15 September, 2005

south asian blog roundup

Here is today’s round up of some of the blogs of South Asia.

Bangladesh:

Bangladeshi rockstar James is due to make history to be the first ever Bangladeshi rock singer to have sung in a Bollywood Hindi film  - via ‘The 3rd world view’.

Sadiq writes wonderful spiritual articles on the beauty of creation and the divine romance.

Arnab of ‘A wave of alternative mandate’ says that human beings are becoming smarter.

Mezba shares his thoughts on Sharia law in Canada.

India:

The latest Bharateeya Blog Mela (Indian Blog carnival) is up in Harini’s blog.

Anna of ‘Sepia Mutiny’ reports that an Indian college girl has temporarily married her teenaged boyfriend’s elder brother so she can live in the same house as her lover until he is old enough to marry her.

Amit of ‘India Uncut’ finds that there is a scarcity of Bengali foods in the eateries of Kolkata, the heart of West Bengal.

Dilip has thoughts on the comparison game people are playing with the Katrina disaster.

Kamesh’s catalog of interesting quotes.

Maldives:

Iruvaihudhu is not happy with the current Gayoom government’s actions against the pro-democracy movements.

Nepal:

Dinesh of ‘United we blog’ fears that the ubiquitous mentions of the military in the major national dailies may signal to militarization in Nepal. He also reports that Nepal Telecom’s deteriorating service quality frustrates mobile users in Kathmandu.

Pakistan:

Ejaj links to some beautiful pictures of the Karachi beach.

‘The Glasshouse’ names the pakistani police as ‘the local crime boss’.

Pakistani perspective reports that in Pakistan the number of cellular phone subscribers in on the rise and has crossed the mark of 15 million already.

Shiraji takes us through the grand trunk road.

Sri Lanka:

Indi.ca brings to us the history of asian chilli (capsicum).

Selvarajah blogs from the class!

Anush discusses about the Colombo International Book fair.

by @ 7:44 pm. Filed under Blogs, Pakistan, India, Asia, South Asia, Weblogs, Nepal

very short thursday links

It’s been a busy two weeks and this is a very short Thursday roundup, AsiaPundit hopes to return to its usual state next week. New contributors are still welcome ( email: asiapundit @ gmail.com )

An update on the Singapore sedition trial, where a blogger and a BBS poster have been charged, I should link to Elia Diodati, but Kevin Lim gets the honor because he has such a keen visual.:

Adventures_taxi_dog_1

Two men suspected of expressing Anti-Muslim opinions online in June this year were charged yesterday under the Sedition Act.
Two men suspected of expressing Anti-Muslim opinions online in June this year were charged yesterday under the Sedition Act. You, Nicholas.
Xu
Songfa faces three counts of the charges, indicating that on on the
evenings of June 12th, 15th and 17th, he expressed anti-Malay and
anti-Islamic sentiments on his blog “Phoenyx Chronicles”, which was
hosted on the website www.upsaid.com.
[Court documents] show
that Xu Songfa used insulting terms to address and describe Malay
people, taunting their customs and religion, and made disrespectful
jokes about Allah , the deity of Islam.
Lin You faces two
counts [of the charge]: in the early mornings of June 16th and 17th, he
wrote anti-Muslim sentiments on an online forum on the dog lover’s
website www.doggiesite.com, in response to a Malay lady’s letter in the
Straits Times Forum.

More on the Lion City via the Peking Duck, Tom Friedman praises Singapore and bashes the Bush administration.:

There is something tremblingly self-indulgent and slothful about
America today - something that Katrina highlighted and that people who
live in countries where the laws of gravity still apply really noticed.
It has rattled them - like watching a parent melt down.
That is certainly the sense I
got after observing the Katrina debacle from half a world away here in
Singapore - a city-state that, if it believes in anything, believes in
good governance. It may roll up the sidewalks pretty early here, and it
may even fine you if you spit out your gum, but if you had to choose
anywhere in Asia you would want to be caught in a typhoon, it would be
Singapore. Trust me, the head of Civil Defense here is not simply
someone’s college roommate.
Indeed, Singapore believes so
strongly that you have to get the best-qualified and least-corruptible
people you can into senior positions in the government, judiciary and
civil service that its pays its prime minister a salary of $1.1 million
a year. It pays its cabinet ministers and Supreme Court justices just
under $1 million a year, and pays judges and senior civil servants
handsomely down the line.

Friedman is right that the Singapore civil service is generally top-notch, and that the city-state is probably better prepared for disasters than any government in Asia and perhaps the world. It’s state of preparedness is freaky. For instance, private homes - by law - must have bomb shelters. And as far as I know, the Lee family’s college roommates are not guaranteed government jobs. Members of the opposition definitely aren’t. Members of the Lee family, however, have a pretty good chance of a high-level government job or position at a government-linked company.

Still, high salaries for Singapore public servants did helped
eliminate corruption among the civil service. The Philippines could
probably follow the example. Madame Chiang notes:

Office workers - overworked, underpaid, frequently
commuting appalling distances through abominable traffic to get to
their jobs - are the proletariat who help keep the economy afloat. The
most common expression for their condition describes how a chicken
eats: isang kayod isang tuka - "one scratch of the ground, one bite".
In other words: hand-to-mouth. They survive through sariling sikap, or
self-initiative: taking extra jobs, working long hours and buying and
selling things. There was the famous story of public school teachers so
hard up they sold female underwear and dried fish to their students.

They probably could have got better prices for the underwear if they were per-worn and sold on Yahoo!’s Japan auction site.

Speaking of Japan, Tokyo Times reports that Japan Tobacco is offering 150 lottery winners the chance to
see a preview of the film Sin City in a restriction-free and
smoke-friendly cinema
. The one condition being that the applicant is a
smoker – preferably a heavy one. Personally, when I watched Sin City I really wanted a fag (and a lap dance from Jessica Alba).:

Smoking_style03

Did I mention North Korean Cheerleaders yesterday? No. My apologies.:

NorkcheerAccording to the Japanese weekly magazine FLASH, this marked the third
time that Pyongyang dispatched its bevy of beauties, and each time
woman have become progressively younger and more beautiful. FLASH
reports that this time around the oldest of the 124 members of the NORK
cheering squad are second year university students. Reportedly, this is
the first time that attendance at the Asian Athletics Championship hit
130,000, and organizers are admitting that it is the Pyongyang pretties
that made the difference.

The really cute Marie Mitsuki Mockett has found the square watermelon,:

Square_watermelon

AsiaPundit trumps with the Gojira egg and Watermelon Bomb!

Melonbomb

Translated Cambodian comic books available online, no super-heroes, unfortunately.

Heaventhumb

by @ 7:38 pm. Filed under Uncategorized

[powered by WordPress.]

Free Hao Wu
Keep on Blogging!

Support Bloggers' Rights!
Support Bloggers' Rights!




Search Blog

Archives

September 2005
M T W T F S S
« Aug   Oct »
  1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30  

Categories

China

Japan

Hong Kong

The Koreas

Taiwan

India & South Asia

Global & Regional

Meta Data

Listed on BlogShares Ecosystem Details

Other

Design By: Apothegm Designs

sponsors



AsiaPundit Friends

Adopt


Recommended


Mr. China - by Tim Clissold:

How to lose $400 million in the world's biggest market.


Imelda - Power, Myth, Illusion:
A documentary on the former Philippine first lady that is damning, sympathetic and incredibly funny.


Yat Kha - Re Covers:
Siberian throat-singing punk band searches for its roots


5.6.7.8.'s - Bomb the Twist:
Three Japanese women play 1950's-inspired punk.


Gigantor Box Set Volume 1:
The original giant Japanese robot


Mao: The Unknown Story - by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday:
A controversial and damning biography of the Helmsman.

Recent Posts

recent comments

  • Falen: Michael, Are you trolling from one website to the next? How dare you to call Blues "anti-democratic"! I think...
  • Michael Turton: Both those commentors above are incorrect. Taiwan must have weapons to guarantee its own security,...
  • mahathir_fan: The source of the anger is probably because the Stephen YOung the unofficial "ambassador" to Taipei...
  • mahathir_fan: I want to applaud legislator Li Ao for his outspokenness on the arms procurement issue and for debating...
  • mahathir_fan: "A widening Chinese anti-corruption inquiry has targeted Beijing’s party leaders, in a sign that...

Sponsors

Your Ad Here

singapore

Malaysia

Indonesia

Phillippines

Vietnam

More from China

27 queries. 0.415 seconds