The convenient lies of liars

In the last few days many would have been familiar with the phrase, ‘I am speaking in my own capacity’, or ‘I am writing in my own capacity’. See, what do these phrases mean? It’s elementary. They are saying that in their own private or personal capacity this is their view, this is what they think or will say. And, if they are speaking or writing on behalf of an organisation or in a non personal capacity, they will say differently, their views will not be the same.

So which is their real view, the one when representing an organisation with a title stuck on it, or the one that has no title but just their names? One must be a distorted or untrue views, or a lie or a half truth isn’t it? Or is it about political correctness?

Heheheh, I am writing this in my own private capacity. What do you think?

A walk into the recent past

Throw back to the 40s, 50s, or even early 60s, there were probably a million people here, or lesser in the 40s. Many were stateless, new migrants allowed to work but no citizenship status. They just fended for themselves under the colonial administration that would be very happy as long as there was no problem from the population of migrants. The migrants knew their station in life and kept to themselves, away from the law, and just worked and lived.

The long arm of the law was thin and short. Land was aplenty, state land, neglected land or untended land everywhere, officially owned by the colonial Govt. The migrants came and looked for a place to stay. Many were herded into the cubicles of Chinatown for the Chinese while the Indians would have their own appointed corner in the island. I was at Thian Hock Keng a couple of days ago and could not imagine that some 80 years ago my parents were standing in front of ‘Ma Cho’ praying at the very same spot that I stood before settling down in this island.

They were not so fortunate but braved the uncertainties and unknown, moved to the foothill of Mount Faber where a Malay kampong Radin Mas stood. At the fringes of the kampong they simply erected a hut from whatever wood available and there was instant home. Many migrants did just that, built themselves a home on any vacant land they could find, away from the kampongs or towns. And there were plenty of land all over the island. After sometimes they would become owner or official tenants of their huts. The ‘teh gus’ would come to register their huts and a official address was given, and that was it. It was like finder’s keepers. I think in the early days there was a law that said once a person occupied a land, built his hut, and lived there after some years, then the land became his, or something like that. It was like choped choped, but not with tissue papers.

And this was not too long ago. The early years of colonial Singapore when the island was too large to administer and too few people to fill up the vacant land. Land was not scarce like today. It is all relativism. Try imagine 2030. Everything will be scarce except people in this island.

Friends at Hong Lim Spring

Below are a couple of photos of some friends that I met at Hong Lim during the protest rally on 6 Feb.

Robbers complaining about robbers

‘Experts call for reform of healthcare financing system’. This is the headline of an article of a forum of prominent doctors calling the govt to do more to reform the healthcare financing structure and spend more. They said the govt is not spending enough with ‘Singapore’s core financing system of the “3Ms” covered just 15 per cent of total healthcare expenditure.

So they want the govt to pay more, raise the 15 per cent. Is this the real problem? No matter how much the govt is going pay for healthcare, if the cost of healthcare is not brought down, just like housing prices, it is as good as a dog chasing its own tail. The more the govt pays, the higher the insurance and its payout, the higher will be medical cost. As long as someone is paying, it is good reason to say it is affordable and the fees can just keep going up ala housing prices.

This classical circular logic has been enshrined into the most corrupt financial system in the USA. What cock is this nonsense? Didn’t they know what is happening to the American and European healthcare system? Are they going to repeat the same shit here, keep chasing up the cost of insurance and govt subsidies only to raise fees higher?

Who is going to benefit in this shitty situation and who ultimately pays for all the shit?

Why are we paying so much for education system?

There was an article being circulated recently on why employers here preferred foreign graduates or foreign talents rather than local graduates. To put into perspective, the local graduates are from three branded universities that ranked pretty high in all the fictitious ranking systems that you can think of. And the foreign graduates are those locals that cannot get a place in our local prestigious universities and went overseas to second or third rate universities. And the foreign talents that came to take over the places of local graduates are mostly from third world universities that are not even listed among the top universities in the world. And to make matter worst, and more sickening, many of these foreign talents actually got a piece of paper from some degree mills or bought from a back lane without going through universities.

And we claim to have some of the best universities in the world, lectured or tutored by the best academics, and great exchanges with foreign graduates here and in overseas exchange programmes, but somehow still found lacking and not up to the mark.  What is going on?

The Govt is paying billions to attract the best academics from around the world, game the ranking systems to stay among the top universities. There are also many joint campuses with reputable foreign universities. For the money spent, what is the Govt trying to achieve? To produce a Newton or an Einstein, or to rank high in university rankings or to produce graduates that employers shunned?

Does the Govt need to spend that kind of money and other than the latter two objectives, the possibility of producing a Nobel Prize winner is near to zero. Even if there is one, is it worth the money spent? A genius is not produced by having high international rankings or buying famed lecturers or professors. Such talents are inborn and come once in several life times. They are not nurtured. Any good university and a good learning environment and culture should be able to produce them. Newton discovered gravity by sitting under an apple tree. And better still, the irony of it all, if you want a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates, you can’t find them in good universities.

Why are we spending billions to fatten so many foreign lecturers and professors for? For sure they would not be able to produce the genius that we want and neither would they be able to produce the Nobel laureates if the input, the quality of students, is not up to speck. Are the money worth spent or can be put to better use instead of gaming the ranking system?