collecting donation an enterprising biz

Repeated calls were made to the homes of Goh Kian Huat to donate to the NUS Alumni to help needy students. 'For the past three weeks, members of my family have been receiving calls from the Alumni Office asking why I had not responded to their request. It appears that NUS is aggressively trying to raise funds from alumni.' But the methodology is so frighteningly familiar. To be able to make so many calls requires manpower and resources. According to Goh Kian Huat's article, 'The NUS was corporatised in March and is now a limited company...there is more pressure for it to operate like a commercial entity, with making profit as its main objective.' All sounded too familiar. There was once an organisation that made collecting donation a commercial business, employing a huge full time staff just to make calls to donors to make donations. I just hope NUS Alumni is not taking the same road.

daylight robbery?

Daylight Robbery 'On Sat, on my way to Vivi City for the first time, I made a wrong turn - I followed the road sign - into the road leading to Sentosa. I told the girl in the booth about it, but was told I had to pay $2 to make a U turn. This is ridiculous, day light robbery.' By Cheo Liew Kiat No this is no robbery. This is Singapore, the unthinking part, the no thinking part, the rule that justifies the means.

a time of peace and love

Christmas is a time of peace, love, giving and sharing. Though the weather was bad across the world, nothing like the tsunami of 2004. There were some cheers and gloomy dark clouds. But a tsunami of a different kind is brewing. Below is a short article which I copied from littlespeck.com which says anything but the above. And if violence befallen on the owners of the article, I think they deserve it. Iran's president Punked by Danish group 'Sympathetic' ad published in Tehran press insults Ahmadinejad with hidden message. WorldNetDaily.com Dec 24, 2006 Less than a year after Danish cartoonists ignited protests across the Muslim world with their depictions of Muhammad, another group from that country has risked offending Iran's president by calling him a "swine" in a hidden message included an advertisement that got past censors and editors at the Tehran Times. Surrend, a Danish art group that targets world leaders, successfully submitted an advertisement to the newspaper that, at first glance, expressed support for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The half-page ad, submitted under the name of "Danes for World Peace," features a picture of Ahmadinejad and a series of statements sympathetic to his regime: Support his fight against Bush, We are also tired of Bush, Iran has the right to produce nuclear energy, No US aggression against any country, and Evil US military stay home. Surrend's members told the editors they wanted to express their solidarity with Iran and make amends for the publication of cartoons of Muhammad published in their own country, reported the German daily, Der Spiegel. But what the advertising editors at Tehran Times missed was that the first letter of each phrase formed an acrostic that, top to bottom, spelled "S-W-I-N-E." On it's website, Surrend describes itself as a "street-art group" that was started in the winter of 2006 "during the funeral of Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milosevic." "The idea behind Surrend is to make fun of the world's powerful men," the group proclaims, through the use of "stickers, ads and posters with ironic texts as its expression medium." Despite listing only two members – Jan Egesborg and Pia Bertelsen – Surrend plans projects that will require "20 different travels," having already targeted authoritarian leaders with their pranks in Serbia, Belarus, Turkey, Poland, Sri Lanka, Faroe Islands and, now, Iran.

When you invite wolves into your home

The last few weeks we have heard the foreign talents calling us silly and shallow, even printed in the main stream media for every Singaporean to read. Now they are even beating up Singaporeans in our own country. If things are not put into proper perspective and the foreigners made to know that they are here as guest workers, by our grace and generosity, tomorrow Singaporeans may fear for their own safety walking in our streets. Just watch these two clips. Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx0iszVuLKw Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-mRTKC_sz4

Western high and mighty justice and ethics

The Professor Simon Shorvon case is another glaring example of what Western justice and high ethics are all about. They decide their own rights and justice. Small and weak countries have no rights to their justice and ethics. Simon Shorvon's unethical and unprofessional practices in Singapore, ie, 'recruiting patients and altering their medications without their informed consent or the knowledge of their neurologists' were serious ethical and professional breaches. Singapore Medical Council(SMC) sacked him only to find him appointed in the prestigious University of London College and National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, London. Such serious violations of professional and ethical conducts in an important field of medical sciences cannot be allowed in any civilised world. It can only be practised in third world countries on third world patients by first world eminent professors. The third world people, govt and patients have no right to a little decency. That is what the case is all about. And the SMC has a duty and responsibility to see such disgraceful acts be made known to prevent further repeats of the violations. However, the British General Medical Council(GMC) had turned down SMC's request for a public inquiry on technical grounds. And they conveniently ruled that SMC was only an informant and not complainant and thus 'the GMC owed no duty of subservience ot the SMC' to inform the SMC of its decision. The issue here, to the British, is a case of subservience to a small country. For its pride as a big country, it refused to hear a complaint from a small country to be seen as subservient. It brushed aside the more important issues of professional breaches of conduct and ethics. This is the kind of Western justice that the rest of the world had lived with for centuries. But for a declining power, a small power like Britain today, they can no longer rule away their hypocrisy. And should Singapore and the rest of the world send their students to the University of London when such misconduct lives among their eminent academic community? And this also applies to the University of Birmingham.