Chui Kong Lumpar Song!

You've got to read this [Link] to understand why talking is cheap and it's unbecoming of one to titillate one's testicles just to have something to say.

I'm a young almost 60-year-old fogey who nobody wants to employ because of my health challenges. I tried to register a company so that I could start a little business at my own pace to earn my keeps but due to my outstanding Medisave in CPF, I was denied the right to register a company. [Link] and [Link].

So I've got no choice but to walk into the sunset, say "Goodbye cruel world", shrivel and die . . . and get fed to the fish?

As much as one has the power to create job for one$elf like SM, MM or whatever M he fancies, it is insensitive, it is cruel to denigrate others who do not aspire to be what he wants them to be. For heaven's sake, one man's meat (like despotic greed for power and riches) may be another man's poison and what is important to one may not be important to another.

Let's not despise regular workers who wish to enjoy the golden years (relax a little without work) before they are fed to the fish. Of course, if one holds a grand MM (money making) position where one's work is decided by one's fancies (like visiting beautiful cities all over the world at one's leisure) without having to report to any higher-up, I'm sure everyone will work until they drop dead in their 80's or even older!

No Sir, I'm not being "bo tua bo sway", I'm just so sick and tired of "Mr Knows All" who keeps running down the "daft" and "complacent" without whose obedience and diligence the MM (mighty mouth) would not be the power that he is today . . . and flooding Sinkapoor would not have the so called 1st World blooming economy that's claimed to be!

You want respect, earn it!
You want respect, behave and talk respectfully!

Is it only the wise one who knows when to call it a day and retire with respect?
Or is it the desperate one who needs to cling on for dear life because there are too many skeletons in the cabinet?

Or is it another wayang like Zorro [Link] to justify one's position and obscene pay?

Who knows.

feedmetothefish

Translation:
Chui kong lumpar song = Hokkien for "mouth talk, balls feel good"
Bo tua bo sway = Hokkien for "no big, no small" or disrespectful

Now it's God's fault?

S Ramesh reported in Today online: S'poreans expect everything to be perfect, but some things are 'an act of God' [Link]

HE said:

We are daft
We are complacent
We are champion grumblers
We need to have spurs stuck to our hide, and now
We expect everything to be perfect. . .

These are derogatory description of citizens of '1st World Singapore' governed by creme de la creme PAP leaders.

We were at fault when we did not "stop at 2". Now an additional 100,000 foreigners is needed this year to compete with locals for jobs and fight for space to squeeze in buses and trains. Soon, very soon, we may have to fight tooth over nail for the air that we breathe!

Congratulations! It's not our fault. I'm glad that Singaporeans are not being blamed for causing the flood. It's the act of God, he said. God may be responsible for the rain but I doubt God is responsible for the freak(ing) flood.

MM Lee said, "whatever we do when we get extraordinary rains like we had recently, no amount of engineering can prevent flooding." Pardon me, but aren't we paying the best brains for extraordinary performances? Or are we paying through our noses just to prevent our mothers, wives and daughters from being maids in other countries?

I know PAP ministers are not gods but if they act like gods and are paid like gods, they had better perform like gods instead of blaming God for heavy rain and fallen trees!

Are they so omnipotent that being honest, transparent and taking responsibility for screw-ups is considered a human weakness? Or is it their culture to come out with silly statement like "PUB has completed the investigation of the flood incident at Orchard Road. The investigation found that the flood was caused by an intense storm"? [Link] Or, as usual, wait for the leederest of the leaders to come up with some high falutin' comment to shut the case up so that everybody else can STFU and move on?

Yes, those embarrassing news keep piling up. . . showing "the power that is" may not be as powerful as the power that actually is. Is this an omen of something more sinister to come?

1. The flood that's caused by the perfect storm [Link]
   
2. The hullabaloo on the video of Martyn See on Dr Lim Hock Siew's speech [Link]
3. The popularity of political prisoner Teo Soh Lung's book "Beyond the Blue Gate"
4. The detention (without trial) of an NSman who's been alleged to be self-radicalised [Link]
   
5. The arrest of author Alan Shadrake, author of Once a Jolly Hangman [Link]
   
6. The increasing number of falling trees that kill [Link]
7. The photographer who got handcuffed by police for taking embarrassing pictures of flood
8. The unhappiness of a rear admiral who was trapped by the flood in Telok Kurau [Link]
9. The effort of lawyer M Ravi taking on Law Mintster Shanmugum and the judiciary to save the life of 22-year-old Yong Vui Kong [Link]
   

Will all these lead to a perfect storm that may rain on our parade at Padang on National Day of August 9?

God knows.

feedmetothefish

Are Ex-ISD detainees in the limelight to radicalise us? Or wake us up from our slumber?

Mr Chia Thye Poh lost 32 years of his prime. Mr Said Zahari lost 17 years and Dr Lim Hock Siew lost almost 20 years. Ms Teo Soh Lung was detained from 21 May to 26 Sept 1987 and again from April 1988 to June 1990.

Many others were also incarcerated by ISD because "they posed a security threat". Security threat to who? The PAP (People And Population) of Singapore?

One can never cover a stink, no matter how wise or powerful one thinks one is. Someday, somehow, whatever vile deeds one has done will catch up with one. The skeletons just have to come out of the cupboard!

The Singapore Government has banned Mr Martyn See's video recording of the speech by former political prisoner Dr Lim Hock Siew [Link]. The reasons for the ban - "The Singapore Government will not allow individuals who have posed a security threat to Singapore's interests in the past, to use media platforms such as films to make baseless accusations against the authorities, give a false portrayal of their previous activities in order to exculpate their guilt, and undermine public confidence in the Government in the process," [Link].

If so, why not use the leethal weapon, the court, to sue the pants off Dr Lim for his baseless accusations?

You can bluff all the people some of the time,
You can bluff some people all of the time, but
You cannot bluff all the people all of the time.

With internet, youtube and vimeo, we have become less blind and less deaf. We can separate the wheat from the chaff. We can see and hear more clearly and know who the liar is, who the hypocrites are . . .

Are they afraid of the ex-ISD detainees (namely, Said Zahari, Lim Hock Siew and Teo Soh Lung) because they know that truth exposes, embarrasses and hurts the guilty villians?

For those who missed Dr Lim Hock Siew's speech, here's the transcription. [Link]

If you want to see more clearly, I recommend that you read Ms Teo Soh Lung's "Beyond The Blue Gate." before it becomes another "security threat" to the authorities and gets outlawed too.

How morally depraved, ignoble or wicked can a despot or party be?

Until we know, we may never know.

Many thanks to Mr Martyn See, Mr Said Zahari, Dr Lim Hock Siew and Ms Teo Soh Lung for showing us some.

feedmetothefish

YOG is getting Cute, Cuterer and Cuterest

I can't help it. I'm tickled pink by Lyo and Merly!

No, the real glee comes from the news of Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports reported by the Straits Times.

The YOG budget skyrocketing from $104M to $387M is cute! [Link]

The "brisk" sale of 80,000 YOG tickets sold by MYCS to MOE as reported by ST is cuter![Link] and [Link]

The engagement of ex-stripper Bobbi from Sydney to choreograph the opening ceremony of YOG must be the cuterest! [Link]

I wonder how much of $387M goes to Bobbi?

Without comparison, this must be the "betterest" [Link] YOG opening ceremony there is and ever will be! As to how big the crowd or how exciting the games will be, who knows? Will we see as many countries participating like we have seen in FIFA's World Cup? Will there be a YOG version of Paul the Berlin Sotong picking up winner of each event?

Well, if only MCYS and ST were bold enough to promote and spice up pole-dancing Bobbi's involvement in YOG, the tickets may have been sold out by now!


feedmetothefish

Has ST and the Law Ministry hammered the final nail into his coffin?

On the printed version of Straits Times of July 10 2010, I read "Law Ministry rebuts lawyer's claim."

"The government is entitled to comment on such policies... Mr Ravi's proposition that the clemency process has been flawed, either by what the minister has said, or by reason of the Attorney-General advising the government, is also incorrect"- The Law Ministry on lawyer M. Ravi's allegations that Minister K. Shanmugum's comments at the community dialogue on May 9 had prejudiced Yong's case.

It went on to point out "that evidence in the court showed that Yong had traffic heroin on other occasions before he was arrested in June 2007."

ST also reported K. Shanmugum's comment at the May 9 dialogue, "Yong Vui Kong is young. But if we say 'We let you go', what is the signal we are sending?" Are we to understand that what the law minister said was not 'sub judice' but an 'entitlement' to comment on a case that was ongoing and yet to be determined by the appeal judges?

I also read a review/highlight of Alan Shadrake's book "Once A Jolly Hangman" by Yawning Bread, "Julia Bohl (Chapter 10) had been closely watched by the Central Narcotics Bureau for several months as a supplier of various party drugs to high society. Piecing together various reports, Shadrake shows that an undercover officer was planted in her company, eventually gaining her confidence. In a raid mounted on a party one night in March 2002, Bohl and several others were arrested, with Bohl charged for having 687 grams of cannabis in her possession, above the 500-gram threshold that mandates the death penalty. The German government applied maximum pressure on Singapore, threatening economic reprisals. The seized drugs (all or part of it?) were then re-analysed by a laboratory which issued a new report that said there were just 281 grams. She was sentenced to five years in jail, serving only three". [Link]

Signals signifying justice? I'm confused.

Is it only in Singapore that "the government is entitled to" lots more than one can imagine?

Someone commented on my previous blog [Link]: "With power you can invoke justice. With money you can pervert justice." After reading this and the review/highlight of Alan Shadrake's book "Once A Jolly Hangman" by Yawning Bread [Link], I totally agree.

The FIFA World Cup will be over by early Monday morning. After this article by ST, will it be 'game over' for Vui Kong?








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Do no harm? Sucker, suckerer, suckerest?

"Man is not naturally altruistic because he has a selfish gene. The golden rule expresses man's yearning to overcome his base nature - or rather, his basic nature. It enjoins social beings like us to think before we act, and instructs that before we do anything, we must first consider whether our actions are likely to cause harm to others."

In his speech, the CJ also said, "What is evil depends on one's views of what is morally right and morally wrong, and how one distinguishes 'right' from 'wrong' may depend on many factors, such as one's religious faith or lack of it, or one's philosophy of life."

I read about the letter from the then Singapore's attorney general to then Law Minister S. Jayakumar regarding the case of the presence of unauthorised persons inside polling stations [Link] then I read about the appeal of Yong Vui Kong [Link].

Then I realised something is amiss.

Therefore, I ask:

• Is it good to do real good or just talk and act (wayang) good?
  
• Is it better to suck up?
  
• Is it betterer (morally right or morally wrong) to do no harm to those who can fix us up real bad?
  
• Is it betterest to do whatever, regardless of conscience or morals, to self-serve and self-preserve?

Pardon me, I just cannot resist the new high faluting English newspeak that's been flying around like crazy lately [Link]

Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong was conferred an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by the National University of Singapore last week. Here's an excerpt from his acceptance speech.

"WHAT little I have to say draws its inspiration from the title of a book recently published by the National University of Singapore's Centre for Maritime Studies: Why Am I Here? Its author is President S R Nathan, also Chancellor of the National University of Singapore.

'The unexamined life is not worth living.' So said Socrates, who paid with his life for insisting on living in accordance with his own maxim. The question 'Why am I here?' requires each of us to examine our purpose in life and to set our life goals.

The question should be asked when one starts one's career and not at the end of it, because it may be too late then to change anything for the better. The past is gone, and can only be recalled but cannot be re-lived. When the poet W.H. Auden was considering this question, he said: 'We are here to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.'

A few weeks ago, The Straits Times reported that Master of Business Administration (MBA) students in the United States have decided that on graduation, they will take a pledge of integrity patterned on the Hippocratic Oath to 'do no harm'.

What is particularly apt for doctors, whose primary function is to heal the sick and alleviate their pain and suffering, may not necessarily be appropriate for managers of businesses with MBA degrees, as the primary, if not the sole function, of the latter is to maximise profits. Still, the pledge of the MBA students is a good start in recognising that they can help in correcting the excesses of capitalism in order to save it.

The concept of harm is easy to grasp - whether it is physical harm, mental harm, financial harm or social harm - because it is tangible. A variation of the 'do no harm' principle is the 'do no evil' principle.

But the concept of evil is harder to grasp. What is evil depends on one's views of what is morally right and morally wrong, and how one distinguishes 'right' from 'wrong' may depend on many factors, such as one's religious faith or lack of it, or one's philosophy of life. At its simplest, however, something evil is something bad.

The 'do no harm' principle finds expression in what is commonly known as the 'golden rule', which has its roots in the great religions and cultures of China, India, Greece and the Middle East.

A positive version of this rule can be found in The Bible, Matthew 7:12: 'Do unto others as you would have done unto you.' A negative version can be found in the Analects of Confucius: 'Do not do unto others what you would not like to be done to you.'

Man is not naturally altruistic because he has a selfish gene. The golden rule expresses man's yearning to overcome his base nature - or rather, his basic nature. It enjoins social beings like us to think before we act, and instructs that before we do anything, we must first consider whether our actions are likely to cause harm to others.

As each of you leaves this hall, you may wish to remember these words of the poet William Cowper:

'Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.'

But it must not be a wholly selfish purpose. Thus, I would commend that your answer to the question 'Why am I here?' should firstly be: 'To do good, do no harm, and do no evil to my neighbour.'

It may then be asked, as the lawyer in Luke 10:29 asked: 'And who is my neighbour?' To answer that question: He is my neighbour who needs my help or is most likely to be affected by my actions. For all of us who live in Singapore, our neighbour should first be those living in Singapore.

For some of us, I think that the following lines of the poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore may have expressed it best:

I slept and dreamt that life was joy;
I awoke and saw that life was duty;
I acted, and behold, duty was joy.
It only requires a few good men to make a nation great. Will you be among them?"

--------------------------------------

A few good men? No sir, it takes more than a few 'god' men, Mr (Them vs Us) Elitist. It takes every citizen to do his part to make this Singapore great. Ironically as of now, we even need more gamblers and professionals of the oldest profession to make this "aspiring" nation great!

A few good men and maybe a certain familee? Great Scott! They think they own the whole damn flooding, over-crowded and hard-to-breathe island!

feedmetothfish

Board & Squeeze for Progress

MM Lee Kuan Yew said: "Let me explain what happens when we make progress. HDB prices go up, private home (prices) go up, all asset prices go up. Everybody finds he owns something more valuable in the house, his shares are worth more and he can live a good life," said Mr Lee. "Of course we have to put up with more crowded trains, more crowded buses, (but) it cannot be helped. [Link]

CEO of SMRT Corporation Saw Phaik Hwa said: “People can board the train – it is whether they choose to” which caused an irate customer to write to her [Link]

If I were her PR Manager, I'd advise her to use the following video [Link] to put her squeezed victims (champion grumblers) to silence.

Is this the price to pay for progress?

Are you ready to be squeezed like sardines to enjoy the good life?

If this is progress, please give me back my old kampung hut built on flood-proof stilts.

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day.

Home, home on the Range;
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day. [Link]


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Men Of Virtue In The Holy Order Of PAP

After his bypass surgery, Khaw Boon Wan contemplated retirement, "use my remaining time to enjoy natural scenery" but changed his mind after reading the Chinese prose anthology Gu Wen Guan Zhi and learn about how “men of virtue” had always done their best to serve the people. “But later, I asked myself, is this way of thinking correct? Heaven gave me a new lease of life – not for enjoyment, but to let me help more people.” [Link]

On the demise of Dr Goh Keng Swee, "Mr Lee recalled Dr Goh's last public speech as a minister in 1984, where he exhorted a new generation of leaders about their public duty. 'He spoke, 'You are coming into this. You are joining a holy order and your job is to build on what we have done, not treat it as a pinnacle, but as a foundation to make it better.' And I think that's our job,' the Prime Minister said." [Link]

Such shameless audacity!

How dare they use such terms when they are nothing but a bunch of greedy mercenaries who pay themselves millions to be in the holy order! To describe oneself in such an altruistic manner while leaving the people no choice but pay the king's ransom to the holy order's paycheck is really 'siah sway'. Bloody 'siah lan'! Call me crazy but had the Brigadier-General, the CEO of bus company, the surgeon, or the eye doctor and what-have-you stayed at their old jobs instead of being elevated to become inglorious 'holy men', Singapore may have retained its soul as a democratic society based on justice and equality instead of what we have today . . . still aspiring.

Maybe, UK is holier than Singapore. At least, they are cutting their ministers' pay by 5%. [Link] Of course, compare to flooding Sinkapore, some will say that England is in the dumps because their medical service sucks. [Link]

With a holy order of cabinet mint$ters like Bargain Hen, 3-meals Bala, Affordable HDB Mah, Mas Selamat Wong, Once-in-50-years-Yaacob, Bypass Khaw, and Don't-Expect-To-Be-Flood-Free-Singapore Lee, what I write here may be considered blasphemous by them.

Or should I say that the reason why I did not die from my heart attack 'Heaven gave me a new lease of life' is because 'not for enjoyment, but to let me help more people' know that self-praise is a bloody disgrace.

No, I'm far from being 'men of virtue' and I don't belong to any 'holy order". I'm just a mere mortal doing the best I can, waiting to be fed to the fish.

Oh, the cartoon would be more apt if "bullet-proof" is changed to "fire-proof"

Warning:
Please note that PAP MPs or Mint$ters have a phobia for that name "Seng Han Tong". Never ever mention that name if you are near any of those elites in the holy order. It can lead to jail or $2,000 fine. [Link]. I advise everyone to stay away from them and not even touch them with a ten-foot-pole.

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