Holland Rd Properties

As the second of a 10-part series, 'The Sunday Times' includes the property buying guide for Holland Road area. Woh, I did not know that a prime bungalow can cost some $20m or $30K monthly rental. Now I know how the ministers may use their several-million-dollar pay-cheques...

River Velley Properties

As the first of a 10-part series, 'The Sunday Times' includes the property buying guide for River Valley area, which I think may be informative.

Fort Canning Park

Together with a few friends, we go to Fort Canning Park in the afternoon. Surprisingly I've never been there for once although been staying in the island for some 14 yrs. It's just by the Orchard Rd & oversees the river (& Clarke Quay) from top.

"Summer Palace"

We went to watch the movie "Summer Palace". It overlaps the background of 04/06 at Tian'anmen Square and the more recent life style & sex attitude of the university students (I think probably in mid 90's). In the movie, the university students get into sexual relationship easily and popularly at dormitory and they seem to 'play out' at the 04/06 event instead of politically involved. An aside remark from the leading girl, 'Yu Hong', came to my attention: why do those loving each other hurt the other party? are people eagle to death?

Changi Village

Changi Village or Changi Beach Park is at the east end of Singapore island or actually at the north of Changi airport. It is by the Serangoon harbour and looking at Pulau Ubin at its north. I used to drive there by Changi Coast Rd that is a beautiful tree-lined main road but quiet.

Today is my 3rd time being there in the recent 1-2 yrs. I still very much enjoy the scene. It is of countryside style & usually less crowed, making me feel like rest in a vacation place.

Interest rate falls

According to a bank letter, Singapore has seen a steady decline in inter-bank rates this year. Since Feb., the 3-month SIBOR fell by >0.6% p.a., from 3.375% to 2.75% p.a. in Apr. I guess this further encourages speculation in the recent property market.

Fring 3.02

While searching for a good IM client, I found this freeware (http://www.fring.com/).

It's so great that links multiple IM and VoIP services in one place. Your contacts at Skype, MSN, Google Talk and other SIP VoIP such as Gizmo are all collected together and present in the Fring frame so you can invite or be invited for a chat or voice call. It also allows to call a normal phone number using your Skype CallOut credit, which is useful in saving the IDD call charge. Fring gets connected via GSM data (e.g. GPRS) or WiFi.

So far I noticed some drawbacks. it seems to consume the phone battery a little bit too much especially when the connection is lost or intermittent (I guess it then keeps searching for the WLAN). There is sometimes a noticeable delay in the Skype voice (due to the transport server like Jabber?). By the way, it does not support Chinese -- my MSN contact with a Chinese alias does not show up correctly. Well, let's hope it gets improved in next release...