A jug of Tiger Beer for $15

Where: O-Bar, #01-23 Robertson Walk, 11 Unity St., 6738-1318
How Much: $15 after 9pm.

A pair of either jeans for $60.

What: Go for Replay jeans
Where: Zenith, #01-56 International Plaza, 10 Anson Rd., 6372-1680
How Much: Prices vary, but start from around $60.

A car for $50,000

What: A Suzuki Swift 1.3 Auto
Where: Kruise Auto, #04-05 Automobile Megamart, 61 Ubi Ave 2, 9637-7216
How Much: $48,988 (before cashback)

Trainers for $80

What: Reebok Road Burst shoes
Where: Stadium, #B2-15/23 Ngee Ann City, 391 Orchard Rd., 6538-8888
How Much: $79.90

Massage for $70

What: A full-body massage (no “special”, you cheeky buggers)
Where: Beauty Matters Inc, #02-64 Hotel Meridien and Shopping Centre, 100 Orchard Rd., 6733-2181
How Much: $68

A meal for $4

What: A bowl of wanton noodles, one plain prata and a can of Coke. Hey, a lot of you said that you’d start at $5, so you get what you ask for, folks.
Where: Most kopitiams or neighborhood coffeeshops
How Much: Almost definitely below $5.

The only thing that we Singaporeans love more than spending money on stuff is getting our money’s worth of stuff. After all, how many times have you been part of a conversation where someone’s reply to your latest purchase is, “But I can get it cheaper than that!”?

We decided to hit the streets and get a rough idea what people are prepared to pay for some of our most basic wants.

And the Going Rate is...

To give you idea of whether our interviewees are big spenders or bugdet conscious, we list what you can expect to pay for these items in Singapore.

Mobile Phone: $600-1,500
Jeans: $100-400
Full-body Massage: $60-300
A Jug of Beer: $15-30
Sports Shoes: $50-500
A Filling Meal: $5-nearly 100
A Plane Ticket to Phuket: $200-500
A Watch: $50-5,000
Cologne/Perfume: $30-500
Plasma TV: $3,000-4,000
A Car: $35,000-well over a million
A Handbag: $50-1,000

Who: Jeremy Chua, 25, Designer

How Much:

Mobile phone: “I paid $8 with a plan.”
Jeans: $60
Full-body massage: $30
A jug of beer: $12
Sports shoes: $70
A filling meal: $30
A plane ticket to Phuket: “I’d rather ride [my motorcycle] up.”
A watch: $130
Cologne: $80
Plasma TV: $800
A car: “$0!”
A handbag for a lady: $400

Who: Rachel Chua, 26, Teacher

How Much:

Mobile phone: $200
Jeans: $150
Full-body massage: “$80. I’d pay the same for my boyfriend too, but the masseuse had better be a guy!”
A jug of beer: $20
Sports shoes: $150
A filling meal: $30
A flight to Phuket: $150
A watch: $200
DOUBLE STANDARD?? - If you were buying a watch for a guy, how much would you pay for it? $250-300, since guys prefer their watches more durable and long-lasting. Plus, I prefer to get reliable brands, so that’ll come at a price.
Perfume: $150
Plasma TV: $3,000
A Car: $70,000
A Handbag: “$200. But I’d never ask a guy to pay more than that for me too. I’d never even ask a guy to buy me one! I mean, if he wants to buy one and pay more than that, he’ll pay more.”

Who: Angie Liyuen, 25, Marine Biologist

How Much:

Mobile phone: $200-400
Jeans: $100-150
Full-body massage: $80
A jug of beer: $40
Sports shoes: $50-130
A filling meal: $5-50
A flight to Phuket: $200
A watch: $50-150
Perfume: $50-80
Plasma TV: “I don’t watch TV very much.”
A car: “I usually take dad’s car, so just for gas money!”
A handbag: $20-60

Who: Trevor Rosario, 25, Sales

How Much:

Mobile phone: $300
Jeans: $100
Full-body massage: $40
A jug of beer: $15
Sports shoes: $150
A filling meal: $20
DOUBLE STANDARD?? - If you were buying a filling meal for a woman, how much would you spend on her?
“$30. Plus dessert!”
A flight to Phuket: $100-200
A watch: “I don’t wear watches.”
Cologne: $100
Plasma TV: $1,500
A car: $100,000
A handbag for a lady: “$500. If she wants me to pay anything more, she’ll have to marry me!”

Who: Joey Setiawan, 27, “Full-time student; lifelong bum.”

How Much:

Mobile phone: $200
Jeans: $100
Full-body massage: $80
A jug of beer: $16
Sports shoes: “If I’m going to put down any amount, it’d be $130 and I’ll bloody well use the shoes as much as I can.”
A filling meal: $13
A flight to Phuket: $100-200
A watch: $300
Cologne: $70
Plasma TV: “No idea.”
A Car: $60,000
A handbag for a lady: “$500. But she’d have to be someone very close, like a long-time friend—or my mother. If she wants me to pay more, well, the product had better be of pretty damn good quality.”

Who: Charlene Yap, 26, Marketing Executive

How Much:

Mobile phone: $800
Jeans: $50
Full-body massage: $80
A jug of beer: $20
Sports shoes: “I don’t buy sports shoes.”
A filling meal: $30
A plane ticket to Phuket: $100
A watch: $200
Perfume: $100
Plasma TV: $3,000
A car: $50,000
A handbag: $2,000

Who: Lindsey Chew, 28, Marketer

How Much:

Mobile Phone: “Well over a grand. I’m a geek.”
Jeans: $80-100
Full-body massage: $50
A jug of beer: “$20 at a kopitiam.”
DOUBLE STANDARD?? - If you were buying a jug of beer for a woman, how much would you spend? “Well, in that case—$50.”
Sports Shoes: “$120—but I’m using SAF shoes.”
A filling meal: “$5. I’m a simple coffee shop guy.”
A flight to Phuket: “$300-500. I don’t fly budget airlines.”
A watch: $300-600
Cologne: $50-80
Plasma TV: $2,500
A car: “What’s the starting rate for an EZ-Link card? Alright, alright—$120,000.”
A handbag for a lady: “$120 and nothing a woman does can make me pay more. I’m a stingy bastard.”

Who: Cheryl Miles, 31, Fly Entertainment Artiste

How Much:

Mobile phones: $150
Jeans: $300-400
Full-body massage (no special!): $200-280
A jug of beer:“If I had to pay, I wouldn’t go out!”
Sports shoes: $280
A filling meal: $5-100
A flight to Phucket: $200
A watch: “Never bought one.”
Perfume: $180-200
Plasma TV: “I wouldn’t pay for it.”
A car: “$5... for a Matchbox!”
A handbag: $25-250

Who: Bjorn Fernandes, 28, Technician

How Much:

Mobile phone: $300
Jeans: $80
Full-body massage: $90
A jug of beer: $16
Sports shoes: $95
A filling meal: $25
A flight to Phuket: $200
A watch: $5,000
Cologne: $30
Plasma TV: $4,000
A car: $80,000
A handbag for a lady: “$300, but the real question is whether it’s how much I would pay—or how much she’d ask me to pay!”

Stretch your dollar. Check out the bargains we've found.

How would you personally categorize yourselves?
It’s kind of hard to categorize. We play music. Whether it’s rock stuff or funky stuff; I don’t want to call it grunge or post-grunge or whatever. We play music and we write songs.

What did you guys do differently for this record?
We didn’t prepare for this record as much. This time, we knew what we wanted to do, but, normally, as far as production goes, we’re usually really prepared. It wasn’t too different—the songs just came together more in the studio, but some songs were already written.

The new album is heavier than some of your other stuff. Was this a conscious decision to distance yourselves from just being known as “the band that did ‘The Reason’”?
We never set out to be the band that was known for “The Reason.” If people want to know us for that, then there’s nothing we can do about it, but we didn’t say, “We want to make a heavy album.” We just wanted to do what we wanted to do.

What’s the weirdest thing that a fan’s done for you guys?
Fans get us gifts all the time. A fan, just the other day, made me a cereal box—a Hoobastank cereal box! Our fans also know I’m a fan of Mr. T, from The A-Team. Fans have given me Mr. T underwear.

Did they fit?
Yeah! Dude…

We had to ask! Anyway, you guys rocked Siloso Beach the last time—tell us more about that. How is this concert going to top the last one?
We’re on a little break right now, so we haven’t been talking about it. We’re really excited though. I have a video, which I shot with my own digital camera. Everyone there was so kind and so appreciative of us being there. Whether it was the fans, or the people at the hotel, everyone was just really cool. We’re just really psyched.

After your last concert, what’s your impression of Singapore?
The first time that we heard we were going there I was kind of scared. In the US, you hear stupid s***. “You better not bring gum! If you drop s***, you’ll get caned!” But, it was beautiful. I’ve never had any problems.

Confucius once said, “Study the past if you would divine the future.” And in fewer places is this little adage more apparent than in the realm of technology. Mobile phones, big screen televisions, even the Internet—before any of these became mainstays in our very real lives, they were envisioned in some form or another by science fiction creators. We look back at technology that once existed only in science fiction, which has become reality.

Ring Me Up, Scotty

Then: It was 1966 when the voyages of the Starship Enterprise and its crew first invaded popular culture’s psyche through the cult sci-fi series Star Trek created by the late Gene Rodenberry. The show’s mission: To boldly go where no television series had gone before. Since then, the show has spawned numerous spin-off series and movies featuring memorable alien races like the Vulcans and Klingons. Clearly set waaaaay ahead in the future, Star Trek featured all sorts of cool gadgets and doohickeys—one of which was a rather familiar looking mobile communicator.

Now: Captain Kirk’s groovy little device has evolved into—the modern mobile phone. While you can’t use your phone to order someone to teleport you into a spaceship, you can most certainly take photos, send text messages, surf the Internet, play games and, oh, make calls too—tons of functions that the good Captain didn’t have access to in his funky communicator.

Even Dr. Martin Cooper, inventor of the modern cell phone, has said that he was directly inspired by the Star Trek communicator. Things have come full circle with US phone company Sona producing a Trek phone last year that resembled the original device (sorry, Singaporean Trekkies—it isn’t available here).
Accuracy:

You Speak-a English?

Then: In 1978, the BBC began airing a radio series by writer Douglas Adams’ called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. For those of you who have managed to get through life so far without having read the book that the series spawned, H2G2 (as it’s commonly referred to) is the story of Arthur Dent, an ordinary Englishman who finds himself whisked off into outer space after the Earth is destroyed to make way for an intergalactic expressway. This novel eventually grew into a series that starred entire races of extra terrestrials, most of whom Arthur communicated with through something called a Babel Fish, an organism translated alien languages into English for him, and which he wore—in his ear.

Now: While we certainly don’t slide strange creatures into our ears in an attempt to talk to other life forms, we do have a Babel Fish of our own—a website by Alta Vista called www.babelfish.altavista.com that provides translations to and from about a dozen major languages. Just type in the text you want translated, select from a drop down menu which language you want your text translated into and click! But, there are absolutely no alien languages in Babel Fish’s options! What’s up with that?
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Blogged It Out

Then: The year is 1997 and blogging was barely even in its infancy. It was during this time that writer Warren Ellis and illustrator Darick Robertson created the comic series Transmetropolitan (otherwise known as Transmet), which featured a futuristic society that consisted of an endless supply of mad technology—from gene-splicing body modifications to cameras embedded in sunglasses. One technology that was prominent in the series were feed sites—website-type pages that were maintained by ordinary people and that consisted of everything from a journal of a user’s daily life to current affairs.

Now: Blogs have become the platform by which everybody and his brother reaches an international audience, whether it’s to give his two cents worth or to report from a personal point of view on current events.While Transmet came a little too close to the advent of blogging technology to really count as a prediction, the series seemed to have accurately foreseen the phenomenon of blogging culture.
Accuracy:

Plugged In

Then: William Gibson’s debut 1984 novel Neuromancer brought us into a three-dimensional virtual landscape ripe with data, created by a network of computers, called the matrix. To log on, users had to jack into machines and abandon their corporal forms.

Now: We’ve got our own matrix today. You might have even heard of it—it’s called the Internet! Sure, the origins of the online world itself can be traced back to as early as 1958, but it was only during the mid-’90s that the World Wide Web became a commercial platform, available to anyone and everyone with a computer and a phone line—something Gibson envisioned nearly a decade earlier.

While we don’t literally abandon our physical bodies when we log onto the Internet; we’ve seen, time and again how people completely lose themselves in the Web and forget about things in the real world (like the person sitting next to you). Gibson’s take may have been a rough idea that didn’t resemble what the Internet actually looks like today, but Neuromancer certainly understood the social impact of this life-changing invention.
Accuracy: