The “perennial debate” over whether maids should or should not be guaranteed at least one rest day a week has apparently been “reignited,” with the Ministry of Manpower indicating that it will be consulting employers, agencies and non-governmental organizations on the issue. But in the pantheon of unnecessary reignitions, surely this is up there with Guy Fawkes asking the guys stoking his bonfire if they wouldn’t mind giving it another go as it’s getting a bit chilly atop the pyre.Really, Singapore?

As soundbites go, telling people that wives must “serve their husbands better than first-class prostitutes” takes some beating. (Although perhaps beating isn’t the best choice of words in this situation.) That’s what Rohaya Mohamed, VP of the now notorious Obedient Wives Club, officially launched in Malaysia earlier this month, said she saw as the solution to marital meltdowns and social ills. To avoid being misunderstood (heaven forbid), she went on to say that “a good wife is a good sex worker to her husband” and then asked “What is wrong with being a whore ...

(Bangkok, Thailand) In a bid to regain some ground in the polls, Abhisit has shifted the focus of his campaign from raising the minimum wage to reminding people what the Red Shirts did last year: undercut local food stalls with free food, sold flip-flops in areas where people wear shoes, burned down Zen department store and Siam Theatre, played molam during office hours and made traffic around Ratchaprasong slightly worse than usual. A goodwill ambassador for the campaign said, “For several weeks, you couldn’t shop at GAP, as their only store was at CentralWorld.

There’s a scene in JJ Abrams’ latest movie, Super 8, in which all the town’s dogs are seen running away, abandoning their owners to the fate they don’t yet know is coming. (Incidentally, we give the film a 0 star. Other staff members swear it’s an impressive, if somewhat imperfect, 4 star effort, marked with flashes of real genius. But hey, that’s joy of not being ruled by the consensus.) Anyway, the dogs run away because they’ve sensed something the townsfolk are yet to cotton on to.

A leaked police report indicated that Pheu Thai would win 164 seats versus 83 for the Democrats in the 331 constituencies they surveyed. This raises a few questions.1. Why does the police conduct polls? We have an answer from the Chief of Special Needs Police Branch: “I have a family too, and I’ve noticed rising food costs, mostly because my eight Burmese maids all asked for a raise this week. If I have to pay them, I want to know who’s going to be giving me a 25% raise. In this case, it seems Pheu Thai is in the lead: Yingluck, big shout-out to ya. You’re beautiful.

Pop-up stores, pop-up coffee bars, pop-up beer dispensers. The city’s gone pop-up mad. There’s a unit just off Orchard that … oops, no, it’s gone already. It’s now at … oh, forget it, we can’t keep track. We can, however, exclusively reveal that next week there’ll be a pop-up sheep-shearing stall in front of Marina Bay Sands, and the following week a pop-up prison operating out of a taxi parked behind Fort Canning. You heard it here first.What is it with brands and pop-ups these days? It’s like they’ve taken the old Pringles motto “Once You Pop, You Can’t Stop” to heart.

We’ve never felt so body-conscious. First the Ministry of Culture and Boobies establishes new rules saying that only people who look great in a bikini can get religious tattoos beneath the waistline (or something like that). Then all those greedy fish eat the sugar from a sunken barge—and die. Then these children get caned for being fat. (Or was it bad grades? In any case, they deserved it.) And finally that Indian guru goes on a hunger strike to protest against corruption.That’s it. We’re going on a hunger strike of our own.

So Arnold Schwarzenegger was a no-show at the official opening of Universal Studios last weekend. Poor guy’s got a lot on his plate right now, what with the admission he fathered a love child, a collapsing marriage and having to withdraw from the next Terminator flick, but frankly none of that is an excuse for sending Paula Abdul in your place. One’s an idol to wannabe stars worldwide, the other’s a wannabe star for would-be idols—no contest.

Is it just us, or are the authorities acting more hyper-paranoid than usual? Following the arrest of Joe Gordon, we’ve noticed that people are getting a little twitchy around town. Here are some highlights we’ve spotted:An image of Abhisit appears on a piece of toast in a Chinatown café.

This week, following a furor in the run up to the election, we learnt that our ministers’ salaries, and for that matter the President’s too, are no longer to be pegged to the high end of the private sector. Governmental service, so the thinking now goes, should involve a degree of sacrifice, an acknowledgement that you’re not working entirely for fiscal gain. “It’s not a job or career promotion,” said PM Lee.