Nat Torkington doing his 2.0-ish thang
At the recent Nexus 2007, Nathan Torkington, crowd favourite and Perl guru from O’Reilly Media, spoke about Disruption, Change, and Opportunity. In case you do not know, its founder Tim O’ Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 and have been in the business of technology trendspotting for quite a number of years. Nat cited key developments in the technology landscape over the decades:
1988 – X Windows Documentation
After hearing my fellow media socialists Kevin, Benjamin, Ivan, Siva, Coleman, Preetam and Vanessa talk about Nexus 2007, I decided that I simply had to check it out for myself. And boy was it a blast!
Before going into the heavy stuff, let me share some photos and tongue-in-cheek observations about what Nexus 2007 is all about.
Iskandar Jalil’s exhibition “The Pottery Voice of Iskandar Jalil”
Anybody who is a collector of pottery and sculptural pieces would be familiar with the works of Iskandar Jalil, one of Singapore’s Cultural Medallion winners and leading ceramicist. Accolades, awards and acknowledgements abound for this inspiring master potter, touted as one of Singapore’s best leading artist and a great teacher to boot.
Iskandar’s recent exhibition at MICA’s Atrium – Material, Message, Metaphor – The Pottery Voice of Iskandar Jalil – was very well received. In fact, I understand that 40% of his pieces were already sold, at prices ranging from $500 to as high as $8,000.
Last weekend, I brought my family to Ka-Soh Restaurant, a famous old chain specialising in Fish Head Noodle. Tucked away in a nondescript corner of the Singapore General Hospital – of all places – the restaurant was literally sitting in darkness in the hospital campus when we arrived for dinner.
Despite its relatively inauspicious location, the restaurant had a good crowd when we arrived. Apparently, Ka-Soh is one of the original purveyors of fine fishhead noodles which does not use evaporated milk to thicken its soup. Instead, the milky white soup came from hours of boiling the bones of “Sang Yu” or snakehead fish. I understand that this dish is especially popular due to its purported ability to heal one’s wounds.
Although the wait was somewhat long, we enjoyed our dinner that night. The decor and ambience was casually comfortable, with a modern and minimalist Zen look. Waitresses were also generally attentive towards our needs and even advised us not to order too much for fear that we could not finish our food. Our favourite dish without a doubt was the fish meat noodles and we lapped up every single drop of the yummy soup.
Ye olde Marketing Mix or 4 Ps, courtesy of marketingteacher.com
Anybody who has studied marketing 101 will be familiar with the marketing mix. Better known as the 4 Ps of marketing, they are Product, Price, Place (distribution) and Promotion. Newer pundits championing Services Marketing have added another 3 Ps which are Process, People and Physical Evidence.
There is even an 8th P called Positioning (made famous by marketing legends Jack Trout and Al Ries) which some have alluded to in marketing books and texts.
Recent newspaper reports indicated that ad expenditure in Singapore has risen by about 4% to $1.94 billion last year. This reversed an 8.3% decline the previous year before. Entertainment outlets and services were the biggest mainstream media spenders at $202.5 million. This was followed by the retail industry with $136.5 million, followed by government and social organisations at $92.4 million.
What’s surprising was that most categories have shown an improvement, with television pipping newspapers yet again as the number one choice for advertisers, while magazines showed the greatest percentage increase. On the other hand, radio advertising seemed to have fallen significantly. I suspect that this may be due to the migration of listeners away from terrestrial radio stations towards podcasts and MP3.
Our new ritual every Saturday noon is to drive up north to Yishun to visit a popular Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) shop there. My wife has been going there quite regularly lately, upon the recommendation of her boss, and has also brought my son to treat his runny nose and cough.
Despite the place being fairly ulu (out in the boondocks) at Yishun Street 71, there was already a queue when we went there recently.
Ok folks, yet another link-love-list, this time courtesy of eastcoastlife. Apparently, this was started by Mack Collier of The Viral Garden. Yeah, I know I am very late in doing this, but well better late than never right? 😉
So How Do I Do It?
Write a post, and copy and paste my list from below into it. Make sure the links are active and correct. If your blog is on that list, remove it because your post isn’t about self-promotion. Don’t worry, because if your name is on mine, it’s on others and will spread. Add your favourite deserving blogs to the top of the list (not compulsory). Publish the post.
Step by Step
This post is dedicated to my friends who bake, cook, prepare cocktails and generally help to make life sweeter and more sublime for foodies and drinkers like myself.
Being a true-blue Singaporean, I love to have my carrot cake and eat it. Yes, we are a nation of foodies and many people live and swear by their hokkien mee, satays, roti pratas, and mee poks (a flat fettucine like egg noodle) here. There are also many food guides around (many with online counterparts) like the venerable Makansutra which has become a national institution for many here.
School kids making a beeline for the sake of science!
Since I was a kid, I have always enjoyed visiting the Singapore Science Centre. One of Singapore’s leading attractions and a member of the Museum Roundtable, the Science Centre has managed to reinvent and rejuvenate itself over the years. This can be seen in its growing list of accolades – including one which stated that it is one of the world’s best science museums. Visitorship has also been improving, with close to 800,000 visitors popping through its doors in 2005 and more expected this year.
What are the scientific techniques which lead to its growing popularity? Let me put forward a few educated hypotheses!