Myth 137

Li Ao is Right Yes he is right. Singaporeans are stupid. This is no longer a myth. After assessing all the debates in the media, it is conclusively proven that Singaporeans in general are stupid. And many Singaporeans will quietly concede to this truth. And those who still refuse to acknowledge this truth are the not stupid one. They are even more stupid than the average Singaporeans. For they still did not know that they are stupid. But I am saying that only the Singaporeans in general are stupid. There is of course a very small group of Singaporeans that are smart like hell. And the smarter this group becomes, the stupidier the rest of the Singaporeans will be. Their smartness is directly proportional to the dumbness of the rest of the Singaporeans. Now, anyone going to disagree with my observation?

a monetary perception

The media flashed a picture of Hsien Loong at the Yahoo HQ flanked by Jerry Yang and David Filo. My immediate impression is S$3m flanked by several hundred million US$. Now that is an extraordinary picture. A head of govt being dwarfed by two young men running an information exchange system in terms of income.

Private sector salary benchmark

The professionals are expecting a revision of their salary. The doctors, except for a few exceptionally well paid specialists, are also staring at their low income vis a vis other professions. In terms of training hours put in, the medical profession is the longest, each spending about 10 years of post secondary education to become a specialist while other professions can make do with 4 to 6 years. They are justified to expect salary in the same level as the accountants and lawyers. And in the medical, engineering or technology fields, the advancement in science and medical knowledge comes in leaps and bounds and it is a strenuous process to keep up with the new knowledge. Not that accountants and the legal professionals are stagnated and have little to keep up with. There are changes and new developments. But the volume of changes is very little compare to the medical and other fields. And the doctors are eyeing the ministerial pay as the benchmark for their salary increment. Knowing the brilliant minds of the doctors, they cannot miss a good thing. The formula is crafted by the top talents of the island and is near to flawless. It is as perfect as it can be. And if one is a beneficiary of the formula, it is almost guaranteed to go one way, up, up and away. The probability of it coming down is at most 0.1%. And this can only happen if there is a world wide depression. Will the doctors get their benchmark? Can they use the same logic and reasonings like they will become corrupt if they cannot get their benchmark? Or can they argue that the medical industry will go to the gutters? Or can they say that the nurses will end up as nurses in neighbouring developing countries earning peanuts? I bet the doctors will be smart enough to come up with more logical justifications that are seen as reasonable. And one reason they can give is that if their salary is not raised, the profession will not be able to attract the top talents into their fold. And many will be poached by top medical facilities around the world.

Myth 136

Just feel like telling a successful Singaporean story. This is about a successful Singaporean's rag to riches story. He was a self made man, building a successful business into a little conglomerate. And at every Annual Dinner and Dance for this employees he would make his happy speech of how he arrived. He told his weird philosophies and his employees clapped and cheered. He shared his distorted logics and reasonings, and they nodded their heads in appreciation. He illustrated his speeches with anecdotes and jokes and they loved them and gave him a standing ovation. But as all good things would come to an end, his business failed and his business was taken over. He was still invited to the company's annual dinner as a very important guest. And the employees took turns to speak on stage. They ridiculed him and joked about his silly wisdom and logics in front of everyone, right in his face. He could not believed what he heard. They all sounded so right during his time of glory, and his employees loved them. Why were they telling him a different thing altogether, and actually telling him that all the time he was talking nonsenses and they were only tolerating him because he was the boss. It is a different story when one is no longer the boss man.

The price of instant population

While everyone is falling asleep, or under severe dosage of feeling good pep pills, that everything will be fine, the problems that new immigrants are going to bring along with them here are beginning to simmer. The fault lines are appearing. These new immigrants are very different from the early immigrants of our forefathers who came here desperate, ignorant and illiterate, and will accept anything that the local authorities threw at them, including curtailment of their basic human rights. The modern immigrants are suave, well educated, affluent and demanding. Couple with a swell headed ego that the govt has bestowed upon them as foreign talents to save us from our impending doom, it is not surprising that they are demanding that the island must adapt to their ways of life and their expectations. They will bring along, other than their wealth and talents, their idiosyncracies and peculiar lifestyles, their religions, language and culture, and everything that means something to them but may be odd or make them look like oddballs to what we have built. And they are going to demand, make demands that we give way to them. They will want their own ministers, their mayors or village chiefs, their schools and language, their culture, to be carved into the main stream of our society. We must not kid ourselves that they are going to be very pleasant and compliant. The latter is a virtue of the locals. They are still new and relatively small in numbers today, but all the signs are there of what the locals can expect of them. And given time and numbers, these foreign talents, more articulate, rich, and thinking too highly of themselves, are going to exert a lot of pressure on their poorer, submissive and less talented locals. If we are not careful, we are sowing the seed of future dissents and discords within our society. If we are going to march ahead, filled with delusions that everything will be well managed and controlled, it is prudent that we set out clear guidelines as to how far we are prepared to bend ourselves to meet the demands of new citizens. We must insist now that new immigrants accept the sacred pillars that we used to build our society and nation, the primacy of the English Language and the three other official languages and that no one is allowed to challenge these basic premises. All new citizens must accept what we are and build their lives around them and not to change what we have taken so long to build. These must be the very first conditions explained to them before they take up citizenship. And if they think this is not what they want, they should go somewhere else. We must not reach a stage when new citizens are arrogant enough and have the audacity to tell the local borns to get lost if they are unhappy with their demands. This should be the right of the citizens to demand from potential citizens. If I don't even believe in Him who had sacrificed his son, why should I believe in any ordinary man?