"VIC! HAVE YOU HEARD? SWINE FLU SPOTTED IN MEXICO! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"
"VIC! HAVE YOU HEARD? SWINE FLU SPREAD TO USA! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"
"VIC! HAVE YOU HEARD? SWINE FLU CAN PASS FROM HUMAN TO HUMAN! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"
"VIC! HAVE YOU HEARD? SWINE FLU! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"

That, roughly, is the gist of what I've been hearing the last three days. Swine flu, swine flu, swine flu, we're all going to die woohoo.

PEOPLE. SHUT UP. WE ARE NOT GOING TO DIE.

Human-to-human contact? YOU MISSED OUT THE "LIMITED" IN FRONT. LIMITED human-to-human contact is NOT the same as rapid, widespread, epidemic proportions human-to-human contact.

Augh if I had a dollar for every ridiculous statement made regarding swine flu, I'd be a millionaire. Sure, knowledge is important, but we could do without the generous heaping of paranoia on the side, thank you very much. Everything that come out of the mouths of people nowadays is twisted beyond recognition, creating a whole generation of paranoid people.

I was at Serangoon Interchange just now when I choked on a bit of my drink. Instantly the group of people surrounding me took one step away. And then I sneezed, and they tried to shift as far away as possible without actually turning around and screaming.

Sigh I'm not making much sense now, but I am really, really, REALLY annoyed by people who think that providing people with little snippets taken out of context is really useful.

According to news reports, researchers believe the worst is over in Mexico. That, people, is a relatively fast turnaround time. And yes, flu viruses do mutate, but as long as you don't go crazy and eat like 5 boxes of Tamiflu a day we'll be more or less okay.

Oh and please stop comparing this to Spanish Flu. Things are abit different. For one, we have better hygiene. And better drugs. And this is not 1918. So stop going all "OMG LOADS OF PEOPLE DIED IN 1918 THEREFORE WE'RE GOING TO DIE IN 2009!!!!!!!!!!!"

Go do something more useful like read xkcd. It, incidentally, has a comic about swine flu. I liked it :)

speak mandarin ads criticised

I quote from today's Life!: "They [Chinese kids] weren't as good on camera or couldn't speak as fluently, so they were cut out."

No, really, serious?

Even though you took footage of kids (read: China natives) from Beijing and Shanghai? Their Chinese wasn't as good as angmoh kids? REALLY?

My god, what were the odds? All those who were brought up on Chinese can't speak as fluently (bs) or weren't as good on camera (all of them? bs) AS COMPARED TO angmoh kids?

Such pure luck and coincidence, really.

So now the aim of the Speak Mandarin Campaign has turned from making people appreciate the Chinese culture (which experts who write our compre passages often claim is the only way to make people learn Chinese) to following the in crowd, whether the in crowd happens to be Hossan Leong or random angmoh children.

People in charge of the Speak Mandarin Campaign, get this: FADS DON'T LAST. OKAY? THINGS GO IN AND OUT ALL THE TIME. Turning Chinese into a fad is just laughable, considering how much it has been emphasized that Chinese is a singularly traditional thing with, I dunno, 5000 years of history? So everyone ought to learn to go back to their roots by following a fad.

And come on, all that ad proves is that these 6 children are fluent in Chinese. Surely we can find 6 people in Singapore who are Singaporeans who are fluent in Chinese. Surely we can find people in Singapore who are more fluent in English than, say, Americans. But do you see Singaporeans on American ads?

Of course their accents would be all nice and Beijingish if they had a Beijing teacher. So unless Singapore intends to hire singularly Beijing people to be Chinese teachers in Singapore, don't expect us to have that accent.

Plus what is up with this statement: "But another viewer might be encouraged to practise more because he sees these fluent Chinese-speaking foreigners as role models."

YEAH, because everyone wants to be able to recite "xiao bai tu, bai you bai, ai chi luo buo he qing cai" fluently. And if I were to choose someone as a role model for speaking Chinese, my first choice'd be someone from China; a native speaker of Chinese, and not some random foreigner.

No one's stopping foreigners from learning Chinese, but I find it exceptionally irksome when we are expected to follow them simply and learn Chinese just because they're foreigners.

In my opinion, this ad was done in the poorest taste possible, and I simply cannot emphasize that enough. Know your audience and cater for them; if this had been done using Singaporean children I would most probably have embraced it. After all, it would have been more logical and much more effective in inspiring Singaporeans to pick up Chinese.

Screw the speak mandarin campaign. If I feel inspired to learn Chinese, it's not going to be because of a bunch of foreigners and much less because it's a fad.

evil villians with a conscience

Now I have to add this disclaimer here for clarity's sake: I've never watching a single episode of R.E.M. 2, and I have no idea exactly how good they are or how much they suck. This blogpost has been pieced together entirely from the viewing of 1 ad.

So anyway, I was watching TV just now when an ad for R.E.M. 2 came on. (Incidentally, I thought R.E.M. was a really old show dating back from when I was in primary school, and about a smart girl, a bimbo and a tomboy getting together to solve crimes. I'm quite sure they moved past series 2, though)

According to what I've seen, this decade's version of R.E.M. seems to be a trio of girls with long, rebonded hair who fight crimes while dressed in the latest fashion. As a fellow female, I understand the intrinsic desire to look good all the time, but is it really practical to wear your favourite D&G white miniskirt out when fighting evil villians? And besides, wouldn't it help more to have your long rebonded hair up in a ponytail or two instead of having it swishing away in your face all the time? "Eat this, baddie- damn! I can't see! Someone get my hair out of my face!"

Plus if it's anything like the original, R.E.M. should be no stranger to the not-so-glamourous side of crime fighting: the getting knocked out with whatever happens to be on hand at the moment, and the getting tied up. Most people with common sense would have that happen to them once, and then forget it--I'm out of crime fighting. But interestingly enough, R.E.M. doesn't mind doing that not once, but about a billion times. Such masochistic tendencies.

And the most ridiculous thing about the ad: It showed one of the crime-fighting fashionistas screaming at a villian while being tied up: "YOU'RE SICK!!!!!!"

If I were the evil villian getting shouted at, I would definitely stop, put my knife down on the floor, and go: "You're right. I-- I never knew." And then I would untie them, and turn myself in at the nearest police post or check myself in for psychiatric evaluation. Because really, all evil villians capable of murdering lots of people have consciences hidden deep inside them which can be triggered easily by the average bimbo.

And of course, everyone goes home happy and contented in time for their next facial. The reality levels of some Singaporean dramas are so deplorable that the possibility that we're all part of a giant computer simulation doesn't seem that far fetched anymore.