Living in a fundamentally Asian country you realise that good burgers are hard to come by. And when they did, they were never quite able to match the prices that fast food joints offer. In the name of convenience and cost, McDonald’s still seems to win.

On the up side, there have been some really good burgers recently like the Fat Basterd (see Fatboy’s The Burger Bar) and Botak Jones‘ Double Botak, that push the boundaries of what burgers can be and try really hard to justify their prices ($15 and $13 respectively).

Aiming to fill the value gap is Vurger, located in a nondescript and unassuming corner of Whampoa in an even more discreet coffee shop, operating on the mantra that “everyone can enjoy a great burger at great value”.

While this sounds promising, one can’t help but wonder what kind of location strategy is employed. With the outlet located across the road from Whampoa Community Centre and the rest of the coffee shop selling traditional Chinese food, the area’s residents are largely senior citizens. The elderly don’t exactly appreciate a good burger, do they?

Not exactly glam burgers.

To be honest, there isn’t that much variety to start with. 9 burgers, all of which don’t look very big, and 5 sides is all you really have to look forward to. What you’re going to be captured by in the end is the price – ranging from $4 to $5.50 per burger.

In the top picture is what I decided to have. It’s called the Jumbo Vurger (yes, they spell everything that way) with a side of cheese fries, all for an exciting price $7 price tag. Great value, check.

Just like everything else, there aren’t any frills about the burger. You get, for your culinary pleasure, a basic serving of two centimeter-thick beef patties, a lonesome slice of cheese and a layer of onions, dressed with ketchup and nestled between two sesame-seed-less buns.

All the magic then, surely must happen in the mouth.

My Jumbo Vurger was reasonably juicy, cooked to the perfect degree. The melted cheese broke off onto the plate, forcing me to clean it up gratefully. Simple as the combination sounds, it’s arguably the beginning of where a burger place should be; without a good cheeseburger, there really is very little left to say.

The fries too were a delight to enjoy. Thick and not too salty, slightly crispy on the outside yet soft within, they were served in generous portions and covered in cheese were the perfect side dish for an unbelievably good burger.

Every bite was a joy, and reminded me so much of the meals from Vurger’s significantly pricier brothers that I always enjoy and have no qualms paying for. Perhaps this then is its party piece, that while everything is simpler and less glamorous, the fundamentals of what a good burger has is presented at a price that’ll please the stingiest of visitors.

For that reason, I’ll happily ditch the McDonalds a five-minute walk from my home for this new-found haven, a good 15 minutes away. Plus judging from the number of people eating there when I arrived, they might need the business. A jewel like this closing down would be an absolute tragedy.

Seconds anyone?

Address: Blk 74 Whampoa Drive #01-310
Opening Hours: 11.30am to 9.30pm, closed on Thursdays

In the process of writing that article, I went about gathering some info about Starcraft and what made it such an epic game that even 12 years of waiting couldn’t dampen the hype. After sending out some tweets to friends who actually played, a response came that read like this: “start with BEST GAME EVER”.

Without reiterating too much that went into the article (assuming you’ve read it of course), the original Starcraft sold 11 million copies over the past 12 years, and kicked off a professional gaming industry in South Korea where 4.5 million copies were sold.

These days, we all know to fear the South Koreans when we see them in an online gaming forum going head to head with us in our favourite games. No doubt they’re pretty damn amazing at gaming, and it’s clear they love Starcraft like it’s a symbol of their national identity. For the answer to why that’s the case, read the response on Ask a Korean! here.

Hardcore Gamer blog.vortixgames.com

Sadly though, gaming hasn’t quite caught on in the same way anywhere else in the world. Of course, you may argue that other countries have other things they’re known for (Singapore for example, has Singlish). Regardless, there’s something truly unique about gaming that has drawn countless studies into the behaviour and whatnot of gamers.

In the midst of that it’s easy to look into any LAN shop (or even Ngee Ann’s OurSpace@72), see a bunch of (predominantly) guys gaming away and dismiss them as gaming addicts who will never amount to anything substantial.

On the most part that’s not entirely true, because most people will grow out of it. On the other hand though, is this addiction really such a bad thing on its own? Ignoring possible effects such as slips in grades and the other obvious problems of addiction, let’s look at the more positive side (I know I’ve taken a while to get here so bear with me).

The first idea I want to look at is dedication – a fundamental part of anything you do. Your parents will always say that if you want to do something well, you have to be dedicated to it. This brings me back to my favourite genius theory that if you put in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice into anything you become a genius at it.

To put the figure in perspective, 10,000 hours means 3 hours every day for 10 years. So in retrospect, gaming addicts are probably closer to becoming geniuses at their chosen craft because of their addiction than most of us who never find commitment to something tangible.

This is a generation of people who jump from job to job, much unlike our parents’ time where you got a job and stayed there for the better part of the next 40 years until you retired, withdrew your CPF and let your children take care of you. We never seem dedicated to one sole thing anymore.

On the other hand (and this is something that seems contradictory to the previous point), gamers are also pretty adaptable, especially because no two games are the same even if you’ve dedicated the full 10,000 hours to it. There is a tendency to become overly comfortable in a place and no longer experience the excitement of a new environment, which is why us youngsters choose to switch it up every once in a while.

Gamers have to pick up different tactics, adapt to different scenarios, use different characters even, in order to remain victorious in the virtual arena. This coincides nicely with governments wanting their people to constantly upgrade their skills in order to remain employable in our volatile economic situation.

Most importantly perhaps, is that all this addiction, dedication and adaptability stems from a fundamental love of what they’re doing, and this is the truly difficult thing to achieve. Especially in Singapore, we’re consistently reminded that certain paths in life aren’t financially sustainable, and decide to opt for safer routes instead.

Thankfully, there’s an inbuilt mechanism in many of us known as a mid-life crisis, where we suddenly lose meaning in whatever we were comfortable with and start to go berserk, doing things we’ve always wanted instead of what was safe and reliable.

Question is though, do we really want to wait until that time before we do what we want? Take a while to watch this video on how gaming can make a better world.

Regardless, the big thing you would’ve wanted to read about/see is the resulting stories and images from my frankly epic trip up to USA and Canada. For those of you who are my friends on Facebook, the albums are coming up one day at a time so you’ll get to (hopefully) enjoy that.

It’s mostly a large dump of all the shots that were taken with my 50D (I switched cams with Cabe from time to time so some of them are his even though they’re all watermarked with my signature), so take a look at my Eastern USA/Canada Flickr set here to get a prime pick of my favourite shots.

Anyway I’ve been beating around the bush haven’t I? For the last 2 weeks I’ve covered the 3rd annual Singapore International Water Week (SIWW 2010) for PUB (See our Youth webpage here) – 26 June to 2 July – and starting this week, I’m working at xinmsn doing news and sports. Now that that’s done, more about the trip.

The 26-hour travel time from Singapore to New York’s JFK airport was really pretty ghastly. Despite the nice planes (B777-300s, my favourite) with simply excellent IFE systems, the extended stopover in Colombo was the worst I’d ever experienced. For some reason the plane couldn’t hook up to the electricity in the gangway and so there was absolutely no air conditioning the whole time. And we were in Sri Lanka.

Dubai International Airport

In comparison, the transit in Dubai was absolutely stunning. The terminal was beautiful and I found myself wishing we could stay longer (transit was only 2 hours). Ironically, the 6 hour layover on the way back was far too long.

Several bag searches, a pat down and a 14-hour flight later, we landed in JFK International Airport’s Terminal 4  happily but a bit late, so we couldn’t find our agent. In the end we did find him and got on the coach to the hotel but it was admittedly a bad start.

The next bad thing to happen was when we met our tour guide and companions for the next 8 days, we realised that they were mostly China Chinese or Cantonese people. Call me atas or what have you, but I just wanted English in an English-dominated environment. Didn’t help that we found out later: most of them were American or Canadian citizens. Integration clearly isn’t on any of their minds.

On the other hand though, this allowed us to do quite a number of things on our own since we didn’t really want to stick so close to them and get angry stares from Westerners. That did make for a better trip.

Truthfully though, the trip’s highlights came largely from Canada, which is often seen as the relatively less developed half-brother to the North of America. There was nothing less stunning or captivating about the sceneries and cities though, and I have to say Canada is more beautiful than America. Or at least the part of America we saw. The picture at the top of this post is of Canada, and was taken from across the border from the American side of the Niagara river. I think you’ll agree it’s quite stunning.

All in all it was a very relaxing and enjoyable trip. Certainly the hard part wasn’t coming back to Singapore, but having to leave New York, especially as overseas my phone couldn’t roam, there weren’t very many free Wi-Fi hotspots and I was genuinely uncontactable. Nice to be off the grid.

For now, it’s back to work. Next time I go it’ll almost certainly be on my own money. Hopefully I’ll be able to enjoy myself just as much then. Sans the Chinese- or Cantonese-only people of course.

Yesterday I got home from my big trip of the decade to Eastern USA/Canada and I’m really pretty jetlagged right now, which is why I’ve been awake since 4am because my body wouldn’t sleep past then.

Today I start work with PUB’s Singapore International Water Week so I’ll be busy until next Friday but in the meantime, here’s a teaser image of my trip to the Land of the Free and more will come soon as I find the time to post process the pictures.

If you notice my site is different, it’s because I updated the old theme and it really messed up so I changed it. This is going to take more getting used to, but I also used this theme for my Sports Journ assignment site so hopefully it all works out.

Stay tuned for more content soon!

I still remember the day I received my posting into Mass Communication. I was distraught. In the three months prior I had enjoyed a very comfortable and relatively exciting time at ACJC, the only junior college I had ever thought of attending. Naturally, I had wanted to continue the tradition of 12 years in AC, but that door had been shut.

All appeals failed, so while my friends from orientation enjoyed (or rather started fearing) the continuing semester, I waited out the 2 extra months for poly to start.

What ensued from the first day of FMS FOC 2007 was passion in its strongest form. Despite my initial dread and disappointment, I am truly grateful that I was given the opportunity to read Mass Communication and discover a future that I never before imagined. Granted I wasn’t the most exceptional student, but I experienced something in my 3 years that I never had thought possible: I actually wanted to go to school. Most of the time anyway.

No doubt it’s been tough, no doubt I didn’t always know what I was doing and felt like giving up many times, but what a ride it’s been! It started off good but ended up declining. That is, until Wuhan in 2008.

Pioneer batch of 6-Week Wuhan Immersion Programme students at Graduation 2010. PICTURE: Davis Koh

Wuhan was a trip that brought along many challenges, chief of which involved the publication of 2 magazines, Trippers and EXcapades. We were also pulled from the various classes we were in during the first semester of Year 2 to be in a Wuhan class, having done some modules in China already.

All this of course resulted in the formation of factions and class politics, but strengthened the bonds within groups and brought about, among other things, some of the best work and grades I’ve ever produced. Such a competitive class meant going to endless means to stand out and produce excellence, and it was the start of much better things to come.

Having been able to survive 6 weeks in China without parental guidance, I then decided to spend 6 months doing my attachment in Hong Kong, during which josh.nekokun was born. It was this time spent at Panacea Publishing Asia Ltd that cemented my ambition in Journalism and Publishing, and helped me to decide my electives the following semester. An A+ grade also meant my GPA that semester was 4.0.

The time away set my priorities in order, allowed me to find myself (corny, I know) and above all, made me cherish the friends I missed and looked forward to seeing back home.

It seems quick but we’re now on to my final semester in NP. That’s how insignificant my first 3 semesters were in comparison, I suppose.

Trust me when I say it felt much shorter than any other semester, and that I truly enjoyed doing my some-say-crazy combination of electives. Print, Online and Sports Journalism. MASINA and Medlaw on the other hand, those I could do without.

Due to our diverse combinations, I was separated from the group of friends I had grown so close to during Wuhan and the semester after. Ironically, none of them wanted to pursue Journalism so it was a path that I had to take alone. I often doubted myself and my abilities that last semester.

Regardless, I was doing all the things I loved so what resulted was the highest GPA of my 5 non-attachment semesters. To top it all off I was awarded a Diploma with Merit despite having never been in the Director’s List. I still wonder how that happened.

6 magazines, 3 school newspapers, 2 online magazines, 1 specialisation.

So, the culmination of my 3 years ends with a few pieces of paper, thousands of photographs and a plethora of memories, good and bad, that I wouldn’t trade for any JC education.

Me collecting my Diploma from GV Managing Director David Glass. PICTURE: Muhammad Hafiz Rahman

Through it all, I’ve made some wonderful friends who will stick by me and I by them, gotten my Diploma and more, and done many more things than I could’ve done anywhere else. I’d say that’s a bargain.

It involved someone who I identified as a former ACS (Barker) boy and his current classmate who, at the time I listened to their rather loud conversation, just found out where he was from. The reaction went a little like this:

“That’s the school with the bad reputation for hooligans and stuff right?”

I almost had to physically restrain myself from jumping up and interjecting. Upon calming down and thinking it through though, it certainly appears like the recent spate of bad press has resulted in a serious reputation decline.

This was certainly not helped by STOMP, which recently published a story describing how a STOMPer named Samantha experienced a bunch of rowdy ACS boys on the bus.

41% of readers indicated they were enraged by what they read in that article. Contrast this to a mere 8% who were enraged with another story about girls from a neighbourhood school discussing sensitive subjects openly in the bus. It looks like double standards to me.

Samantha’s main beefs were as follows:

• Shirts untucked
• Noisy behaviour
• Vulgar language with “improper” Singlish (God knows what proper Singlish is)

Herein lies the irony of the issue. Most people believe that being in a branded school doesn’t mean you’re an elite. At the same time, most people also believe that being in a branded school means you have to act a certain way. Why? Are students taught better in branded schools? Not necessarily.

In fact, isn’t it more logical that every school would teach their students to be courteous on the bus, wear their uniforms properly and speak in proper English? Why is it that only branded schools get flak for this not happening? Or is it because neighbourhood schools have bigger transgressions to deal with that suddenly their students screaming and yelling in the bus doesn’t seem as worthy of interest?

The fact of the matter is this. Teenagers will be teenagers regardless of what school they’re from. They are rebellious, don’t listen to authority and want to do things their way. It’s nonsense to think that just because they’re from so-called elite schools that their behaviour will be much different.

It’s even more ridiculous to insinuate that it is the fault of the schools for not teaching these students better. I remember us being told time and time again during assembly by ACS (Barker)’s former Principal Mr Ng Eng Chin that we need to uphold the reputation of the school by being on our best behaviour at all times and wearing our uniforms properly. That meant not taking off our school badges once the final bell rang and having our shirts tucked in at all times. I’m sure the same or similar is told to the current batch of Barker boys.

Why then is ACS (and all other elite schools for that matter) held in such high regard and expectation when it comes to producing students of standard and respectability? It is simply because once we pass that stage of initial rebelliousness that all teenagers go through in varying degrees, we mellow down and become the gentlemen we were supposed to be. It doesn’t always happen, but by and large that’s the case.

Even if some don’t turn out that way, we can’t expect everyone to be golden apples can we? There are rotten ones even at the top after all. It’s not like we’re getting into gang fights or killing people anyway.

Beyond the fact that the ads were produced for a system that was set to be introduced at the end of last year and then dubbed over to say April 30th instead (a bit of lip reading helped here), the new way of doing things really mucked up my old procedures and channel usage.

Sorry, it isn't simpler or smarter. PICTURE: starhub.com

Before this, I had a method of channel surfing, and knew every channel that I was likely to watch. It was quick and easy to see whether my favourite channels had anything worth watching and everything was fine and dandy. Here’s how it would usually go.

Channel 5 (002) -> Discovery (012) and then scroll through all the news channels -> Discovery Travel and Living (016) -> Star Movies (058) and then scroll through all the movie channels -> BBC Knowledge (074) I was good at this.

Recently though, it hasn’t been as smooth and I’m more prone to leaving out certain channels. Sure I still know most of the channel numbers because I’m good at remembering numbers, but it’s extremely awkward to type some of them. For example, BBC is now on 407, and I tend to accidentally press 487 which brings me to the 400 page and effectively wasting time.

The Channel Guide

Sure, they sent a booklet to help us all out, but it doesn’t help that the old and new numbers most of the time have nothing to do with each other. One such case is Discovery Travel and Living, which used to be on 016 and is now 427.

The channel finder (* button) would help here and be really useful if it didn’t disrupt the feed and take forever to load before obscuring your view of the programme you were watching.

This makes it troublesome for people who didn’t remember the channel names, or remembered only the Mandarin channel names and their numbers and can’t relocate the channels now because the names displayed are in English. Not to mention I’m sure there are plenty of elderly people who have cable. It’s bound to be tough for them more than others.

It was really clever of Starhub to change a system that had been working and implemented since the company was called Singapore Cable Vision (SCV) back in the 90s. I dare say many people were really used to the old system making the change even more unnecessary.

Now I have to go re-figure everything out and re-memorise all the channel numbers. How’s that making life so much better?

People argue that if there had been screen doors installed there like there are in Paris, the man wouldn’t have died. Or at least he wouldn’t have died at the train station, disrupting the lives of about 5,000 commuters who had to wait 30 mins before service could resume.

Screen doors save lives! PICTURE: propertyhighlights.blogspot.com

I’m sorry, but am I the only one who thinks this theory is both selfish and ridiculous?

All this does is prevent people from dying in front of a moving train. It doesn’t stop people who want to kill themselves from doing so, it just makes it more convenient for the general population who feel they have better things to do than wait for the police to clear up a corpse. Plus the screen doors were meant to prevent accidents. People who are resolved to kill themselves will find other ways.

Here’s a scenario: I’m manically depressed and want to die. Now I’m supposed to care about the convenience of people who, not only I don’t know, but don’t really care about me anyway? As if it isn’t worrying enough that suicide is a crime in Singapore and if I don’t succeed there’s gonna be a shitstorm of consequences raining on me like Hurricane Katrina.

Clearly the problem isn’t that people are killing themselves at train stations, it’s that people want to kill themselves in the first place.

At the end of the day it boils down to happiness, and this is where it truly gets interesting. Of all the South East Asian nations, Singapore is the second unhappiest as of last year, despite being the most developed and advanced.

Here’s a table to illustrate where our neighbours are in the Happy Planet Index:

Singapore's a sad, sad place

This list is a country short because Brunei isn’t on the 2009 edition for some reason. But whatever the case may be, it does appear that developed countries are significantly unhappier than those from the 3rd world.

The UK’s at 74, Australia and New Zealand are at 102 and 103, and America’s at 114. In comparison, the happiest country on earth as of 2009 was Costa Rica.

The simple explanation in my mind would be that people in 1st world nations expect a lot because they have a lot, and if they don’t get that then they’re naturally upset about it. Simplicity often begets satisfaction in the most paltry.

What this means though, is not that we see the problem and put in place infrastructures for people to be unable to kill themselves. That shouldn’t be the main measure to address the issue. Instead what this calls for is better intervention. Not just from professionals or specialists (because it’s probable that few people are going to force you to see a shrink even if you don’t want to), but from the family and friends around you.

Call me an idealist, but society’s become a cold box where everyone looks sullen and bored on buses and trains, plugs their earphones of solitude into their ears and shuts the door to their own little world (I’m guilty of this too).

Society has become blind to the needs of their fellow man, and in a society where only the fittest survive, that’s a dangerous game to play.

Death may never conquer your memory in the minds of your loved ones, but having you around and alive is sure as hell a lot better than living with a memory.

I’ve never been much of an Aaron Kwok fan, nor did I know very many of his songs by title except Para Para Sakura, so it was certainly an evening of firsts for me. Especially because the 44-year-old Heavenly King of Cantopop’s fans are more likely to be screaming females, throwing age and inhibition to the wind created by his frantic dance moves.

Despite not bringing my comparatively more elaborate and professional camera, I did manage to grab some images using my trusty iPhone 2MP camera pointed through a pair of binoculars for extended reach.

As most concerts do in Singapore these days, this one started a tad late and after a lucky lady won a Geely 1.5L car, the lights dimmed to unveil a sea of brightly coloured light sticks waving frantically in the hands of over-eager fans.

The tardiness perhaps did affect the audience later on, especially those that went by public transport, because the 4-hour shindig carried on nearly till midnight and caused everyone who stayed on to have to take the last Marymount-bound train to even get out of the area.

How he managed to come up with something that long and work it along I have no idea. Remember now, this is no longer a teeny bopper young man we’re talking about, and I must say I’ve never seen a concert this long carried through with such energy throughout. The man is truly a performer.

Packing pyrotechnics, acrobatics and water displays into the showcase kept my phone’s camera (with dying battery in tow) constantly ready and snapping in case he did another wondrous movement which would then make the droves of fans squeal in excitement (I kid you not). It was this spontaneity that induced a mass seat exodus at one point when he got off the stage to shake hands with his loyal followers.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that on a few occasions when the star went backstage (or in this case downstage) to change and catch a breather, videos of his many achievements would play on ceiling-high screens to occupy and remind screaming fans of his epic awesomeness.

His dancers would then do a little dance display on their own before he came back on in yet another shimmery, sequined display of his ever-growing popularity, stopping every once in a while to suss and sweet talk his audience, using a mix of mostly Cantonese with flurries of Mandarin and English, into softening like putty within his (probably) well-toned fingers. My 6 months in Hong Kong did me well here.

It was all a beautiful spectacle to witness, and the last time I experienced such female-fan-dominance was at the Incomparable to Jay concert in 2005. If I remember correctly I enjoyed that too.

Smiles all round then despite me sitting alone during the concert and inadvertently convincing people sitting around me that I was mental for putting iPhone camera to binocular eyepiece the entire night. You’re not going to complain though are you? After all you get to look at the concert pictures below.

Actually planned on doing this quite a while back, especially after creating the site for my Sports Journ assignment (viewable here) but I kind of got sidetracked and started procrastinating, which seems to be the problem when I try to do something major.

Regardless, I’ve eventually gotten it done and it’s gonna take some getting used to as well as some practice to fine tune some of the processes and presentation, but hell, I’m willing to figure all that out over time.