Today will be the last day of the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon early bird special, do quick make your registration if you do not want your fee to jump by by $20. Today is also the last voting day for the Singapore blog awards, so do help support the site by voting for this very last day!

Been around a run this evening and noticed a few things I believe people on the streets now should take note now. Today is also the start of the 7th month aka the Hungry Ghost Festival in Singapore, you will be seeing alot of prayers and incense being offered on the streets these few days, not to mention rather interesting Wayang stage shows you can see sprouting up in mature estates, (especially particularly where I live in the south).

For runners, when you are out running these days on the streets or roads, do keep a look out for prayer altars or stray pieces of incense paper on pavements- be careful not to step or disturb them. My parents used to tell me that those paper are like Gold to the dead so, it’s like stepping on their belongings- something you won’t want to offend with the hell gates officially open for this month. What I can say is even if you are a non-believer. If you do do kindly apologize if may as well, after all how hard can it be?

Otherwise, do enjoy a great August ahead! National day is something to look forward to.

Sigh, I was clocking in at least 600km at this time of the year last year, seems that I am really cutting down to one run a week these days. I usually do not include gym sessions in my running log now on as that do not affect mileage, except for threadmill runs.

With Mas Selamat all round the paper’s these days with the 1 million bounty on his head now, that may at least get some fingers working. Looking at the papers today, the $1M is kinda negligible to the ones on Osama’s head, not to mention those on his right hand personnel. Nevertheless, it beats to puny few thousand reward previously posted by the Singapore police, not to mention with the possible new barrage of calls giving this now.

On 999 calls, I happened to meet and caught up with an old friend recently who is now serving his active national service in the police force. Just as how nominal I find army stories, I’ve always have a keen ear about the real experiences our men and women in the force have to deal with everyday, let be the civil defense. Not to mention just as how chilling some stories I heard from an ex-secondary school of mine who handles accident calls (we get 7-10 fatalities on our roads daily). This particular friend mans the reporting and messaging of 999 calls from the operators, with some rather interesting stories and experiences.

Though I’ve never and never wish to have the need to call 999. He told me of how some Singaporeans can call the 999 line just as often like they are calling for Pizza, not counting “returning customers”. Complaining over simple matters like low tap water pressure to sounds of mating cats, to remote control airplanes flying into their gardens- In other words, anything you can complain of under the sun.

He told me that people usually have the impression that they have to make taxpayer’s money worth by bugging the police time and again, but the callers seldom put themselves in the police’s shoes on how actually can the problem be solved practically. Say for instance the mating cats, they are not going to sit there and watch them throughout the night right?

Funny Mas Selamat tip-offs
Given that, if you were to ask any police personnel about their experiences with the Mas Selamat followups, I believe each and every one of them have their own head-shakingly unique and funny stories to tell, which can be rather assumingly funny too, here’s some I was told for the record:

People called 999 on Mas Selamat because:

• They saw someone walking with a limp on his leg, but he is not Chinese.
• I saw Mas selamat, and he is 1.8m tall.
• He is playing his PSP on the SMRT bus with the volume turned up and not using headphones like what people will normally do.

No matter how dumb these reason are, the thing is that every call will be investigated, so it will be a great wasteful drain on the force which have their opportunity costs. So next time, do give the people on the force a thought before calling.

The Ngee Ann Kongsi 2008 scholarship ceremony was on today. Though I did not apply for the scholarship this year. They kindly invited me and my family over to witness their prize presentation ceremony. Held at the Teochew building along Tank road, it’s almost like a memory of the award ceremony I went through last year. The interesting thing is that the value of the scholarship and bursary awards had risen by 20-25% from last year, totaling $0.8 Million SGD given out.

I cannot deny that the Teochew in Singapore are very proud of their rich history and culture, as displayed in their heritage center which I always time and again don’t seem to get tried of visiting every time I come to the Teochew center. The Kongsi have a long belief in supporting education, culture and the poor, namely through financial prizes given out in support of their various education institution such as the Ngee Ann primary and polytechnic to name a few, not to mention the Scholarships and bursaries given out today- all with no strings attached. Part of their most accomplised portfolio will involve owning land spanning from Orchard Wisma all the way to Cineleisure orchard.

There was a clay and stone art exhibition on as well (The 5th art exhibition titled the 3 elements), which was a needed break for me to appreciate the arts. A framed certificate token was presented to me on stage as congrats for graduating this year (despite it having a typo which they promptly rectified and fixed).

My group of graduates were called upon a casual chat session by the chairperson who told us more of the organisation and answered some queries on why the Kongsi only sponsor local university studies (and not overseas), together not funding post-grad studies. Apparently, it’s all about the opportunity costs- he explained for the price of one overseas scholarship, they can sponsor 3 local scholars. With rising costs, funds are limited and they would find it fairer this way. On post-grad scholarships, he also mentioned that it’s more feasible to be able to put money into sponsoring students who have yet to do their first degree rather than one looking for a masters or a PHD. He also shared plans with us to create a Ngee Ann award recipient’s alumni which he looks forward into us spearheading and kick-starting the initiative with an invitation to the organisation as volunteers and organisers.

Will be looking forward to that.