Shaw Organisation
Shaw Organisation is a film distribution company and cinema chain founded by brothers Runme Shaw and Run Run Shaw who went to Singapore in the 1920s to expand their family business founded by Runje Shaw. The company originally operated as a distributor for the Shaw brothers' Tianyi Film Company (also called Unique) in Shanghai. Run Run Shaw later moved to Hong Kong in the 1950s to run Shaw Brothers Studio, whilst Runme Shaw stayed in Singapore to continue Shaw Organisation's operations. Unlike Tianyi, Shaw Organisation does not produce films but distribute them in their theatres. History Shaw Organisation has a long history in Singapore since its founding in 1925. They bought the land which the Shaw House now stands in the year 1952. The plot of land was originally granted to William Scott in 1845. About 500,000 square feet of land was levelled original Shaw House and the adjacent Lido Theatre. The company managed single-screen cinemas until the late 1980s, when it decided to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Colin Goh
Colin Goh () is a Singaporean film maker, satirist and cartoonist. He was a former practicing attorney who has turned to full-time writing and illustration. Goh first rose to prominence with his comic strip, ''The Concrete Jungle'', which appeared on a regular basis in the Singapore tabloid, ''The New Paper''. In 1996, his play, ''The Body Politic'', was performed at the Singapore Arts Festival. The play was also performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to set up talkingcock.com, a website which poked fun at the various idiosyncratic aspects of what it meant to be a Singaporean. The site's copious use of Singlish and occasional digs at the bureaucracies made it a popular one.Reuters (21 December 2006)Singapore: Politics is no laughing matter, ''Jamaica Gleaner'' Together with his wife, Joyceln Woo Yen Yen, they made their first full-feature film, '' Talking Cock'' (2002).(22 July 2002)A War of Words Over 'Singlish' ''Time'' They won the Montblanc award for b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Free Speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The rights, right to freedom of expression has been recognised as a Human rights, human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law by the United Nations. Many countries have constitutional law that protects free speech. Terms like ''free speech'', ''freedom of speech,'' and ''freedom of expression'' are used interchangeably in political discourse. However, in a legal sense, the freedom of expression includes any activity of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. Article 19 of the UDHR states that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bordering the Strait of Malacca to the west, the Singapore Strait to the south, the South China Sea to the east, and the Straits of Johor to the north. The country's territory is composed of one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet; the combined area of these has increased by 25% since the country's independence as a result of extensive land reclamation projects. It has the third highest population density in the world. With a multicultural population and recognising the need to respect cultural identities of the major ethnic groups within the nation, Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. English is the lingua franca and numerous public services are available only in Eng ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Malay Language
Malay (; ms, Bahasa Melayu, links=no, Jawi alphabet, Jawi: , Rejang script, Rencong: ) is an Austronesian languages, Austronesian language that is an official language of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, and that is also spoken in East Timor and parts of the Philippines and Thailand. Altogether, it is spoken by 290 million people (around 260 million in Indonesia alone in its own literary standard named "Indonesian language, Indonesian") across Maritime Southeast Asia. As the or ("national language") of several states, Standard Malay has various official names. In Malaysia, it is designated as either ("Malaysian Malay") or also ("Malay language"). In Singapore and Brunei, it is called ("Malay language"). In Indonesia, an autonomous normative variety called ("Indonesian language") is designated the ("unifying language" or lingua franca). However, in areas of Central to Southern Sumatra, where vernacular varieties of Malay are indigenous, Indonesians refe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tamil Language
Tamil (; ' , ) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. Tamil is an official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the sovereign nations of Sri Lanka and Singapore, and the Indian territory of Puducherry. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in the four other South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and the Union Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is also spoken by the Tamil diaspora found in many countries, including Malaysia, Myanmar, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia and Mauritius. Tamil is also natively spoken by Sri Lankan Moors. One of 22 scheduled languages in the Constitution of India, Tamil was the first to be classified as a classical language of India. Tamil is one of the longest-surviving classical languages of India.. "Tamil is one of the two longest-surviving classical languages in India" (p. 7). A. K. Ramanujan described it as "the on ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chinese Language
Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the world's population) speak a variety of Chinese as their first language. Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be variants of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered separate languages in a family. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin (with about 800 million speakers, or 66%), followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shangh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vernacular
A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, normally spoken informally rather than written, and seen as of lower status than more codified forms. It may vary from more prestigious speech varieties in different ways, in that the vernacular can be a distinct stylistic register, a regional dialect, a sociolect, or an independent language. Vernacular is a term for a type of speech variety, generally used to refer to a local language or dialect, as distinct from what is seen as a standard language. The vernacular is contrasted with higher-prestige forms of language, such as national, literary, liturgical or scientific idiom, or a ''lingua franca'', used to facilitate communication across a large area. According to another definition, a vernacular is a language that has not develope ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Singlish
Singlish (a portmanteau of ''Singapore'' and ''English'') is an English-based creole language spoken in Singapore. Singlish arose out of a situation of prolonged language contact between speakers of many different languages in Singapore, including Hokkien, Malay, Teochew, Cantonese and Tamil. Singlish originated with the arrival of the British and the establishment of English-medium education in Singapore. Elements of English quickly filtered out of schools and onto the streets, resulting in the development of a pidgin language spoken by non-native speakers as a lingua franca used for communication between speakers of the many different languages used in Singapore. Singlish evolved mainly among the working classes who learned elements of English without formal schooling, mixing in elements of their native languages. After some time, this new pidgin language, now combined with substantial influences from Indian English, Peranakan, southern varieties of Chinese, Malay, and Tami ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Loan Shark
A loan shark is a person who offers loans at extremely high interest rates, has strict terms of collection upon failure, and generally operates outside the law. Description Because loan sharks operate mostly illegally, they cannot reasonably expect to be able to use the legal system to collect such debts, they often resort to enforcing repayment by terms of blackmail and threats of violence. Historically, many moneylenders skirted between legal and criminal activity. In the recent western world, loan sharks have been a prominent feature of the criminal underworld. Loan sharking is not to be confused with predatory lending with extremely high interest rates such as payday or title loans, which is sometimes considered to be "loan sharking" (or, at least, unfavorably compared to loan sharking by critics) regardless of whether it is legal. A key difference between "traditional" loan sharking and predatory lending is that lenders alleged to be engaged in the latter practice are ex ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dim Sum
Dim sum () is a large range of small Chinese dishes that are traditionally enjoyed in restaurants for brunch. Most modern dim sum dishes are commonly associated with Cantonese cuisine, although dim sum dishes also exist in other Chinese cuisines. In the tenth century, when the city of Canton (Guangzhou) began to experience an increase in commercial travel, many frequented teahouses for small-portion meals with tea called ''yum cha'', or "drink tea" meals. ''Yum cha'' includes two related concepts. The first is " jat zung loeng gin" (), which translates literally as "one cup, two pieces". This refers to the custom of serving teahouse customers two pieces of delicately made food items, savory or sweet, to complement their tea. The second is ''dim sum'' () and translates literally to "touching heart", the term used to designate the small food items that accompanied the tea drinking. Teahouse owners gradually added various snacks called "dim sum" to their offerings. The practice ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |