I have little idea what's gone on in Hougang. This by-election has seen a rally each I think and some harsh words have been exchanged.
I'm just annoyed that no one else came forward to make the elections a multi-cornered fight. Hougang is a single member constituency. Practically anyone could have come forward to add their name to the hat and liven things up a bit. It's $16,000 to join the by-election shindig so that may have been a hindrance. Wasn't there a rumour Tan Jee Say was going to put his hand up for nomination? Well, it's over, no point fussing over blank nomination papers.
Last I glanced in the papers, the WP candidate was not put into gahmen as an NMP previously and DPM Teo thinks that means he isn't quite worthy or something like that. He's also stated that the WP has got what they, and weirdly enough, perhaps by extension, Singaporeans too, have wanted with 5 elected opposition members in gahmen, that that was sufficient. Someone needs an arrogance timeout. Ah Choo has promised to keep Hougang as an SMC if he wins. Yeah right. He's also asked if WP will work the ground if PAP wins. The WP has more or less stuck to the logic of having more opposition members in gahmen to balance things out although Temasek Times reported they were quite convoluted in their speeches.
Is that all that's happened so far?
The other bit that bugs me is part of the precursor to all this. Yes Loverboy MP had an affair and was kicked out of the WP. (But did he have to be?). Our PM was then required to call a repeat election but get this, he could technically do it any time he wanted. "Unfettered discretion" I think they called it or is stated in the constitution. Isn't that a perversion of democracy, having people not represented by an elected representative in parliament for an undefined period? Seems odd to me that the power to decide when the by-election can occur rests with one person. Imagine if he got kwai-lan and keep on making excuses for delaying it. Hougang could have been 'punished for their disloyalty' with abject ignorance till the next GE. That possibility of that possibility just doesn't seem right.
I think I'll go listen to a rally or two this week.
Tuesday 22 May 2012
Wednesday 16 May 2012
We're Better Off Being Scared On The Roads
I was in a taxi at a junction in Sengkang on a night last week. The light in our direction green and the driver accelerated gently. Suddenly, from a white car did a speedy, screechy right turn into the same road we were headed down. "Wah like that also can ah?!" exclaimed the taxi driver.
On Monday night, my colleague and I headed towards McCallum St, I to my yoga class at Telok Ayer and he to his car at a nearby building. Lo and behold, a car turned right at the junction in front of Bangkok Bank, into the direction of oncoming traffic. McCallum St is a one way street. I went "whoa" as the car sped by and into the back lane behind GB Building.
Last night, the SUV ahead of the taxi I was in did a right turn when the lights were red in our direction.
Most mornings I traverse a large junction in Sengkang to get to the train station. There are usually a few people who launched themselves into the crossing when the red man faces them, as it's green for traffic approaching sideways.
Risky business all this. For drivers and pedestrians alike. It seems like everyone is in some sort of hurry or need to get to an emergency somewhere. Quite unnecessary really given the consequences when things truly go wrong. The dumb Ferrari driver who was showing off to his girlfriend on Saturday morning didn't learn the lesson and in the worst way possible way lost his life and took the lives of 32 innocents as well. All because he thought he could speed past the red lights at 4am without consequences. Shameful and stupid.
I've told many people that drivers in Singapore are really bad at driving. Well many drivers are. They make the classic mistake of feeling adequately protected and safe in a metal shell which somehow becomes a tank trudging at 60mph down an expressway. Indestructible and aggressive. All that one doesn't learning in driving school.
Be defensive. It's fine. Give way. It's fine. Go a little slower. It's fine. Signal, for heaven's sake, signal. Plan ahead. Get a little scared and be safer, be safe. You're driving something that can kill. You and others around you.
On Monday night, my colleague and I headed towards McCallum St, I to my yoga class at Telok Ayer and he to his car at a nearby building. Lo and behold, a car turned right at the junction in front of Bangkok Bank, into the direction of oncoming traffic. McCallum St is a one way street. I went "whoa" as the car sped by and into the back lane behind GB Building.
Last night, the SUV ahead of the taxi I was in did a right turn when the lights were red in our direction.
Most mornings I traverse a large junction in Sengkang to get to the train station. There are usually a few people who launched themselves into the crossing when the red man faces them, as it's green for traffic approaching sideways.
Risky business all this. For drivers and pedestrians alike. It seems like everyone is in some sort of hurry or need to get to an emergency somewhere. Quite unnecessary really given the consequences when things truly go wrong. The dumb Ferrari driver who was showing off to his girlfriend on Saturday morning didn't learn the lesson and in the worst way possible way lost his life and took the lives of 32 innocents as well. All because he thought he could speed past the red lights at 4am without consequences. Shameful and stupid.
I've told many people that drivers in Singapore are really bad at driving. Well many drivers are. They make the classic mistake of feeling adequately protected and safe in a metal shell which somehow becomes a tank trudging at 60mph down an expressway. Indestructible and aggressive. All that one doesn't learning in driving school.
Be defensive. It's fine. Give way. It's fine. Go a little slower. It's fine. Signal, for heaven's sake, signal. Plan ahead. Get a little scared and be safer, be safe. You're driving something that can kill. You and others around you.
Tuesday 15 May 2012
Good Job Hope Givers Manchester City
All the noise is just deafening. Thousands of disparate voices talking, yelling, whispering. Thousands of others reacting in response. Everyone is a squawking flamingo at a beachhead, participants at an immense cocktail party engaging in urgent, fervent conversation. The voices, of course, blend. A cacophony from a captive, captured audience averaged out into a general massive persistent groan. Now and then, the volume and pitch rise and peak into a frenzy of screams for several seconds. It fades as readily as it rose. The modulation is controlled by visual stimuli. Everyone is watching. And reacting. Hands up in the air, arms crossed, some in prayer. Gesticulating approval, revelry, encouragement, dismay, anger, shame. Can one show hope? So many emotions are associated with the spectacle before them. A game. The game.
Of men and a ball. And goals.
At the heart of it all, amid the riotous jostling madness is passion. There is nothing like the feeling of witnessing a goal scored. Both ways - ecstasy when your team scores, despondency when a rival does damage. The group theory of transferred emotions is real, even palatable. When you're one individual in a crowd of thousands chanting for the same team, wishing the same ending, equally passionate for uniformed representatives of this sport and their talents, the feeling is magic. A high.
----------
I was about to sleep when a man's scream tore through the quiet of Sunday night in my neighbourhood. It was a shout of elation. It hit me that the finals were on and I quickly reached for my phone to check Twitter. Twitter is news. QPR equalised. Bloody hell. And a lone screamer was glad about this? Must be a Man U fan, I thought. I flicked through the updates posted by @epl_live to get a sense of the evening's scores. Bloody hell, Man U was ahead. Well, whatever will be will be. Sleep.
I woke and heard on the 7am news that Man City were the new league winners. I bounced around the bathroom for several seconds. Miracles do happen. And there is hope for us all again, for a difference, for a renewed vigor to the league. Cheers.
Of men and a ball. And goals.
At the heart of it all, amid the riotous jostling madness is passion. There is nothing like the feeling of witnessing a goal scored. Both ways - ecstasy when your team scores, despondency when a rival does damage. The group theory of transferred emotions is real, even palatable. When you're one individual in a crowd of thousands chanting for the same team, wishing the same ending, equally passionate for uniformed representatives of this sport and their talents, the feeling is magic. A high.
----------
I was about to sleep when a man's scream tore through the quiet of Sunday night in my neighbourhood. It was a shout of elation. It hit me that the finals were on and I quickly reached for my phone to check Twitter. Twitter is news. QPR equalised. Bloody hell. And a lone screamer was glad about this? Must be a Man U fan, I thought. I flicked through the updates posted by @epl_live to get a sense of the evening's scores. Bloody hell, Man U was ahead. Well, whatever will be will be. Sleep.
I woke and heard on the 7am news that Man City were the new league winners. I bounced around the bathroom for several seconds. Miracles do happen. And there is hope for us all again, for a difference, for a renewed vigor to the league. Cheers.
Tuesday 8 May 2012
Blind Lab Rat Sadism
This morning a few morning radio DJs station were discussing a letter someone sent to the local paper about maths standards being too high. It seems that teachers were advocating having tuition for kids as young as 6-7 in Primary 1 to cope with the level of maths being taught. It makes one wonder how tough the maths really is for kids that young. In my time, tuition was for kids who couldn't cope, not a mainstream education system. If kids have to end up at these places jut to keep pace with school, isn't something wrong with the school system? If teachers find it difficult to get their point across in a lesson, then something is wrong with the system. With time for homework and in tuition centres, what time is there for kids to go out and play? There was another report on more Asian kids being most myopic, literally short sighted, at young ages. The experts suspect that it's because they're spending too much time indoors and the lack of exposure to sunlight and far away things is affecting eye development. So kids are getting screwed in more ways than one. Poor things.
What's also bad is the outcome for parents. With all the extra guidance kids need, they run home from work to spend some hours each day to figure out how to solve maths problems without algebra. If they can't they work harder to earn more money to put their kids into tuition centres - the throw money at the problem, hands off approach. It's one of those concerns that's stopping parents from having more kids - the cost of education and the how little they'll actually spend with their children. It's doesn't sound so bad. (It's fantastic for tuition centres. Maybe a conspiracy is afoot) But it's important to figure out how this phenomenon (perhaps uniquely Singaporean) will affect society. Will we be creating information-absorbing robots with LASIK-corrected vision who don't want the outdoors but have fun alone on computers in air-conditioned flats? Well not everyone will end up like this. Some will dropout to earn more as plumbers with better EQ and sense of humour.
Is this happening because years of kiasuism have sprouted crazed PSLE examination setters? It's the only major examination the MOE sets in course of a student's life here. O and A Levels come from England. Since primary school is the only chance to exact madness upon our younglings, we've gone extreme, testing them with blind lab rat sadism with books, quizzes, projects and knowledge.
Ok, I overstate. But we know it's bad. And we await the gahmen's official response. Parents don't hold back.
What's also bad is the outcome for parents. With all the extra guidance kids need, they run home from work to spend some hours each day to figure out how to solve maths problems without algebra. If they can't they work harder to earn more money to put their kids into tuition centres - the throw money at the problem, hands off approach. It's one of those concerns that's stopping parents from having more kids - the cost of education and the how little they'll actually spend with their children. It's doesn't sound so bad. (It's fantastic for tuition centres. Maybe a conspiracy is afoot) But it's important to figure out how this phenomenon (perhaps uniquely Singaporean) will affect society. Will we be creating information-absorbing robots with LASIK-corrected vision who don't want the outdoors but have fun alone on computers in air-conditioned flats? Well not everyone will end up like this. Some will dropout to earn more as plumbers with better EQ and sense of humour.
Is this happening because years of kiasuism have sprouted crazed PSLE examination setters? It's the only major examination the MOE sets in course of a student's life here. O and A Levels come from England. Since primary school is the only chance to exact madness upon our younglings, we've gone extreme, testing them with blind lab rat sadism with books, quizzes, projects and knowledge.
Ok, I overstate. But we know it's bad. And we await the gahmen's official response. Parents don't hold back.
Friday 4 May 2012
Recent HDB News
There's been quite a bit of HDB-related news in the press in recent days. The minister in charge announced with aplomb that flat sizes hadn't shrunk in 15 years and that the gahmen might intervene if too many shoebox apartments are built, and two letters about removing the Cash-Over-Valuation (COV) component of resale purchases made it to TODAY.
Well flat sizes. I'm not sure about 3-rm flat footage but I can generally surmise that both 4-rm and 5-rm flats have lost about 10 sq m in area since the 80s. The former was generally about 100 sq m and the latter 120 sq m when I was growing up. Today fresh to-be-built flats are 90 and 110 sq m in their respective forms. I remember awful 95 sq m 5-rm flats in Sembawang. It was likely an experiment the planners had - start in an ulu estate with tiny apartments and see what happens. The location was unattractive enough and the diminished size became the proverbial salt in the wound. (It didnt help that geographically Sembawang is closer to Johor than Woodlands and there's a road called Jalan Ulu Sembawang there.) There was excess supply and the HDB had walk-in selections for readily available flats. A friend of mine bought one in such a situation. So given that we're all aware enough to see through the minister's statement, there have been multiple posts on FB making fun of the poor man. One picture had him with Pinnochio's nose.
It took me by surprise that the same minister implied that the gahmen might put a stop to developers churning out tiny Mickey Mouse apartments. Really? So private developers may not be able build what they will, on land they've leased for a century? That'll send ripples through the stock market if it ever happened. Some things are best left to market forces I think. Why mess with demand and supply for a niche segment? If people are rich enough to afford such places and live there with a pet or two, let it be. They'll move when their TV gets bigger than the wall area.
COVs are a pet peeve of mine. I had to fork out $25,000 on top of everything to own the flat I'm in now. Awful. So when I read those readers' letters I could empathise. If I could adjust the laws, HDB flats would only be sold back to the HDB at free market valuations and they'd be put into the usual Balance Of Flats sales. Simple as that. No extra cash to be forked out by buyers and sellers. What's not a pretty outcome from this is loss of agents' livelihoods. The HDB could employ them for viewings (someone's gotta open the door) if that became a necessity. I consider them a bit of a menace anyway. Most are after a quick buck and are solely interested in the sellers' interests. I have viewed flats like dumps with sellers' agents with balls to ask for ridiculous cash amounts. Buyers somehow have to fork out the moolah if they want a flat with very little real bargaining to bring prices down. And bargaining is never on the valuation price but on COV. It's become that stupid.
Yeah, everyone wants to make a buck but the buck had got to come from somewhere. With mass market housing, the effects will spiral. Leave flat prices to market forces, not the COV. Ban it altogether.
Well flat sizes. I'm not sure about 3-rm flat footage but I can generally surmise that both 4-rm and 5-rm flats have lost about 10 sq m in area since the 80s. The former was generally about 100 sq m and the latter 120 sq m when I was growing up. Today fresh to-be-built flats are 90 and 110 sq m in their respective forms. I remember awful 95 sq m 5-rm flats in Sembawang. It was likely an experiment the planners had - start in an ulu estate with tiny apartments and see what happens. The location was unattractive enough and the diminished size became the proverbial salt in the wound. (It didnt help that geographically Sembawang is closer to Johor than Woodlands and there's a road called Jalan Ulu Sembawang there.) There was excess supply and the HDB had walk-in selections for readily available flats. A friend of mine bought one in such a situation. So given that we're all aware enough to see through the minister's statement, there have been multiple posts on FB making fun of the poor man. One picture had him with Pinnochio's nose.
It took me by surprise that the same minister implied that the gahmen might put a stop to developers churning out tiny Mickey Mouse apartments. Really? So private developers may not be able build what they will, on land they've leased for a century? That'll send ripples through the stock market if it ever happened. Some things are best left to market forces I think. Why mess with demand and supply for a niche segment? If people are rich enough to afford such places and live there with a pet or two, let it be. They'll move when their TV gets bigger than the wall area.
COVs are a pet peeve of mine. I had to fork out $25,000 on top of everything to own the flat I'm in now. Awful. So when I read those readers' letters I could empathise. If I could adjust the laws, HDB flats would only be sold back to the HDB at free market valuations and they'd be put into the usual Balance Of Flats sales. Simple as that. No extra cash to be forked out by buyers and sellers. What's not a pretty outcome from this is loss of agents' livelihoods. The HDB could employ them for viewings (someone's gotta open the door) if that became a necessity. I consider them a bit of a menace anyway. Most are after a quick buck and are solely interested in the sellers' interests. I have viewed flats like dumps with sellers' agents with balls to ask for ridiculous cash amounts. Buyers somehow have to fork out the moolah if they want a flat with very little real bargaining to bring prices down. And bargaining is never on the valuation price but on COV. It's become that stupid.
Yeah, everyone wants to make a buck but the buck had got to come from somewhere. With mass market housing, the effects will spiral. Leave flat prices to market forces, not the COV. Ban it altogether.
Wednesday 2 May 2012
It's Not Because I Am A Man City Fan
I am glad Man City won their derby. It's not because I am a City fan. It's because I am a whoever-beats-Man U-fan.
Football is a spectator sport and a team's fans can make or break a team. I suppose it's only right in some ways. If your team is doing well, you should celebrate and let off some firecrackers. But how far one team's fans go to piss off other teams' fans can sow the seeds of eternal discord. Rubbing the success in others' faces has its repercussions as it does now.
Man U has been doing exceptionally well for a good span of two decades and the talent and skills that's passed through the Red Devils' line up has been superb. Unfortunately, the fans come off as exceptional too in the arrogant department. Especially the one's with the collars up. (That's Cantona's fault) And that's galvanised everyone else to summon cosmic powers to dethrone the reigning champions. We're bored of the Red Devils' success. We're bored of how good the team is. We're sick of Alex Ferguson and his accent. He doesn't seem to go away. Many are, at least I am, glad that Newcastle and Tottenham are doing well and spicing up the top 6.
We'll wait and see how the remaining few games play out. Level on points the two teams are and it's a knife edge. It'll be most exciting if it goes down to the wire.
Football is a spectator sport and a team's fans can make or break a team. I suppose it's only right in some ways. If your team is doing well, you should celebrate and let off some firecrackers. But how far one team's fans go to piss off other teams' fans can sow the seeds of eternal discord. Rubbing the success in others' faces has its repercussions as it does now.
Man U has been doing exceptionally well for a good span of two decades and the talent and skills that's passed through the Red Devils' line up has been superb. Unfortunately, the fans come off as exceptional too in the arrogant department. Especially the one's with the collars up. (That's Cantona's fault) And that's galvanised everyone else to summon cosmic powers to dethrone the reigning champions. We're bored of the Red Devils' success. We're bored of how good the team is. We're sick of Alex Ferguson and his accent. He doesn't seem to go away. Many are, at least I am, glad that Newcastle and Tottenham are doing well and spicing up the top 6.
We'll wait and see how the remaining few games play out. Level on points the two teams are and it's a knife edge. It'll be most exciting if it goes down to the wire.
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