3 User-generated News Sources in Singapore
With great censorship, comes great proofreading. Sort of. The most popular alternative news sites in Singapore rely heavily on volunteer writers and submissions. Naturally, these sites don’t make enough money to actually bring in skilled individuals to quality check every single piece of writing that comes through (strange, considering how many dedicated and unique visitors...
Dear White People, Authenticity =/= Poor
Thanks to the power of the Internet and kaypoh Singaporeans, some silly white person’s old 2010 Yahoo! post has been dredged up and pelted at with stones by people who feel the exact opposite. In Five Reasons Not to Travel to Singapore, Cassandra James calls Singapore boring and over-regulated, the usual suspects. Even locals call Singapore...
The Self-Defeating Prophecy
Since reading The $100 Startup, it seems more and more inevitable that I’m going to be the first lady of my own business. I opened a new notebook on Evernote that eventually turned into a slightly out of control stack of ideas. I talk about them to anyone who will listen. Except people don’t really...
Newsflash: Hipster Jokes Now Irrelevant
Because the next time I hear another idiot crack himself up over some lame duck “Get a real job!” joke he made targeted at hipsters, I’m going to surprise high-five them (a.k.a a slap). Hipster was never a thing Young adulthood surprise high-fived me in 2009, just in time to see the hipster subculture brush...
Spring Cleaning in Associated Press’s Stylebook
Disclaimer: We’re not going to talk about fashion. Changing conversation changes perception changes policy. If anything major is to change on a political level, often it must be filtered out through the previous two steps first. In a polarizing move this...
Legends Playing Cards
For Lawrence Sullivan‘s custom playing cards. #852 Legends are a breakthrough in playing card quality. New manufacturing methods were innovated to create this initial batch, which makes Legends a cut above the rest. Legends’ card stock was born out of a frustration with the sub-par quality of commercial brands, which are often flimsy and poorly...
GE possibilities stifled by consumer fear
Published in The Peak, photo by epSos.de (Flickr). Picture an heirloom summer squash at the Kitsilano farmer’s market. The vendor is an MBB grad student, genial, bespectacled, bearded. Once he catches your eye, he’s quick to dive into his spiel. This is the latest project from a group of SFU hobbyist engineers, bio-enthusiasts that congregate in...
Debunking the “No Fun City” myth
Published in The Peak. Photo by Jenny Waters, taken outside the Interurban Gallery for the 2012 Vice Photo Show. It’s nearing 10 p.m., and the poorest postal code in Canada is alive with laughter and excited chatter. East side chic has descended upon the corner of Hastings and Columbia, juxtaposed with a shirtless homeless man,...
Ponyboy, king of the stage
Published in The Peak, 2 April 2012. Photo by Mark Burnham Drag king performer Ponyboy stays gold by breaking traditional ideas of gender identities and norms When Paige Frewer puts on a fake moustache and takes the spotlight, she becomes Ponyboy, the ladies’ man who isn’t afraid of doing a little work to win your...
Solders of the new frontier
Published in The Peak, 9 July 2012. Geek meets community at the Vancouver Hack Space Along the alley just off of Hastings and Abbott, I find the doorbell hidden in one of the murals on the wall. The signboard overhead reads “VHS”, and the doorbell setsoff lights flashing above. A moment later, somebody pokes their...
Girl on girls: marriage or bust
Published in The Peak, 10 July 2011. Part of a six-part column on women and feminism. Photo courtesy of Truthout.org (Flickr) In the words of Feministing’s Samhita Mukhopadhyay, “As women, we are taught that our very identity is based on how much attention we get from our partners and our success is based on the...
The Zolas – Ancient Mars
Written for The Zolas, a Canadian band with Light Organ Records. After debuting with Tic Toc Tic in 2009, The Zolas scaled the precipice of cult status across Canada, thanks to a loyal fanbase carried over from Zach Gray (vocals, guitar) and Tom Dobrzanski’s (piano) earlier years as Lotus Child. With Ancient Mars, their second...