Origins of Karaoke

First the pronunciation... I've seen many interesting ways some people try to pronounce it, especially in the Western world (American Idol). :) You pronounce Karaoke as car-ra-okay.

Karaoke is actually a Japanese word and yes, this popular form of entertainment is actually invented by a Japanese in the 70s. Karaoke literally translate to Empty Orchestra. From what I understand, it's actually a term used by Japanese for the tapes used by singers who perform without a band.

Karaoke is a very popular form of entertainment at least in Asia. People can just stay hours singing/screaming in a room. It's also a popular form of socialising in Asia.

Karaoke, unlike the Western way of doing things, is not patented. That is why you can see that the technology in Karaoke has been improving tremendously since the 70s. Innovation is practiced to the extreme. Now, there's even technology in Karaoke where you can sing duets with somewhere that might be halfway across Japan. This has also influenced some Japanese musicians to play duets where they are physically not in the same place, like this Canon rock guitar post here.

This is one very good example where the world should not have patents. Whenever you put money in the equation, it usually spoils the end product due to the comercialisation, which will deviate from your vision of a good product. You'll be influenced by others to create something that sells, instead of creating something that is useful.

Innovation... Something that is sorely lacking in Singapore. Oh well...

What to expect in 2009

Time flies by quickly and it's now 2009. I never have the habit of making new year resolutions because I find it a waste of time. If you want to do it, why must you wait for the new year to do it? Just do it right here right now.

Anyway, 2008 has passed by very quickly for me. I've been super bogged down by work for this year. So much that when my other half asked me what am I busy with, I could not even answer her. I am doing so many things until I do not know what am I doing.

Come 2009, I have to start to tone down, and start to emphasize on the family. I'm already not as fit as I use to be and running 100% almost consistently for the whole year has wore down my engines. I guess I have to watch my health too. I've been having headaches recently, and I never have them previously. 2009 also means that my flat is coming. I have to start planning on that aspect, especially the CPF portion, and of course the big day.

I also shouldn't forget my guitar. I've been super neglecting it for 2008. Now I only practice guitar once a week and that's Saturday. LS doesn't seem to be letting up on us and he's going to more complex pieces. My sight reading still sucks and it's getting worse. Guess I'm really out of practice. Where to squeeze time for practicing. Well... I'll think about it. :p

One thing at a time...

And Always Look On The Bright Side of Life. Da da, da da da da da da.

1.5% Singapore GDP growth for 2008

Updated 2 Jan 2009: Actual estimates

Singapore has announced that the growth for 2008 is a miserly 1.5% due to the global economy meltdown. No surprise at the numbers, although I was expecting around 1.9% instead. It goes to show how quickly the economy has deteriorated in the past few months, and especially for 4Q2008.

Even though I have started warning people of this recession since I came back from the US in June, the sudden deterioration of the global economy is also beyond my worst expectations. Our government as usual said that because Singapore is an open economy, we're very much affected by what's happening in the world, and thus we must work together to weather this storm.

Singapore's 1H 2008 GDP growth was 6.5%. That means that the 4Q GDP numbers are very ugly. 2H 2008 GDP growth would have contracted at around 3.5% for the numbers to reach 1.5%. According to the MTI data:

		4Q07	2007	1Q08	2Q08	3Q08	4Q08*	2008*
	Overall GDP	5.4	7.7	6.9	2.2	-0.3	-2.6	1.5

* = Advance estimates based on Oct and Nov 2008

Seems like I was wrong for the figures for 1H2008. It's much worse than expected. However, if the estimates are from Oct and Nov 2008, then it's highly likely that the figure will be revised downwards if they boosted up the numbers with the "December effect". December was very bad in 2008 compared to the norm.

On a side note, CEOs from around the world, especially in the US, has announced that they are not going to get any bonus in 2008. So considering Singapore likes to follow their pay, will the Singapore ministers forgo their 2008 bonus to show their leadership and commitment to Singaporeans?

I'll wait and see.

Spend within your means

With the recession looming, there are many ideas floating around on how to survive through the recession. However, some of the ideas going around are actually detrimental to the economy recovery. The top most idea that was floated around:

Save as much money as possible until the economy recovers

However, this is one of the worst possible action that one can do during a recession. One has to remember. How does the economy function? It's a buyer, seller relationship. Why do we have jobs? Because some needs our services, or products that we create. Why do we have salaries? That's our payment for the services rendered, or products produced. This is the economy.

So what happens if you ask people to save as much as possible? People get retrenched. Period. There will be no buyers in the market, and left are all the sellers. Prices will be driven downwards (deflation), causing people to lose more jobs. Industries will be shaken up, and consolidated, leading to more jobs lost. The skills that you have acquired will be rendered useless. Depression will set in, causing the downward vicious cycle to spiral even deeper.

Just that simple selfish thought can cause this amount of damage that will inadvertly cause your own misery. And because this thought is the "easiest" way out for most, the herd mentality will follow, where everyone tries to do it. Singapore will be gone. Period.

Nevertheless, given the current climate, it's obviously not prudent to spend like no tomorrow. The key is to spend within your means. Spend when you can afford to. Pay down your debts when you can so that you have less liabilities. Contribute when you can.

Keep the economy going if it is within your power. The effects will reach you eventually.

If you still intend to be lazy, then I'll encourage you to read books about the Great Depression from the library. That will be the conclusion if you take the easy way out.

Inaccurate reporting in Today?? (CORRECTED)

Updated: 27 Dec 2008: 3.1million barrels is for crude oil

Just read in Today that they mention that oil prices fell to USD35 even though there was a decline of US inventories by 3.1million barrels.

However, that is not what I read in Bloomberg and Reuters. According to Bloomberg, it fell because there was an increase of 3.34million barrels for US gasoline inventories. Distillate stockpiles also climbed 1.81million barrels. What decline are they talking about??

This year I've heard of at least 2 grossly inaccurate reports. One was by the Chinese newspaper with regards to the white tiger fiasco, and now this.

With such inaccurate reporting, can I still trust what the Singapore media says?

Update: The decrease of 3.1 million barrels of oil is for US crude oil inventories. However, the increase of US gasoline and distillate stockpiles more than offset the reduction because in the end, no one uses crude oil.

Merry Christmas!

VirtualBox 2.1 does not support VHD again.

I wonder if it's the trend that Microsoft products are never compatible with any other software. The latest VirtualBox 2.1 now prevents me from even adding my VHD file. Some header problem.

I know it is VirtualBox's problem because that same VHD file worked (for a short time) with VirtualBox 2.0.6. Anyway, I have given up trying to make VHD work with VirtualBox until the next version comes out.

There's also still a problem with the Network Adapter if you have 2 adapters configured for the same VM. I usually have 1 NAT adapter, and 1 Host adapter. I've only enable 1 at any time, but somehow, Windows XP keeps detecting that there is 2 and it keeps trying to connect to the disabled adapter. It's just a little irritating for it to keep connecting to an adapter that's disabled.

On a side note, the Mac version has improved and now VT-x/AMD-V is supported again. How do I know? Because my Windows XP on VirtualBox started to slow down, and my Mac is a little faster when VirtualBox is on. If you want to speed up your VirtualBox, just do not enable VT-x/AMD-V in the settings.

Saving and restoring snapshots are still quite fast. Now I have a habit of not even shutting down my VM. I just close the VM to save the current snapshot. :)

One thing to note before you upgrade your VirtualBox, is that to make sure to shutdown all your VMs before updating. Otherwise, your snapshots will be invalid after the update. I've made the same mistake every single time I updated VirtualBox. :(

Now... If only the VHD problem is resolved.

Inflation is up 5.5%

These are the Singapore inflation rates for 2008:
January: 6.6%
February: 6.5%
March: 6.7%
April: 7.5%
May: 7.5%
June: 7.5%
July: 6.5%
August: 6.4%
September: 6.7%
October: 6.4%
November: 5.5%

Food and Housing is leading the charge, rising by 6.9% and 15.7% respectively year on year. One thing that I did not expect is that food, and recreation and others went down by almost 1% compared to last month. It just goes to show conditions can change drastically in 1 month.

Judging from the current economic conditions, inflation will be around 6.6% for the year 2008, down from my earlier estimate of 6.8% here. If it persists, we might have deflation for the first half of the 2009. Good or bad? Depends...

My file and umbrella weights 1.4kg

Mich was remarking to me that my CC-150 wasn't that light. Refer to this post here for the pictures of my CC-150. I could have swore that it is much lighter than my hard case.

Well, I've just changed my case back to the original CC-150 after a mix-up due to a loose screw and for the fun of it, I weigh my guitar case and compared it with my hard case.

Weight of hard case with guitar: 5.1kg
Weight of CC-150 with guitar: 3.6kg.
Weight of CC-150 with guitar, music file and umbrella: 5kg

So my music file and umbrella actually weighs 1.4kg! If you use percentage, it increases the weight by almost 40%. I wonder if it is my music file. So Mich, yes... The umbrella and my music file does matter in the weight calculation. :D

The weight of the hard case is also without my standard barang barang like music file and umbrella. Usually I have to bring an extra bag to contain those items.

Anyway, hard foam guitar case does not mean that it only contains foam. Due to the "screw loose" problem, I've realised that the whole guitar case is actually backed partially by wood. Therefore, it's actually quite solid and could withstand knocks. I guess that's why it is called hard foam.

All in all, I find the guitar case ideal for people who doesn't have their own set of wheels.

One people, one nation, 16 town councils??

Read another article today that they are going to toy with the suggestion of giving more autonomy to the town councils. One of the example they gave was USA, where different states have some level of autonomy.

Singapore is already a small enough country, and yet now they want to split Singapore into 16 portions. Some of the examples given of the pros of this system I felt is destructive in the long run.

For example, let's say one of the town councils say that all their residents felt that they should not have worker's dormitories in their area. After which, all the town councils will most likely say all their residents do not want to have worker's dormitories in their area (hypothetical). What will then happen? In the end, where will it be built? Or will it be somehow pushed to the opposition wards? What happens if one of the town councils say that the industrial factories should not be in their area? Push it all to IDR?

In fact, if we learned from the current situation where nobody actually knows what the town councils are investing in, there should be more oversight to ensure that the town councils are in-line with the guidelines. It should not be the case that when a crisis happen, everyone goes into damage control mode.

Singapore should be working towards a common goal. We're small enough as it is. Let's not be further sub-divided into 16 parts. Everybody plays a part in the overall progress, not apart. Decentralisation is an over-hyped word and used carelessly by many. The government should always provide clear and transparent leadership, with an overall plan on how things should be. The respective councils will then follow these guidelines and implement the policies.

Remember our National Day song. "One people, one nation, one Singapore". It's not "One people, one nation, 16 town councils".