A tragic hole

I still remember this little hole in the 60s, the hole that I crawled out before being buried in it. The parents were all illiterate coolies cramming into little cubicles with 10 or more in a family. Life was simple and without any aspiration. It was just living, working and sleeping. Many dropped out of schools in their pre teens and ended as kopi kias or kopitiam helpers. That was their fate if they failed in school. Never mind, just get a job and get on with life. The next phase of life for these ignorant and illiterate boys and girls was to get married and have children. They got married before they were 20, some at 18. It was time for big celebration. The following year would be parenthood time. At those juvenile age, it did not need much imagination as to what they knew was installed for them. The parents were around to help in the mothering of the new borns. And there went another chapter of their lives, cut out to replay the tragedy of their parents once again. Don't expect their children to be much better than these boy/girl father and mother. Fortunately with education and higher literacy, these things of the past are getting lesser today. These people are not helping themselves. But were they happy? I think they didn't know. It was just living, working and making babies and that was it. Surprisingly not all failed. A few ended up as contractors and became successful! I see it as a big gamble with many losers and few isolated winners.

Poverty and underprivilege are not exclusive to any race

Rewind back to the 1950s and 60s, the better off racial group was the Eurasians, partly because of their European heritage and ancestry, and partly because they were the next closest to the colonial masters in language skills and cultural affinity. The Malays, Indians and Chinese were all in the same boat, all ekeing a living as best as they could. In terms of housing, the Malays were living in quite spacious kampong houses while the non Malays were squeezed in cubicles in their respective town enclaves. Many Malays in the East Coast/Eunos areas were land owners if I am not mistaken. Came independence, everyone was literally on the same starting block, and the field was level to all. The English Language was the neutral instrument for all to learn and level up. The Malays enjoyed free schooling while the non Malays must be the poorest of the poor to be granted free schooling. In those years, the Malays received the most assistance from the govt vis a vis the other races. Why, after 45 years of independence, the socio economic divide between the Malays and the rest became a gulf? The other races did not get any special assistance from the govt in schooling or in the English Language. And they are not blaming the govt for not being able to keep up with the other races. Why are the Malays still asking for govt assistance as a necessary condition to be able to keep up, that without govt assistance, they are destined to fall behind, to be disadvantaged? As of today, there are proportionally as many poors among the Chinese and the Indians as the Malays. They soldier on, to compete with whatever they have. Some will make it, some will not. The field was never made uneven to their advantage. Some couldn’t cope with the mother tongue requirement and had emigrated. The mother tongue problem is especially more serious among the Chinese than the other races, as many Chinese could not speak their mother tongue, which incidentally was never Mandarin. Mandarin was a foreign language to many of them. It was not to their advantage to learn Mandarin. It was a very tough obstacle unlike the Malays coping with Bahasa. Assistance from the govt is a great help. But without assistance from the govt, life goes on. How and why are the Malays falling behind?

Not a mindset issue

Ridzwan Dzafir wrote a book encouraging the Malays to change their mindset to climb the educational and socio economic ladder. This is the same advice that the other communities, including the Chinese, have been told by the govt. What the Malay doyen was saying is a conventional wisdom. One needs to help himself to climb the socio ladder. There is no short cut. This elicited a reply from an Abdul Shariff Aboo Kassim in the Saturday paper. It is easier said than done. In our highly competitive educational system, the playing field is not level. The rich, with their resources, can do that much more to help their children. The poorer parents, ‘even with financial assistance, could not match the investment made by richer ones.’ I agree that the poorer families are at a disadvantage. But not all is lost. Personally I too grew up financially very disadvantaged, socially and academically handicapped in a very poor quarter of the society. I crawled all the way back, without any tuition or assistance from anyone, not even my parents or kin. Then came my children. They too did not benefit from any tuition or special conditioning to assist them in their studies. They went through schools as any average family children did. The only thing we did was to be at home, no drug taking, no clubbings, no havoc and heavy drinking or partying and leaving them at home on their own. We were just there as parents, to keep the family functional and intact. We provide the emotional and psychological support. I have witnessed many well off families with plenty of tuitions but not benefiting their children. The only advantage they really had was to pay for their degrees from an overseas university as they were not good enough for a place in the local universities. Poorer families are disadvantaged but not to the point that it is beyond hope, that they need a miracle to do well. I think any above average students with enough parental care and encouragement should be able to climb the academic ladder on their own. A little assistance would be welcomed, but without them is not the reason for their under performance academically. There are enough assistance schemes for those who need them. Poverty and underprivileged are not the exclusive rights of the Malay community.

Properties are up for grabs

Melvin Chua, a businessman, sold his 4rm flat in Jalan Membina for $550K and bought a 5rm for $638K. He only needs to top up $88K for a bigger flat. No sweat for a successful businessman. Sales of HDB flats have surged due to demand from young couples, upgraders, downgraders and PRs. It looks like the prices of properties will continue to rise, fuelled by demands from people who can afford them. The prices must therefore be reasonable. In the facing page of the ST was an article by Fiona Chan asking whether the property rally is sustainable? I can simply answer that with an affirmative yes. The pool of flats built by HDB is stable, no new flats are being built unless they have been booked in advance. This is a new concept compare to the old when flats were built ahead of demand leading to oversupply at times. And if the locals are not there buying, the huge influx of PRs and new citizens will be there to make up for the slack. We need them to shore up the CPF scheme. Anyway, what is $500k or $600k? Jet Li bought a bungalow for $14m or $16m. And in the Life page there is a huge bungalow of 7,500 sq ft sitting on 16,000 sq ft of land or the equivalent of 15 5rm HDB flats. The value could be more than Jet Li's. The PR hedge fund manager owner did not disclose the price but it is a handsome house in the choicest corner of Singapore. The rich are living very well here. And so are the average Singaporeans in their affordable 5rm flats. Those who cannot afford it, the losers, need not fear. The govt will look into their needs and build more affordable 2 and 3 rm flats to suit their pockets. And for the real losers, there will be more rental flat built specially just for them. Actually we should not be wasting our time talking about the losers. They make their lives that way, lazy, stupid, and failed to seize the golden opportunities to make more money to buy bigger and affordable flats or landed properties. Shall we say good riddance?

Not too long ago

I wonder how many of you remember the school days when a bus from the Institute of Health would arrive at the school weekly to fetch students for dental treatment. All the scalings, extractions, fillings and dentures were provided free to the students. And after each treatment, the bus would send the children back to schools, all the time accompanied by a nurse. It must be a very costly operation as there were many schools and many school children needing dental care. Those were the early years of our nationhood when the country was not that rich. But we could afford it. It was govt taking care of the people. Today, we don't even bat an eyelid for losing hundreds of billions. But healthcare is no longer free and no longer cheap. We could not afford it. Or it would lead to abuses, the country will go broke. Strange tale isn't it.