyrical, emotive, and yet hauntingly bittersweet tune. I pay careful attention to mood music, and like what Wong Kar-wai said, during this scene, the music was indeed the front and the image the background. Perhaps it was a silent tribute to wkw's style that Orked first meets Jason when she turns up at his stall looking for VCDs and the VCD that Jason gives to her with his number inside is wkw's Chungking Express.

Sepet really tugged at my heartstrings during the final part of the film, especially that scene in the car when Orked read Jason's letter where he pleaded with her, telling her that he didn't know for sure whether she loved him because he never heard her say it. I was like... "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.........!!!!!!!" A film has not made me feel that way in quite some time.

Malaysian cinema, if not the world, has lost a great talent with the passing of Yasmin Ahmad. They are screening Gubra, the sequel, tomorrow, and although I initially wasn't that interested, I think I'll be going down tomorrow too.

If you have never seen or even heard of this film, do check out the trailer:

§ Technorati tags: reviews

The one thing about this country I can never agree with

2009-11-26T17:33:06Z

People may say a lot about how chao kuan this country is. While we can all differ about the veracity of that statement, one thing to me is so chao kuan that I can never possibly agree with it.

Amnesty International frequently issues urgent action appeals for condemned prisoners at imminent risk of execution. While these mostly refer to prisoners in countries like the US, China, Japan, or Iran, this time I saw that the country in question was Singapore.

Yong Vui Kong was arrested in June 2007, when he was 19, by officers from the Central Narcotics Bureau. He was charged with trafficking 42.27 grams of heroin, and then sentenced to death in January 2009.

He had been working as a messenger for a man in Malaysia who often asked him to collect money from debtors or deliver packages as "gifts" to people in Singapore and Malaysia. At his trial, Yong Vui Kong said he had not known what was in the packages, and when he asked, he had simply been told not to open them. The judge, however, ruled that Yong must have been aware of their contents, saying in his written summation, "I found that the accused had failed to rebut the presumption against him. I am of the view that the prosecution had proved its case against the accused beyond reasonable doubt, and I therefore found the accused guilty as charged and sentenced him to suffer death."

Did you notice the use of the term 'presumption'? That is because Singapore law states that when it comes to drugs, you are guilty until proven innocent. The burden is on you to prove that you did not know that there were drugs in the package you were carrying or in the vehicle you were driving. All the prosecution needs to do (if anything at all) is to show that you should have known that there were drugs in the sealed package or hidden under your car.

Regardless of whether Yong was indeed trying to traffick drugs or not, even if he really was guilty, what is more serious than the death penalty itself is this presumption. If you remember a couple of years ago, there was a young Nigerian named Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi, who was also hanged because he "should have known"—even though the judge noted that there was no direct evidence that he did know or that he had found out on his own. Indeed, his actions were consistent with someone who didn't know what he was carrying. I have no idea whether anyone at all has ever managed to prove that he did not know and should not have known that there were drugs on him or in his vehicle, but certainly I have never heard of any case where the accused succeeded. Furthermore, there is also another presumption which states that unless you prove otherwise, they can presume that you are carrying it for trafficking, not consumption, which can lead to a mandatory death sentence with no alternative and is almost an absolute certainty.¹

Those are two pretty amoral presumptions to make, aren't they?

¹ After the single appeal is rejected, the final recourse is to appeal to the President for clemency based on the mitigating circumstances of the case. Since 1965, the President has granted clemency only six times; the last clemency was in May 1998 from President Ong Teng Cheong for an 18-year-old convicted of murder, with the sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Between 1994–1999, Singapore had the highest per-capita execution rate in the world, estimated to be 13.57 executions per one million population.

[ X-posted to sg_ljers ]

§ Technorati tags: issues; social commentary

Our Army: Another Proud Cluster Bomb User

2009-11-18T15:47:39Z

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_455906.html

Nov 18, 2009
SAF tests new artillery
Troops get more reach, firepower; delivery of weapons begin next year
By Jermyn Chow

FORT SILL (OKLAHOMA) - A NEW rocket artillery weapon system acquired by the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) to give its ground troops greater reach and firepower went into action on Tuesday.

The US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or Himars, was fired for the first time as part of the Forging Sabre war games being carried out in the rugged scrublands of Fort Sill in Oklahoma, in the United States.

What the artillery rockets can do

THE High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (Himars):
Length: 7m.
Weight: 15,900kg with rockets.
Speed: Almost 100kmh.

Its weapons system can:
Fire at targets 70km away, and always hit within 5m of the target.
Prepare and fire all its six rockets in different directions within five minutes.
Reload all rocket tubes in 10 minutes.

Each rocket has 644 armour-piercing bomblets packed into its warhead, each smaller than a soft-drink can. Each of these bomblets can punch through armour up to 10cm thick.

The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) has purchased 18 Himars trucks, with the first few expected to be delivered by the middle of next year.

Besides the US Army, only Singapore and the United Arab Emirates use this system.

The SAF is training on US-supplied hardware for now, and will take delivery of the first of 18 Himars it purchased by the middle of next year.

Tuesday's live-firing exercise comes eight months after troops from the 23rd Battalion Singapore Artillery (23 SA) first started training on the new weapon.

Mounted on a truck are six rockets, with each warhead packing 644 armour-piercing bomblets. Firing a salvo of all six rockets would rain about 3,800 bomblets over targets 70km away.

Guided by a Global Positioning System, the rockets are more accurate and powerful than the current big guns in the SAF - the 155mm artillery guns and 120mm mortars.

The Army and our mainstream media are trying to hype up this latest 'achievement' of theirs, but when I read this article, I didn't see it the same way. Rather than something to be proud of, I felt this was very disappointing and something to be ashamed of.

In recent times, the campaign against landmines and cluster munitions has garnered the same level of publicity as the campaign against global warming or sharks' fins. I don't think I need to go into the specifics of why, but to date, 101 countries have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions obliging them never to use cluster munitions. Singapore, unsurprisingly, is not a signatory to this convention.

I don't see why we need to procure such a weapon. After all, if as the papers claim its vaunted accuracy of always hitting within 5m of the target, what the hell do we need 644 bomblets for? Or do they mean that with 644 bomblets, at least one of them is guaranteed to hit within 5m of the target?

[ X-posted to sg_ljers ]

§ Quod vide:

Wikipedia: Cluster Bomb

Wikipedia: Convention on Cluster Munitions

§ Technorati tags: news bites

Glen Goei's The Blue Mansion

2009-11-11T20:04:44Z

I caught The Blue Mansion earlier this week and I really liked it a lot, though I must say that you really need a lot of patience to watch this film. It builds up rather slowly but when the ending comes, it comes with a punch.

I particularly liked Louisa Chong's portrayal of the elderly matriarch who is left to take over running the household, how she tried to maintain her dignified composure and poise even in the face of family politics and external gossip. I thought the acting by Tan Kheng Hua was particularly good as well, and fwah nobody told me she had such a MILF-like figure (which Glen Goei showed off to good effect, along with, er... Emma Yong's). My favourite scene though was the one with Sebastian Tan, hahaha! I also grew to empathise with Neo Swee Lin's character even though I initially did not like her very much due to her fanatical Christian beliefs. Patrick Teoh acted quite well too, especially in the scenes after Emma Yong appeared [if you watch the film you'll know why].

Being titled The Blue Mansion, I knew it was a reference to the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, part of the Penang UNESCO World Heritage Site, but I also noticed the abundant use of colour, together with contrast and shadow, in the cinematography. Indeed, blue is the predominant colour in the film (and since it's my favourite colour I liked it quite a lot!) Throughout the film, the character Wee Bak Chuan is wearing gold (a reference to his position as the Pineapple King and being reminiscent of the imperial yellow, also a subtle hint at his dictatorial style, perhaps?) In the scene where he speaks to all his children when he was alive, if you notice carefully, they are all wearing blue. Emma Yong's character appears throughout the film dressed in a dazzlingly white wedding gown. I'm not sure but the symbolism I got from that was that it was to emphasise her purity of heart and that what happened to her was a direct result of her marriage, I think.

All in all, it is a very well-shot film, could have been better written, and acting was good although I don't get the highly contrived accents. Why can't they just speak like real people? I think it's ending its run soon so catch it when you still can!

§ Technorati tags: reviews

The J-thing's Observation of the Day: Love Is

2009-11-09T17:08:10Z

When you think you love someone, you love him because of all that he does to make you happy.

But when you really love someone, you ask not what he can do to make you happy; instead, you know you love him because you're thinking of all the things you can do to make him happy.

Immature love says: "I love you because I need you."
Mature love says: "I need you because I love you."

– Erich Fromm –
§ Technorati tags: observations; ♥

Drunk People Say And Do The Darnedest Things

2009-11-07T22:00:35Z

So tonight marajaded and I were at Timbré 1 watching The Goodfellas, and somewhere in the middle of their 3rd set, they get this on a request form:

Hi guys,

I'm a lawyer and I'm really drunk.
I love your band, I want to come up on stage and sing with you, goddammit.

[OK I don't remember what exactly the second sentence said, but it was along those lines, with the "goddammit" at the end.]

Now this is something you don't get every night! So the band actually gets him to come up... and we realise that our drunk lawyer isn't a he but a she. And she's really high. Firstly, she tells everyone her name (I was waiting for the name of her firm but alas she disappointed). Then when The Goodfellas start to choose a song, she tells them that she wants to sing Don't Speak, because it's the only No Doubt song she knows. Bear in mind this is Goodfellas, the band that sings Queen, U2, and Coldplay (they also do Wondergirls and Earth, Wind & Fire, but that is another story....)

Now, if she could actually sing, that wouldn't be so bad. But we all know how predictably drunk people sing. I was quipping to marajaded that if you have real friends, they wouldn't allow you to do that kind of public harm to yourself, but apparently, not only did her 'friends' let her do it, while we were cringing, they apparently tried to disassociate themselves and pretend that they weren't with her.

(You'll get how jialat it is when you see the video but it's quite mean to post it up so unless you guys really want to see it, I won't lah.)

Anyhow, I'm so glad that whoever was at my birthday party were friend enough to not allow/prompt me to do something as horrifyingly embarrassing as that!

§ Technorati tags: funnies

Exam Questions and Common Sense

2009-10-27T17:54:21Z

angeliatay posted this brainteaser of a question she encountered among her Pri. 1 son's Maths problems; let's see if you can solve it:

84, 64, A, 46, 24.
What is A?

Give up? Heh, after trying very hard to determine the pattern between 84 and 64, and 46 and 24, I gave up—until she revealed that it was actually an MCQ question, and the options were:

a.2 b.74 c.36 d.51 e.34

Still baffled? Well, I took one look and I immediately declared the answer to be D. The reasoning was simple: it was quite apparent to me that 51 was the only number between 64 and 46!

And after I realised what it was trying to do, I steadfastly approve of this question. It may be a Maths problem, but it really is a common sense answer. Lots of kids grilled by the system in deconstructing questions into logical patterns with mathematical certainty will be probably baffled by this question. At best, they will spend a lot of time trying to work out the logical pattern and then either give up and tikam, or realise the logic behind the flow belatedly, yet will still be too afraid to pick that answer with certainty; at worst, the kids will cry because the paper is so hard that they cannot understand that one question, then the kid's spirit will be broken.

However, even as we search for patterns and flows and logical progressions, we must never lose track or forget about the uncommon 'common sense'. Far too often we see these brilliant government scholars churn out idea after idea, policy after policy, that promises to be ground-breaking, revolutionary, and a watershed—but when the people on the ground see this policy, the first thing we think of is: it simply lacks common sense. I think it is important that from a young age, we allow our kids to realise that above all, whatever you do must first and foremost make sense.

Pri. 1 kids may be too young indeed to be taught the concept of Occam's Razor, but you are never too young to apply it.

§ Technorati tags: social commentary

Do people actually realise how dumb they are?

2009-10-08T17:48:40Z

I don't look through STOMP unless I am given a link to a specific article, or if something really bizarre is listed on the STOMP panel on the ST website, but whenever I do, I am always engrossed by some of the articles—because they reaffirm my faith in the unlimited horizon of human stupidity.

One example is this article I saw the other day. Let me reproduce it in its full glory here:

Posted on 05 Oct 2009
Police car waits at double yellow lines unattended

Are police cars allowed to park or wait on double yellow lines? That is what STOMPer Just wonders after spotting this unattended police car with its hazard lights switched on in an HDB estate.

In an email, STOMPer Just says:

"Does the police have the right to park at double yellow lines? Even if the hazard light is on?

"Who are they picking up or who is alighting? A criminal?

"For your info, this picture was taken in a CAR PARK of an HDB estate.

"I know that the police work in pairs when attending cases. Even if so, there should be at least one person waiting in the car as it should not be left unattended."

Stupidity this extreme should really be illegal.

That really made me wonder if these people actually realise how dumb they are, and how they are actually advertising their stupidity to the world. That was when I realised that it's actually very easy to submit something to STOMP, and all this talk about hiding behind a veil of anonymity actually applies more to these morons than established bloggers. Every single post to STOMP is written under the guise of a pseudonym, allowing these so-called STOMPers to say whatever they want.

Many years ago, pseudonyms were allowed for submissions to the ST Forum. Then one day, ST decided that to ensure respectability and accountability, they would require the use of real names and IC numbers when submitting Forum page letters. If ST is really serious about this 'citizen journalism' thing, maybe they should require STOMP submissions to be made with full names and IC numbers. It's no big deal for 'STOMPer Just' to be slammed for his imbecilic post, but I'm sure he would think differently if it was posted by 'STOMPer David Tan Chia Teck'. Otherwise don't call it 'citizen journalism', ST. Just call it what it is: bo liao gossip.

On that note, I wonder if anyone has ever done some social experiment with STOMP. You know, like that guy who made up this quote by Maurice Jarre, put it on Wikipedia as an experiment, and in the end had many respectable newspapers using his fake quote in their articles. I wonder what would happen if someone did the same thing with STOMP: create some fake scenario and submit it, complete with pictures. The STOMP moderators would naturally approve it [if they can approve this, they'll approve anything] and later the originators submit another article to STOMP with the real story behind their first article. I wonder what would happen....

STOMP is really a blot on our nation's collective intelligence, but unfortunately I don't think we will ever be rid of it. And so countless Singaporeans will continue to prove to the rest of the country how stupid they really are. Optima terra, pessima gens.

§ Technorati tags: darwin award

Why women shouldn't wear the pants

2009-10-07T19:12:05Z

Last month, there was some furore in some circles when a woman in The Sudan was arrested, jailed and almost flogged for indecency. Her purported crime? Wearing pants.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/07/sudanese-woman-escapes-lash-trousers

Sudanese woman found guilty of indecency for wearing trousers vows to fight ruling
Former UN worker escapes flogging but says she would rather go to jail than pay fine imposed for breaching decency laws

James Sturcke, Matthew Weaver and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 September 2009 15.15 BST

A Sudanese woman said today that she would continue her campaign of defiance after being convicted by a court of indecency for wearing trousers in public.

Lubna Hussein said she would refuse to pay the 500 Sudanese pound (£127) fine imposed on her by a judge who ruled that she should not face a punishment of 40 lashes.

Hussein was among 13 women arrested in July during a raid at a party by the police in Khartoum. Ten of the women were fined and flogged two days later. But Hussein and two others decided to go to trial.

"I will not pay a penny," said Hussein, who stated last week that she would rather go to jail than pay any fine. "I won't pay, as a matter of principle. I would spend a month in jail. It is a chance to explore the conditions of jail."

Amnesty International has called on the Sudanese government to withdraw the charges against Hussein and repeal the indecency law, which it said justifies "abhorrent" penalties.

Earlier, Hussein's supporters were beaten by riot police armed with batons and shields outside the court. Dozens of people were detained.

Hussein, a former reporter, was working for the UN at the time of her arrest.

The case is being seen as a test of Sudan's Islamic decency regulations, which many female activists claim are too vague and give undue latitude to individual police officers to determine what is acceptable clothing.

"Lubna has given us a chance. She is very brave. Thousands of girls have been beaten since the 1990s, but Lubna is the first one not to keep silent," one protester, Sawsan Hassan el-Showaya, told Reuters.

About 150 protesters – most of them women, including some in trousers – had gathered on a traffic island to wave banners outside the court, hemmed in by security guards and riot police.

The women were later confronted by dozens of men in traditional Islamic dress who shouted religious slogans and denounced Hussein and her supporters, describing them as prostitutes and demanding harsh punishment for Hussein.

Scuffles erupted, in which one bearded protester grabbed a paper banner and ripped it to pieces. Riot police beat back the protesters and later loaded dozens of women into a van and drove off.

"They are beating us. They are trying to provoke us into violent action so they can react and clear us off the streets," said Nahed Goubia, a surgeon in a white trouser suit, before police cleared the area.

Hussein's lawyer, Nabil Adib Abdullah, has said the law on indecent dress is so wide that it contravenes a person's right to a fair trial. Hussein challenged the charges, arguing that her clothes were respectable, so she did not break the law.

The judge adjourned Hussein's last court session to investigate whether she was immune from prosecution because she was working as a UN press officer.

Hussein has said that she resigned from her UN job to give up any legal immunity so she can continue with the case, prove her innocence and challenge the decency law.

Evidently, even if you cover your legs all the way to the ankles, it is still considered by some conservative Muslims to be indecent so long as you're a woman and you wear pants. Where this rationale came from, I have no idea. But suffice to say, there are some who take it very seriously, and there are some in the Western (and Western-influenced world) who are aghast as this senseless and abhorrent act of discrimination and sexism.

However, while pointing fingers and being aghast at the religious basis of such perceived 'indecency', a lot of people don't actually realise that Christianity and Islam actually have our roots in the same religion, and many of the laws that Muslims take literally actually have some basis in the Bible. Yes, that book which all these Christians quote liberally—but only from certain parts: the parts that they like and are convenient to what they want.

Every Sunday, in Churches all across the country, Bible-spouting, verse-dropping Christians refresh their database of Bible quotes from the sermons of their pastors, absorbing in tandem the various and varied interpretations that have been interpreted for them, like how Deut 22:9-11 is proof that God does not intend for us to have dealings with non-Christians, or that Christians must go out and aggressively convert non-believers, etc.

But why does nobody quote verses like Ezekiel 23:19-21? OK, maybe you may say that's way out of context of anything, but how about this one: since Lev 18:22 and Lev 20:13 are always quoted ad nauseum as proof that God forbids homosexuality, why doesn't anybody mention Num 25:6-11, where God shows His great displeasure at interracial marriage to the point where he lifted a plague simply because a mixed marriage couple was killed? In fact, God specifically calls the murder an honour killing! But why don't we hear law professors arguing equally vehemently and zealously in Parliament against interracial or international marriages?

Maybe it's because of Heb 9:22, where you won't be forgiven until you shed some blood. The problem is that God didn't specify whether it's supposed to be your own blood or someone else's. But I suspect He meant other people's blood, because in Num 31:15-18 God specifically instructs the Israelites to commit genocide, killing every single woman and child of the Midianites—except the virgins, whom God tells the Israelites to "save for yourselves", whatever that means. We don't see Christians quoting this verse on their blogs or their essays, or when chatting over a plate of Char Kway Teow.

Indeed, many of these Christians are strangely silent over all the sexist injustices that would leave you more aghast than being jailed for wearing pants. Take Deut 22:23-29, for one. God says that if a man rapes a virgin, both of them are to be executed. You tell me: got fair meh like that? Throughout the book, it is rather confusing how women are treated as objects to be owned and fought over at best, or sperm receptacles at worst. Take Deut 22:13-21, which gives us instructions on what you can do if you marry a girl only to realise: "Shit, she's like a wet fish in bed...." Just publicly question her virginity, and it's up to her to prove her innocence. If she does, at most you kena fined only what, but if she can't... then we're supposed to stone her to death???

In Lev 27:2-7, God even goes so far as to precisely tell us He values women only half as much as men. And let's not talk about 'value', when a woman gives birth to a girl, she is regarded as doubly unclean as compared to if she had borne a son instead! [Lev 12:1-5]

Many Christians, in an attempt to wriggle out of these inconvenient passages, would endeavour to explain them by saying that all this was in the Old Testament, which JC made obsolete from the Gospels onwards. But if that were so, why do you then persist on quoting, referencing, and enforcing texts that you yourself say are obsolete? And speaking of the New Testament, here you find your fair share of misogynists. At wedding services, everybody loves to quote the clichéd 1 Corinthians 13. But how many would quote 1 Peter 3:7, where we're told to regard our wives as the "weaker partner"?

These verses are all strangely absent when people highlight their Bibles into a mass of colours for easy reference when needing to drop a Bible quote, or when people spout verses in every other sentence at every convenient opportunity. This is why I think that people who keep peppering their speech with Bible quotes are all hypocrites (as JC Himself said). Until you can explain God's endorsement of genocide, don't keep bugging me about Corinthians this or Philippians that.

So what does this have to do with the woman in The Sudan being persecuted by Islamic fundamentalists? Well, that shows you've never read Deut 22:5, which states that women must not wear men's clothing, otherwise God will detest you. Yes, YOU. Love the sinner, hate the sin? Well, it doesn't say God detests this practice; it says, verbatim, "God detests anyone who does this". I bet that's another verse people have conveniently overlooked when searching for verses to drop. So yeah, God just hates it when people are gay, but if you're a girl and you wear pants, God hates you.

§ Technorati tags: religion

The J-thing's Observation of the Day

2009-10-02T15:21:05Z

"Singaporeans did not pay for her."

I know the Ris Low issue has been flogged to death by now, and now that she has stepped down, I have nothing for her but best wishes and better diction. But this statement by an ERM employer caught my attention. What exactly has ERM been spending on her? It's not like they have already sent her for the pageant, so what have they paid for?

What appears more fishy is that even after Ris has stepped down, ERM did not approach the first runner-up (who is supposed to be contractually obligated to take over, but says her relationship with the organiser is "not really good") nor the second runner-up, saying instead that they were "interviewing a new representative to represent Singapore". So, who exactly is this "new representative" if she isn't the first or second runner-up?

Heh, I think they should just recall Rachel Kum and send her to Miss World as well! (At least she can speak well—and has a nice voice!)

PS: I just couldn't resist adding Ris's parting statement: "I will be back. Not everyone can be on the world stage that belongs just to you." Er... what?

§ Technorati tags: observations

Do Malaysians really have nothing better to do?

2009-09-23T16:48:00Z

Reading the news, I often wonder why is it that Malaysians appear to have nothing better to do. First the whole idiotic 'this food we claim as ours' ruckus, then on the same page, this article caught my eye:

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/SE%2BAsia/Story/STIStory_433281.html

Sep 23, 2009
Terengganu's khalwat troopers

KUALA TERENGGANU - THE Terengganu PAS Youth wants to mobilise its vigilante squad to check on the rising cases of khalwat (close proximity) in the state.

Its chief, Mohd Nor Hamzah, said the squad comprised volunteers from the Youth Welfare Association - Perkerti, a non-governmental organisation under the party's purview.

'The squad can scrutinise areas deemed 'hotspots' where khalwat cases are rampant,' he said here on Tuesday. 'We have details on these areas.'

Mr Mohd Nor said the intention was not to nab the offender or for the squad to act as enforcement officers.

'We would merely advise Muslim couples that it's morally wrong to commit khalwat,' he said. -- THE STAR

I really don't understand what is the big problem that you have to organise vigilante squads to go out to patrol to tackle it. Wouldn't it make more sense to organise patrols to prevent robberies or rapes or murders?

Speaking of the food ruckus, I am glad that a few days ago, TNP and ST both did their part to research our side of the story, where TNP interviewed several old hawkers to rebut Malaysia's claims on Hainanese Chicken Rice, Laksa, Bak Kut Teh, Nasi Lemak and Chilli Crab, as well as identifying several more indigenous dishes which Singaporeans can be proud of—without going so far as to claim them as ours. It is true that there are many popular dishes which cannot or can hardly be found outside Singapore, such as Yu-Sheng, Lor Mee, Bak Chor Mee, Satay Beehoon, Fried Hokkien Prawn Mee, Black Pepper Crab, White Pepper Crab, Chwee Kueh, and Curry Fish Head.

In fact, I would nominate Fried Hokkien Prawn Mee as Singapore's national dish because you can only find it here and nowhere else (or so I heard).

You know, looking at who started this food-fight, I think I have a feeling I know what this whole fuss is about: it's about tourism. Ng Yen Yen, the Malaysian Minister for Tourism, is not happy that we are using food to promote Singapore at all the overseas Singapore Days. We did bring Bak Kut Teh, Chicken Rice, Katong Laksa and Chilli Crab to Singapore Day over the past 3 years in NYC, Melbourne and London respectively. While this was ostensibly to connect with the overseas Singaporean community, it is quite likely that many foreigners would have come, and this would have contributed to tourism in some way. You can see now how NYY would get pissed, right?

But what NYY doesn't realise is that by featuring these dishes at Singapore Day, it doesn't mean that we're saying all these are Singaporean in origin—it just means that you can find all these dishes in Singapore as part of the visit Singapore experience. And how is NYY going to refute that?

Anyway, take a look at this open reply to NYY from none less than Makanguru K.F. Seetoh.

§ Technorati tags: food; darwin award; news bites

I don't care what Malaysia says...

2009-09-18T12:55:20Z

...but if you really want to play until like that, Bak Kut Teh is OURS lor.

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/SE%2BAsia/Story/STIStory_431009.html

Sep 17, 2009
Dishes 'hijacked': M'sia

KUALA LUMPUR – MALAYSIA will lay claim to its signature dishes like laksa and chicken rice which are being 'hijacked' by other countries, the tourism minister said according to a report on Thursday.

Those on the list include the fragrant coconut milk rice 'nasi lemak', spicy soup noodle 'laksa' and pork ribs herbal soup 'bak kut teh', Tourism Minister Ng Yen Yen said according to The Star newspaper.

'We cannot continue to let other countries hijack our food. Chili [sic] crab is Malaysian. Hainanese chicken rice is Malaysian. We have to lay claim to our food,' she was quoted as saying.

'In the next three months, we will identify certain key dishes (to declare as Malaysian). We have identified laksa... all types of laksa, nasi lemak and bak kut teh,' she added.

Ms Ng said her ministry will announce a strategy on how to brand the dishes as Malaysian.

'That is Part Two. We cannot reveal it yet, but we will let you know soon,' she reportedly said.

Ms Ng did not name which countries were hijacking the dishes, which are popular around the world and particularly in neighbouring Singapore and Indonesia.

Her comments came amid a diplomatic row with Indonesia, where protesters have accused Malaysia of stealing its cultural heritage.

The dispute erupted in Indonesia in August after erroneous reports emerged that Malaysia had screened tourism advertisements featuring the traditional 'pendet' dance of Indonesia's Hindu-majority Bali island.

The ad was actually a promotion for a Discovery Channel programme, but despite an apology from the network, protesters vowing to 'crush Malaysia' have burned national flags and thrown rotten eggs at the embassy in Jakarta.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman will meet his Indonesian counterpart Hassan Wirajuda in Jakarta on Thursday in a bid to cool the tensions which Malaysia has described as a 'grave concern'.

Ties between the two countries are regularly punctuated by rows over cultural issues as well as the welfare of Indonesian labourers and maids working in Malaysia. -- AFP

Eh, Malaysia, you all never heard of Katong Laksa before is it? What do you mean "ALL types of Laksa"? You want to claim Katong Laksa as Malaysian also ah?

Notwithstanding the general idiocy of trying to claim ownership over food, what these Malaysians don't realise is that most of these dishes originated from Peninsula Malaya before 1957, and therefore were invented during the time of the British Empire when we were all one country. Can Malaysia really say that all these dishes are theirs?

And what do you mean by "lay claim to our food"? Other people cannot sell any more is it? Then we should just lay claim to Black Pepper Crab, White Pepper Crab, Fried Hokkien Mee, and Chwee Kueh. And the US should just lay claim to burgers, and let's see what Malaysia will do without Ramly Burger!

§ Technorati tags: food; news bites

The Finest Airport In The British Empire

2009-09-17T15:09:12Z

Before Changi was the best airport in the world, even before Paya Lebar, we already had an airport which won that accolade (or rather, 'The Finest Airport in the British Empire', to be more precise). I have passed by this iconic building so many times along Nicoll Highway. I remember how 20 years ago, every Sunday we would head out from my grandfather's house in Katong for lunch at the old Mayflower Restaurant at the DBS Building, and we would certainly pass by the old Kallang Airport terminal building. I remember asking my mum why Old Airport Road was named thus and she told me that long ago there used to be an airport here, and that funny round building used to be the control tower. Considering that Changi T1 was built when I was 3 years old (and that I only have a singular, very vague recollection of Singapore International Airport Paya Lebar), it intrigued me that this small building was actually an airport once, and I remember even thinking that Nicoll Highway used to be the runway.

It was only when I grew older that I realised that Kallang was indeed our international airport right up till 1955, and when it was built in 1937, it was considered 'The Finest Airport in the British Empire'¹, with facilities which would have been considered revolutionary at that time and an iconic glass-clad terminal building. I learnt that after the airport moved to Paya Lebar, the People's Association took over the building as its HQ, and occupied it up till April this year. Right now, the compound is left unoccupied, and what struck me as I took a double-decker bus ride past it recently, was how large the compound actually is. All along I had assumed that after the airport had shifted, the runway, taxiways, and hangars had been demolished, leaving only the terminal building. It was amazing that even after 54 years, the original Malayan Airways hangar is still there, and the land area occupied by the airport compound is still substantial.

It was also amazing that of all the airports Singapore has ever had, I have been to each and every one except Kallang Airport. Realising this, I told myself that since I was nearby for lunch on Monday, I should take the opportunity to see if I could check out the place. And this little adventure reminded me again of why I 'miss' working with the Civil Service.

Walking past the outer entrance, I walked towards the inner gates of the compound only to see that they were each marked with 'Gate Closed' and a security booth just inside. Noticing that one of the gates was ajar, I walked through them to approach the security booth to ask permission to go take a look around—but there was no one there. I was a little hesitant about just strolling in unwelcome in case some security guard jumped out from nowhere to tell me off so I decided to play by the rules and called the number on the sign at the gate to ask if it was OK.

Big mistake.

The number was supposedly that of SLA Security Centre, but it turned out to be AETOS's HQ instead. After explaining to them that, no, I was not from any organisation, no, this was not an official request, and no, I don't need anything other than to take a walk around the building, they told me that I need to ask permission from SLA, and that once SLA says OK, they would inform AETOS that I was allowed to enter. It was pretty ironic considering that not a single security person was in sight. That phone call took about 5 minutes.

Then I called SLA and had to explain the whole story to them again. After taking 5 minutes to figure out which Kallang Airport I was talking about, which area it was located in, the address of the place, and finally getting the point that I was not enquiring about the future possibility of getting in but that I was right in front of the open gate now, the receptionist finally realised which district's jurisdiction this request fell under and gave me the number of the admin officer in charge. This took another 10 minutes.

I called the admin officer—who was not at her desk. After waiting another 5 minutes, I called again, with the same result.

I called the SLA main line back and explained the situation to yet another receptionist. She was really very helpful, because after advising me that such requests have to be made 1 day in advance, she realised that I was 'right there right now', and proceeded to call a couple of other admin officers to ask for permission. She revealed that these admin officers often have to go for site visits and that's why they were not at their desks. I asked her, "So if a backpacker tourist comes by and wants to check this place out just because he spotted it, he also has to request 1 day in advance?" and she said yes. I don't understand why they can't have a list of guidelines where visitors could be escorted in to just go take a look around the compound for a few minutes without having to enter the building, then she reveals that there was actually no security person on the site, and the 1 working day was for them to arrange for the security people to come unlock the gate. At this point, I remind her that the gate was actually already unlocked, and the only thing stopping me from sauntering in was my preference to play by their rules, and that's why I called to ask for permission. She did the whole 'oh dear' thing and tried calling more people without success. By this point, I had been trying to get permission to enter for more than half an hour, and was getting quite impatient at the fact that the gate was really wide open and there was nothing stopping me. So while I was still negotiating on the phone with her, I took a few steps past the gate, and continued walking as she tried calling more people. Finally, when she told me there was really no one around, and I should just ask for permission 1 day in advance, I thanked her for her help, hung up the phone, and looked up at the building right in front of me. -_-

Initially when I decided to call, I thought that there would be a guard on site and the call would be more of a notification than an actual request for approval. On hindsight, I could have just saved half an hour of my time if I had just happily walked through the open gate without abandon instead of trying to manoeuvre my way around the civil service.

Anyhow, what matters is that in the end I finally got to see this building up close, and here are some pictures so that if you too have never been there, you may see it too:

The old Straits Settlements crest of the Colony of Singapore. The sign also used to read SINGAPORE AIRPORT, but the lettering has since been removed

These street lamps date back to 1937!

This building is already 72 years old, and it seems like it will outlive the National Stadium (visible behind it), which was built on the land that used to be the landing circle/runway strip

The main entrance

The elegant City of Singapore Crest... in stark contrast with the row of smiley faces beneath

The iconic circular control tower

DC-3s and Lockheed Constellations used to park right at this spot on the apron in front of the terminal

Another view of the wide expanse of space occupied by the old hangars and sheds

The old Malayan Airways hangar. Some remnants of the Malayan Airways inscription seem to remain.

Kallang Airport in its heyday

Malayan Airways (the forerunner of Singapore Airlines) DC-3 parked in front of the terminal

Crowds assembled at the Kallang Airport Terminal on the Singapore Air Day, c. 1955

For those of you who wonder what the airport looked like before the runway and taxiways were torn up and removed to build the National Stadium, this is a rare aerial photo of Runway 06/24 taken in 1955. The terminal building is at the bottom left, and at the basin end of the runway you can see the slipway (where Oasis now stands) originally built to allow flying boats like the Imperial Airways Short S.23 Empire to be served at the same terminal as land planes.

¹ The Finest Airport in the British Empire

§ Technorati tags: flying; photography; places

All Dogs Go To Heaven

2009-09-16T18:53:56Z

Main Entry: god·par·ent
Pronunciation: \ˈgäd-ˌper-ənt also ˈgȯd-\
Function: noun
Date: 1865
: (in the Christian religion) a person who, at a baptism ceremony, promises to help a new member of the religion, usually a child, in religious and moral matters

In terms of relations, you have the blood kind, and the, er... other kind, which include relations like the in-laws, and godparents. I personally have 2 godfathers. At baptism, my uncle was my godfather, and at my confirmation, I had another godfather (whom I haven't spoken to in a long time, but that's another story). In both cases, they both undertook the sacred responsibility of being responsible for my moral and religious upbringing (fat load of good it did to the latter, but that again is another story).

As far as I know thus far, the connection between a godparent and a godchild revolves around this responsibility for upbringing—hence the 'god' part of the relationship—and any other god-relations revolve around this sacred bond. You can have god-brothers, god-uncles, god-aunties, etc. but they all function as extensions of the central godparent-godchild relationship. Judaism, I heard, has a similar arrangement. Even in this side of the world, if you look at the HK triad films, some of the gangsters have a godfather figure—not the mafia kind, but the senior triad leader who takes unto himself the responsibility of bringing up a protégé in his own image, with his own values, morals and allegiances.

Now that we have established the basis of this god-relationship, I was pretty amused to hear recently that one of my acquaintances has a god-dog. Yep, you read that right. She has adopted one of her friends' dogs as her god-dog. Meaning (I would gather) that she is the godparent of that dog. And hence responsible for the mutt's moral (?) and religious (??) upbringing, to be a good dog with solid moral values that gives glory to God and his church (I would suppose???) OK I know that's not exactly what's going on here, but isn't it just a little bizarre to take a dog as your god-dog? You can be a co-owner, or foster owner, or even a second 'mummy', or I don't know what lah, but seriously... god-dog?

cheshirefeline, I want to adopt Grey as my god-cat, can or not? I promise to do my best with the power vested in me by Almighty God to make him see the error of his random people-scratching ways.

§ Technorati tags: darwin award; observations

Introducing jtweets....

2009-09-15T11:43:14Z

OK this Twitter has caused a bit of a slowdown, I'll admit, in the rate of my entries on LJ. After all, instead of spending the time to properly elucidate my thoughts in a blog entry about how it was like dealing with the SLA, I can just twitter it in 140 characters. (Some things, though, deserve a proper blog entry so I will still be writing about them.)

I have also caught on the bandwagon of aggregating your tweets with LoudTwitter. The side-effect of these related trends of the rate of tweets being inversely proportional to the rate of LJ entries is that your LJ tends to look like it's nothing more than a daily collection of quips, each 140 characters long. And somewhere within those tweets, you get a couple of journal entries which could be amusing, heartwarming, insightful or provocative (I claim to be none of these, BTW) but are all lost in the mass of tweets.

Looking back at the LoudTwitter downtime recently, I realised that my LJ had more character when LoudTwitter wasn't working, but yet I feel this strange need to collect my tweets somewhere instead of having them lost to posterity once they disappear beneath the 'Read More' button since they are still my thoughts and could be stuff about which there are stories to be told or things I want to say. That's when I came up with this idea of creating a separate LJ to function solely as a tweet aggregator without clogging up my LJ whenever there weren't things I wanted to write a great deal on.

So it is at this juncture that I would like to introduce... jtweets!
All my LoudTwitter posts will now be directed there instead, leaving jemauvais solely for proper journal entries. So for those of you who don't have Twitter (or who prefer to read my tweets on LJ as well as Twitter), please feel free to add jtweets to your friends list. All posts there will remain public so I won't be adding anyone back on its friends lists but I do assure you that should I ever decide to lock my LoudTwitter posts in the future, I will add all of you back so you can continue reading.

Heck you might even realise that it may even be a better idea to read jtweets instead of jemauvais because you can be assured that with the 140 character limit, there will be no long, rambly, and boring posts there! :P

§ Technorati tags: tweets