Gone Missing

The annual Miss Singapore Universe beauty pageant crowned Shenise Wong as the winner last night but you'll have to read about in the paper as it wasn't televised by MediaCorp due to falling audience interest. Shenise is pretty, tall, dark and a foreign exchange broker who when asked what animal she would most like to be chose a dog, for its loyalty and intelligence.

Even with the publicity from films like Miss Congeniality, a Sandra Bullock and Michael Caine light comedy of a few years back, the tense world of lip gloss and sling backs is a sub-cultural backwater. The Straits Times have a discussion board that is often refreshingly down to earth and welcome contrast to the stuffy tone of the main paper. On this topic, the apathy was tangible so when one commenter linked to the missosology.org and I initially mis-scanned it as misogyny.org (how Freudian is that?).

This is the kind of sideways contextual teleport that is unique to the web. The site's About This Website is a hoot; it was setup by a Filipino in 1998, initially as a personal site, but by 2001 was dedicated to the various Miss Whatever competitions, and was quickly creaking with 115 hits a day, requiring a change of hosting company. Wow, 115. Per day.

Shenise and her canine fantasy now go on to represent Singapore in the international finals held in Vietnam in July.