卦Trigram 2.0
Asian Snowcrash

OK, I grant you that I could have done all this before, but really: which genius decided that the best time to take Singapore’s online tax-filing system down for two days of maintenance was the last weekend before the filing deadline? For goodness’ sake…

No-one likes paying tax, but it can at least be made easier. Online payment is convenient - when it’s done right.

I spent a long time last night  trying to submit my Singaporean tax return. My last employer had entered all the necessary details, so that was already on the system. Very convenient. However, the job before that had overlapped into 2007 slightly, and that employer hadn’t been connected with the tax system, so I had to amend the form to add on that income, subtract CPF, etc.

Except - it wouldn’t work. Every time I tried to submit, I was stopped by a pop-up that informed me “Only positive numbers are accepted”. Try what I might, this stumped me. There was nothing in the FAQ.  Why on earth was the system thinking that I was inputting negative numbers?

Eventually, after much frustration and wasted time, I had an inspiration. What if I took off the 67 cents from the end of the amount..? Bingo! It worked!

Note to the retard who wasted my time - find a dictionary, please! “Positive number” and “round number” are very different things!

Sometimes I really have to wonder why Singapore persists in calling itself an English-speaking country…

In this blog’s previous incarnation, I was tracking the development of commercial spaceflight with great interest. One very exciting prospect was the proposed development of a spaceport here in Singapore. I wrote when I first heard of it, it showed a Singapore that might have “advanced bioscience and cheap space travel, in a Garden City with great food and loads of kung fu schools“… Hehe, of course, that reveals a lot about my interests!

Anyhow… I’m not sure what’s happening with the biotech industry; friends of mine who were working for biotech startups tell me that it’s not working out, and they are leaving. I can’t say whether this is indicative of the biotech sector overall here… but from that list of mine, the spaceport project has, sad to say, come to a halt.

Yesterday’s Straits Times reported that the project has stalled due to a lack of funding. I can’t find an online version of the article, but this older article gives an indication of the problems it faced - notably, that potential investors are unconvinced that there is a strong enough demand (something I was also beginning to wonder about last year…)

This didn’t show up when I searched the Straits Times‘ website yesterday, but I just came across it via Google. It isn’t the article I was referring to before, but is pretty informative - and does mention the Finns’ involvement! It’s an article by Tracy Quek: China a leader in developing eco-cities. It’s got an interesting couple of paragraphs deep down:

It intends to stand out from other projects by putting an emphasis on building a strong sense of community among residents, leveraging on 40 years of experience in fostering bonds between people from disparate backgrounds.

‘It’s not just the hardware, but changing the mindsets of people and inculcating in them a whole new way of thinking where they give the environment priority,’ said a source close to the project.

The People’s Association, which oversees grassroots organisations in Singapore, will set up community centres and other grassroots mechanisms that will draw the community closer.

To me, this does reinforce the impression that the Tianjin project is not just a way to boost Singapore’s brand, engineering know-how, and R&D insights, but could also be a way to test social engineering techniques for re-introduction back here - namely, how to build green awareness. And, I have to say, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Following my last post, I idly wondered whether YouTube had anything about China’s eco-cities. Here’s what I found:

Simulated flyover of Dongtan eco-city:

A BBC report on Dongtan eco-city:

Finland involved in the Tianjin project?

This was a surprise to me. My reading in the Straits Times here led me to believe that the Tianjin eco-city is a collaboration solely between China and Singapore, but - unless there are two projects near Tianjin - it seems that the Finns are involved as well. Who else? This clip is nearly 5 minutes long and, actually, doesn’t contain anything specific to the Tianjin project, but its YouTube page leads here.

More from China Digital Times: it seems that construction of the eco-city at Tianjin, a collaboration between China and Singapore, will begin in July.

It will be very interesting to compare how this goes with the concurrent Anglo-Chinese project being developed by Ove Arup near Shanghai.

There’s been a lot written over the last couple of years about the latter:

• Wired: Pop-up cities
• The Guardian: British to help China build eco-cities
• China Digital Times: China’s Green Revolution
• IEEE Spectrum: How to build a green city

Between those, and other, articles, there’s a lot of detail available on the design of the new city, Dongtan, near Shanghai. The Tianjin project, on the other hand, seems to have generated lots of press releases, but as yet I can find very little detail on how the city will be designed, or how it’s expected to work. I get the impression that the project is still in its early stages as far as design is concerned, even if construction is will commence soon. There was an interesting piece in the Straits Times recently which mentioned, IIRC, that Singapore would be bringing its substantial knowledge of environmental technology to the project, but that the experience gained in the project would be fed back into future urban planning back home in Singapore - so the project is, in effect, an opportunity for Singapore to experiment with green design and architecture in China, see what works and what doesn’t, and use the winning lessons to re-design “the Garden City”. An interesting strategy from Singapore.

Tianjin isn’t far from Beijing, and I wanted to go there anyway. Perhaps I should make a trip in July…

The Straits Times has a piece in its Home section today on the MiniOne. Apparently, it’s expected to hit the market here in Singapore from next month, and will cost between S$600 - S$700. The author, technology correspondent Alfred Siew, does mention that it will run Windows Mobile, but mostly discusses the similarity between the appearance of the M8 and the iPhone. He’s hardly the first, but goes on to focus on the “Chinese ripoff” angle, with mentions of cheap iPod knock-offs (the Zling Nax I bought in Carrefour would be one example - and it is cheap and shoddy, I agree!). Still, it would have been useful to mention that the M8 apparently will have a lot of differences with the iPhone, and will be superior in some regards (such as the better cameras). The piece is topped by a couple of uncredited images to compare the M8 and the iPhone. Pity, it could have been a lot more in-depth, and taken a look at current Chinese innovation in the mobile market, rather than just going for the cheap shot.

Since Gizmodo is reporting a likely launch date of March 3rd… perhaps I’ll hang on and get one after all once I hit Beijing.

And since I’m talking of Apple and Beijing, MacNN report that the Chinese capital’s first Apple Store is planned to be on Qianmen street - which is to say, the sanitised, faux-traditional shopping quadrant that is being constructed on the ruins of what was a truly old, vibrant community.

I loved the old Qianmen; I’ve written before on my martial arts blog about my experiences, and the great times I had, there. I guess I’ll just have to see what I think of the new one when I get there, but the metaphor of an Apple Store emerging from the ruins of a bustling and ancient part of Chinese history doesn’t need me to labour the point.

A year ago, I bought a Nokia 6708, largely for the stylus input and Chinese dictionary. I was pretty happy with it at first, but I have to say that I gradually became more and more dissatisfied. It blue-screened quite a bit, frequently hung and needed a reboot, and regularlt seemed to just turn itself off. It took ages to boot. The lack of letters on the keyboard gradually became a real nuisance. I found that I hardly ever used the Chinese dictionary. The USB connection to my Windows XP laptop was really fussy, and hardly ever seemed to work, so I couldn’t transfer files. The camera quality was pretty lousy. I began to think about getting a replacement.

Then two weeks ago I accidentally left it in a taxi. I’ve filed lost property reports, but it hasn’t shown up and probably never will. I’ve been using my old Nokia 6108, but it’s really obsolete now - especially as I can’t transfer my contacts from my laptop, and there’s no way I’m going to type them all in manually! I had been planning to hang on a few months until Meizu MiniOne is released, but now I can’t wait that long.

Actually, the timing is a bit serendipitous. I’d also been thinking that I need:

• a music player. The Zling Nax (Chinese clone of an iPod Nano) that I bought as an experiment is actually pretty crap, with terrible battery life and sound.
• mobile internet. The 6708 was actually internet-enabled, but my current phone plan doesn’t include data transfer; I signed up for this plan when I first came to Singapore in 2002! My contract has long since expired, but I’ve never got around to changing anything

I’m even more convinced that I need mobile internet after reading this O’Reilly Radar article by Peter Brantley. The points he makes about the way the Millennials (he just says “younger generation”) work - constantly online, social, self-organising, flat hierarchy - are spot on, and remind me of things I was thinking about quite a bit last year: how is this going to work out in Asia? The cultural changes and power shifts that are being driven by ubiquitous multimedia technology, social tools, and mobile internetmean that it’s not just about management styles any more. Here in Singapore, the government is reaching an uneasy modus vivendi with the internet-enabled voice of its citizens, but I’m not sure how it’s going to work out. During the recent protests in Myanmar, we’ve seen how important mobile phone cameras and internet access were - to the extent that the junta were forced to simply cut off all internet access to the outside world. China, of course, will be watching all of this very carefully indeed. However, I’m straying into what’s going to be a separate blog post!

So: I need a new phone, mobile internet, and an mp3 player. To get internet access, I need to sign a new contract. If I sign a new contract, I get discounts on a number of handsets, one of which is the Nokia N73 “Music Edition” which, to be honest, seems to cover all bases, except that it doesn’t have wifi… Seems to be a good choice, though, at S$368, which is what M1 are offering…