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?

Heard of “Bak Kwa” before? Well, it is sort of a traditional meat jerky coated with honey. Not very sure how traditional it is, because it only occurs in Singapore. Never seen such things in other countries, except maybe in Malaysia. It usually comes in pork or chicken “flavours”. And best of all, it is very tasty. What they do is to barbeque the meat jerky in thin slices and wow, the smell is just great. Smells like barbeque meat, but the honey really brings up the flavour of the jerky. Everytime I pass by some of the shops sellng Bak Kwa, I get so very hungry for it. They look like shiny pieces of beer jerky, but definitely looks more appetizing than regular beer jerky.

However, this is the Chinese New Year season. So the prices of Bak Kwa has doubled in the recent weeks. Just like the prices of turkey during the Christmas Holidays, the prices of Bak Kwa increase as well druing the Chinese New Year period. It’s a fact of life. Demand increases, prices will rise. Worst of all, you see so many advertisements for Bak Kwa and they are so damn tempting but since I am paid very low, I can’t really afford them. The prices range from store to store, but it is approximately S$50 per kilo. Yes, it’s that expensive now. Probably that will go on till the Chinese New Year holidays are over. Then the prices will drop. I guess this is the time that they can make money. I bet they make a lot of money from just selling Bak Kwa alone. I seen my boss buying stacks and stacks of boxes of Bak Kwa to give to their important clients and the sales staff. Note that it’s to their clients and their SALES staff, not their poorly paid staff. This is a indication of our standing in the company, I guess. Viva Singapore! Viva Singapore!

So if you going to buy some Bak Kwa, please send me a few. Just a few pieces will do. I am not that greedy to demand a few boxes of Bak Kwa. And why are there so many stores selling Bak Kwa near my workplace! It’s just isn’t fair. You can see but you can’t eat.

If you would like to make your own Bak Kwa, check out this blog: http://www.noodlesandrice.com/bak-kua-bak-kwa-diy-pork-bbq-pork-jerky/

For all you people living in Singapore, I am pretty sure you guys know something about EZ Link cards, right? Come one, even if you don’t take the bus or MRT, you guys should know that it does exist. It’s usually used to pay for our bus fares and MRT fares. And the thing is that it is contactless. Like those access cards you see people use when entering buildings and stuff. All you have to do is to place your wallet (with your EZ Link card) on the terminal and you can pay for your bus fares. You don’t even have to take our the EZ Link card out to “tap” at the terminal. It’s very convenient and I like it. I normally just take out my wallet and tap when I take the bus or MRT. Now, how about Cashcards? Yes, they are used by car owners to pay for the ERP gantry fees you see popping up on the roads everywhere. Oh, it is used to pay for everything else as well. We are talking about a cashless society nowadays. Everywhere you go, it is either card or bust.

Anyway, what is happening now is that Nets (which controls the cashcard monopoly in Singapore) has introduced the Combi Cashcard. What this means is that it is both a contact and contactless card. You can use the old type which slots into a card reader or use a “contactless” terminal. Oh, sure it is good that we don’t have to slot our cashcards into the reader anymore, plus the contactless ones are much more reliable than the contact ones. However, the problem is that the Combi Cashcard interferes with your EZ Link card. So if you have both the EZ Link card and the Combi Cashcard in close proximity, then it won’t work. When you “tap” the terminal with your wallet, nothing happens. I had thought that my EZ Link card was faulty and very nearly bought another one. One of my friends told me that it could be due to the Combi Cashcard that is causing all the problem. You need to take away the Combi Cashcard for the EZ Link card to work. I tried it and yes, it works after that.

Well, this is the example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Both the companies who owned EZ Link and the Combi Cashcards are government owned. They are controlled by the government and everything they do has to be approved by their boss, who is the government. Yet, we see that the cards (which are very necessary for Singaporeans) are interfering with each other, thereby rendering both useless. This is what I would call incompetent, but I won’t say it out loud. And I won’t keep both the cards together either.

No, I am not kidding you. In Singapore, you can get away with murder if you are NOT a Singaporean and the victim is. Please read the following article here.

Basically what happened is that a Chinese National who works in a kitchen stabbed his supervisor with a kitchen knief (and he died) but the judge decided that the Chinese National was “not responsible” for his action because he had a “moderate depressive episode” and he was “provoked” by his supervisor. So I guess next time if my supervisor shouts at me, I will have to respond by stabbing him and then shout “We Singaporeans are not easily bullied”. Oh but wait, I am a Singaporean, probably will get life in prison or be hanged by the state. Plus my boss is probably one of those powerful elites.

Of course there are cases which there were killings with provocation but seriously, this happened in a big open workplace not some dark corner in Singapore. The supervisor didn’t really provoke the kitchen helper as claimed by the judge, he probably was overworked or stressed, just like everyone else in Singapore. And I am pretty sure the kitchen helper was also overworked and stressed. My boss shouts at me every time, but I didn’t take my pen and stab him in the eye because I am angry. Some of my co-workers are very nasty, I didn’t stab them with my stapler because I have a “moderate depressive episode”. Come on, even the defense lawyer had asked for 6 years for the sentence, but the judge gave him 4 years. There is something fishy. Even the fishes in the sea knows that this is very fishy. And shouldn’t this be a hate crime as well  since the kitchen helper has expressed hatred against the supervisor?

So, now I am asking everyone in other countries to come to Singapore and start stabbing Singaporeans. Or if you want something less extreme, just go around and beat up some poor Singaporean, especially those without money. In Singapore, if you assault someone, it is NOT a criminal offence (except to rich govt officials). They need to fork out a huge sum of money before they can even prosecute you. Woohooo! Avoid rich/elite people (you can spot an elite because he wears white and can travel to anywhere in Singapore within 20 minutes) because they got connections. Best thing, if that Singaporean hit you back, you can get a knife and stab him to death and shout ” We xxxxians are not easily bullied, bitch!” You get only 4 years or less if you are well-behaved in prison! 4 years for the thrill of killing a Singaporean? What more could you ask for? Or you can just fly back to your home country and forget all about it. No Singapore government official will care at all. After all, the dead are just useless and talentless Singaporeans. Our lives are not worth much after all. Nice country right? Come and enjoy! We all love being stabbed and beaten.

Oh by the way, you shouldn’t shout at any government officials. If you do that, the police will invite you down for a very long talk. This may be considered as “criminal intimidation” and you could be jailed up to 7 years for this hideous crime. Yes, that’s 7 years in prison for shouting at the government officials.