4/26/2016

Water shortage, drought, Linggui water level lowest

There is a new awareness that there is a water shortage among the Singaporeans. Some are showing signs of panic and are demanding for more severe austerity drives from the govt. Make the people feel the pain!  A few forumers are parroting these same unthinking lines that the people must be made to feel the pain, make them pay more to know the value of water. Well this kind of stupidity is now in the DNA of daft Singaporeans. And they even quoted half baked foreigners to support their stupidity, wanting to pay more for the water they are consuming. Someone is quietly smiling in the corner, knowing that his million dollar paycheck would come in time with stupid people so happy to pay more taxes.

Didn’t these clowns know that Singapore is planning to double its population to 10m? If Singapore can afford to double its population to 10m, how can there be shortage of water? Do these people really think the govt are fools, not enough water still want to have 10m population? Cannot be right?

Now stop crying out loud for more restraining measures to control the use of water.  Understand how much is needed per person first. Don’t anyhow shout about the average and people must use less than the average. I bet the average for the foreigners are lesser, because they don’t bath like daft Sinkies do. They no need expensive shampoo and scented lotion to go with it. They don’t mind smelling like they are and daft Sinkies like that too. Once you get use to the smell you may ask for more, and not having them may have withdrawal symptoms and side effects.

This may be a good thing that the foreigners can teach the daft Sinkies, use less water by not bathing and get use to the smell. The pigs are very happy with the smell in the pig sty. They will ask, what smell, where got?

Oops, I digress. Come to think of it the daft Sinkies are really daft. There is a real need to increase the population to 10m. This will improve our water resources. Instead of 5m people peeing, we have 10m people peeing into our reservoir to provide more liquid for our Newater.  Such liquid is independent of rainfall. Got rain no rain, they would still pee.  Daft Sinkies are just too daft and cannot see further than their nose and the long term plans of the govt.

Last year new citizens increased by 20,815, PRs by another 29,955, netting  57,700 more head counts, plus our 30,000++  babies these will give a total plus side of nearing  90,000 in a year.  The govt is meticulously and conscientiously working towards the 10m population goal to increase our water supply. Not to worry, everything is planned for the good of the people. When the population is 10m, our water problem will be solved. No need to panic that we would not have enough water. No need to worry.  No need to increase water fee. Trust the govt.

Be smart, don’t be stupid. But if you are stupid enough and want to pay more for your water, go ahead. No one is stopping you.

Train, train, train…what, what, what?

Calm down Boon Wan, I am not talking about you. Neither am I talking about the train breakdowns that you are desperately trying to put them together. Really, no body really cares anymore about train breakdowns. This is the new normal of a 3rd World country.  Everytime when people hear the announcement of train breakdowns, they burst out into laughter. It is now a joke.

The train I am talking about is this magic word or magic cure called training. Singapore can solve all its problems with training. We can even teach old dogs new trick by training them to be professors but to work as cleaners. What we need to do is to train. Never mind what kind of training, never mind if the training is relevant or irrelevant, never mind if the cost of training is too prohibitive for the little rewards, and never mind if the cost fee is too little for a course that is meaningless. Just send the people for training.

Training is now an obsession in this silly little piece of rock when inside the head is replaced by a piece of stone. Ok, let me be more generous, inside the head is a piece of computer chip that will respond to the input, GIGO. All it needs is for someone to mention the word training and training becomes a magical word, a magical cure for everything, better than Tongkat Ali.  Maybe that is the reason why they are sending the grandpas and grandmas for training. $500 can buy a lot of Tongkat Ali, I am told.

We have a nation of trainees, from foetus to babies, to pre schools, kindergartens, primary school, all the way to universities, even to train retirees in their golden years. Now more professional academies are sprouting out to train professionals as if the universities did not do their jobs or the professionals are incapable of doing what they are doing, or obsolete. How much more training and training money must be spent before we maxed out in this training craze to know that no amount of training can cure stupidity?

Did anyone ask the foreigners, so called talents, how much training did they received in their entire lives, and why are they better trained than Singaporeans and better equipped with better skill sets to replace all the over trained Singaporeans?

Would there be a case when an over trained Singaporeans was replaced by an untrained, half trained or never trained foreigners with a fake degree? The big question, why are the half trained, poorly trained or untrained foreigners swarming all over the island replacing the over trained Singaporeans and the government’s only solution is to send the replaced and so called no skill set or obsolete Singaporeans, despite all their experience in what they were doing, for more training?

I am still very puzzled by this riddle. A nation of highly educated people, all found unsuitable for simple jobs, not highly technical and specialist jobs mind you, and being replaced by people from the third world who could not do anything good in their home countries, who could not find jobs in their own countries?

How silly can this state of affairs be? Yes, the once highly skilled, hard working and proud Singaporeans that built a modern city state good enough to be the envy of the first world, are now being replaced by the unknown herds from the third world countries. It is simply unbelievable! And the govt thinks the only solution to help these silly over trained Singaporeans is more training?

And of course there is the special elite core that does not need any training and can become experts overnight in any field, any industry and being paid millions, through political appointments to be CEOs or Chairmen, advisors and what not all over the island. This group does not need any training at all, the proverbial knows all or smart alecs.

But this funny state of development, whereby people get more stupid or useless the more education and training they received, has no exception. This may be what the believers of gods and fairy tales will say, it is heaven’s will or 天意。We are seeing the beginning or the end of this once proud and hardworking people. They are destined to be taken over and ruled by third world so called talents that they believed are better than them, people who can’t save their countries, unable to find jobs in their countries, unable to build their countries.

Is this a joke? How could this happen? I dunno what to say. Go train some more to become taxi drivers and security guards, to be trained to go to third world countries to compete with them in their home ground since they are useless in their first world country called Singapore.

Now, whose brilliant idea is it to train first world useless but highly educated people to work in the third world for small change? And these foreign talents are invited to live in the heartland to integrate with the heartlanders to improve the stock.

Dunno want to laugh or want to cry.

PS. Daft sinkies are on a perpetual training mode. Dunno training for what and how much training is enough. Actually the daft is at the top. The Singaporeans are made daft by the real daft at the top.

4/25/2016

OBOR – Strategic irrelevance

Some Asean countries are still thinking of wrestling with China for barren rocks and reefs in the South China as their national priorities, and wanting to buy more weapons for a military contest, China is moving along with the One Belt and One Road strategy that would change the way trade will be conducted in the region and the whole world. The strategic importance of the Straits of Malacca and the Isthmus of Kra would become strategic irrelevance when China completes its international high speed train network across Europe, to Africa and to the Americas. There would be no more needs for a large sea going ocean fleet to transport goods to and from Africa and Europe to China and even to the Americas. The efficiency and cheaper cost of going by land in high speed train, cutting time and distance, would make transportation by ships obsolete. China could move goods to and from Europe and Africa by passing South and South East Asia completely.

The little consolation and consideration for the One Belt portion of OBOR is to cater for the needs of countries like Indonesia and the Philippines that trains could not reach them. The game of trade through sea ports would be totally changed.

What about Singapore becoming irrelevant in the game plan? If Singapore and Malaysia would play the game right, both could be playing a new role as the new trading centres and the terminals for high speed train. All goods from and to Indonesia could land in Singapore and go forth by land to Asia and Europe in double quick time. The caveat, if the high speed train terminal landed in Singapore. Missing this boat will mark the end of Singapore as a trading centre for the region.

China is playing on a chess board that is as big as the whole world while the Asean countries are bickering over the South China Sea and thinking that it could hold China to ransom by choking up the Straits of Malacca. The Chinese have thought through their strategic interests and have mapped out their plans, on land, by land and minimizing the need for sea transportation to a minimum.

The OBOR and the high speed train and road network across Asia to Europe and Africa are game changers to a new world of global commerce.

Fixing Singapore’s meritocracy for the good or bad?


Kenneth Paul Tan wrote an article titled ‘How Singapore is fixing its meritocracy’ in the Today paper on 22 April. He described the history of how meritocracy first started in Singapore when education was the first leveler, where everyone of merit could get a scholarship and rose through the ranks and became a mandarin in the civil service.  He then went on to describe how this innocent brand of meritocracy got corrupted and drawing cynicism when meritocracy transformed into elitism and cronyism of the elite. Here I quote him, ‘Today, the Singaporean idea of meritocracy is criticized for entrenching structural limits on mobility, for its overly narrow idea of merit and success, and for an increasingly self regarding elite that seems too interested in staying in power and that citizens perceive as arrogant and unresponsive to their needs.’

The powerful political elite took notice of the growing discontent and have put in some measures to redistribute the wealth by straying into a taboo area called welfarism, a slightly leftist leaning policy that was once frown upon.  What is strange is this comment about anti welfarism. ‘To discourage free riding and maintain business competitiveness, the Government developed a strong anti welfare state rhetoric. It started to pay its top officials and political leaders some of the highest salaries in the world…’  Now what is he saying? To me isn’t this welfarism at the highest level, welfarism for the elite? It is a matter of perception of course.

What many knew but refused to talk about in the fixing of meritocracy is the entrenchment of wealth and power of the elite through the abolition of estate duty. Now the elite could own as many properties as they want, in the tune of hundreds of millions or billions to be willed to their natural aristocratic scions.  The act of self preservation and protecting their wealth for generations to come, a practice that eventually led to the revolution in Europe, Russia and China and the rise of Communism, is now fixed into the Singapore version of meritocracy. A meritocratic family could now be meritocratic for generations to come with their wealth preserved and protected forever and ever, to live happily ever after, unless a bloody communist revolution cut them down to ground zero.

This piece of fixing appears to be well received by the landed gentry and elite, all owners of large properties and land and have nothing to complain about.  They would not complain about its negative repercussion to the social cost of the people. When the rich know that they could go on buying up all the land and landed properties for safe keeping and to perpetuate their wealth to eternity, it simply leads to the hoarding of properties and the rise of property prices.

The poor and not so rich would never ever to be able to catch up with the runaway prices of landed properties hoarded by the landed elite. The elite know the rules of the games and how to protect themselves and their wealth. Landed properties are now worth several tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and would soon be the most expensive real estate on earth.

Social mobility and meritocracy appear to be thriving. But how many of the nouveau riche could make that kind of money in a life time to afford landed properties in the future, now in the hands of the rich elite, entrenched and enshrined as their inheritance for generations and generations to come? Even the civil servants and politicians of the future would have a hard time paying for such out of reach landed properties with their million dollar salaries.

But not to worry, the politicians of the future will know what to do if they want to lay their hands onto these prized and exorbitant pieces of landed properties. They could simply reintroduce estate duties all over again to level the playing field. In a democracy, this is the easiest part. Even dynasties could not hold on to their fortune forever.  The landed gentry class of medieval era were wiped out when the extremism of inequalities reached a point of no return. The unproductive land and property owners would not have their cake and eat it. Les miserables would rise to overthrow a decadent system of wealth preservation at their expense.

4/24/2016

A strange assurance from the MOE

MOE assures a concerned parent that creationism ‘is not part of syllabus’


BY ARIFFIN SHA ON APRIL 23, 2016
In a series of sermons addressed to the megachurch Faith Community Baptist Church, Pastor Lawrence Khong launched a tirade against the Theory of Evolution. In one such sermon, which you can view a snippet of here, he argued that Darwin's brainchild was "a real deception from the Devil."

“Every day we are subjected to a worldview that is a real deception from the devil. For example, I mean the world is telling us that evolution is a fact, undisputable. It is taught in schools. But the fact of the matter is I will be exploring with you that you could hardly find any evidence of true evolution. And in fact, evolution is based on faith and not facts.  In fact, if we study the different theories, we find that creation has the most evidence to show us that indeed there is a God who created us.”
-          Lawrence Khong

The above quotes were from TOC.

I am not sure why MOE has to assure the parents that creation is not part of the syllabus in schools. For MOE to state this implies that this must have crept up somewhere in their discussion or creation has been discussed by some quarters.

A truth is a truth. A scientific truth is a scientific truth and can be verified. If it is not it is not. If a scientific truth cannot be verified, I can say for sure, the scientist is the wrong that is making the wrong assertion, not the devil.  

A belief is a belief. No need any verification. Just belief. That is why it is called a belief. That is why it will always be a belief and subject to controversies and discussions with one side trying do shout down another in order to claim that it is the truth. A scientific truth is just that. No need to shout at everyone and forcing others to believe that it is the truth. Is that simple enough to separate truth from a belief?

I have no quarrels or issues with people who want to spend their lives fearing the Devil and loving God and explaining everything in life as a tussle between the Devil and God. These two beings have been fighting since time immemorial and will still be fighting in the lives of those who chose to take sides and think everything in life is either the work of God or the work of the Devil.

I think there is more to life than just fearing the Devil and loving God. Let the two giants fight their everlasting battle of existence. The small little human beans have a life to live, to make meaning of live, to experience and grow, to feel the goodness, the bad, the pain, the sorrows, the joy and ecstasies of life, of being alive, to have a chance to live to know what life is and being alive is all about.

For those who chose to live life fearing the Devil and loving God, as long as you are happy that that is the meaning of your life, good for you. Do not impose or expect others to live your life and your beliefs. It is a choice, a personal choice, to live one’s life the way one wishes.  If your belief is the truth, after so many millennia, the truth should become unquestionable, and not still a controversial belief.


1 + 1 = 2. That is the simple truth. If people are still not sure and just believing that 1 + 1 = 2, then it cannot be the truth. If 1 + 1 is not equal to 2, I will not believe that it is the work of the Devil for being so. If my life is not going the way I want it, I will not blame the Devil. Neither will I thank God if my life is a little better than it should be. My life, how I live my life, has nothing to do with the Devil or the God. I don’t have to blame the Devil if things did not go well, and I don’t have to give credit to God if things go well. If the belief is what it is, the two would be too busy fighting each other in their unending battle of Creation.