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Another buddy of mine took the walk down the red carpet last evening. Maybe it was time for me to settle down as well. Don’t get me wrong. I loved my freedom and wasn’t really into the marriage thing. At least not for now.

Marriage is the next big step in a relationship. It does scare me actually. From a boy to a man then someone’s husband follow by fatherhood and finally grandfather. Am I really aging that fast? Oh man, back to the topic.

We had known each others for years and I was really happy for him that he found his love. He was someone that enjoy freedom and live life one day at a time. He always told me that his wedding would be special and different from the others. Imagine the surprise on my face when he told me that his wedding would be held at Aramsa the garden spa!

I being the traditional man started thinking,”That was unusual. Which spa would be big enough to host 20 tables?” Chinese wedding usually would have a eight or ten course dinner in a wedding. Keeping an open mind, I went down on his big day last evening. There was one thing which I hated when attending weddings. I wasn’t sure what to wear. If it was in a hotel, formal clothes would be the choice but this time it’s in a spa. What am I suppose to wear? After tossing all my clothes out of the wardrobe, I finally decided to go causal. BB had a good laugh looking at me paraded my clothes after one another.

Since I was very late, decided to take a cab down to Bishan Park where the spa was. I had a funny feeling that the cabs were playing hide and seek with me. I was waiting at this side of the street but the cab kept coming from the opposite side. BB decided to cross the street and wait but once we crossed the street, empty cabs started to come on the opposite end. I almost pull out my hair in frustration. Finally a cab came along but he didn’t know how to get to the spa. In the end, paid almost $15 bucks to get to the park but the spa was at the other end of it. Crap! Took us another 20 mins to walk down one end of Bishan park to the other. I had to remind myself to cut down on cabs. I didn’t knew that there was peak hour charge on a Saturday evening.

By the time we reached there, the wedding was almost finished! The wedding was held outdoors in the gardens. Nice and cosy setting. Loved the place at once. It’s the usual Christian wedding. My buddy was so excited and nervous that he could not even repeat after the pastor! That broke the ice in the crowd. Everyone was laughing their heads off.

Not many photos taken as I was too busy feasting. The buffet was great! I had forgotten to take a card from the vendor. Who knows it could come in handy next time. It was a rather unusual experience for me to attend a wedding in a spa.

Any other unusual wedding venue that you had attended before? Let’s exchange some ideas.

Seems like the scientist had solved the sticky problem of chewing gum. Read all about it here.

I missed my chewing gum days. Chewing gum were part of the children culture born in my era. I would run around the neighbourhood with my multi racial friends pretending to be “Teenage Mutant” “Ninja Turtles” “Spiderman” “Superman” or even “Smurf”. You weren’t cool if you didn’t chew gums while pretending to be those super heroes.

That was way back in 1983s. The time when Singaporean still rely heavily on it’s own buses as their main transport. The time when the government promised cheap housing to Singaporean. To improved our lives further, the Mass Rapid Transport aka SMRT was introduced. With this new mode of transport, the time taken from one place to the other was greatly reduced.

How does the ban of chewing gum have to do with MRT? That was because some idiots decided to stick the chewing gum on the door sensors of MRT preventing it to function properly and causing disruption to the train services.

Maintenance in high rise public housing was fast becoming a headache with vandals throwing the gum in mailboxes, keyholes and elevator buttons. I used to curse and swear when I stepped on those spent gums. It was really a sticky situation for me. Over the years, this taught me to open my eyes and look before stepping to avoid the mishap from happening again and again.

For the good of all Singaporean, chewing gum was banned in Singapore from 1983 onwards and we became the first country to successfully ban the import of chewing gum. (I wonder if the government going to ban the import of cigarettes as well? You know for the good of all Singaporean.)

In 1999, under the pressure of US, the act was revised to allow the import of medicinal chewing gum provided it must be sold by a dentist or pharmacist. With this invention, will Singaporean finally get their chewing gum fix?

For those that have been following closely to the Odex Saga, this is the latest soft approach by Odex in their war against illegal anime downloading. Previously, Odex has decided not to take action against the current group of Pacnet users. 

The local Japanese anime distributor Odex which I am sure every netizen knows about has decided to soften their approach further in dealing with netizen downloading their anime illegally.

Odex is seeking the help of the ISP to forward an electronic warning notice to the alleged infringer asking him/her to cease the downloading instead of getting a court order to force the ISP to reveal the identities of the infringer.

This approach should have been it’s course of action right from the start. Throwing an atomic bomb on Hiroshima right from the start of the war without any warning will only make the situation worst. Rather, it will only make your customers more piss off. There is no warning of any sort before the atomic bomb are send out. This is not the way to fight the war and “educate” Singaporean.

I guess the last chapter of the Odex Saga has been written unless some fool out there want to challenge or test Odex’s patience in the near future. Will this soft approach help to fix the PR nightmare for Odex?

What are your views?

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Has Odex decided to step down and threw in the white towel? The local anime company, Odex has decided to soften their approach towards local anime downloaders after District Judge Earnest Lau dismiss Odex’s bid to force Pacnet to disclose it’s customer’s identity.

Mr Sing has post on the Odex’s forum that Odex won’t be taking action against the current group of Pacnet users or anymore anime downloaders unless they are still downloading after 3rd September.

As to why Odex is still going ahead with the appeal, Mr Sing disclosed that,“this is a completely different issue. The Pacnet case’s ruling, we disagree with the judge, that is why we’re appealing. There are many issues involved in it that I cannot discuss here since the case is in appeal now, (there is a law against it) but in time we will explain when everything has been resolved.”

This has caught me in surprise. What made Odex back off and resort to a softer approach in educating the public of the evils of downloading illegally? They have won 2 court bids, forcing the Singnet and Starhub to hand over the identity of the downloaders. In the case of Pacnet, even though Odex have lost, they are going to appeal against the ruling. Odex was prepared to fly in anime copyright holders just for this appeal.

Does Odex have a hidden agenda behind all this? Or is it because Odex suffered another embarrassing moment with the local authorities?

Mr Peter Goh had written in to the Straits Times Forum to counter the online allegations on the inaccuracy of the sub-titles in the animes series. The sub-titles was tweaked to conform to Board of Censors’ (BFC) requirement.

In respond to this, Mr Tan Lee Cheng, Senior Asst Director (Film Standards), Board of Film Censors clarify that poor subtitling has nothing to do with the classification process and it’s the distributor’s responsibility to ensure that subtitles reflect the true content of an anime.

Another cover up story being rebuked by the authorities? If Odex have decided to use the soft approach in the beginning, none of this unhappiness would have happened. Don’t you guys agree? I mean look at how Riaa handle the situation when they start to crack down illegal mp3. Warning letters are mailed out to the offenders and if they still refused to heed, fines are then dish out to them. This issue have cooked up a storm back then but it is better than shooting everyone without warning of a major crackdown.

Geekonomics did a good job summarizing Mr Sing forum post. Hop down to his blog if you want to find out more.

Quote from Mr Sing,

To wrap and summarise what I have been saying in this thread, Odex will from now on focus enforcement efforts on those who have continued to download illegally even after the publicity in the press on this issue.

If we find evidence that anyone has continued downloading, we will take action and rely on any evidence that we have on past instances of downloading. For those who have already been identified as downloaders but who have not received our letters, we will hold back our letters unless we find further evidence that they have continued downloading.