More jottings from recent news ...

1. Campaign to end use of tissue packs to reserve tables at food courts & hawker centres

My take: if you can come up with a better idea, please do so.  Otherwise, it's no worse than any other ways.  Visitors to Singapore might find the notion repulsive, but hey, it is a home-grown culture, nothing particularly uncouth about it.  If people in other countries prefer to hunt around for seats after getting their food, that's fine too - trends and customs grew out of what majority of the people adopt.

Not all trends are good - Singapore's custom for starting Chinese wedding dinner late for example - but it is wrong to judge it bad simply because it is foreign to you.

 

2.  Euthanasia legalised?

My take: take personal responsibility for yourself.  In Singapore, AMD is available.  If AMD doesn't cover your circumstances, and you know your decision is to end your life instead of continuing in sufferings, do yourself (& everybody else) a favour by making preparations by yourself while you are still physically able to.  And when the time comes, say your goodbyes, distribute your possessions, and do it yourself - don't implicate/involve others.  Call it suicide if you will.  Your life, your responsibility.

I don't encourage it, but I can't oppose it too much if it's your life.  Just don't get others involved where they have to make decision on your behalf or administer the lethal process for you - it is not fair for other people to bear the burden.

 

3.  Obama wins.

Obama is not Santa Claus, so can the world please stop sending him their christmas wish list?

His new responsibility is to his country, not other countries.  He's got a big job getting fundamentals restored as pillars of the economy.  Displacing big-business influenced Republicans is the easy part - doing the same to big business influenced Democrats is going to be harder.

 

4. Non-Chinese-ethnic PM for Singapore?

My take: Why not?  What bad things could have happened if LKY did go ahead to endorse Dhanabalan as PM as he claimed of having considered?  At the least, it would have brought the issue into the open and allowed students and people to engage in critical thinking about it if there is really an issue about it to begin with.

Unfortunately, recent and past personal experiences do tell me that LKY was at least right that there're many Chinese Singaporeans who are not ready to accept it.

Some VIP from the Establishment told me a couple of months ago that more than 50% of the population do not think for themselves but go along with either parochialistic thoughts they grew up with or are easily persuaded by those who talk loud.

I was rather skeptical, but unfortunately, that view is corresponded by the comments posted on the internet by Singaporeans in various blogs, forums and discussion boards.

One STOMP poster gave an account of how a Coffee Bean staff kept telling him "no studying here" despite the poster saying "I just want to drink coffee."  From the conversation reported in verbatim format, I could guess the staff is an ESN (Educationally Sub-Normal) and gave my comment, yet no one else who commented seemed to sense it or has any interest in how it could be so.

Which reminded me of how some years back TNP reported how jealous and demanding a girl was towards her boyfriend, going into details how she made him write promises of how to treat her.  Again, from the content of the promise letters, there were very strong indications that the couple involved were both ESN or mentally less developed, and it really turned out to be so!

Yet the reporter who must have met the couple first hand, and the editor who approved the story, didn't bother with these pertinent facts but ran the story front page in as juicy a manner possible.

Speaking of juicing up news, "Young & Unfazed" in ST 26 Oct reported of an NTU undergrad making callous responses to economic downturn.  So bizarre were the words attributed to the undergrad that I suspected either the interview subject was unreal, or the report was.  Sure enough, I made online contact with the undergrad who angrily denounced the reporter for misreporting all her words, including "wondering why her friend didn't ask parents for money".

And just last week, a neighbour from a higher floor dropped a towel which got caught in a branch above my balcony.  It was too high for me to help bring it down even standing on a ladder and using laundry pole, so I asked Mgt Office for help, explaining what happened. Eventually, they got a worker to bring it down but did not bother to notify us.  Noting the towel was gone, I checked on Saturday but was told since no one claimed it for 2 days, it was discarded.  I reminded them that I told them the unit it belonged to and I left contact numbers.  What infuriated me was the asst manager saying "we're not very clever people working here for miserable salaries".

Next time, I'll print out in exact details what I need them to do if I ever need them to do anything.  That's what I had to do some years back when the MO was contracted to another company, when some tree branches cracked and fell near the swing at the children's playground.  I had to inform the MO, after informing them the incident, that they cannot afford to wait for the scheduled landscaping in a couple of weeks time to prune the few branches overhanging the children's playarea.

I have been, I supposed, blessed that most of the people I interact with are quite capable of critical thinking.

Yet I do question if LKY or the VIP were actually correct in their assessment of the masses in general.  The scary thing is, I had always held the idea that LKY and VIP & co were the most isolated people who knew the least of what is in the minds of the masses and ordinary man on the street.