The 30-second commercial, which first aired on all the four main language channels last week, is a graphic depiction of a woman afflicted with oral cancer. The camera zooms in on a tight shot of her face with a diseased tongue, decaying teeth and chapped lips riddled with sores.
According to the HPB, since last Tuesday’s launch of the three-month-long Smoking Control Campaign, its toll-free smoking QuitLine (1800-4382000) has seen a five-fold increase in the number of calls.
Housewife Leong Sow Chan was one of the peeved parents. Her nine-year-old daughter was so traumatised by the commercial the first time she saw it that she had a nightmare that night.
While she still does not think the commercial is in appropriate taste, she admitted that it "definitely turns me and my non-smoking family off. We are so disgusted we either switch channels when the ad comes on, or look away".
This is one advertisement that makes me want to call the number. It's just so gross. Yucks.. It's just too bad I'm not smoking. I couldn't find any picture of it from the net. Maybe I'll snap the picture from TV later.
"You prevaricated!" How's that for saying "You lied!"?. That will create a lot of question mark on the accused. How about "You equivocated!"? Even more question mark. Have your own question mark? Check the dictionary to remove it.
Multitasking makes you less productive - take ten In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.
In zen, it's called single-minded. Multitasking: screwing up several things at the same time :)
I guess they should be greatful it's not *all* on one line. Seriously though, that's impressive. Sometimes you have to wonder how these people survive a day. It never occurs to them to think "there *has* to be a better way than this."?
That's exactly what I've been pondering. For me, that's the difference between the good and bad programmer:
"It never occurs to them to think 'there *has* to be a better way than this.'?"
A good programmer will think that he/she is doing either stupid or too difficult things. One long line of condition is stupid and difficult to understand. There HAS to be a better way to do it. Deeply nested if statements are just wrong, it's hard to comprehend. There HAS to be a better way to do it. And then the search for greatness begins.
And talking about the bad programmer, I sometimes think: this people, either they are stupidly genius or just plain average Joe, at which the latter is more possible. Understanding a crazy code is really beyond my ability. I simply hate it.
But these bad programmers, if they are such a genius that they're able to understand it with ease, they're stupid for not being able to see the simpler form. If they're just average, well, too bad, being average in programming world equals to being bad programmer.
There is just a vast divide between those who can, those who can't. And for me, another vast divide between those who are good and those who are bad. And for the good programmer, he/she will always think when stumbling upon stupid or repetitive task: there has to be a better way than this.
And by the way, I'm not implying that I'm good myself. I'm just someone learning to be better.
Now I understand why Utada Hikaru is chosen as Nintendo DS's representative. She's a great Tetris player herself. So not only that she's ultra famous, she's also a gamer, a dedicated one at that, with top score 99,999,999 at Endless Mode. Watch as she beats most players with 26 wins and 4 losses. She's damn fast.
In this video, she plays against Nintendo assassins (Tetris-DS experts from Nintendo). That looks like a dangerous name. Nintendo = cute, assassin = death. What a scary name :{ She actually managed to beat one of them. And above all, she's so different from what I thought she is. She looks just like a normal girl and cute too.
Man, it makes me want to buy a DS and play Tetris..
While browsing through Tokyo Toshokan, I found a strange name: Lisa Halim. That name sounds very Indonesian Chinese. A Goggle and Yahoo later, I found her website. Shown there on top: selamat datang. Reading the Japanese words: インドネシア人の父と、日本人の母より生を受ける。 My lousy translation: Indonesian father, Japanese mother bla bla bla. Anyway, forget about my translation. Let Google translate the whole page for you instead. Looks like she's not popular yet. Maybe if they market her in Indonesia she can be big in Indonesia, and thus bringing Jpop to Indonesian mainstream? Then maybe we can see big stars performing there? L'Arc~en~Ciel concert? Yeah I wish.. Now downloading the Daddy PV. Is that a tribute to her dad or something? She writes her songs, btw. Something you hardly see in Western music industry.
That's a rocking new album from Dir en grey. It was released on 2nd March. I like this album, they're just getting better and better, or more like their style is more and more suited for me. It's a style of crazy noise followed by melodic sound.
Some gems are: CONCEIVED SORROW, THE FATAL BELIEVER, RYOUJOKU NO AME, DISABLED COMPLEXES, ROTTING ROOT, NAMAMEKASHIKI ANSOKU, TAMERAI NI HOHOEMI, THE PLEDGE, REPETITION OF HATRED, CLEVER SLEAZOID.
Almost time for Survivor Fiji. This is the first Survivor series I bother to watch. It's quite interesting. One tribe living in luxury and another living survivor style. The interesting part is that the poor tribe never wins, their morale is bad, and they don't and may never bond together.
SINGAPORE: While 11 Formula 1 teams work frantically to get their cars in top gear ahead of Sunday's Australian Grand Prix, race ringmaster, Mr Bernie Ecclestone, is still in Singapore for at least another day of talks about bringing a race here next year.
The Briton arrived on Monday and is expected to meet Singapore's Minister of State for Trade and Industry, Mr S Iswaran, before leaving Thursday for the opening race of the 2007 Formula 1 season in Melbourne.
Mr Ecclestone has been in separate negotiations with local hotel and property tycoon Ong Beng Seng and luxury marina club developer Arthur Tay to bring a race to Singapore.
Both men are bound by a strict non-disclosure agreement.
Since arriving in Singapore, the Formula 1 boss has met Mr Ong but has yet to meet Mr Tay.
Sources say the Singapore race could be held in April or August 2008 and that it would be the first night race in the history of the sport.
Last week, Mr Iswaran told Parliament that the Government was taking a serious look at hosting a Formula 1 Grand Prix.
He said the Government was willing to be a partner in the project and to offer financial and other support.
Before arriving in Singapore, Mr Ecclestone told the British daily Mail on Sunday that he wanted 20 races on the Formula 1 calendar next year, up from 17 this season.
With the bulk of the television audience - 350 million a race - in Europe, the 76-year-old added that he was looking at "three or four" night races in Asia, due to the time difference with Europe.
"Apart from the fact that it's a new development, and there will be a novelty factor behind it, the main reason is because so many of the Grand Prix are east of Europe and instead of having to watch them in the early hours of the morning, Europeans can instead watch them during the day if staged in the evenings in the East," Mr Ecclestone said.
"I think, for example, it's a terrible shame that the first Grand Prix of the new season should be staged in the afternoon in Australia ... Having to get up and watch it in the night over here is not the best way to get the show on the road."
The F1 boss also wants to make changes to the sport's points-scoring system for next year.
The current format awards 10 points for a win, eight for second, down to one for eighth, but Mr Ecclestone wants to give more points to the race winner.
In the last two years, drivers such as Fernando Alonso, preferred not to challenge leading cars when they had an overall points advantage in the drivers' standings.
"With second place getting eight points, it is not right that the winner takes only 10," said Mr Ecclestone, who introduced the current system in 2003. "For 2008, I will propose a change. The guy who wins more should be champion." - TODAY/yy
Looks like it's getting hotter now that Bernie is in Singapore. I'm pretty sure it will happen in 2008. That will be my first live GP ever and the first night GP in history. Btw, this is posted from Google Docs.
I think I have found a solution to my MP3 tagging headache. It's MusicBrainz. Using a community generated database, this system can tag my MP3 without me typing anything. I'm using Picard as the client.
Singapore could be confirmed as a F1 venue for the 2008 season as early as next week according to a daily newspaper in the island republic.
Quoting a source close to negotiations, the Today tabloid claimed that Lion City would host the race either in April or August next year.
"I can confirm that Singapore is on the calendar next year and it could either be the third race of the season, or towards the end of the season in August," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
An update on the event could be made next week when the Committee of Supply debate on the budget for the Ministry of Trade and Industry, which oversees Singapore's new tourism initiatives, is held in parliament.
Reports in January suggested that the island republic were in advanced negotiations to host a night race on a street circuit in downtown Singapore.
Malaysia, Bahrain, China and Japan are scheduled to host races on the 2007 F1 calendar, while Abu Dhabi will be added in 2009 and Korea in 2010.
Good news. At least I can watch live F1 now. To bad Michael is not racing anymore. It's a missed opportunity that I've never watched him race live.
Al last I get my new PC. The model is Compaq Presario SR1960AP. I'm disappointed by the lack of front ports. So all the USB, audio out, etc are at the back. So much for modern age PC. Yo, this is year 2007, or at least the PC is made in 2006. Front ports are just so common and useful. Yet this is what I'm getting. I guess cheap is really cheap. Sigh, at least it's Windows Vista capable, with RAM upgrades, though.
And btw, the monitor, which is Compaq FP 1707, has some lousy speakers. Almost laptop quality. This is also the first time for me using 1280 x 1024 screen resolution. I'm impressed by the screen real estate. In fact I felt that the monitor is larger than 17". It's like being sucked in into the monitor. Really.
Well, looks like there are some game reviews to post too: Disgaea 2 - Cursed Memories, Fahrenheit, Prince of Persia - The Two Thrones, Tomb Raider Legend. I finished quite some games during my laptop's death and I'm pleased to announce that all these games are playable on my dying PS2.
clipped from www.channelnewsasia.com
