Perfect ending to a perfect storm

After 7 months of thorough investigations the MAS has come out with its findings and punishments for the minibond fiasco. The investigation was done very objectively and the three objects that were found to be the cause of the financial storm were financial institutions, training and toxic products. And the punishment was to ban the toxic products and the financial institutions from selling them. No human is at fault and no one will be made a scapegoat. Thank god.

A little bit history

Many of you may not remember the days when the majority in this island was discriminated. Yes it happened. It was an anomaly of history which escaped the notice of many, and many today took it for granted that the majority in power is a norm and will be here to stay, forever. During the colonial days, the masters called the tune. The ruling class and its coterie of officers monopolized all the govt offices, including big western corporations and banks. Key appointments were held by the British and the English speaking elite comprising mainly the Eurasians and those imported from the East India Company. Forget about the Chinamen, they could not speak English and looked funny with their slant eyes. Or maybe it was the British form of meritocracy and the Chinamen were not meritorious enough. When self govt was returned to the locals, all the high offices were naturally taken over by those from Her Majesty Services, filling the positions vacated by the British. The majority Chinese were in the peripheral of the govt. They were either in commerce for the richer ones, semi skilled craftsmen or small time hawkers, and the rest odd job labourers. They were thus grossly under represented in high govt offices. When the PAP govt took over, this state of affair continued for several years with key govt appointments continued to be dominated by the minorities. It took several decades to moderate this historical discrimination and a more representative govt service based on the population profile. But in so doing, many of the Eurasians who were favoured by the colonial govt left for Australia. That was how things were then. Would the majority be discriminated against one day? Given the twist and turn of history, anything is possible.

Planning a City for Crawlies

I watched the news last night and was very impressed with what SBS is trying to do to help the wheelchaired commuters. They have a special point with a button to press and the bus will come to the entrance of that point to pick up wheelchaired commuters. It was so convenient and so pleasant for these commuters. Along HDB estates, new hand railings have sprung up all over the walkways for the oldies to grab as their crawl along their ways. We can expect 300k or 400k of the 70s to 90s in the next 20 years, crawling all over the place. Some will wheelchair into buses or MRTs to have a swing in Orchard Road, some jogging in the parts on their wheelchairs, and many going to work, to their offices, if they are still employable. Yes, we are going to have crawlies everywhere, not the vibrant young things in their fanciful gears and makeups. We are ageing as a population. I too will be one of the crawlies. Actually there could be a few hundred thousands even now. Surprising thing is that not many are seen crawling around. Are we expecting them to appear suddenly in the next few years to swarm the city? 200 wheelchairs queuing for the buses at the interchange at any one time. How many buses will have to be at the designated pick up points and how long will it take to clear the queue? The parks, shopping malls, HDB void decks, all littered with crawlies? Possible? I think I will be content to sit in front of a terminal banging away and enjoy a cup of kopi. The only thing that will still be active and have some energy to do so will be the little ones, the fingers, and a few grey and dying cells in between the ears. I really cannot believe that the 80s and 90s will be so itchy to be crawling all over the places. They will only pose a safety and security problem to themselves. We haven't seen or heard any mugging of the oldies yet, except by their children. It may happen, daily, if they offer themselves too freely and easily.

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?