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Something went wrong with my server today, so my blog wasn’t accessible for more than 12 hours. It should be resolved now. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Just updated this blog with the newest WordPress 2.2 engine, and I decided have a new look to go with the change in the blog engine. Somehow, chinese characters have been mangled as a result of the upgrade, and I have yet to figure that out. Everything else should pretty much be working.

I believe it has to be a first that a local blog aggregating site receives a legal letter. The details of the letter can be found here.

How Tomorrow.sg decides to respond will certainly be closely watched by the internet community because the guys at Tomorrow.sg will be setting a precedent. The situation is not unlike the traditional newspaper receiving a lawyer letter. Editors must then decide whether it is worth fighting a lawsuit for the sake of ideals, or just agree to the terms of the person who sent the lawyer letter.

The problem with Tomorrow.sg is that it probably has no deep pockets. Granted, most newspapers around the world don’t exactly have deep pockets (probably with the exception of Singapore Press Holdings), but I think Tomorrow.sg seriously doesn’t have the money to fight a lawsuit at all, unless some lawyer is willing to waive legal fees or someone is willing to bankroll the lawsuit. Of course, Tomorrow.sg would have to consider the worst case scenario and whether they would be able to pay the compensation.

I do wonder if the lawyers have also sent a letter to the original writer. After all, Tomorrow.sg links and republishes articles written by others and it would not make sense to just go after Tomorrow.sg without going after the original writer. But unfortunately for the law firm, the original entry is hosted on an overseas server, and the WHOIS data of the domain doesn’t list any contact information. There’s an email provided on that blog, but it’s a gmail account which the writer can easily close (or choose to ignore any email that threatens legal action).

Perhaps this is why the lawyers decide to go after Tomorrow.sg. The WHOIS data of Tomorrow.sg has an actual contact person and address. Interestingly, the letter requested Tomorrow.sg to disclose the name and address of the writer. I suppose the law firm had run out of ideas on how to get the identity of the writer and resorted to try and get Tomorrow.sg to do the work for them. In anycase, I doubt the people at Tomorrow.sg will know anything at all. If the lawyers had done some homework, they should have known that Tomorrow.sg probably knows as much them and nothing more.

Let’s watch how this pans out. In the meantime, I must say that there are quite a few grammatical errors in the letter (and the URL provided in the letter was wrong). Not very impressive, I must say.

4 years ago, I promised to marry the woman of my life, and I made good on that promise on Tuesday by proposing to her at Istana Park. Here are some pictures:

The original plan was to 1) steal her colleagues’ phone number and then 2) ask her colleagues to suggest an outing to a place where I’ll be waiting to spring the proposal surprise. I managed to execute part 1 according to plan, but part 2 was changed because I found out that they already were going out on Tuesday. I wanted to propose somewhere around mid-May, but she would probably suspect something amiss if her colleagues were to suggest another outing so quickly, so I decided to make use of this opportunity.

Since they had arranged to meet in Orchard, I went for a recce of Orchard Road on Sunday, walking the entire stretch from Wheelock to Plaza Singapure before deciding on Istana Park. Istana Park is relatively quiet, and there’s a nice long stretch of trees and flowers along the foothpath. I thought that it would be nice for her to walk in amidst flowers and trees. So, on Sunday night, I messaged her colleague and changed the meeting venue to Dhoby Ghaut. My fiancee actually wanted me to join this outing but I bluffed her that I had another meeting elsewhere, and she gullibly believed.

So the stage was set. I went to order a bouquet of tulips (she loves them) on Monday and collected them on Tuesday evening. Thankfully it didn’t rain, although I prepared an umbrella just in case I had to stand waiting in the rain. It was quite hilarious when her colleagues brought her to Istana Park. She saw me from a distance (say about 80m away) but couldn’t make out who it was standing there, nicely dressed and holding a bouquet of flowers. She actually tried to make a detour, which I later understood from her that it’s because she thought that it was someone else’s proposal and the bunch of them should just make a detour.

Her colleagues, with their wonderful acting skills convinced her that it’s alright to continue walking down the footpath and when she came closer, she realised that it was me and was completely stunned. Honestly, I have never seen her so surprised before. Then again, I should expect her to be so completely taken aback. After all, I told her I was at another meeting, and logically speaking, there should be no way her colleagues were in cahoots with me because I don’t know them well (I only met most of them once, for a short while) and I don’t have their contacts.

Well, to cut the story short, I proposed to her, and despite her dazed state, she said yes (maybe because she was too dazed to say no ). I was wondering if she might make things difficult for me by saying something like “Let me think about it and give you an answer tomorrow” but thankfully, I wasn’t made to stay in Istana Park for a day to get the answer. Now, we’re going to begin the journey of preparing for solemnisation, customaries, housing and everything else that’s necessary for marriage.

Special thanks to her colleagues Irene, Wendy, Chailian and Weixing for their assistance, especially Irene whose ingenuity ensured that my fiancee was kept completely in the dark until the actual moment. Also special thanks to Steven who so willingly came down to take a video of the special moment. I am really thankful that there are so many people who so kindly offered their help to make this once-a-lifetime event so memorable for me and my fiancee.