nick’s (n)-line life

Yep, after much build-up, today is the big day in Singapore:
IBN Live — Polls opened at 0000 GMT at more than 400 voting stations and were to close 12 hours later. By late morning, one-fifth of the 1.2 million registered voters had cast their compulsory votes, the elections department said.

The Contenders:

and the currently ruling PAP:

Results [...]

Looks like a lot has been going on in Singapore this week:
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore’s government dissolved parliament on Thursday and called an election for May 6, a poll that will be the first real test of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s leadership. [ Via SingaBloodyPore ]
As a country approaches a general election one [...]

[pre-dated entry]
And so it was that I found myself sitting on the middle bunk of a hard sleeper train heading towards Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, China’s wild west, about to embark on my journey-proper. The province, for years treated as a savage and isolated backwater by Beijing, offers access to some of China’s [...]

This post has been written in the form of a response to a post which appeared in An American in South East Asia.
I have tried to avoid going over old points, as far as possible, and to make sure that I focus on the criticism of my post rather than going over the substantive issues [...]

Microsoft has jumped on board the Chinese censorship band wagon. Words that will now generate a censorship error messages include: freedom (自由) , democracy (民主), human rights (人æ?ƒ), and demonstration (示å¨?) as well as references to pornography (these are links to the relevant MSN searches, i.e. you probably don’t want to click on the [...]

I’ve just come across an excellent Singaporean weblog (apparently the most popular one in the country) that seems worthy of note.

The writer is probably the most abusive and foul-mouthed blogger I’ve read who still manages to make her articles readable and interesting…
Asia Blog Award 2004
As much as I enjoy arguing… I’m scared… in a good [...]