My Reelity is the personal website of Vincent Lee.
Vincent is a versatile character actor and has been featured frequently in local television and in numerous short films over the past few years.
To view his portfolio, photos and video clips, please click on "The Actor" link above.
Paris, or rather Parisans, on the whole reminds me of Tokyolites. They are really not that frenly, and even if they are, you get the sense they are just patronizing you.
The Dutch, in retrospect are far more hospitable by far. I get it that most Cityzens are irritated and annoyed that their lovely city is being invaded by legions of tourists. Why this is already happening back home in SG, so I do feel a certain sense of empathy towards these feelings. At least these people have other parts of the country to retreat to; we on the other hand, have to retreat to other countries. And our problem are not tourists, but more on the huge influx of immigrants.
I think we still show great hospitality to tourists. But it’s beginning harder to differentiate between tourists and immigrants. Who’s to say we won’t grow more indignant in the future if these feelings don’t abate?
This became a very key phrase for me in my stay in Paris. Pronounced “parlay vu anglay”, it means “do you speak English” and somehow this little bit of french after a courteous “Bonjour” served me well.
I tried speaking in English straight away once and the reception was seriously much colder. But the thing that annoys me is that some of them would answer you in the negative even though they do know English. I half suspect they just wanna see how you react; cuz even in these cases, I would proceed to speak in English and they still understood what I wanted. Sheeesh.
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The French loaf seem to be the cheapest thing here. Every lunch/meal, they will always serve you a basket of French loaf slices. WITHOUT FAIL. Even if the main course has loads of carbo, they will still serve the French loaf and will even top up the basket! I’m beginning to think perhaps the French loaf has no carbo at all.
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The other thing that will strike you about French is how naise their TAP water taste. I daresay it’s the best water I’ve ever tasted in a city. Ooh la la! The best part? It’s free; even in pubs and restaurants. Just need to ask for it. All the Parisans do!
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The queue for the Eiffel Tower is RIDICULOUS. I went there in the evening I first arrived and the queue already looked more than one hour. I subsequently went early morning the next day and the queue is TWICE as long. WTF?!!?
In the end I took the stairs, which only had a 20min queue. It was quite exhausting to climb to the first level BUT you get to skip the queue as you can then get supplementary tickets to the second level and in turn the summit. I did that and promptly laughed at the fools below me. 😛
But the views are really worth the effort. Just not worth queuing for 2 hours.
The metros of Paris would seem very confusing and intimating to most travellers, but if you are Tokyo trained like me, then you will be unfazed. The thing that annoys me though is the petty crime rate. It’s so bad you have to be on your toes all the time.
I had my first brush the very day I set foot in Paris. I was approached by a Latina girl in her teens to sign some petition for the deaf. I initially declined but she keeps saying she only needs a signature. So I agreed, and while signing the form, she kept thanking me and planting kisses with her hand to my cheek. I then came across a column where I see some numbers being written and I ask her what’s that for.
She say it’s for donations and ask me to contribute. I declined as I told her that’s not part of the deal but she kept insisting. All of a sudden, a man dressed casually came to us and brandished an arm band that says “Police”. He told me what she was doing was illegal and appended her. As I didn’t give her any money I was allowed to leave.
I would later find out this was one of the ways they will try to scam/pickpocket you. And the policemen are in plainclothes on a regular basis. I would later see a pair of them in action in Galeries Lafayette trying to catch a suspect.
This lack of security, compared to the safe streets of Japan where I last travelled, is a real bummer.
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I didn’t get to see the lovely models at A&F. Why? Because the queue looked to be more than an hour! Madness. These Parisans are crazy.
Onto the second leg of my journey and am on my way to Paris. Internet access in Amsterdam is extremely expensive, which is why the updates have been few and far between.
The Dutch cost of living is pretty close to back home. A meal at MacD’s cost around five euros, and a decent steak around 19 euros. If you don’t count the exchange rate, it’s pretty close to pri es back home.
The thing that is really expensive is the public transport costs and toilet entrance fees. $2.60 euros for a tram ticket and 50 freaking euro cents for the toilet.
It’s good bladder training though. 😛
Has been raining for the past week and I’m hoping for more sunny weather in Paris. The sights on the train trip thus far is so much more less interesting than my train journeys in Japan.
So begins my Holland to Holland adventure, one in which I don’t get horlan in the end. And it’s starting really well because the flight was relatively empty which means … I have the whole freaking row to myself!! Woohoo!
Sure beats last year’s trip to Tokyo when I got a fat male angmoh next to me. And the icing on the cake must surely be the whiskies I had during the flight. I don’t know what grade Johnny Walker Red label is, but I think it’s definitely better than the black.
Typing this at a cafe/pub near where I’m staying where I got chatted up by an old gent by the name of Micky The wifi’s acting up, so gonna continue this another time.
Am typing this in a I half suspect he’s the owner of the joint.
Just came across this excellent interview with Mr Ngiam Tong Dow, former head of the civil service in 2003. Give that man a Tiger, what an excellent insight!
Two things I wish to highlight from the interview :
Q. So what should this new compact consist of?
A. It should go back to what was originally promised: ‘That you shall be given the best education, whether it be academic or vocational, according to your maximum potential.’ And there will be no judgment whether an engineer is better than a doctor or a chef. My late mother was a great woman. Although illiterate, she single-handedly brought up four boys and a girl. She used to say in Hainanese: ‘If you have one talent which you excel in, you will never starve.’ I think the best legacy to leave is education and equal opportunity for all. When the Hainanese community came to Singapore, they were the latest arrivals and the smallest in number. So they had no choice but to become humble houseboys, waiters and cooks. But they always wanted their sons to have a better life than themselves. The great thing about Singapore was that we could get an education, which gave us mobility, despite coming from the poorest families. Today, the Hainanese, as a dialect group, form proportionately the highest number of professionals in Singapore.
Q. What is the kind of Singapore you hope your grandchildren will inherit?
A. Let’s look at Sparta and Athens, two city states in Greek history. Singapore is like Sparta, where the top students are taken away from their parents as children and educated. Cohort by cohort, they each select their own leadership, ultimately electing their own Philosopher King. When I first read Plato’s Republic, I was totally dazzled by the great logic of this organisational model where the best selects the best. But when I reached the end of the book, it dawned on me that though the starting point was meritocracy, the end result was dictatorship and elitism. In the end, that was how Sparta crumbled. Yet, Athens, a city of philosophers known for its different schools of thought, survived. What does this tell us about out-of-bounds markers? So SM Lee has to think very hard what legacy he wants to leave for Singapore and the type of society he wants to leave behind. Is it to be a Sparta, a well-organised martial society, but in the end, very brittle; or an untidy Athens which survived because of its diversity of thinking? Personally, I believe that Singaporeans are not so kuai (Hokkien for obedient) as to become a Sparta. This is our saving grace. As a young senior citizen, I very much hope that Singapore will survive for a long time, but as an Athens. It is more interesting and worth living and dying for.
I heartily agree with ‘That you shall be given the best education, whether it be academic or vocational, according to your maximum potential.’
And our resemblance to Sparta now is horrifying. I would wish we become Athens as well.
Come tomorrow, I’ll be voting for the very first time. After being subjected to numerous walkovers ever since I was eligible to vote, I am glad to have my chance at long last.
Most like me are also voting for the first time. Which explains why there is a great buzz around the elections this year; notwithstanding the fact that a significant percentage of the electorate are very dissatisfied with how things are right now.
I was at Serangoon Stadium last night to attend the last Workers Party rally. And I can tell you, you can really feel how disgruntled the masses are. I have been following the rally speeches for the past seven days, both PAP and the Opposition, and this is what I have noticed : The Opposition has correctly identified the issues the people are not happy with and they have brought it out to light. The PAP however for some weird reason stubbornly stayed clear of these issues and instead prefers to drone out municipal objectives instead. Worse, they even make light of these issues and dismiss them altogether! And up to the nth hour, some of them are still concentrating on municipal plans instead.
This, despite evidence of large crowds attending Opposition rallies EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. You must wonder if they ever paused to think why nobody (or significantly lesser people) turn up at their own rallies. Surely it must be because you are not talking about issues close to their hearts? But yet you don’t sense a switch in their strategy at all. If you ask me, they are either really out of touch with the ground, or are too complacent to even care.
This ambivalence may well prove to be their downfall come May 8. But in the meantime, the people are flocking to potential representatives who have heard their cries and have promised to be their voice. If you have seen footages of PAP’s rallies from their humble beginnings, you would have noticed that they too have massive crowd turnouts in their rallies. And because of this kind of passionate support, the PAP then began to win power. Many have forgotten they too were once The Opposition.
And I think Grand Uncle, if he had the fortune of witnessing such scenes, would surely have a sense of deja vu. But that sense of deja vu would soon become a shiver down his spine when he realises that the crowds are now following another party instead of his party. In fact last night, after the rally, the people were still shouting the name of the party even as they made their exit. And shouting still even as they crossed the streets of Serangoon. It was as close to a public demonstration as you can get in Singapore.
And that party is The Workers Party. I was very impressed with their showing in 2006 as well as their performance these past five years in identifying critical issues and bringing them up in Parliament. In fact, when I saw their last rally in 2006, in which they recited the Pledge at the end, I was truly moved to tears. Which is why I made my way to the stadium last night; I knew they would do it (recite The Pledge) again and this time round, I was determined to be part of it.
Of course, there were also sizable crowds in the other Opposition Parties’ rallies as well. This is because the Opposition has put up a very united front this time round; not only are they raising the same issues, they have synchronised their debates as well. If the issue of housing was debated by one party, you can be sure the other parties are also debating on housing issues on the same night. And if they are talking about the foreigners issues on the following night, you can be sure the other parties will debate on foreigner issues on the following night as well.
This concerted effort is quite unprecedented, and I am mightily impressed. And i think this really caught the PAP off-guard. The again, a lot of things in this election have caught them off-guard as well. And the response from the ground has been tremendous and who can blame them? For far too long they have been ignored; for far too long they have been taken for granted. And to add insult to injury, the PAP tried to rally them to their cause with cheers of “Majulah PAP! Majulah Sinagpore!”. Party before Country? Are you freaking kidding me?
These past five years, I have seen the incumbent commit political suicide many times and shoot their own foot many times. But because they got away with it, they got more and more arrogant, and more and more complacent. I’m glad the Opposition have been diligent enough to note down these gaffes and have used them as ammunition in this election. The PAP simply have no rebuttal against these, and their weak attempt to dismiss or deflect them just made them lose more respect and trust from an already very disgruntled electorate.
When the elections were announced, I wondered if Singapore would be sheltered from the strong winds of change that has been blowing globally these past few years. From our neighbors in Malaysia, from Asia, from USA and now from the Middle East, winds of change have been blowing very hard. But for it to blow here, this tiny island of a nation, it seems more likely than not that it will siam us.
But last night, amongst a 30,000 strong crowd packed in a small stadium, I felt a breeze. A gentle, cooling breeze, brushing against our tired faces and weary hearts, lifting our troubled souls. It blew for the duration of the rally and it helped carried our voices during our recital of the Pledge to reach those who couldn’t be there. To let them hear the pride and passion that is in their hearts and our hearts.
The winds have started blowing. On May 7, may it blow even stronger.
Collected my key on the 20th February but the contractors could only start this week.
Photos before the demolition :
They’ve finished the demolition work today, so I went to take photos of the aftermath. However, all the lights were gone, so I had to take the pictures in the dark. Heng Faustine could still rise to the occasion :
My contractor told me we hit a snag : After the common room wall came down, they found out the elevation of the lobang left behind isn’t flat. As a result, it is not feasible to lay tiles over this lobang.
They are still searching for a suitable material to fill up the lobang. At first they suggested using pebble wash, but I don’t fancy transversing a rough patch every time I walk across the room.
They will be laying the tiles for the kitchen and bathroom tomorrow. Hopefully the tiles I’ve selected will look nice. 😛
