On Maid Abuse

It's not even Sunday, and the Straits Times has splashed pictures of the mutilated boobs of a maid working in Malaysia, right across the front page of its Asian news section.

We should look carefully at what kind of 'horror stories' from foreign countries that our papers play up, give prominence to, and what kind of domestic horror stories are underplayed and under-reported.

For example, recent cases of school-going teens committing suicide out of maltreatment or emotional stress imposed by teachers have been reported in the Chinese press, but the English papers have been silent about.

Now, what of this piece of horrifying maid abuse? The Straits Times fails to inform its 4 million readers in Singapore is that "almost a hundred Indonesian maids had died falling from tall buildings in the island republic in the previous three years" - according to Chalief Akbar of the Indonesian embassy here, quoted in a BBC article. In addition, 10 to 20 maids flee their employers and seek refuge with the Indonesian embassy here each day.

The official story is that these maids, coming from rural villages in Indonesia, the Philippines, and subcontinental India, are unaccustomed to working in high-rise flats, and hence scores of maids fall to their deaths here each year while climbing out of the building to clean windows.

I can't see how anyone can take that laughable explanation seriously. It contains several blatant biases and fallacious assumptions:
1. There is no urban centre in the Philippines, Indonesia and the Subcontinent.
2. Because these are backward countries, unlike modern Singapore.
3. Hence, all maids who work here are unable to deal with an urbanised landscape, and kill themselves by falling to their deaths accidentally.
I don't know whether to be shocked at the assumptions in the argument, or at the fact that people buy into this story.

Since two years ago, it has been mandatory for maid agencies to include safe work training in their maid courses. That's not to say that no maid agency has prepared its maids for urban-based domestic work. Now despite all the (compulsory) safety training in the last two years, the death toll still remains at around 100 maids a year falling to their deaths.

Let's look at the figures again: every day, 10-20 maids run away from their Singaporean employers to seek refuge at the Indonesian embassy. Total number of deaths is therefore about 1/3 to 1/6 of runaways. The more likely explanation is that while some maids have the guts to run, other maids sink into depression - being forced to work more than 18 hours a day, without rest days, without permission to socialise outside of their 'workplace' will do that easily. What do depressed, isolated people stuck in a foreign land do? They might well jump to their deaths.

Now, add to the maid fatalities the hundreds of construction workers who lose their lives or are mangled each (normal) year in our building projects... What kind of country do we live in anyway?

The Rise of the Creative Class

One wonders why our bureaucrats here are so enarmoured with the creative class theory.

The article in the link explains the allure of the theory for civil servants with particular mindsets, and the pitfalls of the theory.

Straits Times fails at reporting news, leaves out key Rice 9/11 quote

Condoleeza Rice testified last Friday morning (Singapore time) to the Senate about the 9/11 attacks. Our national newspaper gives her a glowing report on Saturday, despite the fact that her testimony was clearly damaging to the administration. What's unforgivable is ST's reluctance to print the truth, to leave out key information in its reporting.

Rice said, "I don't remember the Al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about." And that's a quote you'll never see in your newspaper, and it took me under half a week to hunt for the transcripts to the hearings.

(As an aside, you can actually get a transcript of any Senate/Congress debate or speech within a week. How long would you have to wait for Parliament to publish its Gazette? And how easily accessible is the Gazette?)

The Straits Times should realise it IS in our national interests to show that Singapore does not have a monopoly on incompetent civil servants.

Future PM redefines marginally employed as entrepeneurs

I can't imagine Mini-Lee could be so shameless as to do that...

It's one thing to 'salute' the ITE graduate selling chicken pies, the NTU undergraduate turned undertaker, and the security guard cum part-time artist for their tenacity and will to survive, but it's bullshit to hail what are acts of desperation in the race to the bottom as "entrepeneurship".

For the second year in a row, Singapore's largest group of retrenched people belong to the white-collar PMET class. By extension Singapore's most unemployable group of people are the tertiary-educated - think of all the graduates and the would-be graduates who have been trained for the nonexistent PMET jobs.

Go tell these bunch of people when they finally give up hope of decent employment, give in to desperation, and open stalls in hawker centres, pasar malams, that you salute them as entrepeneurs. That's a very neat excuse and diversion to cover up the depressing fact that our Great Leaders have been incompetent and incapable of resurrecting the economy, don't you think?

Public rituals

First off, I'd like to condemn the news reporting of the Falluja incident where "4 US contractors" were killed, and their corpses then mutilated and lynched by public mobs in the Iraqi town.

Let's not get all mushy about this and treat it as though it's Black Hawn Down all over again: these weren't innocent "contractors". That's standard military doublespeak for mercenaries, paramilitary soldiers whose activities and functions are semi-legal and politically troublesome, and cannot be performed by the official coalition forces.

Even though the Shitty Times described these 4 men as "civilian contractors", a blatant lie that even the US media wouldn't be caught dead telling, the contractors were paid mercenaries working for Blackwater USA, which recently hired ex-soldiers from Chilean ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet's infamous and brutal military forces. On a professional level, Blackwater is part of the huge US industry that acts as a black hand of the Pentagon around the world, implementing its political policies on the sly, and often under the guise of providing "security services".

So, not only did the US illegally invade Iraq, part of their more illegal 'peacekeeping duties' are also farmed out to clandestine groups.

Now, if the 4 slain US citizens were members of the military, I would've given my sympathies - no questions asked. Ditto, if the 4 slain US citizens were civilians working there. 4 US mercenaries got slain, and their corpses defiled publicly? Don't cry on me.

Spot the Fake News Article

Every April Fools' Day, the Straits Times will include one fake news report in its broadsheet, often on the front page itself.

Here are the two frontline stories in today's edition of the ST:

Singapore exams go regional, where it seems there are actually fools in the Ministry of Education who want to export our exam system, and fools in other countries who want to buy it.

The other headline?

Commuters to share train security costs. Where Singaporean citizens will pay for the extravagant, needless, and ineffective "security measures" that our paranoid leaders will be installing for our rail network - armed marshals on every train, along with selective luggage checks that will make a mockery out of the phrase "Mass Rapid Transit".

It is a sign of the times that the second story is NOT the april fools' joke, and the improbable news is actually from the first headline.

Linguistic legacy of Singapore leaders

I propose that 50 years from now, historians will point to the coining of new words as the most important contribution of our leaders to their nation and the world. We have already redefined artiste to mean artist, and bohemian to describe the very bourgeois and poser-esque Holland Village. And that's not coining precious phrases like Confucian ethics and Asian democracy.

Sidenotes:
Artiste, in most dictionaries, refers to
1. musical or theatrical entertainers, like music-hall artistes or circus artistes
2. More generally, a person with artistic pretensions

Bohemian: lifestyle associated with liberal, penniless, and new artists or literary circles.

Bourgeois: mostly yuppies hang out at Holland V to imbibe expensive coffee and masticate gourmet food that real bohemians can't afford. These yuppies also hold artistic pretensions while posing at the Holland V bistros.

Today, our former Minister for Education, Teo Chee Hean, continues this rich legacy of linguistic deviation by coining a new use for an old word. The headlines have it: Public servants must think more like insurgents.

It's like watching a comedy in English, performed by Japanese actors who aren't quite sure what the N-word means...

Our poor minister clearly wants to say that the Civil Service needs to "take risks", "think out of the box", to be "less risk-averse", etc. It's just puzzling why his speechwriters chose the word "insurgent". Or mis-use the word and blame Gary Hamel for it.

Insurgent, according to the Webster
1. Person who rebels against civil authority or established government
2. One who acts contrary to policies and decisions of their own political party.

Onelook has it even better:
3. a member of an irregular armed force that fights a stronger force by sabotage and harassment

How should we make sense of the headline?
I can't choose between the following interpretations:

A. Teo welcomes insurgents because the government is afraid of mavericks. (linguistic faux pas theory)
B. Teo urges civil servants to take arms and rise up in revolution. (Webster, sense 1)
C. Teo urges civil servants to sabotage Singapore. (Onelook)
D. Teo admits that Singapore civil servants are members of the PAP. (Webster, sense 2)

Budget Roundup

It wasn't a case of writer's block, though I wish that is the reason why I haven't commented on it. Unfortunately, I needed to resist the urge to scream at my television screen, at the radio, and tear up the newspapers every day for the past 2 weeks of nonsensical speeches from our overpaid and underperforming clowns in Parliament.

The trade-off? Instead of an almost daily rant and snipe at our great leaders, Dear Reader, you will be subjected to just one long, but calm and measured post from me.

What can one write about without ending in a rant or a primal scream? I'll have to skip the great ideas from our leaders about the baby issue, or Sentosa Casino, or what I call the next big white elephant to rival the Tang Dynasty Village and the Esplanade. Or the budget, which Morgan Stanley's analysts complained was one of the most miserly, and certainly Not A Very Good Thing For Our Domestic Economy.

"It's the economy, stupid"

Our ministers have never been good orators, or skilled in any form of rhetoric, or cunning lingustics. They would do well to steer clear of the rubbish they've nevertheless uttered over the past 2 weeks, such as this little gem of a phrase from our infamous Manpower Minister, to "re-take jobs for Singaporeans".

What kind of jobs does our great Million-dollar Minister want to take back for our thousands of unemployed Singaporeans? Choice jobs in the marine, cleaning, and nursing industries, where there is a "shortage" of labour.

Translation: We want to be known as a nation of modern coolies, amahs, and nurses.

This is despite the fact that PMETs "were the biggest group of local workers retrenched last year", according to the Straits Times and the Manpower Ministry. Now, when Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians (i.e. just about the white collared middle classes) form the largest group of unemployed Singaporeans, our great minister wants to solve the unemployment and recession problem by taking back the marine, cleaning, and nursing industries for us.

Why no one rubbished Mr. Ng Eng Hen in Parliament is a great mystery to me.

We have a shortage, really?

Having sources in nursing, I'll just talk about this sector and its apparent "shortage of labour" that needs to be filled by Singaporeans.

Firstly, there is NO SHORTAGE of nurses in Singapore's healthcare industry.

For almost 20 years, Singapore's national health system has systematically relied on employing and training foreign nurses for the industry. Nurses from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and China are a mainstay of our healthcare industry. They sign 5 or 10 year contracts with our hospitals, and our efforts have paid off - Singapore healthcare's "professional and dedicated" image is solely due to these matyrs.

There is a giant sucking sound

And that's the sound of disgruntled expat nurses voting with their feet. Year after year, expat nurses choose not to renew their initial contracts with Singapore hospitals, despite promises of an automatic PR status as a 10-year long service award gift. Instead they flock, not back to their homelands, but to Australia, New Zealand, the US and UK.

Over there, our former expat nurses (great export product, by the way) work much less for much more pay, and are offered PR-ship one month after they arrive, and that PR-ship is extended to their immediate families as well. This speaks very much for the "working climate" of the hospitals here, and how great our Human Resource departments are.

This situation has gotten so bad that most expat nurses here really treat Singapore like a stepping stone to a much more humane, sensible, and better-paid job in another country - they just need to suffer for a short while before hitting paydirt overseas. Even expat junior doctors from less-privileged countries working here see how lucrative and imbalanced things have become, and actually make the switch from being doctors, surgeons, and researchers... to nurses.

Thank you, Singapore, for fucking up the global healthcare market.

And this is why, this time round, our PAP Ministers have "learnt their lesson", and will now resort to hiring people who cannot escape Singapore, to become nurses. Yes, they are taking back the nursing industry for Singaporeans.

Or perhaps, will thousands of Singaporeans take up the exhortation to be nurses, serve their shitty contracts, then leave for greener pastures with the magic bullet vocations?

Schadenfreude

The Singapore Sentosa Cable Car Challenge is on! Only here do you have a contest that's designed to eke out the maximum amount of suffering from contestants for the maximum pleasure of the viewers and media.

Consider the rules: Couples are required to spend 7 days on a cable car. They can get out of the cars as often as they like, except they're limited to a total of 10 minutes a day, total. Even the Guiness Book of Records has some notion of human rights when they set the break times for record attempts.

I just heard an interview on the BBC, where one of the organisers boasted they had to "make the event exciting and memorable", hence justifying the horrific rules and 'temptations' that they distract participating couples with.

Well, I know ONE WAY to make this competition even more exciting and memorable. Let's subject the contestants to another Sentosa cable car disaster!

Testing for Failure

Remember the little quiz I gave 2 weeks ago?

Given:
A. Some holidays are rainy, and
B. All rainy days are boring.

Which of the following statements can be deduced?
1. No clear days are boring.
2. Some holidays are boring.
3. Some holidays are not boring.

Most people I asked got it correct: only statement 2 can be deduced. The problem is, they couldn't quite explain why statement 3 was wrong.

Some of the reasons given for rejecting 3 were more right than others... but they all betray an ignorance of the logical underpinning of the exercise.

"The category of not-boring is undefined, hence you cannot make deduction 3. You can't draw a Venn diagram to solve the problem..."
"Cannot be deduced.. since it is not known if non-rainy days are boring as well"
"clear days is an introduction of an extra term", or a resort to alegebra...

These are all commendable attempts at grasping the logic, but flawed ones.

The key phrase here is "Syllogistic Logic", or "Categorical Syllogisms". All sample attempts failed to recognise the type of logical exercises they were doing.

This is how to solve a syllogism. This is how to reject a conclusion as false or true, within the rules of syllogistic reasoning. There's even a link to a java exercise applet (in the first link) to test more interesting and difficult variants that aren't that easy to solve if you use the sample reasoning I quoted above.

You'd wonder, what's so great about this quiz?

Major corporations and the civil service of many countries require job applicants for managerial posts to take a barrage of tests - personality, IQ, critical reasoning, writing, and so on.

Now, one of the most popular critical reasoning tests, published in 1984 by The Psychological Corp division of Harcourt Brace has a "Deduction" section, and the example question is the one that we've been discussing.

Here's the official answer and reasoning from the test-makers. Look and weep.

"Example one, the conclusion does not follow. You cannot tell from the statements whether or not clear days are boring. Some days may be.

Example two, the conclusion necessarily follows from the statements since, according to them, the rainy holidays must be boring.

Example three, the conclusion does not follow even though you may know that some holidays are very pleasant."

Look, and weep! The reason why statement three is rejected has NOTHING to do with a logical proof or disproof! The real reason why statement three MUST be rejected, is because it commits the logical fallacy of the illicit minor. What the testers have done here is commit the fallacy of the non-sequitur, rejecting a statement on non-logical grounds.

Look, and weep! For anyone who's taken this particular test, you'll remember that the actual questions in the "Deduction" section... don't deal at all with Syllogistic Logic, but with Sentence or Predicate Logic (the usual, and more familiar operators of AND, IF, THEN, NOT, OR. Nove, and everyone else's algebra methods and mathematical approach will be correctly applied for a sentence logic question).

What I want to know... is how can a psychological testing corporation be even trusted to make a competent logic test?

Look, and weep! The critical reasoning test is broken into: inference Deduction, Interpretation, and Evaluation. Now, if you do well in the test... it doesn't mean that you'll make excellent decisions in the real world. Since when are real-world problems so easily bounded into a category?

Since when are we supposed to ignore, like in the Evaluation section, that all the evidence/statements offered MUST BE TRUE? I shudder to think that managers end up not questioning and looking critically at the data given to them, or applying multiple facets of 'critical reasoning' to attack a problem, from all ends.

What I want to know is... Why are these test-making companies even in the business, if the tests they make... make no sense?

In making decisions about important questions, it is desirable to be able to distinguish between arguments that are strong and arguments that are weak, as far as the question at issue is concerned. An argument to be strong must be both important and directly related to the question.

Now, that's rubbish. That's not a Strong statement they just defined; it's a Relevant statement they just defined. Would you trust a test-making company that can't distinguish a "relevant argument" from a "strong argument"?

If the world is so badly screwed up by idiots in managerial positions and complete baboons in the civil service, you now know who to blame.

Oh captain, my captain!

If transplanted to Singapore, this great fallen leader will begin by saying,

"I represent the People's Wing of the People's Action Party!

"WHAT I WANT TO KNOW.... is why there aren't any overseas job listings in the job sections of the local newspapers?

"WHAT I WANT TO KNOW... is why 80% of the job ads are for SALES, SALES MANAGERS, SALES EXECUTIVES, and SALES ENGINEERS?

"WHAT I WANT TO KNOW... is why most job ads demand a 2-5 year work experience, and demand that fresh grads Need Not Apply?

"WHAT I WANT TO KNOW... is why the Labor Minister can claim there are enough jobs for all Singaporeans?"

What I want to know... is why don't we get leaders like that here?

Featured Blog of the Day

Model Singaporean Employer

Ladies and gentlemen, no kidding.. Icepearlz takes great care to insist she is NOT a "model Singaporeans employer", by tabulating a calculus of all the nice things she's done for her ungrateful maid.

The model Singaporean employer was shocked that her maid had unreasonably asked to have every Sunday off! That her maid had the temerity to ask to be let out of her house from 8am to 7pm on Sundays, and from noon to 6pm on Saturdays! The horror! The betrayal of a previously trustworthy maid!

Since the maid said she wanted the long hours out on Sunday because of church activities, the model employer has decided to inform the pastor of the situation, to keep an eye and ensure that the maid is indeed doing what she is claiming...

Now, she claims the maid doesn't know what's best for her, that Icepearlz's the best and most liberal Singaporean employer who's treated the maid "the best I can given the circumstances", that she's in no way inferior to an expat employer.

Really? If the maid is indeed released from Icepearlz's contract in September, I would like to recommend her a Singaporean employer immediately. A certain teacher of mine is not very nice to his students (especially when they're deemed too dense for him), his colleagues (when they're deemed his intellectual inferiors), and even the leaders of this country (openly and publicly criticises their policies)... yet he's capable of treating his maids with more class than this employer will ever have.

Mr. X insists that his maid stop work by 6pm every weekday. Just cook the food, and he and the missus can heat up the stuff when they return from work. Maid is free to get out of the house, and is encouraged to get out of the house after work hours, provided she's back by 10. Saturday's a half day and she's free to go out and stay out, for the whole of Sunday.

Despite his eccentricities and attitudes towards others, Mr. X has his head screwed on correctly here. Because a maid is a contracted employee. Employees are allowed to GET OUT OF THE OFFICE after work hours. They are allowed to take ALL Sundays off, not just public holidays that come 10 times a year. It's a basic human right, I think, not to be imprisoned in your workplace after working hours. The last time I checked, what you do after working hours are your own business too.

No matter how much trinklets you throw at a maid ($400 PCs??? She eats the same food that we eat? She *can* order the same food we do when we eat out?), the fact of her imprisonment within your home, the loss of one of her most basic freedoms, will continue to weigh on her. Regardless of the nice PC you installed in her room. It's just like decorating a hamster cage...

Failing Tests

Given:
A. Some holidays are rainy, and
B. All rainy days are boring.

Which of the following statements can be deduced?
1. No clear days are boring.
2. Some holidays are boring.
3. Some holidays are not boring.

The correct reasoning will be completely unexpected, despite the relative simplicity of the question.

Queer Eye for Chief Justice

This has nothing to do with gay marriages that are conducted by SanFran state officials in defiance and as a test against current laws.

This has nothing to do with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy either, but it's pretty close =D

Singapore's Chief Justice Yong Pung How undergoes radical makeover!

That's right... His Honour, Mr "Double Their Sentence", the appeals lawyer's worse nightmare, has done it AGAIN. Today will be the second straight day in a row that the judge has HALVED a sentence in his apeals court. (First case: Halves sentence for conviction on oral sex. Second case: Halves sentence on internet fraud.)

What gives? Short of a conspiracy theory - i.e. CJ really had a makeover from the wonderful Queer Eye crew, I can give only one sane explanation...

Elected Presidency 2005. The election is yours to lose, baby.

Not since Henry Kissinger

We must be living in some kind of alternate reality.

Some right-wing politican in Norway has nominated Bush and Blair for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, for their "decisive action against terrorism".

Twiddledum and Twiddledee, the architects of the illegal invasion of Iraq, the self-proclaimed "War President" and his attack dog... Their infamous speeches in the UN Security Council... Their escalating warmongering and empire-building project (first Afghanistan, then Iraq. Tomorrow, Pakistan and North Korea?)... Their cluster-bombing of urban centres in Baghdad that needlessly took the lives of civilians...

These two people have been nominated for the Nobel PEACE prize. Which, in the words of Alfred Nobel, should be awarded to "the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." And that describes all the actions of Bush/Blair since 2002?

Forgive me for believing that we live in an alternate reality, that the world we experience now must be a dark reflection of a True World that is lost to us.

I urge as many people as possible to sign the various online petitions and protests against the Bush/Blair nomination on the net.

Some of there are at : http://www.eskimo.com/~cwj2/actions/bushblairnobel.html
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/302184339
and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1801773.stm

Today in History. Or Literature. Just anywhere but reality

Imagine this: your kingdom used to be a global power, but those days are long gone. As its leader, you understand your true position in the world: somewhere near the bottom, with the Has-beens... You will do anything and say anything to be with the winners, and end up dating 2 successive leaders from the current superpower (and some say, the SOLE superpower), dumping the old one when he became unviable, and hopping into bed with the new guy as soon as he got elected. And trying to seduce the third guy, who looks set to take over any time soon...

Who are you, and what country is this?
A) Cleopatra, last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt. Dated Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony. Tried to talk Octavius into an alliance.
B) Tony Blair, PM of UK. Best buddies with Clinton, posed with Bush II in cowboy hats. Will try to persuade President Kerry that he was also fooled into voting for the war.

Cleopatra committed suicide by kissing an asp when she was finally rebuffed by Octavius.

I'm looking forward to the day when Tony Blair has a self-inflicted bungee-jumping accident from the top of the London Eye

The Liberal George Yeo

I've been away for some time. Was sucked into the US Democratic Primary campaign, and checking out all the candidate blogsites constantly, being the political junkie that I am.

I'm back now, with some interesting news to tell.
Tomorrow's blog entry will be called
Bangladeshi PhD thesis outsourced to Singaporean BA grad

Today though, I'll be aiming some potshots at our favourite "Philosopher-King" of the PAP, the greatest long-winded, tendentious and facetious bore and intellectual whore of all-time, BG George Yeo.

Most of you will be too young to remember that during the 1980s, Yeo was the person who pronounced, in Parliament, that media control and information control was important to Singapore, because foreign ideas can be good and yet very dangerous, so "we cannot let the flies in". Few years later, of course, we pretend that he's one of the more "liberal" and philosophical ministers, only because of his long-winded speechmaking...

Here's his latest nonsense.

Trade and Industry Minister urges Singaporeans to venture abroad is what the headlines had it, half a month ago. It all sounds very mature, wise, liberal, and open-minded, yes?

"Individual Singaporeans themselves to take the plunge and their chances [overseas]...

"Our minds must be much larger than our geographical confines"

"If we are too home-bound in our thinking, we will fail."

So why am I slamming and sliming this decent maverick?

General Yeo said: "Indeed, we should try to alter our social climate here so that those who do well overseas are admired, while those who prefer to stay home all the time are suspect.

Here's my beef: What are the list of countries that have a social climate that admires people who go overseas, and suspects people who prefer to stay at home? Answer: These countries are the major labour-exporting nations in Asia - The Philippines, Bangladesh, India, some southern provinces of China. You see their major exports every day in Singapore, working on construction sites.

Mind you, I'm speaking here as a researcher who's editing someone's doctoral thesis on international labour...

Most researchers on labour migration point out that very few of these migrant workers break even, and recoup their intial investments and costs of air travel to the host country. Yet, even if these workers finish their contracts with a big deficit, they'll still apply to work overseas again after a short rest home.

Why? Because in their countries, there IS a social climate that admires people who work overseas, and suspects people who stay at home - the very same social climate that Philosopher-King George Yeo wants to see in Singapore. The very same social climate that some researchers call migration mania, an irrational belief that the overseas is a source of riches and prosperity while the home is a source of stagnation...

It's irrational on 2 counts:
1. Most of the temporary migrants end up poorer
2. Most families WILL willingly go into debt to fund at least one member to work overseas.

So, why are the leaders in these labour-exporting countries not unhappy? Because the migrant workers will send back remittance money to the home country every month. Because, even if the poor worker is suffering overseas, he'll dutifully send back money, a small percentage of which gets taxed by the government before it lands back in the home village.

Why is it really so irrational? Because:

3. In reality, cost-benefit analysis by economists studying this phenomenon show that the migrant workers will actually have made MORE money (or at least made some profit) if they had settled for construction jobs in their own countries, instead of going overseas (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Middle East) for the same construction jobs...

Why don't they do that? Because in their countries, there IS a social climate that admires people who work overseas, and suspects people who stay at home.

4. Just look at the history of Singapore. Why is Singapore majority-Chinese? Because during the founding years, hundreds of thousands of "temporary migrant workers" from Southern China flocked to Singapore, where they found that after so many years of work and sending remittance money back to their families in China, they couldn't afford to go home.

People who CANNOT afford to work overseas should not be forced to go overseas. Why doesn't George Yeo argue for improving and reforming Singapore, for making it a place where we can proudly live and work again?

The economies of the major labour-exporting countries (Philippines, rural southern China, Bangladesh, some parts of India) have not made ANY improvement despite decades of migrant workers - unskilled or otherwise. If we listen to George Yeo today, Singapore will end up looking like these countries in a few years...

People who think Singapore has gone back to the bad old days of the 1980s recessions are wrong. We are going all the way back to the bad old days of the 1880s, with policy-makers and philosophers like George Yeo running around, shooting their mouth off, masquerading as liberals and mavericks, and offering what appears to be sensible advice.

Today, we talk about the bird flu

It was here that I out-predicted China's admission of bird flu, but anyone could've seen that coming. Today, I put forward the case for Singapore.

No, this isn't out of spite for the Most Expensive Newspaper in Singapore, which boasts that "Singapore is prepared for the bird flu". Emergency plans have been drawn for an effective mass culling of chickens (See related: "Snap General Elections"), and switching from imports of Malaysian chickens to frozen Brazillian poultry.

Interesting plans, but hardly "preparing Singapore for bird flu", and hardly combating the real problem of bird flu. The H5N1 virus is uncontrollable. In the months since April, the virus has had time to spread from poultry to pigs in China. My prediction: a further, belated revelation in the weeks to come that this piece of speculation from scientists will be confirmed.

Consider: the natural reservoir of the virus resides in wild migratory birds travelling North-South between Russia, China and Indonesia, Australia/NZ. As silent carriers, most of the natural hosts will not exhibit any signs of flu. Even if the poultry farms are all culled, in April the migratory birds will fly back North, reseeding the virus.

What does Singapore have to do with this? A fair number of these wild birds use Singapore as a nesting ground during the October - April season. The birds are here among us, on our mangrove swamps, as guests in the Jurong Birdpark and various Gardens, on the golf courses, on the lush green grounds on the NUS and NTU campuses =D

Yet, for all the evidence of where the virus resides, we do not hear any news of researchers in Singapore taking stool and blood samples from these "visitors", or taking pre-emptive action by culling all birds here. Part of me is outraged at the double standards from the ENV, which crazily started killing stray cats at the peak of the SARS panic, despite the fact that "Civet Cats" (the culprits in China) are a breed of mongoose, and look more like rodents and racoons than felines.

Now, in an ideal world, the best way for Singapore to prepare itself against bird flu is to eliminate the natural reservoir of the virus, aka kill the birds:

1. Make use of our RSAF white elephants for once, and fire all missiles at any wild migratory bird daring to enter our airspace. Take care not to aim anything at Johore.

2. Forget about not aiming at Johore. Shoot Johore for harbouring the terrorist avians and brand it a rouge state.

3. Get the ENV in action. Not just the teams of sharpshooters who practise their skills on crows. Let's push the war further, confiscate all the coffeeshop ah-peks' birdcages and shoot those birds, just to play safe.

4. Remember the silly RC-approved messages on the notice boards in HDB flats? "Do not feed pigeons. They spread bird flu" is how they can help spin the message in a convincing way.

5. Get the Senior Minister on TV. He will threaten to break bird heads, it'll send out a really clear message.

6. Shooting birds to be included in Rifle Range tests for all NSmen.

7. Mah Bow Tan to head the new initiative for Singapore to win gold medals at the Olympics for air rifle and trap shooting events. Clubs all over Singapore to be set up, and practise on real life birds.

8. Mini-Lee revealed by The Straits Times as an excellent shooter during his student days, to inspire people's trust in his leadership and "human-ness". He will be nominated to be the honorary head of the shooting clubs that Mah will set up.

9. KFC is taken over by Long John Silvers.

10. NUS scientists and the Life Sciences industry collaborate to genetically engineer birds that glow in the dark when infected by H5N1.

Domino Effect

An artifact of 1960s anti-communist hysteria, Amercian neoconservatives devise the theory that should any single country in Asia fall to communism, all countries in the continent will subsequently fall as well, like a stack of dominoes... hence, justifying their interventions in Indonesia (supporting 'regime change' and replacing Sukarno) as well as the Vietnam War (assasinating the democratically-elected South Vietnam president, replacing him with a series of authoritarian, war-happy generals, and going to war with North Vietnam).

Let me invent the New Domino Effect theory for my readers:

Should any single country in Asia fall sick from flu, all countries in the continent will subsequently fall as well, like a stack of dominoes...

Like last year's SARS, this year's H5N1 avian flu proves to be an epidemic fit for the globalised economy. And like last year, several governments have been caught with their pants down this year. Cases in point: Thailand and Indonesia, which have had cases of avian flu for the past few months and covered it up until very recently.

Now, here's a map of Asia for us to consider. Let's take a look at the 7 countries that have bird flu, in order of declaration: South Korea (7 Nov), Vietnam (9 Nov. First human deaths on 11 Nov), Japan (13 Jan), Laos (21 Jan), Thailand (23 Jan. First human death, 26 Jan), Cambodia (23 Jan), Indonesia (25 Jan).

Notice anything weird? Big gaping hole in the almost contiguous land-area: China. Are we to believe that the Middle Kingdom is safe from the current outbreak, when it is conspicuously surrounded by 2 countries to the East, and 5 more to the South with the flu?

The scientific facts of the case are stacked against China's denial - H5N1 is known to be spread across borders by migratory birds, whose droppings fortuitously land near chicken farms and hence infect the livestock. Well, not that much of a long shot as it sounds, since it's apparently happened 7 times already. Can we believe that migratory birds don't shit when they fly over China from Japan to Indonesia?

Of course, China will be given a chance to come clean next week in the emergency bird flu conference in Thailand. It had better.

Chinese New Year Woes

I'm more than happy to skip all the Chinese New Year visiting; relatives are poison, and all the questioning they subject me with is not worth the ang pow money...

My CNY resolution of the year is: Learn to forget all dialects. This will prevent me from comprehending the longer sermons from my grandfather's sisters, who should really save those sermons for their own grandchildren.

Sample sermon...
"Don't you love your mother? She's brought you up for 27 years now, you should do your fillial duty and make sure she spends the rest of her days in peace and comfort. Find a girlfriend and get married soon, so your mother doesn't need to do any housework. You're a graduate, try to earn lots of money and buy a car, so you can drive your parents all over Singapore..."

Yes, if one day SDU decides to shoot advertisements in dialect, we'll know which kindly great-grandmother to recommend.

Now, compare that sermon to one very practical, encouraging, and uplifting advice my father's cousin gave me. I repeat it here, also for the benefit of Camorenesi:

"So the civil service rejected you last year. Never treat that rejection as final, never believe the doors are
closed... Try and try again. They always underestimate the number of people they need, so they're always hiring."

So, my second resolution for CNY is to try again for that cushy civil service job. Just to show that I haven't given up any hope of beating the underemployment trap, that I have a chance aside from applying for waitering...

So, how did we deal with the Stupid Annoying Questions of CNY?

"Have you gotten a job yet?"
"When are you getting married?"
"Don't be shy, show us your girlfriend someday!"

For my part, I dressed in Black and Grey during the reunion dinner and put on the most bochap face and the "Ask me anything stupid and I'll KILL you" attitude® that no one asked. And perhaps the fact that my aunts and uncles seem to have woken up to the fact that there are an alarmingly high number of graduate taxi drivers in Singapore, probably
saved me from the questions as well...

And yes, I didn't do any visiting this year. It's the best way of avoiding the SAQ... maybe next year, I'll spend the holiday overseas (even if it's in Johore).

That's because I'm too polite to reply to the SAQ the way I want:

1. No, I haven't got a job. May I ask if you have enough money in the CPF to retire? Or how many more years it'll take for you to pay off the housing loan? Or how close your company is to the next retrenchment exercise?

2. No, I'm not getting married. I'd rather live in a free love commune.

3. Well, I could bring along my blow-up Gackt doll next year, if it makes you feel happy...