Good morning! Woohoo! Didn’t get to sleep much last night. Sigh. *Yawn* Did I mention I rented a car? Was deciding that I’d rent a car since I’d be going a few places. Haha… and yes, it’s left-hand drive… and I nearly drove against the traffic somewhere near Market Street! Thank goodness that happened at night and there weren’t many cars on the road. In the end, I had to pretend that I was parking so that I can compose myself.

So what happened was that I was flipping through some free papers and read that there were some car rental companies that will rent out cars as long as we have a legal driving licence. So I went down the car office and told the owner, who is a Chinese, that I would like to rent a car. He asked where I was from and said that he had been to Singapore a couple of times. This naturally made renting the car much easier. Rapport is sometimes very important when you are talking to someone for the first time. Kekeke…

Soon after, I got hold of a red Honda Civic 1.5 Auto and clumsily drove my way out of the carpark… for the first time! After driving for a short distance, I thought some re-orientation of my driving is sorely needed, and understanding how the traffic flows is equally important. In the end, I drove down a quiet neighbourhood to get the hang of driving on the left side.

Frankly, I realised that I am not really that good a driver, cos’ in the end, I was just driving blindly. Gosh, I wonder how I even survived?

Places visited by foot: Bombard Street, Fisherman Wharf, Downtown

Place visited by car: All minor roads and some major roads

Update: Actually it seems like there are more worms than I thought - the occurrence of AWOL by officers (as a “normal” practice?), the meting of appropriate punishments and something about the chain of command and how things “seem to stop half-way”. Hmm…

This made it to the headlines as well, as reproduced from straitstimes.com here. For the benefit of readers without access to straitstimes.com (premium news?) nor papers, the article is reproduced here. And oh, Singapore did not endorse Creative Commons, so if anyone feels that I have to remove this article, please drop me a comment.

By Imelda Saad, Correspondent
ONE day after it emerged that the Prime Minister’s son had been reprimanded for firing an email to the SAF’s top brass to complain about a fellow officer, the Internet is abuzz over the issue of whistle-blowing.

A trawl of blogs and online forums show that the cyber chatter has even shifted from admonishing what was earlier described as a ‘brash act’ from a ‘white horse’ to netizens now empathising with and even supporting Second Lieutenant Li Hongyi.

2nd Lt Li had on June 28th sent an email to the Defence Minister and hundreds of other military personnel complaining about ‘the quality control of SAF officers’.

At issue was the disiplinary action taken against another officer who had gone AWOL.

The email was sent over the Ministry of Defence’s intranet and has since made its way into the public domain.

For that, 2nd Lt Li was formally charged and reprimanded for not following the proper chain of command when making his complaint.

But it seems the email has struck a chord with netizens with many bloggers even saying ‘well done’ to Li for making the issue public.

Some like tkt_lucky - who wrote on the straitstimes.com discussion board - recalled their own encounters with disciplinary problems within the SAF.

dbin0047 wrote - ‘Well done I support Mr. Li. finally truth is out.’

Tomorrow.sg, the portal for Singapore blogs, received more than 7,000 reads on the topic as at 7pm on Friday.

2nd Lt Li also seemed to have become a phenomenon overnight.

‘Who is Li Hong Yi’ was one of the top posts on wordpress.com.

There were some criticisms though over the way the issue was handled.

A thread from Yee Hung read: ‘Perhaps there’s an element of social skills involved in making a complaint… a face-to-face discussion with the person is usually better.’

So, this does seem to wrap up the entire issue, and I can probably sleep in peace without worrying if the ISD/MSD will coming knocking at my door to question me on why I reproduced the email on my blog. Now, we can talk about blowing. The whistle.

Good morning Blogosphere! Feeling a little tired this morning because I spent the whole night chasing after the news of 2Lt Li and all. Took me quite a while to understand what is really going on.

So, what did I do yesterday? Absolutely nothing! Haha.. I spent the day lazing at a nearby cafe, book in hand, coffee on table, a sandwich cut in half next to it with a bright and sunny skies accompanied by cool winds. Life couldn’t get better than this, can it?

I like it here because the weather’s really great even without the airconditioning that is so frequently found in Singapore. I’d love an al fresco here anytime, but will probably give it a miss if I am in Singapore. Not only is the weather too hot, but it’s probably populated with smokers. Moreover, it doesn’t really help that the “smoking” tables are placed next to the non-smoking ones. It’s not as if there is some “force-field” of sorts to keep the smoke to that table itself.

I was looking around for any upcoming events in SF and realised that the 37th Annual SF Pride Celebration was just over 3 weeks ago. I’ve heard so much about it in Singapore, but didn’t really have a chance to witness one. I’ve heard of Mardi Gras too. Are they the same thing?

Yes, by now, you would have realised that this is an impromptu trip. Well, almost actually.

Luckily, today is the start of the 12th Annual SF Silent Film Festival with 3 days of performances at the Castro Threatre… sounds like it’s near where I am putting up. The Festival opener is The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. The Silent Film Festival closes with Cecil B. DeMille’s The Godless Girl (1929). Between start and finish is a roster of eleven programs, including features, short films, and special author and historian appearances sponsored by Booksmith.

If you are in SF, reading this and would like to go for any of the screenings, tickets are available online or by telephone (925-275-9005) through July 12, or at the Castro Theatre box office, the day of the show. Information courtesy of http://sanfrancisco.about.com/ :P And oh, I can’t seem to find ticket pricing information for this. Hmm…

Coincidentally, the 7th Annual Fire Arts Festival is also in town, and more information can be obtained by clicking on the link. However, at US$ 40 to US$ 250 per person (the latter for the gala), I’m not too sure if I’m willing to fork that out to see things go up in flames.

So, what am I going to do today? I realised that I was at Pier 39 the other day, and Fisherman Wharf was just next to me. Duh! I’m really blur. So, I’ll head back there today, and since I am there, I might climb up the stairs that run next to the Windiest Road in SF (and the world?) and I think it’s called Lombard Street.

While I am there, I might get a good view of the Golden Gate bridge too. Actually I am thinking of driving across the bridge, but I think I’m being a little too adventurous. Haha… oh well, we’ll see.

Other places I’d like to go includes Japan Town (thanks, K!), a trip to the vineyards (I heard it’s expensive?), SF Museum of Modern Art, Zoo (?!), more museums, up the twin peaks (wherever it is), and probably check out the various districts. And oh, a friend of mine said that I can drive up to San Jose to visit her.

Huh?!?! How to go?