Polytechnics a Jewel in Singapore’s educational system

Posted on May 3, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘PM Lee: Polytechnics a jewel in Singapore’s educational system’, 3 May 2013, article by Robin Chan, ST

Getting a degree is not the only option for polytechnic students after they graduate, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Working for a few years or even starting their own business can offer important life lessons and help them go further in life, he said today as Ngee Ann Polytechnic celebrated its 50th anniversary.

“You will gain experience and understand yourself better and then be better able to decide what the next step will be. These life lessons will complement your polytechnic education and help you to go further in life,” he said.

Mr Lee praised the polytechnic education system calling it “a jewel in our educational system” that offers a first rate tertiary education to about 50 per cent of each cohort of students.

In 2008, it was reported that many bright students who could have qualified for JC opted for a poly education instead, which may explain our PM’s use of the jewel analogy to describe students who could SHINE bright as a diamond in a poly environment. Yet despite such lofty praises, our Government itself remains conspicuous by its absence of poly grads.  While the Workers’ Party have Singapore Poly grads in Png Eng Huat and Muhamed Faisal, Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC MP Charles Chong, who holds a Diploma in Aircraft Maintenance Engineering from the Sydney Technical College, was the only non-uni grad PAP MP in Parliament as of 2008. The lack of ‘jewels’ in Cabinet explains all the lacklustre policies, then. Some portfolios, like Housing for example, are probably better off managed by Bob the Builder than someone of university calibre but can’t construct a basic Lego house without an instruction manual.

The poly route was not always held in such high esteem. In 1984, the Educational Ministry were worried about the BRAIN DRAIN caused by smart students choosing to go poly instead of JC, mainly due to their fear of the General Paper. Minister of State (Education) Tay Eng Soon said that these students should ‘make the most of themselves‘ by choosing pre-U instead of getting a polytechnic diploma, short of saying that it would be WASTE that top scorers didn’t pursue their education in a more ‘prestigious’ institution. Which had several students actually changing their minds about a poly education thanks to Tay’s sage advice. A year later, our then Education Minister and current President Tony Tan ‘urged top O level students to go to junior colleges first’. A paragraph in the article ‘Top grads at NTI took indirect path’ deserves to be reproduced in its hideous entirety:

It (the government) wants BRIGHT O level students to join junior colleges, where they will get a BROAD-BASED education, and not deprive LESS ABLE pupils of a place in the polytechnics.

I suppose we all know who the shining star of the educational system was back then. But wait, in less than 2 years, we would see the same Minister Tay do an astounding about-face upon realising that there was a shortage of students doing mechanical engineering in the polytechnics, expressing concern of the ‘large number who have joined JCs’ and thinks ‘it may be better’ for the WEAKER students to do poly instead. All the university and post-doc education in the world will not save you from making atrocious flip-floppy decisions and sabotaging the careers of budding poly luminaries who went on to waste their lives with GP instead. A blind, amputee clown could do a better balancing act with a unicycle on a fiery tightrope than the highest paid of ministers.

So perceptions of poly have changed for the better. Or have they? Up till now, poly students still do not enjoy the same travel concessions as their JC peers, which was explained away by Transport Minister Raymond Lim in 2009 that ‘some polytechnic students are better off than others’ (and latter clarified by the minister’s press secretary that he meant poly students were a ‘large and diverse’ group, which explains NOTHING). His successor Lui Tuck Yew continued to defend depriving poly students of concessions, saying that fare subsidies would cost transport operators $28 MILLION more. In March this year, chairman of the Fare Review Mechanism Committee Richard Magnus stated in a blog post that ‘polytechnic students AND the disabled are being considered for improved concessions’. Where’s the segment of the President’s Star Charity that donates to neglected poly students then? Full fares AND frequent breakdowns. Oh the humanity.

Calling poly the jewel of the educational system, though well-intentioned, may very well be as patronising and almost apologetic as calling the child who’s not tall enough to take a rollercoaster ‘a growing, striking lad’. Let’s hope no one up there scrambles to keep university places filled while our most inventive minds pursue the Jewel path like what happened decades ago (though they probably have foreigners to make up for this ‘reverse osmosis’ already). Perhaps one shouldn’t take PM’s analogies seriously. After all, he’s somewhat the consummate joker and called some waterway in the North East of Singapore the VENICE OF PUNGGOL. Like a jewel, his wit and timing is totally PRICELESS.

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Filed under: 1980s, 2013, Kids, Politicians | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Singaporean crane operators needed for BTO flats

Posted on May 2, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘More local crane operators needed: Khaw Boon Wan’, 2 May 2013, article by Charissa Yong, ST

More local crane operators are needed to boost productivity in the construction sector and reduce reliance on foreign workers, said National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan today. “Half of the (current 3,600) operators are Singaporeans. But we need more, a few hundreds more, as we ramp up our Build-To-Order programme,” he wrote on his blog. One crane is needed for each block under construction.

Mr Khaw said crane operators are crucial for prefabrication construction, a productivity-boosting strategy where building components are made in factories and transported to construction sites. They are then hoisted by cranes for assembly.

“This is a good job with attractive remunerations,” said Mr Khaw, noting that the relatively new crane operators can take home $4,000 a month including overtime pay and allowances, with more senior operators getting $6,000 to $7,000 a month.

Crane operators have been known to get up to $8000 a month as far back as 2007, when the nation was afflicted by construction frenzy. It’s easy to be seduced by such numbers to perform what appears to be a high stakes version of the claw-crane arcade game for a living, except that you’re hoisting steel and concrete instead of a plush Angry Bird toy. In the past you didn’t even need a licence or certification to do the job, and these soaring metal titans have become so commonplace a foreign businessman decided to dub them Singapore’s National Bird in the early 80′s, a pun that locals continue to use to death till this day. I believe Singaporeans are better at relaying this joke than remembering what our National Flower, or even what the National Anthem, are called.

And what a nasty Bird of Prey our ubiquitous crane turned out to be. Khaw thinks driving heavy machinery is a ‘good job’ but fails to mention that crane driving comes with its share of hazards aside from long hours alone in a cabin and that you’ll need at least 10 minutes to climb up and down just to take a piss. If you’re not careful, you may crush your fellow workers or innocent bystanders to death by dropping a load, or your entire vehicle may just topple over, maybe destroying someone’s house in the process. In 2008 alone, FIVE such incidents of cranes collapsing occurred, including one fatal accident in NUS. Plummeting to certain death aside, you may even fall head first and fracture your spinal cord after falling less than 2m from a cabin platform.

You’d need good hand to eye coordination, steady hands and plenty of confidence to pull off something deceptively simple 70 over storeys in the air. We don’t want to end up with unemployed men rushing to fill up forms and take up BCA courses upon the urgings of the Minister, only to realise they had acrophobia, claustrophia and sweaty palms all along. I’m also not sure if this is really a veiled attempt to hold HDB flat hopefuls at ransom or a bid to shirk responsibility: No crane operators, so too bad, NO FLAT FOR YOU.

The $6-7K monthly salary is not just there to prevent workers from staging crane protests. It’s a high-risk, lonely, low-prospects job that few young Singaporeans would pick up, and many would consider becoming a cabbie or even a hawker first before even considering construction work. If you tell your date that you’re a crane operator, she’ll be wondering if you wore yellow rubber boots to dinner. Our educational system, of course, is designed to push every kid AWAY from jobs that involve hoisting things on top of executive condos using joysticks. Damn you PSLE and O Levels! If I didn’t pass with flying colours I would have been heeding the ‘Khaw’ for more crane operators and help build someone’s dream BTO by now. Or at least help Spiderman catch some baddies.

Filed under: 1980s, 2000s, 2013, Money, Politicians | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Passengers pushing the MRT emergency button

Posted on April 20, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Explain when train’s emergency button can be used’, 18 April 2013 and ‘Emergency button not for those caught between train doors?’, 19 April 2013,  ST Forum

(Terence Teoh Pin Quan): ON TUESDAY night, I was taking the south-bound MRT train towards Ang Mo Kio. At Yio Chu Kang station, a woman asked for help in a desperate tone, then pressed the emergency button on the train. I realised that an elderly man had his arm caught between the train doors. The doors did not re-open after the usual few seconds, and his arm was stuck for about a minute.

When the doors did open, the old man entered the train and was unharmed. However, an SMRT staff member came and demanded to know who had pressed the button.

When the woman owned up, he asked in frustration: “Why you press the button?” Later, when the train stopped at Ang Mo Kio station, the woman was detained and further questioned. Thankfully, another man stood up for her. When is the right time to press the emergency button? If someone gets caught between the train doors, are we supposed to wait until the train starts moving before we press the button?

Perhaps SMRT can clarify the protocol for using the emergency button.

(Lydia Fung): …I was caught between the train doors on the Circle Line last year. A woman inside the train tried to pull me in. I asked her to press the emergency button, but she said the button was not for this purpose, and that there was a hefty fine for indiscriminately pressing it.

I lodged a complaint after I got off the train at Paya Lebar station, but was told that the train was fully automated with no driver, and that there were cameras to alert staff to emergencies. I received a call from SMRT a week later, telling me the same thing. I asked that the public be educated on the usage of the emergency button, but nothing has been done.

The advice given in the SMRT Rider Guide website is that you may push the button (or technically the ECB, Emergency Communication Button) if you get caught between doors while ON the train, and assures us that the train would not move when doors are not fully closed. In the first case, the elderly man appears to be outside the train when his arm got clamped. Judging by the seniority of the victim and the probability of him having a heart condition, pushing the panic button seems to be the instinctive thing to do.  Strangely enough, in 1991, a passenger was lauded as ‘quick-thinking’ for pressing the ECB when a woman’s HANDBAG got caught between doors (MRT slams on handbag, 23 Dec 1991, ST). It appears that there are times when an inanimate object deserves more attention than a living person’s limb.

Sometimes, it’s actually better to alert the staff through the ECB than try to be a hero yourself. Last year, an elderly woman who got clamped got a ‘large piece of skin RIPPED OFF’ when commuters struggled to free her. In 1988, the button was expected to bring the train to a stop for children who failed to board the train after their parents.  One complained about a rude SMRT officer for not understanding the gravity of having left a 6-year old behind on the platform. It was an ‘emergency’ because a helpless child without a parent could have been ‘SCARED TO DEATH’. (See below for SMRT’s U-turn on ‘lost child’ policy) Most emergency hotlines are deliberately vague on examples of situations that warrant activation, because anyone can argue that something needs urgent attention as long as it happens to them.  I, for one, would sooner die of embarrassment if I were caught spreadeagled and squashed in the groin by the jaws of death before anyone would come to my rescue.

SMRT has also used button-pushing to explain ‘longer travelling times’ in a series of tweets in 2012.  A spokesperson also suggested that the button may be activated solely by people LEANING on it. With the crowds these days and the impending free ride morning rush, I’m hardly surprised. To some freeloaders, NOT getting to the gantry by 7.45 am to earn your free ride is a serious emergency indeed. But aside from people suddenly collapsing and carriages catching fire, you MAY push the button under certain special circumstances without a SMRT warden scuttling over demanding “WHY YOU PRESS BUTTON?!’ with a wagging white-gloved finger.

- When a glass panel breaks

- This excruciating scenario:

Apparently not urgent enough to let go of your Old Chang Kee

- When there’s FIGHTING over people flouting No Eating on Train laws. (However, in a 2009 poll, 52% of commuters voted NO to pushing the button when there appears to be an ASSAULT, especially if it’s gang related, not so much because of the fear of being fined $5000, but of becoming the next target in a gang raid).

- When someone looks like a terrorist about to bomb the train. In the same poll above, 51% would report a ‘suspicious character on board’. I highly doubt it though. I see suspicious characters all the time; they carry dangerous construction tools, smell bad, speak in coded language and nobody ever whispers into the ECB that there is a terrorist insurgence on board.

- When the train breaks down and you need to ‘talk to the train officer’. Unfortunately some commuters take train delays as reason enough to push the button and demand to know what’s going on, inadvertently worsening delays. A $5000 fine is well deserved for such counterproductive kancheong-ness. If Sticker Lady Samantha Lo had targetted ECB buttons instead of traffic lights, she could have saved us all a hell lot of time.

Don’t press until shiok, can

- When your lost child is trapped on the train. In 2012, Senior Manager Bernadette Low responded to a parent whose kid ran into a train without her by THANKING a female passenger for pushing the ECB so that the two can be reunited. Try explaining that to your boss if you’re late for a very important meeting. I think such parents need to pay a nominal ‘Lost and Found’ fee at least if it affects hundreds of passengers. Especially if it costs them a free ride.

Filed under: 1980s, 1990s, 2013, MRT, Violence | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Gwiyomi dance craze is too ‘act cute’

Posted on April 14, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘The next dance fad: Gwiyomi’, 14 April 2013, article by Kezia Toh, Sunday Times

A saccharine-sweet pop tune by a South Korean indie singer has inspired a rash of dance spoofs among K-pop stars. And Singaporeans are getting in on the act. Gwiyomi, a song released earlier this year by Hari, has sparked a popular repertoire of hand gestures.

Performed to the ditty’s lyrics of a girl asking her boyfriend never to leave her, the “gwiyomi” – which means “cutie” – involves index fingers pointing to puffed cheeks, and the miming of bunny ears and heart-shaped signs.

The final flourish? Six light kisses – one for each finger on one hand, and both thumbs.

…Gwiyomi early-adopter (Alvin) Chua says gwiyomi will probably not take off in the way that the “highertempo and more catchy” Gangnam Style did here.

“In countries such as Thailand or Taiwan, it seems to be the norm for girls to ‘act cute’,” he says. “Here in Singapore, they probably view it as being overly vain.”

Somewhere in North Korea a madman is threatening to kickstart nuclear Armageddon and his southern neighbours are not only unfazed by his warmongering, but acting cute with bunny ears and finger smooching, slowly turning the rest of the civilised world into a bunch of giggly pansies. Or maybe that is South Korea’s secret counter to the North’s ballistic aplomb all along; If the North get infected with this craze, you’ll see Pyongyang soldiers saluting their Leader with Nyan Nyat cat poses and too busy gwiyom-ing to start a fight. Either that or the entire nation, bred on austerity and grimness, will barf to death. I wonder if KFC is thinking of using the No. 6 sequence to reboot their ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’ campaign. Gwiyomi makes Madonna’s Vogue look like performance art.

Something about acting cute with gestures feels distinctly Japanese, and one can’t help but wonder if K-pop adopted this contagious cute overload from the ‘kawaii’ craze many years back. The Japanese equivalent of gwiyomi was used in 1987 to describe local celebrities with that wide-eyed, deep-dimpled innocence, whose gestures were easily described then as ‘childish’. Today, if you call a Hello Kitty or Gwiyomi hardcore fan ‘childish’, you’ll likely be torn to shreds by the K-pop army with a flurry of cat paws. When I did the Moonwalk in my primary school days, all I got were awe-struck faces. If I do Gwiyomi now, I risk getting a box of lollipops for the remainder of my birthdays.

Similar dance crazes have their roots in Japanese kawaii/anime culture. It has been more than a decade since we were hit by the ‘Para-para’ wave, made popular by Hongkong idol Aaron Kwok. Slighter lower on the ick factor, the para-para at least seems to be a better cardio workout than gwiyomi, though some have complained that it may affect the studies of obsessed teens and isn’t ‘part of our culture’.

Copycat fans like Alvin Chua above suggest that Singaporean girls may find gwiyomi embarrassingly ‘vain’, but I believe there is one group who may take to Gwiyomi as babies would pucker up their lips to the sight of a plump nipple: Mambo Jambo fans. Be warned, this is strangely hypnotic stuff.

You can see the similarities in the range of moves: The number pointing, palms to face, bang-bangs, heart shapes, fake yelling, pick-up-the-phone, sad-face, thumbs-up. All that face touching should prompt HPB to ramp up hand-washing campaigns, though this gwiyomi thing may be more infectious than the H7N9 bird flu. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see some of our MPs taking to gwiyomi as how they warmed up to Gangnam style. Tin Pei Ling is probably practising this is secret, without the Kate Spade box this time. Maybe our kindergartens are already using gwiyomi to teach nursery rhymes as we speak, adding an extra dose of cute to classics like Itsy Bitsy Spider or I’m a Little Teapot.

As social animals, we evolved finger-gesturing for the essential purpose of non-verbal communication before we learnt to even speak, whether as an act of aggression (Robert De Niro’s ‘I’m watching you’ in Meet the Parents), tongue-wagging play (Neh-ni-Neh-ni-Boo-Boo!), flirtation, triumph (V for victory), acknowledgment (thumbs up, OK), tribute to the devil (horns), or making pacts (pinkie-locks). It explains why the gwiyomi has universal  appeal; the perfect combination of cute, mimicry, synchronised playfulness and the ability to bring out the gurgling baby in all of us. God help us all.

There is, however, one solution to end this trend for good in Singapore: Steven Lim, you are our only hope.

Filed under: 1980s, 2013, Fun and games, Music/music videos, Singaporean women | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Pulau Ubin villagers paying rent to SLA

Posted on April 13, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘No plans to evict Pulau Ubin residents’, 13 April 2013, article by Eugene Neubronner, Today online

Contrary to online speculation and some media reports, the authorities yesterday clarified that “there are no plans to evict the households currently residing on Pulau Ubin or develop an Adventure Park on the island”. Issuing a joint statement, the Ministry of National Development (MND) and the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) reiterated: “The planning intention is to keep Pulau Ubin in its rustic state for as long as possible as an outdoor playground for Singaporeans. Given this, there is no need for the residents to move out.”

The speculation started after some residents on the island received a notice signed off by an official with the Housing and Development Board’s (HDB) Land Clearance Section, which carried the header “Clearance scheme: Clearance of structures previously acquired for development of Adventure Park on Pulau Ubin”. The authorities clarified that on March 12, the HDB, acting on behalf of the SLA, informed the residents of a census survey in Pulau Ubin. They added that these households had been informed as far back as 1993 that they would be affected by a public development project, which included the development of a recreation park.

“To align with the rustic nature of Pulau Ubin and its planning intention, outdoor adventure elements were included in the recreation park, for example, trails for cycling and hiking, campsites and amenities like shelters and toilets,” the MND and the SLA said.

…The MND and the SLA said that the affected houses sit on what is now state land, and the households were now residing on state land without the required Temporary Occupation Licence (TOL). If they wish to stay on, they would need to obtain a TOL and pay rent — generally pegged at market rate — to the SLA.

If you want a taste of true ‘kampung’ spirit, look no further than Ubin, often cited as the ‘last bastion’ of rustic, indigenous wilderness. 10 years ago you could spot leopard cats, hornbills and wild boars and bask in the nostalgic Old-World smell of chicken droppings. Thrill-seeking lovers could elope there to set up campfires, cook meals in mess-tins and get lost in mangroves without being marauded by eco-tourists and moutain bikers. But perhaps not for much longer, based on the revelations of the White Paper, as we are already seeing the gradual transformation of what was once an idyllic stone quarry sanctuary into Sentosa in one of her pre-casino incarnations, a ‘fun-in-the-sun’ getaway for fans of outdoor adventure.

The selling point of Ubin has always been a ‘rustic CHARM’, a ‘throwback’ to old Singapore, but history tells us that our relentless march towards progress will somehow squeeze every last drop of its kampung soul dry. Today it may be a bike park or OBS school, tomorrow a luxury beachside villa, and you could still call Ubin ‘rustic’, ‘raw and untouched’, even when this ‘charm’ has been reduced to a puny saltwater pond in some rich man’s backyard and the only fishermen you see on the island are the ones charging you for prawning rod and bait at a spa resort, or giving urban folk a demo of how to toss a fishing net in the visitors’ centre. A far cry from Ubin’s strange, astounding natural and social history, one that boasts of temple devotees of Barbie dolls, straying elephants from Johor, sightings of dugongs, monitor lizards as well as the site of a 1920′s Chinese secret society ritual.

According to Infopedia, an ‘expressway road and a Mass Rapid Transit rail system linking the mainland’ was planned for after the year 2030. As it is, Ubin already boasts a couple of resorts, including the Celestial Resort owned by Marine Country Club which aims to ‘give glitzy Sentosa’ a run for the money, where Singaporeans and can go unwind, enjoy lush greenery, and frolic around in wild lallang for a staycation . A 100 year old kampong house has also been refurbished as a Lonely Planet endorsed Cookery Magic culinary school, where you can make Nasi Kerabu with ‘jungle herbs’. Plans for an adventure park comes as no surprise really; it’s just a sweatier theme park with no rides, air-conditioning or Wi-fi, and has been talked about for decades. In 1996, then Minister of National Development Lim Hng Kiang announced that HALF of Pulau Tekong would be turned into a ‘recreational’ centre. I remember drinking fresh coconut from a dishevelled hut along one of the bike trails some years back. On my next trip to the island there could very well be a Gong Cha outlet in place of it.

Although the government hasn’t forced their hand YET, the slow creep of modernisation and tourism overspilling onto Ubin because of our mainland exploding at its seams may drive residents away from the maddening crowd sooner or later, with or without the additional rental fee. In 1989, S Jayakumar said that Ubin residents were ‘not immune to the law’, and if they were, ‘drug addicts and other criminals’ would be headed for the island. Ironically, the island once housed political detainee Lee Tee Tong in 1980, as well as a boatload of Vietnamese refugees in 1978.

So urban dwellers, time to grab your tumblers, hiking boots and mess tins, relish the last remains of a kampung island, and let’s all sing Dayung Sampan, shall we?

Filed under: 1920s, 1970s, 1980s, 2000s, 2013, Bureaucrats, Environment, Fun and games, Tourists | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Grow up, Ugly Affluent Westernised Singaporeans

Posted on April 12, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Time for the Ugly Singaporean to grow up’, 9 April 2013, ST Forum

(Dr George Wong Seow Hoon): IN VIEW of the increasing incidents of abusive behaviour towards health-care workers…it is time to examine why economic progress has brought with it the emergence of the “Ugly Singaporean”. Part of the reason is that many of our children are now brought up by maids, and they lack the strong cultural milieu to cultivate codes of good conduct.

Once they grow up, they treat nurses the way they treat their maids – because they know of no other way. When I was growing up, I was immersed in the culture and traditions of my grandparents, who made me read San Zhi Jing (Three-Character Classic), which taught Confucian morality.

My uncles and aunts told me stories from the Chinese classics of great men and heroes with outstanding conduct. These have influenced my thinking and conduct in later life. Now, some affluent, Westernised Singaporeans throw litter, abuse nurses and are road bullies.

…It is time for Singaporeans to grow up.

It’s been a while since I’ve heard anyone espouse ‘Asian values’, which typically encompasses concepts of hard work, compassion, humility and filial piety, though such forms of social behaviour are certainly not unique to the Asian society. China, in particular, the birthplace of San Zhi Jing, is among the worst culprits of pollution and global warming in the world, and the inconsiderate act of littering and destroying the planet has nothing to do with the fact that you’re a Confucian scholar, a ‘Westernised’ tycoon, or a homeless bum who poops on the streets.

Blaming the West as the Devil was regular rhetoric for MPs. In 1971, Inche Ghazali urged men to ‘point out gently and tactfully how ridiculous’ their womenfolk look wearing ‘indecent’ fashions of the West. The appearance of ‘Centrepoint kids’ in the 80s prompted Tang Guan Seng to blame ‘decadent Western fads’ for the erosion of our G-rated, homely values. He was also strongly against the ‘Western’ practice of addressing parents by their names, dumping the aged in retirement homes, and probably thinks the ‘Western’ tie as office attire is like wearing Satan’s noose around your neck.

Some male chauvinist pigs also like their partners to be like Samsui women, subservient, meek and not complaining and nagging too much which is a result of being ‘contaminated’ by the decadent West. Thanks to ‘Western influences’, our women have become opinionated, assertive and don’t ever want to treat us guys to a hot home-cooked meal and foot scrub after work anymore. Besides, I’m not sure if ancient China was the ideal pinnacle of Confucian ethics and selfless, epic heroics as it’s lauded to be. At least that’s not what Sex and Zen tells me.

There’s nothing morally superior about ‘Asian values’ as it’s a fallacy to blame Western affluence for all our ‘social ills’, be it teen pregnancy, homosexuality, premarital sex, Playboy magazine or Glee. There are, in fact, downsides to exaggerating your Confucian values, like ‘presentee-ism’, the loss of productivity that results when you’re obliged to report for work even when you’re sick.  The complainant telling Singaporeans to ‘GROW UP’ reeks of the stifling authoritarian hectoring of the stern, party-pooping patriarch who shuns Gangnam Style, skimpy bikinis and shrinking hemlines because he thinks these have all the ‘decadent’ hallmarks of cult-like Western glamour and spiralling moral decay.

You don’t have to be rich and English-speaking to be a total bastard of a customer, nor do you need to mediate under a bamboo tree and be handy with a calligraphy brush to be a responsible, civilised human being, regardless of which side of the globe you’re from. So here’s an adorable clip of an ang mo kid reciting San Zhi Jing. To a ‘Western-influenced’ bloke like me, it’s as impressive, yet meaningless, as memorising pi to 100 decimal places.

Filed under: 1980s, 2013, Environment, Singaporean men, Singaporean women | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

$300 million for Nassim Road good class bungalow

Posted on April 10, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Nassim road bungalow up for sale – at record $300m’ article by Esther Teo, 10 April 2013, ST

A LOCAL property tycoon is asking for up to $300 million for his Nassim Road bungalow – an astonishing amount that would easily make a record sale in Singapore. Owned by Mr Cheng Wai Keung, the chairman of listed developer Wing Tai Holdings, the two-storey home sits on a plum 85,000 sq ft elevated site in one of Singapore’s most exclusive enclaves.

…If it goes through, it would clearly be the biggest residential sale ever made here. Singapore’s largest bungalow transaction so far is believed to be a $87.5 million sale of a 291,000 sq ft parcel at Swettenham Road off Holland Road. It was made in an asset swop deal between Singapore Press Holdings and construction firm Lum Chang in 2001.

A sale price of $250 million to $300 million for the Cheng house would also eclipse what is believed to be the most expensive good-class bungalow sale made in the Nassim Road area in terms of psf price – a $47.8 million sale of a 23,922 sq ft site that worked out to $2,000 psf.

…A JLL survey found that with most other large plots on Nassim Road having been sub-divided, there are only five other freehold parcels on the road that have a land area of 80,000 sq ft or more now. Two are understood to be owned by the governments of Britain and Russia, and one by Brunei’s royal family.

The property owned by a member of the Brunei royal family, Arwaa Mansion (46B and 48 Nassim Road), was once touted as Singapore’s most expensive house back in 2008. At 110,000 sq feet, that works out to be roughly the area of 92 five-room flats combined. It was also the asset in contention amidst a legal tussle between Prince Jefri Bolkiah and BIA, his country’s investment agency. The man himself has been reported to use the house only up till 2000, and according to a Vanity Fair feature, appears to be somewhat of a notorious playboy who named one of his yachts ‘TITS’.

In 2006, Agus Anwar, an Indonesian businessman, bought a GCB for $28 million through his company Ridout Residence. Like the case of the Bruneian prince, he too was caught in a legal battle. As if it’s not enough that we’re allowing the mega-rich to eat up as much precious space as they want to while they gallivant elsewhere, it’s also curious how such ‘good class bungalows’ can belong to jetsetting multimillionaire foreigners when technically they should only be owned by Singaporeans or Singaporean PRs. Like Jet Li’s $20 million Binjai Rise GCB for instance, which when sold (if not already) could earn him the paycheck equivalent of at least 2 forgettable Expendables sequels.

So here we have, on elite real estate, 92 HDB flats’ worth of unoccupied space holding nothing but a sleazy princes’ extravagances or serving as a trophy in some rich celebrity’s real-life Monopoly game. Even those rare few Singaporeans who buy such houses mostly hold on to them as long-term investments. The original intention when the GCB zones were set aside in 1980 was to ‘retain their natural configuration and vegetation’ and ‘preserve such good environmental conditions’ in Singapore, nevermind if nobody actually stays in them. Meanwhile, outside these lush reservations where only rich folk can hold their posh champagne tea parties in, we’re decimating green spaces and cemeteries for condo developments, with many locals still struggling to find a decent home, ‘good-class’ or low-class. Well there’s always the way cheaper $2 million EC to settle for then.

Filed under: 1980s, 2000s, 2013, Money | Tagged: | 3 Comments »

Abortion destroys families and the nation

Posted on April 3, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Abortion destroys nation building’, 2 April 2013, Voices, Today

(Edmund Leong Meng Tsi): It is indeed “Time again to review abortion laws” (April 1), considering the long-term emotional harm on post-abortive women. Some of them are adversely affected and are easier to identify, as they suffer visibly. Much is known about the treatments for them.

Literature on abortion suggests that “unaffected” women harden their hearts instead. Cognitive dissonance hinders their ability to love properly because they had denied love to their closest kin through abortion, and yet must continue to extend love and show compassion to others throughout their lives.

They feared a tiny human so much as to eliminate it, and will subconsciously guard against bigger humans by building walls around their hearts. I believe that when the heart of the family is compromised, the entire family is affected. Emotional strains can tear families apart, and the effects can be passed to future generations.

Singapore’s nation-building efforts are inadvertently being foiled not only because 12,000 babies are aborted annually, but because women are offered an easy way out of adversity.

Abortion is biased towards self-interest by eliminating another’s interest, thereby destroying families and the nation. We must instead utilise all means to keep babies and their mothers alive, physically and emotionally. Adoption is the better choice.

The issue of legalised abortion has been fought over by pro-lifers, pro-choicers, feminists, religious folks, moral philosophers, doctors and politicians for ages, and we will probably never understand enough about the human consciousness or even what ‘life’ means to come to a consensus on the ‘rights and wrongs’ of terminating a ‘potential’ human being. So instead people focus on abortion as a matter of disrupting the natural order of how society traditionally grows. Even more so now that we’re facing a dearth of babies and on surface it would seem logical to assume that one unaborted baby equals to +1 population. If only it were that simple.

In the eighties, loss of babies who could be borne of educated couples was deemed a shame and a loss of productive citizenry. A writer known only as PGT lamented the loss of ‘educated genes’ which would have given rise to ‘smarter babies’. Husbands whose wives went for revenge abortions decried them for ‘the break up of an otherwise happy marriage and family relationship’. Our ‘over-liberal’ abortion laws would also supposedly encourage more people to ‘change bed-partners without any sense of responsibility’. The fact is we have been promiscuous and having unwanted babies way before surgical abortion even existed. The difference is being skewered with a blade on an operating theatre vs drinking some awful tasting folk remedy concocted by your witch-doctor that would scramble your foetus into a bloody pulp before you shed its mushy corpse out through your genitalia. Even today, you’d find dead or barely alive infants in toilets, rubbish chutes or buried in the ground. We always had a means of killing the unborn if we wanted to, with varying success, but nations didn’t get ‘destroyed’ and families still thrived.

If one could ‘destroy’ a nation by depriving it of babies and have abortion turning us all into promiscuous devil-may-care lunatics who scrimp on condoms, neither is it a good idea to have children borne out of mothers who wanted them eliminated out of their uteri in the first place. The simplistic answer to unloved babies would be adoption, but that’s assuming every rejected baby will automatically be shuffled away from a ‘hardened’, emotionless mother and nurtured in a warm, loving home where stepparents make them Eggs Benedict for breakfast everyday.

There are as many complications of reluctant birth as there are to terminating pregnancies. What if no one wants your baby? If your chronically depressed mother told you she had wanted to abort you but was forced to relent at the last minute, and she couldn’t find anyone to take over maternal duties because you were such an ugly infant with all sorts of respiratory problems, how would that make you feel? Even if you found yourself a home, what if your foster parents, though initially enthusiastic about the whole adoption thing, turn out to be really terrible people who wish they had picked someone else from the orphanage? What if you found out that you were conceived after your mother was gang-raped and she couldn’t bear to put you down? Neither choice is, as the writer proclaimed, an ‘easy way out of adversity’, nor do women who face the abortion dilemma necessarily FEAR that tiny human like it was the devil’s spawn. Tell that to the rape victim, the single unemployed mom with quintuplet foetuses, or the mother who realises her baby’s got a monstrous physical defect or severe Down’s syndrome.

We can do little about sex-starved teenagers and religious attitudes towards contraception, but it’ll take more than a nasty pre-abortion video, or haranguing anti-abortionist men who speak about post-abortion psyche as if they’ve been through it themselves, to keep the deaths of the unborn in check.

Filed under: 1980s, 2013, Babies, Funerals/Death, Parenting, Sex | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The disappearing of our hawker heritage

Posted on April 1, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Real chance of hawker heritage disappearing if young do not step up’, 1 April 2013, article by David Ee, ST

There is a real possibility that Singapore may one day lose its rich hawker heritage if the next generation of Singaporean hawkers do not replace our current veterans.

Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan acknowledged this at the inaugural Partners Forum on Monday which was attended by about 200 participants from schools, non-governmental organisations and businesses. Participants were invited at what is likely to be annual affair to talk about ways to build a sustainable and gracious Singapore.

“It’s easy to build (new hawker) centres,” he said. “But the key challenge is to find enough Singaporeans who’d be willing to enter this profession, which is a difficult, challenging one.”

The only sexy hawker in town

In a TNP commentary on a 22 year old female professional happily marrying a chicken rice seller, reporter Benita Aw Yeong quipped:

I grew up conditioned to believe that the path to success and financial security follows years of slogging in school followed by a degree and a good job in a posh office. Not sweating it out with my spouse in a hawker centre.

I’m not looking for a trophy boyfriend or husband, but introducing a blue-collar boyfriend to friends and family is a worrying prospect.

If you’ve a knack for hawkering, willing to work long hours and make the best bak chor mee in the land, there is no question that the job will earn you a decent living as your own boss, but if the above statement is to be believed, you should also be prepared to remain single for the rest of your life. Perhaps it’s not so much the hardship factor that drives young Singaporeans away from a trade that was once associated with the underprivileged and poor, but that it’s just not ‘glamorous’ enough. If a Singaporean child shows signs of displaying the slightest interest in frying char kway teow, the typical parent would stow away his masak-masak kits and hook him up to a plastic stethoscope instead.

It’s not the first time that the government has tried to instill some prestige into hawkers. In 1989, stallholders received a laughable call to ‘dress up’ and were warned that the wearing of attire such as shorts, singlets, slippers and wooden clogs should no longer be the accepted norm. There were even suggestions of a standard uniform to project a ‘good image’, believing that if a hawker comes to you dressed like the butler of the mansion holding a bowl of  fishball noodles, your kid would want to be like him too. It wasn’t like this in the 1970′s, when the government felt that policies to promote hawking amid throes of unemployment such as licence subsidies resulted in ‘many able bodied young men’ pursuing hawking as a full-time job rather than being more productive elsewhere. Today, these same young men are being seduced by the Ministry to keep hawker centres alive. It’s a little like our Stop at Two campaign, proof that the surefire way of killing an endearing part of our heritage is to have the government step in trying to save it.

Nothing screams romantic ‘blue-collar’ in pop culture like the hawker persona.  In Eric Khoo’s 1995 film Mee Pok Man, a humble hawker falls for a prostitute. 2000′s Chicken Rice War, about rival hawker families, was a self proclaimed parody of Romeo and Juliet. In countless local movies and dramas, the hawker character is often depicted as a slovenly, unshaven, bucktoothed, happy-go-lucky, simple-minded, Hokkien-spewing bumpkin with a white towel draped around his sweaty neck which doubles up as a fly swatter. If you’re the kind of girl who adores French and literature, you’re unlikely to find the man of your dreams flipping carrot cake off a greasy wok.

By typecasting hawkers from movies to National Day videos, we’re comforting ourselves that despite our lust for progress, there are still those among us still holding on to local culinary traditions and skills handed down from one generation to another. But more importantly, hawker food is one of the few reasons people even visit Singapore, and we are goners if every single one of these became converted into air-conditioned food courts dishing out nothing but mixed economical rice. Or if the hokkien mee seller with the straw hat gets replaced by the ‘hawkerpreneur’ who mixes it up with French and Western influences. It’s not hawker fare anymore; it’s bargain fine dining. It explains Vivian Balakrishnan’s urgency about ‘hawkership’ dying off, a horn that he has been tooting ever since 2011 when he felt that hawker centres should be ‘professionalised’ to attract the younger generation. Till today, he has yet to sell the hawker profession to the Singaporean woman, who would willingly have a one-night stand with a buff carwash attendant, but not a man who comes to bed smelling like pork lard.

Filed under: 1980s, 2013, Hawkers, Local food, Money, Singaporean women | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

SIA steward arrested for smuggling heroin

Posted on March 24, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘SIA steward arrested in Sydney for alleged drug offence’, 24 March 2013, article by Ng Jing Yng, Today

A Singapore Airlines (SIA) cabin crew member was arrested last Sunday at Sydney International Airport after he allegedly tried to bring in 1.6kg of heroin.

Nicholas Tan Ngat Liang, 50, was a leading steward who was believed to be on duty during the flight from Singapore to Sydney. In response to TODAY’s queries, a spokesperson from the Australian Federal Police confirmed that a 50-year-old Singaporean was arrested on Sunday and has been charged with “importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug, namely heroin”. “The man was arrested for attempting to import 1.6kg of heroin into Australia,” the spokesperson said.

In Australia, the offence carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and/or an A$825,000 fine (S$1.1 million). Tan’s case was first mentioned in a New South Wales court on Monday.

It’s not reported how Tan carried his stash, all 1.6kg of it, but he is only one of several  Singaporeans who have tried their luck with drug trafficking Down Under.

In 2008, a Singaporean drug mule was caught by Australian authorities with 91 packets of heroin in his stomach (net weight 286 g of heroin), and was forced to defecate the goods over 2 days in a hospital. In 2009, two of our countrymen were raided whilst in a taxi carrying $4.5 million worth of the stuff. Last year, one was caught by Melbourne police smuggling 5kg of the same substance in a heap of Chinese books, while another 2 Singaporeans were charged for stowing 4.5kg of it in a vehicle and a service apartment (Sydney). The most sensational Aussie drug bust to date involving a Singaporean was that of Tan Wee Quay, who was part of a North Korean ‘Pong Su’ ploy to ship in 150kg of heroin in 2003.  According to reports, he was born in the ‘Golden Triangle’ and once blasted his way (with the help from some friends in the heroin business) out of a Danish prison in 2001. He was sentenced to 24 years imprisonment and remains there till this day, being ‘held in high regard’ for his skills as an interpreter. Tan would have been gone in a whiff if he was caught in his home country.

At the rate of our own citizens being hauled up by Aussie police, the perception of government-fearing, law-abiding Singaporeans making perfect drug mules doesn’t hold anymore, even if you’re part of our prestigious airline crew. In the 1980′s, SIA crew members were detained for suspected smuggling of GOLD, once in Seoul, and another incident in Kathmandu. But bad behaviour wasn’t restricted to sneaking in illicit drugs or precious metals. In 2008, A PILOT captain was snared for having child pornography on his laptop (again in Australia, Adelaide to be precise). A chief and leading steward were arrested in Denmark for using a passenger’s credit card to go on a shopping spree in 1982. In 1995, steward Zaini Jeloni was charged for the rape and murder of his female colleague (and alleged lover), Chang Yu, in Los Angeles. There’s even a hint of the paranormal about Chang Yu’s murder and some spooky association with the SQ006 crash in 2000, Taipei (the deceased was of Taiwanese descent).

Maybe it’s the long hours spent airborne and psychological stress of jetlag, or the wrangling over salary and leave entitlements that have plagued the airline of late that drives some SIA personnel to desperation and wilful wrongdoing.  If I were a jetsetting cabin crew myself, I would imagine my experience with immigration checkpoints giving me an edge in couriering contraband too. But why Australia, with its hefty penalty of life imprisonment and its experience in apprehending Singaporeans? The last count of Singaporeans in Australia stands around 50,000. Nobody knows how many of those residing are dope fiends or crime lords, but if you’ve got connections, and you’re an extreme risk-taker at your wits’ end, Australia was probably still a better bet than, say, the chance of execution by firing squad in Vietnam.

Incidentally, Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van was hanged in Changi Prison in 2005 (the first to be executed in more than a decade) for carrying 400g of heroin into the country. Tan Ngat Liang had 4 times that amount with him in Sydney.

Filed under: 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2013, Drugs, Funerals/Death, Justice system/Lawsuits, Sex, Singapore Airlines, Violence | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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