Singapore Sojourn

Image via WikipediaAt the risk of sounding like Scrooge I have to say that the bargains come to those who wait.  It is a week after Xmas and the supermarkets are now putting their surplus Xmas cakes and mince pies on special.

I am 'mince-pie'd out' and now somewhat of an expert on the various brands although last night's fare proved anything but pleasant.

A packet of Ernest Adams Xmas tarts smelt and tasted rancid so these were returned this morning.  We were apparently the second customer to do so, but I noted that the supermarket concerned still had not removed the stock from display.

People who are really experienced in such matters will no doubt be consulting the Daily Telegraph who went to the trouble of publishing glowing tributes to the 'best of the bake'. Marks and Sparks came highly recommended.

While on the subject of the baked, and in this case the half-baked, today marks the 10th year anniversary of the foiled terrorist plot to hijack a plane and fly it into Singapore's Changi International Airport.  The perpetrators were a Singapore cell of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a pan-South-east Asian terrorist group and Al Qaeda affiliate.

The plan was thankfully thwarted by Singapore's domestic intelligence service, the Internal Security Department (ISD) and the plotters were clearly not as clever as they thought they were.

The other piece of news that caught my eye was a series of  DNA errors due to inaccurate reading of the instructions on a chemical bottle.  While this might seem a trivial misdemeanor, it adversely affected 412 criminal cases or which 87 required re-testing.