Car Park rates to go up

Front page news that public car park rates will go up soon and a study is in process. You can expect this kind of money grabbing decision to come very soon. No time to waste. One question, govt short of money or what?

What is amusing are the silly reasons that are being quoted to justify a big round of increases. Maybe the cost of living index is too low and the people can afford to pay more. Maybe too long never increase, so it is time to increase. Then of course, the standard high cost of living, inflation and what have you. Actually want to increase just increase lah. Who is there to object or protest or to say that it is unreasonable, unnecessary, it will increase the cost of everything, the cost of living, the cost of visiting your friends or your parents and grandparents?

Ok, listen to this, ‘the review is meant to “right price public car park charges and reduce the gap between the fees charged by private and public car parks.’ What a gem.  The people have a choice not to go to public car parks but no choice parking at HDB car parks. It is home, stupid. Now you people better protest if private car park operators increase their rates or over charged. It would be used as an excuse to raise public car park fees. This is something like HDB prices priced to market private housing prices. It is like that mah!

Next, ‘Separately, the HDB pointed out that its carparks have improved over the years, with amenities such as landscaped decks, electronic parking systems and lifts. Wah, it is like a cup of kopi, now taste better, so good reason to raise price. Or is it that they are now using porcelain cups instead of plastic cups? Who cares about the landscape in a car park? And why pass the cost of electronic parking system that makes collecting fees more efficient to the car owners? Sial lah!

Oh, this one I must agree. HDB is also studying to charge non residents different rates. Got non residents meh? I thought everyone in the island is a resident except permanent or not permanent? Second car charge more. Thought this is already in practice? How about bigger cars charge more? Sorry big car owners.

This one is classic, sooo clever. According to parking policy expert, Dr Paul Barter, ‘Rates could be raised during peak periods and lowered in the off peak period…If it’s too full, it’s too cheap, and if it’s too empty, it’s too expensive.’ This one HDB car owners sure jialat jialat. Evening and night time when all went home after work, it would be peak period for the HDB car parks. So evening and night parking would be more costly according to this logic. Knn, your HDB home car park is subject to demand and supply meh, peak hour and non peak hour?  Got choice meh?

We need foreign experts for such silly brilliant ideas mah! Singapore where got so clever people other than pricing HDB to resale market price? Actually the kopitiam ah peks and ah mahs have better ideas than these if you are willing to ask them.

Give the HDB a break or they will lose more billions. This will be a better reason.

No tear for the Red Indians

Every year on June 4, there will be commentaries and sit ins to commemorate the Tiananmen Incident not only in HK and Taiwan but also in the West.  I was reading this article deemed important enough by our main media to be reported in one full page.  Nick Frisch, a Yale Law School doctoral student wrote this in his article ‘Tiananmen at 27: Is it worth looking back? The first para:

‘Each spring, a ripple of recollection passes through Beijing and anyone over the age of 35 remembers how hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens went into the streets to join striking students.

The crowds, demanding reforms, used their bodies as barricades against advancing columns of troops.  No on believed the People’s Army would fire at its namesake.

When the gunfire started, the crowds melted away in shock and disbelief. Most individuals became anonymous to history and one another, and, like other urbanites across China, walled off memories of the massacre and accepted the Communist Party’s gospel of prosperity: Make money, avoid politics, get on with your lives.’

I find the above very well written and I choose not to reinvent the wheel and to use the same text, with a few changes, to describe the fate of the Red Indians in North America a few centuries ago. Now try reading this.

‘Each spring, a ripple of recollection passes through the Plains of the Prairies and how anyone of any age, could not remember how millions of native Americans, called Red Indians, went into the prairies to join other native Indians.

The crowds, demanding for the right to live in their land, used their bodies as barricades against advancing columns of troops and the Calvary.  No on believed the American troops would fire at its namesake, at native Americans.

When the gunfire started, the crowds melted away in shock and disbelief. Most individuals, mothers and children, became anonymous to history and one another, and, like other urbanites across America, walled off memories of the massacre and accepted the Confederates and American Union’s gospel of prosperity: Make money, avoid politics, get on with your lives.’ Unfortunately for the tens of millions of native Americans aka Red Indians, the genocide was so complete that barely a few survived today in the land of the free.

While the bleeding hearts and white man’s conscience want to remember 4^th of June, would the native Indians want to remember 4^th of July as their Independence Day or the Day they were terminated to near extinction? To quote Frisch, ‘It is a question that global media multinational businesses and foreign governments must confront as well.’ Or they have forgotten, afraid to confront to offend the white Americans?

The silence of the Red Indians is remarkable. There is no tear left for the Red Indians.

Frisch emphasized that there is one place, Hong Kong, 1,900km south of Beijing, that allows mass remembrance of Tiananmen. Would there be a place in the North American continent, a city far away from the Plain of the Prairies, to have a remembrance of the genocide of the Red Indian as a human race?

Frisch quoted a Hong Kong journalist Yau Lap-poon saying, ‘Without June 4, would China have travelled its 27 year path of development? ... Perhaps the blood of Tiananmen was a kind of fertilizer, helping China bloom prosperously on the soil of market economics.’

Using the same phrase, ‘Without the massacre of the Red Indians, would the USA have travelled its 240 year path of development? … Perhaps the blood of the Plain of Prairies was a kind of fertilizer, helping the USA bloom prosperously on the soil of market economics.’

Frisch also quoted a poem by Cao Shuying, a Beijing poet, ‘I am from a planet you cannot forget…We survivors look like husks…A burden over years…The laughter of lost days, emptied out.’

Take a ride into the prairies in a cold summer night and listen…You may still here the Red Indian laughter of lost days….many centuries ago. You may still see them chasing their squaws around campfires surrounded by their wigwams. You may still see the trails of smokes floating into the air from the pipes of the big chiefs.

No more tears for the Red Indians.

Govt give people $100 in activesg$

Here is someone sneering at Singaporeans who would be given $100 in activesg.com when they signed up but did not know how to use the money. He said this $100 can be used for the following:

1.     Gain admission to public swimming pools

2.     Work out at the gym for free

3.     Book courts for racquet sports

4.     Book playing grounds for team sports

5.     Get a 30% discount on sports programmes

Wah, so simple, so many uses! I actually signed up for activesg to participate in the National Game this August without knowing that there is this $100 activesg$. Well since they credit this sum into my activesg account, I might as well use it.

So I went ahead to sign up for the National Games happily.  The organizer of the National Games is none other than activesg, if I am not wrong. When it comes to payment I tried and tried and tried to use the $100 activesg to pay for the $15 registration fee. But no matter how hard I tried I just could not use the money credited to me. What the hell, I saw a $100 activesg$ but cannot use it.

Not going to give up and not going to use my credit card, I called activesg to ask how to use the $100 active$ to pay for the registration. Here is the reply, oh, for registration fee for the National Games, cannot use activesg$.

That’s it. They gave you $100 active$ and someone even sneering at people not knowing how to use it when it can be used for so many things, not limited to the 5 things mentioned above, and I only want to use it for one thing coincidentally and it cannot be used.

Brilliant! Looks like I should be happy and smiling at the $100 activesg$ in my account and feeling really rich, cannot touch except for what they said can be used for. Ahem.

PS. The registration fee is $15 and I am willing to let them deduct the $100 activesg$ in exchange as that is the only thing I need. Other than that it is unlikely that I would be using it for any of the above 5 things. So very likely I will keep the activesg$100 very warm till it expires. Thank you very much for being so generous.

American hate rhetoric to con Americans and daft Asians

This is a quote by an American calling himself hedgeless horseman.

‘As a kid, I was taught that the United States of America went to war in Vietnam to stop the proliferation of communism.  The US government's rhetoric, repeated to me by my father, was that if we didn't stop the communists in Vietnam, then they would take over the world.  So, we trained our young men to hate and kill communists.

We lost the Vietnam War. 

But the communists did not take over the world. 

Today, Americans are making assloads of money exporting manufactured goods from Communist Vietnam.

Why did Americans fight and die in Vietnam?

I was told that The United States of America went to war in Afghanistan, now the longest war in American history, because the Afghanis were harboring a Saudi Arabian, Osama Bin Ladin, who was, allegedly, the masterminded behind the 15 other Saudi Arabians, 2 United Arab Emirates citizens, 1 Egyptian, and 1 Lebanese that allegedly perpetrated 9-11.  The US government's rhetoric was that if we didn't hunt down and kill Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, then the Muslims would plan and execute other terrorist attacks on the USA.  So, we trained our young men to hate and kill Muslims….

Today, Americans are making assloads of money exporting opium from Afghanistan and exporting death to the world.

Why are Americans fighting and dying in Afghanistan?’

The Americans are not only happily trading with Vietnam but also Russia and China. And China is lending hundreds of billions of dollars to the Americans to spend on weapons manufacturing and war games targeting at China and Russia and trying to provoke a war with China and Russia.

The Americans are propagating hate against China and Russia and one day the same question would be asked, ‘Why are Americans fighting and dying fighting China and Russia?’ But that is alright as they are Americans and they started the wars for world hegemony. The other big question would be, ‘Why are Asians/Europeans and especially the daft South East Asians fighting and dying, fighting China and Russia?’

This hedgeless horseman added this, ‘If you are a veteran or active duty US military (or daft Asians, this part I added), I invite you to skip to items 15-18 on my Revolutionary Call to Arms.

15.  Research your two senators and one congressman at https://www.opensecrets.org/ Make a list of their 10 biggest donors, and send the list to your "representative" in an email or letter.
16.  Read War is a Racket, by Major General Smedley D. Butler.
17.  Read On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman.
18.  Watch the online video of the TED Talk, A radical experiment in empathy, by Sam Richards.

Does citizenship make any difference?

What is a citizen’s pledge to be loyal to a country, to protect a country when one becomes a citizen of a country? A citizen of a country, by virtue of birth or choice, by immigration, is supposed to be loyal to that country, to defend that country if it goes to war. What are the official definitions to tell you what a citizen should be? Oxford’s definition, a legally recognized subject or national of a state or commonwealth, either native or naturalized, nothing about defending the country and dying for the country. But would a citizen do that?  Another definition, a native or naturalized member of a state or nation who owes allegiance to its government and is entitled to its protection. This one said owes allegiance to its govt and is entitled to protection, not the other way round.  How about this one, person who is entitled to enjoy all the legal rights and privileges granted by a state to the people comprising its constituency?

In all the above definitions, I am hard put to find one that says a citizen must fight and defend the country, be loyal to a country. But it seems that these are expected, a kind of assumption by the populace. And what it quite clear is that a citizen becomes part of the country he took up citizenship with. He belongs to the country and can claim or should claim that this is my country. Legally this must be the case. Mentally as well. In reality this may not be.

In the case of Omar Mateen, yes he is a US citizen. The USA is supposed to be his country and presumably he must have said his pledge like Singaporeans do, to uphold the country’s constitution or whatever. The funny thing is that Omar Mateen told the 911 officers that his country is Afghanistan. No, he did not say it in that way, that my country is Afghanistan or Afghanistan is my country. Neither did he say the USA is his country although he is a US citizen legally.

He told the 911 officers to tell America not to bomb his country. He is an American citizen but his country…America or Afghanistan? What can we make out of this? A new citizen taking up citizenship and still calling his country of origin his country, not the USA as his country.

What lesson can we learn from this when there is probably a million new citizens taking up Singapore citizenship here, with the new citizens saying our national pledge? Would they call their country of origin their country and not Singapore? Would Singapore be just a convenient place to make a living and all the time their countries would be their countries of origin, like Omar Mateen?

Would a citizenship be just a piece of paper? Would a national pledge be just, yes, an inspiration, nothing to be serious about, meaning nothing. How many of the new citizens here would think in the same way as Omar Mateen?

Would citizenship change anything? Omar Mateen is a US citizen and must behave like an American and must call the USA his country not Afghanistan? If he called Afghanistan his country then it is wrong. Wrong? So what is right, what is real?