Even with my broadband which is supposed to be blazing fast for local sites, accessing NS.SG is still very slow. How many of you have tried accessing this site and felt that the speeds are really unacceptable? I tried accessing it in the mornings, in the afternoon and in the evenings, no luck there, all the same - super slow. I wonder why such an important site for NS Men like me, the speeds are so slow. I mean it is not only important for just people like me, but also NSF, Employers (for NS Men payment matters) and basically every male in Singapore. We need to access this site often to check up on our NS liabilities.

I think it’s their server(s) that is causing the slow speeds when accessing it. Perhaps their server(s) cannot handle the huge amount of traffic that can be generated everyday by people like me who wants to know whether we have a recall manning or a 21 day ICT scheduled. What were they thinking when they planned for the setting up of the site? I mean, it’s bound to have a great deal of traffic everyday, considering that we have tens of thousands of active NSF and NSMen who needs to the site. Is this what we expect from our highly paid government officials? And worse of it, it’s been this way for a long time already. I am sure that they have realized that the speeds are unacceptable and would have at least tried to do something about it. But alas, it has remained slow and sluggish since the beginning. Perhaps they didn’t notice the slow speeds? Perhaps access from government intranets have priority and thus they don’t feel that it is slow?

Or perhaps they don’t think it is important? We peasants who had spent our time and a huge effort to defend our country certainly don’t need to do things fast. We can sit in front of the monitor and wait about 10 minutes for each page to load for all they care. They are definitely not going to spend money to upgrade their servers or increase their bandwidth just for peasants. I think they believe that we are unworthy of faster speeds. It is surprising that the government keeps on telling Singaporeans that they should do their part in defending the country, yet the site which links everything together is unable to handle it. Well….

Just came back from Vivocity and it was terrible. The entire place was just overcrowded with people. There wasn’t any parking space and Vivocity was supposed to have one of the largest parking space in Singapore. We had to wait for 30 minutes before we could get a parking space. Yes, it took us 30 minutes of driving round and round the parking lots to find just a single parking space. And the rush for a parking space was crazy. People were just driving recklessly when they spotted a green light. For those who don’t know what that means, it is actually a light indicator which turns green (from red) when a parking space is available in that lot. I think it’s dangerous but I understand the frustration of having to wait so long for a parking space.

The problem is that Singapore is just too overcrowded. The buses are overcrowded. The roads are overcrowded. Even the eating places are overcrowded. In the mornings, if you are lucky, you will be able to find a seat on the bus to work. But nowadays, that chance of finding an empty seat is rare as the number of people in Singapore is raising rapidly. No, the number of Singaporeans remains about the same, but its the number of foreigners coming into Singapore that is increasing rapidly. This has already put a serious strain on our resources and has increased the cost of living in Singapore. I mean if the population increases, the demand of food, living space, transport and other resources will increase as well. Thus the price of everything just keeps on increasing while the salaries of most Singaporeans remain stagnant.

No, first of all, I am not saying that we should not have foreigners in our country. They do in fact help Singapore’s economy greatly. And by taking over jobs which Singaporeans cannot handle or are unskilled to do, they are helping to build our country. Plus we have another group of foreigners who take over jobs which Singaporeans shun like construction and other menial jobs. We do have a need for such foreigners. However, the problem comes when foreigners start to take over jobs which Singaporeans can and have the ability to do. These are of course introduced by our country’s elite who benefits greatly from such foreigner influx into our job market since they are the biggest employers. The simple reason is to suppress overall workers’ salaries. Logic states that if there is a increased demand for workers, salaries of the workers will increase as well. But instead of increasing the salaries, you simply increase the supply by allowing a large number of foreigners into the country’s job market, then these employers are the ones that only ones that benefited from this “open door” policy.

Is it sad to see that our government is not doing anything to stop it. In fact, they are the ones that are cementing these policies since many of these employers are relatives and have relation to our government officials. But they were elected to help the people, not themselves nor their relatives. Again, I have to stress my disappointment at our government, whose own self interest triumphs over Singaporeans’ and they have caused a lot of unnecessary hardships for the common man on the streets.

Yes, it’s the first of May and we are all celebrating Labour day today! Well, almost everybody in Singapore is celebrating except the common working man. They are busy trying to survive here in super duper expensive Singapore. Looking at all the recent price increases and salary suppression that is going on, I can’t really blame the regular working man. Of course they will be worried. Just look at how much the price of rice has risen and just look at how their salaries have remain stagnant these few years. Oh, yes the government is painting a rosy picture for Singapore, showing that the prices has actually not risen so much, however, the figures shown by the government doesn’t tell the entire story, because they lump everything together. I am sure when you get the figures for the prices of essential goods especially foodstuff, you will see that these prices has risen quite a lot in the recent weeks. And the poor is very dependent on this as they spend a huge portion of their disposable income on essential items. Just imagine a 30% increase in food prices will almost wipe out a low income family’s savings!

And the government had just told the people that it’s not their fault that the price has increased. They blame it on global factors and it is beyond their control. Sure, the global prices of foodstuff has increased but seriously, so has the prices of flats, rental, taxes, fees, fares and many others that the government is controlling and manipulating. If they claim that the price is beyond their control, then they should at least avoid raising these taxes that are in their control. But they don’t. If they reduce these taxes, it will almost certainly help the poor most than it will benefit the rich since the rich don’t spend a huge portion on these. In fact, they spend a lot of their money on high end cars, private 3-story houses, LVs, watches and so on.

Worse still, our beloved government had just claimed that if the people ask for salary upward revisions, the price problem in Singapore will escalate. They claim that if there was an increase in the people’s salaries, prices will be pushed upwards and the people will be worse off than before and this is not the right solution. Of course, they (as in the high ranking government officials) again conveniently forgot that they had recently increased their own salaries by 40%. I wonder what do you guys think of that? Puzzling right? I wonder how greedy and self-serving these elites can be. And the funny thing is, they don’t even have any solution to this problem and being some of the most highly paid multi-million dollar salaried ministers and officials in the world, it is ironic. So, we are still left with ridiculously high prices to deal with and no real solution in sight. We got tons of stupid excuses, ineffective half-assed schemes which benefited the rich more than the poor and nothing more. I wonder why are we paying these government officials so much for doing absolutely nothing?

Please take a look at our current situation here.

Yes, that’s right. All us Singaporeans are soon going to be replaced by foreigners (except for the elites and the powerful) who demand lower pay and are supposed to be willing to do jobs that Singaporeans shunned. Well, that’s what the government is saying anyway, but apparently this is not true at all. The Singapore government also claims that foreigners actually help create jobs for Singaporeans which they won’t be if not for foreigners. I am very surprised that they claim such things. Seriously, which business in Singapore whose main purpose is to make as much money as possible would not want cheaper labour? And if the government allows a flood of foreigners to Singapore, companies will only hire these cheaper foreigners instead of Singaporeans even in jobs which Singaporeans would be willing to do. It seems that companies are firing Singaporeans from their jobs and replacing them with foreign imports.

The problem here is greed. Both the government and the businesses in Singapore are greedy. We cannot allow companies to have a free reign on hiring and firing. Singapore elites are famous for being super greedy and their greed knows no bounds. So if they are allowed to have a unlimited supply of foreign workers, they will never think of hiring Singaporeans at all. In fact, just take a look at your local coffee shops, your high end restaurants, your regional shopping centres, the city areas and you will see that thousands of foreigners are replacing the common Singaporean worker. I cannot even find any Singaporean working in my downstairs coffee shop. In the past, usually the factories you will find foreigners, now even the service side is rapidly taken over by this group of people. I wonder, will all the common Singaporean workers be replaced by foreign imports just to make the rich richer?

The government claims that by hiring cheaper foreigners, it will help create more high end jobs for Singaporeans. High end jobs mean higher paid jobs. But I just don’t see it. I mean, what makes anyone think that companies will not just hire foreigners for the supposedly “high end” jobs too? A lot of Singaporeans are fooled by the government’s propaganda, but reality will soon hit as more and more Singaporeans are having trouble finding jobs. No matter how much propaganda and smoke the government puts out, it will soon have the face the problem of “real unemployment” in the next election. Crowding out Singaporeans and forcing them to take lowly paid jobs is not a smart way to get votes. Being too greedy can really backfire for them.

With Singapore’s super high cost of living (that is cost, not standard of living), I am not surprised that Singaporeans need a higher salary to survive. In fact, without any assistance, a lot of poorly paid Singaporeans cannot even survive on their own salaries, yet we have claims by the government and companies that Singaporeans demand too much. They even once put up a chart comparing the cost of a Singaporean worker to that in China and India. Of course, they conveniently forgot to mention the cost of living here and that in China and India. And now with rapidly rising cost of food, rental, transport and nearly everything, surely the Singaporeans demand for salaries must increase.

Wow, starting last year, we (the people living in Singapore) had tons of price increases to face. And it continued till today. Just recently, it was the price of rice which jumped up like 30% in just 3 weeks. Looks like someone is really trying to play the food market and the poor is suffering due to this. I mean price of rice hardly every fluctuates at all in the past and suddenly, it went up 30% in just 3 weeks. It is not like the demand of rice had suddenly increase or the supply of rice had fallen in just 3 weeks. Of course, the weather could have played a part in limiting the supply, but how did it all happen in the last 3 weeks?

How about the price of all sort of food stuff? Price of chicken, sugar, flour, coffee and tons of others have risen like nobody’s business. Sure, we heard that there is a increase in demand for food worldwide. But how is it possible that there is a sudden increase in demand for everything at the same time? I mean is there a sudden population surge in the world that I didn’t know about? Or is there something or someone controlling and manipulating the supply and thus controlling demand at the same time?

I think another unfair price increase is the fares of public buses and MRT. Public bus operators often blame the rising price of petrol/diesel for the increase and claim that they have no choice but to pass the cost to their customers. But then they made record profits. And when the price of petrol/diesel drops, they didn’t reduce the fares. Come on, I mean that’s just ridiculous to blame their fare increase on the price of oil but when it drops, they don’t even bother to reduce the fares. That’s the problem with monopoly (or duopoly) in Singapore. Of course, another problem is the government who failed to do something about that. Probably the main reason is that most of the major shareholders and directors of these public transport companies are also very much related to the government.  Furthermore, the bus and train services are really lousy. We get delays, slow speeds as well as extremely dirty buses. And a lot of us poor folks do have to take such pathetic public transport to and from work everyday. I wonder if one day, our ministers were to forced to take public transport, I wonder how will they feel if they sit down in our mobile public cesspool called SBS.

Well, I guess the only group that really suffers from all these price increases are the poor in Singapore. I am not saying that the poor in other countries are not suffering, but their price increase is being restricted and thus they do not face such huge rise in prices unlike in Singapore. Food prices is already very high here and with an increase of 30% on foodstuff, how many can afford to eat? And our government is as usual not doing anything serious about it.

Well, it’s the Weather! Yes, it is indeed the weather. It is sort of against us Singaporeans and almost everyone living in Singapore. Singapore has a series of weather patterns that usually fall into this two categories - blistering hot and sunny or windy and rainy. Seldom do we have anything in between these two extremes. When the weather is hot, it is very hot. I mean the sunny is like shining unmercilessly on you and if you will easily get sunburnt if you are not careful. Plus, it is very humid in Singapore, so you will start to sweat and feel sticky and dirty all the time. One of the worst feeling is that. Not to mention, if you sweat to much, you will start to stink and people around you will die like flies.

How about the other extreme? Yes, I am talking about raining. In Singapore, it rains very often. About for 1 month of so in Februray, we have been getting rain everyday. It is like someone is trying to flood Singapore and wash the people away. Well, in this case, you will be drenched and even with umbrellas, your shoes will still get wet. It usually rains very heavily and there is no escape from it, except if you drive and your parking area is sheltered. For people like me who takes public transport, we will almost certainly get drenched. After that, we will all fall sick and some even die.

So that’s it. Why we can’t enjoy life in Singapore. If you think of going to the beach and suntanning, it will rain! No kidding, I tried a few times myself and it rained. So everyone flocks to the shopping malls or stay at home and rot. If you are thinking of going to the park and have a leisurely walk, it will respond simply by providing you with the blistering sun shining on you continously and giving you a big headache or it can just make you blind. Then you flock to the air-conditioned shopping malls as well. Truly, that’s life in Singapore and you will keep doing that until you die.

Looks like we are having a span of very weird weather in Singapore these few days. Just yesterday and the entire of last week, we had rain. And it rained most of the day and night too. But just today, we had sunny weather! It was blazing hot all of a sudden. I had thought that it was going to be a rainy day again, but I was dead wrong. It was very sunny with no speck of clouds that I could see. However, in the evening, it started to rain again. Talk about extremes. Sounds like the weather is going crazy again. I guess we humans are to be blamed for this weather pattern for pumping out all sort of nasty gases into the environment. You reap what you sow. And looking around the world, we have seen a lot of evidence that if we don’t do anything to stop pumping out greenhouse gases into our air, we could be facing a big worldwide disaster. Food crops are failing, property/buildings destroyed or damaged and people are killed by the extreme weather.

However, I am glad for this break in the cold rainy weather. Every morning, I wake up freezing. And when I take the bus to work, it would be freezing in the air-conditioned bus as well. With today’s warm weather, it was much better in the morning and on the bus ride to work. I am usually not afraid of a little cold weather, but the last week, it was very chilly, especially in the morning. Feels a lot like what I experienced in Hong Kong last December, except that it was rainy in Singapore. You go to work and to lunch drenched. Not a good way to spend the day in the office. Plus the damn bus ride to and from office was so slow, because our bus drivers are all morons and cannot drive properly when it is raining.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring, more rain or more sun? With this kind of weathers, I think it would be hard for any forecast to be really reliable. It’s hard to plan for your weekends too. I am going to spend my weekends indoors this week. No point traveling to the beach only to find that it is raining cats and dogs.

Singapore ecstatic about winning the Youth Olympics bid

Apparently there are a lot of Singaporeans who are ecstatic about Singapore winning the Youth Olympics bid. Yes, I am sure that you are shocked to discover that too. I don’t mean to be a bubble “buster”, but in all seriousness, what is it in for Singaporeans? How does it benefit the regular Singaporeans in the streets? What do they get from all these? Sure, the rich and the powerful government people (and their friends) are ecstatic about Singapore winning the Youth Olympics. Of course they are, more money for them and good publicity and propaganda for them to use. I am sure they are all jumping up and down crazy with joy. But then the rich and the powerful are not the entire Singapore. Singapore consists of the regular folks as well. In fact, the majority of Singaporeans are just regular people. I am wondering how “ecstatic” are they about this win?

Look at this way, if we host the Youth Olympics, most Singaporeans will have to face the problems with having such a big event in such a small country. Our roads are already overcrowded and our public transport unable to handle the traffic. And now comes the Youth Olympics, which certainly means a lot more people, more road closures and heavy traffic everywhere (since Singapore is so small). That’s what we will have to face. Picture yourself going home after a hard day’s work, only to find the buses have to be re-routed because of the Youth Olympics and you need to walk a long way to the nearest serviced bus-stop, all because of the Youth Olympics. Just think how crowded the buses and the trains are now. Now imagine what will it be like with the Youth Olympics on the way.

How about the building of the facilities for the Youth Olympics? Singapore doesn’t have the necessary facilities to cope with what the Youth Olympics needs, so we will have to build them big big buildings. What? You say that this will provide jobs for Singaporeans? Seriously, most jobs in the construction industry will go to foreigners. And if you are thinking that the salaries of Singaporeans will go up due to the increase in demand for labour, you should think again. Yes, this is just another excuse to let more foreigners into the country to artificially push down the salaries of locals here. Oh, don’t forget, Singapore is already building the extended MRT line, the Integrated Resorts plus whatever nonsense the government is planning. What do you think will happen to the prices of properties in Singapore? It will go sky high. That’s a plus for land owners and we know how those people are. But now about those Singaporeans just trying to find a flat just to live in? Wait, you are saying that it benefits Singaporeans since the value of their pigeon hole rise? Well, first of all, you need somewhere to stay. So that even if your pigeon hole increases in value, you can’t sell it. And if you sell it, you still need to find another pigeon hole to stay in (unless you would like to stay in the streets), which common sense tells you that the price has increased as well. Anyone tell me what benefit is there to gain except for the rich who are mainly the landowners? And if you need to renovate your home, again imagine how expensive the building and construction materials and labour will be. Time for you to pay through your teeth till it all falls out.

Heck, my area don’t even have a decent football field for me to play football. Kids have to pay in the void deck. The basketball court is always full of people and the damn basketball hop is always broken. Fix that first. Don’t talk to me about some shit Youth Olympics when you can’t even provide a decent standard of living for your own people.

Been posted before I am sure. But this always crack me up when I see it. So I am posting it here again for everyone’s viewing pleasure. True to a certain extend. It has some very profound meaning as well.

Jobs for Foreigners, NS for Singaporeans. I have to tell those people in charge of the country, if you treat people badly, the people will do the same to you. It’s a fact of life. If you treat Singaporeans unfairly and rule the country like you are managing a business, don’t expect people to think of you “elites” as leaders. Most probably Singaporeans will treat you like their boss, and a bad boss at that. Abuse that power, and sooner or later you will have to answer for all these abuses. This is just an friendly advise to our leaders here in Singapore.

I really hope that our leaders will change for the better. But I am not that hopeful, seeing that our current generation of leaders are all rich “elites” with no understanding of how Singaporeans feel or face. They don’t face the same hardship as what most Singaporeans have to face everyday. Thus, they are unable to solve Singaporean’s problems. Sure, they very efficient in solving their own problems (like estate taxes, increase in GST and so on), which isn’t exactly what most of Singaporeans face. Rich people will try to solved “rich people” problem and leave the “peasants” to their own doom. This is why I don’t respect the current generation of Singapore leaders. We need a new generation of leaders who are not from this “elite” circle, they should be able to understand what are the problems Singaporeans face, and what should be done. Time perhaps for a change?

Hooray, ithe next day, it’s the start of the 4 day weekend! Yes, we are finally able to relax for a while, without the pressures of work and from our bosses and enjoy our miserable lives for once. In Singapore, getting a little break is like a god sent, errrr……once in a blue moon. Well, if you money problems (which most of us have), you will be worried still, but then what can we do about that? It’s going to be the Year of the Rat, which is supposed to bring good luck and good fortune. Well, I am pretty sure some of you guys will be lucky and will have good fortune. Some probably not so lucky I guess.

And when you are enjoying yourselves this holiday, remember that there are people out there worse off than you are. Spare a little thought for them. These are the people that the government won’t care less and most of us ignore when we see them. Yes, they are poor, but that doesn’t make them any less important. In Singapore, we are all too busy to really care which is very sad. Work, children, parents, peers, money……the list goes on and on. Most of us are already overwhelmed by our own problems. Perhaps that is what our government is trying to do. Make all of us “don’t care”. However, if this continues to happen, you will see a decaying society. I love my country, but look at what has happened for the last 2 decades.

And please don’t drink and drive. It’s the holidays, time to be merry and you definitely don’t want anything “bad” to happen to you or your family, right? Peace out and “Gong Xi Gong Xi Gong Xi Ni”! Where the red packets?