Singapore F1 Race on 28 September 2008

(Picture courtesy of Wikipedia)

At last, the date for the inaugural F1 race in Singapore has been set. It will be held on 28 September 2008 and will be after the race in Belgium, and before the race in Shanghai, China. Subject to final safety clearances, the Singapore race will be the first F1 race to be held at night. The race will be held on a 5.2-km street circuit around the Marina Bay/Esplanade area.

Tickets will start to go on sale in December 2007. Although the ticket prices have not been fixed yet, Singapore Grand Prix, the organiser of the Singapore race, has released the estimated ticket price to start from S$50 for the trial races, and S$100 for the actual races.

Well, I believe Formula One fans can start marking the date in the calendar, although now it might still be too early to book the hotels. I'm not too sure whether you can just book a hotel within the Marina Bay area and watch the race without having to buy tickets. :)

Complete race list for 2008 F1 season:

1. March 16, Melbourne, Australia
2. March 23, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
3. April 6, Bahrain
4. April 27, Barcelona, Spain
5. May 11, Istanbul, Turkey
6. May 25, Monaco
7. June 8, Montreal, Canada
8. June 22, Magny Cours, France
9. July 6, Silverstone, England
10. July 20, Hockenheim, Germany
11. August 3, Budapest, Hungary
12. August 24, Valencia, Spain
13. September 7, Monza, Italy
14. September 14, Spa, Belgium
15. September 28, Singapore
16. October 12, Shanghai, China
17. October 19, Fuji Speedway, Japan
18. November 2, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Stagnant Water at Bukit Merah Playground

Yesterday (22/7) evening, while waiting for my wife to shop at IKEA on Alexandra Road (it's annual clearance sale in IKEA now until 12 August 2007, by the way), I took Inka and Irza to a children playground, located in front of Block 2 Jalan Bukit Merah, between the former SAFRA Bukit Merah clubhouse and the ABC market and food centre.

The playground is quite nice, and I remember that this playground was just built recently after the whole block and some other blocks nearby were undergoing major renovation. Inka and Irza were having a great time playing there.

The only one disturbing sight there is stagnant water, most probably as a result of drops of rain, smacked in the middle of the playground. With many cases of dengue reported all over Singapore, such sight is a bit worrying since if I'm not mistaken, the stagnant water can be a nice breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Wondering what would the NEA say about this?

Umbrella Vending Machine

I have seen many vending machines throughout Singapore dispensing drinks and snacks. But this is the first time I saw a vending machine dispensing umbrellas. The vending machine is located at the first floor of IMM Building at Jurong East, just in front of Burger King fast food restaurant.

I believe this is a great business idea, especially in Singapore where the weather can be so unpredictable. One time it can be so hot, and one or two hours later, it can just suddenly rain heavily. Sometimes it can be difficult for some people (including myself) to get an umbrella when we need one. Either we forget to bring one, or too lazy to bring one.

The price of the umbrella itself is, surprisingly, quite cheap, for Singapore standard. Only S$6 per umbrella. I haven't managed to buy one so I don't know how's the quality of the umbrella, but the vendor's website claimed that it's a mini 3-fold high quality umbrella, framed by lightweight aluminum alloy, which also has ultra-violet ray protection as well.

Not too sure whether we also have this kind of vending machines in Jakarta or any other parts of Indonesia. Has anyone seen one? :)

Migrating Albums from Yahoo! Photos to Flickr

Before I had my Multiply site, I used to use Yahoo! Photos to store my photo albums. There were more than twenty albums I stored there before I started to use Multiply, which I think is much better in terms of features and community. Time goes on, and since Flickr was being acquired by them, Yahoo! had two redundant photo sharing services. And now, they have decided to close Yahoo! Photos since they will focus their efforts for the development of Flickr.

Yahoo! will officially close the service on 20 September 2007, and they give the option of moving the photos to another photo sharing service, download the original resolution photos back to our computers, or buy an archive CD containing all the photos. I chose the first option, and considering Flickr is currently also being managed by Yahoo!, I decided to move the photos to my Flickr account, which I have merged with my Yahoo! account quite some time ago.

It's quite easy to migrate, I just needed to login to my Yahoo! Photos site and chose Flickr to transfer my photo albums, and they will do the rest. They estimated that it will take up to a week for them to do so, however I found out that all my albums were being migrated in less my two days. All my Yahoo! Photos albums were conveniently being transformed into sets in Flickr, and being set as private so I can easily mark which albums I want to set public and which ones I want to keep private. Very convenient.

The only problem is that the number of sets for normal (free) Flickr account is limited to three. Because I moved my Yahoo! Photo albums to Flickr, they have generously gave me free 3 months of Pro account, which will expire on 28 September 2007, but I was wondering what will happen to my albums (read: sets) after the Pro account expires. I might need to extend the Pro account, which will cost me US$24.95 a year. Holy smokes! That's cheap! Or, is it? :) Considering that Multiply can give unlimited albums and photos for free? :)

Well, what I am doing now is to create a same tag for all the photos on the same albums, so I can still access my albums using tags. Hopefully this will help me to track the albums even after the Pro account is expired. Or, perhaps later someone might be kindly enough to give me a Flick Pro gift account, for free? Who knows... :) :)