:: views of a tiny being on global throes ::

It has been widely reported that certain American food manufacturers have turned to downsizing package sizes on the quiet in a bid to cut costs, fuelled by rising production costs due to soaring oil and food prices (what’s new).

Of course, the hush-hush game is being played so as not to repulse consumers who may not be observant enough to notice the downsizing at all. After all, in a world where prices of everything else is going up, it will be a promotion of the items of some sorts should their prices remain stagnant. Such coy marketing ploys at work, albeit underhand. Who cares about honesty being the best policy if profiteering is affected at the end of the day?

Though, with the latest reports, these ploys are likely to have been foiled and the companies have some answering to do to their customers.

Then again, are consumers that blind not to notice the surreptitious marginalising privately at play?

As Ms Deirdre Cummings, legislative director at consumer advocacy group MASSPIRG aptly puts, “So many times, they put ‘new improved package’ on the label but they would never put ‘new, improved and smaller’.”

Shouldn’t it be made clear for consumers that they are paying less for the same amount? As buyers, we definitely have the right to know about such changes. Well, at least the Singapore market is not that badly affected yet, although even if it is, we can probably trust our Consumers Association (CASE) to set things straight.

In the meantime, however, has any other fellow local readers noticed a possible covert shift taking place in the fast food restaurants here, in terms of the food portions? I was having supper with a friend recently when he commented, rather aptly it seems, that “unlike 10 years ago when the Big Mac was so huge that we have to split the hamburger into two layers to eat it, the Big Mac is more like a Small Mac now”. Apart from which, the sizes of the burgers at McDonald’s, the fried chicken at KFC, as well as the meat at Long John Silver’s certainly seem to be shrinking by the year, while the prices of their meals are still going up.

As consumers become savvier while the business world gets tougher, it remains to be seen who will have the last laugh.

The world of sports is certainly a lucrative one, giving the recognition being placed on it, whether as a barometer of human progress, a showcase of indomitable human spirit, or simply, a chance to earn bragging rights on an international or regional platform.

This is further exemplified by how numerous countries have invested money into building up their burgeoning sports industries, amplified more so by the efforts and incentives of the Singapore Sports Council (SSC) in attracting foreign talent to Singapore, as well as the carrot being dangled in front of our sportsmen as motivation for them to perform.

The number of sporting events which capture global attention is countless, with the Summer Olympics, World Cup, Euro Championships and Commonwealth Games being some of the few large scale events with a lot of hoohaa attached.

The prestige of hosting a major sporting event has therefore grown leaps and bounds over the years, as a nation welcomes the best athletes from around the world for approximately a month of friendly competition. The benefits are boundless - a chance to build political ties and to gain recognition, as well as the promising tourism revenue which is bound to come along.

The onus lies with the host country to invest hefty sums of revenue to refurbish pre-existing infrastructure, as well as to construct new systems and to erect supportive tourism promotion campaigns so as to ensure the successful execution of the event.

Via Euro 2008, Austria and Switzerland is bound to reap rewards from the European fans that are expected to descend on the countries during the championships, with an estimate of $358 million gained by the Swiss economy and $369 million gained by the Austrian economy. In Austria alone, overnight bookings have hit the 2-million mark during the campaign, which is well above the usual rates for the month of June, while almost 11,000 temporary jobs have been created to cope with the visitor influx.

However, while it may still be too early to tell, things do not look especially rosy for the upcoming Beijing Summer Olympics and Singapore’s Formula One Night Race.

Both events have been in the news lately in the run-up till the kick-off of the events.

The Beijing Games have been fraught with controversy surrounding the Chinese-Tibetan rule and the subsequent exile of the Daila Lama, and as a result, an unprecedented spotlight was shone on the global torch relay.

The Singapore Formula One Night Race has been vigorously marketed as a world’s first-ever F1 night race.

Yet, recent reports have shown that the Formula One hotel booking is looking sluggish, while there is no sign of Olympic boom for Beijing hotels.

So, what ticks and what does not?

In the case of the Beijing Games, fingers are being pointed at wildly inflated prices within the country in view of the impending games despite a global economic slump, tighter visa regulations (ironically to keep out excessive visitors, a plan which has since proven to backfire), as well as possible anti-Chinese sentiments in the wake of the deadly Tibetan rioting. Tourism figures have dropped by 12.5% comparing May this year to a year ago.

As for Singapore, it is speculated that the sluggish outcome is a result of escalated hotel rates, especially for the hotels surrounding the race track, so much so that hotels have started pushing down their prices. But seriously, could there be an over-estimation for the demand? Ardent F1 fans would have snapped up grandstand tickets when ticketing sales first open. And, who would want to watch miniature-sized cars zoom by at a fraction of a second from, say, the thirtieth floor? Where is the kick in that?

The sciences behind generating revenue during a major sporting event may not be that simple, but the works are easy - for money to be earned, people have to come, and apart from placing too much focus and reliance on the sports itself, perhaps there is also a need to sell the country per se as well.

Read how Adam Sandler’s latest silver-screen outing, You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, which also features the scriptwriting team from last summer’s sleeper hit, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, fares with us!

Official trailer:

Reports like these surface: 

• Report: North Pole May Be Ice-Free This Summer [Fox WTTG Washington]
• North Pole ice cap could disappear this year [Adelaide Now]
• North Pole ice ‘may disappear by September’ [The Telegraph]
• No North Pole ice for 1st time in human history? [SINA China]

It appears that the dire consequences of global warming are bearing down fast on our generation, in spite of the numerous efforts which have been set in place to step up action against practices which are bound to destruct the Earth.

The signs are there. The possibility of the complete melting of the Arctic ice cap as early as this year has compounded with the earlier reported issues of rice shortage / oil shortage / quirky weather patterns (floods in India during a dry season and vice versa; extremely hot summers in the US, just to name a few).

On the individual level, perhaps it is really time for us to listen, to leave our complacency and procrastination aside, and to get out of our comfort zones. And actually ‘go green’. The rising sea levels the melting Arctic ice is bound to result in will certainly cause catastrophic damages to the world, so what next?

At the rate things are going, perhaps it will not be so surprising after all if Nostradamus’ end-of-the-world prophecy in 2012 actually comes true.

Lucky Number 13 of our Movie Review series goes to the silver-screen adapation of Sex And The City, or SATC, as it is more affectionately known. The movie has crystallised the four lead characters from the hit television sitcom as icons in modern pop culture - Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Samantha (Kim Cattrall) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) with their flamboyant outfits and witty dialogue. Read how this big screen effort fares with us!

The past year has seen an NSF going AWOL from camp with a SAR-21 rifle and live ammunition, a limping JI terrorist making a toilet break from custody, and an attempted breakout from the Subordinate Courts making headlines around the world.

A new addition to the fray, however, is a security lapse at Changi Airport, though thank goodness this did not arise as a result of a deliberate escapade. Interestingly, Singapore is so well-known for its security that this lapse even made the papers in Azerbaijan.

Here’s a quick recap of the story:

• Retiree Ang Heng Soon (61) checked in at the Tiger Airways counter using his son’s passport, which he had grabbed by mistake in his hurry to catch the flight
• The counter officer issued him a boarding pass in his own name.
• The Certis Cisco Airport Police officers on duty checked Mr Ang’s boarding pass and the passport he was holding before clearing him for entry into the restricted area
• Mr Ang failed the fingerprint verification checks at the enhanced Immigration Automated Clearance System and could not pass
• The Immigration Duty Officer did a ‘face-to-face verification’ and cleared him to go
• Mr Ang realised the folly only on his flight to Ho Chi Minh City where he owned up to immigration authorities there and he was placed on a return flight to Singapore.

Deputy Prime Minister / Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng is naturally, not a very happy man. It is difficult to foresee him actually being happy with the recent unfolding of events which has tarnished Singapore’s squeaky-clean reputation as a security-tight state.

Obviously, he should be taken to task for this (as well as the many lapses which occurred under his charge), instead of delegating the blame down the command chain and emerging relatively unscathed, which is probably akin to soldiers trying to fight a war with their commander retreating to his bunk and watching primetime television.

Have all calls against complacency and for utmost vigilance gone unheeded in the wake of the recent escapades? It remains to be seen the punishments which will be meted out for the airport officers, though some sackings and demotions will certainly be in the air.

Instead of talking about the “should have”s or “should have been”s, what next for the ICA? What will the “review” of the security systems and processes which DPM directed the Ministry HQ’s Homefront Security Division to front throw up?

These are definitely questions which have to be answered.

Japan’s status as a modern industrialised nation has, pretty much, not affected their crime rate over the past years (though criminologists do readily attribute the conditions of modernisation and industrialisation to growing crime rates).

This is in spite of the high profile murders which have shocked the nation over the past decade or so, such as:

• Aum Shinrikyo or Aleph, a new Japanese religious movement responsible for the deadly sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subways in 1995, as well as several police shootings and stabbings within the same year.
• the murder of a 11-year-old boy (strangled and decapitated) and a 10-year-old girl (bludgeoned to death) by a then-14-year-old schoolboy in 1997, who has since been released on parole
• the hijack of a Japanese bus by a 17-year-old user of online forum 2channel in 2000, with one passenger being stabbed to death.
• the Sasebo slashing, the murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by her 11-year-old classmate in an elementary school in 2004, which involved the slitting of the victim’s throat and arms with a box cutter
• the murders by Yukio Yamaji, who killed his own mother in 2000. Upon being released on parole, he then raped a 27-year-old woman and her sister prior to murdering them in 2005

However, violence in Japan seems to have taken an unprecedented turn for the worse, going by the numerous reports on the stabbing sprees which have surfaced over the past month alone.

It seems that the Internet has become the go-to channel for potential killers to make their intentions and death threats known on forums, prior to the stabbings themselves. The motive remains unclear, as to whether the persecuters were merely gunning (no pun intended) for their own thirty seconds of fame prior to the killings, or whether they were attempting to channel some character from the media in their murder attempts.

Following the arrest of Mr Kato, who embarked on a knifing rampage on June 8, taking the lives of seven people and wounding 10 others in the process, the nation has been on an alert for copycat crimes.

And rightfully so, it seems, with an unparalleled number of people posting threatening messages online.

Authorities have arrested a 19-year-old male who posted an Internet threat to go on a Disneyland stabbing spree, while they have also apprehended a 38-year-old jobless woman for attacking 3 women with a knife at a train station on Sunday.

It remains to be seen how many followers of Kato are there, as well as the motive behind the murders. Could the killers be followers of a massive cult, a la Aum Shinrikyo? Or could the pressures of living in a highly post-modernised state have gotten to their heads, resulting in depression? Or, could this be attributed to the influences of the mass media, what with the heightened number of violent movies and games in the market today?

With Singapore’s wish to establish and sustain its status as a nation with burgeoning nightlife, it has spent much effort in forging an active clubbing night scene.

However, one area of neglect is to have major shopping malls open later into the evening instead of closing prematurely at the godforsaken early time of 9.00pm or 9.30pm. And by major shopping malls, I refer to the malls along Singapore’s premier shopping district that is Orchard Road, such as Paragon and Takashimaya, not just Mustafa Centre (Singapore’s only 24-hour shopping centre till date, which sells mid-range products at cheap prices and is located away from the city area).

With tidal changes in the lifestyles of Singaporeans, late-night shopping ought to be the norm, instead of the exception that is marketed as a weekly event.

The implementation of the five-day work-week has resulted in students staying back in schools later into the day with their co-curricular activities and extra tutorial commitments. Similarly, professionals are knocking off work later and later into the evening as well. All this translates into a lack of retail time should shops continue to close early.

This is especially so with the current Great Singapore Sale (GSS), a prime opportunity to milk the wallets, of both incoming tourists and local Singaporeans alike, dry.

How is Singapore going to gain an edge as a retail haven over regional shopping districts which offer a wider range of products at cheaper prices continue to baffle me. Furthermore, shops in these districts such as Hong Kong and Taipei open later into the night catering for the late-night shopping crowd. True that they may open later in the day instead, but who’s complaining?

It is apparent that crowds flock to shops later in the night as opposed to earlier in the day, evident from observing crowd flow along Orchard Road.

With the impending opening of the Integrated Resorts and the annual Formula One race promising to draw a flurry of crowds to our sunny garden city, many tourists could find themselves disappointed with the minimal amount of time there is for shopping, or, for the lack of activities to do after shops close at 9.30pm and before midnight, when crowds start to pack local clubs.

Instead of writing off late-night stragglers, why not offer them the opportunity to shop by opening doors slightly later, till about 11.00pm instead?