Hear Ye! Hear Ye!
Comments, opinions and an occasional ramble
Why I would leave Singapore
Feb 16th
Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew has acknowledged the alarming problem of Singapore’s brain drain. While I do not profess to be a talent, I profess to be someone who has given very serious thought to leaving Singapore and giving up citizenship.
Singapore is a good place to live in. The food is good, infrastructure sound, safe and it’s a global aviation hub. However, I cringe when I saw Martin See’s video, Speaker’s Cornered. I feel indignant for Francis Seow, and even more so for Chia Tye Poh. I am saddened by the execution of a Nigerian boy for drug trafficking. I am disillusioned by defamation suits by the ruling party against their political opponents. I shake my head in disbelief that there’s more interest in reviewing minister salaries than reviewing public assistance to the poor.
There many other things I can probably add on to the list of reasons why I’ve been contemplating giving up my pink IC. It seems to me that the Singapore story is becoming the story of Animal Farm. And, before I end up like Boxer, I’m going to get out of here.
Self-portrayal and relationships
Feb 5th
This week is Chinese New Year week and the mad rush of spring cleaning (I know, I got a new flat and you must be wondering what is there to spring clean but I assure you, I did ALOT of cleaning) and other preparations for CNY have caused fatigue, both physically and mentally. So, I’m just going to ramble about what I consider a very interesting contradiction in life.
My brain’s anger fuse is weird. It’s unusually long for most people, except when it comes to immediate family. For some strange reason, I’m like a tinderbox with family. I lose my temper much more readily, either at them or in front of them.
My wife and I have talked about this before and we have wondered why we are usually so patient with others but less so with each other (she’ll probably say it’s just me and I shouldn’t extend things to her). My guess is that when you’re emotionally close to someone, you are not so self-conscious and more comfortable with self-expression. We’re probably not afraid of being looked upon negatively by the person who we are emotionally close to and as a result, we express both positive and negative emotions more readily than usual.
Then again, shouldn’t we be treating the ones who mean the world to us much better than people whom we don’t know so well? Isn’t it odd that we are more likely to vent our frustration and anger on people who are closer to us? I mean, why do we want to use hurtful words on or look really upset in front of people we care about so much?
While it might not make much logical sense, I guess that’s the way life is. It’s only when you are close enough to someone that you let down your guard and express all your emotions freely and openly. While I do lose my temper much more readily (but I get over it really fast), I too laugh much more readily, engage in small pranks on my wife very often and do all kinds of funny things to cheer her up that I’ll never do in front of other people. I guess it’s a two way street.
I recall hearing a marital advice that prescribes quarrels from time to time. The logic behind it is that couples should let out some steam from time to time. The worry is that one party might just be letting it all build up inside in a bid to have a more ‘harmonious’ relationship so it’s better to play safe and argue from time to time. Well, I guess I don’t need to deliberately create a quarrel with my wife considering that I’m pretty much a tinderbox when I’m with her.
Of course, one might be tempted to reason that too much of arguing can also cause the relationship to fail. Well, I think that will happen only if the couple does nothing other than quarrel all the time. I fight with my wife, but I take her out for good dinners, mop the floors, clean the toilets, iron the clothes and cook and wash the dishes much more often than I fight with her. In fact, I ban her from doing lots of housework because cleaning agents will cause her hands to dry and no woman would want her hands looking like raisins (nobody really cares about how smooth a guy’s hands are). Besides, science has proven men to be physically stronger so I have no excuse not to do housework.
Anyway, I digress. What I’m trying to get at is that a relationship fails not because of constant bickering but rather, there’s nothing solid that undergirds the whole relationship. If there’s a strong emotional bond between two people, both of them will come to realise that the expression of ‘negative’ feelings is part and parcel of a strong relationship (of course, this will be appreciated only AFTER cooling down).
Ok, enough ramblings for now. I would like to wish you a very happy Chinese New Year. And, if you want to come visit me in the hopes of getting an angpow, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’ve yet to do my tea ceremony so I won’t be giving out angpows. 
Using a sledgehammer on a thumbtack
Jan 31st
The recent Comprain Complain choir hoo-ha has been the subject of many online discussions. It seems to me that my government appears to have a penchant for using a sledgehammer on a thumbtack. The last time they used a sledgehammer on a thumbtack wasn’t too long ago.
I seriously don’t understand why there’s a need for the police to even look into the issue. The Complain choir is just for entertainment purposes. Does it matter if it’s foreigners or locals singing? Will foreigners singing result in any serious social unrest? I don’t think so. In fact, I think there’s greater unrest and unhappiness over the ban. If there’s one thing that I think seriously annoys me about how my government works, it has to be extreme rigidity in adhering to procedures to the point that the ability to reason completely disappears.
Sometimes, I just wish that my government loosen up a little and stop assuming that Singaporeans are mindless zombies that will absorb anything and everything that other people have to say. Have some faith in our world class education system. Or perhaps the “world class education system” we have been so proudly telling other countries is but a sham?
I just read this article calling for reform to our electoral system. Actually, I think that before we can reform our electoral system, we should really be able to discuss issues and laugh at ourselves. If our government can get so worked up over a small, humourous performance, I have little hope that something as big as a electoral reform along the lines of the American system is actually possible.
The role of education in Singapore
Jan 29th
This entry on academic freedom in teaching by Elia Diodati inspired me to write this entry.
I think that educational institutions in Singapore has traditionally been viewed as manufacturing lines rather than a place for scholarly pursuit. The role of education is to provide the necessary engineers and technicians to fill up the jobs in factories. This is true right up to the tertiary level. Singapore would have been doomed if philosophers were produced by truckloads.
When education becomes a manufacturing line, it is small wonder that the emphasis is on grades. Since everyone is pretty much a carbon copy of each other in terms of knowledge, the only differential is grades. Those with good grades get the good jobs and those without good grades get the leftovers.
However, things have somewhat changed of late but the change isn’t because of a sudden enlightenment on the importance of scholarly pursuits but rather, it’s because education has been identified as another potential industry for further economic growth. This is a very cynical view but I believe that without an economic imperative, nothing advances in Singapore.
Despite my cynical view, I am thankful for the change because my university education is nothing like what I experienced previously. The first 12 years of my formal education were completely undone by 4 years of university education. I remember that in secondary school and junior college days, the buzzwords in education was critical thinking but I realised I never knew what was critical thinking until I reached university. Looking back, I am honestly not sure if there was critical thinking involved (maybe except for GP) in my classes. The standard operating procedure was to do the ten-year-series from front to back and back to front.
I have to thank my professors in university for their efforts in undoing my first 12 years of education. If I have to pick the single most important thing in university that all my professors taught me, that would be that there’s no such thing as a model answer. The answer you get depends on the perspectives and assumptions you think is “true”. I may be over-generalising but I think that the local education system prior to university somewhat follows the positivist tradition rather than the critical school of thought. There could be many reasons for this but I am of the opinion that the positivist tradition is less of a threat to the status quo than the critical approach (and of course, it is easier to grade when you assume there’s a certain “truth”, i.e. model answer).
Ultimately, how insidious education can be as a political tool depends on how far teachers are willing to abet the system. Academics, thankfully, are usually resentful of attempts to turn education into a political tool because they understand the importance of academic freedom in both teaching and research. I think that any rot in our education system stops at junior college and university education (including local university education) will provide the saving grace. Of course, this is assuming that the government continues to adopt a hands-off approach towards the universities.
Attract foreign talents or retain local talents?
Jan 24th
MM Lee has a very upbeat assessment regarding the foreign talent policy. He feels that even if just 30 percent to 40 percent of foreign talents who come into Singapore eventually stay, Singapore would benefit tremendously.
Well, that is a fair statement to make except that I don’t exactly have the necessary statistics to agree with him. Do we actually have such a high rate of foreign talents who choose to make Singapore their home, or do most of the foreign talents take Singapore as a nice, sheltered parking lot?
Besides, is it easier to convince a foreign talent to make Singapore their home, or is it easier to convince local talents not to make somewhere else their home? The CIA World Factbook stated Singapore’s net migration rate in 2002 to be an estimated 26.11 migrants per 1,000 population. It’s a sobering figure.
Of those, this figure appears to be extraordinarily high and I have no idea how it’s computed but there is no doubt that a good deal of Singaporeans are giving up their pink ICs and red passports. I have to say that I do not know the exact demographics of Singaporeans who migrated but I do think they are probably highly-educated, talented folks who are either attracted to better opportunities elsewhere or are just too sick and tired of life in Singapore. If you are not highly-educated nor talented enough, you are probably too busy with just making ends meet, let alone consider migration.
It’s perhaps much more effective to stem the emigration rate compared to increasing immigration rate and hoping immigrants will stay. Those who choose to emigrate probably lived in Singapore for a large part of their life. They would have made many friends here and they probably have many cherished memories of times in Singapore too. Would it be easier to persuade these people to stay compared to foreigners who are new to Singapore shores? The foreign talents probably feel more of an emotional attachment to their own hometown than to Singapore.
One might argue that Singapore is a state made up of immigrants and that if my logic above holds, there should be no Singapore today. That may be true, but the immigrants of yesteryear are usually poor and less educated than immigrants of today. The modern Singaporean immigrant is highly educated, probably well-to-do and certainly very mobile. It will take much more to convince these people to stay compared to the immigrants of the past.
However, encouraging Singaporeans not to emigrate is not exactly easy either. While emotional ties might be a useful leveraging tool, there’s only so much that can be leveraged without corresponding tangible actions addressing the reasons why these Singaporeans choose to migrate. Sometimes, it might not be in the interest of the government to address these issues. Perhaps the key consideration for the government really isn’t a question of whether it is more effective to attract foreign talent or retain local talent but rather, which option doesn’t disrupt the status quo.
Contradiction by Tharman?
Jan 21st
I was quite, to put things very mildly, surprised to read the headline of this particular ST story: Govt to take ‘hands off’ approach on state funds: Tharman
Well, if it is a state fund we are talking about and that the government decides to leave their ‘hands off’ the fund, who should be responsible for the fund?
Actually, I suspect that Tharman didn’t actually mean to make this contradiction. If you read further down the story, Tharman was was actually saying that the government does not interfere with investment policies, not that it is washing its hand completely off state funds. The headline gave a totally wrong impression.
It would have been clearer if the headline was “Govt to take ‘hands off’ approach on state funds investments: Tharman”. One missing word can change the meaning of the headline completely.
I wonder if the editors are already red-faced.
The wildcard in public bus reforms
Jan 21st
The recent annoucement by transport minister Raymond Lim regarding public bus reforms is certainly welcome, and it’s long overdue. I won’t discuss about the reforms because I believe that most of it are in the right direction in making public transport an effective alternative to private cars.
However, there’s a wildcard in the proposed reforms, and that is the Public Transportation Council (PTC). Sure, the LTA can do centralised planning of bus routes and service frequency can be increased but the question is, at what cost?
Currently, route planning and service frequency are done by the two bus companies and their planning is based on commercial considerations more than anything else. With centralised planning and higher frequency standards to meet, the bottomline of bus companies will definitely be affected. And, they will definitely apply for fare increases to cover the shortfall. After all, these are profit seeking companies, not charities. Will the cost of public transport increase as a result of these radical reforms?
While the proposed changes in bus services are certainly commendable, Singaporeans will not benefit much if the cost of taking a public bus goes up significantly as a result. While some may argue that having more bus operators entering the market will drive costs down by increasing competition, this scenario is unlikely to play out unless two or more companies are serving every bus route. What are the chances of this scenario occuring under a centralised planning model?
Ultimately, whether Singaporeans get bus services that are a viable alternative to private cars is still dependent on the PTC. This doesn’t mean that the PTC should freeze fare increases. It just means that the PTC has to figure out what exactly is the optimum cost-benefit ratio such that Singaporeans will be willing to trade their cars for public transport. And, I don’t envy this job.
Know who to give the wake-up call to, please
Jan 17th
Lui Tuck Yew has come out to defend the principal who advised her Secondary 5 class to transfer to ITE since they are ‘unlikely do well in the O levels’.
According to Lui, 40 per cent of Sec 5 students will not do well enough at the O levels to enter polytechnic. The principal in question apparently considers a 60% chance of entering polytechnic as being ‘unlikely to do well in the O levels’. I think that principal operates with really cranky logic. I would like to ask that principal a hypothetical question: if you have a terminal illness and the doctor says you have a 60% chance of recovery if you undergo surgery, will you do it? I wonder what her response will be.
Anyway, I digress. I don’t disagree with Lui’s point that certain tough messages need to be delivered. However, please draw a clear distinction between who should and should not be given tough messages. We are talking about N level students who worked hard enough to gain promotion to Secondary 5. Are these students lazy bums who need the wake-up call? Probably not. The lazy bums would not have made it in the first place.
So, is the ‘wake-up’ call necessary for these students? I don’t think so. I am of the opinion that these students should be further encouraged to better their good performance in the N levels. I can’t think of any reasonable justification to tell these students that they should seek a transfer to ITE as soon as possible.
There is no excuse for the behaviour of this principal, and Lui Tuck Yew just made things worse defending the principal. And, in defending that principal, Lui also said that educators should not be deprived of tools to manage student performance. Honestly, no one is saying that we should ban educators from delivering tough messages. The issue here is that the wrong tool was used. You don’t use a hammer on a screw, and neither do you use a spanner to saw a piece of wood.
Know who to give the wake-up call to, please. To demoralise hardworking students with such insensitive remarks is not the right thing to do for an educator.
Great Singapore sale comes early
Jan 16th
First, it was GIC that spent billions of dollars buying into UBS. Then, Temasek spent billions of dollars buying into Merrill Lynch. Now, GIC has just spent a few more billions on Citigroup. It seems to me that the Great Singapore Sale has started extra early.
I am not sure if the Citigroup deal would be the last one on the shopping list of GIC and Temasek. With so many major financial institutions hungry for cash as a result of the subprime crisis, it’s bargain hunting time for cash-rich institutions/individuals.
Of course, the problem with GIC and Temasek spending billions is that they are sovereign wealth funds. Spending such huge sums of money without parliamentary accountability is clearly disturbing to some people. I do feel some discomfort at how so much money is spent in a matter of weeks but at the same time, it’s not a wise idea to leave too much spare cash lying around because of opportunity cost.
There are bound to be Singaporeans claiming that the monies held by GIC and Temasek are “their” monies and therefore, how can such huge sums be spent in an “any-o-how” fashion. Well, if we want high levels of public scrutiny, it will take months, if not years before such investments can be approved and by then, the opportunity would be gone. It’s a tough choice.
I can only hope that these investments are wise investments but it’ll take quite a while before the results are known. In anycase, even if these investments fail, the losses are probably “peanuts”. According to Wikipedia, GIC alone apparently has $330 billion dollars and we are worth $100,000 each! Hmm… I don’t even have $10,000 in my bank account.
I’m now waiting for the Straits Times to print letters from individuals hailing the wisdom of our great leaders.
From an engineer to a doctor
Jan 15th
Professor Shih Choon Fong will be handing the baton over to Professor Tan Chorh Chuan.
Prof Shih is an engineer by training, while Prof Tan is a physician by training. Prof Shih took over from Prof Lim Pin, who is also a physician by training.
Seems like NUS prefers to have those with a science background to be its leader. I wonder if there will be a day when NUS will be led by either a philosopher or historian.
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