Cyberiad Food

HOME \| HYPERLINKS \| KONG BENG SPORTS AND STATIONERY \| January 1999
Introduction Cyberiad is a shared account used by several persons. Please address your email to the appropriate recipient. cyberiad@pacific.net.sg	A series of whimsical commentaries on the state of the world, culture, music, technology, fiction, travels, games, film, art, and more.	These pages are designed specifically for Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01. Viewing with older and other web browsers may result in anomalies. The web pages are designed for a 800 x 600 resolution.
Fabulist Literature Stanislaw Lem Italo Calvino Jorge Luis Borges Salman Rushdie Enterprise Business Week Fortune Forbes Bloomberg Information Technology MIT Technology Review Red Herring Upside PC Magazine PC World Internet World Byte CNET ZDNet Wired Mondo 2000 2600 Science and Technology Discover Hardware Tom's Hardware Guide Bill's Workshop The Firing Squad Hardware Zone Military Jane's Naval Institute Air Power Online Music Elements A Different Drum Isolation Tank Al Crawford's Reviews Music Labels Hypnotic / Cleopatra Mute October 4AD Wargames Decision Games Avalon Hill 3W The Gamers Roleplaying Games Warhammer GURPS Call of Cthulhu Runequest RPG Companies Steve Jackson Games Chaosium White Wolf Hogshead Games Workshop Wizards of the Coast Search Engine Northern Light	food Theme Restuarants and Sidewalk Cafes The advent of Starbucks and the demise of theme restuarants The quality of life in Singapore has improved greatly. The late seventies and early eighties were a very dull period with little in the way of entertainment, and culture perhaps, stifled by the single-minded rush toward a better life. The emerging nation was largely caught up in the headlong pursuit of economic wealth, and the transformation of a low-cost labour intensive manufacturing industry into one of a knowledge-based one. Gradually, the scene began to change. The first McDonald's fast food joint arrived in the late seventies, bringing plastic and bland fare to the masses, and these were followed by theme restuarants in the late eighties like the Hard Rock Cafe which made quite a splash back then. In the nineties, Starbuck's, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Spinelli's and a few other coffee chains made a appearance on the shores of Singapore, swiftly becoming the places for the trendy to hang out. Inexorably, a coffee culture developed, though, a parallel culture which surrounds that of the dirty kopi tiam and smelly hawker centres has always existed. Now, the new cafes with their rattan seats and bright, shiny, steel tables on sidewalks have opened up new vistas of delight, offering choice, with choice, there is diversity. Hail diversity! Hail choice! The demise of the theme restuarants as reported recently saw many theme restuarants like that of the supermodels, comic book heroes, die a premature death. Is the market for that oversaturated? Or has the novelty simply worn off? Were there just too much choice? Do we really care? Hard Rock Cafe, good food, bad music, boring decor. Good riddance.
Cyberiad. This term has nought to do with the current Cyberspace phenomena, instead, it is the title of a 1974 fabulist tract, 'The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age', a masterpiece written by the iconoclastic Stanislaw Lem. This magical work consisting of short fables, written during the stifling Communist era in Poland, when the Warsaw Pact was close to its nadir under the leadership of Brehne. 'Cyberiad' describes the two constructors who in trying to out-invent each other conjuring the most bizarre and hilarious of situations and creations, including dragons of improbability, electronic bards and so forth. 'The Cyberiad' is a delightful collection of fables. Heavily recommended.