MayDay Concert

Went to Mayday concert over the weekend! It was great, truly enjoyed the concert except for the sound system that I think was not working very well.

I did not know I will be able to go until the day before the actual event. Had a budget of $100 from my friend which was also what I was willing to pay. I started searching online for the tickets a week before the concert. As Mayday is a popular band and the concert was a full house, some people were trying to sell the tickets for higher values than its ticketed value. And the original ticketed prices were already not cheap eg 108, 148, 188, 208.

Only during the last few days, price started to drop. I made a few bids even though I knew I would not get them. Thought better to try than do nothing. Thus was bidding $240 for a pair of $188 tickets (worth $376). They were rejected as the people were asking for $300 or more. Then try a few others to no avail even when I offered $200 cash + $50 vouchers. I had a few different kinds of vouchers. I reckoned to use them now to sweeten my deal than to spend more money buying things with the pretext of using the vouchers.

Thought I would not be able to get the tickets anymore on the last day until I saw a posting at about 5pm. The seller could not go to the concert at the last minute. A pair of tickets worth $376 and she wanted to sell it for $300. I contacted her with my offer ($200 plus $50 vouchers) and she accepted it. It was probably a bit too late for her to find buyers and meet them to pass the tickets which was why she accepted my offer. Under such win win situation I got my tickets.

Was quite happy with the deal! And was glad to have gone for the concert. I like Mayday for their songs. Some of their songs are quite inspiring, imploring people to go for their dreams and to love and believe in themselves.

Many of the audience were their diehard fans. Even though we had seats, we were standing more than half of our time as the fans in front of us rose up from their seats to sway with the songs. We all have to stand too in order to see the band.

There was no dancing etc, just singing. And their songs were infectious! Especially like the part where everyone was literally jumping/swaying and singing along with them! Cool! :)

Gender Ratio

One of my foreigner colleagues was asking me on the demographics of the people in the company. The topic naturally progressed to the gender ratio of Singapore. He mentioned that he thought there are more working females in Singapore which I concurred based casually on the fact that I seemed to often see more female passengers in the office lifts.

He thought the female ratio is higher as the males may have left Singapore to skip NS as some of his friends in Australia does. This may be true but I was not so sure it is the main reason as I believe there are not many such "escape" cases. I was wondering whether it could be due to work mobility as in males may be more willing to relocate for work.

Digging further, I went to look for the official statistics as pasted below.



As we can see, at least during the productive working years, there are many more females than males in Singapore.

Under natural birth rate, the ratio of males to female should be higher though with increase in ages, the ratio will creep lower as female has higher life expectancy. Looking at the statistics, during birth, there are more males to female. However the gender ratio turned somewhat dramatically for population between 25-39. I am guessing that it may be due to differences in work mobility for the genders. This is interesting, maybe such numbers are/can be looked if we need to draft some action plans for social issues.

Photos....

Was searching for my photos over the past few days only to realize they are all missing. They must have disappeared when my computer crashed last year.

Very much like to scold myself.... How can I not have any backup to these photos... especially since I do not have many to backup in the first place....

For someone who take few photos, each photo is relatively precious. I am afraid memories will fail me someday and the photos can at least remind myself of the experiences.

Further proof that I cannot take anything for granted. Remember to backup your photos, friends.

The Big Open: On Foot Across Tibet's Chang Tang

Is a rather interesting book. The book allows me to follow the journey of Rick Ridgeway (the author) and his teammates on their journey to discover the migration route of the chiru (the tibetan antelope).

What is special is that it is a journey on foot across inhospitable terrains. They are helping the wildlife biologist George Schaller to track/discover the chiru breeding ground.

Chiru is a protected species that is hunted to make the Shatoosh shawl, the world's finest and most expensive shawl. Unfortunately to get the wool, chiru is sacrified. The project is a success as the information gathers during the expedition is used to make the case of making the shatoosh wool illegal in many countries.

Is quite a amazing journey and makes me one to see a Chiru in real next time! :)