Impression of Lijiang. An open air show choreographed by famous director Zhang Yimou
3/11/2017
Public transport to raise fare?
When was the last fare hike? Is public transport a strategic asset, a scarce resource? If so it must be priced right to make the people feel the pain of higher transport fare so that they would not abuse taking public transport unnecessarily and wastefully. Building infrastructure for public transport is very expensive and new transportation system is not cheap, not when you need to build for another 2m people in an already congested piece of rock. All the costs have gone up. The public must be encouraged to travel at off peak hours or not to travel at all and make unnecessary trips to stress the public transport system. Do these kinds of reasoning sound right or idiotic?
With rising cost of public transportation and better quality of public transport, some media said service quality has declined so not sure which is right, it is only right to raise transport fare. The improvements over the years with each price hike did not seem to make the quality of service improved much. Maybe the increase is not high enough so not much improvement could be seen.
Would anyone think it is clever to raise transportation fee by 30% like water? Someone must have been reading Machiavelli and the advice of Machiavelli must have gone into their heads. When making increases, make it big and painful, the public would soon forget the pain. Don’t do it bit by bit. When giving out handouts, then do it bit by bit to milk as much good will as possible like wanting to give a 10c discount, give it in 10 times or 5 times, like 1c or 2c at a time at a time. The daft would be grateful for 5 or 10 times.
Are the public expecting to be slammed with another big transportation hike like the 30% water fee and comes the next GE all would be forgotten? Transportation hike got good reason, to improve quality of services. You want better services, pay more. So simple.
3/10/2017
Air is also a strategic resource and a security concern
Water is a
strategic resource and affects national security. What about air? We have taken
free and clean air for granted. The haze season has given us a taste of what it
is like when air is no longer clean and healthy to breathe. Air may not be a
scarcity, but clean air is. Clean air is also strategic and scarce if not well
managed.
Think of the
great effort and funds applied to keep our air clean. Clean air does not come
naturally anymore. Keeping the air clean is costly but many people have yet to
know how costly this is. Just to keep the haze away, the govt has spent a lot
of effort and financial resources to keep the culprits from continuing with
their harmful actions. And there is also a political cost when relations with
our neighbours can be agitated and aggravated and in the end affecting economic
relations and trade.
The tree
planting activities, keeping as much greenery in the island, using clean
technology, policing anti clean air activities all cost money. It would not be
long before someone comes up with the idea to make the people to feel the cost
of keeping the air clean and healthy. If water can be priced on the basis of
making the people appreciate that it is important, the same kind of logic would
not be far fetch to apply to air.
How about
levying some kind of free and clean air taxes for the money spent to keep the
air breathable for Singaporeans? Would
some nuts in the future be thinking that this is a good thing, to make the
people feel the price of clean air and how important and valuable is clean air?
If it really happens, then cham liao.
Would some
jokers be saying that this is to help the people and good for the people, for
the people’s good? Would there be free
and clean air tax in the future? Smokers be warned, you are contaminating the
air with all kinds of harmful agents. You have yet to be made to pay for
harming the environment, making the air unclean and the efforts to keep the air
clean from cigarette pollutants.
But before
free air is in the calculation, would power and electricity fall into the same
category as water and be subject to the same strategic thinking and pricing? We
don’t have natural power production sources and producing power and electricity
is very expensive. Tiok boh?
3/09/2017
MOM taking 50 firms to task
MOM has
taken 50 firms to task for not giving fair opportunities to employing
Singaporeans and another 250 firms put on the watchlist. Is this enough after
letting in 500,000 foreigners, so called talents to take away jobs from Singaporeans
and still happily employed while many Singaporeans PMETs are unemployed or
underemployed or resigned to early retirement? This pathetic situation has been
going on for the last 10 to 20 years!
Think of the
pain and suffering thousands of Singaporeans have gone through. Think of how
many families got into financial trouble or even broke up. Think of the
emotional suffering of Singaporeans seeking jobs but got rejected and rejected
or not even called up for an interview. Think of the number of dejected cases,
depression cases, Singaporeans losing confidence in themselves, some even
became IMH cases. Think of the disappointment of parents for raising their
children and putting them through the expensive education system. Think of the
disappointment of young Singaporeans after spending their parents’ life savings
and unable to find a decent job, some were lucky to end up with part time job
but not enough to feed themselves, how these young people felt, unable to repay
the kindness and generosities of their parents, wanting to be filial but unable
to, and feeling ashame and useless.
Are the MOM
and the govt doing enough to help the Singaporeans suffering because of the
500,000 foreigners here and depriving Singaporeans from getting a job to feed
themselves and to have some pride and dignity as an individual? Oh MOM is
partnering foreign agencies to look for jobs for Singaporeans, where, overseas?
If Singaporeans could not find jobs in Singapore, how are their chances to finding
jobs overseas, to be what, cooks, gardeners? Seow!
What is
wrong with this bloody system? Why are Singaporeans being forced out from their
homes and country when there are 500,000 foreigners happily employed here? I
look around Raffles Place and MBFC and at the young foreigners and cannot
believe my eyes that what they are doing cannot be done by Singaporeans? There
are easier solutions to helping Singaporeans to find a decent job than trying
to send them overseas. Please stop doing nonsense and get the basics right.
There is no need to teach million dollar ministers how to do their job unless
they are unworthy of their million dollar salaries. It is time to be serious
and do the necessary and the due diligence. If they still cannot think out of
the mess, just think of immigration passes and quotas will do. It is not difficult and it is only a
responsible thing for the govt to do. I have wasted so much breath talking
about this issue while so many Singaporeans are suffering and some people are
happily tweedling their thumbs counting their millions and acting innocent.
How much
more must Singaporeans suffer from this fate due to govt policies to bring in
more foreigners at their expense? Singaporeans mismatched, misfits, foreigners
from little villages with funny degrees are better fit and better matched?
Stupidity
has no cure. Forsaking the Singaporeans is a crime against Singaporeans.
If no
serious and immediate action is taken, if the govt is not going to provide the
opportunities for Singaporeans to be suitably employed, Singaporeans will end
up without the relevant skills, without the experience to move up the corporate
and skills ladder for higher appointments. Singaporeans would become skill less,
less experiencede and unemployable with foreigners getting all the on the job
training and experience to boot in their CVs.
A good
example is the CEO positions. Why give them to foreigners to gain the
experience and not to Singaporeans? Soon no Singaporeans would be good enough
to be CEOs, even in GLCs.
This is
tragedy in the making and Singaporeans would become the dodo birds of the 21st
Century, in their own country. This is another kind of ‘Sook Ching’ in a way.
I read
somewhere that Lim Swee Say was so emotional in Parliament when talking about
the unemployment of Singaporean PMETs. Some were saying that he was shedding
crocodile tears. I hope he really felt the pain and suffering of the unemployed
or under employed Singaporeans and understood how ‘chek ark’ 折悪is such a policy of giving hundreds of thousands of jobs to
foreigners but leaving Singaporeans in the lurch, in despair. I also hope that
those MPs and ministers sitting in the Parliament also felt the same and would
quickly start to do something to help Singaporeans instead of talking cock, to
help the people that voted them into Parliament. They owe it to the voters not
to foreigners.
3/08/2017
Kim Jong Nam - Fake news and alternative truth
In the Kim Jong Nam case Malaysia has come up with its version of the truth. All fingers conveniently pointing to North Korea just like the NOT UN backed tribunal or kangaroo court in The Hague on the SCS dispute. Malaysia is walking around like a cock strutting its stuff. They have all the truths and evidence, like indisputable truths similar to the Choenan Incident. The North Koreans did it.
As more questions are
being asked and more information is being produced, more holes are seen and the
picture is looking murkier. With the Malaysians refusing to cooperate with the
NK whom the victim is their people in the investigation, the NK has to conduct
their own.
How did the Malaysians
become so clever to narrow it down to VX nerve gas? The NK is demanding that
the Malaysians produce the sample and let it be confirmed by an international
body which the Malaysians strangely refused to do so.
For a victim to die
within a few minutes, then the dosage used must be quite high, high enough to
be inhaled by the two women who would thus become victims of the gas as well.
The fact that the two women were harmless tells a story that either the dosage
was so small or it could not be toxic when inhaled, ie not VX. And if the
dosage was big, people around them, the toilet used to wash up would likely to
be affected. Where is missing towel or gloves that could be very toxic?
NK has raised a point,
that one or both women had made several trips to South Korea. Can this be
verified? Sure it can if the SK wants to and if confirmed, what would it say of
SK complicity?
SK and the Americans
have in many occasions planted false flag incidents to tarnish the reputations
of NK to blame NK for all kinds of silly things. This is a fact. Could this
case be just another false flag incident hashed by the SK or the Americans?
If you look at the cctv
clip, the guy looked like Kim Jong Nam. But his hair, the long shaggy hair
behind his head did not. His mannerism and the way he walked did not. And for
him to walk around to talk to police officers, to talk to airport staff after
the incident did not show that he was a victim of a VX attack. There were not
sweating, nauseating or vomiting as what would be expected. A Japanese cult
member sprinkled himself with the gas and died only 10 days later in Tokyo.
There are many
unanswered questions especially with the involvement of Vietnamese and
Indonesians. The North Koreans are known to have little contact with other
people and would likely work on their own if they would to commit such an
attack. Hiring agents is a common trick of the West and western trained
operators to cover their tracks and their involvement. The involvement of
foreigners, reality shows, contacts with the two women looking like Japanese or
Koreans must have raised a red flag. But these leads are not being pursued by
the Malaysians. They are conducting a witch hunt in the NK embassy.
The truth is unfolding.
Who gave the toxic substance to the attackers? What is that substance if not
VX? Where is the evidence of the gas? Is the victim really Kim Jong Nam?
Why is Malaysia acting
so strangely and so sure that it was the NK who did it like they knew MH370
ditched in the Indian Ocean? Who has been feeding the Malaysians with all the
information or misinformation? Are the Malaysians so clever or so stupid?
From a rather straight
forward case of investigating a crime involving foreigners, Malaysia is now
having a diplomatic row with the North Koreans and acting so atas. Is it
necessary and what is Malaysia benefiting from it?
Now after PNG the North
Korean ambassador, the North Koreans are retaliating by not allowing Malaysians
in North Korea to leave. Now would Malaysia up the stake and do the same to
North Koreans in Malaysia? Oops,
Malaysia has responded with the same ban on North Koreans in Malaysia.
Where would this end? Is
there a puppeteer behind all this? If the incident was not committed by the NK,
the real culprits would be laughing themselves silly.
Stupidity has no cure.
3/07/2017
Water price hike and new social behaviour
The govt is
taking proactive actions to warn the hawkers not to raise prices to benefit
from profiteering. And very likely, in my dreams, that the hawkers would follow
this call religiously. Some hawkers even said they would not pass down the hike
to the consumers and would absorb the increase in cost. This is something you
can only hear in heaven when everyone is so saintly and angel like.
Let’s
believe that the hawkers and food sellers would not pass the burden to their
customers and everything will be as before. Look at the other areas where this
price hike would hit the people. Maids in the condominium would likely be asked
to bath in the common bathrooms beside the swimming pools or gymnasium. All
public facilities like toilets would be doubly well patronized for sure. I have
seen office workers brushing their teeth in the office toilets. Soon more will
follow suit and they may even bath in the office bathrooms if available.
In the case
of public toilets, would they start charging for usage? Oh, toilet facilities
in shopping centres would also be a hot favourite place, in Changi Airport too.
Would
employers start to restrict the number of times a worker can bathe, how long
they can bathe because of this water hike?
Then there
are the wet markets, hawker centres, foodcourts that required daily wash up.
Would the frequency and duration be shortened? Water is not cheap now and these
operators must be made to feel the heat of higher water prices. And when the
heat is on, would they stinge on washing up their stalls and the hawker centres
and food courts? Would they stop washing their food during preparation, would
they cut down on water when washing the crockery and eating utensils? Would the
hygiene of food preparation be compromised, would the eating places be less
washed and deteriorated into waste land?
Would buses
and trains be more smelly when people cut down on personal hygiene, bathe less,
use less water, don’t wash their clothings that often? Water festivals would be
banned I supposed which would not be good for integrating the foreigners here,
not respecting their festivals.
One good
point is that human noses are very adaptable and soon everyone would be used to
the smell and get on with their lives with the new normal.
The greetings of 'jiat pah buay' would be changed to 'chang chui buay'.
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