An Inconvenient Virus

The Influenza A H1Ni virus is not a deadly virus. Yes, it has killed more than 12,000 people worldwide, but I understand that this number pales in comparison to the numbers that die from the seasonal flu virus, which I caught last week, probably from someone in the MRT Train while going to work a week earlier. Yes, 2 weeks ago, I have had a person sit next to me who was sniffing mucus all the way to my destination. I optimistically hoped that he had a case of sinus. Then there was the case when a woman sneezed while standing next to me in the train. Fortunately, she didn't sneeze in my direction, but she was standing next to me.

With over a hundred people identified with H1N1 and not a single fatality in Singapore, people are beginning to treat H1N1 as a variety of the seasonal flu. Only this flu strain is so new that we don't have a vaccine against it yet. Some pharma companies have announced positive results towards a vaccine but we do have other drugs, such as Tamiflu and Relenza, which have proven effective against it.

Really, the problem with H1N1 is not that you die from it. The inconvenience is that you get 'jailed by association' for it - a minimum 7-day quarantine period - either on your own, or in government mandated locations. That means that you can't earn a living, you can't socialise, you can't see your kids or your husband/wife. (Well, ok, for some people, this can be a blessing). Nor do they want to see you during this 1-week jail time. And you get to go to this 'jail' not because you carry the virus, but that you have been in contact with a person or persons who carried the virus. That's why people are afraid of travelling - not that they will die, but that they will be locked up. So holidayers who have gone overseas over the last couple of school vacation weeks will be treated as a separate class of citizens once school starts. Some wouldn't be in school with the rest of their classmates.

One only hopes that these vacationeers won't 'elevate' those who have stayed home to that separate category of people. So I thought it ludicrous that people think they can 'get away' from these complications by their staycation plans. What if that staycation involved a 4-day 3-nights at the Swissotel the Stamford over the last weekend, or even into this week when more athletes from around the region show up at the hotel?

So staycation or vacation, it makes no difference in Singapore because Singapore brings the world to its doorsteps anyway. The only way to avoid the bug, whether of the seasonal variety or the H1N1, is to go to 'jail' - voluntarily. No turning right, no turning left, just go straight to jail. That's what most of us are already doing, anyway. What an inconvenient virus!

Lucky blokes

I am envious, I really am green with envy. How come youth half my age get to stay in Swissotel the Stamford (Swissotel) when I can only either dream about it or break my bank otherwise? It would appear that Swissotel is going all out to accomodate and feed the participants and sportsmen/women of the Asian Youth Games (AYG). Not only that, they have reserved an entire floor at the Swissotel for its medical centre, ostensibly, to catch the H1N1 bug that threatens to infect the community at large, now that carriers have been found wandering the streets, the cafes, the theatres, the shopping centres and the workplace. Let it not be said that the Singapore government doesn't put its best foot forward in taking care of visiting athletes.

Only, who is paying for the bills at the Swissotel? Is business that bad at the Swissotel that they are willing to lower their prices and put in an extra beds a room, just for some young athletes who haven't even qualified for the Olympics? Heck, in most cases, athletes are housed in dormitories, or 3-star hotels at best, but when you come to Singapore, you get housed in one of its best hotels. Well, who said anything about lowering prices? I don't know, really. If room prices are not much lower than the normal rates (June happens to be a peak season, or shoulder, if you consider that the Asian Youth Games do not start until the end of June), then how would some impoverished nations, like North Korea, afford the bill? Unless sugar daddy Singapore is footing some of it? And that means I, as a taxpayer, am footing some of that bill. And to think I was never willing to break the bank for a stay in the Swissotel.

Why am I treating myself so shabbily? To think that some North Korean youth have stayed in the Swissotel before...

That said, would Raffles City Mall beside it become a ghost town now that everyone is put on notice that the hotel next to it is a potential hotbed of hotblooded young athletes and possibly the H1N1 bug? Yikes!

Of the People

Yesterday in Parliament, Mr Yaacob Ibrahim, the Minister for Environment and Water Resources, in rising to answer the MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC, Mr Inderjit Singh, referred to the MP by name and not as the Member for Ang Mo Kio GRC. In the British Parliamentary system, the system that Singapore's Parliamentary system is based on, each member in the House is addressed by the constituency he/she represents, in recognition of the fact that that is how they got into Parliament in the first place. When government ministers refer to fellow Parliamentarians by name instead of the constituents that is represented by that MP, are they forgetting the people? Do they remember them only during the Elections when the people's votes count? Mr Inderjit Singh was speaking on behalf of the people's towns, specifically the running and upkeep of these people's properties and possessions. True, some of these properties belong to the government, but isn't the government, to quote Abraham Lincoln, of the people?

When this happens, and this is not the first time MPs are calling each other in Parliament by first names, we know that Parliamentary democracy has taken a step back. All MPs in Parliament should be referred to the Member for the constituency he/she represents. They speak on behalf of his/her constituency. That is the primary role of an MP. They speak at the national level on laws and policies as a consequence of their understanding of the needs and issues of the people they serve. This is not new. Somebody some time ago raised this point and I am just raising it by way of reminder.

Nevertheless, Singapore Parliament is set for changes. So much so that the Constitution needs amending to accomodate the changes.

Chief among the changes announced is the institutionalising of Opposition seats in Parliament. 9 guaranteed seats will be set aside for non-ruling party MPs and/or NMPs. These 9 can be duly elected MPs or all 9 of them can be nominated MPs, should the party other than the ruling party lose all seats contested in a General Election. This may be a good thing, or it may not. If all 9 are NMPs, then they have no constituency to speak for. For all you know, they can speak on their pet subjects (e.g. the Arts and other civil society groups, etc.), which may not have anything to do with the bread and butter issues of the electorate. Funny, I thought there are government ministers, who are paid very handsomely in Singapore, and his Ministry who already looks after the Arts. In Singapore, that's MICA - the Ministry of Information and the Arts. It should be doing that instead of paying yet another person (the NCMP) to raise issues on the Arts.

So why do we need 'specialised' NMPs anyway? And what if the Opposition parties sweep all 9 seats, and then some? No more voices for the civil society and special interest groups? Is this a further tactic by the ruling party to limit the number of Opposition Members in Parliament? So is the latest suggested innovation in Parliamentary democracy necessarily a good thing? Of course, whether this works depends on the people's need for such 'specialist' NMPs, and their actual performance and effectiveness in Parliament. Yes, today, we have a few strong NMP voices in Parliament. They lend their voices to certain subjects. They speak frankly, but my sense is that they are not taken very seriously because when it comes down to it, they cannot vote on the things that matters. They are just toothless tigers, roaring aloud, yearning to be heard. In practice, their effectiveness is limited. One can talk, but when you are in no position to execute, to put action to words, it isn't must use, is it. MPs that are elected by the people are those who truly matter in Parliament.

The problem in Singapore is that, even with upwards of 70 MPs, we still see the need for NCMPs, and 9 at that. What a waste of money and resources. What a failure of the government of the people, by the people and for the people.

The Swine Cometh

Well, finally, the virus, now known the world over, as Influenza A (H1N1), aka Swine Flu, has made landfall on the shores of Singapore island on the 26th May 2009.

Yes, it was a sooner or later thing when our island's neighbours, Thailand and Malaysia, received their unwelcome aliens in the last 2 weeks.

And is it any surprise that it came via a women who returned from the US of A? That was the route it came by for both Thailand and Malaysia. I just hope that there won't be panic all around, though I suspect that 'Temperature Taking' season will now definitely come back.

Fortunately, public schools are taking a break from next week, otherwise the spread of the flu among the Singapore populace should take on pandemic proportions, if that viral swine were to get out into the open. Can we be comforted that this time around, available anti-viral drugs have been found to be effective in combating this virus, and that Singapore has stocked up plenty of them for occasions such as this? After all, the number of fatalities against infection is in the low low low 0.00749% - 12,950 cases, 97 deaths as of 26th May 2009.

Stay calm, Singapore.

The Chairwoman

Singaporeans should be shameful for the way it treats its 'foreign talent' in sports. All its major sports - soccer, swimming and until recently, table-tennis, are coached by foreigners. Yet in a year when Singapore has achieved most in the sports arena - Olympic silver medals, 5th place finish in the Beijing Olympics, 1st place in the Paralympics swimming, it couldn't find a coach who had stood out. I don't know what yardstick is being used, but it appears that this yardstick is a tad too long for anyone to measure up to.

It can be argued, very strongly, that the coach of the year (COY) award should have gone to the coaches of sportsman/sportswoman who did Singapore proud in the Olympics, indisputably the most prestigious and the toughest sports arena in the world. Yet all of them have been found wanting. If so, why don't we just sack all of them and find more worthy people to fill their shoes. After all, Singapore taxpayers' money is being used to fund sports in Singapore. Singapore taxpayers have a right to ask why we are using sub-standard coaches to drive excellence in Singapore sports.

But the most shameful thing is that an aggrieved coach, Mr Liu Guodong, is in town to seek an apology from Mdm Lee Bee Wah, President of the STTA, for allegedly slighting him in remarks explaining why he wasn't nominated for the COY award. This in spite of the fact that he coached Singapore's Olympic Table-Tennis team to silver medals - the first in 48 years. Yet, in the first meeting, she reportedly didn't turn up. Some officials appeared instead. I don't know what was said in that meeting, and whether the discussion was useful, but it does look to me as if the STTA is acting like the Communist Part of China -that 'Chairwoman' Lee BW deigns it beneath her to meet with a 'discredited' coach. Liu flew in to Singapore to LBW's doorstep. The least she could have done was to meet him, if only for old times' sake? Well, I shouldn't drag China into this, but Mr Liu is from China , after all. And for the Chinese, 'face' is important, and credibility is important in any leader, as our top political leaders in the PAP have stressed and demonstrated countless times since the country's independence.

So I am not surprised at Mr Liu's incredible quest (I hope it is not an impossible quest) to clear his name. It is now up to Chairwoman Lee to show that she is deserving of everyone's respect and support, from all sportsmen/women and coaches down to the taxpaying public, by facing Mr Liu and explaining herself, and/or otherwise, apologise PERSONALLY.

Personally, I think she and her management team in the STTA should step down for bringing disrepute to the Table-tennis fraternity in Singapore and diminishing the achievements of the silver-medal winning Olympic team by refusing to nominate their coach for the COY award. A wrong step here and she may even cost the PAP a GRC, eventually. For a fresh politician, nothing is worse than becoming unpopular for the wrong reasons.

Swine fugitive

Singapore has this slippery relationship with Mas Selamat Kastari. He is a Singapore citizen and yet he wants to wreck Singapore and possibly Singaporeans who are 'suey' enough to be near his targets of destruction. We can understand when a foreigner wants to do that, but a local boy? What has he against Singapore, the land which he adopted from young, albeit it being the choice of his parents? If he hates Singapore that much, why doesn't he remove his entire family to Indonesia, or Malaysia, and let the rest of us get on with our lives instead of having to look over our shoulders all the time and providing him free food and lodging when he is in town, albeit shorn of freedom.

That is why Singapore heaved a collective sigh of relief when news broke that he has been caught by the Malaysia Special Branch in Johore, very near the birth place of his radicalisation. He was reportedly arrested on April 1, 2009. For a moment there, an April Fool's joke flashed across my mind, but I thought it is probably too serious a matter to fool around with. At least, Mr Wong KS and his entire ISD's reputation is at stake. So while we haven't really seen his face since his capture was announced, we believe that he is in police custody. Where exactly he is now held we have the faintest idea. Whether he will be returned to Singapore eventually is not even a foregone conclusion. Actually, a couple of days ago, I had hoped that Influenza A H1N1 would do us the courtesy of infecting him and thus flushing him out. Well, the police beat the swine to it.

You can't always get what you wish for.

Silvery tongue

To its credit, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has come out to state, officially and unequivocally, that the instructor guide used in the Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) programme run by AWARE are "explicit and inappropriate, and convey messages which could promote homosexuality or suggest approval of pre-marital sex." (See Today, 7 May 2009, page 1 and Voices section, page 30; Business Times, 7 May 2009, page 3 - "MOE suspends AWARE 's sex education programme")

This vindicates the former AWARE committee's stance that AWARE has lost its direction. Indeed, it appears that AWARE's agenda has been hijacked by liberal elements, either from within or outside, that is pushing their views and preferences regardless of what the rest of Singapore society believes in or prefers. This insidious approach is worse than one where a particular religion is identified and accused of pushing its religious agenda. At least we know where they are coming from even if we may not agree entirely with them. By painting itself as non-religious and non-judgmental, the homosexual 'religious' faction has hoodwinked some, nay, many, naive women (and some men too) in AWARE into adopting, if not applauding, such liberal ideas and perverted practices (e.g. "Anal sex can be healthy, homosexuality is perfectly normal...").

Yes, more than a thousand women voted for the old AWARE guard, but I wonder among these group of people, how many are AWARE of AWARE's practices, particularly with respect to the CSE programme. I, for one,just got to know about it only in the last few weeks. If they are, do they approve? If they approve, will they let their children be schooled in this homosexual 'religion'? Is AWARE now a hotbed of homosexuals and homosexual sympathisers? If AWARE's CSE programme is neutral in its message about sexuality and choice, does the CSE give equal voice and emphasis to sexual abstinence as a choice, as Ms Charlotte Wong, former VP of the ousted AWARE committee has rightly questioned? And even if the CSE seeks to present a balanced view, as the old guard has always claimed, what has it put in place that will ensure that its trainers do not push their own preferences and biases in the classroom?

Josie Lau and her supporters may have lost within the confines of the Suntec City Convention Centre room by the 'ballot box', but it would appear that outside it, there is a significant number of people who are questioning the very practices that moved Ms Lau and her band to attempt to reform AWARE. Today reports that there are 7,000 signatures, so far, from people who have expressed concerns about AWARE's CSE. So before the old AWARE celebrate its 'victory' last Saturday (2 May 2009) for much longer, it must take stock of itself. Its President, Ms Dana Lam said that AWARE "will be open to seeing what has to be done" in response to the MOE ban, but in the same breadth, she said that AWARE will "stand by the programme. After all, we've been running it for almost 2 years."

I am worried. Can we ever trust what AWARE says now? Where along the way has it lost its integrity?

A critique of the secret CSE Manual: http://www.vtaide.com/blessing/AWARE-cse.htm - Thank you, Mr Alan S.L. Wong for the link.

RIP

The die has been recast, and the new has become the old and the old the new. AWARE members, many of whom just joined, voted collectively that they want the old AWARE back. The former new have bowed to the will of the majority who voted. Hopefully, we will see the end of this saga which has gripped the nation, young and old, male and female. It was perhaps a good distraction from the constant flow of bad news about the economy. Perhaps it is also timely because we now have to face a potentially deadly enemy - the Influenza A (H1N1) virus, which Singapore is trying its hardest to deny entry to our shores.

Unfortunately, there are hints of the continuing feud amid the threat of a lawsuite, as if the threat against people's lives earlier is not enough. I applaud the new old AWARE committee members, who were brave enough to take up a cause they believed in. Nobody can take that away from them. One may disagree vehemently with their way of going about the whole thing, but through it all, I think they succeeded in drawing much attention to the issue of homosexuality education in Singapore schools. The MOE is looking into this. They may find nothing wrong with AWARE's programme (why would they want to be found with pies on their faces?), but these programmes will face greater scrutiny now from the public, not only from Christians, but from the conservatives among us. And these include Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and even the religiously non-committed, especially those with school-going kids. No one can ever be neutral on this matter.

Thank you for hearing me

I am honoured that a reader has nominated this blog for the Singapore Blog Awards. However, I wish to decline for personal reasons.

I wish those who are nominated similarly the best and may the best weblogs/bloggers win!

epilogos.

quote message:

Dear blogger,

You have been nominated by (name withheld) to join the Singapore Blog Awards, because (name withheld) thinks that your blog is loud and clear.

The Singapore Blog Awards, organised by Singapore's leading bilingual news and entertainment portal, omy.sg, gives recognitions to outstanding blogs in Singapore.

The winners in the 10 main award categories will walk away with a total of more than S$ 20,000 worth of prizes and a trophy designed by famous artist, Tan Swie Hian.

Please accept the nomination by completing the registration form.

We look forward to your participation to make this event a success for the Singapore blogosphere.

The Singapore Blog Awards is sponsored by East Asia Institute of Management (EASB), United International Pictures (UIP), National Heritage Board (NHB), Koka, Asia Web Direct, Play Smart Pte Ltd and HTC.

Supporting media: Avertlets, ping.sg

unquote

The Other Page

The AWARE saga has been a long-running one, often characterised, not by women against women, but by sex against sex. For some, it is secularists against Christianity, although there are people of other religions who are just as concerned by the issues - specifically, homosexuality, raised by this group of Christians who now form the core committee of AWARE.

For more than 4 weeks (the whole thing started on 28 March 2009), the issues and personalities have hee'd-and-haw'd. The wounded party - the old guard raising the most voice, if only because the new guard has been inexplicably silent most of the time. This has given occasion for diverse parties to cast aspersions on the valiant new guard who were willing to take action according to their convictions. Even the government has weighed in, warning off would-be religionists (aka Christians) mixing religion with politics.

The wonder of it all is that the voice of the majority has been deafeningly silent. Take a poll and you would probably find that more people in Singapore are against homosexual practices, yet it is the supporters of homosexuality, the old guard of AWARE, for example, that seem to be speaking for the majority. Yes, perhaps people are offended by the way the new guard 'took over' AWARE. If it hasn't been noticed, it was done democratically, according to the rules that the State (the ROC /ACRA ) stipulates, cuts no ice. I can understand. When a rug is pulled under you, you wouldn't stretch out a hand to the 'pullees'. The press hasn't helped either. It is repeatedly using emotive words like 'takeover', "a coup", 'militants', ad-nauseam.

Now religious figures have appeared too, in spite of the point made repeatedly for religions to stay out. But well, I suppose some people think that religion is important in the whole scheme of things. But of course, religious figures are trying to moderate the fight, but in doing so, I wonder if they are not taking a stand themselves?

For me, I don't even have to bring religion into this whole thing in order to express an opinion. Homosexuality is wrong, period. Many people seem to have forgotten how AIDS came about. AIDS is still with us, and it is still incurable, and it is still transmitted via unsafe and unnatural sex practices. Now I believe that any behaviour that puts at risk another's life is wrong, just as you would haul a person to court for trafficking in narcotics. Singapore law even mandates the dead penalty for such people. You may agree or disagree with the death penalty, but in Singapore, it would appear that more rather than less agree with it. And it does seem to be the case that more disagree with homosexuality than those that do, at least in Singapore.

So why are we lambasting those ladies who have the courage of their convictions?

Deja Vu

The thermometers that the government issued to me came out of the office drawers last Thursday, the last day of March 2009 where it has languished for over 5 years. Yeah, that tells you how often I clean out my office drawers. Who was it that Shakespeare caused to say, "Beware, the ides of March?" This time, it may be 45 days late, but I was still apprehensive. Its a digital thermometer, stupid, and I wondered if it worked any more - the battery, i.e. At these times, you see the virtue of alcohol or mercury thermometers. These would still do their magic even if you have left them in the drawer for 10 years or more.

I pressed the button and a beep sounded. Ahhh...it is alive! And I took my temperature - 36.7 celsius. That's good. I wasn't running a fever, so that meant that I wouldn't be escorted off the office premises. All these bring back memories, 6 years ago, to be exact, when the SARs virus caused so much consternation and fear, yes, fear. This time around, we knew exactly what to do. No need to refer to office manuals nor have office briefings. Just say the word, which the authorities, from the government down to the private enterprise, and we went about our temperature taking and recording like second nature. Perhaps this is one of those things that will characterise the first decade of the 21st Century - the terror of killer viruses (besides the terror wreaked by Islamist terrorist). Or perhaps it can just be shortened to terror, which is ironic.

The first decade of the 21st Century has been relatively peaceful. There have not been wars between nations (Iraq and Afghanistan do not count), as in the 20th Century, yet we live in times where we have had to guard ourselves and our nations from unseen enemies, who will strike willy and nilly, bringing down the weak and the strong, the young and the old, the rich and the poor, suddenly and indiscriminately. So also this Swine Fever (somehow its easier to say that Influenza A (H1N1)). It has brought down more than 170 people in Mexico, where it reportedly originated, as well as a 2-month old Mexican child in the US. Thus far, Singapore is still H1N1-free, but we wonder for how long. So you can't blame people for raiding the stores for those masks, which is now scarcely available.

How long will this last? It is anyone's guess. Until the vaccine comes along in half a year's time? Perhaps. But then, we are reminded that there are large quantities of stockpiled Tamiflu in Singapore, which has proven effective against this virus. Maybe that, and the fact that we have gone through this before, has given us a quiet confidence that we will lick this sucker in time. Err...wrong use of word, let me rephrase. We will stamp out this virus if and when it appears amongst us, make no mistake about it. But of course, the priority is to prevent this sucker from stepping onto our shores.

Toasted

I have been watching on the sidelines the election debacle at Aware (Association of Women for Action and Resarch). After all, it is about women and does not in the least affect me. Many have weighed in with an opinion or 2, including PN Balji, editor of the Today newspaper. It is Balji's opinion that the old guard of Aware should not be sour grapes for having many of its people kicked out of the Executive Committee. Instead they should welcome new blood and all. Of course there are those who disagree, pointing out that these 'young turks' are unknowns, unliked, and probably unable. They point out that these newly elected people have not made even a squeek one week after their elections, leading them to wonder if these people are real or not.

Of course people are speculating that the hidden agenda of this new group is to take Aware along the straight and narrow - no to homosexuality and yes to straightlaced religiousity, which is causing concern among the old guard and the more liberal amongst them. Now what is wrong with saying no to homosexuality and being religious? It is a point of view, much as irreligiosity and homosexuality are another set of beliefs? If we tolerate one party to push the homosexual agenda, why can't we let those sitting on the other side of the fence to do so with their beliefs, and respect those views? Whether one side or the other prevails depends on whether and how society supports or rejects either party's agenda.

The old guards should accept that they have been out-maneuvered through the rules they have put in place and maintained for 25 years. If nothing, they left the door open and now they are blaming others for sneaking in? They should kick themselves in their collective behinds instead. If any blame is to be placed, it must rest squarely on the complacent shoulders of the old guard, who, until now, assumed that their way is the only way for women, an obviously arrogant, presumptious and oppressive stance. If this were a military encounter, the old guard will be toast, much like what the British suffered in Singapore at the hands of the Japanese in 1941 - marching down Upper Bukit Timah Road to surrender the flag of the mighty British Empire that had ruled Singapore for more than a hundred years and thereafter to incarceration for the next 4 years, some never living to taste freedom again.

Thank God that they can still do an EOGM. I hope they believe in God because they can do with some divine intervention now. Whether they will succeed remains to be seen.

Paradox of recession

Nothing is predictable in Singapore nowadays, or at least, some things do not work according to the script.

Consider the opening of the newest shopping mall, Tampines 1, in the middle of one of the deepest recessions in Singapore. Retailers and even the Retailers' Associations have, in the recent past, asked the government for help in cutting costs, such as reducing the GST from 7% to 5%. The government said no. And after witnessing Tampines 1, who can blame them?

Tampines 1 sits on the site where Sogo was. It opened last week, to throngs of people. If there is one thing you can trust Singaporeans to do, it is shopping at the latest malls. I avoided the mall (yea, I am an atypical Singaporean) on its opening day, as well as the weekend, for obvious reasons. I thought today, Monday, would be a good day to visit. I was wrong. The crowd at this Mall on Monday afternoon is nothing like a weekday crowd. Everybody on the island seem to be there, from the children to the teenagers to the adults in businesses and casual wear to the aunties and uncles, all of them were there. I can begin to understand the gridlock that shoppers were faced with last weekend at this mall.

The Japanese retailer chain, Uniqlo, the newest new thing, was shuttered, not because there weren't any customers. Yes, it had drawn down its shutters, but a long queue of would-be customers were lining up just outside, ready to rush in when the shutters come up again. How any retailer would envy at this state of affairs. The mall is much bigger than I'd imagine it to be because I used to visit the old Sogo quite often before it shut. I could imagine the retailers at Tampines Mall and Century Square swatting flies all day long. The crowd was over the other side of the MRT station - in Tampines 1, stupid!

People just came, like bees to flowers, except that visitors came to dump their money into this newest of new places whereas bees would suck dry the nectar from the flowers. Come to think of it, that's what the shoppers were doing - sucking dry the merchandise using their not-so-hard-to-part money. Hey there's a recession going on, if you've forgotten. But then again, it should be like this if one wants to break the spiraling cycle of thrift, which has the effect of choking economic activity thereby worsening the recession.

My one complaint is the food sold at Kapitan, the Kopitiam food court located at the 4th level. Let me rephrase that. My complaint lies with one food stall in Kapitan, the stall that sold char siew rice. When my companion put the plate of char siew rice on the table, the stranger sitting next to me exclaimed at the portion - it was very small indeed. This is the first time that a total stranger has ever made such a remark. Singaporeans tend to be a reserve lot. They'd usually just whisper among their own group of friends. So you can imagine how small the portion really was to elicit such an unbridled comment! But this takes the cake - it costs $3.80! Cough cough cough... And in case you were wondering, there is nothing out of the ordinary about the rice, the char siew, the cumcumber and the sauce. In fact, you could getting better char siew rice at $2 elsewhere.

I thought, if this is how much things will cost, I shuddered to think how high prices will be at the planned wet market in Sengkang Square when it goes into operation. Kopitiam won the bid to build and operate it just 2 weeks ago. And their bid was 2 times the next highest bid. There may be some red faces in Kopitiam right now, but I think they will have the last laugh because they know they can recoup this exorbitant investment quite quickly. That's because people will still flock to this market even if it prices are higher. The reason is very simple - there just isn't anywhere that can compete with the convenient location of this planned wet market. This lack of competition is something that HDB overlooked when it pretended to understand how free markets (there is no effective competition) worked. Of course, there have been complaints and dismay expressed by heartlanders of the prospect of having yet to pay more. The initial euphoria of having a wet market at your doorstep is turning to disillusionment. At the end of the day, the ward's MP and the HDB will be the ones with red faces.

This is living in Singapore today - all full of irony and contradictions.

Whiter than white

Is the Singapore school system barbaric? Does it not measure up to the Western liberal standards of enlightened education? Will students in Singapore schools suffer irreparable emotional damage? Should you pull your sons and daughters out of this barbaric regime that is the Sinagpore school?

Well, if you think about it, there is a lot of bad going on in the Singapore school system. Students not only have scheduled classes, they also have unscheduled classes with private tutors whose job it is to drill students to do well in school. Free time to enjoy your childhood/youth? Banish the thought. Slack a tinsey-whinsey bit and your child will fall to the back of the class, no, the back of the school, say position 459 out of 460. Students face so much pressure to do well that we are not certain if they will suffer permanent head damage (PhD) in addition to permanent social and emotional handicap in years to come.

What's this I hear? Somebody got three of the best on his behind in a Singapore school, and sanctioned by his parents, no less? Surely nothing can top this. To think that foreigners, Indonesian, Mainland Chinese, Burmese, Vietnamese, Malaysian and the Thais, send their children to be schooled here. What must these foreigner parents be thinking of? Are they sadists to put their children in harms' way, or do they just want someone else to do the spanking for them? Well, you can't blame them. Spanking is a very common punishment in this barbaric part of the world. You wonder why people from liberal western countries come in droves though. Are they also sadists? To learn from the natives, perhaps? But of course, they put their children into schools with superior educational systems and enlightened philosophies, never mind that they cost a bomb. Their training will certainly help them in future to create complex financial products that nobody understands so that, whether they mess up or not, they have to be paid obscene bonuses. What better profession is there in the Universe?

The natives? They can have their 3rd class schools, such as Raffles Institution. They just will not enrol their children in them. Their children are just superior beings, you know, not like the Ah Mads and Ah Sengs and Ah Lians you commonly find in these 3rd class schools.

This incident should be reported to President Obama so that he can reprimand Singapore, just like what a father would, but without the cane, mind you, just like what President Clinton did when an American got 3 of the best here, courtesy of the Singapore Courts, which of course, is barbaric.

Yeah, and those people who have gone overseas and got their brains washed by liberal detergent, if you cannot bear with the barbarism here in the tiny little red dot of Singapore, go back to where you returned from. I hear that they have whiter than white streets there. So white that people dare not venture into them when night falls.

Unkind Cut

Firing a staff is never ever easy to do. I have only ever fired 2 people in my working life so far. The first one, being the first one, I didn't handle well at all. The second one I left it to my superiors, because the case involved theft.

Because I messed up the first one, the whole department turned against me. Before, they had been more than kind to me, leaving me little things on my table, like some food, for me to enjoy. I also always joined them for lunch, where lunch was in the factory as many did not want to venture the long distance to the nearest foodstall. So to all intents and purposes, I had a good thing going with my department. Until my superior called me in and told me about the bad times and that I should 'release' one staff from my department. Who it was going to be he left up to me to decide. Yeah, he wasn't going to hold the blood soaked knife, I had been volunteered to do it.

The choice was a difficult one since all of them had been as hardworking as the other. Some were absolutely essential as they operated key systems. Thinking back, I couldn't work out rationally who should go. It was entirely arbitrary, really. There wasn't an issue about favouritism. Call it a roll of the dice if you would. One went. She wasn't shown the door immediately. She was informed, and during the notice period, I notice knife-edged stares everyday I showed up for work. It was uncomfortable, to say the least.

In restrospect, I should have protected my staff more. And even if a staff had to be fired, I should have shown more concern about the staff's future plans. And I should have talked to the rest of the department to seek their understanding and not kept quiet about it all. It was the worst way to release a staff, particularly one who has worked there for more than 10 years.

Needless to say, I never ate with them anymore. I left voluntarily not long after. But this incident still haunts me to this day. I hope that people do not repeat my mistakes. In this retrenchment 'season', let the one in charge show greater compassion and sensitivity. It's somebody's life, livelihood and family we are talking about.

See
10 ways to be a good manager during recessions
Gilbert Goh's Letter in Today's (23 Marh 09) Voices section (page 18)

Speaking aloud

I am ambivalent about the 'Jiang Hua Yu' campaign (Speak Mandarin Campaign), now in its nth year (I have lost count). MM Lee Kuan Yew is again at it, probably the best spokesman Singapore has to encourage people to speak Mandarin. He has been so successful that I know not a few non-Chinese who speak Mandarin, and I have a son who refuses to learn and speak any dialect, except Mandarin. I thought that since he is born into a Cantonese clan, he should speak Cantonese. After all, when I gave him his name, I deliberately transliterated it in the Cantonese form - phonetically. This was so that he would remember that he is a Cantonese. But he does not want to learn Cantonese, and he doesn't understand it when spoken within earshot of him. He has lost an integral part of his historical being.

I think, rather, the challenge in the Speak Mandarin Campaign is not about speaking less dialect. Few speak dialect any more. The battle today is with English, as MM has suggested. Between the 2, English seems to be a favourite of the majority, even in MM Lee's family. Can anyone be blamed how we all turned out? Not really. It is after all social engineering and you have to tweak the screws here and there once a while to make sure that the desired balance is maintained. The problem is, our younger generation doesn't want to learn Mandarin, though it is an obviously important language, given China's ascendency in the last 20 years or so.

But even as English and Mandarin are engaged in a see-saw battle of the tongue, I would rather that my son learned how to speak Cantonese. It is a family thing, you know, and goes beyond nation building...

Divining the times

Is Singapore heading for an early General Election?

Some have done an analysis that, historically, the longest interval from the time the electoral register is open for inspection (2nd March 2009) to the next General Election (GE) is at most 6 months. Even my wife, who is as apolitical as a potatoe, asked me last night what I thought. If there was going to be a GE soon, and if so, how soon?

I didn't dive into speculation. I just said I didn't know, which was the truth. I don't hang around chatrooms to pick up the latest gossips. I am not a keen political observer and I don't look at the moon and stars to divine the course of mankind, as far as politics go. If the government does announce a GE next month, I will be the first one to be surprised, since one isn't due until 2011.

But if the government does call early elections, it would be a statement by the official soothsayers today that 2 years down the road, the economic situation, which will impact the social situation severely this time around, will not give a 'feel good' factor at all. If nothing, the expectation is that it will be a terrible time for any government to go to the polls. The feeling among the populace may very well be doom and gloom.

We hear some optimistic predictions based on the upcoming Integrated Resort (IR) and, errr...nothing else, really. More likely, the situation will become worse before it becomes even more worse. So with the fresh memory of the bonuses received from last year, it would be prudent for the incumbent governement to call for elections soon, and I mean really soon. People can have such short memories. Bad new is beginning to pile up like a dunghill. Better do something about it before the electorate is overwhelmed and they make choice they will regret. That's what desperate people tend to do, besides looting and jumping off a highrise, or the open air MRT (elevated train) platforms in Singapore.

The question is: when this year, not if this year?

Image: morguefile.com. Author: nibujohn

Law of wealth

The current economic recession, probably the worst that Singapore has ever seen, may be a blessing in disguise. For too long, Singaporeans have had it too good, and expecting that the good times will roll on and on - strong economic growth, high wages, sky-high apartments (of the $$$ kind) and easy credit through very very low interest rates.

I have lived long enough to know that this happy state of affairs cannot last long. That it has done so came as a bit of a surprise to me. Of course, there was the recession in 2003 - largely caused by the SARS outbreak, so it was not representative of typical economic cycles. The same can be said of the internet boom/bust and even the Asian Financial Crisis back in 1997. All of these were largely localised. For the connected globalised economy, the real markets were still there. So it would appear that globalisation would smoothen these economic boom-bust cycles, leveling the fluctuations that are characteristic of capitalist economies.

We got drunk on globablisation, we became careless with our money, and like the US consumers, we began to go into debt thinking that we will always have that steady stream of income to cover ourselves. Debt financing, sophisticated people call them. Even the Singapore government was bullish about this, talking about the desirability of developing a debt market as if it was the next best formula for pushing the economy to ever greater heights.

Now, I am not saying that debt financing is all wrong. Most businesses depend on a careful balance of cash flows to survive and many go into debt to expand, for example, listing on the stock market. But when everyone is doing it, including the clueless sub-prime people in the US, where debt is miraculously converted into interest-baring assets, which are then resold as it they were gold, ad-nauseam no less, with no accountability and no tomorrow (because the people who sell these get their money today -why worry about accountability some time down the future?), we end up with what the world is lamenting but can't do much without - toxic assets. These 'assets' which came out of the ingenuity of the human mind - to create something out of nothing. Ironically, every banker is now holding a lot of these toxic assets and none of them dares to move on them.

The problem is, they forgot that only God can create something out of nothing. We mortal souls? They again forgot about Isaac Newton and the greatest physicists that came after. They taught that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. But I suppose those PhDs who went into Financial Engineering - they abandoned Physics and its immutable laws. They did not look at 'wealth' as matter, so you could create new wealth without limits.

When you tinker with matter, you can save mankind or blow up the whole world. Is it any surprise that when you do the same with numbers, you can end up destroying the world too?

God help us all.

Image: morguefile.com. Author: clarita

Love and law

For the voyeur amongst us, the story titillates. For the family of the woman, it was a tragedy, non more so than the 2 children who will not see their mother for 10 months. For the youth, it may have brought on psychological scars. Hopefully, these scars will heal so that another tragedy might not happen.

I am referring to the case of a 32 year-old woman, formerly a school teacher, who was jailed for 10 months for having sex with an under-aged boy, now 15. No, there was no rape involved. It was reportedly a consensual affair. But the newly minted law on these matters made this consensual affair a crime - whether the 'perpetrator' (read: the older person) is a man or a woman. Newspapers have given this story enough coverage that it does not need recounting here. On its own, this story isn't all that remarkable. Woman teachers have been reported elsewhere to have engaged in the same sort of activity before. See for example, Buffalo, Lamar CISD, Mary Kay Letourneau, etc.

While the woman has been 'put away', and the teenager probably receiving psychiatric counseling, the woman's 2 children will be the real victims in the long run. They require counseling too, though I am not aware how old they are now. And if the family were to break up because of this, then it will be a double tragedy. This is really a mess, and on hindsight, could all have been avoided if the woman's family had been more sensitive to her needs.

It is too late to say 'I told you so', but if there is a lesson to be learnt her, it is that everyone, including teachers, need attention, that nothing should be taken from granted. Are we engaged in something that takes up all of our time to the exclusion of everyone and everything? This is an obsession, and obsessions are no good. If you want to get married and have children, then you are obliged to stay married and bring up the kids. Why should somebody else's interests rank higher than your own family's? The simple straightforward answer is, it shouldn't.

Love others as you would yourself. If you cannot love your own family, what right have you to go around doing charity for others?

Ageing and willing

Just the other day, I got a lift from a person I met for the first time around a 'yusheng' dinner at a posh Chinese restaurant. We had an interesting chat around the table, from which we discovered that we shared knowledge of several people in our profession - talk of a small world.

He dropped me off at Potong Pasir MRT station. As we neared this Opposition-held ward, I casually mentioned Mr Chiam See Tong. He has been known to be in bad health since a minor stroke he sustained a few years ago. He hasn't made his presence felt in Parliament for a long time now, not like when he first got into Parliament and got ridiculed for his stuttering speeches. He spoke in Parliament again last week. His manner of speaking was again a topic of discussion. He was slow, very slow, but he spoke, nevertheless. He puts to shame many other MPs who merely put in perfunctionary speeches in Parliament. Quite frankly, I never thought that Mr Chiam would ever speak in Parliament again, but I, together with Singapore, were proven wrong.

No, he wasn't the fiery speaker, never was anyway. And yes, he was often ignored, even in his heyday. But he always came across as ever sincere, earnest and honest. Some would add naive. Probably not the type who will built up an opposition alliance of any substance, as history seems to have shown.

I am happy that he spoke. It was probably an inconsequential speech. But he is showing the rest of us that when it matters, however hard it is personally, we should make our point and presence felt, never mind the ridicule and talk behind the back. I haven't got what he has - courage and honesty. You've got to be honest with yourself, and if Mr Chiam believes in cobbling a GRC together in the next GE, I wish him well. He will probably try his best to keep his word, come what may. He's an old but willing warhorse that you'd feel confident of supporting, somehow. Instead of playing dead and living on sympathy, he has shown why he is still the MP for Potong Pasir after 24 years, in spite of the repeated assaults from the PAP juggernaut over this same period.

Source: Chiam See Tong Friendster Account

Learning and training

Someone asked me, "What's the difference between a test and an exam?"

I would have brushed off the question, thinking that he just wanted to split hairs, except that this question has gained a certain significance with the announcement by the government of the intention of scrapping exams for Primary 1 and 2 students and replacing them with tests to be held throughout the year.

Ever since this announcement, many Singaporeans have weighed in on the issues. Many feel that the absence of exams at P1 and 2 will disadvantage students when they eventually take exams in P3. There's this thing about practice and pain that almost all Singapore parents of school going children are all too familiar with. Right from Primary 1, if not earlier, parents engage private tutors to grill their children on how to work out problems and answer exam questions. If the private tutor did not have an inventory of practice questions for their children, his/her competence could be called into question. One wonders then if our more 'successful' primary school students are exam-smart or just simply smart? Of course, one can be both but a lot of cynicism has been expressed over exam-only-smart students.

So perhaps it is the right thing to do, abolish exams for P1 and 2 students and get them to really learn and not merely be trained, like you would a dog. But doubt lingers, and I am not convinced that you can brush aside such doubts. The current exam-heavy regime of education in Singapore will still be there - the PSLE, the GCE 'O' levels.... As many parents point out, from P3 onwards, exams will determine the options, directions and schools that their child can take and go to. And if you don't train them early, especially when they are young, their ability to cope later becomes questionable. Of course, the really smart ones will adapt quickly, but those needing coaching will now, ironically, get more extra-curricular coaching in anticipation and preparation for the P3 exams and beyond. After all, it is a conventional wisdom in government to take the long-term view. And this has filtered down to the governed(?) Perhaps schools will also offer such coaching because they will also be ranked. No principal wants his/her Primary School to be ranked last. It isn't good for the school's image and certainly damaging to morale and prospective promotions of teachers and principals in the dog-eat-dog world of education in Singapore.

So what is the difference between tests and exams? I would venture that, as far as anxious parents are concerned, the difference is like night from day. Somehow, exams are viewed as a more serious form of assessment and thus a true validation of the competence of their children's performance compared to tests, even if tests are held more often throughout the year. If the latest government initiative is carried through (and there is little reason for it not to), we might see tests evolving into mini-exams. This will mean an increase in the anxiety for parents, students, teachers and private tutors throughout the year.

Pity the educators.

See also:
Primary education in Singapore
Review of Primary education in Singapore

Image: morgueFile.com. Author:gracey

The Ox cometh

Chinese New Year has come and the first 2 days of celebrations have past without your knowing it. In this New Year celebrations, it has been the same old routine, the obligatory CNY eve dinner, the visiting, the eating. Yes, the visiting too. It appears that for some relatives, it is a once a year affair meeting up, unlike friends whom we meet and talk with the whole year around.

But meeting them, the relatives, have been a good thing, I wonder, though, if our meeting will be the last. Why so morose in a time of celebration? The inevitable. Within the last year, I have lost a dear relative, who was the architect of my parents' meeting and eventual union. In a way, I am here today because of her. But she was over 90, and she died peacefully in her sleep, that was a relief. There are those who hang to to dear life, when letting go would be so much better. So I had one less person to visit this. I visited another nonagenarian yesterday, an in-law. She seemed less alert than when I last saw her, no prizes for guessing, one year ago. But she could still recognise me, if barely, and one had to go near her to make oneself heard. But otherwise, she is in relative good health, which is what I wished for everyone I visited this CNY. No, not the wealth and good fortune, not the wish for the presence of the God of Fortune in the New Year, it had all got to be about good health. Priorities and realities, they change as you grow older. Perhaps that is why we grow wiser too. Oh to reminisce the fun and folly of youth, days gone by, never to come again.

We wish the best to all the children and send them along their way with a little money during these times. We genuinely wish them the best of life, good fortune, a life in excess (not of excess), excelling in school and, yes, health in their young lives. Even the young die prematurely, in the prime of their lives. We must ever be mindful of that. The young, some of them act and behave like there is no tomorrow. They speed down the expressways after having imbibed a few glasses, devil may care to claim their souls that very day. Many youth puff their way into addiction, thinking that they can put the stick down some time down the road. It rarely works out that way. I know a friend, a good man, who told me that, try as he might, he could never stop smoking. His regret comes too late. He is addicted till the day he breaths his last.

Why such depressing thoughts, this CNY? Perhaps the old look back with a sense of "seen that, done that" 20/20 vision. For all the good wishes over the years, there have been hard times. And 2009 promises to be the hardest of them all, the mother of all depression, they say. Talk is about possible loss of jobs - not because the company will retrench, but that the company will simply disappear, post CNY. People are on edge. It is part of the conversation this CNY. Everyone, it seems knows someone who has such worries on their minds.

But we remind ourselves that we have to be resilient, as the expansionary Government Budget 2009 suggests. More than at any other time, these people already have a plan B, ironically just waiting for that opportune time to put action to words. As the New Year slips into history, we face the inevitable tomorrow.

Happy Lunar New Year!

A coin has two sides

The blogging community started the buzz, the mainstream print media picked it up and it went all the way to Parliament. This is really a reversal of rolls. Usually, news starts with what is said in Parliament, gets reported in the print and/or broadcast media and then dissipates in the blogging community where everyone weighs in which his/her 2 cents worth. But the story really started innocuously enough in the print media when the subject of interest wrote an article for the Straits Times.

Of course, I am referring to Singapore Permanent Secretary Tay Yong Soon's ill-advised column on his family and his 5-month trip to Paris where they attended a cooking class $15,000 a pop, totaling S$45,000. For this amount of money, you could be enrolled in a full-fledge degree course, or even a master's degree course at SIM University. This is conspicuous consumption of the highest order, although one cannot deny that the PS is just following official policy to learn new skills to remain employable. Thus, before we jump to the conclusion that the PS has indulged himself and his family, we should let him explain.

And from all accounts thus far, the PS appears to be a decent chap. The only error he made was talk to the press about his trip and have it written up. Really, if he has the means to get a top-notch lesson in cooking that costs a bomb, that's his prerogative. There are many others who spent a fortune indulging in their hobbies, so why begrudge a man his pleasures? And he did it with his family, so that's really a good thing. Nothing like family bonding around the fireplace, albeit a costly one.

But chatter on the internet, in blog gossips and such, these are often merciless, subjective and shorn of any mitigating information. Merciless is the keyword here. It does not matter if you are a good man, a generous man, a charitable man. Once you are 'caught', you're toast. So what's the lesson here?

1. Be careful when you talk to the Press.
2. Apologise to show humility, not that you are in the wrong (Good for you, Mr Tay)
3. Don't defend yourself, let others do it for you (his colleagues' comments spoke volumes for him).
4. Be a good boss - the goodwill will be returned in spades later
5. Take internet chatter with a pinch of the salt. (Look, we are not trained journalists, just chatterboxes, sometimes equal to the best auntie gossipers you can find in a market any day)
6. Ignore internet savvy auntie gossipers at your own peril
7. Write for the Press at your own peril. Worst if you are a civil servant

Worth of Words

I am disturbed. I really am. What is the source of my discomfort, you ask? Well, a Director of our Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has written to the press, in reply to a reader's question, that "Insurance companies are expected to have clear policies...", that "MAS expects the board and senior management to ensure that these policies and procedures are implemented consistently". She was writing in response to a reader's letter questioning the security of having one's personal data stored on insurance agents’ laptops. Some other readers have gone on to question the wider practice of providing photocopied ICs for all kinds of applications, depositing ICs with the security guard, etc.

While MAS may not have oversight over the latter, its reply concerning the former certainly gives no comfort to the person considering an insurance policy. If governance can be executed through expecting that people and organisations will do the right thing, then the frauds that have been surfacing over the last few years, from Enron to Satyam, would not have occurred. But it is precisely because these things do happen, and that even after auditing firms have done their jobs (or not) in conducting periodic statutory reviews. What is alarming in many cases is that fraud can take place with the most respectable people (e.g. Bernard Madoff - described as a long-standing leader in the financial services industry), that something more cries out to be done. I am not suggesting that we stifle the industry with more government rules thereby imposing onerous bureaucratic procedures on businesses that are struggling in these times. But its current 'hands-off' approach is surely too optimistic of human nature.

Might Singapore be waiting for its next Enron, or Satyam or, worse, its Bernard Madoff to make MAS' Communications Director's words come back to haunt her? We have had Leeson-Barings under our belt, but we certainly don't need another.

Health of my Pocket

Great news! 4,500 jobs to be created in the Healthcare sector within the next 2 years. This will surely come as good news to people who are facing retrenchments, or already have been retrenched. I think many Singaporeans have come around to the inevitable - the inevitability that jobs will be lost, but jobs elsewhere will be created, that to remain employed and employable, we just have to change by acquiring new skills.

Except, you wonder what vacancies these 4,500 are supposed to fill in the Healthcare sector? And if the Healthcare sector was missing 4,500 admin and ancillary staff up till now, you wonder how Singapore has gained a good reputation for the efficiency of its healthcare services so far? Or are we padding our hospitals and other healthcare establishments such as Polyclinics? Well, yes, there will be a new Hospital, the Khoo Teck Phuat Hospital come 2010, so recruiting and training people in the next two years makes sense. But does it require 4,500 administrative and ancillary staff to run the hospital? And the long waits at government Polyclinics, a bug-bear for many years, are hardly caused by a lack of administrative staff, it more like not enough doctors.

If these staff are not absolutely necessary, I hope they do not add to the already high cost of medicine in Singapore. Already, means testing has started, and I fear for people in the middle-income bracket ending up paying for these government pump-priming activities. Almost every commercial firms are looking at cutting cost nowadays with not a few deciding that they could do with less staff. While government activity will help to fill these gaps in the employment market, I hope that when better times come around, healthcare cost will not go up because "operational costs have gone up..."

Image: morgueFile.com. Author: Clara Natoli