《夏日心情》

你曾说女生的心情象天气，阴晴不定。
我觉得这就象是夏天：

    夏天是充满阳光的。
    虽然偶尔有雷阵雨，
    但终究会雨过天晴。
    这样的夏天很可爱。

A formal reply from MDA

I have received an email from MDA, making a formal explanation to my feedback (see my blog entry two posts ago). As usual, their formal explanation reads just as much as any template, relegating all responsibilities to Mediacorp being a commercial entity. So does that mean being a commercial broadcaster can shirk all social responsibilities as the only national broadcaster? Below is the text from the actual email:

2. MDA provides funds (received from Radio and TV licence) to Mediacorp Ch 5 (the dedicated National sports channel) to carry significant sporting events. The individual channel will then, decide on which event to cover and what not to. The bigger and more important events will take priority, some of which are the Olympics Games, the Asian Games, and the Southeast Asian Games. Since most live-action sporting events command high licensing and telecast costs, it is unfortunate that it has been Mediacorp's commercial decision to drop the World Cup's 3rd round of qualifier between Saudi VS Singapore. As you may know, in the case of the Pre-World Cup Qualifiers, there are four contenders in the 3rd round, namely, Singapore, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan. Each country will meet their three other opponents in a total of six “home and away” matches. For example, Singapore will play three “away” matches against Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan in their respective home countries and three matches at “home” in Singapore against the same opponents. We have decided to cover all the home matches as they will feature every other country in the group. The first of these home matches will be on 12 March when Singapore meets Lebanon followed by the matches against Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan in June. Hope you will tune into the upcoming matches that will be held in Singapore on Channel 5

Update on May 1, 2011: The govt has finally abolished the Radio & TV licence.

I got a call from MDA

I excerpted part of my previous blog entry and filled it in the feedback form I found on the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) website last week. Then today, I received a phone call from the Media Development Authority (MDA) asking me whether I am serious about cancelling my TV licence. Haha, how funny is that? The MCYS actually did take notice of my feedback and apparently redirected it to the MDA. However, what I wrote was a sarcastic complaint, not a service request! Hello, anybody home? Anyway, I am heartened to see that the feedback function in a governmental website is not just for show only although more care and seriousness can be taken to attend to any reply.

Happy CNY but a sad day for S'pore football

It's the Chinese New Year tomorrow and I hereby wish everyone an exciting and prosperous year ahead. I also want to congratulate the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports. Once again, you have shot yourselves in the foot. What a spectacular bid for being the first city to host the Youth Olympics and yet fail to get our national television station to telecast the Saudi Arabia vs Singapore football match. So can I not pay my TV licence since I already don't have anything to watch anyway? Maybe we can disband our TV broadcasting station since all it does is showing reruns, producing crap programmes, and paying salaries to people that don't really contribute to the welfare of the community? In fact, why not fire those producers, directors, script-writers, actors and actresses and spare us all the torture of watching TV. Oh wait, I know, this is actually a conspiracy to prevent us from becoming couch potatoes, give our students an excuse to study more and adults spending more in our malls. Right?