deadpris » singapore news

We are Singapore, Singaporeans – Are we?

Priss — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 02:57:10 +0000

With the recent price hikes in Singapore’s transport systems, more and more disgruntled Singaporeans are beginning to feel annoyed with what is happening in Singapore. Some may still defend Singapore’s system and policies, comparing it with neighboring countries such as Thailand and Malaysia, and try to convince themselves that Singapore’s transport system isn’t that bad even with all the problems we are facing.

Our transportation is getting from good to bad to horrible. To drive a car in Singapore, you got to apply for COE (Certificate of Entitlement) that costs as much as the car itself. COE is now fluctuating between $30000 and $60000. Taxi prices just rose again, having taxi ‘surcharge’ from 6pm to 10am the following day. So there’s only 8 hours of non-peak periods where you don’t have to pay for surcharge. The taxi companies might as well just add surcharge for the entire day! Now those who can’t afford to drive or take taxis, they have to resort to the MRT – which is failing too! There have been 3 break downs in the past few days! What is wrong with our transport system???

What has our failing transportation system got to do with foreigners and the government? Everything.

The reason why Singaporeans are unhappy with influx of foreigners here is because we are not given preferential treatment. Foreigners are given so much incentive to come to Singapore that us Singaporeans feel as though we’re marginalized and we are the sacrifice to ‘build’ Singapore. With more foreigners pouring into Singapore, I fail to see the immediate benefits of having so many foreign workers but the negative social and cultural corrosion is becoming more obvious.

Our trains are flooded with foreign workers, many of them hard laborers board the trains with a stench of unpleasant body odor. Trains need to keep up with the number of commuters so they increase their frequencies, but our MRTs have been breaking down and SMRT have no idea how to deal with angry and unhappy commuters. Crime rates are increasing, more people are committing suicide. Our birth rates are declining as this society has become so stressful that people have no mood or time to have sex. Inflation and cost of living keeps rising, but our salaries remain stagnant. Some people feel that it is easier to find a job in Singapore if you are a foreigner! I’m not sure if that is true, but I won’t be surprised. Singaporeans are too arrogant to take a job that pays $2000 a month? No, we are not too arrogant. How does someone earn $2000 a month support a family in Singapore when everything is so expensive now??

We are unhappy because we decided to make Singapore our home, our ancestors decided to make this our home. We shouldn’t have to bear the consequences of letting the flood gates open for foreigners by compromising our quality of transport, quality of service, unscrupulous hiring tactics, corroding our Singlish and Singaporeness - all in the name of building Singapore’s economy. Who are we building this economy up for? For them or for us? After building up a world class economy, if foreigners are allowed to enjoy it as much as Singaporeans, then what pride should we have to be a Singaporean? The problem isn’t foreigners, but foreigners that did not pledge their allegiance to Singapore like I did. If you want to stay here, be a citizen! Serve the nation! Learn bloody Singlish!

What the government can look into is setting penalties for Singapore PRs for forfeiting their application for citizenship. Singapore PRs gets almost similar benefits to Singaporean, but they can leave any time since they are holding other nationalities at the same time. What I’ve heard is that some Singapore PRs even buy HDBs, and when they earn enough in Singapore, they sell their HDBs for a profit and return to their home country to retire! How about increasing taxes on foreigners based on income? How about limiting number of houses and cars they are allowed to own in Singapore? How about making it more difficult for Singaporeans to get sacked or retrenched? Besides English tests, how about implementing oral examinations and hygiene lessons for foreign workers!

Perhaps my suggestions may come across as very Nationalistic, but if the government continues the way it does, can Singapore still make it? Let Singapore love us as we love Singapore. Let us feel that this country deserves for us to defend and protect.

We Are Singapore

There was a time when people said
That Singapore won’t make it, but we did
There was a time when troubles seemed too much
For us to take, but we did
We built a nation, strong and free, reaching out together
For peace and harmony

Chorus 1:
This is my country, this is my flag
This is my future, this is my life
This is my family, these are my friends
We are Singapore, Singaporeans

Singapore our homeland, it’s here that we belong
All of us united, one people marching on
We’ve come so far together, our common destiny
Singapore forever, a nation strong and free

( Repeat Chorus 1 )

( Sung )
We the citizens of Singapore
Pledge ourselves as one united people
Regardless of race, language or religion
To build a democratic society
Based on justice and equality
So as to achieve happiness
Prosperity and progress for our nation

Chorus 2:
We are Singapore, we are Singapore
We will stand together, hear the lion roar
We are Singapore, we are Singapore
We’re a nation strong and free forevermore

( Repeat Chorus 1 & 2 )

We are Singapore, Singaporeans ( X 2 )

Maia Lee’s sex life – What’s SEX in Singapore?

Priss — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:27:03 +0000

I recently read some comments on how Maia Lee’s interview with The Electric New Paper was shameful. Ironically, the title of the report was “I almost died of SHAME”

I think to be accurate, these people found her leaking details of her sexual life “shameful”, rather than the act itself. On one hand, I admit that leaking your private life out in the public isn’t something I agree on, on the other hand, it’s just SEX.

I think Singapore’s society have been far too repressed when it comes to the topic of sex. It’s unhealthy for people to be repressed about something so beautiful and natural to us. Even Christianity, a very uptight community doesn’t find sex offensive. In fact, recently a Dallas pastor challenged married hetrosexual couples to a 7 days sex challenge. There’s no shame in the act of sex.

I know what some of you might be thinking at this point, Maia Lee’s sex life. But that’s not really the topic I want to go into, because her sex life is not really for us to judge.

I wish that the government would do more sexual education in Singapore schools, to educate these young little rose buds about the birds and bees.

Proponents of comprehensive sex education, which include the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association,the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, the Society for Adolescent Medicine and the American College Health Association, argue that sexual behavior after puberty is a given, and it is therefore crucial to provide information about the risks and how they can be minimized; they also claim that denying teens such factual information leads to unwanted pregnancies and STIs.

Taken from Wikipedia’s entry on Sex Education

It is the government’s responsibility to educate and mould a nation of people that practices safe sex and healthy living. I understand that Asian societies are more conservative when it comes to topics such as sex, but do we really want our society to make SEX into such an unspeakable topic that even healthy hetrosexual married couples have problems with their sex life and have no one to confide in because it’s too embarassing?

I’m not promoting for more SEX in this city. I’m against having pornography legalized for the same reason why I feel Cartoon Network should stop showing sleezy teen flicks that talk about sex all day when their target audience is mostly under 10years old.

Of course, it is difficult where to draw the line when it comes to such sensitive issues. But we should and we can definitely do more to bring awareness to topics related to sex such as contraceptives and HIV prevention.

Responsible Blogging, Self-censoring?

Priss — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:41:20 +0000

At the recent blogging events I attended, I got to speak to quite a few PR and marketing people. During our conversations, I realised how bloggers are becoming more and more like journalists in the most ironic sense.

When the blogging platform first became popular, it was easy and simple to create a blog with Blogger and various other blogging platforms. Anyone can own a blog! Anyone can write anything on their blog! Although this fact hasn’t changed now, but something else has. Bloggers are beginning to feel a certain sense of responsibility towards their readers.

I suppose that’s the difference between writing an e-diary and writing a blog in 2008. Although I think the lines are still blurry, but trends have emerged and bloggers’ words are taken more seriously now as compared to just two years ago.

I find myself censoring my own blog entries more and more. I start to think about the consequences of posting each article, be it responsibility towards my readers or abiding by Singapore’s laws.

The blogging platform was once thought to be our new found freedom of ‘speech’. In places like the states, they already have the First Amendment, but in a repressed Asian society like Singapore, we thought we were given a new voice. Imagine little mermaid finally getting back her voice after being muted for a long time! Hooray! Under the sea, under the sea~~! So us Singaporeans started singing and singing in our blogs. Until the government steps in to try to mute us again.

I don’t believe that the government’s intentions are bad, we need to promote responsible blogging.

I wouldn’t be able to imagine if traditional media were given the liberty to defame or accuse anyone they like for the entire nation to see. People’s lives, companies, reputations could be severely damaged on a whim of a depressed and unhappy editor.

I have chose not to publish at least 10 blog entries in the past year because they were either too offensive or too political. Too bad you won’t get to read them

My Nuffnang Story

Singapore’s Government is Robin Hood?

Priss — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:28:54 +0000

Do you remember when you were little, Robin Hood was always portrayed as this righteous super hero that goes around stealing from the rich and giving to the poor? Well, it just occurred to me that Robin Hood’s character is a folk tale manifestation of what essentially is socialist or communist (I’d lean more towards communist). One would argue that Robin Hood is a hero-class character and it shouldn’t be associated with dirty political terms such as “socialism” and “communism”, but isn’t that what redistribution of wealth is – taking from the rich and giving to the poor.

Now it’s no secret that our government denies that Singapore is a socialist state, I assume because of all the stigma that comes with the word “socialist” and imagery of Karl Marx and WWII naturally pops into mind, but perhaps they should just come out of the closet! After all, America’s President elect Barack Obama believes in a more socialist America with his push for Universal health care, so why shouldn’t Singapore (oh, but we already are)? Or perhaps both Obama and Singapore wants to be that hooded Robin Hood like in the above picture, where his face is fully covered and you’re not sure who Robin Hood really is…

Let’s see if Singapore really fits the bill of the Robin Hood role in the recent financial crisis:

1. Singapore pumping $600million for upgrading skills and provide retrenched employees paid courses during this period.

Skills Programme for Upgrading & Resilience, also known as SPUR, will hopefully prevent local companies from sacking too many people. Singapore government pay these otherwise fired employees up to $6.80 per hour to study! Imagine Robin Hood, after stealing from the rich and the not-so-rich, then starts throwing money at random unemployed people spur of the moment. Hooray! [read article here]

2. Singapore pumping in $2.6billion in loans to businesses to tide over this difficult time.

Wait a minute… isn’t this whole loan thing the reason why we’re in this mess? My brain’s too small to understand how this loan thing really works…..

The Bridging Loan Programme allows all local enterprises with more than 10 employees to access credit of up to S$500,000. The default risk is shared equally by the government and the financial institutions.

Small businesses with no more than 10 employees will have access to SPRING’s Micro Loan Programme. The limit of this loan has been doubled to S$100,000, and the government will increase its portion of risk to 80 per cent to encourage lending to businesses.

To encourage start-ups, the government will be raising investment capital from S$300,000 to S$1 million under the SPRING’s Start-up Enterprise Development Scheme.

Its Business Angel Scheme will also be raised to S$1.5 million as a permanent feature.

The government will also temporarily increase its co-match ratio, which means that start-ups will receive S$2 from the government for every dollar an investor puts into the firm.

[read article here]

So I guess the Government is trying to give investors greater confidence in local businesses. I believe it is very important that our start-up companies don’t collapse overnight due to lack of funding, but are there sufficient checks on these companies to make sure we’re not loaning to companies that will bankrupt overnight? With the government taking up more risks, wouldn’t it mean that the banks would be less stringent about approving loans? I understand that that IS the whole point, but isn’t that also dangerous? Yeah, I’m being too skeptical and putting too little faith in our local businesses, but Lehman Brothers and many other big brand companies did collapse overnight, so why can’t they?

Of course, I have full confidence in our hooded government. He’s our hero and I’m sure his judgments are correct. But I’m just saying…. government’s money is our money too… =\

3. Robin Hood and his Merry Men are getting less bread and wine to bring home (as well as less holidays, cars, and condominiums).

Ministers and civil servants will be getting a pay cut of up to 19% ! If you’re currently bringing home a $3million, I’m sorry to inform you that your income next year might drop to SG$2.43million dollars! Oh dear, should we be fearful now that our ministers might become corrupted? I think it’s best we leave their salaries alone, can a minister really survive a half a million dollars pay cut without receiving bribery?? Except for Wong Can’t Sing, I think he should have a pay cut. But not my decision to make, Robin Hood will make the best choices after all. [read article here]

But wait a minute, where am I in this whole big picture of things?

I am neither 1. getting retrenched 2. being sent for skills upgrading 3. not getting subsidized school fees 4. not snobbishly rich 5. not pitifully poor 6. part of a dying start-up company 7. not a civil servant.

I’m basically ignored!

While millions and billions of dollars are spent to boost our economy, I won’t be the one losing or gaining anything. Robin Hood, I want my hand out too! *sticks hand out*

Some reading this might feel that I’m being selfish, he’s just trying his best to prevent the poor and unemployed people from becoming poorer and bankrupt. A Singapore not in crisis is a Singapore good for you and me. Although he doesn’t personally come to my door step and throw bags of gold at me (like he usually does on TV or story books), he’s magnanimous enough not to raise my taxes for 2009. We should be more than thankful for that.

Robin Hood redistributes wealth. Can we say that he is not a socialist or a communist? It also begs the question, is socialism the new democracy?

Wong Can’t Sing, Mas Selamat can…

Priss — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:57:54 +0000

Although PM Lee has a point when he said we cannot afford to cultivate a culture whereby people are too afraid to make mistakes (for fear of their heads), this IS the perceived mentality of the bureaucratic system in Singapore. I would even go as far as to say that this mentality have been drilled into Singaporeans since young. Also known as “Kia si” which translates in Hokkien, “afraid to die”.This “Kia si” mentality might not be uniquely Singapore, but since I’ve been brought up in Singapore, I’m going to talk about it where it is relevant to the local context.

Most Singaporeans observe this “mind your own business” a.k.a. MYOB mentality, because, well, we’re “Kia si”. If you see trouble that is not happening to you, just look away. If you poke your nose into trouble that has nothing to do with you and you get into trouble yourself, well, you deserve it. (I’m sure there are readers looking at this analogy puzzled and wondering what is wrong -_-!)

Even in the office, in order to cover your own backside, you sending thousands of email a day to inform people every single thing that takes place. Why? So when trouble happens, we can check the “black and white” in our emails. We don’t want any trouble.

Singaporeans already have that “Kia si” mentality etched into our culture and society. Is there a problem with this mentality? Perhaps so. PM Lee asking us not to call for people’s head in times of trouble just contradict the very foundations of our culture. Telling us that he doesn’t want to cultivate this culture is too late, since we are already like this. Infact, I would imagine the reasons why Mas Selamat was able to escape, is perhaps of this culture we have.

They had to inform 4 people before breaking into the toilet door. The guard nearest to the toilet door could not break open the door to check because, if he did, he might be liable to his superiors for breaking protocol (one assumes)? The 2nd guard that was informed probably had the same mentality. The 3rd guard, being a female, couldn’t break open the door… you know sexual harassment lawsuits (not that Mas Selamat would be able to go trial)? The 4th guard was finally the “right” person to break the door down, and by then it was too late.

Everyone was in due process, everyone covered their backside very well, everyone “Kia si”, now end up all kenna “si“.

If, indeed, the guards thought that Mas Selamat had collapsed in the toilet cubicle… THEY SHOULD KICK THE DOOR DOWN IMMEDIATELY!@ What if Mas Selamat had died of a heart attack because they took 10minutes to “cover backside”??
Nocturne needed me to point this out “Mas Selamat never actually did commit any crime, except, escaping from prison.”

***Read this page for links to more Singaporeans bloggers’ reactions to Wong’s singing***

Nasi Lemak Terrorist – Mas Selemat….. haha

Priss — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:16:53 +0000

Here’s a tribute to Mas Selemat the Nasi Lemak Terrorist:

Mas Selemat went to toilet to fetch a pail of water,
Mas Selemat had a limp, but he managed to escape!
Nasi Lemak was so delicious the guard didn’t bother,
And that is how Mas Selemat broke through the barricade!

*** THIS IS NOT FACTUAL, IT’S ONLY A NONSENSICAL POEM***

♥

Have to put that disclosure up so I won’t be liable for defaming anyone. It’s written more like a limerick. It’s just funny how I keep hearing “Nasi Lemak” in people’s conversations everyday

♥

I do these kind of silly things all the time, and people around me are so used to it they probably don’t even find it funny anymore….

I was riding on a bus after work and it was playing Channel News Asia and of course, the biggest news this week in Singapore – terrorist escapes Singapore’s detention centre.

Quoted from my friend xizor who probably quoted from some where reliable

A MASSIVE manhunt involving thousands of policemen and Gurkhas was launched yesterday after Mas Selamat Kastari, the terrorist who planned to crash a hijacked plane into Changi Airport, escaped from detention.

Mas Selamat, 47, who took over as head of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) terror network here in 1999, fled the Internal Security Department’s Whitley Road Detention Centre at 4.05pm yesterday.

Now…. What I (PRISS THE DEAF GOON DU) heard on the bus was… “terrorist”, “escaped”, “Nasi Lemak”… WHAT??

For at least FIVE MINUTES, I was wondering what did a “Nasi Lemak” man do to get the attention of so many military personnel dispatched to hunt for his head. I saw the footage of the armed military men near SCGS and something about someone escaping the country……… I still didn’t get what the “Nasi Lemak” man did or what high profile crime he had committed.

Alas, I took a few steps closer to the TV mobile screen and the marque below the footage wrote his name… MAS SELEMAT

I thought I was quite deaf, but the news caster pronounced his name yet again – Nasi Lemak. I give up, maybe I’m really deaf.

No related posts.