Undergrads kicked out of hostel for streaking.

Hostel residents: Others have run naked before.

(via)

By the way, I may have been the one (or at the very least, one of the people) who provided the tip-off about the story… And believe it or not, it was through Twitter. Here’s the chronology of tweets with some background information:

I posted these, and other ‘web’ tweets using tweet.sg when I returned to NUS for the India Trip exhibition thingy.

I learnt about the expulsion from Zee, who was “one of the KR guys” I met. I’m not going to comment too much on the punishment, but let’s just say that I believe it’s a fallacy for every action to deserve a punitive reaction, especially one of this measure.

It took a sharp-eyed journo who’s very in tune with the workings of social media to spot my Tweet, and before long, the reporters were on their way.

So ladies and gentlemen, if you ever need an example about how collaborative Web 2.0 technologies are, and the potential for these technologies, here’s a classic one for you. Cheers, and have a great weekend.

P.S. My reply:

Less may sometimes be more.

I stay on campus during the weekdays, and when I go back to Hougang on weekends, I try not to use the Internet (or minimise my Internet usage, at least). Call me silly, but I believe it gives me some recharge time and forces me to do some offline reading – I’m finally starting on David Brin’s Glory Season (one year too late, some might say). Until it comes to be seen that this ‘no Internet on weekends’ policy is more bane than boon, I’ll stick to it. Nevertheless, one good thing that has resulted from the policy is in me realising the powers of micro-blogging.

I’ve just started using Twitter, and even more recently, tweet.sg. The latter allows me to send Tweets by texting to a local number, so in essence, I’m micro-blogging while offline. I’ve been wanting to do this for the longest time ever, because of all the thoughts that come to my head while I’m disconnected from the Internet. I’ve never been able to do it, though, due to either the lack of technology available to do so, or my lack of knowledge about the technology available to do so.

More importantly, I’m micro-blogging. Because of the 140 character limit that Twitter imposes, my thoughts are pared down to the bare minimum, so I’m forced to keep everything as succinct as possible. No lengthy discourses, sadly, but in this situation, it’s really the ideas that matter. One of the most important thoughts that came into my head over the weekend was this gem:

While waiting for The Girlfriend, am thinking of how a Writing Fellowship might work to improve standards of literary production in SG.

It was supposed to have been followed up by this:

Alternatively, a Writing Scholarship? Full tuition, yearly stipend, bond free. But recipient must produce literary piece biennially.

but somehow tweet.sg didn’t relay it, for some reason.

Nevertheless, it’s been a good weekend, and a good discovery. Looking forward to more of these weekends – and discoveries – along the way.