In case you didn’t know, I’m a avid fan of T.R. But today, I just realised that my good friend Prita is one too.. We had a small competition in msn earlier.

Prita says:
heyyyyyyyyyy nee beckyyaee pannathae Lollu illanae naa odichiduvae on pallu

g a y a says:
kathuleh aadunaa udambulae konjam sillu.. nee unnam pesunae, unoda munjilae veesiduvaen kallu
Prita says:
neee periyaaa parappa… onnae parthaaa yenukku varuthu sirippaaa

g a y a says:
nee pesathaa serithaa po paa, yella vechuruvaen periya aaapa.

Prita says:
onaae yen nenjilaee vetchane anbaaaa…athukku nee veesittiyae periyaaa ambaaaa
heyy dandannakka hey hey daranadakka

g a y a says:
nee aadu sammba sammba.. kakuz ku pogumpothu thookikae periya somba.. eh dandanakka hey danakunakka!

BeCkYGaL says:
can both the TR fanz stop it… I can’t take it

Prita says:
heyyy TRae parthaaa unakku vedappa irukkaaaa….avar yen thalivan athae nee marakaama iruppaaaa

g a y a says:
TR pathi pesunaa nee aayiduvae chutuney.. Avar illae vaazhakae nammaku pattuni. (hunger)

I went to watch the TP show last Saturday, along with my buddies. It was not too bad, quite entertaining. After that, headed back to Woodlands to slack (and gossip of course.) Haha.

The weather is getting really warm and the heatyness is getting to me. Throat’s all dry and I can feel the heat and steam coming out of my hair. K maybe that was a little exaggerated. Lol.

Well, what can I say.. It’s Marvelous Monday. Will be leaving office in a bit after suffering from the Monday Blues, but thought of scribbling some thoughts before I leave for the day.

My colleague Jane is on 3 days MC and I don’t know why but today has been the busiest day compared to the usual workload. No, that’s not cause Jane’s not around. Just my fate, I guess. I just hope workload’s not that much tomorrow and Wednesday.

Today a new ‘girl’ came to join our office. She’s actually from the Procurement Department. If you noticed I kinda stressed on the word ‘girl’. Well, that’s coz she’s a lady aged atleast 45. I was actually looking forward for the new person to come thinking she wud be around my age group and that she wud be my frequency, and finally I could find a friend but NOOOO my hopes were crashed. She was just another aunty. I don’t know why my company has something for hiring aunties. Wait, I know what you’re thinking now. NO! I am not an aunty k.. I guess the HR manager was in a very good mood when she hired me.

Heeeeeeee.

High-pitched device drives teens from loitering spots

NEW YORK – A WALL-MOUNTED gadget designed to drive away loiterers with a shrill, piercing noise audible only to teens and young adults is infuriating civil liberties groups and tormenting young people after being introduced into the United States.

Almost 1,000 units of the device, called the Mosquito, have been sold in the United States and Canada after the product debuted last year, according to Mr Daniel Santell, the North America importer of the device sold under the company name Kids Be Gone.

The high-frequency sound has been likened to fingernails dragged across a chalkboard or a pesky mosquito buzzing in your ear.

It can be heard by most people in their teens and early 20s who still have sensitive hair cells in their inner ears. Whether you can hear the noise depends on how much your hearing has deteriorated – how loud you blast your iPod, for example, could potentially affect your ability to detect it.

‘It’s horrible, loud and irritating,’ said, Eddie Holder, 15, who sprinted from his apartment for school one morning covering one ear with his hand to block out the noise. The device was installed outside the building to drive away loiterers.

‘I have to hurry out of the building because it’s so annoying. It’s this screeching sound that you have to get away from, or it will drive you crazy.’

The device has already roiled civil liberties groups in countries where it’s already in use, including England, Australia and Scotland. England’s government-appointed Children’s Commission proposed a ban.

‘Infringement of rights’

They describe it as a weapon that infringes on the basic rights of young people, and claim it could even have unknown long-term health effects.

The US$1,500 (S$2,027) device has also been challenged in some American cities and towns that have proposed installing it, with some criticising the tactic as needlessly cruel.

Mr Santell said the noise can be heard by animals and babies, but is bothersome only to children older than 12 and becomes unbearable after several minutes, making it a perfect teen-repellent. The same sound is also used as a cell phone ring tone by deaf adults, and is a popular download on the Internet.

The town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, banned the device last year after a movie theatre owner installed one.

‘There was an outcry, and people didn’t like the idea of torturing kids’ ears like that,’ said Mr Ronald Dlugosz, a town official. ‘People here don’t tolerate that kind of stuff.’

Milford, Connecticut faced similar resistance when the city announced plans to install the Mosquito in a park. They increased police patrols instead.

Elsewhere, there have been few or no complaints. A mall in Maryland, announced plans to introduce the buzz to disperse skateboarders, and officials and police said they haven’t had any outcry.

A school district in Columbia, South Carolina recently installed one on the front grill of a school vehicle and another in a parking lot where students gather after high school games, with no complaints.

‘We’d have crowds gather in parking lots, and there’d be the usual trash talk, then you’d have fights,’ said Mr Rick McGee, the school district’s emergency services manager. ‘Now there’s no confrontation at all, they just get aggravated and leave within a few minutes.’

Mr Santell, the device’s marketer, said most of the company’s inquiries are from major corporations and government agencies looking for a way to protect private property.

Overseas, complaints arose when the device was projected into public spaces, like sidewalks.
Mr Santell said it does not violate any noise ordinances, but added that the company will soon be selling the same product with a higher ‘power,’ or decibel output, that will only be sold to government agencies.

‘A miracle’

Ms Carmen Ramirez, superintendent of the New York apartment building where Eddie Holder lives that recently installed the Mosquito, described it as ‘a miracle.’

‘We used to have young men here all of the time, bothering people in the building and doing illegal things,’ said Ms Ramirez, 50.

‘As soon as we put it up, they were gone, and they haven’t been back. If they return, we’ll just put up more.’

A spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union said the organization does not yet have a position on the issue.

But Mr James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Boston’s Northeastern University, said crowd-monitoring devices in the hands of private businesses and citizens is ‘dangerous.’

‘There is a significant problem with giving people a tool like this and empowering the public to take over the tasks of law enforcement,’ Fox said. ‘It can certainly be used in a way that’s inappropriate, and without a doubt it will be.’

Nobody at Holder’s apartment building could say where the loitering kids had gone after the Mosquito was installed.

‘I just deal with it, but I can’t be around here for too long,’ Eddie Holder said. ‘If I am going to stand around somewhere, it won’t be here.’ — AP
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I just hope Singapore doesn’t come up with such stuff.. (-_-)

I was travelling back home in the bus yesterday, and an incident left me thinking.

The bus I usually take from my workplace gets crowded along the way.. Too crowded that everyone gets squashed like sardines in a can. Yesterday, an Indian man (foreigner) was about to alight from the bus when he discovered that his ez-link card could not be read. He tried to tap his card but the ‘beep (x5)’ went on. So most of us know that when this happens, most probably the card wasn’t tapped properly at the entrance earlier, which also means he just had a free ride.

And most of us would just leave the bus and go on our way, grinning to ourselves on how we managed to save up on the few cents. But this guy wasn’t that aware of what’s happening and got really flustered. He quickly ran out of the bus, and ran to the entrance to speak with the driver to tell him what’s going on. This time, I was curious to see what the bus driver would tell him to do.

What shocked me was, this gentleman’s honesty wasn’t really appreciated by the driver. I heard the driver shouting at the top of his voice, but I couldn’t catch what he was saying as I was seated quite far behind. All I heard was a ‘Just, get out.’ by the driver, at the end of their conversation.

Was the driver rude to him because that’s just the way he is, or was he rude because he thought that it made no sense to be nice to a foreign worker? If it’s the latter, I think it’s very sad.. Foreigners are humans after all, and they deserve to be treated fairly. Not ostracized.

But coming to think of it, some bus drivers have simply no manners. I have personally come across rude drivers who “bark” at people who ask them for directions. I don’t think only employees in the Marketing/ Sales lines needs some customer service training. Bus drivers need the trainings too. After all, we’re paying for the transport and not travelling for free.

Everything these days increase.. Including the bus fares. And it’s sad that we’re not getting the proper treatment for it.

Moral of the story: It’s doesn’t pay to be honest at times.. Sometimes, it’s just not worth the hassle.

Mas Selamat’s Escape

Physical Lapses

* No window grilles in toilet
* CCTV cameras not yet in commission
* Perimeter fences that met roof of covered walkway

By Zakir Hussain

THERE were no grilles on the toilet window through which Mas Selamat Kastari escaped.
CCTV cameras were not yet in commission, so while they were working, there was no recording or active monitoring.

And the low Whitley Road Detention Centre perimeter fences met the roof of a covered walkway.

These were the key physical lapses that made Mas Selamat’s escape possible, said the Committee of Inquiry (COI) that investigated his Feb 27 escape from the detention centre’s Family Visitation Block.

During a re-enactment of how the fugitive could have left, a Gurkha guard took only 49 seconds to go out the window, scale a fence, climb onto the roof of the covered walkway, and jump out of the compound.

Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng gave Parliament an account of the COI’s findings yesterday.

The COI learnt that the centre’s administration had meant to put in grilles on all the windows in the block as far back as 2004, when it made plans to renovate the centre.

The Internal Security Department (ISD) told the vendor to install the grilles, but when renovations were carried out in 2007, this toilet window remained unsecured ‘due to a difference in understanding…over exactly which windows were to be secured’, DPM Wong said.

Still, when a staff member walked about to check on renovations between April and May last year, he detected the ventilation window without grilles and alerted the centre’s Superintendent to the lapse.

Instead of having the grilles installed, the Superintendent directed that the handle of the window be sawn off as a security measure, assuming that the guards would always keep the detainee in sight.

Mr Wong called this ‘bad judgment’ on the Superintendent’s part, and said the unsecured window was ‘the single most crucial factor which enabled Mas Selamat to escape’.
Once the detainee got out the window, the COI believes he took advantage of a weakness in the security fences.

There were two perimeter fences, but they converged with the roof of a covered staircase and walkway at the back of the visitation block.

DPM Wong said that the failure of centre staff to detect this weakness was a ‘failing’.
The COI also noted that CCTV coverage of the area was being upgraded to add motion-detectors, as part of a system upgrade for the entire complex.

So while two cameras were mounted at the location where Mas Selamat climbed out the window, they were not commissioned yet.

DPM Wong said this was ‘very unfortunate’ as fully operational cameras would have given an idea as to how the detainee got out of the centre.

But he assured the House that immediate action was taken to strengthen security following the escape. The toilet window has been sealed, and other actions such as raising the height of the perimeter fence are underway, and should be completed by next month.

Prisons Department assistance will also be sought to ensure the place is secure enough, Mr Wong added.

I’ve been feeling a little weird lately. It’s a strange feeling when I seem to read people’s minds.. And sometimes when what I say for fun comes true. It’s not always a pleasant surprise.

By the way, I saw a weird sight sometime last week. It was raining heavily in Clementi.. And when I was on my way to work in the morning, I saw this lady with her shower cap loitering around the void deck.

And the bus I was in was stuck in a bit of traffic jam so I was unintentionally watching her while listening to my music. Then I saw her walking away from the shelters and erm. she looked as if she was taking her shower.. Don’t let your imaginations run wild. She WAS wearing clothes. Those batic dresses housewives wear.

She was “catching” the raindrops and directing it to her body and washing her arms.

So she actually waited for the rain to pour so she could have a urm free shower?

I would rather take my shower in a public toilet if I wanted to have it free.

Then the bus left before I could signal anyone to take a sight of this rare incident.

Now I am thinking if she actually brought along a bar of soup.. Haha. Or maybe she had already soaped herself at home. Lol.

Finally they’ve decided to implement the Alternate Saturday work week at my place.

Well, even this has it’s pros and cons, though it sounds like a really positive change.

I used to knock off from work at 5.30pm before. But ‘cos of this implementation, working hours have been amended.

I now work from 8.30am – 6pm. Althought the difference might be a miserable 30mins, that sure makes a hell of a difference., transport wise.

I only have one bus service here. But it’s a loop service so I can choose if I wanna head to Clementi MRT (20 mins approx.) or to Jurong East MRT (35 mins approx.)

The faster bus approaching Clementi gets so packed after 6pm that I have to squeeze my way through the bus with men and remain squashed in the bus like a sardine for a good 20mins ..

I thought I could just settle for the Jurong East bus, but I got shocked as the traffic was disasterous after 6pm.. I only reached the interchange at 7.10pm. ( 1 hr, 10mins)

Like that what time go back sia? Whole evening is burnt.

I badly need to rush on my license. Things would be better once I have my own transport. (I hope)

Australian father has child with his own daughter

SYDNEY – AN Australian woman who had a child with her father pleaded for acceptance of their illicit love as the couple and their baby girl appeared on national television after being convicted of incest.

Jenny Deaves was 31 when she was reunited with her father John Deaves, who separated from her mother three decades before. Shortly afterwards, she had considered embarking on a sexual relationship with him, she told the Nine Network.

‘John and I are in this relationship as consenting adults,’ she told the ‘60 Minutes’ programme on Sunday night. ‘We are just asking for a little bit of respect and understanding.’

The couple’s nine-month-old daughter, Celeste, to whom John Deaves is both father and grandfather, was also shown on the programme and appeared to be in sound health.

She is a third child, but also a half-sister, for Jenny Deaves, now 39, who has two other children from another relationship.

Jenny Deaves said not long after meeting her father, she began to see him as a man first and a father second.

‘I was looking at him, sort of going, oh, he’s not too bad,’ she said.

‘Like you might look at a man across the bar at a nightclub.’ John Deaves, who is 61, said he knew it was illegal to have sex with his child but emotions soon overcame him.

‘Emotions take over, as people no doubt realise, there are times during your life where emotions do rule the heart, it rules the head,’ he said.

‘I knew it was illegal, of course I knew it was illegal but you know, so what.’

The South Australian couple, who bear a striking resemblance to each other, were both placed on three-year good behaviour bonds on March 20 after being convicted of two counts of incest each, a spokeswoman for the South Australian Courts Administration Authority said.

The bonds disallow any further sexual activity between the pair.

Sentencing remarks published on the court’s website reveal that the couple had another child in 2001 but the infant died after only a few days due to a congenital heart disease. — AFP

- Straits Times, 7th April 2008.
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So they gonna vellaku pudikiraan and watch these two all the time?

Pregnant man tells Oprah: “It’s a miracle.”

CHICAGO – A TRANSGENDER man who is six months pregnant said in an interview aired by Oprah Winfrey on Thursday that he always wanted to have a child and considers it a miracle.

‘It’s not a male or female desire to have a child. It’s a human desire,’ a thinly bearded Thomas Beatie said. ‘I have a very stable male identity,’ he added, saying that pregnancy neither defines him nor makes him feel feminine.

Mr Beatie, 34, who lives in Oregon, was born a woman but decided to become a man 10 years ago. He began taking testosterone treatments and had breast surgery to remove glands and flatten his chest.

‘I opted not to do anything with my reproductive organs because I wanted to have a child one day,’ he told the talk show host.

Mr Beatie’s wife Nancy said she inseminated him with a syringe using sperm purchased from a bank.

Now, he said, his size 32 jeans are getting a bit tight and his shirts are a bit stretched.

Nancy, to whom he has been married for five years and who has two grown daughters by a previous marriage, also appeared on the show, saying the couple’s roles will not change once the baby is born.

‘He’s going to be the father and I’m going to be the mother,’ she said. Their marriage is legal and he is recognised under state law as a man.

The couple was shown on video provided by People Magazine, which collaborated with Winfrey on the show, showing the room that will be the baby’s nursery.

Mr Beatie said the little girl was going to be ‘daddy’s little princess’. The couple was also filmed in their hometown of Bend, Oregon, where he underwent an ultrasound showing the baby in his womb.
‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she’s inside me,’ Mr Beatie said while watching the ultrasound image. ‘We see her as our little miracle.’

His obstetrician, Dr Kimberly James, who practices in the Oregon town, told Winfrey: ‘This is a normal pregnancy.’ She said Mr Beatie stopped taking testosterone two years ago and his levels of the hormone are normal.

‘This baby is totally healthy,’ she said. ‘This is what I consider a normal pregnancy.’
The couple said they had been turned down by a number of other doctors before Dr James agreed to take him as a patient.

The couple said an earlier attempt at pregnancy failed when he developed a tubal pregnancy, resulting in surgery that removed his Fallopian tubes.

The couple said they decided to go public with the pregnancy because they wanted to control the way the news got out. ‘We’re just going to have the baby now,’ Nancy said. ‘If we have to, we’ll go hide.’

The couple runs a small business in Bend and has some savings, she said. In addition, Mr Beatie is working on a book about his childhood, his mother’s suicide and his life growing in Hawaii where, as a girl, he was a teen beauty pageant contestant and earned a martial arts black belt.
Winfrey called the development ‘a new definition of what diversity means for everybody’. — REUTERS