Friday, March 21, 2008

Terror Suspect Eludes Posse of 4 Million

Published: March 14, 2008

SINGAPORE — The big mistake, officials here say, was letting the terrorist suspect make a trip to the bathroom.

Mas Selamat bin Kastari, alleged by the government to be the leader of a terrorist group here, escaped from a high-security prison two weeks ago while taking a bathroom break, in a major embarrassment for this efficient, tightly battened city-state.

In a furious response, the government put the entire country on alert, setting up checkpoints, sealing its borders, patrolling its parks and its shores, even urging people to keep an eye on their bicycles in case the wanted man decided to pedal to freedom.

With each new empty-handed day the embarrassment deepens as Singapore confronts its Tora Bora moment, its most-wanted terrorist suspect melting into the urban terrain, as Osama bin Laden evaded American troops in Afghanistan.

For some people here, this noisy, flailing search — even more than the escape itself — has cast Singapore in an unfamiliar light of haplessness.

“We had all bought into the image of a well-organized government machinery,” wrote Alex Au, author of a popular political Web site called Yawning Bread. “Suddenly, our picture of Singapore as a kind of Big Brother state is, well, full of holes.”

All around the city, police officers are on patrol and their checkpoints have delayed traffic for as much as 15 hours in some places, according to newspaper reports.

Security officers on boats and Jet Skis are patrolling the coastline and the police have removed keys from the ignitions of unattended motor boats.

In what one newspaper called “extensive land, sea and air searches,” military officers in jungle fatigues and Nepalese Gurkha paramilitary forces have scoured the city for the runaway inmate.

Wanted posters are everywhere, mug shots have been transmitted to millions of cellphones and the entire nation of four million people has been deputized to look out for a round-faced man who is 5-foot-2, weighs 139 pounds and walks — or at least runs — with a limp.

Newspapers here say it is the biggest manhunt in Singapore’s history. Mr. Mas Selamat, 47, who is said to be the chief of operations in Singapore for the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network, is accused by the government of being the coordinator of a failed plot to bomb the United States Embassy and several other targets in Singapore. Officials also say he planned to crash an airplane into Singapore’s airport.

He had been in detention here since 2006 under the Internal Security Act, which allows the government to hold suspects without trial, and his escape shocked terrorism experts in the region.

“Everyone thought Singapore had the tightest security system of anyone around,” said Sidney Jones, a leading terrorism expert for the International Crisis Group.

As a nation, Singapore is as lean and mean and flexible as the rapid-response military the Pentagon dreams of, and it reacted with impressive speed and agility to recent Asian outbreaks of bird flu and SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

But for the moment it seems to have met its match in Mr. Mas Selamat. His disappearance challenges the government’s basic promise to its citizens that it will keep them safe and comfortable.

The authorities have released little information about his escape on Feb. 27, but they say that he acted alone and on the spur of the moment and that he is probably still in Singapore.

The official account is that the prisoner asked to go to the bathroom while waiting for family members to visit, then simply disappeared from the Whitley Road Detention Center.

If this is true, said Lee Kin Mun, a leading political blogger who calls himself Mr. Brown, the government should “take a leaf from school exams, where security seems to be tighter” and where students must be escorted to the bathroom.

The country’s founder and former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, boiled the whole debacle down to one word: complacency.

He used the episode to strike again with his frequent warning that Singaporeans must work hard to protect the modern but fragile country he created from a social or economic explosion.

“It shows that it is a fallacy, it is stupid, to believe we are infallible,” he said. “We are not infallible. One mistake and we’ve got a big explosive in our midst. So let’s not take this lightly. I think it’s a very severe lesson on complacency."

His son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, said, “It is definitely a setback, and it should never have happened.” And then, echoing his father: “It’s the danger of complacency, of thinking that everything is all right.”

In Singapore, words like that amount to marching orders, and government agencies seem to be rushing to demonstrate that whatever else they are, they are anything but complacent.

Wong Hong Kuan, the assistant police commissioner, is at the center of the storm, commanding both his security forces and the public response.

“He knows machines, so keep an eye on your car,” said the newspaper Today, reporting on a recent briefing by Mr. Wong. “Anyone who discovers their vehicles, including motorcycles and bicycles, missing, should make a police report immediately.”

“Err on the side of caution,” the paper quoted Mr. Wong as saying. “Every second counts.”

The public has swung into action, as it has with previous nationwide campaigns — to have fewer children, to have more children, to keep toilets clean, not to throw things off balconies, to speak good English, to smile and to commit “spontaneous acts of kindness.”

More than a thousand people have telephoned the police with tips. Concerned citizens are stopping people on the street who fit the fugitive’s description. This is not a good place to be a man with a limp.

“Mas Selamat” seems to be everywhere.

He has been seen running into a park wearing only a pair of shorts monogrammed with the initials of the detention center. He has been spotted at an outdoor food stall, “but it turned out to be the man is Chinese,” according to a witness quoted in the news media.

Someone followed his footprints up a flight of stairs to a rooftop, where the footprints disappeared. Someone else saw him running down a highway toward a causeway linking Singapore to Malaysia.

A comedian, Ahmad Stokin, 51, said he had been stopped eight times, but did not seem to find it funny. He said he might look a bit like the picture on the wanted posters and he may have a limp, but it is in his right leg, not his left.

Two weeks into the search, these fruitless sightings are about all the papers have to report about the biggest news story of the day.

The top headline on Thursday about the search in the country’s main newspaper, The Straits Times, read: “I Think I Saw Mas Selamat.”

An unidentified woman, the paper reported, had just recalled seeing someone who fit the description two weeks ago near the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped.

Pondering this report, the newspaper left its readers with what is now a pointless question.

“Was Fugitive Limping Along This Road?” it asked in a headline, and displayed a photo of an empty, rain-slick road where the witness had been standing.

-- report from here

ironic, and very amusing, no?

Thursday, March 20, 2008

chaffing cream

sometimes the human imagination can be weird. especially if it's your own imagination which is in question. i'm not questioning my sanity completely. But i might be going crazy without knowing it.

warning: this might be slightly graphic.

you see, i went to the pharmacy today to look for some cream to ease chaffing caused by too much walking on a hot and humid day. In case you didn't know, when you're fat and physically still quite active in such a climate as Singapore's, it is very likely you'll get abrasions from friction on parts of your body. Maybe it's characteristic to me. but ask any army boy. he'll tell you what it's like after a 40Km route march.

ANYWAY. So i went in search for this specific cream i saw in a VERY strange advert once. what i remembered was that this cream was specifically for sensitive areas of the body prone to chaffing. i remember a cartoon torso with underwear on it, and there were eyes on the buttocks which looked very unhappy. Naturally, for chaffing caused much discomfort to the poor set of buttocks. Then of course, the chaffing cream brand and stuff came on, and that was that.

So, the pharmacy. I walk to the creams and ointments section and asked the pharmacist if she knew of this specific cream which eases chaffing. She was very helpful, but when i tried describing what the cream was, she looked blankly at me and said:

"Are you looking for nappy rash cream?"

It's not her fault, i think.

See, here's why i think i might have made it up:
1. I cannot for the life of me remember what the brand of this cream was.
2. I cannot for the life of me find it ANYWHERE.
3. I cannot for the life of me believe that what i have described in the passage above was a real advertisement.
4. NO, i am not referring to nappy rash cream. i grew out of that, quite a while ago.

If you remember any advertisement that fits the description above, please tell me. I need to keep my sanity in check.

and i do NOT want to resolve to using Nappy Rash Cream.

Monday, March 03, 2008

step off from that ledge, my friend.

and i think i'm about to. I am fully aware that i am wasting my time bloggin when i should be working, but i am just VERY pissed right now. it's not that people voted for songs which i didn't want to do or what not, not even because people don't choose my ideas, but the mere thought of the sheer unfairness this whole thing is being dealt with, and i'm at the base of it all, hurt, very much by the whole pantomime of a song selection process.

Unlike anyone else, this is ME, MY WORK for this module, put under a spotlight and scrutinized by the other people in this module. THIS IS MY WORK's quality being decided by the other people taking this module. It's as if i did a presentation and everyone got to stand up and tell me how shitty it all is, where i can do better, and what i should do, when half the people there don't know how much trouble it is to fit existing lyrics into existing melodies. half the people there don't know the limitations of the arrangements and the budget. and half the people there seem to think i'm a music genius who can work anything out with a synthesizer. and if this is supposed to be democratic, then why is music the only department subjected to such scrutiny? am i missing something? is my incompetence showing? WHAT?! doesn't anyone have any confidence in me and my abilities?

perhaps even i don't have confidence in my own abilities anymore. I CAN'T HEAR MYSELF THINK. i have to take into consideration everyone's ideas and i don't know what was my initial idea anymore. and. how can we all vote based on popular vote, when popularity is only ONE of the MANY things that i have to consider when planning for the music?! the statistics mean little to me. my worries are now new ones, like how in the world am i supposed to get a full orchestra score to sound like it should on a bloody 6 piece rock band?!

let me just say this: NO I AM NOT A GENIUS; I NEVER FELT QUALIFIED TO DO THIS, BUT I TRY. I TRIED VERY HARD BECAUSE I'M PASSIONATE ABOUT MUSIC AND THEATRE and I'M SORRY IF I CAN'T GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT BECAUSE THE MUSIC I LISTEN TO IS VERY DIFFERENT. I'M SORRY I CANNOT GIVE YOU A FULL ORCHESTRA, I'M RELIANT ON SOME OF YOU TO HELP WITH SINGING PARTS AND I DON'T HAVE AN AMAZING VOICE LIKE THE CAST DOES THAT DOES JUSTICE TO THE MUSIC I WANT TO USE. I REGRET THAT I CAN'T BUT I TRY. I TRY HARDER THAN ANYONE OF YOU. AND I APPRECIATE SOME OF YOU HELPING, BUT I ALSO HOPE YOU CONSIDER MY ROLE IN THIS PRODUCTION AND NOT GO AHEAD AND PRACTICE SONGS WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE AND THEN PRESENTING IT TO THE COMPANY AS A "MUSICAL COMMITTEE" DECISION.

FUCK MAN. i've had enough of this for tonight.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

built to last

at least, i hope.

i am unable to be real with myself sometimes, and the consequences of those instances seem to replay over and over again like a record on an unstoppable record player. I will not elaborate, much, but it's also because i'm prone to being vague and ambiguous in blog posts. i want to say it though: when life becomes a cycle, you either stay oblivious or get off of it.

but nobody is going to jump off anything at this moment, because sometimes you want to return to the oblivious state in the form of a soft sink-your-butt-into-me sofa. but i'm almost hitting the ground and it scares me.

I have 2 days to decided whether or not to drop a module and free up sometime before the grade becomes an F. and i CANNOT have an F, solely because it will affect my grades and job prospects and yadayadayada for all my life and i'm typically singaporean and therefore worried about that.

and things in the personal life arena are taking a downturn (HORRORS). and all because i'm a selective optimist, believing that i can make things work when i want them to. I'm still holding on, wondering if you'll stay awake for me, cause i really don't wanna miss anything. i've had too much to handle and i get grouchy, so i hope you forgive me for taking it out on you. I REALLY don't mean it. it's just me, sometimes the work and the world get too much to bear and i feel like you're not there even when you are, so please, just bear with me until all of this tides over. i love you.

ok. now for some general waste time destressing.

1. My ex is: when the dinner bill comes up to above $20 per person and i'm paying.

2. Maybe i should: drop german? i don't know!

3. I love: God (i must be honest this didnt come to mind first.), you, my guitar, theatre, brecht and acoustic-y emo stuff.

4. I don’t understand: why we dont always get along, cant always be there for each other and Grant Shen.

5. I lose: most of the time, but in my heart i tell myself i'm a winner.

6. People say i’m: too nice for my own good.

7. Love is: that damned thing that i'm in right now.

8. Somewhere, someone is: wearing furry boots in Singapore's eternal summer.

9. I will always: be doing FOH? (NO!!!!!)

10. Forever is: a very very long time.

11. I never want to: hurt someone so bad that they never forgive me.

12. I think the current US president: is a short redneck with a guitar singing country roads.

13. When I wake up in the morning: I check that my heart is still beating and then proceed to wonder if i should be thankful or resentful.

14. My past was: a chapter that i've closed and would like to keep it that way, thank you.

15. I get annoyed when: i haven't a clue what is going on.

16. Parties are for: getting as much dancin down as possible.

17. My dog is: Wishbone, whom i've shamelessly adopted.

18. My cat is: nowhere in my future.

19. Kisses are the best when: they're from you.

20. Tomorrow: tomorrow, i love ya tomorrow, you're only a day away.

21. I really want: an epiphone les paul and my own jamming studio.

22. I have low tolerance for people who: do things that aversely affect other people.


Part 1: On The Outside
Name: Tan Liting Rebekah
D.O.B: 29th October 87
Current Status: burning out.
Hair Colour: black.
Righty Or Lefty: Righty.
Zodiac Sign: Scorpio.

Part 2 : On The Inside
Your heritage: would like to say african american, but i'm yellow mungen all the way.
Your fears: losing my love, disappointment and death.
Your weakness: emo songs, procrastinating, the rubiks cube and my guitar.

Part 3: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow
Your thoughts 1st waking up: I am still alive.
Your Bedtime: generally more than 2 hours after i get home.
Your most missed memory: TSD. and performing with jeane.

Part 4: Your Pick
Pepsi Or Coke: COKE. hello, pepsi tastes like cough syrup.
MacDonald's Or Burger King: Carl's Junior.
Single Or Group Dates: both. but more of the single ones.
Adidas Or Nike: would have to say adidas. the 3 stripe superstar sneaker is a classic. plus i love how hip hop inspired the brand is.
Lipton Tea Or Nestea: Lipton, but generally there's no difference.
Chocolate Or Vanilla: Vanilla.
Cappucino or coffee: Latte, with a shot of caramel syrup. :D

Part 5: Do You?
Smoke: Occasionally.
Curse: I'm trying not to.
Drink: I love my beer. :D

Part 6: In the past month
Drank Alcohol: yes. Pint of erdinger weissbeir which was SO GOOD.
Gone to the mall: yes. well, kinda. i haven't gone shopping, if that's what you mean.
Been on stage: err. does backstage count?
Eaten Sushi: will do this properly tomoro. :)
Dyed hair: Nein.

Part 7: Have You Ever?
Played a stripping game: ... :P
Changed who you were to fit in: of course. was never happy.

Part 8: Age
You are hoping to be married: in amsterdam i suppose.

Part 9: In a Guy Or Girl
Best Guy Eye Colour: i dont really give a shit.
Hair colour: as long as you don't look like a golden monkey.
Short Or Long Hair: depends, really.

Part 10: What were you doing?
1 min ago: answering the first part of all this.
1 hour ago: emailing, i think.
1 mth ago: relacking more than now.
1 yr ago: enjoying myself at Film art and Acting. :)

Part 11: Finish the sentence.
Love: can be a many splendoured thing, can't deny the joy it brings.
Feels: just like it should!
Miss: Sukey Tawdry! look out, miss lotte lenya, and old lucy brown.
Hate: that i love you, so.
Need: to sleep soon.