Singapore"s Classiest Afternoon Tea: Fullerton Bay Hotel

The venue itself is Landing Point, the hotel’s swanky all-day dining spot. And in addition to its gorgeous surroundings (the paved marble floor and crystal sculptures dangling over the bar really completed the look), we were totally impressed by the service.

Our waiter not only helped us pick out our preferred tea from a menu of around 20 different blends (black, green, herbal, you name it), but when our tea arrived, he even unscrewed the honey jar, spooned out a little, and stirred it into the cup for us! The only time we even lifted a finger was to drink it.

If we had happened to be in the mood for a cocktail at 3 in the afternoon (not something we generally make a habit of), there would have been plenty of options for that, too, as the bar is filled with endless bottles lined up along the shelves. Thankfully, our appointment was business-related, so tea and a biscuit was plenty.

Afternoon Tea is clearly a thing in lots of hotels, but this may just be the classiest act we’ve encountered so far. To experience it yourself, show up between 3pm and 5:30pm, though Landing Point is open all day (7am-midnight Sun-Thurs; 7am-1am Fri-Sat).

[Photos: HotelChatter]

Singapore"s Classiest Afternoon Tea: Fullerton Bay Hotel

In Singapore, A Rare Call for Protest Against Blogging Censorship

Student Scott Teng (L) speaks during a demonstration at “Speaker’s Corner” in Singapore October 5, 2008, when a small group protested against censorship at a university newspaper. (Photo: Reuters)

Singapore’s blogging community is rebelling against a stringent new law that requires online news sites to put up a performance bond of US $40,000 and to submit to government censorship, calling for the general public and bloggers to rally next Saturday against the measure.

Last Tuesday, the Singapore Media Development Authority issued the new regulations, which it said were designed to place the websites “on a more consistent regulatory framework with traditional news platforms which are already individually licensed.”

The protest group, calling itself “Free My Internet,” is asking Singaporeans to rally in Hong Lim Park, the site of Singapore’s speaker’s corner, where a May 1 protest drew 3,000 participants protesting the government’s plans to let in vast numbers of new immigrants. It was said to be the biggest protest crowd in Singapore in modern times.

“We encourage all Singaporeans who are concerned about our future and our ability to participate in everyday online activities and discussions, and to seek out alternative news and analysis, to take a strong stand against the licensing regime which can impede on your independence,” the organizers said.

“We urge Singaporeans to turn up to send a clear message to our elected representatives to trust the Singaporeans who elected them.”

The message was signed by 35 bloggers, who asked all Singapore bloggers to go black for 24 hours from midnight June 6.

“You can choose to create your own blackout notice, or use www.freemyinternet.com we have created for your convenience,” the group said. “When you reopen your blog, write your account of the protest, about the new regulations and censorship, or anything related to media freedom in Singapore. Share your thoughts. Share your hope that the light that free speech provides will not go out on us.”

The Speaker’s Corner, modeled after London’s free speech site of the same name, is hardly free. Demonstrations are allowed only by Singapore citizens and attended by Singapore citizens. Banners, films, flags, photographs, placards, posters, signs, writing or other visible representations or paraphernalia containing violent, lewd or obscene material must not be displayed or exhibited, the government says.

Events must not deal with any matter that relates directly or indirectly to any religious belief or to religion generally, or which may cause feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between different racial or religious groups.

Events adhering to the regulations are not immune from other existing laws, such as those relating to defamation and sedition, which in Singapore can be extremely broad, especially when the Lee governing family is mentioned.

Asia Sentinel’s attempts to reach the Media Development Authority by telephone and email went unanswered last week.

The Singapore-based Channel News Asia, however, quoted the agency in an article on May 29 as saying the new licensing framework “is not intended to clamp down on internet freedom,” adding that the regulations will only apply to news sites that meet the content and reach criteria.

But while the government was characterizing the new regulations as merely bringing the internet into line with print publication restrictions, the protesters said, they apply to all content on the news sites including readers’ comments. In the recent past, the Singapore government has gone after news sites for not erasing what are deemed to be offending comments fast enough, threatening lawsuits.

Any blog that reaches more than 50,000 unique visitors in a month and prints a single article of Singapore news within two weeks is liable to come under the regulation and to be forced to withdraw the story within 24 hours or be faced with forfeiting the bond although the bigger problem, for most bloggers, is coming up with the money in the first place.

Although bloggers have been a circumspect presence in Singapore for more than a decade, the government apparently grew irritated by reporting particularly by Yahoo News, the giant news aggregator that claims nearly 700 million Internet readers across the planet, for carrying stories on the arrest and deportations of striking Chinese bus drivers last December and the aftermath.

Among sites named as currently falling under the MDA’s guidelines, including Asia One, Business Times, Channel News Asia, Omy, Stomp, Straits Times, TNP, Today Online, Zaobao, and Yahoo, Channel News Asia reported.

“The License also makes it clear that online news sites are expected to comply within 24 hours to the MDA’s directions to remove content that is found to be in breach of content standards,” the authority said on its website.

Presumably, that would mean Yahoo must remove the offending articles about the striking bus drivers, Leslie Chew and others within 24 hours of being notified by the authority. In particular, the MDA said the websites must take down content that “is prejudicial to racial harmony.”

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In Singapore, A Rare Call for Protest Against Blogging Censorship

In Singapore, A Rare Call for Protest Against Blogging Censorship

Student Scott Teng (L) speaks during a demonstration at “Speaker’s Corner” in Singapore October 5, 2008, when a small group protested against censorship at a university newspaper. (Photo: Reuters)

Singapore’s blogging community is rebelling against a stringent new law that requires online news sites to put up a performance bond of US $40,000 and to submit to government censorship, calling for the general public and bloggers to rally next Saturday against the measure.

Last Tuesday, the Singapore Media Development Authority issued the new regulations, which it said were designed to place the websites “on a more consistent regulatory framework with traditional news platforms which are already individually licensed.”

The protest group, calling itself “Free My Internet,” is asking Singaporeans to rally in Hong Lim Park, the site of Singapore’s speaker’s corner, where a May 1 protest drew 3,000 participants protesting the government’s plans to let in vast numbers of new immigrants. It was said to be the biggest protest crowd in Singapore in modern times.

“We encourage all Singaporeans who are concerned about our future and our ability to participate in everyday online activities and discussions, and to seek out alternative news and analysis, to take a strong stand against the licensing regime which can impede on your independence,” the organizers said.

“We urge Singaporeans to turn up to send a clear message to our elected representatives to trust the Singaporeans who elected them.”

The message was signed by 35 bloggers, who asked all Singapore bloggers to go black for 24 hours from midnight June 6.

“You can choose to create your own blackout notice, or use www.freemyinternet.com we have created for your convenience,” the group said. “When you reopen your blog, write your account of the protest, about the new regulations and censorship, or anything related to media freedom in Singapore. Share your thoughts. Share your hope that the light that free speech provides will not go out on us.”

The Speaker’s Corner, modeled after London’s free speech site of the same name, is hardly free. Demonstrations are allowed only by Singapore citizens and attended by Singapore citizens. Banners, films, flags, photographs, placards, posters, signs, writing or other visible representations or paraphernalia containing violent, lewd or obscene material must not be displayed or exhibited, the government says.

Events must not deal with any matter that relates directly or indirectly to any religious belief or to religion generally, or which may cause feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between different racial or religious groups.

Events adhering to the regulations are not immune from other existing laws, such as those relating to defamation and sedition, which in Singapore can be extremely broad, especially when the Lee governing family is mentioned.

Asia Sentinel’s attempts to reach the Media Development Authority by telephone and email went unanswered last week.

The Singapore-based Channel News Asia, however, quoted the agency in an article on May 29 as saying the new licensing framework “is not intended to clamp down on internet freedom,” adding that the regulations will only apply to news sites that meet the content and reach criteria.

But while the government was characterizing the new regulations as merely bringing the internet into line with print publication restrictions, the protesters said, they apply to all content on the news sites including readers’ comments. In the recent past, the Singapore government has gone after news sites for not erasing what are deemed to be offending comments fast enough, threatening lawsuits.

Any blog that reaches more than 50,000 unique visitors in a month and prints a single article of Singapore news within two weeks is liable to come under the regulation and to be forced to withdraw the story within 24 hours or be faced with forfeiting the bond although the bigger problem, for most bloggers, is coming up with the money in the first place.

Although bloggers have been a circumspect presence in Singapore for more than a decade, the government apparently grew irritated by reporting particularly by Yahoo News, the giant news aggregator that claims nearly 700 million Internet readers across the planet, for carrying stories on the arrest and deportations of striking Chinese bus drivers last December and the aftermath.

Among sites named as currently falling under the MDA’s guidelines, including Asia One, Business Times, Channel News Asia, Omy, Stomp, Straits Times, TNP, Today Online, Zaobao, and Yahoo, Channel News Asia reported.

“The License also makes it clear that online news sites are expected to comply within 24 hours to the MDA’s directions to remove content that is found to be in breach of content standards,” the authority said on its website.

Presumably, that would mean Yahoo must remove the offending articles about the striking bus drivers, Leslie Chew and others within 24 hours of being notified by the authority. In particular, the MDA said the websites must take down content that “is prejudicial to racial harmony.”

Related Posts :

• Aussino Plunges after Singapore Bourse Rejects Deal with Burma-Linked Firm


• IMF Flags Risk of ‘Middle-Income Trap’ in Emerging Asia


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• Migrant Bus Drivers Bailed after Singapore Strike


• First Singapore Strike in Years Highlights Strains

In Singapore, A Rare Call for Protest Against Blogging Censorship

Singapore"s water companies aim to quench China"s $850 billion thirst

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Singapore"s water companies aim to quench China"s $850 billion thirst

Singapore"s water companies aim to quench China"s $850 billion thirst

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Singapore"s water companies aim to quench China"s $850 billion thirst

Shades of Manila 1945: Novel about Singapore deals with Japanese occupation

This long, ambitious novel is, like most recent and current Asian novels written in English, brilliant but with a difference: There are ghosts swarming all over the place.

It is a fictional history of Singapore from 1929, the year of the stock market crash in the United States, to the present. But, distinguo, as the Jesuits would say, it is a work of fiction and author Tan, wary perhaps of lawsuits, calls the city-state the Black Isle of the title.

A dead giveaway, however, is the map featured just before the text. It shows a large blackened island directly south (joined no doubt by a causeway) of the then British Malaya.

“The Black Isle” by Sandi Tan (Grand Central Publishing, NY, 2012; 469 pages) is a long flashback, with occasional shifts to the present. The narrator-heroine is Cassandra (Ling during her childhood), a psychic. Like the boy in the movie “Sixth Sense,” she sees “dead people.” And, when motivated, she can invoke the restless spirits to wreak havoc upon the land.

As the tale begins, we see Cassandra, now 88, living in self-exile in Tokyo, alone and friendless and not particularly caring about this. She has outlived all who have loved or hated her. Cassandra is, however, stalked by a Professor Maddin who is fascinated by her life story (and who, unknown to Cassandra, has her own agenda).

And Cassandra or Ling is persuaded to recount her incredible story.

Ling spent her childhood in Shanghai during the 1920s, when the city “was either the Pearl of the Orient (like Manila?) or the Devil’s Den.” The unloved child had a neurotic mother, an indifferent father and a twin brother with whom she had a near incestuous relationship.

The Wall Street crash in 1929 affects the family, and the father and the older twins (Ling and Li) are forced to migrate to the Black Isle to become “overseas Chinese.” Left behind are the mother and two younger children (also twins).

The island is a British colony.

Swirling around Cassandra are other fully realized characters: Daniel, scion of a rich family who falls in love with Cassandra; his sister Violet, who despises Cassandra; Issa, a shaman who becomes the revolutionary terrorist Isakandar; Cricket, an errand boy who becomes a businessman with many wives and children; Kenneth, a scheming politician and later prime minister with blood on his hands; and Taro, the charismatic Japanese officer who transforms Cassandra into a sex slave.

Surrealist images

The novel has many surrealist images, like a giant octopus making love to a Japanese woman, a ghostly dog-man and thousands of jellyfish clambering over the beach as war is about to erupt.

Under the Japanese yoke, the Isle deteriorated, just like Manila during the 1940s: “The rest of the city regressed.” And Cassandra asserts, “the Japanese were animals.”

“The Black Isle” is not the first Asian novel to document Japanese atrocities in fictional form, nor will it be the last. There is the recent “The Glass Palace” by Amitav Ghosh, and we have our own “Without Seeing the Dawn” by Stevan Javellana, “More than Conquerors” by Edilberto Tiempo,” and “Sugat ng Alaala” by National Artist-designate Lazaro Francisco.

For the Japanese, unlike the Germans, have not really repented of their World War II crimes. This is the reason behind the continuing tension between Japan on one hand, and China and the Koreas on the other.

The Chinese and Koreans have a sense of history; we don’t.

“The Black Isle” is available in Fully Booked, tel. 8587000; National Book Store; and PowerBooks.

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• Shades of Manila 1945: Novel about Singapore deals with Japanese occupation


• Jonathan Olazo reclaims dignity of abstraction in new show


• Joseph Esmilla leads Filfest chamber music concert in Alabang


• Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino gives out National Language awards


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Tags:

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The Black Isle

Shades of Manila 1945: Novel about Singapore deals with Japanese occupation

Shades of Manila 1945: Novel about Singapore deals with Japanese occupation

This long, ambitious novel is, like most recent and current Asian novels written in English, brilliant but with a difference: There are ghosts swarming all over the place.

It is a fictional history of Singapore from 1929, the year of the stock market crash in the United States, to the present. But, distinguo, as the Jesuits would say, it is a work of fiction and author Tan, wary perhaps of lawsuits, calls the city-state the Black Isle of the title.

A dead giveaway, however, is the map featured just before the text. It shows a large blackened island directly south (joined no doubt by a causeway) of the then British Malaya.

“The Black Isle” by Sandi Tan (Grand Central Publishing, NY, 2012; 469 pages) is a long flashback, with occasional shifts to the present. The narrator-heroine is Cassandra (Ling during her childhood), a psychic. Like the boy in the movie “Sixth Sense,” she sees “dead people.” And, when motivated, she can invoke the restless spirits to wreak havoc upon the land.

As the tale begins, we see Cassandra, now 88, living in self-exile in Tokyo, alone and friendless and not particularly caring about this. She has outlived all who have loved or hated her. Cassandra is, however, stalked by a Professor Maddin who is fascinated by her life story (and who, unknown to Cassandra, has her own agenda).

And Cassandra or Ling is persuaded to recount her incredible story.

Ling spent her childhood in Shanghai during the 1920s, when the city “was either the Pearl of the Orient (like Manila?) or the Devil’s Den.” The unloved child had a neurotic mother, an indifferent father and a twin brother with whom she had a near incestuous relationship.

The Wall Street crash in 1929 affects the family, and the father and the older twins (Ling and Li) are forced to migrate to the Black Isle to become “overseas Chinese.” Left behind are the mother and two younger children (also twins).

The island is a British colony.

Swirling around Cassandra are other fully realized characters: Daniel, scion of a rich family who falls in love with Cassandra; his sister Violet, who despises Cassandra; Issa, a shaman who becomes the revolutionary terrorist Isakandar; Cricket, an errand boy who becomes a businessman with many wives and children; Kenneth, a scheming politician and later prime minister with blood on his hands; and Taro, the charismatic Japanese officer who transforms Cassandra into a sex slave.

Surrealist images

The novel has many surrealist images, like a giant octopus making love to a Japanese woman, a ghostly dog-man and thousands of jellyfish clambering over the beach as war is about to erupt.

Under the Japanese yoke, the Isle deteriorated, just like Manila during the 1940s: “The rest of the city regressed.” And Cassandra asserts, “the Japanese were animals.”

“The Black Isle” is not the first Asian novel to document Japanese atrocities in fictional form, nor will it be the last. There is the recent “The Glass Palace” by Amitav Ghosh, and we have our own “Without Seeing the Dawn” by Stevan Javellana, “More than Conquerors” by Edilberto Tiempo,” and “Sugat ng Alaala” by National Artist-designate Lazaro Francisco.

For the Japanese, unlike the Germans, have not really repented of their World War II crimes. This is the reason behind the continuing tension between Japan on one hand, and China and the Koreas on the other.

The Chinese and Koreans have a sense of history; we don’t.

“The Black Isle” is available in Fully Booked, tel. 8587000; National Book Store; and PowerBooks.

Follow Us

Recent Stories:

• Simple vinegar test cuts cervical cancer deaths


• Weaves of life: Preserving B’laan and T’boli traditional practices


• Art banners pay tribute to 150th birth anniversary of Bonifacio


• Commercialization threatens historic Mindanao church plaza


• Shades of Manila 1945: Novel about Singapore deals with Japanese occupation


• Jonathan Olazo reclaims dignity of abstraction in new show


• Joseph Esmilla leads Filfest chamber music concert in Alabang


• Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino gives out National Language awards


• Learning to play the violin a dream come true for dad


• Manila to get taste of real Spanish ‘zarzuela’

Tags:

Books

,

Lifestyle

,

Singapore

,

The Black Isle

Shades of Manila 1945: Novel about Singapore deals with Japanese occupation