Note to Readers #6

Hi internet, it's your favourite online editor back again with a short update.

You may or may not have noticed a slight decline in Suburban KID posting activity lately. Regional readers will know that nearly our entire team is caught up in various national exams, also known as Very Serious Matters, a natural consequence of being in the final grade and all. Hence the decline in posting frequency.

That line sounded way too much like Physics-cum-Social Studies for my liking. Anyway.

We have yet to emerge from the dark pits of big equations and even bigger textbooks, but I personally am in a more, 'available', state than before. So while we won't be fully operational just yet, I can at least start warming those engines in preparation.

In preparation for S.K.'s fourth anniversary, that is.

Chalking up another year is always a huge excitement for us, and naturally we try to inject some life in commemoration of the event. As you might have seen last year, our third anniversary also saw the launch of v3.0 of the site, which was a complete revamp and relaunch, and the Calling Home series of articles. This year won't see such huge changes - contrary to many rumours, the SK team does sleep - but we will officially usher in v4.0. Actually, that's not quite accurate; v4.0 has actually resembled something of a 'rolling release', and we've been pushing out small updates and bug fixes over the past couple of months, which will accumulate to make version 4 (an example was the site optimisation we announced, which has managed to lower load times by up to 60%).

There are also be some special articles in the pipeline, including a new series that will be launched soon: #shortstories, a series of short (duh) articles of little experiences we have had that were interesting, funny or entertaining in some way to us.

All in all, there is quite a bit of stuff coming up, though we can't announce much yet - need some suspense in life, no? - that we hope you, the reader, will enjoy and love as much as we enjoy and love creating them. Watch this space.

Oh, before I forget: to our readers who celebrate it, happy premature Halloween!

Jetball

The following is a fictional story based in the video game 'Firefall' by Red 5 Studios. All portrayed stunts are conducted by gamers professionals; do not attempt them at home.

It was indeed a proud moment for me as I was hailed as the top scorer for my team. All the time spent training has finally paid off as I scored the winning goal, securing a spot for my team in the finals. It was my first amateur tournament, and getting so far was not a walk in the park.

The year is 2233. It marked the advent of personal flight propulsion systems, more commonly known as jump jets. Also a time when teleportation was at its infancy. It was developed to replace jump jets by instantly transporting one’s physical body from one place to another in an instant. However, the process isn’t exactly appealing nor comfortable, so it didn’t garner the attention of the general public. Instead, it found a home in competitive sports, namely Jetball, my personal favourite. My grandfather calls it a blend of basketball and rugby with a sprinkle of jump jets and guns on top. Well, non-lethal guns of course.

Excuse Me: The Curious Case of Singaporean Apathy

Next to kiasu-ness, one of the most well-known and self-admitted faults of the Singaporean society is, supposedly, its apathetic, ungracious attitude. Specifically, the attitude that's being attributed to for little social issues such as not giving up seats, cutting queues, impoliteness... stuff along those lines.

Why, ever since that article claiming that Singapore was the "least emotional" society in the world, it's been excessively quoted in numerous thousands of student discursive essays nationwide - including my own, yes, but I insist that was done under duress. Regardless, I think that exhibits that the reasons behind this attitude, on a nationwide basis, have been more than sufficiently discussed. I, instead, want to draw attention to something that surprisingly few people have mentioned or observed: the gaping differences across age groups when examined for this phenomenon.