Miss Singapore got 'jacked | money well spent?

Last night, a Turkish plane flying from Tirana to Istanbul was hijacked. No one was hurt, the hijacker voluntarily surrendered. He seems to be a Turkish army deserter, and claims that as a Christian convert (he's Turkish), he should not be forced to serve in a Muslim (Turkish) army. So he's a conscientious objector.

However, the only reason why I'm mentioning this is because several beauty contestants were on board - including Miss Singapore. They were en route to Butrint, Albania, to participate in the Miss Globe International contest.

The People's Daily Online is inadverdently funny about this event:

Much of the pageant's history and related information remain sketchy. No one can say for sure how many times the event has been held. And this has led to minimal publicity of the pageant, as well as the lack of interests by international pageant enthusiasts.

Wikipedia is also vague. I like this bit:

Much of the pageant's history and related information remain sketchy. For example, the website claims that the 2004 pageant edition was its 31st, while several editions were also held on American soil. However, such information remain unavailable for scrutiny and verification. The number of delegates per edition, and even the name of the winners for some years, remain a mystery. These inconsistencies have led to minimal publicity of the pageant, as well as the lack of interest by international pageant enthusiasts

A look at past winners seem somewhat, well, dodgy. The requisite Brazil is there, and Venezuela, but you'd expect India to have run off with crowns as they routinely do. Strangely, Estonia, Turkmenistan and the Czech Republic have won before.

While I agree that there is no universalist standard of beauty, and that more recognised beauty contests such as Miss Universe do seem to favour a type, it does seem strange that crop of listed winners for Miss Globe are fairly spread over the world - but doesn't include India. And the official website is just downright dodgy.

Did the STB just spend money to ship our Miss Singapore over to a one-horse town, to win a two-bit tinfoil tinsel crown, at a competition that isn't going to do jack squat in terms of publicity for Singaporean lovelies? Or did they spend the money in hopes that we could nab a cheap title if no one else was really competing?

Either way, money well spent? Seriously, why bother? The only publicity that Ms Singapore got for this competition happened because her plane got hijacked.


BBC report is here.

(And if it comes back that Miss Singapore wasn't on the plane - well, blame it on the BBC, and I apologise to STB. By the way, Miss Globe International has no relation to Globe International, a Mongolia-based NGO involved in press and information freedom.)