We’re removing the upper-age limit for organ donors, it seems. Now, even those over the age of 60 can expect their bodies to be recycled upon death. Why the Ministry of Health thought this was necessary eludes me. Surely elderly organs are not particularly suitable for transplants? Or perhaps there just aren’t enough young people in Singapore dying in ways that can allow for body-part-reuse?

In any case, I had no idea that we were recycled quite so… efficiently.

From Channel NewsAsia:

The amendments approved by Parliament in March this year is expected to increase the number of organ donors by about 10.
This would mean some 70 patients could potentially benefit from the move.

That’s an average of seven organs per donor? That seemed like a lot, until a wikipedia search for common transplantable organs and tissues:

• Bone
• Bone marrow
• Corneal
• Face
• Hand
• Heart
• Heart-lung
• Kidney
• Liver
• Lung
• Pancreas
• Penis
• Skin
• Spleen
• Uterus

So it turns out that we’re only transplanting at less than 50% efficiency here and we’re not even taking into account things like Islets of Langerhans. So uncharacteristic of our little technocracy.

Goodness gracious me. I had no idea that the reason we have that Raffles statue still standing, even after our neighbours pulled down their respective colonial masters’, is due to the advice of one Dr Albert Winsemius, whom it seems we owe much of our current financial sucess to.

One of his earliest pieces of advice was not to remove the statue of Stamford Raffles as it was a symbol of public acceptance of the British heritage and could alleviate concerns that investors have toward a new socialist government. With his help, Singapore attracted big oil companies like Shell and Esso to establish refineries here.

And I always thought it was a symbol of the uneasy legitimacy the chinese leadership here have forged for ownership of the island.

The Economist’s 2009 Liveability Ranking is out (though it costs $250 for a long peep).

We scored 54th out of 140 cities being ranked, according to AsiaOne, losing out to the usual suspects like Hong Kong and Tokyo.

So we’re (according to Mercer) the 13th most expensive place to live in the world, but only 54th in liveability???!!!

Oh Singapore, when will I stop making sucker bets.

Me: Must you always touch my things without asking first? Now it’s gone! And I had a lot of important stuff on that hard disk too!

Her: Like what?

Me: … stuff! Important stuff! Like photos!

Her: Photos…? You mean, like these?

Me: … never mind.

So silvr’s flickr feed features a photo of me:

Someone saw fit to quote:

Wow, you’ve captured someone truly lost in thought!

Yeah, I was really lost in thought about that one. Thoughts like “when am I going to get to have dinner?” and “this bus sucks.”

The twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen affair is over (at least here in GMT+8).

It got little coverage in Singapore (big surprise), but the western world has been whipping itself up into a pretty froth about it. They even managed to dig up some new photos of Tank Man.

Whilst it certainly is a terribly tragic affair, I’m rather disturbed by the tone of the reporting. Some of it borders on the “how can we allow this brainwashed evil empire to survive???!!!” kind, replete with “the-chinese-government-and-their-sheeple-can-kiss-my-ass” type comments. It’s terrible to be at the receiving end of liberal smugness–no wonder the American right-wing hates them with a vengeance.

It doesn’t help that the Chinese government, which must have the worst PR team in the world, decided to try to cover up the whole affair with complete media blackout, internet blockage, and frankly pathetic umbrella tactics.

They might as well as have painted ”此地无银三百两“ in huge red letters all over Tiananmen Square.

It’s simultaneously sad and ironic that Hong Kong, that gleaming metropolis of materialism, has to stand in for China’s conscience.

It’s not fun being on the apologist end of a discussion about tyrannical governments. I’m taking a break from reddit for a couple days until this blows over and I can go back to lolcats and pun threads.

The past few days on reddit I have argued that the Chinese were surely not so stupid and naive, that surely the memory of this shameful event burned, if dimly, in their hearts and that the day would come when the salves of time would finally soothed the pain enough to allow a suitable memorial to the matyrs of the past to be honoured (albeit, my reddit arguments are phrased more in terms of “LOL STOOPID IGNORANT ‘MERKINS”). Because I do believe that.

And yet, today I was to be treated to a huge slice of irony cake.

At lunch, scantly an hour earlier, my colleague, seeing an article about Tiananmen in the Straits Times, asked me what it was all about–”why are they digging up this stuff from 20 years ago?” She had completely no idea. A brief explaination later, she called her geomancer to ask for a good date for her wedding. Because traditions are important.

Oh, irony cake–so soft and smooth. If only you were not so bitter.

SingTel has been sending staff adverts for the HTC Dream, screaming discount rates. My guess is that the HTC Magic will be out pretty soon, hence the need to clear old stock.

I can’t help it, the monster rabbit

I’m stuck in a rut. I’m not exercising, I’m not coding, I’m not pursuing any hobbies, I’m not learning anything new, I’m not even reading anything. Other than for my driving lessons–but that’s not providing any real fulfilment in life besides making me grateful for it every time my instructor tells me to go above 30kmph.

New hobby imminent? Or should I take up some form of Buddhism that focuses on the transcience of life? The latter seems to be the path of least effort. Alternately, I could just lower my expectations from life massively, though swallowing my pride may take a bit more work and ice cream.

There is some amount of achievement to be had in finishing an entire tub of Rocky Road.

I remember it used to impress the girls that I could use Photoshop. After watching a couple of YouTube videos of girls putting makeup on, I can’t understand how my proficiency with Photoshop can possibly measure up.

I’ve recently been intrigued by a browser-based game–eRepublik.

Built by some guys in Romania using what looks like Pylons, it’s a rather simple game where you play as a citizen of a state, doing things that you would normally do in real-life such as buying food, working and training in the army (perhaps the last is a little less normal). Players are constrained by the number of things they can do per day, which for a newbie like me means the extent of gameplay consists of 1 minute clicking on the “Work” and “Train” buttons.

The entire economy is based off the amount of work players put in to produce goods, which are in turn bought by players using the money they earn from working. I hear that at higher levels the game involves a virtual version of the world bank.

Despite the ostensibly simple gameplay, there are of course players who take it quite seriously. Consider the current Dictator of eChina, Mimihitam.

Her efforts to rally her citizens to maintain political stability are sadly thwarted by the game’s implicit use of democratic rule as the only administrative option, such that she has no real dictatorial powers, and the suspicion that she is a puppet for eIranians, ePakistanis and eKoreans. Also, it’s difficult to take seriously a girl in golden cosmic armour for good political policy.

eRepublik maintains the geography of the real world, though players can play where-ever they like. Still, there is the acknowledgement that only people who in Real Life hail from from a particular country could possibly act in the interests of the game-version of said country. Poor Mimihitam (who as far as I can tell is from the Phillipines) has suggested the recruitment of new RL (Real Life) Chinese players, though I’m almost certain any large influx will oust her from her position.

In short, eRepublik is scarily close to real life, except that the politics is played out by teenagers in golden armour rather than older men in suits. I’m reminded of the squabbling and petty power plays at work and in the various organisations I’ve belonged to over the years, and it puzzles me why anyone plays this stupid game.

I’m pretty happy just clicking “Work” and “Train” once every day. Maybe one day I’ll buy a house.

Oh, and eSingapore is as boring as RL Singapore.