So among the 39 nomination papers collected Friday was one set by Mr Lim Kian Heng, a taxi driver in Potong Pasir. Mr Lim hopes to contest as an independent candidate as ``[ Minister Mentor ] Lee Kuan Yew mentioned, he wants all his constituencies being contested. I take his challenge. That's why now I'm calling all Singaporeans, whatever, anybody who qualifies to be a candidate, you come forward.'' He offered to help raise the deposit funds for anyone who wanted to help ``Stand up for Singapore.'' Minister Mentor Lee feels a serious opposition is needed for Singapore to be truly a first-world nation. Altogether it's a show of public spiritedness both from the Minister Mentor and from Mr Lim of the kind I haven't seen since the Instrumentality of Man closed up shop.
I went to Ikea on Earth Day for good reason: my cutting board broke. I do use it somewhat regularly, to cut up blocks of cheese, typically cheddar, usually extra sharp, and last time around a crack in the wood opened up and split the thing about two inches from the side. They were having an Earth Day special of not giving out plastic bags, allowing them to successfully charge a dime per paper bag or more for a reusable cloth bag, although my backpack, worn as it is, proved to be just be fine for a new cutting board.
I also picked up a small bookshelf, for some of my overflow of paperback books. There's no hope of stemming the tide; I'm happy to slow down the rate at which I'm falling behind. It's a small shelf fitting on my study's desk, overall, a nice match. The books don't fit on the shelf quite right, but placed at a jaunty angle they do, and it gives things a remarkably appealing look. Among the things that I didn't buy there was a neat set of four baskets given the name ``Hakebo''. Joel, Tom Servo, and Crow would love it/them. There's also a line of plates named ``Motto'', and a laptop computer table named ``Dave''. I like the notion of a table called Dave.
Trivia: William Shakespeare's Henry V appears to have been first performed sometime between March and September 1599. Source: Shakespeare's Kings, John Julius Norwich.
Currently Reading: Hell's Pavement, Damon Knight. Modern psychiatry applied to give people socially useful hallucinations, by which they mean brand loyalty. Later there's Planning for the Revolution and the usual eugenics blather about keeping lunkheads from breeding. If only there were psi babble and a secret faster-than-light spaceship it'd almost be the Platonic Ideal of the 1950s science fiction novel.