Watched The Avengers last night, and this was on my mind throughout.

Something tells me this translation is wrong. #windowsphone #translator twitter.com/vickiho/status…

— Victoria Ho (@vickiho) April 23, 2012

Singapore's Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, is on Facebook.

His initial greeting post sounded kind of...coached. By a 17-year-old "social media whiz".

But then, after reading it, I was like

It sounded kind of heartfelt, coached or otherwise.

Images from tumblr and telegraph.co.uk.

An impromptu recording. Been a while since I last heard this song.

Okay, so I'm a little Sugru-nuts at the moment. I was thinking of things to mend or make, and I figured, why not ear buds moulded to my ear?

I have an old pair of ear buds that sound great, but I was unhappy with the fit because they tend to slip out of my ears after a while.

I read that cling film doesn't stick to Sugru so I made a little tunnel for it to go around, so that the eventual Sugru shape would retain a passage for the sound to travel though.

... Not the most successful attempt. It worked for one of the sides, but the cling film on the other side stuck a little to the Sugru when I pulled it out. So I had to take a pin and recreate the hole.

Sugru doesn't stick to soapy water, so I covered my ears liberally with the stuff. Made a bit of a funnel shape with a lump of Sugru putty and stuck it in, trying to wiggle it around so it would fill the crevice. Left it in my ears for about 5 minutes and pulled them out. Success!

Hanging them out to cure. They turned out great. The eventual rubbery texture of the Sugru is also easy to trim and make amendments to with a knife or pair of scissors.

My iPad screen shattered a couple of months ago when it fell and landed on one of its corners. It was in a case, but even that failed to save it. What was the point of carrying it in a bulky case in the first place?

I remembered this bouncy iPhone bumper video I saw and decided I'd give that a try after I got the screen fixed.

It's here! Shipped from the UK from Sugru. Got it in a week.

Split the plasticine-like contents of one foil pack into two blobs. Used two foil packs for four corners.

Moulded the blobs into smooth shapes with a soapy finger. The plasticine texture tends to stick to your finger and pick up finger prints, so a finger dipped in soap water will glide over it. 

All done!

Before I went off to Dubai for a short work trip, most of the casual reviews from friends described an artificial city, a fake metropolis.

But I like cities. So I didn’t think it would be anything short of pleasant. Malls, restaurants, first world transport and amenities, what’s not to like?

Since I was there for work, I was nestled in the shinier side of town amid gleaming steel and glass structures. My hotel was also next to the sprawling Dubai Mall. I had ventured in one lunch break, and The World's Biggest didn't fail to impress.

Wikipedia says it has more space than 50 football pitches. Holy crap.

The Burj Khalifa building

The mall houses a huge aquarium.

Right above the aquarium, there is an artificial sky with twinkling stars.

A very sanitised 'gold souk' market area inside the mall.

The Dubai fountain in the day is the centrepiece connecting a number of Emaar's properties: the Burj Khalifa, Dubai Mall, The Palace hotel and The Old Town souk-themed shopping area. The US$200 million project was done in 2008, and (clearly this doesn't happen only in Singapore), its name was the winning entry in a contest.

Perhaps emblematic of much of the nouveau riche culture in Dubai, there was a shiny Lamborghini parked outside the Dubai Mall. Inside, plastic-covered seats. Lol.

The Palace hotel

On my last day in the city, I had the afternoon free, so I wandered away from the downtown project towards the other side of town, where the (actual) souks are. I suppose it must be a sign of China’s economic progress, but we were constantly accosted by touts along the street yelling "ni hao".

And not "konichiwa". Japan's economy has seen better days, but I've been grown accustomed to barks of "arigato" and "Nippon" on travels abroad, although it's become less of an occurrence in recent years.

Chinese tourist at the old Dubai fort

The cityscape outside of the downtown project is a vastly different world to the Dubai Mall and race-to-the-top-of-the-world projects like the Burj Khalifa.

'Made in China'

1 UAE Dirham per ride across the river: 34 Singapore cents/27 US cents

On a window at a workers' quarters

A large mosque down town

Sprouting up from the dusty, brown landscape of the less-posh side of town was a clean new metro, newly-launched in 2009. It runs two lines through the spine of the city right now, and three lines are in the works.

Back near the hotel to wait for my flight back at night, I had some dinner by myself at a bustling Italian place overlooking the lake, I mean fountain.

Over dinner, I read this thoroughly depressing article, describing the gap between the working underclass of immigrants from poor Asian countries and the (much more) privileged Western expats and of course, the Emiratis themselves.

One day about town clearly wasn’t enough to make me an expert verifying the article’s claims, but sitting there at the restaurant surrounded by white expats and Emiratis, it made me think about how none of the Indian workers I saw in the day were anywhere to be found nearby.

The difference was stark.

In 2010, Emiratis made up 17% of residents in Dubai. A good majority of the rest of the city is made up of Indian workers in blue collared designations.

This is hardly something to bat an eyelid at, but the silent oppression and human rights violations described in Hari’s piece made it hard to swallow.

Cars waiting outside the Dubai Mall

The only supermarket at the mall: Waitrose

A spot of tea

The fountain in action, by the same guys that designed the Bellagio fountain in Las Vegas. No wonder it looked a little Oceans Eleven.

A giant iPad camera

What probably happened: construction worker trips over protruding sewer duct, flips out and goes to town painting it like a poisonous flower so he never does again.