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CEO HarisH Nim, wHO arrivEd HErE 21 yEars agO aNd startEd a 

busiNEss, tHiNks all new citizens should serve ns saturday people • 11 

todayonline.com we set you thinking 

saturday, 23 march 2013 MICA (P) 093/06/2012 

myanmar ethnic violence spreads myanmar declared martial law in four districts yesterday after unrest between buddhists and 

muslims stoked fears that the violence would spread to the heartlands. at least 20 people have been killed and thousands displaced. see page 6 

world economy 

China to overtake US ‘by 2016’ 

Beijing has weathered financial 

crisis better than many other 

economies, says OECD report 

BEIJING — China’s economy will expand 

by 8.5 per cent this year and 8.9 per 

cent in the next, putting it on track 

to overtake the United States as the 

world’s biggest economy in 2016 after 

accounting for price diferences, 

the Organisation for Economic Cooperation 

and Development (OECD) 

said yesterday. 

The assessment, in the OECD’s 

new Economic Survey of China unveiled 

in Beijing, was one of the most 

upbeat of China’s prospects by a major 

multilateral institution. China’s own 

oicial growth target for this year is 

7.5 per cent and 7 per cent on average 

in the ive-year plan that runs to 2015. 

The 161-page survey, the irst such 

report from the Paris-based OECD 

since 2010, was particularly optimistic 

about the outlook for investment 

spending in the world’s No 2 economy. 

The survey pointed to substantial 

deicits in rail and road capacity relative 

to other major economies at similar 

stages of development, as well as 

to sub-standard housing as ofering 

scope for more profitable spending 

on infrastructure. 

“The level of investment in the 

private sector is well-founded by the 

rates of return, and in infrastructure, 

we still think there are tremendous 

needs,” Mr Richard Herd, head 

of the OECD’s China desk, said at a 

media conference. 

China’s growth slowed to a 13-year 

low of 7.8 per cent last year, with weak 

demand in the European Union and 

the US — the two biggest export 

THE OECD 

EXPECTS 

CHINA’S 

ECONOMY TO 

EXPAND BY 

8.5% 

THIS YEAR 

customers — the main drag. 

But “recent OECD simulations suggest 

that China could maintain high, 

though gradually easing, growth during 

the current decade, averaging 

8 per cent in per capita terms”, the 

report said. 

“China has weathered the global 

economic and financial crisis of the 

past ive years better than virtually 

any OECD country and better than 

many other emerging economies. It 

is well placed to enjoy a fourth decade 

of rapid catch-up and improving 

living standards,” it added. 

When assessed in purchasing 

power parity (PPP) terms, which factor 

in cost of living differences and 

exchange rates between countries, 

China’s economy will become as large 

as that of the US by around 2016, the 

OECD forecast. 

sports • 26 

TEENAGE SWIMMER DYLAN 

BREAKS 21-YEAR-OLD MARK 

CONtiNuEd ON pagE 2 

SIA steward 

arrested 

in Sydney 

for alleged 

drug ofence 

Ng JiNg yNg 

jingyng@mediacorp.com.sg 

SINGAPORE — A Singapore Airlines 

(SIA) cabin crew member was arrested 

last Sunday at Sydney International 

Airport after he allegedly 

tried to bring in 1.6kg of heroin. 

Nicholas Tan Ngat Liang, 50, 

was a leading steward who was 

believed to be on duty during the 

light from Singapore to Sydney. 

In response to TODAY’s queries, 

a spokesperson from the Australian 

Federal Police conirmed that 

a 50-year-old Singaporean was 

arrested on Sunday and has been 

charged with “importing a commercial 

quantity of a border controlled 

drug, namely heroin”. “The 

man was arrested for attempting 

to import 1.6kg of heroin into Australia,” 

the spokesperson said. 

In Australia, the ofence carries 

a maximum penalty of life imprisonment 

and/or an A$825,000 ine 

(S$1.1 million). Tan’s case was irst 

mentioned in a New South Wales 

court on Monday. 

Responding to TODAY’s queries, 

SIA spokesman Nicholas Ionides 

said: “We can conirm that 

a member of our cabin crew was 

detained recently in Sydney by 

the police. As it is a police matter, 

it would not be appropriate for us to 

provide further comment.” 

A spokesperson from Singapore’s 

Ministry of Foreign Afairs 

said that the ministry has so far not 

received any request to extend its 

assistance on the matter. 

When this reporter visited 

Tan’s condo in Simei yesterday, a 

man and a woman who answered 

CONtiNuEd ON pagE 4

today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

2 

hot news 

acquiSition 

DBS bid for Danamon near approval 

Central banks have ‘finalised 

an understanding’, with 

Indonesian regulator targeting 

approval of the deal this month 

HONG KONG — DBS Group’s bid for Bank 

Danamon Indonesia is set to be approved 

as soon as this month as Singaporean 

and Indonesian regulators 

come close to an agreement over bank 

access, according to Mr Chairul Tanjung, 

who is Chairman of the National 

Economic Committee to Indonesia’s 

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. 

DBS’ proposal to buy Danamon 

has been on hold for almost a year 

as Indonesia’s central bank weighed 

the deal while seeking greater access 

for its own lenders in Singapore. DBS 

recently stepped up discussions with 

Bank Indonesia , the country’s central 

bank, over the acquisition’s structure 

and inal ownership levels, two people 

with knowledge of the matter said. 

“We want our neighbour to become 

like family, if we are kind to 

China to 

‘overtake US’ 

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 

China’s gross domestic product in 

PPP terms was about US$12.4 trillion 

last year, compared to the US GDP of 

US$15.7 trillion. 

Mr Herd said oicial economic data 

so far in the irst quarter of this year 

supported the OECD’s above-consensus 

growth call, with domestic consumption 

— key to Beijing’s rebalancing 

strategy to wean the economy of 

exports and investment — faring well 

with wages ticking higher and inlation 

subdued. 

The OECD highlighted risks to 

its outlook, including a weak global 

economy, high housing prices, social 

inequalities and an ageing population. 

But it noted that China had made 

strides in reducing its dependence on 

external demand, with domestic consumption 

a bigger driver of growth 

than investment since 2011. 

Also yesterday, the International 

Monetary Fund’s (IMF) top adviser for 

China, Mr Markus Rodlauer, said he 

was conident its economy would stay 

on a “growth path of around 8 per cent” 

with “no real major short-term risks”. 

The IMF in January forecast China’s 

economy to grow 8.2 per cent this year 

and 8.5 per cent in 2014. AGENCIES 

DBS is seeking 

to tap rising 

demand for 

banking 

services in 

South-east 

Asia’s fastestgrowing 

economy. 

them, please be kind to us,” said 

Mr Tanjung, Chairman of Indonesia’s 

CT Corp, which controls Bank Mega, 

in an interview. 

Regulatory approval would help 

DBS gain access to more profitable 

lending opportunities, while clearing 

the way for further acquisitions of Indonesian 

banks by foreign entities. 

Bank Indonesia and the Monetary 

Authority of Singapore (MAS) have 

“inalised an understanding,” Mr Tanjung 

said, adding that he has been informed 

of the matter by Indonesia’s 

central bank. 

The Indonesian regulator is targeting 

approval of the deal this month, although 

the deadline could slip by in a 

few weeks, he said. An oicial at Bank 

Indonesia declined to comment on the 

deal’s status. 

DBS is seeking to tap rising demand 

for banking services in Southeast 

Asia’s fastest-growing economy, 

which will average 6.4 per cent from 

this year to 2017, the Organisation for 

Economic Cooperation and Development 

estimated in November. 

Ren Ci Hospital will convert three floors of existing office space 

at its community hospital into wards. PHOTO: REN CI HOSPITAL 

Danamon, the sixth-largest bank 

in Indonesia, has more than 3,000 

branches across Indonesia with about 

six million customers. 

Indonesia may approve the DBS acquisition 

of Danamon while Singapore 

simultaneously announces it will provide 

an operating licence for Indonesian 

banks, Mr Tanjung said. 

DBS said on April 2 last year 

that it would pay 66 trillion rupiah 

(S$8.47 billion) to acquire Danamon 

in two steps — first obtaining 

the 67 per cent currently held by Temasek 

Holdings, and then making a 

7,000 rupiah-a-share cash ofer for 

another 32 per cent. 

Bank Indonesia said in the same 

month that it was seeking equal access 

for Indonesian lenders to expand 

in Singapore, without being more 

speciic, and then said a review of the 

bid would wait for new bank-ownership 

rules. 

Any lender seeking to purchase 

more than 40 per cent of an Indonesian 

bank must meet capital adequacy 

requirements and be committed for a 

“certain period of time”, according to 

regulations released last July. 

The acquirer also needs to show 

good corporate governance for three 

consecutive assessment periods over 

a ive-year span, the bank said, without 

specifying the length of each assessment 

period. 

Ms Karen Ngui, a Singapore-based 

spokeswoman for DBS, declined 

to comment. 

However, DBS Chief Executive Officer 

Piyush Gupta said last month 

that he was positive about the approval 

coming through based on signals 

from Bank Indonesia. 

“We are not in the position to comment 

on the regulators,” said Ms Vera 

Eve Lim, Finance Director at Danamon. 

“We continuously comply with 

BI’s (Bank Indonesia’s) regulations 

and policies.” 

Mr Stephen Forshaw, a spokesman 

for Temasek, said he declined “to comment 

on market speculation”. 

The MAS also said that it does not 

comment on speculation. 

BLOOMBERG 

Ren Ci Hospital to add 

60% more beds by 2015 

SINGAPORE — Ren Ci Hospital is set 

to expand its total bed capacity by 

60 per cent over the next two years 

in preparation for greater demand 

for its services as Singapore’s population 

ages. 

This will bring the number of 

beds across its three facilities — a 

nursing home, a long-term care facility 

and a community hospital — from 

the current total of 502 to 811 by 2015. 

To manage this, Ren Ci will convert 

three floors of existing office 

space at Ren Ci Community Hospital 

into hospital wards, adding another 

130 beds, said the hospital’s 

Chairman Chua Thian Poh, speaking 

at the Friends’ Tribute to Ren Ci 

Charity Dinner held at Orchid Country 

Club yesterday evening. 

“By June this year, Singapore 

Christian Home will return four 

wards that it has been leasing from 

Ren Ci at our Moulmein Nursing 

Home site. After carrying out renovation 

work, these wards will add 

some 90 beds to our existing nursing 

home,” Mr Chua added. 

Ren Ci is also currently building a 

new 265-bed nursing home at Bukit 

Batok Street 52, which is expected to 

REN CI PLANS TO HAVE 

811 BEDS ACROSS ITS 

THREE FACILITIES BY 2015 

commence operations by early 2015. 

The hospital did not say how much 

the expansion would cost, but said 

that it expects its operating expenses 

to go up to S$48 million a year, up 

from the current S$38 million. 

Yesterday’s dinner was attended 

by close to 600 guests, with Health 

Minister Gan Kim Yong as guest-ofhonour, 

and raised S$1.37 million for 

the hospital. 

Earlier this month, Mr Gan noted 

during the Budget debates that 

ageing is a key driver of demand for 

healthcare services and said the 

Government was on track to adding 

4,100 more acute and community 

hospital beds by 2020. 

Besides increasing bed capacity, 

Ren Ci Hospital will be introducing 

a new day rehabilitation centre at 

its community hospital from next 

month to provide continual care to 

patients who have been discharged.

3 

today • Saturday 23 March 2013

4 

hot news today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

(Above) Workers 

deploying the last 

of the eight solarpowered 

buoy 

stations yesterday. 

(Right) Minister 

for the 

Environment 

and Water 

Resources Vivian 

Balakrishnan 

viewing the 

deployment of 

the new water 

quality monitoring 

system at Cyrene, 

off Jurong Island, 

yesterday. 

PHOTOS: ERNEST CHUA 

environMental Safety 

S$4m system to 

monitor S’pore’s 

coastal waters 

New Neptune system will 

let authorities respond 

quickly to pollution incidents, 

track where they originated 

KELLY NG 

kellyng@mediacorp.com.sg 

SINGAPORE — A new water-monitoring 

system that allows for real-time monitoring 

of the waters around Singapore 

has been launched, so that the 

authorities can respond more quickly 

to water pollution incidents and potential 

pollution hotspots. 

With the new system, called Neptune, 

the National Environment 

Agency (NEA) will also be able to 

send out alerts of chemical spills and 

algae blooms to the public through its 

mobile application myENV by the end 

of this year, so that the public would 

know which spots to avoid for recreational 

activities like swimming. 

In 2008, the NEA found the waters 

at Pasir Ris beach unsuitable for 

swimming in, as the bacteria count of 

enterococcus, which is found in human 

faeces, was too high. The beach 

was declared safe for swimming 

last year. 

The NEA said Neptune would allow 

for earlier alerts and more “timely” 

responses to such incidents. 

“With Neptune, we will have better 

capabilities to backtrack and see 

where the pollution originated,” said 

a spokesperson for the NEA. 

The S$4-million system was jointly 

developed by the NEA and Singapore 

SIA steward 

arrested 

in Sydney 

for alleged 

drug ofence 


the door declined to comment, saying 

that it was “not the right time”. 

The Singapore Police Force said 

that cabin crew members and pilots 

are “subjected to the same level of 

checks as departing passengers prior 

to boarding the aircraft”. It added: 

“The authorities conduct screening 

Delft Water Alliance. 

Comprising eight solar-powered 

buoy-based stations, the final buoy 

was deployed yesterday at Cyrene, 

an ofshore reef. 

Speaking at the deployment, Minister 

for the Environment and Water 

Resources Vivian Balakrishnan 

called this a “critical” development, 

given that Singapore is one of the busiest 

ports in the world. 

“We want to maintain a safe, highquality 

(maritime) environment ... 

(Real-time data will) allow us to anticipate 

problems or the evolution of 

a problem even as it occurs. 

“This is also a symbol of our commitment 

to make sure that environment 

data is transparent and 

available to all stakeholders,” Dr Balakrishnan 

added. 

Each buoy tracks and sends live 

updates of the ocean conditions to 

an operational management system 

located on mainland Singapore 

for processing. 

Parameters measured include pH, 

algal nutrients and concentration of 

dissolved oxygen. 

They each weigh about 1,000kg and 

are itted with Global Positioning Systems 

and anti-theft alarms. 

All eight buoys were deployed over 

this month. A test will be carried out 

in the next year for necessary modiications 

to be made. 

Neptune will complement the 

NEA’s current manual water monitoring 

programme, in which oicers 

collect water samples from six designated 

locations and analyse them 

in laboratories. 

on persons and their hand-carry baggage. 

Checked baggage is also subjected 

to screening upon check-in at the 

departure hall.” 

An SIA light steward, who wanted 

to be known only as Mr Lim, said 

that at Sydney International Airport, 

random checks — which occur about 

“50 per cent of the time” — are conducted 

on cabin crew after their lights 

touch down. 

According to the Australian Federal 

Police website, there were 332 seizures 

involving heroin between 2009 

and May 31, 2010. 

There have been previous reported 

cases of Singaporeans who were 

caught in Australia’s airports for 

trying to bring in drugs. In August 

2009, a Singaporean man was sentenced 

to a jail term of 11 years and 

three months for importing 4.3kg of 

heroin from Kuala Lumpur. The drug 

was concealed in food items.

5 


6 


Sectarian Violence 

Myanmar declares State of Emergency in Meiktila 

MEIKTILA (MYANMAR) — Myanmar’s President 

Thein Sein declared a State of 

Emergency yesterday in a central city 

shaken by sectarian bloodshed that 

has killed at least 20 people, as thousands 

of minority Muslims led, and 

overwhelmed riot police crisscrossed 

the still-burning town seizing machetes 

and hammers from enraged 

Buddhist mobs. 

Black smoke and flames poured 

from destroyed buildings in Meiktila, 

where the unrest between local Buddhist 

and Muslim residents erupted 

earlier this week in the latest challenge 

to Myanmar’s ever-precarious 

transition to democratic rule. 

The State of Emergency will allow 

the military, rather than the police, to 

take over security. 

The authorities had imposed an 

overnight curfew on Wednesday when 

clashes first began following an argument 

between a Muslim gold shop 

owner and his Buddhist customers. A 

Buddhist monk was among the irst 

killed, inlaming tensions that led a 

Buddhist mob to rampage through a 

Muslim neighbourhood. 

It was not immediately clear which 

side bore the brunt of the latest violence, 

but terrified Muslims, who 

make up about 30 per cent of Meiktila’s 

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100,000 inhabitants, stayed off the 

streets as their shops and homes continued 

to burn. Angry Buddhist residents 

and monks prevented the authorities 

from putting out the blazes. 

“We don’t feel safe and we have now 

moved inside a monastery,” said shop 

owner Sein Shwe. “The situation is unpredictable 

and dangerous.” 

Some journalists said monks accosted 

and threatened them for trying 

to cover the unrest, at one point trying 

to drag a group of them out of a van. 

An unknown number of Buddhists, 

meanwhile, sought refuge inside the 

city’s shrines. 

Mr Win Htein, a lawmaker for the 

opposition National League for Democracy 

party, said 20 people have 

been killed and dozens wounded since 

the violence began. Two camps now 

held more than 2,000 people displaced 

by the ighting, he added. 

The United Nations Secretary- 

General’s Special Adviser to Myanmar, 

Mr Vijay Nambiar, issued a statement 

expressing “deep sorrow at the 

tragic loss of lives and destruction”. 

He said religious and community leaders 

must “publicly call on their followers 

to abjure violence, respect the law 

and promote peace”. 

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“Celebrating 20 years in Singapore” 

The State of 

Emergency 

will allow the 

military, rather 

than the 

police, to take 

over security. 

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Riot policemen form up near a fire during riots in Meiktila yesterday. PHOTO: REUTERS 

Myanmar, Mr Derek Mitchell, also 

said he was “deeply concerned about 

reports of violence and widespread 

property damage in Meiktila”. 

The devastation in Meiktila, where 

at least five mosques have been 

torched by angry mobs, was reminiscent 

of strikingly similar scenes last 

year in western Myanmar, where 

sectarian violence between ethnic 

Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya 

left hundreds of people dead 

and more than 100,000 displaced. 

Human rights groups had long 

feared that unrest could spread to other 

parts of Myanmar, and the clashes 

in Meiktila are the irst reported in 

central Myanmar since then. 

The government’s struggle to contain 

the violence is proving another 

major challenge for Mr Thein Sein’s 

reformist administration as it attempts 

to chart a path to democracy 

after nearly half a century of military 

rule that once crushed all dissent. 

Mr Thein Sein took oice two years 

ago this month and, despite ushering 

in an era of reform, he has faced not 

only violence in Rakhine state, but an 

upsurge in ighting with ethnic Kachin 

rebels in the north and major protests 

at a northern copper mine where angry 

residents — emboldened by promises 

of freedom of expression — have 

come out to denounce land-grabbing. 

AGENCIES 

M’sian PM uses Action Kit to 

appeal directly to first-time voters 

KUALA LUMPUR — Taking a leaf from 

United States President Barack 

Obama’s irst presidential campaign 

back in 2008, Malaysian Prime Minister 

Najib Razak is appealing directly 

to irst-time voters with an Action Kit 

to help him win the upcoming general 

election. 

Apart from the kit that contains a 

booklet, pen, collar pin and stickers, 

Mr Najib’s personal blog is also being 

illed with video clips explaining some 

of the economic indicators that have 

shown an improvement since he took 

oice in 2009. 

Sources in Mr Najib’s ruling Barisan 

Nasional (BN) government 

say they consider the choice of some 

3.3 million irst-time voters to be crucial 

to the coalition’s performance. 

“The irst-time voters haven’t made 

up their minds yet and that is why the 

Internet strategy is important, as 

shown by Obama in 2008 when he 

won impressively using the Web,” a 

BN source told The Malaysian Insider. 

“These young voters rely on the Web 

for information more than on mainstream 

media. So we need to reach out 

to them any which way we can.” 

In Mr Najib’s blog, he asks firsttime 

voters to “take action now” by 

registering to get the kit. 

“This Action Kit contains the basic 

tools to help you prepare for the coming 

General Election. A helpful booklet 

provides simple tips on how to vote 

for irst-time voters and for those who 

wish to refresh their memory,” said 

the message on the blog. 

Last Tuesday, Mr Najib announced 

his government’s report card and 

achievements under the Economic 

Transformation Programme and Government 

Transformation Programme. 

His initiatives appear to have made 

him more popular than his party and 

government, with the latest survey by 

independent research irm Merdeka 

Center showing his approval ratings 

at 61 per cent last month. 

Both his government and coalition 

have been scoring just above 40 per 

cent approval ratings in similar surveys, 

reflecting his importance to 

BN’s eforts to regain its customary 

two-thirds majority lost in the 2008 

election. THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER

7 

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8 


rEMEMBErING SarS 

The legacy of SARS in S’pore’s hospitals 

Measures put in place during 

2003 outbreak still useful 

today at SGH, NUH and TTSH 

tan Weizhen 

weizhen@mediacorp.com.sg 

SINGAPORE — On the eighth level of 

Block 6 at the Singapore General Hospital 

(SGH), a motorised partition will 

seal of and cut the entire level of 51 

isolation rooms into half at the push of 

a few buttons. This enables the hospital 

to manage patients sufering from 

two types of infectious diseases without 

cross-infecting one another. 

A self-suicient fever zone — with 

X-ray facilities and an isolation ward 

— uses a two-door system, creating a 

bufer from the rest of the emergency 

area and ensuring that contaminated 

air does not get out. 

Over at the National University 

Hospital (NUH), similar facilities are 

in place. It has also set up a new Epidemiology 

Unit which, among its other 

functions, monitors sudden increases 

in the number of staf who called in 

sick or were hospitalised. 

Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH), 

meanwhile, has invested more resources 

into developing rapid diagnostic 

tests. Its medical doctors go 

through conversion courses so that 

they will also be able to treat patients 

in intensive care units. 

At all three hospitals, newly-hired 

medical staf are trained in infection 

control and go through mask-itting. 

Ten years after healthcare workers 

here fought of the Severe Acute 

Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis 

in 2003, traces of it remain — and not 

only in the form of posters reminding 

patients and staff to observe hand 

hygiene and hand sanitisers along 

the corridors. 

In a country where 33 people died 

among the 283 who were infected during 

three dark months, the legacy of 

SARS is most pronounced in hospitals 

here. From systems to work processes 

and infrastructure, the lessons from 

the crisis have been learnt and applied 

to try to make sure there is no repeat 

of the devastating consequences — or, 

at the very least, to ensure the country 

is better prepared when another 

$2000 

Each isolation room at SGH comes with double doors which do not open at the same time, creating a buffer from the rest of the emergency area. photo: sgh 

VIDEO 

TODAY 

VISITS 

THE SGH 

EMERGENCY 

DEPARTMENT 

FEVER AREA 

scan the Qr code 

using the reader app 

on your smartphone, 

or you can visit 

tdy.sg/sgh23mar 

for the video. 

outbreak hits. 

By all accounts, Singapore — along 

with countries such as Vietnam — 

was lauded for its efective response 

to SARS, which was a largely unknown 

virus then. The outbreak killed 

774 worldwide. 

But Dr Leo Yee Sin, Clinical Director 

at TTSH’s Communicable Disease 

Centre, said: “We were not prepared 

in many areas, in terms of how best 

to respond to the outbreak, how to 

quickly gather adequate information, 

research on it, crunch (the information) 

as quickly as possible, provide 

evidence to manage the disease.” 

TTSH was designated as the screening 

and treatment centre for SARS on 

March 22, 2003. But the move was too 

late — as former Deputy Prime Minister 

Wong Kan Seng shared in an interview 

with TODAY earlier this week 

— and was unable to prevent cluster 

outbreaks in the SGH and NUH. 

Professor V Anantharaman, SGH 

Senior Consultant at the Department 

of Emergency Medicine, noted that, 

before the SARS outbreak, there were 

no designated fever isolation facilities 

in the emergency department here or 

in other countries. 

“Today, we are much more prepared, 

we have in place a routine of 

fever screening. Today, everyone is 

aware of the need to minimise transmission 

of infections,” he said. 

Referring to the 2009 H1N1 outbreak 

when Singapore emerged relatively 

unscathed, he added: “Having a 

fever zone in the emergency department, 

having isolation wards, having 

systems in place where potentially infected 

patients can be moved from one 

part of the hospital to the other in as 

safe an environment as possible — all 

these were brought back in place during 

the H1N1 outbreak, so it shows our 

level of preparedness is much better 

than it was prior to SARS.” 

But, as Prof Anantharaman noted, 

the improvements put in place since 

SARS are utilised on a day-to-day basis. 

At the SGH fever facility, the staf 

screen patients who were suspected of 

having made contact with people carrying 

infections or having travelled 

to areas of known outbreaks. They 

are screened for fever, cough or other 

symptoms of common infections and 

assessed by staf dressed in personal 

protective equipment. If any symptoms 

are present, the patient is isolated 

within the facility. 

NUH Associate Consultant Indumathi 

Venkatachalam said its Epidemiology 

Unit also works with various 

departments in the hospital to identify 

possible index cases and manage outbreaks. 

It “serves as an early warning 

system for potential infectious disease 

outbreaks by surveillance of global, local 

and intra-hospital situations”, she 

added. “If index patients are present 

in the hospital, the unit will coordinate 

contact tracing eforts so as to contain 

the possibility of spread.” 

Diseases which are monitored 

include influenza, pneumonia, dengue, 

tuberculosis, and hand, foot and 

mouth disease. 

Emergency preparedness committees 

have also been set up in acute hos- 

pitals. These committees gather every 

few months to discuss the latest trends 

in infectious diseases and how to manage 

them, Prof Anantharaman said. 

During the SARS outbreak, Parliament 

also passed amendments to the 

Infectious Diseases Act to increase 

penalties for people who breach quarantine 

orders. The new laws — which 

mandate possible jail terms for irsttime 

ofenders — were described by 

some foreign media as draconian. But 

they were necessary on hindsight, 

Dr Leo said. 

Since 2003, quarantine has been 

evoked, including during the Chikungunya 

outbreak in 2008, Dr Leo noted. 

“It’s out of necessity ... Having said 

that, a lot of it is about public education, 

acceptance and communication. 

We only utilise the laws as a last resort,” 

she said. 

While healthcare professionals 

have no doubt that Singapore is better 

prepared for the next outbreak, the 

answer as to whether the Republic is 

ready is less clear cut. 

Dr Lim Suet Wun, Executive Vice- 

President for Singapore Operations 

at Parkway Pantai, said: “It depends 

on the type of outbreak, but it’s also 

about the combination of processes, 

the leadership we have in place. We 

are more prepared now than before 

SARS, but to be prepared is not about 

doing the necessary things every day.” 

He added: “It would be an abnormal 

situation, what’s important is that 

when there’s a disaster, we kick in the 

processes. It’s also about the ability of 

everyone to work together.”

9 


World is ‘not 

well-prepared’ 

for next outbreak 

SINGAPORE — It is not a rosy picture 

when it comes to how prepared the 

world is for the next global health 

threat. 

Some countries are still not forthcoming 

with their health data, others 

simply lack the technical expertise 

or funds to put in place systems and 

infrastructure. International public 

health experts also cite the inability 

of some countries to get all its agencies 

to work together. 

In Asia, the varying standards of 

healthcare capacity across countries 

would also be a challenge in the event 

of an outbreak, not to mention the increase 

in volume and frequency of 

cross-border travel due in part to the 

growth of budget airlines in the past 

10 years, they added. 

Dr Isabelle Nuttall, Director of the 

Global Capacities Alert and Response 

department at the World Health Organisation 

(WHO), said that following 

the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, a committee 

of experts was convened to review 

the world’s capacity to handle disease 

outbreaks. 

“The conclusion was that the world 

is still not well-prepared,” said Dr Nuttall, 

who is based in Geneva. 

Speaking in a phone interview 

with TODAY, she added: “Every outbreak 

makes countries learn, but what 

is needed is for countries which are 

well-prepared to support poor countries 

which do not have the technical 

expertise and resources.” 

Following the Severe Acute Respiratory 

Syndrome (SARS) outbreak 

in 2003, the WHO developed a global 

surveillance system to monitor Internet 

chatter and rumours all over the 

world relating to disease outbreaks. 

“If we hear anything, we go to 

the country, which has 48 hours to 

come back with explanations. If they 

don’t, we have the right to communicate 

this to the rest of the world,” said 

Dr Nuttall. 

The WHO also introduced legislation 

to, irstly, require all member 

states to report any unexpected or severe 

diseases in their countries with 

the potential to afect trade and travel, 

and to enhance their surveillance 

and diagnostic capabilities. Second, it 

mandated international airports and 

ports to put in place early detection 

and disinfection measures, as well as 

emergency plans. 

Dr Nuttall said that 109 countries 

have yet to meet the irst requirement 

and were given an extension until 

next year. 

In this regard, she noted that Singapore 

is “one of the very few” countries 

which are fully equipped to meet this 

requirement. “But no matter how wellprepared 

a country is, it is still a problem 

if other countries around you are not,” 

she added. 

continUed on page 10 

VIDEO 

FORmER 

DPm WONG 

KAN SENG 

REFLEcTS 

ON ThE 

2003 SARS 

OUTBREAK 

scan the Qr code 




tdy.sg/sarswong 


Every 

outbreak 

makes 

countries 

learn, but what 

is needed is 

for countries 

which are 

well-prepared 

to support 

poor countries 

which do 

not have the 

technical 

expertise and 

resources. 

Dr Isabelle Nuttall 

World health 

organisation 

director of global 

capacities alert and 

response department 

(Left) The exterior 

of the accident 

and emergency 

department was 

used to screen 

if patients were 

infected with 

SARS. (Right) The 

infected were then 

placed on stretchers 

within an area that 

was labelled ‘dirty’. 

photo: sion toUhig

10 hot news today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

bilateral relationS 

Xi underlines importance of ties with Russia 

Visit signals an intent to 

bolster Sino-Russian 

inancial, geopolitical clout, 

blunt US inluence overseas 

MOSCOW — Chinese leader Xi Jinping 

demonstrated the importance of Beijing’s 

growing ties with Russia yesterday 

by travelling to Moscow on his 

irst foreign trip as President and telling 

his counterpart Vladimir Putin he 

was a good friend. 

Mr Xi’s choice of destination — only 

eight days after his installation as 

President — sent a signal to the United 

States that the world’s largest energy 

producer, Russia, and its biggest 

consumer, China, want to bolster their 

joint clout as a inancial and geopolitical 

counterweight to Washington. 

Russian- 

Chinese 

relations 

are a very 

important 

factor in world 

politics. I am 

certain your 

visit ... will 

give Russian- 

Chinese ties 

a new and 

powerful 

impulse. 

Mr Vladimir Putin 

RUSSIAN PRESIDENT 

Mr Putin has long sought to blunt 

US inluence overseas, while China is 

grappling with the expanded military 

and economic interest Washington 

has displayed in Asia since 2011. 

Mr Xi became the first foreign 

guest to be met in the Kremlin by an 

honorary cavalry escort created by 

Mr Putin in 2002, oicials said, underlining 

the importance the Russian 

President attaches to the relationship. 

Mr Putin, 60, greeted Mr Xi with 

a firm handshake and a grin, then 

ushered the Chinese leader down 

a red carpet past a long line of oicials 

and into the Kremlin’s gilded 

Green Room. Both leaders smiled and 

looked at ease, despite the formality 

of the occasion. 

“Russian-Chinese relations are a 

very important factor in world politics,” 

Mr Putin said at the start of 

talks. “I am certain your visit ... will 

give Russian-Chinese ties a new and 

powerful impulse.” 

Mr Xi replied, through a translator, 

by telling Mr Putin: “I get the impression 

that you and I always treat each 

other with an open soul, our characters 

are alike. 

“We always speak in a good manner, 

you and I are good friends.” 

His remark brings to mind former 

US President George Bush’s declaration 

on meeting Mr Putin in 2001 that 

he had looked him in the eye and “was 

able to get a sense of his soul”. 

Mr Xi, who took oice this month, 

has met Mr Putin previously, including 

in Moscow. 

Both countries have increasingly 

underlined the importance of developing 

ties but this has not always translated 

into agreement on bilateral energy 

deals. 

World is ‘not 

well-prepared’ 

for next 

outbreak 


The lack of coordination in some 

countries was apparent in the WHO’s 

eforts to beef up the capacity of airports 

and ports to handle outbreaks. 

“There is a disconnect between the 

Health Ministry and the ports and airports,” 

Dr Nuttall said. 

“What these countries also need 

to know is, it is not just a problem for 

the Health Ministry. It involves the 

Ministry of Transport, the Ministry 

of Agriculture, as many viruses these 

days come from animals, so there’s 

a need to maintain surveillance 

on that.” 

An international public health 

expert, who declined to be named, 

Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) is the irst foreign guest to be met in the Kremlin 

by an honorary cavalry escort created by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 

2002,underlining the importance Mr Putin attaches to the relationship. PHOTO: AP 

A long-sought agreement on supplies 

of pipeline gas to China was unlikely 

to be signed during Mr Xi’s visit, 

although there will be other deals 

that will make Beijing the top customer 

for Russia’s oil. 

Just before Mr Xi’s arrival, a US$2 

billion deal was announced by Russian 

and Chinese companies to develop 

coal resources in eastern Siberia. 

Mr Putin has said he wants to 

“catch the Chinese wind in our economic 

sail” and observers say that desire 

will grow stronger if China overtakes 

the US as the world’s largest 

economy during Mr Xi’s 10-year term. 

said the recent outbreak of the novel 

coronavirus — which belongs to the 

same family as the SARS virus — was 

a case in point of how countries are 

still not transparent enough with public 

health data. 

The virus, which emerged from the 

Middle East, has killed nine people 

so far. 

But the response from the afected 

countries has been “disappointing”, 

with the information on the outbreak 

made public only months later, the expert 

said. 

He added: “No country wants to 

admit they have a public health problem, 

it can afect tourism.” 

The doctor who diagnosed the irst 

patient with a strain of the coronavirus 

in Saudi Arabia was reportedly 

ired for trying to inform researchers 

and public health agencies. 

Nevertheless, Dr Nuttall said that 

compared to the SARS outbreak, 

when countries such as China were 

criticised for withholding information, 

the situation has improved. 

“(Countries) know there is a need 

to be transparent. Today, information 

Talks between the two leaders will 

also likely touch on Syria, Iran as well 

as other international issues on which 

the two governments often join hands 

against Western demands. 

They are expected to issue a joint 

declaration “enunciating positions 

and proposals on a series of major international 

and regional issues,” China’s 

Xinhua news agency reported. 

Mr Xi will be in Russia until tomorrow 

before lying to the African 

continent for a state visit to Tanzania, 

South Africa and the Republic 

of Congo. 

AGENCIES 

travels fast, especially with social media,” 

she said. 

Professor Malik Peiris, Chair Professor 

of Virology and Professor (Clinical) 

of the School of Public Health at 

the University of Hong Kong Li Ka 

Shing Faculty of Medicine, reiterated 

that border control measures can 

only do so much. 

“They are useful to have, but for 

some diseases, the incubation period 

is longer than the time it takes to ly 

from Singapore to New York, for instance. 

So you won’t be able to pick it 

up. Simple measures such as identifying 

patients and isolating them are 

more useful.” 

Noting how countries such as 

Thailand and Vietnam responded 

quickly to avian lu outbreaks in the 

past few years, Professor Peiris said: 

“The problem is that, clearly, diferent 

countries in Asia have difering 

levels of capacity. And of the most 

dramatic lessons learnt from SARS, 

any infectious diseases in one part is 

a problem for people elsewhere in the 

world tomorrow.” 

TAN WEIZHEN

tOday • Saturday 23 March 2013 

11 saturday 

people 

21 years ater 

he arrived 

here and built 

a thriving 

business from 

scratch, Harish 

Nim considers 

himself a 

passionate ‘old’ 

Singaporean — 

who thinks all 

new citizens 

should serve NS 

THE ST REGIS PERSPECTIVES 

His 

singapore 

dream 

WHAT MR HARISH NIM HAD AT LABREZZA 

Appetiser 

Burrata cheese, heirloom tomatoes, basil 

Pizza 

Beef carpaccio, black trufle, tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella 

S$64++ 

mr Harish nim at The st regis singapore. PHoto: ooi Boon KeonG 

Woo Sian Boon 

woosianboon@mediacorp.com.sg 

The ... emotion 

that lives with me 

is a sense of ‘what might 

have been’ had injuries 

not robbed me of my most 

lethal weapon — speed. 

Michael Owen • 27 

When he was granted 

Singapore citizenship 

17 years ago, 

Mr Harish Nim, 

then aged 35, tried 

to enlist for National Service (NS). 

Making a trip to Depot Road 

Camp, he put his request to a 

young NSman on duty. “The guy 

looked at me and said, ‘Sir, I get my 

boss’. The boss walks in, says, ‘You 

know, we have an age limit’ ... So, 

okay lor.” 

So to fulil his “national duty”, 

Mr Nim has served on various panels 

such as the Economic Strategies 

Committee, the Ministry of 

Education’s COMPASS and the 

Family Matters! Committee of the 

former Ministry of Community Development, 

Youth and Sports. 

Asked why, Mr Nim, 53, shrugs 

and says: “You do what you can. 

It’s my country. I’m very passionate 

about Singapore.” After all, the 

company he set up here in 1997, 

with only S$15,000 in capital, today 

has 1,500 employees working 

out of 12 countries. “Only in Singapore 

could I have done that, no other 

place,” says the Chief Executive 

of Emerio GlobeSoft, a technology 

services and outsourcing company. 

ONLY ONE CHOICE 

Mr Nim arrived on these shores in 

1992, with a young family in tow, 

seeking new pastures after he had 

worked his way up the corporate 

ladder in the IT industry in India. 

Armed with a Masters in Business 

Administration from the Indian 

Institute of Management and an 

engineering degree from the Indian 

Institute of Technology, Mr Nim 

could have continued on as a senior 

manager in Pertech Computers, a 

major personal-computer manufacturer 

in India. 

“Except for banking, I think it 

was one of the best careers that I 

could have had. But after 10 years 

I just sat back and thought, is my 

life going the way I want it to? No.” 

Having visited Singapore four 

times on business trips, Mr Nim 

liked its “Western infrastructure, 

safety and Asian values”. Many of 

his former classmates had moved 

to the United States and “at the 

time, Singapore was not a trendy 

place to be”. “But something about 

it really attracted me. There was 

only one choice,” said Mr Nim. 

We need citizens who 

have a stake in our 

country and not people 

who are here only because it’s a 

fabulous place to live ... Either they 

embrace Singapore fully or leave. 

Mr Harish Nim 

on WHY nS SHouLD Be CoMPuLSoRY 

FoR aLL neW CitiZenS 

Getting a job with an IT company 

here, he sold all his possessions in 

his home country — “after 10 years 

of working, it amounted to about 

S$12,000” — and relocated. 

The irst six months were tough. 

He, his wife and two daughters lived 

in one room in a Housing and Development 

Board (HDB) flat, all relying 

on his pay cheque. “It was quite 

a dumb thing to do actually. I was a 

senior manager, had a nice house, car 

and household help. And I decided to 

chuck it all for a job in Singapore paying 

S$2,500 … It was tough.” 

To cap it off, Mr Nim discovered 

that his employer had been deducting 

Central Provident Fund (CPF) from 

his salary, when he had no CPF account. 

It was then he decided to start 

his own business. 

DREAMS DON’T COST ANYTHING 

Without enough capital of his own, he 

sought help from his former employer 

in India, which suggested he set up its 

subsidiary in Singapore. 

“So I took it on. Suddenly, my salary 

increased three times and it was comfortable. 

After a year and a half, I actually 

bought our irst home.” PCL Mindshare 

took of, and he began making 

arrangements to hand over the reins 

so he could leave to do his own thing. 

That took three years, but the itch 

to become his own boss prevailed. 

“Dreams don’t cost anything, right? 

So when I dreamt, I dreamt really big.” 

With S$15,000 in savings, he set 

up Emerio GlobeSoft. His goal: To 

become South-east Asia’s leading IT 

services company, a target he says he 

is still “nowhere near”, though he did 

ind a niche in providing “a one-window 

IT service to European or American 

MNCs who want service coverage 

across the region”. 

Today, Emerio operates out of 

countries like India, Germany, the US, 

Britain and Australia — but Southeast 

Asia is “where the action is”, 

says Mr Nim, who targets 25 per cent 

growth in Malaysia, Thailand, the 

Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia. 

“We’re planning to scale up in these 

countries. This market is growing.” 

ContinueD on PaGe 13

12 

saturday people today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

LESSONS FROM LIFE THEN AI PING typical problems most teens face. I 

thenaiping@mediacorp.com.sg wondered about the meaning of life.” 

His outlook began to change when 

When Sean Lim was 24, his father was he was doing National Service. 

diagnosed with prostate cancer. “Army gave me time to reflect. I 

At age 26, he got into debt amount- read self-help books intensively, stoing 

to S$70,000. At 30, just when he ries about people in unfortunate situ- 

got out of debt, his mum was found to ations. When I saw how much worse 

have a brain tumour. At 33, a business of they were, I realised how blessed I 

franchiser absconded with Mr Lim’s was and how I’d never given my best 

S$150,000 investment. because of my low self-esteem ... It was 

And at age 36, Mr Lim published a journey to realising my choice to be 

a book on how happiness is within happy,” he says. 

one’s reach, released in December. This decision was his armour in 

His attitude can be summed up in tough times. Without a proper in- 

his concise mantra: Happiness is a come for a year while trying to make 

choice. “It is not what happens to you his way as a self-employed young man, 

that matters, it is how you react to it. Mr Lim had to make wedding prepa- 

You cannot control the weather, but rations, pay for his home and renovate 

you can control the clothes you wear. it. He resorted to loans and using his 

You can complain about your situa- credit card, accumulating a mountain 

tion, but you have a choice to move of debt. 

on,” he says. It was a stressful time, “but I was 

“I always expect the worst so that still optimistic because ... when you 

I will not be disappointed, and am love what you are doing, you have a 

thankful when it doesn’t turn out the feeling things will turn out well”. 

way I imagined. In fact, one gener- His wife, who worked in banking 

ally does get a decent outcome. The and was earning about S$4,000 a 

worst does not occur,” adds Mr Lim, month, helped share the inancial load. 

who recently released his book Hap- But the following year, she got pregpiness 

Within Your Reach: 52 Ideas to nant with their irst son and quit her 

a Happier You. job to be a homemaker. 

Growing up, the director of an inde- Business picked up for Mr Lim 

pendent advisory irm said his family and he paid of his debts within three 

was close-knit but “very traditional”; years. But in 2008, he invested in an 

they found it hard to open up. education franchise and lost his mon- 

Mr Sean Lim published a book on how happiness is within one’s “I was feeling frustrated and had ey. The other investors sued the fran- 

reach in December. PHOTO: OOI BOON KEONG 

low self-esteem ... You know, the chiser, but Mr Lim let the matter go. 

Choosing 

to be happy 

“I just wanted to move on. For me, 

I always believe that there’s a learning 

point in any situation, like it or not. 

Mine was that I did not do enough research 

before investing.” 

As a father of two boys aged six and 

three, Mr Lim ensures he has time 

with his family — he works at most 

six hours a day. 

Mr Lim also gets eight hours of 

sleep, has cofee breaks with friends 

at least an hour a day and exercises 

on weekends. 

“Time with family or friends is 

part of happiness,” he says. “Based 

on statistics I’ve read, we should socialise 

about six hours a day. That is 

almost impossible ... one to two hours 

is good enough. So although I’m an introvert, 

I try to socialise during my 

cofee breaks. I always feel recharged 

after that.” 

According to statistics, those 

struggling with daily expenses are 

generally less happy, but anything 

more than a decent income does not 

necessarily make one happier. 

Mr Lim added: “There are statistics 

that are in favour of Singapore being 

a happy state because everything 

is provided for. 

“The foundation of happiness is 

to have all your basic needs met — 

and we have most of our basic needs 

met here.” As for pursuing happiness, 

he says: “Happiness is not a goal; it is 

not a moving target. It is to be contented 

with what you have now.”

13 

saturday people today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

His Singapore 

dream 


HIRE LOCALS, BUT HOW? 

At home, however, Mr Nim is more 

subdued when it comes to business 

opportunities. 

Munching on a breadstick over dinner 

at The St Regis Singapore, he is 

blunt as he shares that his head oice 

here is not immune to the Government’s 

decision to tighten the inlow 

of foreign workers. 

“We used to have 670 people (here) 

and we’ve lost 280. Those on Employment 

Passes working here for three, 

four years, they were rejected on renewal,” 

he says. 

He echoes some others’ predictions 

that Singapore’s economy will 

slow, with more companies outsourcing 

jobs to other countries. 

“I know companies which are sending 

back work which has been done 

in Singapore for the last 10 years. If 

you add it all up, maybe 200,000 to 

300,000 PMET jobs ... Calculate the 

taxes, the money they spend here, all 

gone, and it’ll never come back. Once 

they make it work ofshore, why would 

they come back?” 

This, coupled with the company’s 

diiculty in hiring and retaining locals, 

has led Mr Nim to consider moving 

his headquarters out of Singapore. 

“Our business is IT services and 

mostly, the technical positions are not 

applied for by locals as I believe there 

aren’t enough of such people here who 

are experienced and willing to work 

for a non-branded, small company. 

They prefer the large MNCs.” 

Not that he did not try. 

“Whenever I put my foot down and 

say ‘we will only hire locals’, we end up 

not being able to hire, and bowing to 

delivery exigencies … I have had candidates 

rejecting our ofers for various 

reasons such as location, job scope 

and beneits. 

“I have people leaving because they 

have found a job that is one MRT station 

closer to their home. I have had 

people join and leave as the work pressure 

is ‘too high’.” 

AN ‘OLD’ SINGAPOREAN 

At one point, he catches himself. “I 

talk too much. But I’ve been here 

20 years. This is my country, so I’m 

allowed to voice my opinion, right?” 

Comparing himself to expatriate 

friends who only took up citizenship 

“ive or seven years ago”, the seasoned 

entrepreneur describes himself as an 

“old” Singaporean. 

Acknowledging that not all foreigners 

will successfully integrate, 

he says: “I started from the bottom. 

If you come here as head of an MNC, 

there’s not much chance to (integrate) 

… (if you’ve) never been to a neighbourhood 

food court. It’s also personal 

— how much you want to, how much 

you enjoy living here.” 

I love local 

food … 

Breakfast, 

chee cheong 

fun. In 

between, rojak 

or something, 

but the best 

breakfast in 

the world is 

kaya toast, 

sot boiled egg 

and the kopi 

si gau siu dai. 

Mr Harish Nim 

And he continues to firmly believe 

in NS enlistment — which he 

feels should be compulsory for all 

new citizens. 

“We need citizens who have a stake 

in our country and not people who 

are here only because it’s a fabulous 

place to live. We do need these new 

citizens to form our core for the future. 

Either they embrace Singapore 

fully or leave.” 

Besides peppering the ends of his 

sentences with the colloquial lehs and 

lahs, Mr Nim — when he is not jetting 

around the world on business — also 

thinks nothing of walking 2km every 

morning for his “favourite kopi si gau 

siu dai” (strong cofee with evaporated 

milk and less sugar). 

“I love local food … Breakfast, 

chee cheong fun. In between, rojak or 

something, but the best breakfast in 

the world is kaya toast, soft boiled egg 

and the kopi si gau siu dai.” 

While they are now residing in a 

Bukit Timah condominium, Mr Nim 

does not discount downgrading now 

that his two daughters are grown and 

carving out their own lives. 

With a chuckle, he says: “Why 

not? We’ll move into a three-room 

HDB. Very convenient, just take the 

lift down, go to the kopitiam, read 

your paper, chit-chat with all the other 

old people, it’s a very good life ... 

Very relaxed.”

14 

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today • saturday 23 march 2013 

18 

WE SET YOU THINKING 

voices 

MANAGING DIRECTOR & EDITOR 

Walter Fernandez 

DEPUTY EDITOR 

Carl Skadian 

ASSOCIATE EDITORS 

loh Chee kong 

Yvonne lim 

EXECUTIVE EDITORS 

razali abdullah 

Phin Wong 

DIGITAL MEDIA EDITOR 

edriC Sng 

EDITOR-AT-LARGE 

Conrad raj 

NEWS 

leong Wee keat 

VOICES 

derriCk a Paulo 

FOREIGN 

trixia CarungCong 

BUSINESS 

david bottomleY 

SPORTS 

gerard Wong 

FEATURES 

ChriStoPher toh, maYo martin 

SPECIAL PROJECTS 

ariel tam 

OPERATIONS • riChard j valladareS 

CORPORATE SERVICES • roSalind Png 

CIRCULATION • SunnY iSSaC 

MARKETING • Caroline joanne bone 

EDITORIAL SUPPORT • doreen Sabai 

MEDIACORP PRESS LTD 

today@mediacorp.com.sg 

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andrew road, Singapore 299939 

tel: 6236 4888 | Fax: 6534 4217 

NEWS HOTLINE 6822 2268 

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• have your say 

email your letters to voices@mediacorp.com.sg 

• join the conversation 

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• read more letters 

todayonline.com/voices 

The big debate on the HDB’s role 

Should the public housing provider fulil wide-ranging aspirations, or should it 

stop the frills? Here are some views from Thursday’s episode of VoicesTODAY. 

on the show 

FROM chua soo Kiat 

The issue boils down to the income 

ceiling for Build-To-Order (BTO) lats: 

There should be none. Married Singaporeans 

should be entitled to buy a 

BTO lat. There could be people whose 

incomes are below the ceiling but who 

come from wealthy families and can 

aford a house. Others may bust the 

ceiling by a bit but have other inancial 

commitments. 

We should not force people into 

private property if they do not want 

higher liabilities. That is inancial prudence. 

And housing subsidies are not 

a lot compared to the amount spent on 

defence or education. 

We may not need to shelve Executive 

Condominiums (ECs) permanently 

— maybe for a few years — although 

I do not think one needs to have a condo 

unit or a swimming pool in one’s 

estate to have a decent lifestyle. 

For the lower- and middle-income, 

there should be more BTO options 

that are priced lower. 

FROM leow Zi Xiang 

There would be diferent segments of 

the market who would be receptive to 

diferent kinds of goods, so to speak. 

For instance, as long as the price is 

right, some people would be okay with 

no-frills flats, assuming that these 

could be sold back to the Housing and 

Development Board (HDB). 

It would be a good way to control 

prices somewhat. The HDB would retain 

control over the sale and buyback 

prices, and we could avoid the bubble 

efect we are almost seeing now. 

I am sure that the HDB can provide 

diferentiated goods — no-frills 

housing for those who want it and lats 

with trimmings for those with higher 

aspirations. 

letter 

FROM henry ng 

The Government must be brave and 

freeze prices of new HDB lats for the 

next three years. Even if resale prices 

continue to head upwards, the prices 

of new lats would act as a bufer. We 

do not want a market crash. 

Concurrently, creating a category 

of HDB lats that cannot be held as an 

asset is a must. These would be basic 

flats and should be meant for those 

who cannot aford to regard housing 

as an investment. 

When this category is running 

smoothly, we should take away some 

or all housing subsidies. It is ridiculous 

to subsidise people who earn S$10,000 

or S$12,000 a month, igures that have 

been shifted upwards to appease 

the public. 

Catch the 

repeat telecast of 

voicestodaY at 

6.15pm today on 

Channel 5 (hd5). 

VIDEO 

VOICESTODAY 

HDB FLATS: 

BACK TO 

BASICS 

Scan the Qr code 




tdy.sg/voicestoday 


on FacebooK 

FROM serynn guay 

Premium lats are okay, but in moderation. 

The mass market should be 

the main focus due to higher demand. 

I doubt that it is possible to have 

lower prices, but it would be good if 

HDB lats were to come with betterquality 

doors and looring ... and some 

furnishings, so that they are in better 

move-in conditions. 

Apartment blocks can be built 

higher, but do not compromise too 

much on unit sizes. 

on todayonline 

FROM henry tan 

ECs and the Design, Build and Sell 

Scheme were misguided schemes. 

The more the HDB caters to private 

housing aspirations, the more the Government 

would have to shore up property 

values to gain votes. 

This is not sustainable. It has to 

stop at some point, and the house of 

cards would fall. 

No one can ensure that property 

values never come down. 

FROM PhiliP KweK 

The HDB should be the good old nanny 

that provides afordable, basic housing 

for Singaporeans. 

Anyone who then chooses to buy 

private property should be aware of 

the risks and returns, and not come 

crying to the nanny.

19 

voices today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

S$600 a year for 

your health: SDP 

FROM Paul taMbyah 

for the Singapore Democratic Party 

Healthcare Advisory Panel 

During the recent Committee of Supply 

debates, the Health Minister said: 

“The review of our healthcare inancing 

system will be extensive, and will 

involve fundamental shifts.” 

The Government will “take on a 

greater share of national spending, 

from the current one-third to about 

40 per cent and possibly even further”. 

The Singapore Democratic Party 

(SDP) applauds these steps, which 

bring Singapore closer to where we 

were in the 1980s. However, we share 

Dr Jeremy Lim’s concern, in his commentary 

“Only one ‘right’ question to 

ask” (March 20), that there is a need 

to go beyond incremental steps to real 

fundamental shifts. 

As he stated, the important question 

in the healthcare cost debate is 

whether Singapore’s healthcare is 

afordable to the extent that it gives 

people “peace of mind”. 

By simply tweaking the fundamentally 

flawed 3M system (Medisave, 

MediShield and Medifund), the 

Health Minister would miss the point. 

Medisave funds are taken from 

Singaporeans’ Central Provident 

Fund savings. Even if its usage is liberalised, 

users would continue to expend 

their retirement income, leaving 

them with insuicient savings for 

the future. Medisave is also used for 

our children’s and elderly parents’ 

hospital bills. All these add to people’s 

inancial burden. This is not the way 

forward to a sustainable system that 

afordably takes care of Singaporeans’ 

healthcare needs. 

As Dr Lim notes, the SDP does not 

advocate a system where the Government 

shoulders all of the cost and 

users pay nothing. Our plan calls for 

Singaporeans to pay S$600 a year on 

average from our CPF into a National 

Health Investment Fund — a universal, 

national health insurance scheme, 

based on the principle of risk pooling, 

to ensure that Singaporeans have 

peace of mind in healthcare. 

The Government would contribute 

to the fund for those who cannot aford 

the payments. There are also diferent 

co-payments for outpatient treatment 

of acute conditions and for serious 

hospitalisations, which are capped. 

Such a single-payer system is 

streamlined and cleaner than the 3M 

system, requiring less bureaucracy 

and administrative costs. Most importantly, 

this plan treats healthcare 

as a basic right of Singaporeans rather 

than a commodity one purchases 

when one falls ill. 

Such an approach undergirds the 

diference between the SDP’s and the 

current system. The last thing we 

want when we or our loved ones fall 

ill is to worry whether we can aford 

the treatment. 

Such a 

single-payer 

system is 

streamlined 

and cleaner 

than the 3M 

system ... 

Most 

importantly, 

this 

plan treats 

healthcare 

as a basic 

right of 

Singaporeans 

rather 

than a commodity 

one 

purchases 

when 

one falls ill. 

Give demerit points to vehicles, not drivers 

FROM liM EE hui 

Fixing yellow-and-black rubber 

poles along roads, as suggested in “A 

cheaper alternative to CCTVs to deter 

illegal parking” (March 22), is not a 

good solution. 

I have written on numerous occasions 

to the Land Transport Authority 

about illegal parking along Kallang 

Way. But even after double yellow 

lines and white lines were drawn and 

a concrete centre divider built recently, 

the problem continues. 

This is a particularly bad stretch 

of road — because there is an almost 

90° curve, as well as a 20° downhill 

gradient. 

A better alternative would be to 

bar vehicles with more than a certain 

number of demerit points from being 

on the road. Imposing demerit points 

on motorists alone will not work, since 

this is more diicult to enforce than 

to record demerit points against vehicles, 

whose in-vehicle units can be 

tracked through Electronic Road Pricing 

gantries. 

Would the appropriate authorities 

comment on these suggestions?


20 

singapore 

Singapore WoMen’S congreSS 2013 

More women-friendly practices needed 

Need for work-life balance, 

female-centric policies 

also highlighted by panellists 

LOUISA TANG 

louisatangqr@mediacorp.com.sg 

SINGAPORE — The lack of women in positions 

of leadership or with decisionmaking 

power and the need for women 

in the workforce came in for a lively 

discussion at the Singapore Women’s 

Congress yesterday. 

Only 81 per cent of women who 

graduated from Harvard University 

in the early 2000s and 49 per cent of 

women who graduated in the 1990s 

are working full-time, said Malaysian 

columnist and women’s rights advocate 

Marina Mahathir in her keynote 

speech at the event, which was organised 

by MediaCorp. 

There is a need for better work-life 

balance, as “with education, women no 

longer are satisied with simply staying 

home” but want successful careers 

while marrying and having families, 

she added. 

Also highlighted at the congress 

was the need for women-centric policies, 

such as a reasonable amount of 

maternity leave and laws against sexual 

harassment. 

As Singapore continues to grapple 

with falling birth rates and a labour 

shortage, the Singapore Government 

has moved to better support companies 

in improving work-life balance 

for employees in the recent Budget 

announcements, aiming to encourage 

women to rejoin or remain in 

the workforce. 

Senior Minister of State (Law and 

Education) Indranee Rajah had earlier 

stressed the importance of societal 

change in her opening speech, saying 

that the issue of lexi-working hours is 

something very “current”, which the 

Government is “actively looking at to 

see how we can support”. 

“Our approach has been, at the moment, 

not to legislate it as yet, but to 

see whether we can get all the stakeholders 

to do it as something that becomes 

a norm,” she said. 

While Ms Marina made a case for 

legislating that 30 per cent of all decision-making 

places should be allocated 

to women, fellow panellist Eleanor 

Wong “categorically disagreed”. 

Ms Wong, a playwright and Director 

of the Legal Skills Programme at 

the National University of Singapore’s 

(From left) 

Panellists Eleanor 

Wong, Laura 

Hwang, Natalie 

Turner and Marina 

Mahathir with 

moderator 

Lian Pek at 

the Singapore 

Women’s 

Congress 2013. 

PHOTO: ERNEST CHUA 

Faculty of Law, said that in her opinion, 

gender discrimination was not the 

issue in Singapore. 

“It’s the conventional status quo 

discrimination against those who are 

different and think differently, and 

that’s what we have to ight. That cuts 

across men and women,” she said. 

Earlier, she also pointed out that 

it surprised her that “anyone needs 

to ask the question whether women 

are ready to lead or that we should 

somehow think that a woman leader 

ought to be good for women … I always 

thought we ought to choose people for 

jobs because they’re good at it, and the 

job of a leading politician is to be good 

for everyone, men and women”. 

Also discussed yesterday was the 

issue of women in politics and business. 

It was noted by Ms Marina and 

other panellists that even when women 

politicians are elected, they tend 

not to “empower other women” or are 

“afraid to bring up issues concerning 

women” as they know “they will get 

too little support for them”. 

While women occupy only 6.9 per 

cent of company board seats in Singapore, 

24 per cent of parliamentarians 

here are women, slightly above the 

world average of 20 per cent, according 

to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. 

However, Ms Laura Hwang, President 

of the Singapore Council of Women’s 

Organisations, noted the “unprecedented” 

number of women who 

contested for political positions in the 

2011 General Election, signalling that 

Singapore is headed in the right direction. 

“We had women in just about 

every single ward,” she said.

21 

singapore today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

Red Cross warns of fund-raising scams 

SINGAPORE — The Singapore Red Cross 

(SRC) has advised the public not to 

fall prey to cheats who raise funds 

in its name. 

It said yesterday it had been 

alerted to several cases of individuals 

claiming to be volunteers and soliciting 

donations on its behalf. They 

were carrying fake documents and 

collaterals bearing the SRC logo and 

Over 90% of fresh 

grads from 2012 

cohort employed 

SINGAPORE — More than 90 per cent of 

fresh university graduates were employed 

in 2012, according to the irst 

joint Graduate Employment Survey 

conducted by Singapore’s three autonomous 

universities. 

The National University of Singapore 

(NUS), Nanyang Technological 

University (NTU) and Singapore 

Management University (SMU) said 

in a joint statement yesterday that 

their graduates continue to be well 

sought after in the job market. 

They said the indings strongly afirm 

the value of a local university degree 

to employers in Singapore. 

A total of 9,668 full-time fresh graduates 

took part in the survey. As at Nov 

1 last year, the overall employment rate 

among economically active graduates 

was 91 per cent. Of these, 85.6 per cent 

held full-time permanent jobs. 

The median gross monthly salary 

for those in full-time permanent employment 

was S$3,050, while the mean 

gross monthly salary was S$3,260. 

A total of 550 follow-up graduates 

— those who completed their studies 

in 2011 but had to serve pupillage or 

housemanship — from all three universities 

also took part in the survey. 

The graduates were from the courses 

of Architecture, Law, Medicine and 

Pharmacy, and Biomedical Science 

(Traditional Chinese Medicine). 

Of the follow-up graduates who 

are economically active, the overall 

employment rate was 98.6 per cent, 

with 98 per cent in full-time permanent 

employment. The median gross 

monthly salary for those in full-time 

permanent employment was S$4,500, 

while the mean gross monthly salary 

was S$4,465. 

Separately, NUS said graduates 

from several of its faculties and courses 

“generally received a higher pay” 

than the overall mean gross monthly 

salary among fresh graduates employed 

in full-time, permanent employment, 

but did not disclose any igures. 

SMU said the mean gross monthly 

salary of its graduates last year was 

a record S$3,395, an increase from 

S$3,388 in 2011. 

NTU said the mean gross monthly 

salary for its graduates improved by 

2.76 per cent, from S$3,152 in 2011 to 

S$3,239 last year. CHANNEL NEWSASIA 

To report any 

door-to-door or 

street solicitations 

under the Red 

Cross name, 

call the SRC at 

6664-0500 or make 

a police report. 

Graduate 

Employment 

Survey findings 

Overall 

employment rate 

among 

economically 

active graduates 

was 91 per cent. 

Of these, 85.6 per 

cent held full-time 

permanent jobs. 

Median gross 

monthly salary for 

those in full-time 

permanent 

employment was 

S$3,050, while the 

mean gross monthly 

salary was S$3,260. 

fake fund-raising licenses. 

The SRC said that at the moment, 

it is not holding any public 

appeal or fund-raising activities 

that are conducted door-to-door. 

It advised the public to report any 

door-to-door or street solicitations 

they come across. 

The authorities are investigating 

the matter. CHANNEL NEWSASIA 

Employer fined for using unlicensed agent 

SINGAPORE — A 23-year-old Indian national 

has become the irst employer to 

be convicted for using an unlicensed 

employment agent to hire a foreigner, 

since the revised Employment Agencies 

Act came into efect in April 2011. 

In February 2011, Sadh Aakash Raman, 

director of Times Supermarket, 

engaged his uncle Balaguru Amirthalingam 

for a fee of S$6,000 to submit 

a work pass application for the foreign- 

er. He pleaded guilty to one charge of 

engaging the services of an unlicensed 

employment agent and was convicted 

of one charge of illegally employing 

a foreigner without a valid work 

pass. Three other illegal employment 

charges against him were taken into 

consideration for sentencing. 

Sadh was ined S$4,500 and will be 

jailed for 18 days if he is unable to pay 

the ine. CHANNEL NEWSASIA


22 

world 

StuMbling block to policyMaking 

China’s pollution woes 

clouded by infighting 

BEIJING — China’s state leadership transition 

took place this month against 

an ominous backdrop: Thousands of 

pigs were found dead in a river that 

provides drinking water to Shanghai 

while a haze akin to volcanic fumes 

cloaked the capital. So severe are China’s 

environmental woes, that top government 

oicials have been forced to 

openly acknowledge them. 

Ms Fu Ying, the spokeswoman for 

the National People’s Congress, said 

she checked for smog every morning 

after opening her curtains, wore 

a face mask when it looked bad and 

strapped one on her daughter, too. 

Mr Li Keqiang, the new Premier, 

saying the air pollution had made him 

“quite upset”, vowed to “show even 

greater resolve” to clean it up. 

What the leaders neglect to say is 

that inighting within the government 

bureaucracy is one of the biggest obstacles 

to enacting stronger environmental 

policies. Even as some oicials 

push for tighter restrictions on pollutants, 

state-owned enterprises — especially 

China’s oil and power companies 

— have been putting proits ahead of 

health in working to outflank new 

rules, according to government data 

and interviews with people involved 

in policy negotiations. 

For instance, even though trucks 

and buses crisscrossing China are far 

worse for the environment than any 

other vehicles, the oil companies have 

delayed for years an improvement in 

the diesel fuel those vehicles burn. 

As for power companies, the three 

biggest ones in the country are all repeat 

violators of government restrictions 

on emissions from coal-burning 

plants — ofending power plants are 

found across the country, from Inner 

Mongolia to the southwest metropolis 

of Chongqing. The state-owned enterprises 

are given critical roles in policymaking 

on environmental standards. 

The committees that determine fuel 

standards, for example, are housed in 

the buildings of an oil company. 

Whether the enterprises can be 

forced to follow, rather than impede, 

environmental restrictions will be 

a critical test of the commitment of 

Mr Li and Mr Xi Jinping, the new 

Communist Party chief and President, 

to curbing the inluence of vested interests 

in the economy. 

Last month, after deadly air pollution 

hit record levels in northern China, 

officials led by Mr Wen Jiabao, 

then the Premier, put forward strict 

Beijing oficials 

have said that 

vehicle emissions 

account for 22 per 

cent of the main 

deadly particulate 

matter in the air, 

known as PM 2.5, 

and another 40 per 

cent is from 

coal-ired factories 

in Beijing and 

nearby provinces. 

new fuel standards that the oil companies 

had blocked for years. 

Sinopec and PetroChina, two of 

the biggest oil companies, had insisted 

that consumers or the government 

pay to upgrade their reineries 

to produce cleaner fuel, and they had 

delayed approving higher standards 

unless there is consensus on who pays. 

Fuel standards are issued by the 

Standardization Administration of 

China, which convenes a committee 

and a subcommittee to research 

standards. They each have 30-40 

members, almost all of whom are 

from oil companies who “will represent 

more of the company’s interests”, 

said Mr Yue Xin, a scientist who sits on 

one of the groups on behalf of the Ministry 

of Environmental Protection. 

Oil oicials resisted a similar government 

order for higher-grade fuel 

four years ago, so there are doubts 

about whether the oil companies will 

comply with the new standards. 

State-owned power companies 

have been as resistant. The companies 

regularly ignore government orders 

to upgrade coal-burning electricity 

plants, according to ministry data. 

The Environmental Protection 

Ministry last month issued stricter 

factory emissions standards for six 

coal-burning industries. First on the 

list is the power industry, which accounts 

for about half the coal consumption 

in China. And as with the 

oil companies, the power companies 

exert an outsize inluence over environmental 

policy debates. 

In 2011, during a round of discussions 

over stricter emissions standards, 

the China Electricity Council, 

which represents the companies, 

pushed back hard against the proposals, 

saying that the costs of upgrading 

the plants would be too high. 

“During the procedure of setting 

the standard, the companies or the 

industry councils have a lot of inluence,” 

said Ms Zhou Rong, a campaign 

manager on energy issues for Greenpeace 

East Asia. “My personal opinion 

is even if we have the most stringent 

standards for every sector, the companies 

will violate those.” 

Another problem is the low penalties: 

Fines are generally capped around 

US$16,000 (S$20,000), not much of a 

deterrent, said Ms Zhou. She said the 

violating factories “should be required 

to stop production temporarily — that 

would then force companies to take this 

seriously”. ThE NEw York TImEs 

A prayer to end racism 

Wearing a Jewish skullcap, United States President Barack Obama pauses after 

rekindling the eternal lame and laying a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust 

memorial in Jerusalem yesterday. He spoke of a collective “obligation not just 

to bear witness but to act” against racism “and especially anti-Semitism” as 

he wrapped up his three-day visit to Israel and the West Bank with symbolic 

pilgrimages. Mr Obama’s next stop will be Jordan, where he will meet King 

Abdullah II today. PhoTo: rEuTErs 

Police foil terror 

attack on New Delhi 

NEw DELhI — Police said yesterday 

that they foiled a terror attack by a 

Kashmiri rebel group that was planning 

to target India’s capital during 

celebrations of a major Hindu festival 

next week. 

The arrest on Wednesday of a suspected 

agent from Kashmir’s biggest 

rebel group, Hizb-ul Mujahedeen, led 

the authorities to a hotel in Delhi’s old 

quarter, where an assault rile, several 

grenades and plastic explosives 

were discovered, said senior Delhi police 

oicial S N Srivastava. 

He said the attack appeared to be 

a plot to avenge the recent hanging 

of Mohammed Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri 

militant who was convicted of involvement 

in a 2001 attack on India’s 

Parliament that left 14 people dead. 

The suspected agent, identiied 

as Syed Liaqat Shah, was arrested 

in a town along the Nepalese border 

following a tip. Mr Srivastava said 

Shah told the police the weapons 

were intended for an attack in New 

Delhi around the time of the popular 

Indian festival of Holi on Wednesday. 

Shah said he lew from Pakistan 

to Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, and 

then travelled by road to the India- 

Nepal border. He claimed he was instructed 

by his handlers in Pakistan 

to tear up his Pakistani passport upon 

reaching Kathmandu. “He was 

told to destroy his passport so that 

all traces of Pakistani involvement 

are destroyed,” Mr Srivastava said. 

India has long accused Pakistan 

of arming and training Islamic militants 

and unleashing them into India 

to attack government forces and 

other targets — a charge Islamabad 

denies. Kashmir has been wracked 

by more than two decades of separatist 

violence. 

While militant attacks have decreased 

in recent years, Kashmir 

has faced weeks of protests since 

Guru’s hanging last month in a New 

Delhi prison. Many Kashmiris do not 

believe Guru received a fair trial. AP

23 world today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

Grandfather of African literature Chinua Achebe dies 

LAGOS — Chinua Achebe (picture), the 

internationally celebrated Nigerian 

author, statesman and dissident who 

is widely seen as a grandfather of modern 

African literature, has died at the 

age of 82 after a brief illness. 

Achebe made his name more than 

50 years ago with his novel Things Fall 

Apart, about his Igbo ethnic group’s 

fatal brush with British colonialism in 

China not the 

source of cyber 

attacks: Seoul 

SEOUL — The South Korean government 

said yesterday that it was mistaken 

when it identiied an Internet address 

in China as the source of synchronised 

cyber attacks that paralysed the computer 

networks of banks and broadcasters 

in South Korea. 

The Korea Communications Commission, 

a government agency, said 

the Internet address actually belonged 

to a computer at Nonghyup, 

one of the three banks afected by the 

hacking on Wednesday. 

It was mistaken earlier, it said, because 

the address, used only for the 

bank’s internal network, was identical 

to a public Internet Protocol (IP) 

address registered in China. 

IP addresses are useful for tracing 

the location of an Internet-connected 

computer, though experts say 

the computer could be controlled by 

hackers operating elsewhere. 

South Korean investigators have 

found “indications that the malicious 

codes were installed from abroad”, 

the commission said. “There are so 

many similarities in the ways the attacks 

were executed and the viruses 

used that we believe that there was 

probably a single group behind them.” 

The coordinated attacks on 

Wednesday afected 32,000 computers 

and servers at the country’s two 

largest broadcasters, one cable channel 

and three banks. The banks were 

operating normally yesterday, but 

many of the broadcasters’ computers 

remained down. 

Many in South Korea suspect that 

North Korea was behind the shutdowns, 

partly because it was suspected 

in earlier attacks against South 

Korean websites. The North also recently 

issued several threats that it 

would retaliate against the South for 

staging joint military exercises with 

the United States and supporting 

United Nations sanctions imposed 

for its Feb 12 nuclear test. 

South Korea has not oicially assigned 

blame. Government investigators 

have said it would take weeks to 

complete their analysis. Even after a 

lengthy investigation, it is still sometimes 

impossible to identify the hackers, 

they said. THE NEW YORK TIMES 

WAR IN 

SEOUL, ON 

YOUTUBE 

North Korea 

has released a 

new propaganda 

video showing an 

imagined invasion 

of Seoul, titled A 

Short, Three-Day 

War. Posted on 

the government’s 

YouTube channel 

Uriminzokkiri, 

it begins with 

scenes of heavy 

artillery and 

rocket ire, 

followed by an air 

and land assault. 

The narrator 

says troops will 

occupy Seoul 

and other cities, 

taking 150,000 

American 

citizens hostage. 

the 1800s. It was the irst time the story 

of European colonialism had been 

told from an African perspective to an 

international audience. 

The novel was translated into 50 

languages and has sold more than 

10 million copies worldwide. 

A spokeswoman for his publisher, 

Penguin, conirmed his death but had 

few other details. 

Achebe’s early work focused on 

the social upheavals caused by colonialism 

in Africa. He later turned his 

sights on the devastation wrought to 

Nigeria and Africa by a series of military 

coups that entrenched kleptocratic 

dictatorship. 

Achebe became a yardstick against 

which generations of African writers 

have been judged since. His eminence 

worldwide was rivalled only by Gabriel 

Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison and 

a handful of others. 

Nelson Mandela read Achebe’s 

work in prison and once referred to 

him as a writer “in whose company 

the prison walls fell down”. 

A car accident put Achebe in a 

wheelchair in 1990, after which he 

wrote no books for more than 20 years. 

He spent most of his later years in the 

United States, where he lectured at 

universities. AGENCIES


24 

Euro ZoNE crISIS 

business 

SINGAPORE 

3,258.57 

(-0.28%) 

JAPAN 

12,338.53 

(-2.35%) 

HONG KONG 

22,115.30 

(-0.50%) 

SHANGHAI 

2,328.28 

(+0.17%) 

MUMBAI 

18,735.60 

(-0.30%) 

MALAYSIA 

1,626.89 

(-0.24%) 

AUSTRALIA 

4,967.30 

(+0.16%) 

Cyprus lawmakers scramble ahead of Monday deadline 

NICOSIA — Cyprus lawmakers reconvened 

for emergency talks late yesterday 

to cobble together a plan that 

would convince international lenders 

to provide the money the country 

would need to avoid bankruptcy 

within days. 

Cyprus needs to have a plan in 

place by Monday to raise the €5.8 billion 

(S$9.4 billion) necessary for a 

€10-billion bailout. Without a deal, 

the European Central Bank (ECB) will 

cut of emergency support to Cyprus’ 

banks, a move that could trigger their 

collapse and leave the economy reeling, 

possibly leading to the country 

having to leave the euro zone. 

The proposals being discussed 

come after plans to raise the money 

through a bank deposit levy of 6.75 to 

9.9 per cent caused widespread protests 

across Cyprus. 

“The next few hours will determine 

the future of this country,’’ said government 

spokesman Christos Stylianides. 

Members of the so-called troika 

of lenders — the International Monetary 

Fund, the ECB and the European 

Commission — met President Nicos 

Anastasiades and were planning to 

review the new proposal should Parliament 

pass it. 

Demonstrators massed again 

yesterday in front of the Parliament 

building, demanding access to their 

funds after banks were forced to remain 

closed until next Tuesday. 

With anger raging across the country, 

Mr Anastasiades’ new plan would 

scrap the controversial tax on bank 

deposits that Parliament unanimously 

rejected in a vote on Tuesday. Experts 

warned, however, that the levy might 

need to be revisited unless the government 

inds other means to satisfy 

Cyprus’ creditors and unlock the bailout 

funds. 

Lawmakers debated a number of 

possible alternatives to the tax, including 

the creation of an Investment 

Market reaction 

Markets were 

relatively calm 

yesterday as 

investors awaited 

developments from 

Cyprus. About an 

hour after the 

opening bell in New 

York, the Dow 

Jones Industrial 

Average was up 

about 0.6 per cent. 

Key bourses in 

Europe were lat to 

modestly higher in 

late trading as the 

Cyprus stock 

exchange remained 

shut. The euro rose 

0.4 per cent 

to US$1.2950. 

Solidarity Fund of pension fund assets, 

an emergency bond sale and the 

introduction of capital controls, which 

would limit cash withdrawals, prohibit 

or restrict cheque cashing and 

bar premature account closings and 

any other transaction the authorities 

deemed unwarranted. 

A Bill was also being considered 

which would see the country’s secondlargest 

lender, the Laiki Bank, split into 

“good” and “bad” assets. 

Before concrete details emerged, 

German leaders made it clear they 

would not back any deal that involved 

nationalising the state-owned companies’ 

pensions, a measure Berlin saw 

as even more socially dangerous than 

the original plan to tax savings. 

Cypriot Finance Minister Michalis 

Sarris returned yesterday from Moscow 

empty-handed after two days in 

the Russian capital pleading for additional 

aid. But Russian Prime Minister 

Dmitry Medvedev said in a joint 

SEOUL 

1,948.71 

(-0.11%) 

news conference with European Commission 

President Jose Manuel Barroso 

that his country was not walking 

away from Cyprus. 

“We haven’t shut the doors. Of 

course, we’ve got our own economic 

interests at stake,” he said. Additional 

eforts to help Cyprus will come “only 

after a final settlement scheme” involving 

the European Union, he added. 

As the clocked ticked away, a silver 

lining emerged, with Greece agreeing 

on a deal for the takeover of local 

units of stricken Cypriot banks, the 

two nations said, helping shield Greek 

banks from the fallout of the island’s 

crisis and allowing Cyprus to shrink 

its bloated banking sector. 

“The Cypriot branches in Greece 

will be sold to one Greek bank,” a 

senior oicial at the Hellenic Financial 

Stability Fund told Reuters, declining 

to be named. “The fund will 

assess the ofers submitted by Greek 

banks.” AGENCIES

25 business today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

HK home prices could plunge 20% on rate rises 

HONG KONG — Hong Kong leaders, who 

have struggled in vain for three years 

to slow growth in home prices amid 

fears of a housing bubble in the Special 

Administrative Region, are inally 

about to get their wish as the city’s 

biggest banks raise mortgage rates. 

Prices could fall as much as 20 per 

cent over the next two years, according 

to Deutsche Bank analysts, after 

lenders including HSBC Holdings, 

Hong Kong’s biggest by assets, 

and Standard Chartered raise their 

home loan rates by 25 basis points in 

response to tighter risk rules. 

The Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the 

US dollar has kept interest rates in the 

city near record lows, underpinning a 

more than 110 per cent gain in home 

prices since the beginning of 2009 to 

the most expensive among major global 

cities. 

Low mortgage costs, coupled with 

a property buying spree driven by 

Chinese from the mainland, have 

seen home prices shrug of repeated 

attempts by the Hong Kong government 

since 2010 to stymie escalating 

housing values amid an outcry 

over afordability. 

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive 

Leung Chun-ying, who took over last 

July as head of the government, on 

Feb 22 imposed his toughest pricecurbing 

measures yet by doubling the 

stamp duty on all property transactions 

over HK$2 million (S$322,000). 

The same day, the Hong Kong Monetary 

Authority told banks to maintain 

the risk weighting for new home 

loans at a minimum of 15 per cent to 

help protect them against a drop in 

home values. 

HSBC was the first among Hong 

Kong’s lenders to lift rates from 

March 14, with its prime-linked mortgages 

climbing to a range of 2.85 per 

cent to 3.15 per cent. Standard Chartered, 

meanwhile, increased its rates 

to a range of 3.1 per cent to 3.5 per cent. 

About a week later, BOC Hong Kong 

(Holdings), the city’s largest mortgage 

lender, increased mortgage rates to 

between 2.4 per cent and 3.05 per cent. 

Other major banks like HSBC-controlled 

Hang Seng Bank and the Bank 

of East Asia also raised rates. 

The rate rises may finally put a 

dent in prices, which have climbed 

16 per cent since Mr Leung was sworn 

in on July 1, according to an index compiled 

by Centaline Property Agency. 

“With the new government measures, 

the potential further rises in 

mortgage rates and the expected 

increases in new supply in the medium 

term, we expect property prices 

to show larger corrections,” said 

Mr Tony Tsang and Mr Jason Ching, 

analysts at Deutsche Bank. 

Prices of both residential and commercial 

real estate have “come down” 

in the past two weeks and the property 

market is “stabilising”, Mr Leung 

said on Thursday at the Credit Suisse 

Asian Investment Conference. 

Since 2010, Hong Kong has imposed 

an extra tax of up to 20 per cent 

Apartment prices 

A 646-sq-ft 

apartment on Hong 

Kong Island cost 

about HK$11,613 psf 

in January, 

according to Hong 

Kong’s Rating 

and Valuation 

Department. By 

that calculation, it 

would cost about 

HK$7.5 million on 

average. An 

equivalent-sized 

apartment in 

Manhattan would 

cost about 

US$700,300 

(S$875,000), 

or about 

HK$5.4 million, 

according to 

property irm 

Miller Samuel and 

brokerage Douglas 

Elliman Real Estate. 

of the value of homes on buyers who 

resell them within three years after 

purchasing, and raised the minimum 

downpayment requirement on mortgages 

for homes valued at more than 

HK$7 million. 

Mr Leung imposed an extra 15 per 

cent tax in October on all home purchases 

by companies and non-per- 

manent residents, and promised to 

increase land supply for private development 

and to build more government 

housing. 

While the impact on prices has 

yet to surface, the measures have reduced 

transactions. 

The average number of homes 

changing hands every month fell to 

6,777 last year from 7,039 in 2011 and 

11,315 in 2010. 

Total home transactions may fall 

below 3,000 in March — the monthly 

lowest since 2003 — and prices may 

drop as much as 10 per cent this year, 

said Mr Buggle Lau, chief analyst at 

Midland Holdings, the city’s biggest 

publicly traded realtor. BLOOMBERG

today • Saturday 23 march 2013 

26 

Formula one 

sports 

M’sian GP future in dOuBt: siC CHief 

Problem lies 

in convincing 

government that 

race is worthwhile 

IAN DE COTTA 

ian@mediacorp.com.sg 

SEPANG — Although studies have time 

and again reairmed the positive impact 

that the Malaysian Grand Prix 

has had on the country’s economy, 

Sepang International Circuit (SIC) 

chief Razlan Razali has admitted 

that a question mark hangs over the 

future of the annual event. 

It is not because the SIC faces the 

likely prospect of having to pay rights 

holder Formula One Administration 

(FOA) more to host the race after 

its current contract expires in 2015, 

said Razlan. Instead, the task before 

him is to convince the Malaysian government 

that it is a worthwhile event 

to continue investing in, and that it 

serves the interest of Malaysians. 

Speaking candidly to TODAY, Razlan 

said a key concern of the authorities 

is that the Formula 1 race, which 

Malaysia has hosted since 1999, has 

failed to catch on with local crowds 

after 15 years. Ramping up interest 

around the event by lying in celebrities 

to attend the race and having 

headlining groups like Guns N’ 

Roses to perform after the Sunday 

race has not yielded results. 

Research has revealed that the 

price of tickets, ranging from RM70 

(S$28) to RM1,600, is no longer an issue 

with fans. However, sales have always 

been slow and only 70 per cent of 

the 90,000 tickets for this weekend’s 

event have so far been snapped up. 

“Locals have been slow to support 

the event every year, although 

a key concern 

of the Malaysian 

authorities is that 

the f1 race has 

failed to catch on 

with local crowds. 

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES 

Telecast details 

for Malaysian 

Grand Prix on 

Mio TV Ch115 

today: 

Practice Session 3 

(Live) 12.55pm 

Qualifying (Live) 

3.50pm 

tomorrow: 

Main Race (Live) 

3.45pm 

the number of foreigners coming to 

Malaysia because of the exposure 

F1 has given us has certainly increased,” 

Razlan told TODAY. “Any 

international event or a successful 

one must be supported by the locals. 

The question we have to ask ourselves 

is whether interest in F1 here 

is waning and what else we can do 

to attract more locals to the event.” 

The SIC chief has been tasked by 

the government to come up with a paper 

to outline how the Grand Prix in 

Malaysia can, in the next two years, be 

turned into an event that the majority 

of Malaysians will look forward to. 

Organisers are reportedly paying 

up to US$35 million (S$43.7 million) 

a year in F1 rights fees, and FOA boss 

Bernie Ecclestone — who is skipping 

the Sepang event after missing the 

Melbourne race last week — is expected 

to raise the amount for a new deal. 

It will mount pressure on Razlan 

to make sense of the numbers, and 

while he is conident a proposal he 

is putting together will improve the 

Malaysian Grand Prix’s appeal, he is 

not so sure that what he is asking will 

get the approval of the country’s economic 

council. 

Said Razlan: “The government 

is obligated to support the race until 

2015. But the question is beyond 

that What we are asking is less than 

10 per cent increase in the funding we 

get from the government. We are already 

doing well in getting the tour- 

ism numbers, but what we are saying 

is that with a little more funding support, 

we can make it more appealing 

and a wholesome experience for local 

fans and this will raise the incremental 

value of the economic impact.” 

As far as alternatives that will 

give Malaysia the global exposure F1 

generates every year are concerned, 

Razlan said not even motorbikes’ 

MotorGP is able to match it. 

“World Cup or the Olympics? I 

think we will have to wait 40 years if 

we can get it. We and Singapore are 

hosting the third-most-watched event 

in the world. Do we want to go any lower 

to the fourth-, ifth- or sixth-most 

popular events? There is no real alternative 

we can get on a yearly basis.” 

dYLan KOO BreaKs 21-Year sWiMMinG reCOrd 

SINGAPORE — It may have been a second 

place inish, but the result will 

most certainly be one Dylan Koo 

(photo) will remember for a long time 

to come. 

The 14-year-old yesterday shattered 

a 21-year record for the Boys 

Under-14 400m Individual Medley 

(IM) during the 44th Singapore National 

Age Group Swimming Championships 

at the Singapore Sports 

School, coming in at 4 min 49.11 secs 

— 49 milliseconds quicker than 

THE KOO FAMILY 

Gerald Koh, who set the record with 

4 min and 50.00 secs in 1992. 

Bryan Tjut of Indonesia won yesterday’s 

event in 4 min 46.74 secs. 

Dylan’s feat followed his impressive 

results earlier on Wednesday 

when he broke Joseph Schooling’s 

100m butterly record of 57.55 secs 

set in 2007 with a time of 57.30 secs, 

before proceeding to shatter the 

200m IM timing of 2:14.44 set by Nicholas 

Ho, also in 2007, with a time 

of 2:14.21. He won both events. 

Speaking after his victory yesterday, 

the Secondary 2 student from 

Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) 

said: “The 400m IM is one of the 

most tiring races and it’s the hardest 

record to break, which makes 

this victory all the more satisfying. 

“After the heats in the morning, 

I knew I had a ighting chance after 

I registered a 4:53.22 ... and despite 

the breaststroke leg being the weakest 

link, I managed to pull through.” 

But despite already breaking 

three national records in a week, 

Dylan, who is from the Chinese 

Swimming Club, is aiming to break 

a fourth today. 

This time, it is his own 200m butterly 

record of 2 min 10 secs he is 

trying to rewrite, and he ambitiously 

wants to shave three seconds of it. 

“My hopes of qualifying for the 

Asian Youth Games in August hinges 

on today. I’m looking at registering 

a 2:07.10, which is the qualifying 

mark,” he said. CHARLES ONG

27 

sports today • saturday 23 march 2013 

man of the moment 

Balotelli’s super 

strike leaves 

Neymar iN awe 

GENEVA — Italy striker Mario Balotelli 

left his Brazil counterpart Neymar 

in the shadows with a majestic goal in 

a 2-2 international friendly draw on 

Thursday (yesterday morning, Singapore 

time). 

Balotelli curled an unstoppable 

shot past Julio Cesar in the 

56th minute, after Daniele De Rossi 

scored just two minutes earlier, 

as Italy clawed back following goals 

by Brazil’s Fred and Oscar in the 

irst half. 

The result meant that Brazil 

coach Luiz Felipe Scolari was denied 

his irst win since being reappointed 

for a second stint in November. 

Neymar, 21, billed as Brazil’s 

great hope for the future, 

cleverly set up their second 

goal for Oscar but was not 

against one of the 

world’s greatest teams, 

Balotelli showed what 

he’s truly capable of. 

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES 

rose outshiNes woods at Bay hill 

ORLANDO — Briton Justin Rose returned 

a seven-under 65 to grab 

the irst-round clubhouse lead at 

the Arnold Palmer Invitational on 

Thursday (yesterday morning, Singapore 

time), while Tiger Woods 

got his bid for an eighth Bay Hill 

title of to a solid start. 

Rose outshone playing partners 

Woods and South African Ernie 

Els by mixing an eagle and six birdies 

with a single bogey on a sunny 

but chilly and blustery day. 

Playing the back nine irst, Rose 

got of to a stuttering start with a 

in the same class as the mercurial 

Balotelli, who is two years his senior. 

Balotelli often made the headlines 

in England for all the wrong reasons, 

which included setting his own 

home on ire, breaking curfew and, 

most notably, getting into a training 

ground scule with Manchester City 

manager Roberto Mancini. However, 

the maverick striker has found a new 

lease of life since joining AC Milan in 

January, scoring seven goals in six 

Serie A appearances. 

Prandelli, who demands impeccable 

behaviour from his players, has 

not always seen eye-to-eye with Balotelli 

and at one stage dropped the 

22-year-old from the squad after 

the player foul of the Italy team’s 

code of ethics. 

However, he had nothing 

but praise for the controversial 

striker yesterday, saying: 

“I know how he really 

wants to be one of the 

best in the world but he 

has to remember how he 

can get there, and that is 

through team work. 

“That is what he 

did tonight, like a true 

champion. He has the potential 

to be among the 

best five (players) in the 

world but to do that he 

needs a lot of continuity, as 

he is having at the moment.” 

Even Neymar lauded his 

counterpart, saying he was a 

“big fan” of the Milan striker. 

“He’s a player that I’m a big fan 

of. A great player and great person,” 

Neymar told reporters after 

the match. 

“I think the Selecao were good. 

We are getting better with each passing 

day and you can see our team improving. 

It’s a great team, with players 

of real quality.” 

REUTERS 

bogey at the 11th but it would be 

his only blemish in an otherwise 

sparkling round highlighted by an 

eagle at the par-ive 16th and four 

straight birdies from the fourth. 

“It was a good round of golf, I 

kept myself out of trouble for the 

most part which is tough to do here 

at Bay Hill,” Rose told reporters. 

“I thought I put together a clever 

round of golf and capitalised 

with the putter today.” 

Woods, who can reclaim the 

No 1 world ranking from Rory McIlroy 

with a win tomorrow, was not 

michael owen 

Age: 33 

Club goals: 222 

International 

goals: 40 

International 

caps: 89 

Highest price 

a club paid for 

him: £16 million 

(Newcastle) 

mario Balotelli 

Age: 22 

Club goals: 65 

International 

goals : 6 

International 

caps: 18 

Highest price a 

club paid for him: 

£20 million 

(AC Milan) 

at his best but battled to a threeunder 

69 alongside. 

Woods feasted on Bay Hill’s par 

ives, carding three birdies and an 

eagle on the four holes but the defending 

champion undid much of 

his good work with back-to-back 

bogeys at 17 and 18. 

“I certainly didn’t play my best, 

but I got around and made a few 

good saves out there,” said Woods. 

“I’ve had a few courses like 

that, and, fortunately, this is one 

of them.” 

REUTERS 

yesterday’s man 

i was almost 

too QuiCk: oweN 

LONDON — Michael Owen enjoyed a 

stellar career as a prolific striker 

for England and Liverpool but said 

he would reflect in retirement on 

“what might have been” had he not 

been robbed of his incredible speed 

due to injury. 

Owen, who said on Tuesday he 

would hang up his boots at the end 

of the season, burst onto the scene 

at Liverpool as a 17-year-old and also 

played at Real Madrid, Newcastle 

United and Manchester United before 

signing for Stoke City last year. 

Owen regularly terrorised defences 

with his speed, most memorably 

with a stunning goal against 

Argentina in the 1998 World Cup, 

but the latter part of his career was 

plagued by injuries. 

The 33-year-old said he would 

look back on his long and successful 

career with pride. “I have two overriding 

emotions,” he wrote on his 

blog. “The irst is a sense of pride at 

not only what I achieved but how I 

achieved it. Winning virtually every 

trophy at club level is the stuf of 

dreams but in amongst all that, there 

were some incredible days. 

“Making my England debut having 

just turned 18 before heading to 

the World Cup where I would score 

‘that goal’ ... Further international 

glory followed in the shape of a hattrick 

in Munich. In that same year 

we won ive trophies at Liverpool ... 

Collecting the European Footballer 

of the Year award at the end of that 

season was an amazing feeling and 

that trophy takes pride of place 

at home! 

“The second emotion that 

lives with me is a sense 

of ‘what might have 

been’ had injuries not 

robbed me of my most 

lethal weapon — 

speed. 

“I was almost 

too quick. My hamstring 

gave way 

in an away game at 

SCORES 

The second emotion 

that lives with me is a 

sense of ‘what might 

have been’ had injuries not 

robbed me of my most lethal 

weapon — speed. I was almost 

too quick. My hamstring gave 

way in an away game at Leeds 

at the ... age of 19 and from 

that moment on, my career ... 

was compromised. 

Michael Owen 

Leeds at the ... age of 19 and from that 

moment on, my career as a professional 

footballer was compromised.” 

Owen’s declaration that his football 

career was eight weeks from 

ending hit him harder than expected. 

“It started with a text from my 

sister. It was the last thing I was expecting 

as I had presumed that my 

nearest and dearest were already 

hardened to my decision,” he said. 

“A text from my best mate was followed 

by one from my Dad. I had 

emotionally gone! I headed of to see 

my parents. They were still in their 

bed clothes at 2.30pm glued to Sky 

Sports News. My Mum’s eyes were 

swollen from all the crying.” 

Owen added a first Premier 

League winner’s medal with United 

in 2010/11 and said his goal, after 

the current season comes to a close, 

would be to set up a management 

company in his name to help young 

players in a career “full of pitfalls”. 

AGENCIES 

sony open round 1 (selected) 

men’s singles 

Jarkko Nieminen (Finland) beat David Nalbandian 

(Argentina) 2-6 6-4 6-3, David Gofin 

(Belgium) beat Robin Haase (Netherlands) 

7-6(4) 3-6 6-1, Bernard Tomic (Australia) beat 

Marc Gicquel (France) 7-5 7-6(3) 

women’s singles 

19-Venus Williams (US) beat Kimiko Date- 

Krumm (Japan) 7-6(3) 3-6 6-4, 9-Caroline 

Wozniacki (Denmark) beat Karolina Pliskova 

(Czech Republic) 5-7 6-3 6-3, 1-Serena 

Williams (US) beat Flavia Pennetta (Italy) 

6-1 6-1, 1, 5-Li Na (China) beat Kiki Bertens 

(Netherlands) 6-3 6-1 

s-league 

Hougang 2 Tanjong Pagar 3 

owen 

clutching his 

hamstring 

in agony, a 

recurring 

sight 

throughout 

his career. 

NBa 

Trail Blazers 99 Bulls 89, 76ers 100 Nuggets 

101, Timberwolves 98 Kings 101

28 

sports today • saturday 23 March 2013 

Deborah ong 

deborahong@mediacorp.com.sg 

SINGAPORE — It is an injury he will remember 

for life. 

Four years ago, national boxer 

Harold Ko was forced to quit his beloved 

sport after two years of competitive 

action left him with a detached 

retina, which threatened to 

cause blindness in the left eye. 

“My doctor said I couldn’t box anymore,” 

recalled the 25yearold, who 

has a communications degree from 

Murdoch University in Australia. 

“I was younger and reckless then. 

I thought it was a minor injury at 

irst and it’d be ine, but it got worse, 

so much so that I almost went blind 

and had to go for surgery.” 

Initially devastated by the news, 

Ko eventually accepted that it was 

the end of the road for him in boxing. 

He looked around for a new combat 

sport and decided to give Brazilian 

jiujitsu (BJJ) a try, partly 

because it “has one of the lowest injury 

rates in the mixed martial arts 

(MMA) world if you play smart”. 

That decision proved to be a momentous 

one, as he soon realised that 

he had a natural talent for BJJ. 

After winning some medals at the 

white belt (beginner) level, Ko, who 

trains at the Juggernaut Fight Club 

at Boat Quay, eventually earned his 

The 

born 

fighTer 

boxer-turned-bJJ 

exponent punches above 

his weight after 2009 injury 

What is brazilian 

jiu-jitsu (bJJ)? 

It is a martial 

art, combat sport 

and self-defence 

system that focuses 

on grappling and 

especially ground 

ighting. bJJ 

promotes the 

concept that a 

smaller, weaker 

person can 

successfully defend 

against a bigger, 

stronger assailant 

by using leverage 

and proper 

technique, taking 

the ight to the 

ground — most 

notably, by 

applying joint-locks 

and choke-holds to 

defeat the other 

person. once the 

opponent is on the 

ground, a number 

of manoeuvres 

(and countermanoeuvres) 

are 

available to 

manipulate the 

opponent into a 

suitable position 

for the application 

of a submission 

technique. 

brazilian jiu-jitsu 

PhoTo: Wee TeCK hIan 

blue belt under MMA ighter and jiujitsu 

blackbelter Rodrigo “The Professor” 

Praxedes in 2011. 

And that was when Ko started 

serving notice of his potential in 

the sport. 

“Initially, I did not have success, 

losing my irst three matches at blue 

belt in the beginning of 2012,” recalled 

the 1.66m, 60kg pugilist. 

However, by the end of last year, 

he had already won ive gold medals, 

two silvers and two bronze medals. 

“I won two golds in my division 

(64kg men, blue belt) in the recent 

Bangkok Open,” he said, describing 

the wins as his proudest achievement 

so far. 

“I also inished third in the World 

Pro Trials in Hong Kong last year 

and irst in the Hong Kong Open.” 

But, as with every sport, Ko’s 

journey in BJJ has not always been 

smoothsailing. 

Ko, who is now a fulltime BJJ 

coach at Juggernaut, cited the lack 

of funding and support from his 

family as obstacles that he has had 

to overcome. 

“Money (funding) has always 

been the main problem. People in 

the fitness industry don’t get paid 

too well, and I have to pay for most 

of my competitions, mostly overseas 

ones, sometimes with the help of my 

gym,” said Ko, who travels regularly 

to Hong Kong and parts of Southeast 

Asia to train and compete. 

He declined to reveal his salary 

but estimates that his trips can cost 

up to S$1,000 or more each time. 

HAROLD KO’S 

ACHIEVEMENTS IN BJJ 

2010 

FbT Thailand open U-64kg gi 

Men’s White belt (3rd), FbT Thailand 

open U-64kg nogi Men’s novice 

(3rd), Jagsport Invitational nogi 

Competition Lightweight (Champion) 

2011 

Copa De Macao U-64kg Men’s 

White belt (2nd), eMaC White/blue 

belt Festival, Thailand U-64kg Men’s 

White belt (3rd), United Jiu Jitsu asia 

Cup U-64kg Men’s White belt (3rd), 

Pan asian Jiu Jitsu C’ships U-64 kg gi 

Men’s White belt (Champion), Pan 

asian Jiu Jitsu C’ships U-64 kg nogi 

Men’s White belt (2nd), Impact Mini 

Competition U-65kg gi Men’s White 

belt (2nd), Thailand open U-64kg gi 

Men’s White belt (Champion), Thailand 

open U-64kg nogi Men’s novice 

(Champion), blue belt under Professor 

rodrigo Praxedes, WFS Invitational 

Trials U-60kg (3rd) 

2012 

WFS Invitational Trials U-55kg (3rd), 

Pan asian Jiu Jitsu C’ships U-64 kg gi 

Men’s blue belt (2nd), Cup of 

Friendship U-64kg gi Men’s blue belt 

(Champion), Cup of Friendship 

U-70kg gi Men’s blue belt (Champion), 

Cup of Friendship U-64kg nogi Men’s 

blue belt (2nd), bangkok open U-64kg 

gi Men’s blue belt (Champion), 

bangkok open U-61.5kg nogi Men’s 

Intermediate (Champion), Pan Paciic 

Jiu Jitsu C’ships U-64kg gi Men’s blue 

belt (Semi-Finalist), World Pro Jiu Jitsu 

Trials hong Kong U-65kg Men’s blue 

belt (3rd), Copa De hong Kong 

U-65kg Men’s blue belt (Champion) 

On the home front, Ko’s mother, 

who is 60 years old and selfemployed, 

has not been enthusiastic 

about his passion, having grown 

wary of all contact sports since her 

son’s eye injury. 

Ko also explained that the lack of 

sparring partners has occasionally 

proven to be an problem. But he is 

optimistic that this will change, as 

there has been recent growing interest 

in the sport, though within a “specialised 

community”. 

“There are a lot more people enquiring 

about the sport, and the 

popularity of mixed martial arts is 

rising. Since Brazilian jiujitsu is a 

very important aspect of it, people 

will naturally have to learn to keep 

up,” said Ko, who predicts that the 

number of BJJ participants in Singapore 

will double within a year. 

Buoyed by his recent successes, 

Ko has set his sights even higher. He 

plans to compete in the PanAmerican 

and World Championships in 

California this year and dreams 

of becoming Singapore’s first BJJ 

world champion one day. 

He has been saving up for over a 

year for the trip, which he estimates 

will cost him over S$10,000. 

Recently, he lew to San Die go to 

train professionally with the world’s 

best for three months, in a bid to 

raise his own game. 

“I feel like this is a good year for 

me to go,” said Ko. 

“It’s a chance to achieve my 

dreams and goals — a onceinalifetime 

experience.”

30 

32 

34 

BIKER DUDE 

ADVENTURER 

CHARLEY 

BOORMAN 

TAKES THE LONG 

WAY ROUND 

BUZZ WORTHY 

THE COFFEE 

THAT TRULY 

GIVES YOU A JOLT 

INSECT FEEDER 

TIME TO MUNCH 

ON SOME BUGS 

SATURDAY, 23 MARCH 2013 

MEAT ME THERE 

AND SPLURGE ON SOME JAPANESE 

BLACK WAGYU AND OTHER BARBECUE TREATS 33 

MARINATED PORK COLLAR FROM ITO-KACHO


30 

cars 

Adventurer ChArley BoormAn 

tells us how he And his Jedi mAster 

Buddy ChAnged the Biking world 

Derryn Wong 

features@mediacorp.com.sg 

unless you’re an avid motorcyclist, 

you’ve likely 

never heard of Charley 

Boorman. That’s a pity 

because he, along with 

biking buddy Ewan McGregor (aka 

Obi-Wan Kenobi), are responsible 

for bringing about a sea change to 

biking culture. 

In 2004, Charley and Ewan took 

a trip from London to New York on 

a pair of BMW R 1150 GS motorcycles. 

The result of the 30,000km journey 

was documented in the television 

series, Long Way Round, which also 

spawned a best-selling book and DVD. 

The 47-year-old, gregarious, wildhaired 

Englishman, who’s also the 

son of film director John Boorman, 

was in Singapore to promote his new 

show, Freedom Riders Asia, produced 

with Star Sports and oil company 

Shell. 

His two-wheeled trajectory from 

actor to “bike-mad TV guy” has been, 

like any two-wheeled adventure, full 

of eye-openers, lots of sweat, blood 

and tears and a serendipitous twist 

as well. 

the spirit of Adventure 

Adventure motorcycling as we know 

it, was established long before that, 

but arguably, no one has done more 

to promote the idea of packing it all in 

and riding into the sunset like Charley 

Charley Boorman on a vietnam motorbike. 

and Ewan. If nothing, growing worldwide 

sales of the BMW GS and similar 

“adventure bikes” have proved that 

going the long way round (or looking 

the part, anyway) has replaced traditional 

antidotes to whatever-stage-oflife 

crisis. 

Boorman started life, quite literally, 

as an actor, appearing in his father’s 

ilms, even having a cameo in the infamous 

Burt Reynolds/Jon Voight movie 

Deliverance. 

“No, I’m not the kid playing the 

banjo!” he admits with a laugh. “At 

the end of the show, Jon Voight comes 

back to his wife and there’s a little boy 

sitting on the sofa — that’s me.” 

He met McGregor 17 years ago on 

the movie set of The Serpent’s Kiss 

and their irst conversation was, unsurprisingly, 

about motorcycles. 

Boorman recounted how the Long 

Way Round project took on a life of its 

own from the start: “Actually, it was 

just supposed to be the two of us and 

we wanted to take a long bike journey 

and irst planned only to go to Spain!” 

he said with a chuckle. 

Somehow, Spain expanded to include 

China, and then McGregor 

made the point that they could “hop 

over the Bering Strait (between Siberia 

and Alaska) and cross America to 

New York”, to which Boorman replied: 

“Why not?” 

The first problem was obvious: 

Money. Boorman simply didn’t have 

the cash for a ive-month motorcycle 

epic — until a friend mentioned it’d 

make great material for a book. Once 

Charley Boorman. PHoTo: oLIVe Tree STuDIo 

(On the Long 

Way Round 

project) 

Actually, it was 

just supposed 

to be the two 

of us, and we 

wanted to take 

a long bike 

journey and 

irst planned 

only to go to 

Spain! 

Charley Boorman 

MoTorCyCLe 

ADVenTurer 

that was done, things quickly escalated. 

“We funded the trip (with the book 

deal) and then we decided if we’re going 

to do a book, we may as well ilm it 

because we can have a diary of it. And 

then we said, if we’re going to ilm it, 

we’d better do it properly too.” 

The success of the subsequent book 

and TV series was a big surprise to 

him, not in least because it also gave 

rise to his current career as a motorcycle 

adventurer/show presenter — a 

role that has brought him to extremes 

around the globe, including participation 

in the gruelling Dakar Rally. 

“I think we just thought that we’d 

do it, we’d have a book and a nice home 

video, and laugh about it when we are 

80! And then it came out and it did really 

well, but we weren’t really expecting 

it at the time.” 

eAstern premises 

For his current Asian jaunt, Boorman 

will travel to six countries in Asia and 

explore each astride various motorcycles. 

He’ll investigate the region’s 

diferent motorcycle cultures to “see 

what people get up to on a motorcycle”. 

Filming hasn’t concluded, as the 

show is scheduled to air here in May, 

but Boorman’s already had a taste 

of bike life up north in the fast and 

“dough” lane. 

On one hand, he took to the Sepang 

circuit on the back of Ducati’s latest 

superbike, the Panigale. “It was a 

great moment for me because I’ve always 

wanted to ride at Sepang,” he 

said. “It’s one of the best circuits in 

the world especially for motorcycles. 

But it was also very warm, and very 

humid — and of course, I wore black 

leather which made it worse!” 

On the other hand, he also found 

out just how much motorcycles are the 

unseen fabric of society by following a 

kapcai-mounted roti seller on his daily 

rounds. 

“I just thought I’d go try and sell the 

bread. But I found all this other stuf 

going on as I followed one of these guys 

around on his working day, like how 

he sells in the morning and afternoon, 

and at night, he goes around and he 

has a key to everybody’s house! That’s 

so he can drop of the bread for them.” 

In Singapore, bikes are seen less of 

a crucial mode of transport than up 

north, which probably explains why 

the little red dot didn’t make the episode 

list: “For some reason, Singapore 

wasn’t on the cards. Well, maybe for 

Season Two. Save the best for last, you 

know,” he said with a smile.

31 

cars today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

CITROEN DS4 THP 200 

Fiery Frenchman 

thanks to a new engine, the Citroen ds4 is 

all dressed up with somewhere to go — fast 

Derryn Wong 


SINGAPORE — The Citroen DS4 you see 

on these pages isn’t a top-of-the-line 

hot hatch like the Renault Megane RS 

or Volkswagen Golf GTI, but it’s still a 

pretty damn quick Frenchman. 

As part of the model’s drivetrain 

update (a diesel variant and six-speed 

auto version of the current THP 156 

model are also available), the DS4 

gets a 197bhp turbocharged engine, 

which comes with the sole choice of a 

six-speed manual gearbox. 

The engine is a gem, endowed 

with strength, lexibility and a happy, 

burbling soundtrack to match. 

Not only does it have a lot of low end 

shove, it actually seems to generate 

even more before inally petering out 

above 5,000rpm. It thus feels much 

quicker than its 0-100kmh time of 8.5s 

suggests. 

Ergonomically, not everything 

makes complete sense — compared 

to the lawless logic of the VW Beetle 

for instance — but in its own quirky 

Gallic way, it all works. 

There’s torque steer, the ride is a 

little choppy, and the gearbox a little 

long in its throw, but these things 

paradoxically add to the car’s charm. 

It helps that you’re probably too 

busy laughing and going faster than 

is generally required, since it’s also a 

hoot to throw into corners. 

But the added dynamism is icing on 

the cake, since the DS4’s strengths are 

still out in full force: Plenty of standard 

equipment, ive doors and seating 

for as many people, all wrapped up in 

a handsome package. 

“Desse”, is pronounced “de-ess”, 

and means “goddess”. It’s itself a pun 

on the original 1955 Citroen DS, from 

which the modern range of vehicles 

draws inspiration. 

This particular DS4 is best enjoyed 

as a car that looks and is named in a 

saintly vein, but makes you act the 

devil behind the wheel. 

CITROEN 

DS4 THP 200 

engine: 

1,598cc turbo 

in-line 4, 197hp & 

275nm 

performance: 

235kmh, 

0-100kmh in 

8.5 seconds, 

6.4L/100km, 

149g/km Co2 

price: 

S$169,988 with 

Coe 

VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE 1.4 TSI 

Speedy scarab 

volkswagen’s ‘cute mobile’ bites back with 

scrabbling speed that belies its lovable face 

LeoW Ju-Len 


SINGAPORE — Volkswagen’s new 

Beetle 1.4 TSI slots in above the 

basic 1.2 model. It may cost 

S$23,500 more but comes with 

a twin-charged engine — that 

means it has both a supercharger 

for instant response and a turbo to 

deliver high-rev high-jinks. 

Though the engine can sound 

buzzy, rev it hard and feel the Beetle 

take wing. The 1.4 TSI really 

does pull strongly and keeps going 

long past the point where the basic 

1.2 engine gives up. 

It comes with a better entertainment 

system with a 30GB 

drive. Unlike the 1.2, it has a satellite 

navigation system. Its dash also 

features oil temperature and turbo 

boost pressure gauges along with, for 

some reason, a stopwatch. Why not 

something more relevant, like a compass 

that points the way to the nearest 

hipster bar? 

The beefier Beetle also rides on 

larger, 17-inch alloy wheels. Alas, 

the shiny retro-licious 18-inch items 

you see here are a S$2,200 option. 

They’re worth considering, though, 

for the sticky tyres they come with 

help to transform the basic bug 

into a speedy scarab around corners, 

giving the Beetle fearsome 

grip on the road, the way its insectoid 

namesake can cling happily to 

your follicles. 

Ultimately, the new Beetle has always 

exuded fun, but with the 1.4 TSI 

engine, it now has the exuberant performance 

to match its irresistibly 

cheery demeanour. 

VOLKSWAGEN 

BEETLE 1.4 TSI 

engine: 

1,390cc twincharged 

in-line 4, 

160hp & 240nm 

performance: 

207kmh, 

0-100kmh in 

8.3 seconds, 

6.2L/100km, 

143g/km Co2 

price: 

S$150,300 with 

Coe


32 

food 

UK wine merchants look to China. PHOTO: STOCK XCHNG 

To register, visit MEclub.com.sg today. 

Download the MEclub App at Google Play and iPhone Store: 

Like us on www.facebook.com/MEclub.com.sg 

MAKE A TOAST 

Chinese wine muscles in 

Britain’s oldest wine 

merchant puts new 

Chinese wine on sale 

LONDON — Britain’s oldest wine merchant 

is giving its official stamp of 

approval to Chinese wine by stocking 

four wines produced in China from 

European grapes, a production shift 

that could help China muscle into the 

world wine market. 

Berry Bros & Rudd, which dates 

back 314 years and is a supplier to the 

royal family, said it was the irst major 

British retailer to put Chinese wines 

on sale alongside some of the world’s 

inest wines. 

The four wines on ofer, a Cabernet 

Sauvignon/Merlot blend and three 

ice wines priced from US$28 (S$35) 

to US$98, are from Chateau Changyu 

in eastern Shandong province which 

is China’s oldest and largest winery. 

Mark Pardoe, Berry Bros’ master 

of wine, said they were diferent from 

most Chinese wines produced for 

domestic consumption as they were 

made from European grapes and to 

European standards. 

“For the irst time we have some 

Chinese wine that will not be embarrassed 

alongside some of the world’s 

inest wines,” he said. “This really is 

a snapshot of what China can do in 

the future.” 

China is the eighth largest producer 

of wine in the world and is forecast 

to be sixth largest by 2016. 

Wine consumption in China has 

more than doubled in the last five 

years, according to Vinexpo, a wine 

industry expert, and China is expected 

to become the second largest wine 

consumer by value by 2016, up from 

third place today. 

But to date most wine has been 

made for Chinese consumption 

and is not suitable for export and 

overseas tastes. 

Pardoe said China’s huge size and 

location, with a key climate band in 

the northern hemisphere, meant it 

was home to regions with climates 

capable of producing good wine as 

A brew of Death Wish 

SINGAPORE — Its website looks like 

something out of a slasher lick, it has 

a skull and bones logo — and it promises 

to keep you awake at night, one 

cup at a time. 

It’s called Death Wish Cofee and 

it has been creating a buzz recently 

as the world’s strongest cofee. A 12oz 

cup contains 520mg of cafeine compared 

to 260mg for the same size from 

Starbucks. 

The cafeine amount comes from 

its mix of the harsher Robusta beans 

from Indonesia, Ethiopia and South 

America. The beans are roasted to 

a medium-dark for a strong and robust 

lavour and then we grind it to 

the proper level for extreme potency,” 

it said on its website. 

According to mayoclinic.com, 

caffeine consumption of more than 

500mg a day counts as heavy daily 

consumption and can have a variety 

of side efects ranging from restlessness 

and insomnia to fast heartbeat 

and muscle tremors. 

That hasn’t stopped its growing 

number of fans. “I’d say one cup of 

this is comparable to about ive shots 

of espresso ... I felt like superman on 

shown by its production of wine for 

the local market since the 1890s. 

British supermarket chain Waitrose 

last year trialed a Chinese wine 

made from the local grape specialty 

Cabernet Gernischt but a spokeswoman 

said this was no longer on sale. 

Pardoe said it was not until Austrian 

wine-maker Lenz Moser, whose 

family has run wineries for 15 generations, 

teamed up with Chateau 

Changyu several years ago that the 

export potential started to emerge 

with the first good wines ready 

this year. 

“He concentrated on using European 

grape varieties and imposed 

European style quality controls,” 

said Pardoe. “You really can’t tell it 

is Chinese.” 

Pardoe said there was still only a 

small selection of wines suitable for 

export but this could be a sign of the 

future with Chateau Changyu showing 

that the combination of expertise 

from old and new world wines could 

lead to some top-class wine. 

“There will be other wine-makers 

hot on their heels and we expect to 

taste wines of greater quality from 

more Chinese producers,” he said. 

REUTERS 

Death Wish Coffee . 

steroids,” said one comment on its testimonial 

page. 

Another suggested it should even 

be renamed Resurrection: “It has 

brought my life back to life.” AGENCIES

33 

food today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

The karubi plate. 

Food review: ito-kacho 

Raising the steaks 

A Japanese barbeque 

restaurant ups the 

ante on good beef 

SINGAPORE — The mention of wagyu 

beef used to evoke that wistful, wideeyed 

look of desire on faces of meat 

lovers all over the island. These days, 

however, the premium breed of cattle 

has lost some of its posh shine since 

any restaurant worth its chocolate lava 

cake now serves wagyu. Hell, even 

hawker stalls boast wagyu burgers 

and steaks. 

How does a restaurant specialising 

in beef set itself apart? In the case of 

the relatively-new Ito-Kacho — a Japanese 

table barbeque restaurant on 

the fourth loor of Mandarin Gallery 

— it imports Japanese black wagyu 

from the Kyushu prefecture. 

Though one shouldn’t give too 

much weight to the restaurant’s claim 

that Japanese black wagyu is “the inest 

beef in the world”, it certainly is 

very lavourful beef that is worth the 

occasional splurge. 

To make its point about the beef’s 

rich, natural flavours, the restaurant 

serves it un-marinated and with 

just one house-made soy-barbeque 

dipping sauce. 

The premium short rib (S$50 for 

80g/S$69 for 120g) gets top billing 

here. It is richly marbled and decadently 

creamy in the mouth. Good as 

it may be, I preferred the slices of lank 

steak (S$50/S$69) that were much 

lighter, but still fatty enough that the 

meat melted in the mouth. This slightly 

leaner cut also had a sweeter lavour. 

Also satisfying was the karubi 

plate (S$36/S$49), cut from the area 

closer to the cow’s chest. Leaner than 

the short rib but fattier than the lank, 

it was a satisfying in-between that’s 

also just that much more economical. 

Speaking of which, it’s probably a 

good idea to order one of the set menus 

that start from S$148 for 580g of 

assorted meats. Among them are different 

cuts of beef and the marinated 

pork collar (S$19 for 180g) that comes 

to the table in an earthen jar and in 

large, thick pieces. We let these sit 

on the grill till they were nice and 

charred on the outside. And when we 

bit into them, they were succulent and 

redolent of, of all things, satay. 

All this rich meat goes well with the 

assortment of kimchi from the appetiser 

menu. According to the restaurant, 

the Japanese took the idea of 

table barbeque grilling from the Koreans, 

so it seems apt that they incorporate 

other Korean gustatory elements. 

Ask for the kimchi moriwase 

(S$9.90) that comprised three separate 

mounds of pickled Chinese cabbage, 

cucumber and white radish. 

Think of this as Japanese-style kimchi 

since it is nowhere near as pungent 

or spicy as the authentic Korean stuf, 

though it still hit the spot. ANNETTE TAN 

Ito-Kacho 

Where: 

#04-08/09 

Mandarin Gallery 

333A Orchard Road 

Tel: 6836 0111 

Opening hours: 

Monday to Friday 

11am to 2pm, 6pm to 

11pm; Saturday 11am 

to 11pm; Sunday 

11am to 10pm 

Sushi Mitsuya 

Where: 

60 Tras Street 

Tel: 6438 2608 

Opening hours: 

Daily 12pm to 3pm, 

6pm to 11pm. Closed 

on Sunday 

Food review: sushi mitsuya 

Minimal eats 

Upscale sushi and 

pristine Japanese fare 

come to Tras Street 

SINGAPORE — In the last year, Tras 

Street has become a burgeoning foodie’s 

enclave with restaurants like Teppei, 

which reportedly ofers some of 

the most afordable omakase menus 

in town, and the immensely popular 

Ramen Keisuke Tori King. 

The newest kid on the block is 

Sushi Mitsuya, a quiet little restaurant 

that brings with it a slice of 

minimalist Japan. 

Walk through its white doors and 

you’ll see little more than a bright 

bouquet of faux cherry blossoms and 

a pale wooden screen. No one greets 

you till you stroll into the austere dining 

room that seems to stretch the entire 

length of the shophouse. 

Working behind the 18-seat hinoki 

counter is head chef Ryosuke Harada. 

The 31-year-old has been making sushi 

since he was 18 and last worked as 

the sous chef of The Mandarin Oriental, 

Hong Kong’s Sushi Hiro. 

Like his puritanical dining room 

here, Harada’s food is steadfastly traditional. 

You won’t ind chawanmushi 

lavoured with trules or foie gras on 

your sushi. Like the recent crop of 

upscale Japanese restaurants in Singapore 

(think Shinji and Yoshiyuki), 

Sushi Mitsuya puts out food in the 

Edo-mae tradition. In other words, sushi 

and seafood dishes prepared with 

simplicity and precision. 

The S$100 set lunch menu was ac- 

Get your hands on these delectable dishes from Sushi Mitsuya. 

cordingly heavy on the sushi. Each 

morsel of rice was light on the vinegar 

and quite plain. They were topped 

with raw seafood like chutoro (tuna 

with a moderate amount of fat), sea 

urchin, and hokai clam lown in twice 

weekly from Tokyo’s Tsujiki market. 

Harada also served a slice of lounder 

that had been aged for four days, 

a technique that harks back to Edomae 

times when sushi peddlers were 

impelled to preserve their seafood in 

delicious ways since air-freight and refrigeration 

hadn’t yet been invented. 

Contrary to our expectations, the aged 

lounder was delicate and savoury, with 

a just a whisper of piquant ishiness. 

The sushi I enjoyed most here, however, 

comprised a tiny slice of eel sitting 

atop a square of rice flavoured 

with mushrooms, plum paste and 

plum powder. This was probably because 

I like my food robust, and having 

eaten morsel after morsel of very 

cleanly-lavoured dishes, I wanted a 

bit of oomph. 

Other dishes Harada served that 

day included a starter trio of monkish 

liver, pickled seaweed and tuna tendon 

that really woke the appetite with 

their varyingly stimulating lavours, 

and a petite square of salmon grilled 

so lightly that it was barely charred on 

the outside and creamy within. 

The prices here are affordable 

enough for the kind of food Harada 

serves. There are three omakase 

menus at lunch priced between S$60 

and S$180, and dinner menus priced 

at S$200 or S$300. ANNETTE TAN

34 food today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

INSECT CHOW 

Gourmet fried grasshoppers anyone? 

Time to get over our 

squeamishness and 

savour the taste of bugs 

REBECCA SMITHERS 


LONDON — On the menu the Mexican 

delicacy is described as “chapulines 

fundido”. Having eaten it — indeed 

polished it of — I would say it is the 

equivalent of an “insect moussaka”. 

The bottom layer is made of pureed 

fried grasshoppers (chapulines), 

which have been lavoured with softened 

shallots, garlic, smoky chipotle 

chillies and lime juice, topped with a 

gooey, fondue-style blanket of mozzarella 

and cheddar cheese (queso 

fundido). You can scoop it up, streetstyle, 

with corn tortillas or get stuck 

in with a knife and fork. And so that 

you are under no illusion whatsoever 

about the main ingredient, the dish is 

garnished with three crispy grasshopper 

bodies — minus legs and wings. 

Yum — or not. 

Grasshoppers, of course, don’t routinely 

feature anywhere on British restaurant 

menus, but that could all be 

about to change. Wahaca, the sustainable 

Mexican street-food restaurant 

chain co-founded by Thomasina Miers 

who was winner of television’s MasterChef, 

is trialling the dish for one 

month only at its South Bank restaurant 

in London. It claims the unusual 

move — some might say shameless PR 

stunt — relects its ethos of providing 

interesting, lavoursome fare while 

encouraging people to take the next 

step in sustainable eating by swapping 

meat for a protein-rich, environmentally 

friendly alternative. 

More than 1,000 insect species are 

eaten in 80 per cent of countries — 

mostly in the tropics. The UN’s Food 

and Agriculture Organisation says 

insects are vital to meeting the nutritional 

needs of the world’s growing 

population but they hardly feature in 

the diets of many rich nations. As an 

ingredient, chapulines are a healthy 

alternative to meat; cooked grasshopper 

contains up to 60 per cent protein, 

with 6 per cent fat. Miers herself believes 

eating insects is no different 

from eating shrimp or prawns; after 

all, like insects, they are arthropods. 

“It’s just not in our psyche at the 

moment,” she says. “The chapulines 

fundido is a great introduction to the 

beautiful earthy lavour of these insects 

as it tastes amazing and a salsa 

is much more palatable for the more 

squeamish diners out there.” You 

can’t argue with the need to get us to 

eat more sustainably, but given Britons’ 

aversion to dealing with, let alone 

eating insects, what do the punters 

think? On a chilly Monday evening — 

the irst full day of the experiment — 

a handful of early evening diners at 

the South Bank restaurant ordered 

the dish. 

Friends Kate Franklin and Bella 

Lawrence have eaten more than half 

the portion they are sharing. “It was 

very tasty, very lemony in flavour,” 

says Kate, a 22-year old photographer. 

But Bella, also 22, isn’t sure about “the 

three smiley faces” on top, which lie 

uneaten. The pair agree that the initiative 

was a commendable one. The 

chain is doing a steady trade in the 

Munch on some fried grasshoppers. PHOTO: REUTERS 

dish, if not a roaring one. General 

manager Dean Hughes said he expects 

the restaurant — which has 90 

covers — to serve up 30 portions by 

the close of play. After the horse meat 

scandal people are deinitely looking 

for alternatives to meat,” he says. 

In fact there seems to be more 

criticism of the heavy cheese layer 

— which tends to congeal as it gets 

cold — than the insect content. Personally, 

I enjoy the rich, smoky lavour 

and texture of the dish. But even I am 

unable to wolf down an entire bowl of 

crunchy grasshopper bodies, which 

are typically served in Mexico as bar 

snacks washed down with cold beer. 

And there is also the issue of the insects’ 

carbon footprint. Those used by 

Wahaca — vaccuum-packed in large 

bags — are imported to the UK from 

Oaxaca in Mexico. THE GUARDIAN 

HOW TO PLAY 

Fill in the grid so that every row, every column, 

and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9. 

DiFFicuLTY LEVEL: 

YESTERDAY’S 

SOLuTiON 

cOPYRiGHT ucLicK

35 food today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

THIS ROUND’S ON 

Goodstuph’s 

Pat Law 

SINGAPORE — Pat Law loves all things 

vintage and has a soft-spot for nostalgia 

so it seemed like a natural progression 

to set up The Damn Good Shop. 

It’s an online emporium of vintage 

goodies — or, in Law’s words, “a platform 

of nostalgic knick-knacks and 

playground for my people to exercise 

their creativity”. 

When it comes to buying vintage, 

the founder of Goodstuph thinks 

that the journey of sourcing the 

items are every bit as important as 

owning them. “When you buy a piece 

of vintage, you’re actually buying heritage 

and perhaps even a memory,” 

she said. 

Anything from yesteryear she 

wished she could get her hands on? 

Law already has it: A 1980s playground 

merry-go-round that can 

carry 15 kids. There’s 

one problem, though. 

“I just haven’t igured 

out where on earth to 

store it yet.” 

We then proceeded 

to ask her more boozy 

questions and for nostalgia’s 

sake, started 

off with what 

her favourite 

VIVOCITY PLAZA SINGAPURA KATONG GRAND, GREAT WORLD MARINA SQUARE YISHUN 

JURONG POINT TAMPINES MALL 

THE CROODS* ▲ 10.30am 

4.00 6.30pm 

TOM: 1.30 4.00 6.30pm 

THE CROODS - 3D* ▲ 12.15 

2.40 4.50 7.00pm 

TOM: 12.45 3.00 5.10 7.20pm 

THE CROODS* ▲ 12.50 3.20 

5.30 7.40 9.20 11.00pm 

TOM: 10.50am 1.00 3.30 

5.40 7.50 9.30pm 

V/H/S* ▲ 2.20 

4.45 9.40pm 12.05am 

TOM: 2.20 4.45 7.15 9.40pm 

DJANGO UNCHAINED* ▲ 

11.00am 2.15 5.30 8.45 

11.30pm 

GAMBIT* 

10.40am 12.40 4.50 

11.40pm 

WARM BODIES ▲ 11.20am 

1.30 2.40 3.40 5.50 6.50 

8.00 9.25 10.10 11.35pm 

12.20am 

SNITCH ▲ 6.20 11.00pm 

CONFESSION OF MURDER +▲ 

KOR 11.50am 

THE INCREDIBLE BURT 

WONDERSTONE ▲ 10.40am 

8.40pm 

SIDE EFFECTS* ▲ 10.35am 

5.10 7.25 9.40 11.55pm 

HELTER SKELTER* ▲+ JPN 

12.25 10.05pm 

THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT 

2: GHOSTS OF GEORGIA 

12.50pm 

ARMY DAZE THE MOVIE* + 

10.30am 


3.30 5.40 7.50pm 

TOM: 12.45 3.50 7.15pm 


12.20 2.30 3.00 4.10 4.40 

5.10 6.20 6.50 7.20 8.30 

9.00 9.30 10.40 11.10pm 

TOM: 10.35am 11.00 11.50 

1.10 1.40 2.10 2.55 3.20 

4.20 5.05 5.30 6.30 7.40 

8.40pm 

V/H/S* ▲ 4.15 

9.10 11.35pm 

TOM: 4.25 9.10pm 


11.30am 2.45 6.00 9.15pm 

12.30am 

GAMBIT* 

11.50am 8.00pm 

WARM BODIES ▲ 12.30 2.05 

2.40 3.50 4.50 7.00 9.10 

11.20pm 1.30am 

SNITCH ▲ 1.10 8.25pm 


KOR 6.40pm 

1.20am 



12.50am 

HELTER SKELTER* ▲+ JPN 

12.55 10.45pm 


2: GHOSTS OF GEORGIA 

10.45am 

THE CROODS - 3D* ▲ 

10.50am 3.10pm 

TOM: 10.50am 3.10pm 


1.30 2.10 3.40 5.50 7.30 

8.00 9.25 11.35pm 

TOM: 1.30 2.10 3.40 5.50 

7.30 8.00 9.25pm 


12.20 3.35 6.45 9.00pm 

12.15am 

GAMBIT* 1.10 

5.30pm 12.30am 

WARM BODIES ▲ 12.45 

2.55 5.05 7.15 10.10pm 

12.20am 

SNITCH ▲ 10.00pm 


WONDERSTONE ▲ 6.50pm 

THE CROODS - 3D* ▲ 

11.50am 4.40pm 

TOM: 12.50 5.10pm 


12.30 3.00 5.30 7.05 8.00 

9.00 10.30pm 

TOM: 11.10am 1.30 2.05 

4.00 6.30 8.40pm 


12.40 3.55 11.10pm 

GAMBIT* 

11.30pm 


11.30pm 


DJANGO UNCHAINED ▲ 1.00 4.30 

8.00 11.30pm 

SNITCH ▲ 6.30pm 12.00am 



SIDE EFFECTS* ▲ 11.45am 

9.15pm 

6311 9162 

@ 

CON CONCIERGE SERVICE: E: 6349-2936 

THE CROODS ▲ 12.00 2.30 5.00 7.20pm 

TOM: 11.40am 2.50 5.10 7.30pm 


2.30pm TOM: 2.45 4.55pm 


1.30 3.45 4.45 6.00 7.15 

8.15 10.30pm 

TOM: 3.45 6.00 8.15pm 

V/H/S* ▲ 6.55 

9.20 11.45pm 

TOM: 7.05 9.30pm 


3.30 4.10 7.20 9.00 10.30pm 


5.00 9.30 11.45pm 

SNITCH ▲ 1.15 6.45 11.35pm 



12.35am 

DJANGO UNCHAINED ▲ 12.50 4.30 8.00 11.30pm 

SIDE EFFECTS ▲ 6.30pm 12.30am 

THE CROODS ▲ TOM: 12.20pm 

DJANGO UNCHAINED ▲ 3.00 

11.50pm 

WARM BODIES | PG13 | Violence & Some Coarse Language, THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE | PG13 | Some Drug References & Coarse 

Language, CONFESSION OF MURDER | NC16 | Some Violence & Coarse Language, THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT 2: GHOSTS OF GEORGIA 

| PG13 | Disturbing Scenes, SNITCH | NC16 | Some Drug Use, GAMBIT | PG13 | Some Nudity, DJANGO UNCHAINED | M18 | Violence & Coarse 

Language, V/H/S | M18 | Coarse Language, Nudity & Gore, SIDE EFFECTS | M18 | Sexual Scenes, HELTER SKELTER | R21 | Sexual Scenes 

*Only fi rst-week movie session times are listed. For more accurate and 

all other movie timings, please log on to www.gv.com.sg. 

www.gv.com.sg 


2.20pm TOM: 12.00 2.20pm 


12.30 1.50 2.50 4.10 5.10 

6.30 7.30 8.50 9.50 11.10pm 

TOM: 11.45am 12.30 2.05 

2.50 4.25 5.10 6.50 7.30 

9.10 9.50pm 

V/H/S* ▲ 2.30 

4.55 7.20 9.45pm 12.15am 

TOM: 2.30 4.55 7.20 9.45pm 


5.35 8.50 11.30pm 

GAMBIT* 11.40am 

1.40 3.40 7.40pm 


5.00 7.10 9.20pm 12.05am 

SNITCH ▲ 11.30am 6.50 

9.10pm 12.00am 


KOR 12.25 11.40pm 


WONDERSTONE ▲ 2.55 5.05pm 


2: GHOSTS OF GEORGIA 9.45pm 

BISHAN JUNCTION 8 


2.50pm TOM: 12.40 2.50pm 


1.50 4.00 5.00 6.10 7.10 

8.20 9.30 10.30pm 

TOM: 11.40am 1.50 4.00 

5.00 6.10 8.20 9.30pm 

V/H/S* ▲ 4.35 

9.20 11.45pm 

TOM: 4.35 9.20pm 


1.10 3.20 5.30 7.40 

9.50pm 12.00am 





7.25pm TOM: 4.50 7.10pm 


1.20 2.10 3.40 4.30 6.00 

6.50 8.00 8.20 9.10 9.45 

10.40 11.30pm 

TOM: 11.40am 12.40 2.00 

3.00 4.20 5.20 6.40 7.40 

9.00 9.45pm 

V/H/S* ▲ 8.20 

10.45pm 1.10am 

TOM: 11.55am 9.25pm 


12.30 2.40 4.50 7.00 9.10 

11.20pm 

SNITCH ▲ 1.00am 



CITY SQUARE 

THE CROODS* ▲ 

3.20pm 


4.30pm TOM: 12.30 2.40pm 

THE CROODS* ▲ 12.10 2.10 

4.20 5.00 6.30 7.45 8.40 

10.50pm 

TOM: 10.40am 1.50 4.00 

5.00 6.10 8.20pm 

V/H/S* ▲ 2.35 

9.55pm 12.20am 

TOM: 2.35 7.20 9.45pm 

GAMBIT* 

11.00am 1.00 3.00 7.20pm 


7.20 9.30 11.40pm 




Cinema opens 30 mins before 1st show. All movie rated 

PG unless otherwise stated, Session times are subject 

to change, * No Free Passes, + English Subtitles, 

, No refunds for uncollected tickets. 

childhood drink was. Anyone else 

remember the Chinese Apple soft 

drink? FARAH DALEY 

What is your favourite tipple now? 

Pat Law: Laphroaig on the rocks. 

What is the most unique food and 

drink pairing you enjoy? 

Brussel’s Mer du Nord’s escargots in 

a soup bowl with a glass of Duvel in 

freezing winter. This is what heaven 

tastes like. 

facebook.com/gvmovieclub 

twitter.com/gvmovieclub 


2.20 4.40 7.00pm 

TOM: 12.00 2.20 4.40 7.00pm 


11.30 12.25 1.50 2.45 4.10 

5.05 6.00 6.30 7.25 8.50 

9.45 11.10pm 12.05am 

TOM: 10.05am 11.30 12.25 

1.20 1.50 2.45 3.40 4.10 

5.05 6.30 7.25 8.50 9.45pm 

V/H/S* ▲ 3.35 

9.35pm 12.00am 

TOM: 7.10 9.35pm 


3.05 9.00pm 12.25am 


12.50 3.00 5.10 7.20 9.30 

11.40pm 



KOR 10.55am 



1.25pm 

TIONG BAHRU PLAZA 


4.10pm TOM: 2.00 4.10pm 

THE CROODS* ▲ 12.30 2.40 

3.30 4.50 5.40 7.00 9.15 

10.10 11.25pm 

TOM: 12.30 2.40 3.10 4.50 

5.20 7.00 9.15pm 


5.00 7.10 9.25 11.35pm 


CONFESSION OF MURDER + 

KOR 1.00pm 



PROMISED LAND 

(PG13) ✱ 

12:20pm, 4:50, 7:00, 

9:10,11:20pm 

HELTER SKELTER 

(R21)(JAPANESE) (CS&ES) ✱ 

10:10am, 2:40pm, 

7:15, 9:45,12:15am 

THE CROODS 

(CS) 3D ✱ ✱ 

10:00am, 2:30, 6:40 

THE CROODS (CS) ✱ 

12:45pm, 2:50, 5:00, 

7:10, 9:20,11:30pm 

DJANGO UNCHAINED 

(M18) (CS) ✱ 

11:45am, 3:00pm, 

6:15, 9:30,12:00am 

SIDE EFFECTS 

(M18) (CS) ✱ 2:50pm, 

5:00, 7:10, 9:20,11:30 

WARM BODIES 

(PG13) (CS) 

10:40am,12:50, 3:00, 

4:30, 5:10, 7:20, 8:45, 

9:30,11:40, 12:45am 

PRINCESS & THE 7 

KUNG FU MASTERS 

( PG13) (M) (CS&ES) 1:20pm, 

3:15, 7:40,12:10am 

THE INCREDIBLE 

BURT WONDERSTONE 

(PG13) (CS) 12:40pm, 

2:45, 7:10, 9:15,10:50 

THE HAUNTING IN 

CONNECTICUT 2: 

GHOS TS OF GEORGIA (PG13) 

12:40pm, 5:10pm 

OZ THE GREAT AND 

POWERFUL (CS) 10:40am 

1:20, 4:00, 6:40, 9:20 

JACK THE GIANT 

SLAYER (PG13)(CS) 

10:00am, 2:30pm, 

4:50, 9:40,11:20pm 

BEAUTIFUL CREATURES 

(PG13)(CS) 5:10pm 

FLIGHT (M18)(CS) 10:40am 

LINCOLN (PG13) (CS) 

11:50am 

LIDO 

SHAW HOUSE LEVEL 5 

LIFE OF PI (CS) 12:00pm 

ARGO (PG13)(CS)10:20am 

BUGIS 

BUGIS JUNCTION LEVEL 4 


10:50am, 1:00pm, 

3:10, 7:20 



( PG13) (M) (CS&ES) 

5:20pm, 9:30,11:30pm 

WARM BODIES (PG13) 

(CS) 10:30am, 12:40, 1:40 

2:50, 5:00, 7:10, 8:40, 

9:20,10:50pm, 11:30 

THE INCREBIBLE 


(PG13) (CS) 11:30am, 6:30 


POWERFUL (CS) 3:50pm 

CENTURY 

CENTURY SQUARE LEVEL 5 


10:30am, 11:40, 12:40 

1:50, 2:50, 4:00, 5:00, 

6:10, 7:10, 8:20, 9:20, 

10:30pm, 11:30 

WARM BODIES 

(PG13) (CS) 10:40am, 

12:50pm, 3:00, 5:10, 

7:20, 9:30,11:40pm 



(PG13) ((M) (CS&ES) 

11:15am, 1:15, 3:15, 

5:15, 7:15, 9:15,11:15 

THE INCREBIBLE BURT 

WONDERSTONE (PG13) (CS) 

10:15am, 12:20, 4:50 


POWERFUL (CS) 

10:20am, 1:00pm, 3:40 

6:20, 9:00,11:40pm 

JACK THE GIANT SLAYER 

(PG13)(CS) 

2:30pm, 9:00,11:20pm 

GHOST CHILD 

(PG13) (M) (CS&ES) 7:00pm 

TODAY 

JCUBE 

2 JURONG EAST CENTRAL 1 

LEVEL 4 


10:00am, 10:40, 12:00 

12:50, 3:00, 5:10, 6:30, 

7:20, 9:30,11:40pm 

WARM BODIES (PG13) (CS) 

10:50am, 1:00, 2:10, 

3:10, 4:20, 5:20, 7:30, 

8:40, 9:40,10:50,11:50 



(PG13) (M) (CS&ES) 

10:50am, 12:50, 2:50, 

7:00, 9:00, 11:00pm 



(PG13) (CS) 

10:15am, 2:40pm, 7:10 



12:20pm, 4:50, 9:20, 

11:40pm 


POWERFUL (CS) 

11:20am, 4:00pm, 

6:40, 9:20,12:00am 

THE HAUNTING IN 

CONNECTICUT 2:GHOS TS 

OF GEORGIA (PG13) 4:50pm 

GHOST CHILD (PG13) 

(M) (CS&ES) 2:00pm 

What is the furthest you’ve travelled 

for a good drink? 

My extended family owns a vineyard 

in Brussels, Belgium, and by virtue of 

proximity, I was close to showering in 

Rosé every day. I’ll travel back for that 

in a heartbeat. 

What is your most embarrassing 

memory involving alcohol? 

The most embarrassing memory cannot 

be printed but I’m proud to say I’ve 

never woken up in the wrong bed before! 

BALESTIER 

SHAW PLAZA LEVEL 4 

HELTER SKELTER 

(R21)(JAPANESE) (CS&ES) ✱ 

10:40am, 1:20pm, 4:00 

6:40, 9:20,12:00am 


10:30am, 12:40, 2:50, 

5:00, 7:10, 9:20,11:30 

WARM BODIES 

(PG13) (CS) 

10:40am, 12:50, 3:00, 

5:10, 7:20, 9:30,11:40 



(PG13) ((M) (CS&ES) 

11:15am, 1:15, 3:15, 

5:15, 7:15, 9:15,11:20 


POWERFUL (CS) 11:30am 

4:20pm, 9:10, 11:50pm 



(PG13) (CS) 2:10pm, 7:00 



1:00pm, 5:20, 9:40, 

Show times are subjected to change, please check 

www.shaw.sg for the most up to date timings 

nex 

nex SERANGOON CENTRAL 

LEVEL 4 

PROMISED LAND 

(PG13) ✱ 

12:00pm, 2:20, 4:40, 

7:00, 9:20,11:40pm 

THE CROODS (CS) ✱ ✱ 

3D 2:00, 6:20,10:40 


10:40am, 12:50, 3:00 

5:10, 7:20, 9:30,11:40 

WARM BODIES 

(PG13) CS) 

10:30am, 12:40pm, 

2:50, 4:10, 5:00,7:10, 

9:20,11:30pm 



(PG13) ((M) (CS&ES) 

11:15am, 1:15, 3:15, 

5:15, 7:15, 9:15,11:20 

THE INCREBIBLE 

LOT ONE 

LEVEL 5 

LOT 1 CHOA CHU KANG 


10:50am, 1:00, 3:10, 

5:20, 7:30, 9:40,11:50 

WARM BODIES 

(PG13) (CS) 

10:40am, 12:50, 3:00, 

5:10, 7:20, 9:30,11:40 

THE INCREBIBLE BURT 

WONDERSTONE (PG13) (CS) 

10:20am, 2:30pm 



(PG13) ((M) (CS&ES) 

12:30pm, 4:40, 9:20 


POWERFUL (CS) 

11:20pm 

GHOST CHILD 

(PG13) (M) (CS&ES) 12:40, 

5:00, 9:20,11:20pm 




(PG13) (CS) 

10:20am, 2:40, 7:00 

11:50am, 4:10, 8:30 

12:00am 


POWERFUL (CS) 

GHOST CHILD 10:50am, 1:30pm, 

(PG13) (M) (CS&ES) 

11:00am, 3:20, 7:40 6:20, 9:00,11:40pm 



11:30am, 2:00, 4:30, 

7:00, 9:30,12:00am 

OZ THE GREAT & GHOST CHILD 

(PG13) (M) (CS&ES) 

POWERFUL (CS) ✱✱ 

IMAX 2:20, 7:10, 9:10,11:10 

BEAUTIFUL CREATURES 

(PG13)(CS) 11:50am 

FLIGHT (M18)(CS) 4:20pm 

® 3D 11:20am 

4:20, 7:00, 9:40, 

12:20am 


SLAYER (PG13)(CS) ✱✱ 

IMAX ® • PROMISED LAND (PG13) 

SOME COARSE LANGUAGE 

• HELTER SKELTER (R21) SEXUAL SCENES 

• SIDE EFFECTS (M18) SEXUAL SCENES 

• DJANGO UNCHAINED (M18) 

VIOLENCE AND COARSE LANGUAGE 

• WARM BODIES (PG13) VIOLENCE AND SOME 

COARSE LANGUAGE 

• PRINCESS AND THE SEVEN KUNGFU MASTERS 

(PG13) SOME VIOLENCE 

• THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE (PG13) 

SOME DRUG REFERENCES & COARSE LANGUAGE 

• THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT 2: GHOST OF 

GEORGIA (PG13) DISTURBING SCENES 

• OZ: THE GREATEST AND POWERFUL (PG13) 

OZ THE GREAT & 

SOME FRIGHTENING SCENES 

POWERFUL (CS) ✱✱ 

• JACK THE GIANT SLAYER (PG13) SOME VIOLENCE 

• BEAUTIFUL CREATURES (PG13)SOME FRIGHTENING 

IMAX SCENES AND SUPERNATURNAL THEME 

• FLIGHT (M18) NUDITY AND DRUG USE 

• LINCOLN (PG13) SOME VIOLENCE & COARSELANGUAGE 

• ARGO (PG13) COARSE LANGUAGE 

• LIFE OF PI (PG) SOME FRIGHTENING SCENES 

• GHOST CHILD (PG13) HORROR 

3D 2:00pm 

at nex 

® 3D 10:30am 

1:10, 6:20, 9:00, 

11:40pm 


SLAYER (PG13)(CS) ✱✱ 

IMAX ® 3D 3:50pm 

• CHINESE SUBTITLES (CS) • ENGLISH SUBTITLES (ES) • MANDARIN (M) 

NO SUBTITLES (No Indication of CS or ES) ✱ NO FREE LIST/NO FREE PASSES 

✱✱ STRICTLY NO FREE LIST/STRICTLY NO FREE PASSES 

ALL FILMS RATED PG UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED 

DJANGO UNCHAINED (M18)(CS) ✱✱ 

10:45am, 2:00, 5:15, 8:30,11:45pm 

WARM BODIES (PG13)(CS) ✱✱ 

12:15pm, 2:30pm, 4:45, 

7:00, 9:30,12:00am

36 toggle tv listings on saturday today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

TOGGLE 

6.00AM The Martha Stewart Show 

9.00 The Emeril Lagasse Show 

10.00 Obsessed 

11.00 Power Players 

11.30 Sustainable Futures 

NOON Biography - Julia Roberts 

1.00PM Outlaw-In-Laws 

1.30 Last Chance For Romance 

2.00 Fiona X Fiona 

4.30 JP Times 

7.00 Landmarks 

7.30 Connect 

8.00 Can I Cook With You? 

8.30 Naturally Delicious 


9.30 Natural Companions 

10.00 It’s All Relative 

10.30 Crimes of Fashion 


11.30 Why, What, Where? 

MN Style Etc 

12.30AM Rich & Famous 


1.30 Hot on the Trail 

2.00 Models Reinvented 

2.30 Picker Sisters 


3.30 Fun to Grow On 

4.00 Behind This Door 

4.30 Empty Nesters 

5.00 Essence Of Emeril 

JP Times 

Always wanted to explore 

Japan? Let our hosts show you 

the places you have to visit and 

how to get there in the most 

eficient and economical way. 

TOGGLE EVE, 4.30pm 

TOGGLE 

6.18AM Zheng He’s Voyages 

To The West Seas 

7.30 Farhat 

10.00 The Crocodile 

Hunter Diaries 

11.00 Nimbols, A World Closer 

and Closer 

12.30PM Rubi Series 1 

2.50 Rubi Series 2 

4.00 Farhat 

6.30 The Crocodile 

Hunter Diaries 


and Closer 

9.00 Panda Adventure 

With Nigel Marven 

10.00 Zheng He’s Voyages 


MN Galaxy Racers 

2.00AM Magic Eye The Wonder Boy 

4.00 Swirl Fighter 

NimBOLs, A WORLD 

CLOseR AND CLOseR 

Oona, Neema, earp, Ulpy 

and Blip face a life full of 

surprises and new adventures. 

TOGGLE KIDS, 7.30pm 

6.10AM Rediscovery of Korea 

7.10 Cloud Bread 

7.20 [LIVE] Morning Forum 

8.30 KBS News 

8.40 KBS World Highlights 

8.50 Three Days 

9.40 Backpack Travels 

10.30 Let’s Go! Dream Team 2 

11.40 Music Bank 

1.10PM Seri’s Star Kitchen 

1.40 Ad Genius Lee TaeBaek 

4.00 Road For Hope: The Voice 

of Children 

5.10 Immortal Songs 2 

6.50 Seoyeong, My Daughter 

8.00 KBS News 9 

8.40 Dream of the Emperor 

9.40 Sungkyunkwan Scandal 

MN Road For Hope: The Voice 

of Children 

1.10AM Immortal Songs 2 




5.40 Invincible Youth 

CLOUD BReAD 

Two kittens, Hongbi and 

Hongshi, discover they 

can ly after eating dough 

mixed with a cloud and 

‘a kiss of mother’s love’. 

KBS WORLD, 7.10am 

To subscribe, 

log on to 

www.toggle.sg 

or call Toggle 

Customer Care 

Hotline. 

6388 3888 

(9am-9pm 

daily, Sundays 

and public 

holidays) 

6.00AM Blissology Project 

7.00 The Skinny Girl Workout 

8.00 Carribean Workout 

8.30 Bellydance with Samsara 

9.00 The Perfect Bum 

9.30 Fertility Flow Yoga 

10.00 Shanti Yoga 

11.00 Yogalosophy 

11.30 Sun Power Yoga - Yoga Divine 

NOON Blissology Project 

1.00PM Carribean Workout 

1.30 Fame Workout 

2.00 Tantric Yoga for Pregnancy 







6.30 Dirty Dancing Workout 

7.00 Fabulous Fitness at 40 






11.00 Phat Moves 

MN Blissology Project 

1.00AM The Skinny Girl Workout 

2.00 Latinva 






5.00 Latinva 


6.00AM Full Show 

6.15 Backstage 

6.30 Men 

6.45 Events 

7.00 Fashion Week 

7.15 Tendencies 


7.45 Designers 


8.15 Events 

8.30 Voice of Hong Kong 2013: 

Hong Kong Fashion Week 

9.00 REPLAY: Beauty Fix 



9.45 Events 



10.30 Men 


11.00 REPLAY: Design Genius 


11.45 Events 

NOON Voice of Hong Kong 2013: 


12.30PM Photographers 

12.45 Perth Fashion Festival 



1.30 Men 

1.45 Full Show 

2.00 Events 






3.30 Frontline Recap 






4.45 Events 


5.30 Men 


6.00 Events 


6.30 Men 


7.00 Events 







8.45 Men 

9.00 VIP VIEW 


9.30 Photographers 

9.45 Events 



10.30 Men 





MN Swimwear 

12.15AM Tendencies 





1.30 Events 




2.30 Swimwear 



3.15 Men 

3.30 Events 


4.00 Parties 


4.30 Swimwear 




5.30 Events 


RePLAY: BeAUTY FiX 

Get makeup tips from top 

makeup artists from New York 

City and around the world. 

FASHION|ONE, 4pm 

6.15AM Truck Race 

6.45 Classic Ride 

7.35 Classic Races 

8.00 Motorland UK 


8.50 Supercars 

9.15 Perfect Ride 

9.40 Streetwise 

10.05 4x4 

10.30 On Tour 

11.20 Trackmasters 

11.50 Top Ten Show 

12.20PM Made in Germany 

12.45 Car People 

1.10 Tuning 

1.35 Truck World 

2.00 On Tour 




5.20 Stunt Heroes 


6.45 Made in Germany 

7.10 Tuning 



9.15 Motorheads 

9.40 Tuning 



11.20 4x4 


12.15AM Truck Race 



2.00 On Tour 






6.00AM Divine Destinations 

6.30 Tracking Royalty 

7.00 Xplore Czech 

7.30 XP Guide 

8.00 Hills & Valleys 

8.30 Great World Hotels 

9.00 Scrapbook 



10.00 Divine Destinations 

10.30 Strictly Street 

11.00 Bada Weekend 

11.30 Foodicted 

NOON Xplore Czech 

12.30PM Divine Destinations 

1.00 XP Guide 




3.00 Great Indian Hotels 

3.30 Heritage 

3.45 Best From The Rest 






6.00 XP Guide 


6.45 Heritage 








10.00 XP Guide 

10.30 World Festivals 


11.30 Xplore India 

MN Divine Destinations 

12.30AM Landmarks 

12.45 Heritage 




2.30 XP Guide 







5.30 World Festivals 

XP GUiDe 

Wayanad in Kerala is surrounded 

by lofty ridges, majestic 

wildlife and lush jungles. 

TRAVEL XP, 1pm

37 toggle tv listings on sunday today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

TOGGLE 

6.00AM Essence Of Emeril 

7.30 Cultural Flavours 

10.00 The Crocodile Hunter Diaries 

11.00 Tech Tools 

NOON Rome Unwrapped 

1.00PM Arctic Exposure With 

Nigel Marven 

2.00 Life on Horizon 

7.00 Kitchen Road 

10.00 Taiwan Hotels Ichiban 

11.00 Europe Tetralogy 

MN The Crocodile Hunter Diaries 

1.00AM Tech Tools 

2.00 Rome Unwrapped 

3.00 Arctic Exposure 


4.00 The Martha Stewart Show 

5.00 Essence Of Emeril 

5.30 Cultural Flavours 

Taiwan HoTels icHiban 

From villas to Moroccan-style 

rooms, check out the most 

interesting accommodation 

Taiwan has to offer. 

TOGGLE EVE, 10pm 

TOGGLE 

6.00AM Puppy In My Pocket 

7.10 Spaghetty Family 




and Closer 

NOON Galaxy Racers 

2.00PM Magic Eye The Wonder Boy 


6.30 The Crocodile Hunter Diaries 


and Closer 




MN Dream Town 

12.30AM Galaxy Racers 


1.30 Farhat 


2.30 Magic Eye The Wonder Boy 


3.14 Puppy In My Pocket 


4.00 Zheng He’s Voyages 


4.30 Dream Town 

5.00 Galaxy Racers 


GalaXY RaceRs 

in the future, car racing has 

advanced into the domain of 

the Galaxy Racers. our hero, 

Roy, was born to race and 

aspires to be no 1! 

TOGGLE KIDS, Noon 

6.50AM Pit-A-Pat Korean 

7.00 Screening Humanity 

9.50 Vitamin 

11.00 KBS News 

11.10 [LIVE] Korea Sings 

12.20PM Gag Concert 

1.40 IRIS II: New Generation 

4.00 Happy Sunday 

5.20 Two Days and One Night 




9.40 2013 Big Concert 

11.30 Tasty Road Trip 

MN Qualiications of Men 

1.20AM Two Days and One Night 




5.40 K-Wave Extra 

DReaM oF 

THe eMPeRoR 

This series is based on the life 

of Muyeol, the 29th monarch 

of silla and Kim Yusin, who 

became one of the greatest 

generals in Korea’s history. 

KBS WORLD, 8.40pm 

To subscribe, 

log on to 

www.toggle.sg 

or call Toggle 

Customer Care 

Hotline. 

6388 3888 

(9am-9pm 

daily, Sundays 

and public 

holidays) 

6.00AM Blissology Project 









NOON Blissology Project 

1.00PM Carribean Workout 


2.00 Phat Moves 








7.00 Fabulous Fitness at 40 








11.30 Latinva 

MN Barbara Currie: The Power 

of Yoga 

12.30AM The Body Holiday 

Lifestyle Series 

1.00 Fighting Fit, Fighting Fat 

1.30 Howard Napper Yoga 

Series: Upper Body 


3.00 Tracey Mallett: Dancer’s Body 




5.00 Tai Chi Nations Guide 

to Qi Gong and Tai Chi 

6.00AM Designers 




7.00 Events 






8.30 Events 





10.00 Celebrities 




11.00 Events 

11.15 Men 



NOON REPLAY: Design Genius 

12.30PM Fashion Week 

12.45 Events 


1.15 Men 




2.15 Events 








4.15 Events 


4.45 Men 






6.15 Events 








8.15 Events 





9.45 Men 








11.45 Men 

MN Photographers 

12.15AM Full Show 

12.30 Lingerie 

12.45 Swimwear 




1.45 Events 

2.00 Parties 

2.15 Swimwear 




3.15 Models 




4.15 Men 

4.30 Events 



5.15 Swimwear 



6.45AM Made in Germany 

7.10 Tuning 




9.40 Tuning 



11.20 4x4 


12.15PM Truck Race 



2.00 Tuning 





4.30 Car History 



6.10 Top Ten Show 


8.00 On Tour 






12.45AM Made in Germany 

1.10 Tuning 





4.30 Car History 



6.15AM Best From The Rest 




8.00 XP Guide 










NOON Xplore India 

12.30PM Divine Destinations 




2.00 XP Guide 







5.30 XP Guide 


6.15 Heritage 














MN Great Indian Hotels 

12.30AM XP Guide 



2.00 Xplore Austria 


3.00 XP Guide 




5.00 Heritage 



baDa weeKenD 

if you thought wine was 

not popular in india, think 

again: The sula Vineyard 

is revolutionary. 

TRAVEL XP HD, 4.30pm

38 tv listings on saturday today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

chaNNel 

tellchannel5@mediacorp.com.sg 

6.00AM The Two Of Us 

8.00 The Ellen DeGeneres 

Show X (HD5) 

8.45 Just For Laughs Gags IX 

9.00 S-League 2013 

(Highlight Show) (HD5) 

9.30 S-League 2013 (Matches): 

Hougang United FC Vs 

Tanjong Pagar United FC 

11.30 Films & Stars Asia 

NOON Multisport M7 Adventure 

Series II (HD5) 

12.30PM GP Racing: 

Rd 2 Malaysian GP 

1.00 Football Action: MUTV II: 

Under 21s Live! Arsenal v 

United/Park et al — All 

The Goals (Ep 1) 

4.00 The Million Pound Drop 

5.00 Ninja Warrior 

6.00 Just For Laughs Gags 

6.15 Voices TODAY (HD5) 

6.45 Stay Home Saturday Movie: 

Eat Pray Love(HD5)(PG) 

(CH5 Premiere) 

9.30 News 5 Tonight (HD5) 

10.00 Saturday Movie House: 

The Ruins (CH5 Premiere) 

(PG13-Horror) 

11.45 Saturday Late Night Movie: 

Dinoshark (PG-Violence) 

1.45AM Saturday Late Night Movie: 

Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus 

(PG-Violence) 

3.40 GP Racing: 

Rd 2 Malaysian GP 


Show X (HD5) 

4.55 Just For Laughs Gags 

5.10 The Price Is Right (USA) 

staY Home 

satUrdaY moVie: 

eat praY loVe(Hd5) 

(pG)(CH5 premiere) 

liz Gilbert had everything 

— a husband, a house and a 

successful career — and yet it 

seemed she had nothing. 

so she decides to embark on 

a journey around the world 

to ind herself. starring: 

Julia roberts. 

channel 5, 6.45pm 

moss 

When ryu arrives in a remote rural village to 

settle the estate of his estranged father, he 

stumbles into a dark web of secrets that have 

lain buried for 30 years. it’s ruled by a sinister 

chief, Cheon, a former police detective, and 

his cabal of reformed criminals and it quickly 

becomes clear that ryu’s presence is not 

welcome. 

mei ah movies channel (asia) 

(mio tv ch 577), 8pm 

chaNNel 


6.00AM I Not Stupid (Ep 1) 

6.30 My Home Cuisine 

7.00 Fallen Angel 

8.00 Chinese Moral 

Education Stories 

8.30 Shiffer Dog Ahoo 

9.00 Pleasant Goat and Big Big 

Wolf IV 

9.30 Doraemon 

10.00 Romance of the 

Three Kingdoms 

10.30 Hao Hao in Words 

Wonderland II 

11.00 Fun Learning! 

11.30 Truly Friendship 

NOON Sizzling Woks III 

12.30PM Oh Mother! 

1.00 Paris & Milan 

1.30 Golden Age 

Talentime 2012 

2.30 Saturday Matinee: 

King of Beggars 

(PG - Fighting Scenes) 

4.30 The Teochew Family 

6.30 Singapore Today 

7.00 Life (PG) 

9.00 Mind Your Money 

(Last Episode) 

9.30 Taste With Jason IV 

10.00 News Tonight 

10.30 Meet My Family 

11.00 Saturday Chinese Cinema: 

Marry A Rich Man (PG) 

1.00AM The Scarlet Kid 

(Last Episode) 

3.00 Room In My Heart 

4.00 Cash Is King 

satUrdaY 

CHinese Cinema: 

marrY a riCH man (pG) 

ah me (sammi Cheng) is 

an average girl who wants 

to fullill the dream of every 

Hong Kong girl: to rope in 

a rich husband. she decides 

that milan, italy, is the place 

to meet someone rich, and 

lies irst class. during the 

light, she meets ah dan 

(richie ren). Could he be 

the rich man of her dreams? 

channel 8, 11pm 

ON SiNgtel miO tv 

chaNNel 

tellchannelu@mediacorp.com.sg 

6.00AM Home Shopping 

10.00 Diamond Club 

NOON My Working Holiday 

12.30PM Youth Diary 

1.00 Super IQ 

2.00 The Adventures of Chris 

3.00 Brilliant Legacy 

5.00 Autumn’s Concerto 

(Ep 1 &2) (PG) 

7.00 Money Week 

7.30 Perfect Match 

9.00 Spring Love (PG) 


11.30 When Love Walked In 

12.30AM Who’s the Hero 

(PG13-Gambling Theme) 

2.30 End of Transmission 

tellokto@mediacorp.com.sg 

7.00AM Mister Maker (Preschool) 

7.30 Zingzillas(Preschool) 

8.00 Mat Yoyo (Preschool) 

9.00 The Little Prince 

9.30 Gundam AGE 

10.00 Pokemon: Black & White 

10.30 The Super Hero Squad Show 

11.00 Metal Fight Beyblade 

11.30 Bakugan: Mechtanium Surge 

NOON Zero Hero 

12.30PM Shutter Kidz 

1.00 Generator Rex 

2.00 Martha Speaks 

3.00 Team Word 

4.00 Singapore Football 

Galacticos 

5.00 Magic Planet 

5.30 Sherlock Yack 

6.00 1001 Nights 

6.30 Winx Club 



8.00 The Amazing Spiez! 

8.30 Tricky TV 

9.00 Nick Baker’s Weird Creatures 

10.00 Sleeping Beauty 

12.40AM Close 

niCK BaKer’s Weird 

CreatUres 

in the delaware Bay on the 

north-east seaboard of the 

United states, nick Baker 

tracks down the horseshoe 

crab, one of the oldest and 

most endangered creatures 

on the planet. 

okto, 9pm 

silent Code BBs 

reporter lan feels a special calling for her 

work. she thinks that entering the world of 

news would be perfect, but her boss has her 

looking for news on the internet instead. By 

accident, she stumbles across a BBs forum 

with more than 100,000 members. 

Star chinese movies hD 

(mio tv ch 571), 9.30pm 

programming@channelnewsasia.com 

Headlines 

7.30am, 8.30am, 10.30am, 12.30pm, 

1.00pm, 3.30pm, 5.30pm, 6pm, 7.30pm 

Headlines/s’pore Updates 

9.30am, 11.30am, 2.30pm, 4.30pm 

Programmes may be pre-empted 

due to breaking news 

6.00AM Instant Noodles Diary 

6.30 Fill My Tank 

7.00 News Now 

7.32 Correspondents’ Diary 

8.00 News Now 

8.32 In The House Of Style 

9.00 News Now 

9.33 Welcome 2 Taiwan: 

Taiwan Holiday 

10.00 News Now 

10.32 Amazing Asia 


11.33 Social Inc 

NOON News Now 

12.32PM Correspondents’ Diary 

1.02 Living in the Shadows 

2.00 News Now 



3.00 News Now 


4.00 News Now 


5.00 News Now 


6.02 Instant Noodles Diary 

6.30 Fill My Tank 

7.00 Primetime Weekend 

7.32 Japan Hour 

8.30 2 Brothers 2 Cities 


9.30 One in a Million 

10.00 Singapore Tonight 

10.30 On The Red Dot 

11.00 World Tonight 


12.30AM 2 Brothers 2 Cities 

1.00 News Pulse 




3.00 Instant Noodles Diary 



4.30 Living in the Shadows 


2 BrotHers 2 Cities 

Henry goes to southern laos 

to see traditional ishing and 

irrawady dolphins. paul inds 

out how the Kanpur leather 

industrial pollution affects the 

Ganges river. 

channel Newsasia, 8.30pm 

GinGer snaps 2 

the late Ginger’s sister Brigitte, now a 

werewolf herself, must try to ind a cure 

for her blood lust before the next full 

moon while hiding out in a rehab clinic 

from a relentless werewolf. stars emily 

perkins and Brendan Fletcher. 

thrill (Starhub tv ch 618), 9pm 

ON Starhub cable tv 

tellvasantham@mediacorp.com.sg 

1.00PM Vasantham Gold: 

Kanne Pappa 

4.00 Bollywood Masti: 

Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu 

7.00 Namaste Bollywood 

7.30 Dhoom Dhoom Dhoomeel II 

8.00 Ha Ha Ha Sirippu 

Holiday Specials 

8.30 Tamil Seithi 

9.00 Tamil Silverscreen: 

Thiruthani 


MN Close 

BollYWood masti: 

eK main aUr eKK tU 

ek main aur ekk tu is a 2012 

Hindi romantic comedy ilm 

directed by shakun Batra, 

starring imran Khan and 

Kareena Kapoor. 

vasantham, 4pm 

tellsuria@mediacorp.com.sg 

3.00PM 80an Gerek 

4.00 Zoom Korea 

4.30 Ayah Kat Rumah 

5.30 Nora Wedding Concepts II 

6.30 Chef Skuter 

7.00 Chakia dan Kasut Sukan II 

7.30 Renovasi Impian III 

8.00 Berita 

8.30 Makan Angin Sepanyol 

9.30 Releksi 

10.30 Kadir & Kadir 

11.00 Detik 

11.30 Berita 

MN Close 

Zoom Korea 

Hosted by norfasarie and 

maiya rahman, Zoom Korea 

explores the beauty of 

south Korea. 

Suria, 4pm 

a monster in paris 

paris, 1910. panic sweeps the city as 

loodwaters rise and a monster is on the 

loose. Commissioner maynott and his 

men hunt for it day and night with no luck. 

perhaps the rare Bird, a montmartre 

cabaret where feisty lucille is the star 

attraction, isn’t a bad place to hide after all. 

stars mathieu Chedid, Vanessa paradis and 

Gad elmaleh. 

hbO Family (Starhub tv ch 604), 1pm

39 tv listings on sunday today • Saturday 23 March 2013 

chaNNel 


6.00AM The Two Of Us 

8.00 The Jeff Probst Show 

(HD5) 

9.00 The Dr Oz Show II 


Show X (HD5) 

11.00 Films & Stars 

11.30 Million Dollar Listings III 

12.30PM Hole In The Wall: 

Family Edition 

1.00 Don’t Forget The Lyrics IV 

2.00 Lost VI (PG) 

3.00 Covert Affairs 

4.00 Terra Nova (HD5) 

(PG-Action VIolence) 

5.00 We Are Singaporeans (HD5) 

6.00 Films & Stars 

6.30 Just For Laughs Gags XI 

6.45 Blockbuster Sunday: 

G I Joe: The Rise Of The 

Cobra (HD5) (PG-Action 

Violence)(CH5 Premiere) 

9.00 Crimewatch 2013 (HD5) 

(Season Premiere) (PG) 

9.30 News 5 Tonight (HD5) 

10.00 Sunday Night Movie: 

Confessions Of A 

Shopaholic (HD5) (PG) 

MN How I Met Your Mother V 

(HD5) (PG13- 

Mature Themes) 

1.30AM Crime Investigation Asia: 

The Braemar Hill Murders 

2.30 Fairly Legal 


Show X (HD5) 

4.10 The Jeff Probst Show 

(HD5) 

5.00 The Dr Oz Show II 

BloCkBUster sUndaY: 

G i Joe: tHe rise oF tHe 

CoBra (Hd5) 

(pG-aCtion ViolenCe) 

(CH5 preMiere) 

While transporting special 

warheads created by Mars, 

a group is attacked by evil 

organisation Cobra. G i Joe, 

a special elite force comes to 

the rescue and puts a stop to 

the villains who wants to take 

over the world. 

channel 5, 6.45pm 

ForMUla 1 — MalaYsia Grand 

priX (liVe) 

alonso won his irst race here last season , 

kick-starting his challenge for the crown. it 

was also a bad start for eventual champion 

Vettel as he only inished 11th and red Bull 

will deinitely be looking to improve on their 

early season form. 

Star Sports (mio tv ch 115), 

Qualifying – 23 mar, Saturday, 4pm , 

race – 24 mar, Sunday, 4pm 

chaNNel 


6.00AM Ah Hong Food Tour 

7.00 Fallen Angel 

8.00 Pleasant Goat and 

Big Big Wolf 

8.30 Ori Princess II 

9.00 Dragon Crystal Legend 

9.30 Doraemon 

10.00 Chinese Di Zi Gui 

10.30 Fun Discovery With Maths 

11.00 Alien 

11.30 Koffee Did It! 

NOON Borders 

12.30PM Love on the Plate II 

1.30 Your Best Bet II 

2.30 Myths & Legends Of 

Singapore (Ep 1) 

3.30 The SPD Charity Show 2013 

6.30 Singapore Today 

7.00 Life (PG) 


10.30 Art Beats 

11.00 Incredible Tales VI 

(PG-Supernatural) 

11.30 Foodie Dash II 

12.30AM Sunday Chinese Cinema: 

Undercover Hidden Dragon 

(PG - Some Violence) 

2.30 A Child’s Hope 

3.30 Celebrations! 

4.00 The Heavenly Sword & 

The Dragon Sabre 

liFe (pG) 

Businessman Zhang tianqi 

goes to kexin’s nightclub for 

the irst time. kexin takes 

the opportunity to chat with 

him. ah Zhong’s younger 

sister, Xiaoyan, goes to stay 

with him in taipei. dafeng 

deliberately makes things 

dificult for kexin at the 

nightclub. tianqi tells dafeng 

off. Qiaqia and dafeng go 

to the Yangs’ residence to 

propose marriage. only then 

does Zonghua object to the 

marriage between dafeng 

and amy. He also criticises 

dafeng’s character and states 

that he will not support 

Qiaqia in her electoral 

campaigns again. 

channel 8, 7pm 

ON SiNgtel miO tv 

chaNNel 

tellchannelu@mediacorp.com.sg 

6.00AM Home Shopping 

10.00 Million Singer 

11.30 Campus Superstar 2013 

1.00PM BOSS (PG) 

3.00 Brilliant Legacy 

5.00 Untamed and Uncut (PG- 

Some Disturbing Scenes) 

5.30 Power Sunday 

7.00 World This Week 

7.30 My Working Holiday 

8.00 Youth Diary (PG-Some 

Sexual References) 

8.30 The Brave Game 

9.30 City Hunter (PG) 


11.30 Money Week 

MN Strawberry Night 

(PG 13 - Mature Themes) 

2.00AM Singapore Flavours 

3.00 End of Transmission 

tellokto@mediacorp.com.sg 

7.00AM Mister Maker (Preschool) 

7.30 Zingzillas (Preschool) 

8.00 Mat Yoyo (Preschool) 

9.00 Kung Fu Masters Of 

The Zodiac 

9.30 Monkey King 

10.00 Galaxia 

10.30 Cardight Vanguard 

11.00 Ben 10: Alien Force 

11.30 Kaijudo: Rise Of The 

Duel Masters 

NOON After School 

12.30PM Surprise Party! 

1.00 Discover Science 

1.30 Pearlie 

2.00 Artzooka 

3.00 Groom My Room 

4.00 Brain Juice 

5.00 Monkey King 

5.30 Sherlock Yack 

6.00 1001 Nights 

6.30 Winx Club 



8.00 The Amazing Spiez! 

8.30 Tricky TV 

9.00 Doctor Who 

10.00 The Million Dollar Job 

MN Close 

tHe Million dollar JoB 

the Million dollar Job 

revolves around an attempt 

to steal a million-dollar 

smartphone prototype from 

singapore’s Museum of 

design. stars Gurmit singh, 

keagan kang, pamelyn 

Chee, and sani Hussin. 

okto, 10pm 

pandeMiC 

tsuyoshi Matsuoka (satoshi tsumabaki), 

a young doctor, is examining a patient, 

Manabe. the symptoms are lu-like, so 

tsuyoshi orders tests, which come back 

negative. the next day, however, Manabe’s 

condition worsens dramatically and he 

dies. soon the infection starts to spread 

throughout Japan. 

Star chinese movies hD (mio tv ch 571), 

9.30pm 

programming@channelnewsasia.com 

Headlines 

7.30am, 8.30am, 10.30am, 12.30pm, 

1.00pm, 3.30pm, 5.30pm, 6pm, 7.30pm 

Headlines/s’pore Updates 

9.30am, 11.30am, 2.30pm, 4.30pm 

Programmes may be pre-empted 

due to breaking news 

6.00AM Ask Minister - Talking 

Point Special 

7.00 News Now 


8.00 News Now 

8.32 Kungfu Kitchen 

9.00 News Now 



10.32 Chasing Sleep 



NOON News Now 

12.32PM SportsWorld 


2.00 News Now 


3.00 News Now 

3.32 Chasing Sleep 

4.00 News Now 


5.00 News Now 

5.32 SportsWorld 

6.02 High Tech, Low Life (Part 2) 




8.00 Silent Screams 


9.30 Life Less Ordinary 





MN Instant Noodles Diary 

12.30AM Fill My Tank 


1.30 Life Less Ordinary 









silent sCreaMs 

on dec 16, a 23-year-old 

girl was brutally raped in a 

bus south of new delhi. the 

incident prompted calls for 

stronger laws, a sensitive police 

force and gender equality 

campaigns. 

channel Newsasia, 8pm 

tanGled 

Go on an adventure with the striking and 

spirited rapunzel and the infamous and 

charismatic outlaw Flynn rider. they’ll 

take you on a journey full of unexpected 

heroes, calculating villains, laughter, 

action and hair — lots of hair. 

DiSNeY channel 

(Starhub tv ch 312), 10am 

ON Starhub cable tv 

tellvasantham@mediacorp.com.sg 

1.00PM Indian Panorama: 

Pancharangi 

4.00 Cinema Express: 

Guru En Aalu 

7.00 Vanakkam London (Ep 1) 

8.00 Athisayangal 


9.00 Kannottam 360 

10.00 Tamil Talkies: Indira 

MN Tamil Seithi 

12.30AM Close 

kannottaM 360 

new citizens in singapore — 

do they integrate well with 

fellow singaporeans? Join 

our discussion tonight. 

vasantham, 9pm 

tellsuria@mediacorp.com.sg 

10.00AM Adam & Sarah 

10.30 Nenekku Superspy 

Upgrade 

11.00 Graiti 

11.30 Pop Agenda 

12.30PM Art & El 

1.30 Opah Popular 

2.00 Di Pinggir Hati — 

Kisah Di Turki 

3.00 80an Gerek 

4.00 3 Dara Metropolitan 

4.30 Tiket Untuk Dua 

5.00 Jurnal Kembara Australia 

5.30 Nenek Super Canggih 

6.00 Ulat Buku 

6.30 Chef Skuter 

7.00 Chakia dan Kasut Sukan II 

7.30 Renovasi Impian III 

8.00 Berita 

8.30 24/7 III 

9.00 Destinasi Bajet III 

9.30 Releksi 

10.30 Akses Larangan II 

11.00 Akhir Kata 

11.30 Berita 

MN Close 

CHakia dan 

kasUt sUkan ii 

a series that sees two family 

members from different 

generations switching 

hobbies for a day. 

Suria, 7pm 

tHe ladY [16] 

an epic love story about how an 

extraordinary couple sacriiced their 

happiness for a higher cause. this is the 

story of aung san suu kyi and her husband, 

Michael aris. despite the distance that 

separates, a dangerously hostile regime, 

their love endures until the very end. stars 

Michelle Yeoh and david thewlis. 

hbO (Starhub tv ch 601), 10pm

40 


SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 2013 The new york Times inTernaTional weekly 

14 

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY 

It’s pretty clear that the American 

actress Tina Fey has a longstanding 

preoccupation with motherhood. 

In her new movie, “Admission,” 

Ms. Fey stars as an unmarried college 

administrator who belatedly 

regrets not being a mom. Ms. Fey 

played a single woman in her late 

30s who hires a surrogate in “Baby 

Mama.” And on “30 Rock,” her popular 

comedy on the NBC television 

network, her character Liz Lemon 

spends the later part of the series’ 

seven-year run agonizing about 

whether to have children. And then 

obsesses over how to do it. 

As personal as they are, Ms. Fey’s 

choices also reflect a broader cultural 

mood swing: pregnancy is an 

increasingly fertile field for romantic 

comedy. 

Ms. Fey is not alone. Jennifer 

Lopez played a woman who becomes 

pregnant through artificial 

insemination, then meets Mr. Right 

in “The Back-Up Plan” (2010). And 

that’s also what happens to Jennifer 

Aniston’s character in “The 

Switch“ (2010), though she encountered 

messier complications. In 

“Knocked Up“ (2007) Katherine 

Heigl becomes pregnant after a 

one-night stand. 

Last year Jennifer Westfeldt 

starred in and directed “Friends 

With Kids,” about a woman who 

makes a deal with a male friend 

to make a baby, without benefits. 

“What to Expect When You’re 

Expecting,” a 2012 comedy that 

flopped, was based on a parental 

advice book. 

Maternity is not a new subject, of 

course. The decision to have children 

has been a perennial obsession 

that blooms in a thousand blog posts 

and talk show debates every time 

science pushes a new boundary or 

The New England Journal of Medicine 

prompts a fresh scare about 

child-bearing. 

But in today’s 24-hour tabloid culture 

signs of celebrity baby bumps, 

morning sickness and secret surrogacies 

are as closely monitored 

via Telephoto lens and minicams 

as engagement rings and cosmetic 

surgery scars. Everything about 

celebrity parenthood is up for grabs 

and public exposure. 

There’s a cycle to the fertility 

fixation. Right now older mothers, 

a r t s & d e s i g n 

romancing the obsessions of Pregnancy and motherhood 

By CHRIS SUELLENTROP 

Since helping to invent the videogame 

industry in 1981 with his 

design of Donkey Kong, Nintendo’s 

Shigeru Miyamoto has repeatedly 

reinvented it, most notably with the 

Nintendo Entertainment System 

in the 1980s — which introduced 

Super Mario Bros. and the Legend 

of Zelda — and in the 2000s with the 

Wii, which started a craze with its 

arm-waving motion controls. 

During a recent conversation Mr. 

Miyamoto, 60, talked about the violence 

in video games, the company’s 

newest creation, the Wii U, and 

the future of video games. These 

are excerpts from the discussion. 

Q. What do you think of the conversation 

we’ve been having in the 

United States about games and 

violence since the elementary school 

shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, 

in December? 

a. That’s a difficult question. It’s 

a subject that I’m very sensitive 

DaviD Lee/Focus Features 

older mothers are in vogue. in “admission,” tina Fey plays a woman who regrets not being a mom. 

about. We’ve seen through a variety 

of media that when people see 

or experience violence on screen, 

there is a certain amount of entertainment 

that people get out of that. 

Mario is a character that, I feel, 

doesn’t need to use guns. But when 

it comes to violence, you then have 

to ask, “So, if Mario doesn’t use 

a gun, is it appropriate for Mario 

to hit people?” And, in fact, when 

we were creating the game Super 

Smash Bros., we had very long and 

deep discussions about whether or 

not we thought it was appropriate 

for Mario to hit people. 

Q. The Wii U hasn’t sold as well as 

the Wii. Have you been disappointed 

by its reception? 

a. I think the Wii U still has a long 

future. We really view it as being 

the ideal device that families are 

going to want to have connected to 

that screen in the living room that 

everyone is going to gather around 

and watch. 

along with gay adoptions, are in 

vogue and in the news. It used to be 

that women rarely had a first child 

after the age of 40, and it used to be 

that actresses were rarely cast as 

romantic leads after 40. Back when 

show business was ruled by men, 

the trajectory from girlfriend to 

wife to mother was a downward, 

one-way spiral; now there’s more 

mobility. 

But Hollywood comedies are still 

conventional. Once a woman in her 

30s gets her man, or can’t find him, 

altered Game world assessed by a Pioneer 

Q. A lot of people in the industry 

are concerned about competition 

from phones and tablets. The Wii U 

is a way to bring those screens into 

console game play, but the industry 

feels very uncertain now. 

a. The last couple of years in Japan 

we’ve seen a huge increase in 

the adoption of smartphones, to 

the point where in Japan people 

are saying, “Maybe I don’t need a 

console, or I don’t need a portable 

gaming device.” But we released 

a game called Animal Crossing: 

New Leaf. And in Japan it has really 

been a big hit. The people playing 

it primarily are adult women. 

And adult women also happens to 

be the same group of people that 

has been rapidly adopting cellphones. 

As long as we’re able to provide 

an entertainment experience that 

people want to play, they’re more 

than happy to purchase another 

device to carry around with their 

smartphone. 

then she has to want a baby — or 

cope with a baby she didn’t plan on. 

A steadfastly single, aging woman 

who is not grappling with infertility 

or hidden mommy yearnings is 

branded a psychopath. 

The main way around that rule 

is a buddy film. The genre provides 

the only really safe alternative for 

older comic actresses. Kristen Wiig 

proved that resoundingly with her 

hit movie “Bridesmaids,” and that 

success surely helped persuade 

Sandra Bullock, who gave up on tra- 

FreD r. coNraD/tHe NeW YorK tiMes 

Q. The Museum of Modern Art has 

a new installation with 14 video 

games. There aren’t any Nintendo 

games there, although the museum 

would like to have some. What do 

you think about games in museums, 

as opposed to living rooms? 

a. I think the saddest thing about 

video games is that once the hardware 

that the game runs on stops 

operating, the game is gone. And 

the only way to preserve it then 

is through video. And so, on the 

one hand, I’m happy that there’s a 

facility that’s starting to preserve 

ditional girl-chases-boy romantic 

comedies after the box office failure 

of “All About Steve” to return 

to “Miss Congeniality” mode: She 

co-stars with Melissa McCarthy in 

“The Heat,” a coming comedy about 

an uptight F.B.I. agent paired with 

an unruly Boston cop. 

Ms. Fey chose the mommy track 

for Liz Lemon on “30 Rock.” But her 

sitcom was certainly not the first 

to showcase a woman who contemplates 

having a baby alone. In 1992 

Candice Bergen’s character decided 

to have the baby on her own on 

“Murphy Brown,” a decision that 

became a cause célèbre after the 

American vice president at the time, 

Dan Quayle, denounced her family 

values. 

But Ms. Fey, who has a longtime 

husband and two children, seems 

more determined than most to express 

her generation’s anxieties 

about infertility and parenthood. 

For Ms. Fey the focus on maternity 

seems to be a personal preference 

as much as a bow to the spirit 

of the age. In her otherwise blithe 

and biting memoir, “Bossypants,” 

Ms. Fey writes quite feelingly about 

such topics as the working mother’s 

guilt and social pressure to breast 

feed . 

With “Admission,” which opened 

March 22 in the United States and 

worldwide through June, Ms. Fey 

once again chose to play a late-30s 

career woman who begins to regret 

her decision not to be a mother. 

As a writer and performer Ms. Fey 

mocks everything, but she rarely 

disparages her children, which is 

almost surprising in such a sharpedged 

humorist. It’s another reminder 

that even as she makes fun 

of the lengths people go to have children, 

she takes motherhood very 

seriously. 

shigeru Miyamoto 

thinks the Wii u has a 

long future. 

games in their original 

state. At the same time 

it seems a little strange 

to me. I still look at video 

games as entertainment. 

Q. You’ve had so much 

success over almost 35 

years. Does that create additional 

pressure for you, 

compared with how you 

felt when you made Donkey Kong? 

a. What I always say is: “We can 

make the rules ourselves. Nobody 

has done it before. We can make it 

up as we go along.” And that to me 

is a lot more fun. 

Q. What’s most exciting to you about 

video games right now? 

a. For a long time at Nintendo, we 

didn’t focus as much on online play. 

But now we see that so many people 

are connected to the Internet. It 

opens up a tremendous amount of 

possibilities.

13 The new york Times inTernaTional weekly 

SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 2013 

kinky sexual Preferences 

are hush-hush no more 

By MATT HABER 

On a recent Friday night, a small 

group of people lined up in an unmarked 

entrance to Paddles, a 

club in New York. Two men in their 

60s were discussing real estate 

and a few women in their 20s were 

sending last-minute texts before 

going down to the subterranean 

space. 

Paddles is a “safe space” to live out 

erotic fantasies, specifically BDSM 

(bondage/discipline, domination/ 

submission, sadism/masochism), 

OTK (over the knee; in other words, 

spanking), and other sexual practices 

that, until recently, have gone 

largely undiscussed by the mainstream 

world. 

But surely in part because of 

the success of E. L. James’s “Fifty 

Shades of Grey” trilogy (65 million 

copies sold worldwide according to 

Publishers Weekly), people who are 

drawn to a power exchange in sexuality 

and may refer to themselves as 

kinky are finding themselves in the 

spotlight as never before. 

In February, “kink,” a documen- 

Christina Voros 

Bondage and domination are 

gaining acceptance in america. a 

scene from the documentary ‘‘kink.’’ 

tary directed by Christina Voros 

and produced by James Franco, had 

its premiere at the Sundance Film 

Festival in Utah. And some real-life 

kinksters are wondering if they are 

approaching a time when they can 

begin living more open, integrated 

lives. 

But that time, it seems, has not yet 

arrived. Though the Harvard College 

Munch, a social group of around 

30 students focusing on kinky interests, 

was officially recognized by 

Harvard University in December, 

its 21-year-old founding president 

asked that he not be identified. (“I’m 

interested in politics,” he offered as 

one reason.) 

A 20-year-old college student and 

self-described submissive on Long 

Island, outside of New York, who 

asked to be referred to only by her 

middle name, Marie, said that she 

was disowned by her parents when 

a partner’s lover outed her as kinky. 

“They were just beside themselves,” 

Some sexual practices 

lead to discrimination 

and legal problems. 

Marie said. “I think they were worried 

I would get hurt.” 

For those who find hostility in the 

wider world, though, there are plenty 

of welcoming environments to 

be found. Inside Paddles, there are 

black walls and a mural featuring 

a cartoon woman in thigh-high red 

boots standing with a stiletto heel on 

a man’s back. The club’s various areas 

featured rigs, chains, cages and 

benches where participants could 

play out whatever “scenes” they 

agreed upon. Intercourse and oral 

sex are not allowed. 

For those not ready to explore 

kink in public, dating sites like 

Alt.com and social networks like 

FetLife let them do so from their 

own homes or mobile devices. 

Founded in 2008 and based in 

Vancouver, British Columbia, 

FetLife added 700,000 members 

last year, bringing its 

total membership to over 1.7 

million, according to Susan 

Wright, a manager for the site 

and a spokeswoman for the 

National Coalition for Sexual 

Freedom, a nonprofit group 

that is working to raise awareness 

of kinky people and defend 

their rights. 

It’s understandable that 

kinky people would seek the 

anonymous refuge of the Internet; 

their preferences can be 

made an issue in custody battles 

or contribute to employees 

losing their jobs. Valerie 

White, a founder of the Sexual 

Freedom Legal Defense and 

Education Fund, a nonprofit 

advocacy group, points to one 

man whose ex-wife sought to 

change the terms of their joint 

custody when she learned of 

his interest in kinky sex through his 

blog (the parties settled). 

Ms. Wright said the coalition 

receives 600 calls a year from individuals 

and organizations seeking 

help navigating legal difficulties. 

The coalition has lobbied to have 

the American Psychiatric Association 

update the definitions of certain 

sexual practices so they can be depathologized 

in the Diagnostic Statistical 

Manual. “We should not be 

discriminated against,” said Ms. 

Wright, 49, who has been married 

19 years. 

The group maintains a database 

of clinicians and advisers. Some 

therapists say “something is wrong 

with you, that it’s a pathology,” said 

Charley Ferrer, a clinical psychologist 

in New York. “Most people look 

at BDSM as being abusive: ‘How can 

you tell someone to beat you and be 

happy with that?’ Domestic violence 

and dominance and submission are 

totally different.” 

s t y l e s 

new Visions instilled at Valentino 

By ERIC WILSON 

PARIS — The setting was a 

reception hall in the Salomon de 

Rothschild mansion. In front of a 

lavish table setting were the designers 

who took over the Valentino 

label in late 2008: Maria Grazia 

Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli. 

Their Fashion Week party here 

on March 5 marked the reopening 

of the Valentino store on Avenue 

Montaigne, which had been overhauled 

to reflect their vision of the 

label. 

To one side was Valentino Garavani, 

with his business partner, 

Giancarlo Giammetti, the men who 

made Valentino a household name. 

The guests complimented the designers 

on their fall collection inspired 

by the paintings of Flemish 

masters. 

“They get better every season,” 

Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis, 

Vogue’s style editor at large, said 

of Ms. Chiuri and Mr. Piccioli. “But 

it must be hard to work with a living 

legend.” 

Mr. Garavani, 80, has remained 

in the spotlight since his retirement 

in 2008. That year, the documentary 

“Valentino: The Last Emperor” 

made him a celebrity for a 

new generation. 

Recently, Mr. Garavani and Mr. 

Giammetti attended every major 

party in Los Angeles on the Oscars 

circuit, at the same time that the 

company was trying to lure celebrities 

with red-carpet dresses designed 

by Ms. Chiuri and Mr. Piccioli. 

(There were two successes, 

with Sally Field and Jennifer Aniston, 

and one embarrassment, with 

Anne Hathaway.) 

When they took over the collection, 

Ms. Chiuri and Mr. Piccioli 

were described as “very Valentino.” 

Having designed accessories 

for Valentino for a decade, they 

knew the codes of his house. Alessandra 

Facchinetti, a former Gucci 

designer, had succeeded Mr. Garavani, 

but was fired after going too 

far in her own direction. 

Replacing any designer is like 

walking a tightrope; replacing 

Mr. Garavani is like walking on a 

thread. Ms. Chiuri and Mr. Piccioli 

thiBaUlt CaMUs/assoCiateD Press 

Pierpaolo Piccioli and Maria 

Grazia Chiuri have come into 

their own with Valentino. at a 

presentation in Paris. 

have managed to do that better 

than anyone might have imagined. 

Their most recent collections have 

included designs that are often 

regal and conservative in appearance 

— like church dresses, with 

high collars, but with lively filigree 

or floral lace patterns — and they 

are now coming into their own. 

The designs look nothing like the 

Valentino of old, and no one has 

complained. 

The March 5 show included a 

Replacing a design 

living legend is like 

walking on a thread. 

Delftware-inspired dress made of 

five meters of fabric, each meter 

requiring 28 hours of handwork as 

the designers try to bring a couture 

sensibility to their ready-to-wear. 

“It is wonderful what they are doing,” 

Mr. Garavani said. “This is 

how the future of Valentino can be 

modern.” 

Ms. Chiuri and Mr. Piccioli are, 

as Cathy Horyn, the fashion critic 

of The New York Times, wrote of 

their spring couture show, “more 

self-critical and demanding.” 

Valerio Mezzanotti for the new York tiMes 

the fashion 

icon 

Valentino 

Garavani, 

near right, 

with his 

successors, 

Pierpaolo 

Piccioli, far 

left, and 

Maria Grazia 

Chiuri, at 

their fashion 

week party 

in Paris 

recently. 

And they have no complaints 

about Mr. Garavani’s enduring 

public profile at Valentino, which 

was acquired in July by Mayhoola, 

an investor group from Qatar. His 

presence serves a purpose. “We 

love fashion more than we love the 

lifestyle of fashion,” Mr. Piccioli 

said. 

Ms. Chiuri, 49, and Mr. Piccioli, 

45, trace their friendship to the late 

1980s in Florence, Italy, when the 

city was a lively center of international 

fashion. When Ms. Chiuri 

was offered a job at Fendi, she 

asked Mr. Piccioli to join her. More 

than 20 years later, they describe 

themselves as “like an old couple.” 

They often dress alike, but each 

has a family life and a spouse, Ms. 

Chiuri with two children and Mr. 

Piccioli with three. 

“We are two designers,” Ms. Chiuri 

said. “And how we work is very 

specific.” 

In Rome, they share an office 

with two desks and two computers 

facing each other, and only 

one phone. Internally, they are 

referred to as MGPP. They have a 

hard time saying no to each other’s 

ideas. Women’s Wear Daily wrote 

that their fall show “would not have 

suffered from a few less looks, gorgeous 

as they all were.” 

Valentino’s sales, $510 million in 

2012, have improved, and there is 

a revitalized men’s wear business. 

“We are not trying to make fashion 

in the traditional way,” said 

Stefano Sassi, the chief executive. 

“We should be more iconic, not just 

because of the red or the evening 

gowns, but because of this kind of 

statement, too.” 

Still, Valentino would not be Valentino 

without the glamour. 

The dinner in Paris included Ms. 

Hathaway, a longtime member of 

the Valentino “family” whose lastmoment 

switch to a Prada dress at 

the Oscars offended some. Oddly, 

Ms. Chiuri and Mr. Piccioli, who 

designed the rejected dress, supported 

her decision. “What we try 

to say as designers is that beauty 

is how you feel in the moment,” Mr. 

Piccioli said. “Respecting women 

means respecting their choices.”


12 

wiccan 

spirits 

suddenly 

stylish 

By RUTH LA FERLA 

Witchcraft and its moody expressions 

— long weedy hair, peaked 

hats and pointy boots — have attained 

a strange cachet. 

No longer the hideous wartcovered 

crone of folklore and fairy 

tale, the witch of current films, like 

“Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” 

and “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” 

and recent youth-oriented novels 

like “Released Souls” and “A Discovery 

of Witches,” has swept aside 

the vampire as a symbol of power, 

glamour and style, darkening the 

plots of fiction and films, and casting 

an enchantment on the concert 

stage and the fashion runways. 

“The witch is the ultimate bad 

girl,” said Carly Cushnie of the design 

team Cushnie et Ochs, who 

played on the Salem witch trials in 

the fall collection she unveiled in 

February. “You want to be her.” 

The Saint Laurent collection Hedi 

Slimane showed in Paris last fall, 

with its wide-brimmed hats, flowing 

capes and ethereal drifts of chiffon, 

had a whiff of sulfur about it. The 

line, as Mr. Slimane revealed, owed 

a debt to the kinds of self-anointed 

Gypsy sorceresses who thrived during 

the 1970s in subterranean Los 

Angeles, equal parts Stevie Nicks 

and Marjorie Cameron, the latter 

an urban legend in her day who 

By NATALIE KITROEFF 

At least in the old days lovers 

could split, move on and retain their 

dignity. Now, in the age of social 

media, extrication is nearly impossible. 

The pain of a breakup is 

nourished by an endless real-time 

stream of Facebook status updates, 

Instagram photos and tweets about 

one’s ex. 

Until recently, anyone with two 

fingers and a smartphone was subjected 

to this kind of self-torture. But 

new apps and Web sites created to 

ease the pain of breakups may be 

changing that. 

One is Killswitch, a mobile app 

that promises to “seamlessly and 

discreetly remove all traces of your 

ex from your Facebook.” 

Erica Mannherz, 28, who created 

the app with her friend, Clara 

de Soto, 27, said the app reduces the 

bitter taste of a breakup. The two 

women, who live in New York, came 

up with the idea after seeing a friend 

go through breakup after breakup 

online. 

“The poor girl, her Facebook profile 

was a minefield of elements of 

The witch may be 

turning into the 

fairest of them all. 

painted pagan goddesses and dabbled 

in the occult arts. Diaphanous 

frocks and mantles favored by Ms. 

Cameron, who died in 1995, and her 

spiritual kin have wafted into collections 

as diverse as those of Pamela 

Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor. 

With its chalk-faced models clad in 

white tights and sharp-shouldered 

her defunct relationship,” Ms. de 

Soto said. 

Ms. de Soto said the app is the 

digital version of throwing an ex’s 

gifts and belongings into the trash, 

something she has her fair share of 

experience with. “I’ve seen Clara’s 

ex-boyfriend boxes, and they aren’t 

pretty,” Ms. Mannherz confirmed. 

But being connected to so many 

people across a web of overlapping 

s t y l e s 

goth-tinged frocks, Thom Browne’s 

fall show in New York in February 

might have been an outtake from a 

creepy Tim Burton film. 

Fashion’s black-magic women are 

trading on something subtler than 

raw sex appeal. “Maxidresses and 

capes are not really revealing a lot of 

skin,” said Hayley Phelan, the senior 

editor of the style blog Fashionista. 

com. “They’re celebrating a kind of 

beauty, that maybe appeals more to 

other women than to men.” 

Wiccan spirits surfaced at Gareth 

Pugh in London in February, 

draped in hooded capes and sweeping 

gowns with a distinctly pagan 

cast, and at Ann Demeulemeester 

social networks means that “defriending” 

or “unfollowing” people 

rarely removes them completely 

from your virtual world. 

“It was a lot easier before because 

you could actually achieve out of 

sight, out of mind,” Ms. de Soto said, 

“but you can’t do that online.” For 

proof that the need is real, walk into 

any bar and listen in on a conversation 

between 20-somethings. It’s al- 

and Rick Owens in Paris. 

Jessica Rayne, a South African designer 

who likes black frocks trailing 

fringe and lace, has explored pagan 

imagery. “The witch is a strong 

character,” Ms. Rayne said. “She’s 

crazy but engaging, the kind of 

woman you fall in love with, though 

it scares you to death.” 

The music world has also spawned 

a pantheon of witchy women, among 

them Florence Welch, who was obsessed 

with witchcraft as a child. 

Contemporary witches and dystopian 

fantasies are, in some views, 

a corrective to the childhood notion 

that the good and the fair will invariably 

prevail. 

most certain that at some point, the 

fateful question will be asked aloud: 

“Should I text him?” 

For extra support, an app developed 

by the Brazilian soft drink 

company Guaraná Antarctica 

called the Ex-Lover Blocker, also 

tries to tackle the impulse to reconnect. 

Anytime you try to call an ex, 

the app sends a text message to your 

closest friends so they can come to 

your rescue before you make a tragic 

mistake. The app also posts an update 

on Facebook alerting the world 

of your imminent transgression. 

“It’s kind of like, hey, if you call 

him everyone is going to see on Facebook 

how weak you were,” said 

Marco Versolato, 46, of DDB Brasil, 

the São Paulo-based advertising 

agency that created the app. “Selfcontrol 

depends on the person but 

when you’re not emotionally stable 

you can use the Ex-Lover Blocker’s 

help as friend.” 

Annabel Acton, 29, had a different 

approach in mind when she started 

Never Liked It Anyway, a Web site 

on which spurned lovers can sell 

gifts from their exes that are too 

left, francois Guillot/aGence france-Presse; 

Valerio Mezzanotti for the new York tiMes 

Sugarcoated entertainments are 

less likely to appeal to moviegoers 

reeling in the recession’s aftermath, 

Jeremy Gutsche, the editor of the online 

publication Trendhunter, suggested. 

“Consumers want a more 

edgy, dark and villainous vibe to 

make these childhood stories more 

enticing.” 

“Oz,” which opened worldwide 

this month, treats audiences to the 

spectacle of Evanora, swathed in 

green satin, persuading her sister, 

Theodora, who has been jilted by her 

lover, to embrace the consolations of 

the dark side: a kingdom of her own, 

perhaps — oh, and yes, a killer wardrobe. 

after a Bad Breakup, Digital aids Can help erase the ex and Toss the Gifts 

Michael f. MCelroY for the new York tiMes 

Bettye 

dewey said 

the web site 

never liked 

it anyway 

helped her 

dispose of 

unwanted 

gifts from 

her exhusband. 

chris Pizzello/associated Press 

the music world has spawned its own 

pantheon of witchy women, among them 

the flame-haired florence welch. Below, 

witch-inspired creations by Gareth Pugh, 

left, and ann demeulemeester. 

Apps and sites offer a 

cathartic cleansing of 

an ex’s presence. 

painful to keep. “I think it’s very cathartic,” 

said Ms. Acton, who lives in 

New York. 

Bettye Dewey, 29, of Euclid, Ohio, 

needed to move on after divorcing 

her multimillionaire husband two 

years ago. She had discovered that 

he was having an affair — and buying 

another woman duplicates of 

gifts he bought for Ms. Dewey. 

After they split, Ms. Dewey was 

left with a pile of Louis Vuitton 

purses, Dolce and Gabbana dresses 

and Chanel jewelry that she didn’t 

want to throw away, but couldn’t 

bear to look at. So when she found 

Never Liked It Anyway, she was 

thrilled. 

“I mean, cathartic isn’t even the 

word,” she said. “I feel like I am puking 

this stuff out of my life.”



Tiny Computer attracts 

one million Tinkerers 

By JOHN BIGGS 

Raspberry Pi may sound like the 

name of a math-based dessert. But 

it is actually one of the hottest and 

cheapest little computers in the 

world right now. Almost one million 

of these $35 machines have shipped 

since February 2012, capturing the 

imaginations of educators, hobbyists 

and tinkerers around the 

world. 

The story of the Raspberry Pi 

began in 2006 when Eben Upton 

and other faculty members at the 

University of Cambridge in Britain 

found that their incoming computer 

science students were ill-prepared 

for a high-tech education. While 

many students in the previous decade 

were experienced electronics 

hobbyists by the time they got to 

college, these freshmen were little 

more than skilled Web designers. 

Easy-to-use, modern PCs hide 

The Raspberry Pi’s 

popularity astounds 

its creators. 

most of the nuts and bolts behind a 

pleasing interface. Mr. Upton posited 

that parents did not want their 

children to destroy their expensive 

computers by experimenting with 

their insides. But a cheaper machine 

would be fair game for messing 

around. 

The Raspberry Pi, which is about 

the size of a credit card, was intended 

to replace the expensive computers 

in school science labs. For less 

than the price of a new keyboard, 

a teacher could plug in the Pi and 

connect it to older peripherals that 

might be lying around. But because 

Pi initially ran only Linux, a free 

operating system, students would 

have a learning curve. 

The Raspberry Pi Foundation began 

selling the computers in February 

of last year. They soon could not 

keep them in stock. 

“We honestly were thinking of 

this as a 1,000- to 5,000-unit opportunity,” 

Mr. Upton said. “The thing 

we didn’t anticipate was this whole 

other market of technically competent 

adults who wanted to use it.” 

One Pi owner, Dave Akerman, of 

Brightwalton, England, even sent 

a Raspberry Pi to the upper atmosphere, 

floating it 40,000 meters up 

using a weather balloon. There he 

was able to take live video, photos 

and measurements. 

“Now every primary school in the 

world can take pictures from near 

space,” Mr. Upton said. “You give 

people access to this tool and they 

do great things.” 

The Pi is so popular that many 

distributors are constantly out of 

stock. It is also difficult to find it for 

sale online. 

“We’ve sold tens of thousands in 

weeks,” said Limor Fried, founder 

and engineer at Adafruit Industries, 

a distributor of the Pi. 

The Pi costs $35, or $25 for an older 

model, and comes as a bare circuit 

board, although you can buy plastic 

cases for it. 

The Raspberry Pi works best with 

an HDMI-compatible monitor. It is 

powered via a standard USB cable. 

To turn it off, you simply pull out 

the power cable. Because it has no 

onboard storage or operating system, 

you will need to copy the necessary 

software to a high-capacity SD 

memory card. 

There are programs to let users 

add features to the Raspberry Pi, 

including Wi-Fi support and hardware 

controllers for sensor, motors 

and more. 

Users can even turn the product 

into a small home media center. Because 

the Pi has a powerful graphics 

chip, users have been able to stream 

video and photos to their television 

sets using little more than a Pi and a 

Linux program like RaspbMC. 

“I’m not aware of a company that 

has gone from a standing start to a 

million in a year,” Mr. Upton said. 

“It’s quite a wild ride. I don’t get a lot 

of sleep.” 

Broadcom maSTErS 

The $35 raspberry Pi, intended for computer science students, is 

the world’s cheapest computer and a top seller. 

s c i e n c e & t e c h n o l o g y : g A d g e t s 

clockwise from top, anthem head phones from 

Sol republic, en dorsed by the U.S. swimmer 

michael Phelps; House of marley rise Up 

head phones; and Ferrari r300 headphones. 

marketing headphones for style 

By ROY FURCHGOTT 

If you are planning a $200 

splurge on premium headphones 

— as millions of people are this 

year — who will give you the most 

for your money? Maybe a rapper 

like Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Nick Cannon 

or Ludacris? 

Or will you get better sound with 

headphones branded by rockers 

like Motörhead or inspired by the 

reggae artist Bob Marley? 

This is how headphones are 

marketed these days — affinity 

headphones, if you will. Headphones 

are in high demand. The 

Consumer Electronics Association 

estimates 79 million were sold 

last year, and it predicts 10 percent 

more than that will be sold this 

year. But the category of headphones 

costing more than $100 is 

growing even faster — 64 percent, 

according to market analysts at 

the NPD Group. 

“Retailers can make more on a 

high-end pair of headphones than 

they can make selling a smartphone 

in many instances,” said 

Ross Rubin of Reticle Research, 

a consumer electronics research 

firm. 

Knowing what’s behind the 

marketing can help a consumer 

avoid the hype when choosing a 

product. Headphone designers estimate 

the cost of making a “fashion 

headset” selling for $200 is as 

low as $14. “I would have guessed 

$20 to $22,” said Tim Hickman, 

whose California Headphone 

Company and Fanny Wang Headphone 

Company brands are made 

in China. 

“When you look at a $300 Beats 

headphone, how much does it cost 

to tool the enclosure, how much 

does it cost to stamp the thing 

out?” said John Chen, director of 

sales for the audio manufacturer 

Grado Labs. “Stamping it out is 

pennies.” 

“I wish that were true,” said 

Noel Lee, founder of Monster 

Products, which until December 

produced Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. 

“I’m going to say it’s in the 

$40 and up range to make a quality 

product.” 

The growth in pricey headphones 

is yoked to the growth of 

tablets and phones. IPods and other 

media players come with basic 

earphones, but the expanded menu 

of music and video apps now available 

encourages people to replace 

those with higher-quality headphones. 

“What is really pushing 

premium headphones is not just 

the growth in mobile smartphones 

and tablets, but video and music 

services like Netflix and Spotify, 

that make people want a better 

listening device,” said Benjamin 

Arnold, a consumer electronics 

industry analyst for NPD. “It’s 

serious consumption rather than 

30-second YouTube clips.” 

The rush into premium headphones 

was set off in 2008 by the 

A $200 headset that 

can cost as little as 

$14 to make. 

Beats by Dr. Dre brand, which marketed 

headphones like Air Jordan 

basketball shoes. Headphones had 

traditionally been sold on technical 

specifications like frequency response, 

but Beats created appealing 

designs in an array of colors. 

It also tweaked the headphones to 

stress the bass. 

Monster lost the rights to make 

the Beats, but has introduced 12 

of its own headphones, none with 

a celebrity name on the brand, 

although some have celebrity endorsers. 

NPD found that celebrity 

endorsement was important to 30 

percent of consumers, and was 

the top factor driving purchases 

of headphones costing more than 

$100. Consumers say they want 

sound quality, but brand counts 

heavily too. 

“Basically good-enough sound 

is good enough if everything else is 

in line, like brand and color,” said 

Benjamin Arnold, a consumer electronics 

industry analyst for NPD. 

“You see young people walking 

around the mall with them around 

their necks. They aren’t even on 

their ears.” 

Classic brands like AKG, Shure, 

Audio-Technica, Grado and Klipsch 

still market based on realistic 

sound and value. With no celebrity 

endorsers to share profits and a 

nearly unlimited shelf life, because 

the style does not change, the marketing 

model is different. 

Audiophiles have lauded Grado 

Labs’ SR80i headphones, which 

have remained largely unchanged 

since 1991. Those sell for about $100. 

The company hasn’t advertised 

since 1964 and has no celebrity endorsers, 

and the SR80is come only 

in black. “We are very cognizant of 

costs,” said Grado’s Mr. Chen. “We 

make a good profit.” 

In general, fashion headphones 

may not be a value sonically. 

“These designer headphones are 

sort of flavor of the month, and 

people will get tired of this sound 

eventually,” said Jim Anderson, a 

Grammy-winning audio engineer. 

“That’s why you won’t see professionals 

using this equipment in 

studios.” 

Citing the $100 Sony MDR 7506 

headphones that audio engineers 

favor, he said: “There are certain 

models of headphones that have 

lasted years and years.” 

He uses Sennheiser HD 650s, 

which retail for about $500. 

TheWirecutter.com likes the $140 

Audio-Technica’s ATH-M50. 

Consider your preference for 

in-ear, on-ear and over-the-ear 

designs, keeping in mind that 

over-the-ear headphones are most 

likely to leak sound, which public 

transportation seatmates might 

not appreciate. 

The best way to test headphones 

is to use music you know well. If 

you start hearing things you never 

heard before, Mr. Anderson said, 

“that is a good sign.”

Saturday, March 23, 2013 The new york Times inTernaTional weekly 

10 

After I bought an iPhone, something 

changed. When I bought a 

new electronic device, I was often 

filled with regret. 

The problem was this: Once I 

bought the gadget, I 

realized that a cheap 

smartphone app could 

easily replace it. For 

example, I bought 

a point-and-shoot 

camera, wanting 

better-looking photos. Later, photoediting 

apps like Camera Plus and 

Instagram appeared to touch up 

my iPhone photos with a few taps. 

I haven’t used the point-and-shoot 

camera in years. 

I even sometimes regret buying 

an iPad because the iPhone can 

perform the same tasks, and it’s 

more portable. I’m well aware my 

regret can be considered indulgent 

but you can learn from it. 

If you want to be wise about the 

gadgets you buy, keep the following 

items in mind: 

JaMBoX BlUetooth sPeaKeR 

The Jambox is a brick-shaped 

wireless audio speaker. It can play 

sound from any device with a wireless 

Bluetooth connection, including 

smartphones and most laptops 

and tablets. It is small, lightweight 

and has decent audio quality. 

Want to listen to a news program 

while showering? Put the 

speaker on the side table in the 

bathroom. 

Along with the Jambox, 

which costs $130, there are 

plenty of similarly priced 

bluetooth speakers from companies 

like Logitech, Soundfreaq 

and Jensen. 

MacBooK aiR I use my 

MacBook Air every day 

and take it with me to cafes 

and wherever I travel. Like 

the iPad, it’s extremely thin 

s c i e n c e & t e c h n o l o g y : g a d g e t s 

3-D Printer may Be the home appliance of the Future 

By STEVEN KURUTZ 

Brook Drumm, a bald, goateed 

father of three who lives outside 

Sacramento, California, has big aspirations 

for the Printrbot, a desktop 

3-D printer kit he designed that, 

like a number of other 3-D printers, 

uses heated plastic — applied layer 

by layer to a heated bed by a gluegun-like 

extruder — to turn designs 

created on a computer into real objects. 

As Mr. Drumm illustrated in the 

Kickstarter campaign he used to 

raise more than $830,000 to start his 

business in late 2011, the Printrbot 

is small enough to fit on a kitchen 

counter, next to the coffee maker. 

“The goal for the company,” Mr. 

Drumm said, “is a printer in every 

home and every school.” 

The technology for 3-D printing 

has existed for years. But there is a 

growing sense that 3-D printers may 

be the home appliance of the future, 

much as personal computers were 

30 years ago. 

Like computers, 3-D printers 

originally proved their worth in the 

business sector, cost a fortune and 

were bulkier than a refrigerator. 

But less expensive desktop models 

have emerged, and futurists and 

3-D printing hobbyists are now envisioning 

a world in which someone 

has an idea for a work-saving tool 

— or breaks the hour hand on their 

kitchen clock or loses the cap to the 

shampoo bottle — and simply prints 

the invention or the replacement 

part. 

Bre Pettis, the chief executive 

officer of MakerBot, the New Yorkbased 

company leading the way in 

making 3-D printers for the consumer 

market, has seen how the 

technology is already being applied. 

A file-sharing database MakerBot 

oversees, called Thing iverse, holds 

more than 36,000 downloadable designs. 

BRIAN X. 

CHEN 

essay 

robert wright for the New York times 

As the cost of 3-D printers decreases, potential uses increase. A Printrbot Jr. building a tiny house. 

Printing parts for 

broken ovens and 

even new printers. 

“One of my favorite stories from 

Thingiverse is a dad who has a 

daughter who is 41 inches tall,” Mr. 

Pettis said. “They were going to an 

amusement park, and she wasn’t going 

to be able to go on any of the rides 

because the minimum height was 42 

inches. The dad made orthopedic inserts 

for her shoes.” 

Last fall, MakerBot opened what 

may be the first retail store devoted 

to 3-D printers, in New York. Inside, 

demonstration models of the company’s 

Replicator 2, a slick, steelframed 

machine with the boxy dimensions 

of a microwave that sells 

for about $2,200, are constantly 

printing, turning files created on 

Trimble SketchUp and other computer-aided 

design (CAD) software 

into architecture models or smartphone 

cases. 

Emmanuel Plat, director of 

merchandising for the Museum of 

Modern Art’s retail division, said 

that in his experience, watching a 

and light. But unlike the iPad, it 

has all the tools I need, including 

Microsoft Word and Adobe Flash. 

It’s powerful enough to occasionally 

edit photos and videos. If you 

are shopping for a computer and 

have to choose between a tablet or 

a superlightweight laptop, I would 

vote for the latter. At $1,000, the 

MacBook Air is pricey. But there 

3-D printer work can induce future 

shock. “When people see the machine 

function, they’re mesmerized,” 

he said. 

As part of its “Destination: NYC” 

collection in May, the MoMA Design 

Store will feature a Replicator 2 

printing New York-themed items for 

sale, like a miniature skyscraper or 

taxi; people can also buy the printer, 

Mr. Plat said. 

But for all the excitement surrounding 

3-D printing, there is still a 

significant gap between its potential 

and the current reality. The 15,000 or 

so early adopters who have bought 

a MakerBot printer are mostly de- 

Gadgets you Need, Even With a Smartphone 

the synology Ds213 

storage device, above, 

and the Asus rt-N56U 

wireless router. 

are lots of ultrathin “Ultrabook” 

laptops that usually sell for upward 

of $800. 

asUs RoUteR Wireless routers 

are kind of like sunglasses. Buy a 

cheap one, and you will probably 

end up purchasing several more 

because pretty soon it will break. 

After going through several routers 

over the years, I finally invested in 

a nice one, the $130 RT-N56U from 

Asus, and realized that buying a 

fancy router goes a long way. It’s 

extremely easy to set up, fast and 

reliable. 

synology n.a.s. Not many people 

own a network attached storage 

device because they can be expensive, 

but they make life much 

easier. It’s basically a hard drive 

connected to the Internet. I use the 

Synology DS213 NAS ($300) to do 

wireless backups for my MacBook 

Air, and to add bulky files the note- 

sign professionals or hobbyists, not 

homeowners. And the things being 

printed still tend to be toys, key 

chains or just colorful pieces of plastic 

in amusing shapes. 

Mr. Drumm bought a kit a couple 

of years ago because he wanted to 

be “the first family on our block to 

have a 3-D printer,” he said. After assembling 

the machine, a complicated 

task that required a knowledge of 

soldering, he and his 6-year-old son 

printed a bottle opener. “It took 45 

minutes and it was kind of crappy, 

but I was encouraged,” Mr. Drumm 

said. 

Mr. Pettis is betting parents will 

buy 3-D printers for their children in 

the same way his family purchased 

a Commodore 64 home computer in 

the early 1980s. The machines represent 

the future, he said, and “for 

the cost of a laptop” they offer “an 

education in manufacturing.” 

But at $2,200, a Replicator 2 costs 

more than most laptops, and one 

imagines families could find other 

uses for that money. 

When he was designing the Printrbot, 

that was one of the things Mr. 

Drumm had in mind. He wanted the 

kit to be easy to assemble and to require 

no soldering, he said, but most 

of all he wanted it to be cheap. “It 

became obvious to me that it can’t 

be $1,200 or even $800,” he said. He 

settled on a price of about $550. 

“People don’t know what they’re 

going to do with it,” he added. 

Max Lobovsky, one of the creators 

of the Form 1, a desktop 3-D printer 

that is stunning in both its design 

and printing quality, said the home 

3-D printer is at a protozoan evolutionary 

stage. 

“It’s not just about technology or 

reducing costs,” Mr. Lobovsky said. 

“The machines need to be easier to 

use, more capable and offer more applications 

in the home. I think all of 

those things are missing today.” 

the Jambox bluetooth wireless 

audio speaker. 

book can’t hold, like movies and big 

audio files. 

The connected drive can also 

stream videos and music to any 

multimedia player. For example, if 

you have an Xbox or Apple TV, you 

can wirelessly stream media from 

the Synology onto those devices. 

Some argue that an external 

hard drive is unnecessary now that 

we can live in “the cloud.” But most 

people have files they don’t want to 

store on a company’s online server, 

so a network attached storage device 

is still a solid investment.



By CATHERINE RAMPELL 

American employers have job vacancies, 

piles of cash and countless 

well-qualified candidates, but many 

remain reluctant to actually hire, 

keeping interviewed applicants 

waiting weeks or months before 

they make a decision. 

If they ever do. 

The 4 million jobs available (for 12 

million unemployed) are the most 

there have been since the height of 

the financial crisis. But vacancies 

are staying unfilled longer — an average 

of 23 business days compared 

to 15 in mid-2009, according to the 

economists Steven J. Davis, Jason 

Faberman and John Haltiwanger. 

“There’s a fear that the economy 

is going to go down again, so the 

message you get from C.F.O.’s is to 

be careful about hiring someone,” 

said John Sullivan, a management 

professor at San Francisco State 

University. 

Employers are bringing in large 

numbers of candidates for interview 

after interview. Data from 

Glassdoor.com, a site that collects 

information on hiring, shows that 

the interview process at major companies 

has roughly doubled since 

2010. 

“After they call you back after the 

sixth interview, there’s a part of you 

that wants to say, ‘That’s it, I’m not 

going back,’ ” said Paul Sullivan, 43, 

an exasperated but cheerful video 

editor in Washington. “But then you 

think, hey, maybe seven is my lucky 

number. And besides, if I don’t go, 

they’ll just eliminate me if something 

else comes up because they’ll 

think I have an attitude problem.” 

Mr. Sullivan has received eighth- 

and ninth-round callbacks for positions 

at three different companies. 

Two of those companies ultimately 

decided not to hire anyone, he said. 

The hiring delays are part of the 

vicious cycle: financially stretched 

Americans are reluctant to spend, 

which holds back demand, which in 

turn frays employers’ confidence 

that sales will firm up and justify a 

new hire. Job creation over the last 

two years has been steady but too 

slow to put a major dent in the back- 

m o n e y & b u s i n e s s 

online emotions, in hundreds of Varieties 

By JENNA WORTHAM 

Emoji is the colorful symbol alphabet 

that contains nearly a thousand 

images of cute animals, food items 

and expressive smiley faces to convey 

what words cannot. 

Using emoji, emoticons and GIFs 

— those short, looping animated 

clips — in a texted conversation 

can instantly signal the difference 

between sincerity and a joke or sarcasm. 

And it takes less effort. It can 

be easier to smooth over hurt feelings 

with an impish cat face than 

to hastily type a long and winding 

explanation of why you’re 20 minutes 

late to your dinner date, or to let 

a friend know that you are sending 

your love her way with an animated 

GIF of two pandas hugging. 

Typically, these mobile phone features 

have not been big businesses 

in the United States. But a few young 

American start-up companies, including 

a private social networking 

service called Path and messaging 

services called Lango and MessageMe, 

have released emoji and 

emoticons called “stickers” that can 

be inserted into messages. 

Compared with emoji, stickers 

are elaborate, artsy creations. On 

Path, for example, the sticker that’s 

intended to convey an upset mood 

shows a frowning face surrounded 

by a storm cloud and lightning 

bolts. 

“People have always been typing 

‘LOL,’ or putting in a YouTube link 

while communicating,” said Arjun 

Sethi, one of the founders of MessageMe. 

“This is a faster and more 

intuitive way to communicate; it’s 

about more ways to be expressive in 

this medium.” 

Sharp-eyed entrepreneurs and 

venture capitalists are eager to cash 

in. 

“Messaging as a category will 

evolve to be more commerce-oriented,” 

says Chi-Hua Chien, a partner 

at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers 

— one of Silicon Valley’s most 

successful venture capital firms 

— which has invested in Path and 

several other messaging applications. 

The success of sticker 

messaging in Asia 

attracts investors. 

The sticker apps are free to download. 

But for a few dollars, users can 

buy extra packs that include premium 

items like hand-drawn caricatures 

of snacks — a dancing slice 

of pizza, for example. 

Line, an app that lets people send 

stickers, drawings and messages 

to one another, has enjoyed com- 

log of unemployed workers. 

“If you have an opening and are 

not sure about the economy, it’s pretty 

cheap to wait for a month or two,” 

said Nicholas Bloom, an economics 

professor at Stanford University in 

California. But those little delays 

are helping stretch out the recovery 

process. 

Employers might be making 

candidates go through a torturous 

process partly because so many 

workers have been jobless for a 

long time, and hiring managers 

want to make sure their skills are 

up to date, said Robert Shimer, an 

economics professor at the University 

of Chicago. 

But there’s also little pressure to 

hire right now, so long as candidates 

mercial success in South Korea and 

Japan. The service, developed by 

Naver, a South Korean company, 

says it has more than 100 million 

users. The company has opened an 

office in San Francisco. 

Line’s popularity was part of 

what motivated Lango and MessageMe 

to bring their versions of 

sticker-type messaging to the United 

States. But the translation might 

not be easy. 

David Lee, a founder of SV Angel, 

an investment venture capital 

firm, has invested in MessageMe. 

But he questions whether “user behavior 

and cultural norms in Asia 

and other countries are so different 

are abundant and existing staff 

members are afraid to refuse the 

extra workload created by an unfilled 

position. Employers can drag 

out the hiring process until they’re 

more confident about their business 

— or until they find the superstar 

candidate. 

“They’re chasing after that purple 

squirrel,” said Roger Ahlfeld, 44, 

of Framingham, Massachusetts, 

using a human resources industry 

term for an impossibly qualified job 

applicant. 

An H.R. professional himself, Mr. 

Ahlfeld has been looking for work 

since August 2011, and has found 

himself the “silver medalist” for 

a couple of jobs after six separate 

rounds of interviews totaling 10 to 

20 hours for each position. For both 

posts, though, there still has been no 

gold medalist. After eight months, 

they remain unfilled, with the companies 

intermittently posting a job 

ad, taking it down, then posting it 

again. 

In addition to demanding credentials 

beyond what a given position 

traditionally requires, employers 

have more screening devices. 

Mr. Sullivan has taken several 

video-editing tests, which he says 

he aced. But he has also been subjected 

to a battery of personality 

and psychological exams, a spelling 

quiz and even a math test. 

For the companies, economists 

that they don’t translate well to the 

U.S.” 

Mimi Ito, a cultural anthropologist 

at the University of California, 

Irvine, says it may be too late for 

these visual stickers to catch on with 

Americans. 

“Many users in this country,” she 

says, “missed many of the kinds of 

mobile use practices that characterized 

early mobile texting culture.” 

Unlike emoji, the sticker apps do 

not function on the default texting 

program, which makes using them 

more of an effort. And figuring out 

how to satisfy the American mobile 

consumer has frustrated companies 

like Zynga and Facebook, which 

have struggled to translate Web 

success to mobile. 

Still, Mr. Lee says the applications 

fit well into what he sees as the 

future of social networking, where 

friend groups are built around phone 

address books and texting, rather 

than a Web site. 

Other forms of visual-based communication 

are catching on in the 

United States. Big audiences have 

already been gained by video-chatting 

services, like Skype, as well as 

by Instagram, the photo-sharing 

service, and Snapchat, a tool that 

lets people send photos and videos 

that self-destruct after a few seconds. 

“The U.S. has clearly jumped 

onto the visual mobile communication 

bandwagon,” Ms. Ito says. 

“But in a way that is different from 

the emoji orientation of the earlier 

adopters.” 

employers hesitate to Fill Vacant Jobs, extending a Torturous Process 

Daniel Rosenbaum foR The new YoRk Times 

Paul sullivan, 

a video editor, 

has had 

numerous 

interviews 

with the same 

company, but 

he has not 

received a job 

offer. 

julia Yellow 

say, the gantlets they have constructed 

may be wasting managers’ 

time and company resources. And 

for applicants, the expenses add up 

fast. Mr. Sullivan calculates that 

the three positions he applied for 

cost him $520.36 in parking fees and 

tickets, gas and coffee while waiting 

for his interviews. That excludes the 

costs of producing and mailing his 

video work, dry-cleaning bills and 

Hiring delays feed a 

cycle that hinders an 

economic recovery. 

thousands of dollars of fees to become 

certified in new video-editing 

programs. 

Jameson Cherilus, 23, counts 

himself lucky. He spent hundreds of 

dollars traveling from his home in 

Connecticut to interview for jobs in 

New York. After about six weeks of 

interviews for an entry-level administrative 

position at a talent agency, 

he was finally offered the job in mid- 

December. 

There’s just one catch. 

More than two months later, he 

said, “they still haven’t given me my 

start date.”


8 

Google Takes on rivals 

and Dives into Cloud 

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER 

and QUENTIN HARDY 

In a battle for dominance in 

cloud computing, Google is taking 

on Microsoft and Amazon in their 

own backyard. 

Google said March 12 that it was 

doubling its office space near Seattle, 

Washington, just kilometers 

from the campuses of Amazon and 

Microsoft, and stepping up the hiring 

of engineers and others who 

work on cloud technology. 

It is part of Google’s dive into 

cloud services — renting to other 

businesses access to its data storage 

and computing power, accessible 

by the Internet. 

In cloud computing, thousands 

of computer servers are joined to 

create a giant machine capable of 

handling many tasks at once, from 

storing data to running Web sites 

and mobile apps. 

Individual software developers, 

Microsoft and 

Amazon are leading 

Google in the cloud. 

large companies and governments 

rent these services, often at a fraction 

of the cost of buying their own 

machines. Amazon Web Services, 

or A.W.S., is by far the leader in 

this area. Amazon expects that 

this business will eventually be as 

big as its retail operation. 

Google says the cloud business 

is a new source of profit and a way 

to improve the Internet by providing 

other companies access to its 

sophisticated services. Analysts 

say it is also a strategy to lure 

businesses to use Google products 

instead of those of archrivals like 

Amazon and Microsoft. 

The cloud business has become 

so vital to these companies, said 

James Staten, an analyst at Forrester, 

the market research company, 

because it is crucial to other 

businesses like mobile apps and 

online video and music. Most of the 

apps that run on Google Android 

google is 

hiring more 

engineers 

and others 

who work 

on cloud 

technology 

at its offices 

near seattle. 

phones, for instance, are built using 

Amazon’s cloud, and Google 

would like to wrest back control. 

Microsoft, Amazon and Google 

are all competing to host online 

video, a booming business that relies 

on cloud services. 

“Almost every major consultancy 

supports Amazon; almost 

every advertising agency runs on 

Amazon; if I need to hire 10 people 

tomorrow to help me build my application, 

it’s super easy to find 

people who have Amazon experience,” 

Mr. Staten said. 

Google plans a major recruiting 

effort to increase its Seattle-area 

engineering staff by as much as 

five times. There is already fierce 

competition among tech companies 

for talented engineers, and 

many of those with skills in cloud 

computing work at Google’s rivals 

in Seattle. It is also adding about 

16,700 square meters to its office in 

Kirkland, Washington, which with 

its Seattle office already houses 

about 1,000 employees. 

Though the cloud business is 

in its early days, Google is late to 

the game. Over the years, Google, 

Amazon and Microsoft had each 

built world-class clouds, consisting 

of giant data centers in different 

countries, to run their businesses. 

Amazon was the first to 

rent its data storage and computing 

power to outside customers 

when it started A.W.S. in 2004, and 

Microsoft’s Windows Azure and 

Google followed. Another company 

with huge data centers and 

computing power, Apple, does not 

rent its cloud. 

Amazon earned $800 million 

from its cloud last year, according 

to analyst estimates. 

People who have used Google’s 

cloud business say it is inexpensive 

and capable, but lacks some 

features of A.W.S. Google has said 

its cloud services will cost about 

50 percent less than competing 

products. 

If Google wants a price war, Amazon 

is ready, said Adam Selipsky, 

who runs A.W.S. 

“We’ve always been very good 

at making everything as low-cost 

as possible,” he said, “then we lower 

it some more.” 

stuart Isett fOr the new yOrk tIMes 

m o n e y & b u s i n e s s 

To mars, by way of reality TV 

By NICOLA CLARK 

PARIS — When Bas Lansdorp began 

dreaming more than a decade 

ago about establishing the first permanent 

human colony on Mars, his 

primary focus was not on overcoming 

the technological challenges. It 

was the business model. 

“All the technology we need exists 

already — or nearly exists,” he 

said. “I just couldn’t figure out how 

to finance it.” 

Mr. Lansdorp, a 36-year-old Dutch 

engineer and entrepreneur, does not 

have the name recognition of Dennis 

Tito, the American financier 

who announced a plan in February 

to send two people on a Mars flyby in 

2018. Nor can Mr. Lansdorp hope to 

match the wealth of Elon Musk, the 

billionaire founder of SpaceX and 

Tesla Motors, who has proposed 

sending as many as 80,000 people to 

the Red Planet and charging them 

$500,000 each. Richard Branson, the 

Virgin airlines entrepreneur, has 

space aspirations, too. 

But Mr. Lansorp is convinced 

that he has found the perfect plan to 

raise the $6 billion he says he needs 

to land an initial crew of four people 

on the Martian surface by 2023. The 

entire mission would be broadcast 

as a worldwide, multiyear reality 

television show. 

“How many people do you think 

would want to watch the first humans 

arrive on Mars?” Mr. Lansdorp 

asked in a recent interview, 

recalling the more than 600 million 

viewers who were said to have tuned 

in to Neil Armstrong’s first steps on 

the moon in 1969. “We are talking 

about creating a major media spectacle, 

much bigger than the moon 

landings or the Olympics, and with 

huge potential for revenues coming 

from TV rights and sponsorships.” 

Mr. Lansdorp does not plan to 

make the trip himself. And despite 

the significant skepticism his plan 

has raised, he cites his success 

in starting and cashing out of the 

wind-energy company Ampyx 

Bryan Versteeg/Mars One; BelOw, IlVy njIOkIktjIen fOr the InternatIOnal herald trIBune 

Power — a company trying to use 

pilotless, tethered aircraft to generate 

electricity — as evidence that he 

can turn lofty ideas into financially 

viable realities. 

With 10 years to select and prepare 

its first crew, the project, called 

Mars One, expects to begin recruiting 

astronauts online this spring. 

Applicants must be at least 18 years 

old, be physically fit and speak English, 

and they must be willing to live 

out the selection process and an 

A $6 billion plan 

to send people to a 

Martian settlement. 

eight-year training program under 

the constant stare of a camera. No 

specific skills or experience are required, 

but be sure to read the fine 

print: This is a one-way trip. 

Last month, Mars One secured 

its first commitments from outside 

investors, and those funds will be 

used to finance the first conceptual 

design studies for the various hardware 

components. 

The site has received about 1.7 

million unique visitors since it went 

live last June, according to Google 

Bas lansdorp, a dutch 

engineer, envisions the 

establishment of a human 

colony on Mars by 2023. 

Analytics. More than 8,000 people, 

from more than 100 countries, have 

already e-mailed résumés since online 

recruiting began in January. 

Mr. Lansdorp has set up Mars 

One as a nonprofit foundation, but 

it is the controlling shareholder in a 

for-profit company, Interplanetary 

Media Group, that owns the exclusive 

right to sell mission broadcast 

and advertising rights. 

Still, not everyone is convinced 

that Mars One would fly. 

“The idea of flying to Mars oneway 

is not as outlandish as it may 

appear,” said Robert Zubrin, former 

chairman of the United States National 

Space Society. “But I am very 

skeptical that it can be financed by 

broadcast revenues.” 

Peter Meijer, chief operating officer 

of the Dutch unit of Trifork, a 

software developer based in Copenhagen, 

said his company — which 

is supplying Web-host and network 

technology for Mars One — agreed 

to invest an undisclosed sum. 

“For us, it is a chance to become 

attached to this not only from a technology 

perspective, but also to benefit 

from the marketing and branding 

exposure,” Mr. Meijer said. 

The pool will be narrowed to a 

few hundred candidates by 2014, at 

which point Mars One hopes to begin 

televising the process in select 

countries. 

Junwie Cheng, who has applied 

for the Mars mission, is a 26-yearold 

metals importer from Taiyuan, 

a city of four million people in northeast 

China. He admits that he is not 

much of a people person but says 

he is used to living in cramped surroundings. 

“Sometimes when I take 

the subway or the bus,” he said, “I 

can’t even find space to put my 

feet.”


6 

hong kong and Beijing 

Differ over Democracy 

By KEITH BRADSHER 

HONG KONG — Looming over 

a Chinese medicine shop here that 

sells dried deer penises for virility 

and bat feces for vision is a 40-story 

monolith of dark glass and gray 

steel: the Hong Kong offices of the 

Chinese Communist Party. 

For Wu Beihan, who sells traditional 

remedies, the dark-suited cadres 

next door have become an unexpected 

source of extra business this 

past winter, snapping up anxiety relievers 

like winter mulberry leaves. 

“They have worried hearts and are 

coming here more often,” he said. 

Anxiety is understandable at the 

Central Liaison Office, which is under 

the Chinese Communist Party. Factional 

struggles in Beijing have spilled 

into Hong Kong, with the removal of 

the long-serving director and deputy 

director at the liaison office, together 

with a series of transfers and retirements 

among other aides. 

Turmoil at the liaison office has 

coincided with, and possibly fed, 

mounting frictions between Hong 

Kong and the mainland. Tens of 

thousands of people have joined 

street demonstrations against the 

Beijing-backed government here, 

scuffles have broken out between 

Hong Kong residents and the many 

mainland visitors, and plans are under 

way for a large-scale civil disobedience 

campaign. 

The Beijing-backed local government 

has responded with a series 

tim o’roUrke for the new york times 

officials at the Chinese Communist 

party offices next door have been buying 

anxiety relievers at this hong kong shop. 

of initiatives to allay residents’ objections. 

These have included steep 

taxes on apartment purchases by 

anyone who is not a permanent resident, 

notably mainlanders. 

But government supporters have 

also organized noisy but peaceful 

counterdemonstrations. Local news 

media said they have paid as much 

as $25 apiece to hire protesters. 

Few expect Beijing to respond to 

political difficulties here by granting 

greater democracy. The new member 

of the seven-person Politburo 

Standing Committee who is expected 

to oversee Hong Kong policy in 

the years ahead is Zhang Dejiang, a 

North Korean-educated hard-liner 

from the so-called Shanghai Faction 

in Chinese politics, led by former 

President Jiang Zemin. 

Yu Zhengsheng, another member 

of the Standing Committee, and Mr. 

Zhang gave strong warnings at the 

National People’s Congress in early 

March that Hong Kong residents 

must safeguard national security 

— a thinly veiled threat against embracing 

Western concepts like democracy. 

Willy Lam, a longtime Chinese 

politics specialist, said the new team 

installed at the Party Congress in 

November was united in its hostility 

toward greater political pluralism in 

Hong Kong. They also share a deep 

suspicion that democracy advocates 

are being manipulated by the United 

States so as to create trouble as China 

asserts its territorial claims in the 

East China and South China Seas. 

“There’s no difference at the top 

regarding Tibet, Hong Kong and 

Taiwan; there are no liberals,” Mr. 

Lam said. 

Since Britain returned Hong Kong 

to China in 1997, mainland China’s influence 

over the city has been divided 

between the Hong Kong and Macau 

Affairs Office in Beijing, which is a 

cabinet agency of the Chinese government, 

and the Central Liaison 

Office, which the Communist Party 

controls. 

The biggest long-term problem in 

Hong Kong is that most 

of the population wants 

more democracy than 

Beijing is prepared to 

tolerate. China said in 

2010 that it “may” allow 

the entire population to 

vote in chief executive 

elections in 2017, and not 

just the 1,200 members 

of the city’s Election 

Committee, roughly 

three-quarters of whom 

follow the Chinese government’s 

instructions 

closely. 

The question is who 

will be allowed to run in 

general elections. 

A survey by the Hong 

Kong Transition Project, 

an academic group that 

studies the territory’s 

democratic evolution, 

has found that 81 percent 

of the population 

want everyone to vote in a primary 

that is open to all candidates, followed 

by a runoff. 

But the Beijing adviser on Hong 

Kong policy said such an approach 

was unacceptable to the Communist 

Party, saying that some screening of 

candidates is needed. 

With more protests likely, the 

Central Liaison’s skyscraper’s commanding 

views seem little consolation 

for the occupants. 

“Even department heads next 

door come see me,” said Mr. Wu, the 

medicine practitioner, “as they’re 

not feeling well.” 

w o r l d t r e n d s 

photographs by bryan denton for the new york times 

in mazar-i-sharif, afghanistan, noor ahmed gul visited the graves of his sisters who poisoned 

themselves after arguing about the younger girl’s boyfriend. their father, mohammed gul, below. 

wave of suicides Claims afghan sisters 

By AZAM AHMED 

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan 

— The Gul sisters were young, 

beautiful, educated and well off, 

testing the bounds of conservative 

Afghan traditions with fitted jeans, 

makeup and cellphones. 

But Nabila Gul, 17, a bright high 

school student, pushed it too far. 

She fell in love. 

Her sister, Fareba, 25, alarmed 

at the potential shame and consequences 

of Nabila’s pursuit of a 

young man outside of family channels, 

tried to intervene. Their argument 

that November day ended 

with both girls dead within hours 

of each other after consuming rat 

poison stolen from their father’s 

grain closet. 

In a city increasingly marked by 

the despair of its young women, the 

deaths have come to symbolize a 

larger crisis: an intensifying wave 

of suicide attempts. 

The city’s main hospital says it 

has been overwhelmed, with three 

or four such patients coming in every 

day, up from about one or two a 

month a decade ago. 

As for the questions of why, and 

why here, there seem to be as many 

theories as there are cases. Most 

explanations focus on Mazar’s 

status in Afghanistan as an affluent 

cross-cultural hub, relatively 

more liberal and exposed to European 

influences. While Afghan 

girls here are exposed to the social 

norms of the West through television 

serials and the Web, the fact 

is that they live in Afghanistan’s 

conservative and male-dominated 

society. The clash is cruel, and can 

be heartbreaking. 

“Most of the girls don’t die, but 

they all take poison or at least 

threaten to kill themselves,” said 

Dr. Khowaja Noor Mohammad, 

Sharifullah Sahak contributed 

reporting. 

Young women 

caught in a cruel 

clash of cultures. 

the head of internal medicine at 

Mazar-i-Sharif Regional Hospital. 

“This is their cry for help.” 

Perhaps no case is more emblematic, 

or more discussed, than 

the deaths of the Gul sisters. 

Mohammed Gul, their father, is 

a prosecutor. Nabila planned to attend 

college. Fareba was already 

attending college and hoped to follow 

her father’s footsteps into the 

legal profession. 

Nabila was impetuous, with a 

quick temper and a strong sense 

of self. She often challenged what 

Fareba told her, rejecting the deference 

held for elders in Afghan 

society. Fareba, who often wept after 

small arguments, confided to a 

close friend that she felt Nabila did 

not respect her. 

Their last fight, the morning of 

November 26, involved a boy Nabila 

said she was in love with. Fareba 

thought the relationship was inappropriate, 

and urged her sister 

against it. Their mother heard the 

shouting, and ran in to break it up, 

slapping Nabila twice across her 

face for talking back to her older 

sister, according to people close to 

the family. The younger girl ran off 

in tears. 

An hour later, Nabila’s mother 

discovered her on the floor of her 

room, white foam dripping from 

the corners of her mouth. 

At the hospital, Mohammed Gul 

sat quietly, holding his daughter’s 

hand. She went in and out of consciousness. 

At 2:30 p.m., Nabila 

died. 

On the way home from the hospital, 

her father suffered a heart 

attack, and was admitted as a patient. 

At the house, the Guls’ eldest 

son, Abdul Wahid, played host to 

the mourners who crowded into the 

house. But he was worried about 

Fareba. She was not answering 

calls or texts. 

At 4 p.m., his phone rang. It was 

Fareba. Her voice hoarse and 

slow, she said she was at the Hazrat 

Ali shrine, a stunning mosque 

of cerulean tile in a sea of white 

marble. Abdul Wahid asked his 

uncle, Malim Faiz Mohammad, to 

get her. 

He found his niece lying on the 

cold marble. He decided then to 

keep the matter to himself and 

rushed her to the hospital. At 5:30, 

the doctors pronounced Fareba 

dead. 

“Dying this way just doesn’t 

make sense,” Mr. Mohammad said. 

“I wish they would have died in an 

accident.” 

The parents seek comfort in 

small ways. At night, Mr. Gul and 

his wife sleep in the girls’ room. 

They have given away the sisters’ 

belongings, as is customary, except 

for a pair of dresses. On bad days, 

the parents clutch the clothing to 

their faces.

5 THe New yORK TIMeS INTeRNATIONAL weeKLy 


New Love 

Hunters 

In China ONLINE: 

Con tin ued from Page 1 

become an unexpected burden: 

seeking a spouse. 

The confusion surrounding marriage 

in China reflects a country 

in frenzied transition. Sharp inequalities 

of wealth have created 

new fault lines in society. As many 

as 300 million rural Chinese have 

moved to cities in the last three 

decades. Uprooted and without 

nearby relatives to help arrange 

meetings with potential partners, 

these migrants are often lost in the 

swell of the big city. 

Not only are many more Chinese 

women postponing marriage to 

pursue careers, but China’s gender 

gap — 118 boys are born for every 

100 girls — has become one of 

the world’s widest, fueled in large 

part by the government’s one-child 

policy. By the end of this decade, 

Chinese researchers say, the country 

will have a surplus of 24 million 

unmarried men. 

Without traditional family or 

social networks, many men and 

women have taken their searches 

online, where thousands of dating 

and marriage Web sites have 

sprung up. These sites cater mainly 

to China’s millions of white-collar 

workers. But intense competition 

has spurred a growing number of 

singles to turn to more hands-on 

matchmaking services. Markets 

have popped up in parks across the 

city. Long rows of graying men and 

women sit in front of signs listing 

their children’s qualifications. 

Big Fees, Rich Clients 

Dozens of high-end matchmaking 

services have sprung up in China 

in the last five years, charging 

big fees to find spouses for wealthy 

clients. 

“These men are lost souls,” Ms. 

Yang said. “They worked hard, 

made a lot of money, and left their 

old world behind. Now they don’t 

have time to find a wife, and they 

don’t know whom to trust. So they 

come to us.” 

One day in her Beijing office at 

Diamond Love last year, Ms. Yang 

was fretting over a potential client: 

a divorced 42-year-old property 

mogul who was prepared to 

spend the equivalent of more than 

$500,000. 

Ms. Yang is Diamond Love’s 

most seasoned Beijing scout. Her 

success has earned her huge bonuses 

— in one case, $27,000 — and 

a reputation as one of China’s most 

accomplished love hunters. 

Still, she said that this new case 

was “nearly impossible.” Mr. Big 

(he insisted that Diamond Love 

not reveal his name) is a member of 

China’s fuyidai, the “first-generation 

rich” who have leapt from poverty 

to wealth in a single bound, often 

jettisoning their first wives. Mr. 

Big had specific requirements for 

his second wife. The ideal woman, 

he said, would look like Zhou Tao, 

a famous Chinese television host: 

slim with pure white skin, slightly 

pointed chin, perfect teeth, double 

eyelids and long silken hair. 

The ‘Marriage Market’ 

Yu Jia kept her search a secret at 

first. She didn’t want to risk upsetting 

her son so soon after a trying 

time for the family. Ms. Yu’s husband 

died of cancer in 2009, after 

wiping out the family’s savings. 

Devastated, Ms. Yu stayed in an 

apartment on the outskirts of Beijing 

with her sons — one married; 

the other, Zhao Yong, still single at 

36. But one day, Ms. Yu came upon 

a crowd swarming under the elm 

trees near the Temple of Heaven. 

It was a “marriage market,” where 

parents try to match their single 

children to other parents’ single 

children. 

Her life suddenly had a new purpose: 

finding a spouse for her son. 

Plunging into a crowd of strangers 

with a sign made Ms. Yu feel 

awkward at first. Ms. Yu’s son, Mr. 

Zhao, was angry when he found out 

that she had been searching. But he 

has relented. “I see how hard she 

works, so I can’t refuse,” he said. 

To save money and to enhance 

his marriage prospects, Mr. Zhao, 

now 39, works two jobs — one selling 

microwaves, the other cosmetics. 

He tried Internet dating, but it 

didn’t work out. Finally his mother 

came through: She arranged a 

meeting between him and the 

daughter of a woman she had met 

in the marriage market. Despite a 

lack of chemistry, the woman, who 

was a successful businesswoman, 

was interested in Mr. Zhao and 

proposed marriage. In the end, Mr. 

Zhao refused: He did not want to be 

subordinate to her. Even with this 

setback, though, Ms. Yu has continued 

her daily pilgrimage to the 

marriage markets. “I’m optimistic,” 

she said. After all these years, 

w O R L D T R E N D s 

Gilles sabrie for The new YorK Times 

at a ‘‘marriage market’’ in beijing, parents search for potential 

spouses for their unmarried children. 

hope is what keeps her going. 

Finding the Right One 

One afternoon in Chengdu, the 

capital of Sichuan Province, where 

Ms. Yang had gone to check on 

prospects, she noticed a young 

woman sweeping past her into a 

noodle restaurant. Long black hair 

hid most of the woman’s face, but 

there was something captivating 

about her laugh and easy gait. 

Ms. Yang followed her inside, 

apologized for the intrusion and 

switched on her charm. Ms. Yang 

came away with her phone number, 

photograph and a few pertinent 

details: she was 24, a graduate 

student and she resembled the TV 

hostess Zhou Tao. 

The love-hunting campaign for 

Mr. Big yielded more than 1,100 

fresh prospects. The list was reduced 

to eight. Mr. Big received 

thick dossiers on each of the eight. 

Ms. Yang’s hunting skills and 

tenacity had paid off again, giving 

her two of the eight finalists. 

In June, Mr. Big flew to Chengdu 

for meetings with the three local 

finalists. His final date in Chengdu 

was with the Zhou Tao look-alike 

whom Ms. Yang had approached 

at the noodle restaurant. At first, 

it seemed a mismatch, and not just 

because of the 18-year age gap. 

He knew nearly everything about 

her — her dating history, her acceptance 

to a graduate school, her 

father’s lofty government post — 

while she knew little more than his 

height and weight. Diamond Love 

had told her only that his net worth 

exceeded $800,000. 

After dinner, Mr. Big called off 

all other dates with finalists and 

dispatched his consultant to buy a 

Gucci handbag for the woman, as a 

token of affection. 

The couple has not yet decided to 

marry. But they are still dating exclusively. 

Nobody pays a half-million 

dollars “just to play around,” 

Ms. Yang said. “He just needs a 

little more time.” 

Civilian Drone Market 

Makes Rapid Advances 

Con tin ued from Page 1 

of grasshoppers devouring a crop. 

“The sky’s going to be dark with 

these things,” said Chris Anderson, 

the former editor of Wired magazine, 

who started the hobbyist Web 

site DIY Drones and now runs a 

company, 3D Robotics, that sells unmanned 

aerial vehicles and equipment. 

He says it is selling about as 

many drones every calendar quarter 

— about 7,500 — as the United 

States military flies in total. 

The Federal Aviation Administration 

has been ordered by Congress 

to work out a way to integrate these 

aircraft into the national airspace by 

2015. But Senator Patrick Leahy, the 

Vermont Democrat who is chairman 

of the Senate Judiciary Committee, 

said this year: “This fast-emerging 

technology is cheap and could pose a 

significant threat to the privacy and 

civil liberties of millions of Americans.” 

The progress of electronics seems 

relentless. Mr. Anderson said that 

all the components in a drone — a 

fast processor, a good battery, a 

GPS receiver and microelectromechancial 

sensors — were present 

in an iPhone. The systems include 

a ground station, usually a laptop 

with communications gear. Some 

drones weigh only a few kilograms 

and most can fit comfortably into 

the trunk of a car. 

Some fans of the technology wince 

at the word “drone,” which implies 

that there is no pilot. And they have 

grown resentful about the alarms 

raised over privacy issues, noting 

that a few city and state governments 

have begun banning drones 

even where they do not yet operate. 

Experts here outline a number of 

uses for the planes: “precision agriculture,” 

with tiny planes inspecting 

crops several times a week for the 

first sign of blight or insect invasion; 

safety missions by semiautonomous 

flying machines that could cruise 

the length of a freight train and examine 

the air brakes on each car, far 

faster than a person could, and be 

available for accident assessment in 

case of derailment; inspection operations 

of pipelines or power lines, a 

job that is notoriously dangerous for 

helicopters, and scouting out fires or 

car crashes. 

DOMEsTIC DRONEs 

For a video report on the rise 

of unmanned civil aviation: 

nytimes.com Search civilian drones 

Volunteer fire departments would 

provide a clear market, said Tom K. 

Kenville, chairman of the North 

Dakota chapter of the trade association, 

Unmanned Applications Institute, 

International. An unmanned 

vehicle, he said, was “going to beat 

all the cars there. If it’s a chemical 

fire, it will tell us to stay away, or it’s 

just some hay bales, drive slower.” 

Remote control equipment might 

even displace some human pilots, 

in the cockpits of cargo planes. 

One person could handle six cargo 

planes at a time. 

Mr. Regenhard, 21, is building 

a six-rotor helicopter that will 

beam pictures back to the ground. 

Equipped with a GPS sensor and a 

$220 autopilot, it can be programmed 

to fly to a sequence of coordinates, 

much the way an airliner can. 

To avoid midair collisions, the 

Federal Aviation Administration 

plans to have a system ready by 2015 

called “sense and avoid” in which 

each plane in the sky, manned or 

unmanned, uses GPS equipment to 

locate itself, and sends that information 

to a computer on the ground 

that draws a map showing all targets. 

Benjamin M. Trapnell, an associate 

professor here, said the 

unmanned aircraft program was 

not about just learning to fly such 

vehicles, but also designing them, 

including the cameras and other 

sensors. 

Even companies involved in 

conventional aviation see uses for 

drones. Applebee Aviation flies helicopters 

out of Banks, Oregon, mostly 

to spray crops, at a cost of $1,100 

an hour. Warren Howe, the sales 

manager, said survey work could be 

done with a drone instead, mapping 

out what a manned helicopter would 

be needed for. 

Mr. Anderson said that later this 

year his company would introduce 

a helicopter for agricultural surveillance 

that would sell for less than 

$1,000. “That’s not per hour, that’s 

for the helicopter,” he said. 

Dan KoecK for The new YorK Times 

andrew 

regenhard 

and meagan 

Kaiser, 

students at 

the University 

of north 

Dakota, 

with a drone 

and remote 

control.

SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 2013 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY 

4 

Worries Increase as the French Plan Exit From Mali 

By ERIC SCHMITT 

NEMA, Mauritania — With 

France planning to start withdrawing 

its troops from Mali in April, 

Western and African officials are 

increasingly concerned that the African 

soldiers who will be relied on 

to continue the campaign against 

militants linked to Al Qaeda there do 

not have the training or equipment 

for the job. 

The heaviest fighting, which has 

driven the militants out of the towns 

and cities of northeastern Mali, has 

been borne by French and Chadian 

forces, more or less alone. Those 

forces are conducting patrols in the 

north, while troops sent by Mali’s 

other regional allies, including Nigeria 

and Senegal, have been slow 

to arrive and have focused on peacekeeping, 

prompting grumbles from 

Chad’s president, Idriss Déby Itno. 

The outcome of the fighting in 

Mali carries major implications 

not only for France, but also for the 

United States, which is worried that 

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb 

and other militant groups could retain 

an enduring haven in remote 

mountain redoubts in the Malian 

desert. 

To help the French, the United 

States began flying unarmed surveillance 

drones over the region in 

February. The Obama administration 

has spent more than $550 million 

over four years to help train and 

equip West African armies to fight 

militants. But critics contend that 

the United States has little to show 

for that effort. 

Turning Mali’s army into a cohesive 

and effective force would entail 

“a huge amount of work,” according 

to Brigadier General Francois Le- 

A thoughtfully designed building, 

a well-engineered car or a 

beautifully decorated home can all 

stimulate the pleasure centers in 

our brains. We’re also drawn to cer- 

LENS 

tain colors and 

shapes, though 

for a long time 

we weren’t sure 

why. 

That is starting 

to change, 

Lance Hosey 

reported in The 

Times, as the 

science of design is growing more 

sophisticated. German researchers 

found last year that the color green 

can motivate us and make us more 

creative. “We associate verdant 

colors with food-bearing vegetation 

— hues that promise nourishment,” 

Mr. Hosey wrote. 

Windows that look out on landscapes 

facilitate patient recovery in 

hospitals, student learning in classrooms 

and worker productivity in 

For comments, write to 

nytweekly@nytimes.com. 

kenzo tribouillard/agence france presse — getty images 

french soldiers in northern mali are focused on taking out the remaining insurgents. 

cointre of France, who is leading the 

effort to retrain Mali’s army. 

The United Nations Security 

Council is expected to decide soon 

whether to authorize a peacekeeping 

force for Mali. 

“It’s possible these troops would 

go to Mali,” said Lieutenant Colonel 

M. Dieye of Senegal, commander of 

a platoon of special forces soldiers 

who took part in a recent exercise 

led by the United States in Mauri- 

offices, Mr. Hosey reported. 

Another revelation scientists 

discovered is based on simple geometry, 

in the shape of a “golden 

rectangle.” “Subtract a square 

from a golden rectangle, and what 

remains is another golden rectangle, 

and so on and so on,” Mr. Hosey 

wrote. 

Some of the most beloved designs 

in history follow the golden 

rectangle’s 5-by-8 proportions: the 

facades of the Parthenon and Notre 

Dame, the face of the Mona Lisa, 

the Stradivarius violin and the 

original iPod. 

Now we are closer to understanding 

why: a scientist at Duke 

University in North Carolina found 

that our eyes can scan an image 

fastest when its proportions mimic 

tania. His nation and others in the 

exercise, like Chad, Niger, Burkina 

Faso and Nigeria, have sent troops 

to Mali. “Now we’ve worked together 

with other African troops, like we 

would in Mali,” he said. 

The French-led operation in Mali 

has killed scores of militants and 

destroyed many weapons caches. 

France has said it will not withdraw 

until the threat from the militants is 

vastly diminished. Even so, some 

The Saving Grace of Good Design 

Scientific insights 

into how design can 

influence behavior. 


the golden rectangle. 

There is also growing evidence 

that smart design can reduce aberrant 

behavior. Psychiatric hospitals 

try to identify patients who 

may be aggressive and train staff 

to reduce violent incidents. But 

these approaches are not enough, 

as the number of aggressive events 

in care facilities appears to be increasing, 

Roger Ulrich, a professor 

of architecture in Sweden, reported 

in The Times. Research suggests 

that hospitals can be designed to 

reduce violence and these adaptations 

do not cost significantly more 

money. 

A psychiatric hospital in Gothenburg 

that opened in 2006 incorporated 

spaces that minimize noise 

and crowding, shared rooms with 

movable seating to give patients 

control over their space, and offered 

more natural light. It reported 

significantly fewer aggressive 

incidents, Professor Ulrich 

reported. 

“Evidence from myriad studies 

and design research strongly supports 

the notion that architectural 

Western officials say the African 

troops in Mali will be up against 

guerrilla fighters with far more experience 

in desert warfare. 

“No amount of exercise or training 

in the next couple weeks or 

months can, in itself, prepare African 

forces for their new role in Mali,” 

said Benjamin P. Nickels, a counterterrorism 

specialist at the National 

Defense University’s Africa Center 

for Strategic Studies in Washington. 

design can reduce violence,” he 

wrote. 

Times columnist James Stewart 

visited Google’s office in New York 

recently, which at first glance — 

scribbling on the walls, roaming 

dogs, engineers walking on treadmills 

in front of computer screens 

and workstations seemingly made 

out of children’s toys — struck him 

as “some kind of high-tech refugee 

camp.” 

But Google being Google, there is 

a method — and research and data 

— behind the madness. The company’s 

headquarters occupy a full city 

block in a former shipping complex 

in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. 

Craig Nevill-Manning, a New 

Zealand native and the company’s 

engineering director in Manhattan, 

said he pushed for the building 

because it was near where workers 

wanted to live and the amount of 

space per floor (over two hectares) 

would allow for the chance encounters 

the company believes give it 

an edge. 

Among innovations that have 

come from seemingly random of- 

African forces may 

not be capable of 

defending Mali. 

“An ongoing commitment will be required.” 

France has delayed its withdrawal 

by at least a month, amid fierce fighting 

against a major militant stronghold. 

The French had some 1,200 soldiers 

in that battle; along with 800 

troops from Chad, they have been 

focusing their efforts on a 24-kilometer 

zone in the Adrar des Ifoghas, 

the rocky, barren mountains near 

Mali’s border with Algeria. 

The French are likely to maintain 

a small counterterrorism force 

in Mali after withdrawing most of 

their 4,000 troops from the country, 

diplomats say. The bulk of the peacekeeping 

duties will shift to African 

troops, with the growing likelihood 

that they will operate under a United 

Nations mandate. 

Some diplomats are suggesting 

that the United Nations approve 

a heavily armed rapid-response 

force of up to 10,000 troops to ward 

off any resurgent Islamist threat in 

Mali. Chad, which has 2,200 soldiers 

in Mali, would probably supply the 

core of any peacekeeping mission. 

Mali’s own army, which toppled 

the country’s civilian government 

early last year, is “very much underequipped,” 

said General Lecointre, 

who is leading the European Union 

mission to retrain the Malian troops 

beginning April 2. “It is the army of 

a very poor country.” 

karsten moran for tHe neW york times 

Work spaces that resemble 

subway cars are one of the 

design oddities in google’s 

headquarters in manhattan. 

fice conversations are the Google 

Art Project, which is putting thousands 

of museum works online, and 

enhancements to the company’s 

advertising platforms. 

“Google’s success depends on 

innovation and collaboration,” Mr. 

Nevill-Manning told Mr. Stewart. 

“Everything we did was geared toward 

making it easy to talk. Being 

on one floor here removed psychological 

barriers to interacting.” 

A Google spokesman told Mr. 

Stewart that “we’re trying to push 

the boundaries of the workplace.” 

TOM BRADY



By GARDINER HARRIS 

CHERRAPUNJI, India — Almost 

no place on Earth gets more rain 

than this small hill town. Nearly 12 

meters falls every year. The monsoon 

is epic. 

But during the dry season from 

November through March, many in 

this corner of India struggle to find 

water. Some are forced to walk long 

distances to fill jugs in springs or 

streams. Taps in Shillong, the capital 

of Meghalaya State, spout water 

for just a few hours a day, and it is often 

not drinkable. 

Half of the water supply in rural 

areas, where 70 percent of India’s 

population lives, is routinely contaminated 

with bacteria. Every 

year, about 600,000 Indian children 

die because of diarrhea or pneumonia, 

often caused by toxic water and 

poor hygiene, according to Unicef. 

Employment in manufacturing in 

India has declined, and a prime reason 

may be the difficulty companies 

face getting water. 

A report that McKinsey & Company 

helped to write predicted 

that India would need to double its 

water-generation capacity by the 

year 2030. 

A separate analysis concluded 

that groundwater supplies in many 

of India’s cities are declining so rapidly 

that they may run dry within a 

few years. 

The water situation in Gurgaon, 

the new mega-city south of Delhi, 

became so acute last year that a 

judge ordered a halt to construction 

until projects could prove they 

were using recycled water instead of 

groundwater. 

In February, India’s finance minister, 

Palaniappan Chidambaram, 

proposed providing $2.8 billion to 

the Ministry of Drinking Water and 

Sanitation in the coming fiscal year, 

a 17 percent increase. 

But water experts describe this as 

very little in a country where more 

than 100 million people scrounge for 

water. 

Much of the country is arid, and 

India has just 4 percent of the world’s 

fresh water shared among 16 percent 

of its people. 

But the country’s struggle to pro- 


india’s lack of Drinkable water imperils the Population 

Sruthi Gottipati contributed reporting 

from Meghalaya State, India. 

Kuni TaKahashi for The new YorK Times 

Portions of india have heavy rainfall but are still short of drinkable water. women walked long 

distances to carry water from a community tap in Cherrapunji. 

vide water to the 2.6 million residents 

of Meghalaya, blessed with 

more rain than almost any place, 

shows that the problems are not all 

environmental. 

Arphisha lives in Sohrarim, a village 

in Meghalaya, and she must 

walk 1.6 kilometers during the dry 

season to the local spring, a trip she 

makes four to five times a day. 

On a recent day, Arphisha, who 

has only one name, took the family 

laundry to the spring, which is a pipe 

last Days for a Parisian artists’ squat 

By ELVIRE CAMUS 

PARIS — Illegal squats in Paris 

usually have a short life. But not 

La Miroiterie, which has been a renowned 

artists’ settlement for 14 

years. Its days appear to be numbered, 

however, as a development 

company is planning to close it. 

In 1999, an artist who signs his 

work Michel Ktu was among the first 

to set up a studio at La Miroiterie, an 

abandoned mirror factory up the hill 

of Ménilmontant, a slowly gentrifying 

immigrant neighborhood in the 

20th Arrondissement, in northeastern 

Paris. 

“I was in vital need of a space to 

work,” said Mr. Ktu, who is now 46 

and a set painter for the theater. 

The real estate company SARL 

Thorel spent four years buying up 

the various parts of the complex 

from numerous owners and is now 

suing to take control of the building. 

Over the years, many artists lived 

and worked at La Miroiterie, and 

contributed to creating its identity. 

Acts drew Parisians 

hungry for an 

underground scene. 

La Miroiterie provided free services 

to the neighborhood: a free 

clothing store was opened, classes 

were given to children in capoeira 

(a Brazilian discipline combining 

martial arts and dance), free meals 

were distributed, exhibitions were 

regularly organized and the rusty, 

graffiti-covered gate of the dilapidated 

complex was always open. 

Over time, residents organized 

concerts and started to attract a 

different audience: Parisians looking 

for an underground scene. La 

Miroiterie is now well known for its 

entertainment — jazz, punk and rap 

shows, which are scheduled several 

days a week, for no more than 10 eu- 

ros, about $13, or sometimes free. 

“There is no other venue like this 

in Paris, for this kind of music,” said 

Mr. Ktu. 

When they discovered in 2009 that 

Thorel was planning to evict them, 

the Miroitiers, as they call themselves, 

filed suit. But after four years 

and many court hearings, it looks as 

if the fate of La Miroiterie is sealed. 

The whole complex seems likely to 

be emptied of its last residents by 

the end of March. 

Parisians tried to support the 

Miroitiers: online petitions were issued 

and demonstrations were held 

in front of City Hall. 

“Places like these should be protected,” 

said Erwan Le Scouarnec, 

an amateur hip-hop artist who often 

performs at La Miroiterie. 

The City of Paris has offered to 

relocate and otherwise help the 

Miroitiers, but the latter refuse to 

compromise. 

Anne-Sophie Devos, a 37-year-old 

Miroitier who has been squatting 

set in a concrete abutment. While 

her son played nearby, Arphisha 

beat clothes on a cement and stone 

platform. When it rains, she uses a 

barrel to capture runoff from her 

roof. 

In the somewhat larger town of 

Mawmihthied, Khrawbok, the village 

headman, walked more than a 

kilometer on a goat path to point out 

the spring most residents visit to get 

drinking water. Taps in Mawmihthied 

have running water for two hours 

at La Miroiterie for five years, said, 

“We’d rather be wild, hands free.” 

Mr. Ktu, who also opposes the 

city’s involvement, said, “They are 

willing to help us, but they want to 

have a hold on us.” 

The two of them are considering 

opening “La Miroiterie No. 2” and 

Aquifers threatened 

by pollution and poor 

maintenance. 

every morning, but the water is not 

fit to drink. 

New Delhi water plants generate 

more water per customer than do 

those in Europe, but taps operate on 

average three hours a day because 

30 percent to 70 percent of the water 

is lost to leaks and theft. 

Many residents install pumps to 

pull as much water out of the pipes 

as possible. But those pumps also 

suck contaminants from the soil. 

The collective annual costs of 

pumps and other such measures are 

three times what the city would need 

to maintain its water system, said 

Smita Misra, a senior economist at 

the World Bank. 

And even as towns and cities increase 

water supplies, most fail 

to build the far more expensive infrastructure 

to treat sewage. So as 

families connect their homes to new 

water lines, many flush their sewage 

into the nearest creek, making the 

water that much more dangerous. 

In Meghalaya, efforts to improve 

the water supply have been stymied 

by bickering among government 

agencies, said John F. Kharshiing, 

chairman of the Grand Council of 

Chiefs of Meghalaya. In one example, 

the state built a pump near a river 

to bring water to towns at higher 

elevations. 

“But they didn’t realize that the 

pump would be underwater during 

the monsoon,” he said. “So it shorted 

out that first year, and it’s never 

been used since.” 

CaTaLina marTin-ChiCo for The new YorK Times 

anne-sophie Devos lives at La miroiterie, a 14-year-old artists’ 

settlement in Paris. a developer has other plans for the building. 

already have a vacant building in 

mind. 

Mr. Ktu is convinced that the City 

Council, despite itself, is promoting 

a certain kind of official culture. 

“They destroy everything, these 

fools,” he said. “They just don’t get 

it.”


2 

Pope Francis Puts 

Jesuits in the spotlight 

By lauriE goodstEin 

rome — men who join the Jesuits, 

the roman catholic church’s 

largest religious order, take vows 

of poverty, chastity and obedience, 

and promise never to take 

any high office in the church. 

So while other priests were 

climbing the ladder of the church’s 

hierarchy, the Jesuits directed 

their energies into spreading the 

catholic faith. They have planted 

the church in places like india, Japan, 

canada and Latin america. 

They work with the poor in shantytowns 

and aidS clinics. They 

publish magazines, paint, write 

music and stage plays. and they 

run academically rigorous schools 

and universities. 

Now, for the first time, a Jesuit 

has been elected pontiff. Pope 

Francis, the former cardinal 

Jorge mario Bergoglio, an argentine 

of italian origin, has already 

Emilio morEnatti/associatEd PrEss 

many Jesuits stress economic and 

social justice. a church in rome. 

set a new tone. He took the name 

Francis, in homage to Francis of 

assisi, who abandoned comfort to 

join beggars. in keeping with the 

Jesuit ideal to live simply, Francis 

in his first days as pope dressed 

in a plain white cassock. and he 

suggested a humble course for the 

church as a whole. 

“How i would like a poor 

church,” he said, one that was “for 

the poor.” 

Some hope that the leadership 

of a Jesuit pope will allow the 

church to engage more openly 

and fearlessly with the world, to 

project the church’s message in 

new ways and to emphasize service 

to the poor. They also hope 

Francis will be able to shake up 

NaNcy Lee executive editor 

Tom Brady editor 

aNiTa PaTiL managing editor 

The New york Times international Weekly 

620 eighth avenue, New york, Ny 10018 

the Vatican’s culture. 

if so, his papacy could become 

a contrast to that of his predecessor, 

Benedict XVi, a quiet German 

scholar and former doctrinal enforcer 

who stepped down in February. 

But it is still too early to tell what 

is at the top of the agenda for Francis, 

who at 76 is only two years 

younger than Benedict when he 

was elected. He is assuming control 

of a Vatican that has been 

racked by missteps and scandals. 

The Society of Jesus, as the order 

is called, was founded in the 

16th century by ignatius of Loyola, 

a Spanish knight who experienced 

a religious conversion while recovering 

from the wounds of battle. 

There are now about 17,000 Jesuits, 

and while their ranks are declining 

in europe and the United 

States, they are growing in places 

like Vietnam, india and Latin 

america. 

The reverend antonio 

Spadaro, editor of La 

civiltà cattolica, a Jesuit 

journal in rome, said that 

before the papal conclave, 

journalists were asking 

him whether cardinal Bergoglio 

could be pope. “and 

i said, ‘Not at all, because 

he’s a Jesuit,’ ” he said. 

“We are used to serving a 

pope, not to be a pope.” 

many Jesuits are more 

concerned with economic 

and social justice than 

with doctrinal purity. Jesuits 

were in the forefront 

of the movement known as 

liberation theology, which encouraged 

the oppressed to unite along 

class lines and seek change. 

However, Francis, when he was 

head of the Jesuits in argentina in 

the 1970s, was opposed to liberation 

theology, seeing it as too influenced 

by marxism. He came down 

hard on Jesuits who were liberation 

theology proponents and left 

the province divided, according to 

some who study the order. 

Jesuits are aware that Francis 

will bring new attention to their 

order. “it’s a good chance for us to 

help people to understand better 

our spirituality,” Father Spadaro 

said. “But we like to do our job, not 

to be under the lights. So we’ll just 

see.” 

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maUricio lima For tHE nEW YorK timEs 

For Hugo chávez, a hatred for the United states outweighed the aspirations of the people of Venezuela. 

London 

Hugo chávez, a 21st-century 

socialist god destined to be embalmed 

like his 20th-century communist 

predecessors from moscow 

to Beijing, was a self-styled man 

of the people. He rose to power in 

Venezuela, and won election after 

election there, as the embodiment 

of the humble mestizo challenging 

the entrenched privilege of the 

bourgeois oligarchy. 

The inefficiency of the chávez 

regime was prodigious — he 

contrived to leave his country’s 

finances in a shambles despite riding 

soaring oil revenues — and he 

enriched his revolutionary coterie 

through sweet deals, but his attachment 

to the cause of “el pueblo” (not 

least their health and education) 

remained the core of his appeal. 

and yet this man of the left and the 

people could scarcely find a dictator 

he did not find seductive. He was a 

strong supporter of Bashar al-assad, 

the Syrian despot whose ruthlessness 

has cost the lives of 70,000 

of his own people. He backed muammar 

el-Qaddafi of Libya to the last. 

He sided with robert mugabe in his 

despoilment of the Zimbabwean 

people. When millions of iranians 

rose in 2009 to protest a stolen presidential 

election, chávez stood firmly 

with mahmoud ahmadinejad as the 

uprising was suppressed with great 

brutality. Given a choice between 

British liberalism and Belarussian 

repression, chávez did not hesitate. 

of course, chávez was also the 

staunch ally of Fidel castro, his 

Send comments to 

intelligence@nytimes.com. 

intelligenCe/roGer Cohen 

Dressed Up as a Liberator 

Latin american mentor, but with 

castro he at least shared socialist 

ideas as well as a web of economic 

interests, including an original oilfor-doctors 

exchange. With other 

dictatorial buddies he had little in 

common, at least on the surface. 

But of course there was a unifying 

ideology at work here that 

outweighed chávez’s professed 

embrace of popular will: a shared 

determination to confront and resist 

the United States and its allies 

in all their manifestations. chávez 

was the anti-american ideologue 

par excellence. i once listened to 

him for hours in caracas as he wove 

an endless but intermittently spellbinding 

speech around the theme of 

the predatory cowboy up north. 

For chávez and all these latterday 

strongmen, confronting the 

United States and its neoliberal 

economic order — as well as its post 

9/11 military adventures — was 

far more important in the end than 

liberty, a free press, representative 

government or the aspirations of 

the people. chávez was a profoundly 

illiberal man dressed up as the 

“liberator” of his people. 

in this it must be said he was 

scarcely alone. civilized disagreement 

and the institutions that 

permit and safeguard it — the 

heart of a liberal order — are not 

much beloved in an age when those 

who shout loudest and with most 

certitude tend to get their way. For 

chávez and his ilk a liberal was no 

more than a Western imperialist 

dressed up in mollifying garb. The 

position of “liberal interventionist” 

(of the kind who supported the Western 

interventions in Bosnia or Lib- 

ya) or “liberal Zionist” (of the kind 

supporting a two-state outcome in 

the Holy Land) has become increasingly 

lonely. Liberal society — and 

i don’t know of any better kind — is 

a less effective rallying cry than the 

america-hating of the despots. 

The United States’ invasion of 

iraq 10 years ago this month, the 

endless war in afghanistan, and 

the global contagion from the Wall 

Street financial meltdown of 2008 

have all contributed to the chávezlike 

america derangement Syndrome. 

Whatever its source this is 

a dangerous pathology: it provides 

the cover for repression that often 

turns brutal. 

The “people,” so-called, have 

other ideas, not least the arabs who 

have risen against despotism over 

the past two years. Their quest is 

for freedom — the freedom at last 

to write and say what they like, act 

to change their lives and join the 

modern world. This does not mean 

they want societies that are clones, 

or lackeys, of the United States and 

its allies. But they refuse to live any 

longer in cowed and manipulated 

societies bound by fear of imaginary 

enemies. 

chávez chose his despotic friends 

because he believed the main division 

in the world was not between 

dictatorship and democracy but 

between countries subordinated 

to the United States and countries 

independent of it. His obsessive 

hatred of Washington led him again 

and again to embrace the powerful 

against the weak, the caudillo 

against the people. This was at once 

his deepest betrayal and a symptom 

of his core illiberalism. 

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TODAY-NYT is published by MediaCorp Press Ltd, Caldecott Broadcast Centre, Annex Building, Andrew Road, Singapore 299939 Tel: 6333 3888. Printed by KHL Printing Co Pte Ltd, 57, Loyang Drive, Singapore 508968. Tel: 65432222

In collaboration with 

MICA (P) 031/07/2012 

By BROOK LARMER 

FROM heR STAKeOUT near the entrance of an h & M store 

in Joy City, a Beijing shopping mall, Yang Jing seemed lost in 

thought, twirling a strand of hair, tapping her nails on her iPhone 

4S. But her eyes kept moving. They tracked the clusters of young 

women shopping. They lingered on a face, a gesture, and then 

moved on. 

“This is a good place to hunt,” she said. “I always have good 

luck here.” Ms. Yang, 28, is one of 

China’s premier love hunters, a 

new breed of matchmaker that has 

proliferated in the country’s economic 

boom. 

The company she works for, Diamond 

Love and Marriage, caters 

to China’s nouveaux riches: men, 

and occasionally women, willing 

to pay up to thousands of dollars to 

outsource the search for their ideal 

spouse. 

In Joy City, Ms. Yang gave instructions 

to her eight-scout team, one of 

VICTO NGAI 

New Love Hunters in China 

six squads the company was deploying 

in three cities for one Shanghai 

millionaire. This client had provided 

a list of requirements for his future 

wife, including her age (22 to 26), 

skin color (“white as porcelain”) 

and sexual history (yes, a virgin). 

“These millionaires are very 

picky, you know?” Ms. Yang said. 

“Nobody can ever be perfect 

enough.” 

Still, the potential reward for Ms. 

Yang is huge: The love hunter who 

finds the client’s eventual choice 

will receive a bonus of more than 

$30,000, around five times the average 

annual salary in this line of 

work. 

INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY 

Three decades of combustive 

economic growth have reshaped 

the landscape of marriage in China. 

A generation ago, China was 

one of the world’s most equal nations, 

in both gender and wealth. 

Most people were poor, and tight 

controls over housing, employment, 

travel and family life simplified 

the search for a suitable 

match. 

China’s transition to a market 

economy has swept away many 

restrictions in people’s lives. But of 

all the new freedoms the Chinese 

enjoy today there is one that has 

ContinuedonPage5 

By MATTHEW L. WALD 

GRAND FORKS, North Dakota 

— On the pilot’s computer screen, 

planted at ground level a few meters 

from the airport runway here, the 

data streaming across the display 

tracked an airplane at 400 meters 

above a small city on the coast, making 

perfect circles at 240 kilometers 

per hour. 

To the pilot’s right, a sensor operator 

was making a camera on the 

plane pan, tilt and zoom, searching 

among the houses for people who 

had been reported missing. 

On the screen, cartoonlike human 

figures appeared in a gathering 

around a campfire. “There they 

are,” said Andrew Regenhard, the 

pilot and a student. 

In fact, no one was missing; the entire 

exercise used imaginary props 

and locales. Mr. Regenhard was 

taking part in a training session at 

the University of North Dakota. The 

first to offer a degree program in 

unmanned aviation, the university 

is one of many academic settings, 

along with companies and individuals, 

preparing students for a brave 

new world in which cheap remotecontrolled 

airplanes will be ubiquitous 

in civilian air space, searching 

for everything from the most wanted 

of criminal suspects to a swarm 

WORLD TRENDS 

6 8 13 

In Afghanistan, 

A Mars project with 

Valentino’s name, 

a suicide wave. a reality show hook. 

but their vision. 

MONEY & BUSINESS 

INTELLIgENcE: A man of the people befriended dictators, Page 2. 


Copyright © 2013 The New York Times 

Drones 

Advance 

In Civilian 

Market 

ContinuedonPage5 

DAN KOeCK fOr The New YOrK TImes 

Benjamin m. Trapnell of the 

University of North Dakota with 

a remote-controlled hexocopter. 

STYLES

55 

TM 


56 


Today is published by MediaCorp Press Ltd, Caldecott Broadcast Centre, annex Building, Level 1, andrew Road, Singapore 299939 Tel: 6333 3888. Printed by KHL Printing Co Pte Ltd, 57, Loyang drive, Singapore 508968. Tel: 65432222

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