These days, a new craze has hit town. Scratchit! is so popular that stocks of the game cards run out within days of them reaching the 4D betting outlets. The people who buy them are mostly older Singaporeans - Ah Peks and Ah Sohs. You can see them at these outlets buying strips of such game cards for themselves and their friends.
 
Just what is Scratchit! and why is it a phenomenon here? Scratchit! is a scratch-n-win product launched by Singapore Pools on 30 Nov 2004. The game is printed on a square card called a ticket. There are S$1 and S$2 scratch game tickets available at the local betting outlets.
What you do is simply use a coin to scratch the surface of a game ticket to reveal the figures, pictures, letters, symbols or words printed beneath. A player wins by matching three of those figures, pictures, letters, symbols or words out of a total of eight.
 
Prizes vary from S$1 to a top prize of S$10,000 for a S$1 game ticket, and from S$1 to a top prize of S$20,000 for a S$2 game ticket. There is one game for each S$1 ticket and two games for each S$2 ticket so theoretically, you could win twice for a S$2 ticket.
 
Each series of game tickets has a theme such as Go For Goals!, Wildlife Treasures, and Jewels of the Rainforest. The proceeds of the game series go to beneficiaries such as Football Association of Singapore (FAS), Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS) and Jurong Birdpark.
 
While it is difficult to win the top prizes, it is quite easy to win amounts such as S$2, S$4, S$5 and S$10. So, if you buy a strip of, say 3 S$2 cards, it is quite possible for you to win, say S$5. So, in this case, for an outlay of S$6, you get S$5 back. This means your net donation to the funding programme is S$1.
 
Just what is it about Scratchit! that fascinates the older Singaporeans? I guess it’s fun and a chance to win big money. I mean, who can resist surprises? Here you have a game that instantly surprises you with cash prizes.
 
Those born in the 50’s and 60’s will surely remember a popular game for children then - the ang pow game tickets stuck to a long rectangular cardboard. For 5 cents, a child could peel off a ticket and unfold it to reveal hidden money prizes. One could win 20 cents, 50 cents or even a whole dollar! If you have played such a game before, you will remember the times you spent pondering over which of the 100 tickets on the board would hide the biggest prizes.
 
Well, kids nowadays don’t have such fun anymore. Now, I am not encouraging gambling. I am for the occasional things that bring fun and excitement, with the possibility of pleasant surprises, to the individual. You have all these things on TV today - eg. buy some provisions, get a lucky draw ticket and if your ticket is picked by a presenter, you win a prize. Sure, the games are in different forms, but they do provide fun and excitement, and occasionally a reward.
 
I don’t deny it. I am a fan of the Scratchit! game too. But, I don’t go crazy over it. I spend a few dollars a week, get some nostalgic fun scratching the panels on the tickets, collect the S$5 or S$10 that I win, and go off thinking that as I am having my fun, I am also contributing to the programmes run by the FAS, Wildlife Reserves Singapore or the Jurong Birdpark.
 
Hey! This is life that we are living. Why go complicated over such a simple fun-raising idea that benefits both the fun-raiser and the contributor? If the idea is wrong, then those raffle tickets, in whatever form, that are sold to raise funds for community groups shouldn’t be sold, for they too provide fun and excitement, with an occasional reward, too.

Yes! The boys at Morning Express are back on their morning radio programme on Class95FM today, after a one-week absence. Their last- broadcast stunt last week caused minor ripples on the island. I heard that one loyal fan even set up a Web site to garner support to keep the popular programme from going off-air.

On Getforme, we had to re-title our FrontPage edition for 14 Jan 2005 from Morning Express Ends Successful Run on Radio Today to Morning Express Ending Successful Run on Radio Today? with a question mark at the end of the title. Read what I said in the article.

This morning, we had the boys apologising for the stunt which they pulled off last week. The Flying Dutchman said that he and his wife had a one-week sponsored holiday in Japan, courtesy of Club Med. The other two spent the week in R&R on the island. Loyal fans such as this Editor had to get used to waking up each morning last week to female DJs Vernetta Lopez and Jean Danker making conversation over the air on the Morning Express programme.

Did the last-broadcast stunt sit favourably with listeners to the Morning Express? Well, I can’t speak for others, but I wasn’t too happy though I had suspected the last-broadcast thing to be a prank. And my suspicions grew stronger when Rod Monteiro said on air on the supposedly last day of broadcast last Friday that “all will be revealed at 9.52am”.

I couldn’t stay for the end of the programme as I had to keep an appointment. But, I found out that it was all a stunt when I read The Straits Times the next morning - there was an article with the header DJs Say It’s Just A Joke.

Yes! it was just a joke. Did it backfire on the trio? I am happy that the boys are back. I can hear news that I would otherwise have not been privy to. For instance, this morning, I heard Glenn Ong sharing with listeners an incident he witnessed at the National Stadium during the recent Tiger Cup Finals. He mentioned that the wife of one of the Singapore players had trouble coming in because her 3-year-old kid did not have a ticket for the match.

“It’s a new dawn; it’s a new day; it’s a new life for me, and I am feeling good,” croons Michael Bublé over the airwaves on the Morning Express this morning. Yes! I am sure feeling good this morning. And I must confess - the Morning Express puts zest into my mornings. I can feel it now, while listening to the songs they dish out. I am glad they are back, aren’t you? Forgive and forget! It’s great to be alive!

School starts today for more than 500,000 children across the island this new year. As these children stream back to their schools and begin looking around in their new classrooms, some of them may notice a classmate or schoolmate missing. And they may realise that the tsunami which took place far from our shores over the holidays has something to do with that student’s absence from school. 

Yes, our children return to school nowadays to face situations which we did not face in our time as schoolchildren. The year before last year, it was Sars. Children suddenly found their term holidays extended and home quarantine orders slapped on holidaymakers returning from Sars-affected countries.

I used to be red with envy when I saw students whip out their mobile phones in the classrooms and corridors of schools. Simply by flicking their fingers on the phone pad, they could instantly message classmates, schoolmates and friends, be these chaps in the same school as theirs or any other school in Singapore. The entire island’s schools had become a very personal communication network for the students.
These students could share news and gossip about their teachers and friends in real time, though they were in their own classrooms and far away from one another. They could even snap pictures or video-record scenes and send these instantly - remember the teacher-scolding-student incident in a JC?

And when you were teaching them, you suddenly realise that it was possible that their minds might be far away, for they could be looking blankly at you while their fingers were doing the communication work for them - sms-ing their friends on their mobile phones which were hidden from your view. 

Yes, indeed, I thought these students were a privileged lot - to be born in this time and blessed with the tools that today’s technology had made available to them. But, now, I do not envy them.

It’s true that in my time - in the 1970’s - we had no gadgets to indulge ourselves in. Why, we didn’t even have electronic calculators in class. They didn’t exist then. At secondary school, we were using logbooks which we had to flip through for sine and cosine calculations.  

It’s true that television for us was black and white till 1973 when colour was introduced in Singapore. I remember I was in secondary three at Victoria School that year. It was a year I could not forget, for that same time, my family had our first telephone in our flat in Toa Payoh. Wow! I thought, what a thrill it was, being able to call my schoolmates on the telephone and talk to them in the comfort of my home.

It’s true that looking back, I realise that these were simple thrills indeed, pale in comparison with what’s available to the young of today. But, while it’s true these gadgets have made living a luxury of a lifestyle for students of today, it’s also true that the ills of today - Sars, birdflu, Tsunami and their lot - were practically unheard of in my time as a student.

The young of today are saddled with these problems and so they learn to grow up faster than we did in our time as students. It’s not precocity, mind you. It’s just that they have found themselves in an environment which is not as conducive as that which we had when we were as young as they are now. 

Whether it’s Sars, birdflu, tsunami or whatever nature may throw in their paths in future, our young will have to face up to these afflictions for it’s a world they have inherited by virtue of their being born in this day and time. Pluses and minuses considered, I think these chaps do not have as good a time as we had as students decades ago.  

So, should we still envy our children?