The Oligopoly strikes back

so 3 cinemas, holding the bulk of the market, raises prices together AGAIN.

Did i hear something about Singapore being the most 2nd most competitive economy in the world?

these analysts don't watch movie, pump petrol, take MRT and buses, do they?

The CFEA's chairman, Mr Shaw Vee King, who is also Shaw's managing director, said: 'We are no cartel. All along, as an association, we have implemented price increases when we felt it was timely.'

The Straits Times, April 01, 2005

Ok, 3 operators holding 80% of the market, raising the exact same amount in price, on the same day, in unison..... NOT a cartel.
Coming from the land where casinos are termed "integrated resorts".
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cartel or no cartel, they're a pretty brunch of smart dudes.

1) Raise the price just before a major blockbuster.
2) Singaporeans whine and swear laying off cinemas forever....

3) and then the major blockbuster comes and everyone has to catch it at the big screens.
4) Everyone adjusts to it, and forgot about the higher price.
5) Repeat.


watch the movie, you must! $9.50 price, you still lan-lan!

Don't think it will be effective (coz they are not cartel, wad...) but oh well, no harm trying.
http://www.petitiononline.com/sgmovie/petition.html

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Aye! SMRT: Best investment ever!

Record Profit for Fiscal 2004 (ended mar 31): $126.9 million

Return on Equity (ROE) = 24.5 per cent
(my POSB only gives me 0.125 per cent leh)

Only competitor = SBS Transit which btw, also formally applied for an increase in bus and train fares. But they are not a cartel because this is Singapore and there is no cartel in Singapore.

SBSTransit Group Profit Before Tax 2004: $60.125 millions
134.3% improvement over 2003
(Bus and Rail Profits made a 428.1% improvement over 2003)


Alright, maths is boring me.

Hmmm, they need to increase prices to cover increasing oil costs, GST, blah blah (don't understand, so the profit fake one ah?), because they are a private company and need to operate cold-bloodedly efficiently as a private company .

So they are a PRIVATE company that is answerable to their PRIVATE shareholders.


All along, I thought they are handling PUBLIC transport!

The New SAF

Ah, the army chinaware of our times....
who can forget the bulky mess tin which gets blackened and stained after every hot meal...


the old mess tin....

And the old mess mug we tucked in our SBO, which gets dirtied with mud and leaves in the jungle. Beside the 1st 3 mths of BMT, who would drink from it?


The old mess mug..(kidney shaped)...

And now, the SAF has taken fashion and 2-in-1 trend into consideration!
Introducing the hip, cool mess-multi-purpose-kit!


From dull grey, to trendy camo green!

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From a Mug....to a pot!

What's the point?

UPDATE!!
Okok, I have to insert some shameless plug in here.
Please do watch CNA (Channel News Asia) on Monday (02 May' 2005)!
8:30pm, "Local Express" on CNA!!

You'll get to see cherub on tv. :P

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Whats the point of laws?

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."

- Plato (427-347 B.C.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Whats the point of teachers?

"What's the point of teaching when only the learned are willing to learn."

- Relentless (1980-Present A.D.)

Those that need the most guidance, are those that refuse to be guided.
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a conversation's worth

cherub:
i am [supposed to be] a financial planner, remember?

but i am helping pple who are savy, who are already rich.

those pple who are stubborn....i can't help them...and i'm suddenly quite sadden that these pple are going to work and be poor their whole life

C.Planet says:
hiyah....its their choice wat...even jesus also cant save everyone....

"The rich are the ones fetching returns over 10 percent off their wealth, while the poor are deluded with 0.125 percent."

- Cherub (1980- Present A.D.)

What's the point of so called financial planning when those who need it most are those who are most sceptical?
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Regarding the earlier post abt teachers, I wasn't very clear and specific.

Just to clarify, I wasn't arguing about people's ambitions and aims in life when they do a job for the sake of holding a job.
I am fine with that. I believe most of us don't choose our first job, they choose us.
And any job is fine as long as it brings home the bacon.

However, teaching is different.
If i don't do my job well, my clients can jolly well get another agent. At most, he may suffer some losses and miscalculation in his assets. It won't make a huge dent in his life.

if a teacher don't do his job well, its gonna affect a lot of people in their whole life. Right from the start.

I'm pretty sure I had a blessed life. With a good family, and enrolled in pretty decent schools from primary till university. And I dare say most of my friends in the same social circle, having reached university level, belongs to the better half of society.
Most of us haven't seen the unfortunate, uglier side of life.

And for these people, especially those with a poor family background, the teacher is one that is going to decide their life.
Its the teacher that will be a role model.
That will motivate them to choose their paths in their life.


To the teachers that are guiding many many others, a big thank you.
I hope MOE increases ur remuneration soon. :)
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To those teachers who don't like their jobs,
who slept with their students (2 in last year slept with their underaged students, if i recall correctly)
and mostly recently, a lecturer-caught-buying-sex-with-underaged-boys,

Go be an insurance agent or something.

Not as good as roulette, but Safer.

I was looking at the 14 successful bidders for the casinos, sorry, i meant integrated resorts and I wonder how I can invest my money in its favour.

Two of these companies are going to win, and their stocks are going to rise...
so picking a winner, thats 1:7 odds.

still a risky bet:- picking a 1:7 winner in stocks
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inevitably my attention shifts to the 3 big players.

1) Kerzner International Ltd and CapitaLand Ltd
2) MGM Mirage and CapitaLand
3) Harrah's Entertainment Inc and Keppel Land Ltd

Thats right. Government-linked companies are involved in them.


Now now, fellow economic graduates, journalists and taxi-drivers, debate all you want abt how neutral (or biased) the government is in allocating commerical projects but I think its quite a sure bet that one of these players is going to land a bid, aint it?

and US$2 billion investment for each resorts.
and these companies will need to raise some of their funds via bonds.

What better place than the Singapore bond markets? a good cheap source of funds, plus its one of the government's aims to broaden the bond markets, and a GLC is definitely going to look towards it for funds.

Other non-GLCs that win the bids are probably going to turn towards the bond markets for their fundings as well....so i guess i don't hv to predict the 2 winners anyway.

hmmm.... Bond funds.
Hah!! i just left a bit of money with them.

Maybe the profits when the price of the bond fund rises....can pay for my 1 year casino membership.......
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Yeah, I'm bored studying.

Economics of Technology.
8 weeks of work => 4 days of slogging

Let there be Jobs and careers

I have tons of friends who are already teachers or going to be teachers.

Not surprising, since I'm from Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (faculty of ASS, i always say) where many disciplines have a relatively narrow range of career prospects.

I'm fine with teachers. I'm fine with people who enter Arts and Social Sciences because they want to be teachers. I am fine with people who love to teach.

what I cannot stand are teachers who are in this trade because they cannot find any other jobs.


neofik says:

[faculty of] arts supposed to open their mind. if anything, it has only conformed them to an even narrower path.

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there are people who enter Faculty of Engineering because they don't know what they want to do with their life.
and engineering seems the "safest" choice.
Hence, they occupy a space that others may value more, and expand resources training them in a career they would not take.

...we see students who choose Science in JC because they don't know what they want to do.
so Science is the "safest" choice.

...we see students who choose science subjects after sec2 'streaming' because they don't know what they want to do.
so science subjects are the "safest" choices.

how many engineer students would become engineers? they are here only because the govt encouraged them to do so! same for the IT students [who are now marooned with a 'worthless' degree] a while ago! same for Faculty of Life science students [whose honours requirements has just been reduced to increase the honours intake]!

mixed quotes from friends

[note: remarks in paratheses are mine]
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The casino integrated resort issue is boring me.
As an economist, I say go for it.
As a singaporean, i'm, surprisingly, against it.

To my former maths teachers: I still do not understand the sum. How does gaining 35,000 jobs against causing 50,000 families to suffer equal a plus?

Ms Goh Sai Luan (The Straits Times, April 22, 2005)

Pre - sexyblogger

The sexyblogger project, of which xiaxue posed in a rather "sexy" image......


the sexy xiaxue

........ and which mrbrown and mr miyagi posed in a "not-so-sexy" way.....


the not-so-sexy mrbrown


the ok-sexy-mrMiyagi

........ is not entirely new.


Apparently, miss Angela, of the canon advertisment fame was the first.
(if you read mrbrown frequently, he "browned" her once. OK that sounds really pornographic. Nothing of that sort, u dirty bastard.)

yes, she's the chio angmo whose bikini flew off and got snapshot in the advertisement while playing beach volleyball, and NO, you lusty pervert, you can't see anything. And YES, she was wearing additional protection. If you must know, i think the girls called it nipple tape or something like tat. ouch.

all these dirty-old-men in the forum. tsk tsk.


Apparently she has a similar sexyblogger concept much earlier, except she didn't meant for it to be sexy.

The "blur sotong of the month". The very original sexy blogger :P


the sexyblogger

Yes, I know the photo is not of her sticking a tongue out. But I pasted this photo here to remind all u dirty old men (come on, stop denying it) that she's blissfully attached.
and, I really like this photo a lot.

sweeeet.

Okok...here's the lastest blur-sotong of the month.


Blur Sotong of Mar'05

The Brown Man

You know you are reading too much mrbrown when

cherub: there! thats mr brown *pointing at tv*
bro: who?
cherub: mr brown!
bro: who is mrbrown?
cherub: u dunno who is mrbrown?wah, u always watch him on tv
bro: *confused*
cherub: mr brown ah! mr brown!
bro: Oh...MR BEAN.

bro: who is mrbrown?

that was embarrassing.
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Anyway, yeah, i think i grew up on mrbrown's articles.
the guy who "blogged" even before the term "blogging" was invented.

I remember chancing upon his website (no, I was not looking for porn. *wink wink* earlier mrbrown reader would know that his website, "browntown", got confused with another porn website) when his Singapore National Education was just in the mere 40 plus.

(now i remember why i didn't do well for my exams!)

I think i spent the next few weeks gorging myself with the entire archive of his Singapore National Education.
Yes it is that satirical, it is that funny.

Now that blogging is in vogue, it seems that he mellowed, and now writes in a different style. More blogger style, and less "SNE" style, i guess.
The old mrbrown seems like a mac evangelist, a heavy duty designer, and pokes fun at the govt at every opportunity he gets. Like a white collar kopitiam uncle, if you ask me.

The old browntown was mostly a one-man show. Now he's flanked by many talented bloggers. And he's reaching out more than through his SNE. You get to read abt his family, and most recently, listen to his ipodcast "radioshow" with other talented bloggers.

In fact, for those people who have not yet visited his website, where have you been?
This is the man!
www.mrbrown.com

And yes, SNE is now Part 106. You can have the entire 106 series here.
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You know mrbrown, you should start a political party or something. You can try and bring about some real changes here. (the key word is try) I think you would be a more viable opposition party, having the capability to amass talents.

You can call ur party the Brownies Party. Ok ok, that was silly.
How about Brown Democratic National Party? I promise i would vote for you.

(as long as I still get my HDB upgrading)