the meek shall inherit the world

my rumbling continues. china and india are today a force to be reckoned with, all because of their own weaknesses. a hungry mass of humanity that prepares to work for a pittance. we pride our world best workers and wanted to be paid world best wages. that became our weakness. during the time of the japanese occupation, the weak and meek survived by being compliant with the power of the day. the heroes and fighters died. america today is being dragged to its own destruction because of its might. the weak islamic terrorists and arabs find strength in their weaknesses to take on the mighty americans and the world. the strong is weak and the weak is strong. what a contradiction.

this world is perfect...perfectly flawed.

there are people who believe that this world is perfect and man is or was perfect. but i still believe this world is flawed and man is flawed. and there is no perfection in this world. in the same way there is no perfect political or economic system, no perfect religion or political philosophy. our system of authoritative paternalism has its good and bad points. so does the american capitalism and freedom of speech, so does the communist system of state control and equal distribution of wealth. the strength of each system is also its weakness. the stronger the strength the weaker it is. the world is created for self destruction as a means of self renewal. every system fails eventually. if only we can have a bit of communism, a bit of paternalistic authoritarianism and a bit of freedom and capitalism in the right dosage and combination. but it will not be. all will come to an end and there will always be a new beginning and a new hope. a new hero and a new world. we will be destroyed by what we perceived and believed as our greatest strength.

it is time we cast aside our imitation psyche

singaporeans have climbed the mount everest, crossed the antartic, swam the english channel, etc to follow others in their great achievements, that we have arrived to challenge the world. we want to win the world cup. we want more medals in competitions. but all we did were imitations. we only follow the footpath of others. we are still not there if we dare not beat our own path and find our own ways to the future. why can't we shout to the world that a singaporean has swam from the southern tip of the asia continent to indonesia? we can start from changi to batam....singapore is at the southern tip of continent asia. or why can't we write a page for a man to swim the malacca straits or crossing the malacca straits? forget about feats like being banged or banging chickens. is cheap recognition what we craved for, that we are willing to pay for? lets do something of our own, something that we can call our own. they said we must make a difference. let's make it different.

who guards the guards?

narayana narayana wrote in the today paper raising the question 'who guards the guards' in the case of the sgx. the problem is obvious and permeates through all levels of our society. and nobody wants to know about it. call it whatever names, this sickness is a sickness that we will pay dearly in times to come. we do not need murphy's law to tell us that what can go wrong will go wrong. the cracks are appearing everyday. the next stage of our history and development will be how to patch or coverup all the wrongs that irritatingly keep popping up. when the rot starts, it always starts small, with one or two presumably innocent mistakes or slip ups. but it will pour like torrential rain without warning and sweep away everything. everything that is built on weak foundation or false premises will be torn away.

many angry letters on $5000 fine

the publicly perceived and inadequate fine for a deserter from national service is still boiling from the number of angry letters that have been received and published today. it is like stacking a deck of wooden bricks and someone gently pulled out a piece from the bottom. the integrity of the whole structure is weakened and threatens to collapse if nothing is done to prop it up and the damage corrected. 35 years of hardwork building up an institution for national defence is undermined by a careless decision.