The loyal supporters of AGF, the local football club. I did my part by eating a big mac meal to get my free ticket for the match. Its called the "support your town's team menu" which costs 60DKK which is about SGD16.00. Yup 16 bucks for a big mac meal. I swear it was worse in Norway and contrary to popular believe, Sweden is much cheaper than Denmark and Norway. This is the latest
big mac index compiled by the Economist. Singapore is at -29% whilst Denmark sits at +50% and Norway at +98%. Anyhow, the match was really good and AGF really deserved to win. It was almost like a local derby as there isn't another football club in Aarhus and Silkeborg is the next closest town. Despite being so close, the Silkeborg fan turn out was dismal. The bit of the stadium that was reserved for the Silkeborg fans was practically empty. Here's a shaky
video of the first goal, its shaky cos its hard to make a video with one ungloved hand (the other hand was holding a cup of hot coffee) at 0 degrees. You can make out the empty bit that was allocated for the opposing team's fans.
And moving away from soccer, onto something equally sensational, the hanging of Nguyen Tuong Van. I have been following the whole saga on BBC and Straits Times and its really interesting to see how the whole thing has developed. It is also interesting to see how the blogging phenomenon has managed to influence the reporting style of
BBC correspondents. Well I suppose this is the way the world works now isn't it? Everything is just opinions and viewpoints. No need for any old fashion proof or evidence. Statistics? Opinion polls? Bah! who needs those fuddy duddy stuff!
I always assumed that a blogger is a person who writes what he/she feels or senses and that a correspondent when writing an opinion should do the same, with the minor exception that he/she has to substantiate his/her viewpoints with some form of justification (anything more than a mere "sense of something"). I suppose the middle ground would be a Wikipedia contributor. Oh well, maybe I'm just too traditional. Old fashioned even. But some say old is gold.
Anyhow, according to this BBC bloggerspondent, all of you (my Singaporean friends) reading this are living in a climate of fear *shudder* Hurry! run home before the boogey man catches you. Or in this case, maybe the state will catch all of you and throw you in a prison with some exotic name like Guantanamo or Gaucamole bay prison where you will be held without trial! Run Run! Hide Hide!
And reforms and changes in countries other than Singapore happen overnight! Yes, for all you swakoo readers, in ultra modern and ultra hip western countries, changes take place in a snap of a fingers. Like in the UK, if they want to implement a national identity card system, like our NRIC system in Singapore, they can do so overnight.... Right???? There will be no protest about a violation of privacy and no big fuss about biometric tagging.... right??
Apart from bloggerspondents, apparently you don't really need to have a lot of grey matter in your skull to be the
prime minister of a country. Or maybe that's just confined to the 70s era, which I most certainly hope is the case. According to this esteemed former diplomat, I hail from a "rogue chinese port" city.... hmmm interesting... everyday I learn more and more about myself and my country. I didn't know that there were only Chinese in Singapore. I also didn't know that my Malay and Indian neighbours are Chinese too.... now... apparently.YES! Even our national anthem is in Chinese too!! Well I'm just a mere undergrad and not a former prime minister. What would I know...
Although I may not know much about race and ethnicity, I do pride myself on knowing a thing or two about simple economics and basic supply and demand. And that economic strangulation or cutting off trade ties does not put an end to drug production. In my humble opinion, if the world does place an embargo or restrict trade and economic ties with Burma, the production of poppy would just simply increase. Farmers would turn to poppy cultivation, in fact most people would turn to the illicit drug production industry. WHY!? Because everything else that they produce cannot be exported. Because drugs would simply be a more lucrative alternative. Because you don't need offical trade relations to sell drugs abroad. There are no export duties and no import taxes on drugs. Because drugs would be paid for in cold hard international currency, Aussie Dollar, US Dollar etc etc which would in turn be used to pay for blackmarket imports or necessities. Because demand for drugs is inelastic. And it is a simple rule of economics that if you can't fix the supply side, you can always try to fix the demand aspect of the problem.
What a sensational Sunday. Oh yes, and in case you havent figured it out by now. I am a blogger. Not a correspondent.
