I'm double-posting lately. Maybe the new skin's motivating me to blog more, instead of the teeny posts on celebratory days =D
My alarm rang at 10, waking me up long enough to hit the snooze. It rang again nine minutes later only for me to put it on snooze again. The third time it rang, I dragged myself into a semblance of a sitting position while I blearily rubbed my eyes, trying to rid myself of the prickles of my eyelids.
I left my bed to go online and stare at my new pretty blogskin until bee chased me off to go wash up. Showered, then went online again, leaving around 12 to have lunch at the hawker centre near ah ma's for delicious kway chap with my dad and sister. Poor mummy was working because her colleague who was supposed to be working had to go because her grandmother had passed away, so mummy had to replace her.
We lounged around at ah ma's for quite sometime, watching Chinese and Korean variety shows and chatting until we had to go fetch mummy from her office.
Dinner at Hot Tomato's was greeeeeeeeeeeaaaaat. (Daddy seems to like calling it 'the potato place'.) I think I've turned mummy into an addict. She wants to dine there again on Sunday, because it's affordable.
There was talk about migrating while we were finishing our meals.
Daddy wants to get out of this country because everything's getting so darned expensive and he can't stand the ERPs.
**Disclaimer: The bulk of the rest of this entry is a very biased P.O.V.**
"Are ERPs for controlling traffic, or a source of income for the government?" he asked.
So now he wants to get out of here when he "builds up enough wealth".
Transparent as the government might seem, with little or no corruption, I think the way everything's getting so expensive is ridiculous. If all the prices are to be hiked up, I think salaries should be increased too. How else can we cope with the ever-increasing prices with the same salary which used to be enough before the price-increase and GST hike?
Really, Singapore is a country where you can die, but you cannot fall sick.
Or else, you'd be up to your neck with debts and loans, and you'd really wish that you'd died anyway.
Getting out of this country seems like a very nice idea now, to go to another country where your capabilities are not assessed by the amount of academic credentials you have (I'm not saying that they're not important), but rather your work ethics, how well you can get the job done etc.
For, in a very well-used example, someone can be a straight A student, graduating with honours and the works, but when it comes to getting down and dirty, where all the theory of acadamia now turns into application, just how well can that person work if he hasn't worked before and has just digested textbooks and regurgitated them out during the exams?
I don't really know what my topic really is anymore.
I shall stop here before I blabber you all into catatonia.
I really don't feel like going to school tomorrow ><
But at least bee's coming to school (thought he doesn't need to), to accompany me during my insane three-hour break =D
/end
Journey
Monday, 19 May 2008
Posted by Chloe at 8:46 pm
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1 comments:
I'm not sure if I can agree with your point on the cost of living in sunny Singapore. Maybe a 7% GST feels like a pain, but it's comparatively lower than other developed countries (or even upper-echelon developing countries). Increment in taxes might be a real bother for the middle/upper class (admit it, it's a stratified society!) but with the economic slowdown and widening income gap, you'll need the tax increment to prevent a real major socioeconomic crisis. You won't really see it in Singapore (not too obviously anyway), but you will if you travel to foreign cities - for instance, the richest and poorest districts in Vancouver are right smack next to each other - there's a CAD$25 million penthouse suite located only a couple of blocks down from Main Street where there's a lot of homeless people and drug addicts having exchanges in broad daylight (I've seen both the penthouse and the drug addicts, so I'm not pulling your leg). This kind of divide is created by income inequality, which can be remedied by taxation (i.e. your GST).
If your argument is that the gahmen sucks up all the GST but is using it on worthless stuff (like the IR, for instance) then you might also want to consider the fact that in spite of all our reservations about the IR and similar gahmen projects, the fact remains that such large-scale attempts to reduce unemployment and to increase the amount of investments by foreign MNCs does require taxes. Whether it succeeds or not is a different question, but at the end of the day at least the gahmen is doing something about it. (No, I'm not pro-PAP. As far as I'm concerned, they're not in the least bit transparent, but one has to admit that they've got what it takes to run a country efficiently. Except freedom of speech. And then some.) So it probably would be fair to say that ERP was created for controlling traffic, but in recent times has become a useful tool for increasing gahmen funds. (Income sounds too much like gahmen pocket money.)
And yes, I can hear the middle-class, blue-collar worker in you going, "Down with the white collared slaves of desk jobs!" It's a pity you can't go on strike in SG (my teacher gave me a weird look today when I said that I've never seen a strike - live - before. I forgot to mention that I live in SG, but!). On the other hand, it's not like North American or European countries have great systems of education or employment either. Top jobs still go to top dogs, and if by regurgitation you prove yourself to be a real bitch, then you get the job. Work ethics happen after you get the job, and even then connections, an MBA or a PHD are all materially advantageous. It's just that in Singapore, with the job hunt being more of a rat race, it's a lot more obvious and seems so much more vaudeville. (The demerits of living in such close proximities with one's job rival, I guess.) At the end of the day we might all gripe about that damned kid from HCJC who has no life outside of academia but who managed to get into NUS Biz, but really, complaining about the system isn't going to help. Instead, why not beat them at their own game? (Reminds me of when my JC teacher told me, "if you can't beat them, join them", and then proceeded to lambast the NTUC ex-chairman with obscure quotes from Jane Austen about money-mindedness. Apparently she was being ironic, but everyone else thought she had gone and joined the devil.) Get stinking good grades (is that a paradox? An oxymoron?) and then get into the uni course of your choice, trash all the muggers, and emerge as the champ. After that, join the PAP and like a mole working from the inside, create change by using your mass comm prowess to corrupt the media until everyone preaches "Four legs goooood, two legs baaaaad". Blue collar power! No seriously. Study hard, get good grades, and social justice will be served in its own time.
If you were WTFing there at the end, then you'd probably heard me right.
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