Just.

Rain. I am ambivalent about it. I like it when I am indoors curled up in my nice warm quilt on my king size bed. I hate it when my laundry is hanging out, when I am about to go to work, and the worst: when I have to bring the pipster duex to school. It’s no joke juggling two bags (hers and mine) holding her hand, holding the freaking umbrella trying to make sure neither one of us gets wet and looking out for icky puddles. No, I am definitely not the type of mother who will go jumping into puddles merrily with her kid….

So I always try to get a cab, the operative word being TRY. It is virtually impossible to call through to the cab booking lines in Singapore whenever there is a downpour. The chances of striking the lottery is minutely higher.

So I was late for work this morning. AND I HATE THAT. I like to be at work at least 10 minutes before the official starting time so that I can settle in and prepare a nice hot cuppa latte to kick off the day. I also flip through Herald Tribune and Business Times quickly to get a gist before reading my regular news webbies and my favourite blogs.

Being late screws all that up. My nerves are shot to ribbons, my schedule is thrown out of sorts and I am just generally pissed that I am not the picture of Missy Perfect. I am also mightily pissed because I had wanted to wear my new suede 4 inch killer heels and couldn’t do so because the freaking rain would have ruined the suede.

It is exactly at times like these I wished I had dragged my lazy ass to the driving school diligently back then.

our government agencies. One stellar example.

This is precisely what irritates me to no end. That our super scale civil servants on their super scale salaries can come up with stooooooooOOOOOOoooooopid policies like this for the sake of keeping in line with bureaucratic bullshit.

In the words of Mr Wang: “What’s the average IQ of Mindef officers these days?” Or even any other government agency for that matter?

Could be anything from 80 to 100, I say.

No wonder the good people at MDA were sooo impressed when they saw my IQ report, which I enclosed with my CV and certificates. Yes, yes, I applied for the position of PA there just for the sake of satisfying my morbid curiosity. I had to go through three rounds of interview; two being interviewed by a panel of three (what’s the point?!) and the last being a senior director or something. Can’t remember cos I was rather unimpressed and bored. They did make the offer at the end of the whole brohaha but the salary…. is pathetic. Like I said, it’s typical PAP bureaucratic style again. Pay more for the Masters/ Hons guy regardless of other attributes like thnking on his feet, intelligence as opposed to mugging for exams, EQ etc etc. The poor dude got there after mugging so hard. Pay him, say the PAP.

OK it was not that miserable, but still lesser than what I expected. And far from the standard of MNCs. And there is their 21 days leave……. which I will probably over utilized if I had accepted the offer. Too depressed to go to work every morning.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I am sooo bad, I know. I sometimes wonder WHERE on earth did that come from? My parents are really really nice people. My mum is the type who never knows how to be sarcastic (her only sin is NAGGING!) and my dad is the really diplomatic sort. If he doesn’t like you, you wouldn’t know it. He’s too polite and nice.

More about my parents later. I will blog about my maternal home and their fantabulous dinner parties they host… (which I love……. and hate because of this “Ponz Goo type” rich spoilt girl that I absolutely detest and who loves to bore me to bits..) *bitchy rolls eyes bored look*

I realized that I had not been commenting on political issues for a while. Been too busy with coping with every day living and juggling many roles I guess. The level of stress of living in Singapore is very high. The high standard of living, the educational demands upon which are constantly made on our children and the competitiveness as nurtured by society and culture all add up to a hotpot of stress steamboat.

Moreover, my blog is not in the nature of heavy duty political/ sociology blogs like Yawning Bread, Singapore Angle, Kway Teow Man or Mr Wang, all of whom I have utmost respect and high esteem for.

Nope, this is a place where I will write about the pipsters, my life in general, my bimbiotic behaviour to be chuckled over a few years later, my little escapades, the things I get away with, and only then and lastly commentary on the political and social issues in the country of my birth and which I love.

You might have thought; oh she is so anti-government, so anti-everything. That’s not true. It only sounds that way because anyone with a logical mind and some time to read, sit down and analyze the issues will come to the same conclusion as I did. Things are not right.

But I was glad to see that finally the chronic ill are able to use their Medisave to pay for part of their medical bills for treatment. That should have been one of the original purposes of Medisave, but somehow it got sidelined to only being allowed for surgery and hospitalization usage. We are probably the only nation whose people are forced to park a certain percentage of our money with the government who then proceeds to tell us how the money should be used. *rolls eyes*

But anyway, it was due a long time ago, but better late than never.

So that means… finally, some results from the Ministry of Health!

*still in a state of shock*

*recovering from shock*

But still… the significance of the article is in the last paragraph:

“One million Singaporeans suffer from one of the four chronic diseases, and if all one million actively participate in this new scheme, then Medisave withdrawals will reach up to S$250 million a year.”

See why the government were so adamant about not allowing withdrawals back then?

But the question now should be, why then would they allow it now?

Me thinks that it could be

a) A long term strategy of laying the foundation for 2011 Elections;

b) Softening the blow for “means testing”, which basically means, you either have to be very poor and screwed to get subsidies from the government. If you have money coming out of your ears, you may not even bother with healthcare in Singapore, and probably is a Gold VIP at John Hopkins, so means testing really means shite to you. If you are middle class rich, borderline rich or borderline poor, you will be badly screwed by the government. Why do I say that?

MOH’s brainchild: Means Testing

Three levels of medical subsidy: 75%, 50% or 25%.

Per Capita Income

$0 to $300 – 75%
$301 to $700 – 50%
$701 to $1000 – 25%
More than $1000 – 0%

Scenario 1

Family of 3: Single mum (earning $700) and two kids.

Per capital income: 700 divided by three persons in household = $233.33

Situation: very poor and screwed

Subsidy: 75%

Scenario 2

Family of three: dad earning $1600, mum earning $1500, one kid

Per capital income: 3100 divided by three persons in household = $1033.33

Situation: borderline poor

Subsidy: BIG FAT ZERO

Scenario 3

Family of four: dad earning $2500, mum earning $2200, two kids

Per capital income: 4700 divided by four persons in household = $1175.00

Situation: borderline rich

Subsidy: BIG FAT ZERO

See what I mean by brainchild now?

Finally the last and most likely possibility

c) Better that the sick use their own money rather than leech off the government’s reserve funds by getting subsidies of all manners. Social welfare is not one of this government’s forte, ya know….

****

The way I see it…

Me thinks it is 5% of a) 5% of b) and 90% of c).

I feel very disturbed at the naivete and one track mindedness of which our government and their whole train of civil servants in waiting seem to be unfortunately endowed with. Even as I type, resources are being focused on organizing talks to deal with maintaining healthy relationships with your children, managing your rebellious teenagers and how to save your marriage etc, just to name a few.

Do they serious think talks can solve these deep rooted problems? I would think that even intensive workshops might not have a 100% of achieving a quantitative level of success, much less talks!

Naive, simplistic and detached from the man on the street. Eerily similar to the malady that pragues every PAP elite.

It brings to mind what Alex Au said about the quality of our ruling political party’s candidate. Because of the very method they were pampered into office, they do not have the fighting spirit of some of our notable Opposition members, being Ms Sylvia Lee and Mr Low Thia Khiang being stellar examples. I have never been moved by any of the speeches given by the PAP delegates. On the contrary, I find myself being disgusted and even outraged at the flawed logic and appalling stance taken in some of the latest PAP speeches, once of which is the recent rally speech by none other than our Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong.

Just to put forth one example on why I was so disgusted and outraged (just one, so that you do not get too depressed as I did…) :

One point I gleaned from the rally speech I linked above, was that, gasp, we (yes; you, you and you, and also me of course) are to be blamed for the population crisis that we are facing now. Last year, we were short of 14,000 babies! All 14,000 of us out there are to be blamed for not doing our national duty! Shame on us!

But bear in mind, it is today in present times that we are short of 14,000 to maintain the 4 million population. It would be logically sound to make the deduction that the said 14,000 babies should have been born like, 25 – 30 years ago? No?

But what was the government policy and stance back then? Was it not the STOP AT TWO campaign and as usual, they abused their political power and punished heretics who chose to have more than two? I use the term heretics because our government seem to think they are God.

Then why now in present times, it became OUR fault?

You screwed the macro economics, stop the finger pointing at the citizens.

And what is that stupid nonsense about not poking fun at our political leaders? Else we lose our respect for them?

Please…… tell me, how do you lose something you do not have in the first place?

***

Touching again on the quality (or lack thereof) of our PAP candidates: one word comes to mind.

Dough.

Soft, easily malleable. Even crumbles easily if not properly prepared.

And they are never properly prepared. How to be, if you have your work all cut out for you and success guaranteed? Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) are how these nambly pamblies (NP) ride on the coat tails of existing political powerhouses into power. In each GRC, a political heavyweight in placed nicely like a pawn piece, and is mainly there to hold the hands of these aforementioned NPs, oops I beg your pardon, MPs (Minister of Parliament). Success is handed to them on a plate.

It could also be because that these chosen ones are literally just that. Chosen. Hand-picked from the elite (perhaps for their “teachability”), they were invited to serve the nation, and I reiterate I use this term very very loosely. Very often, they had to to be persuaded into position, what with the numerous “tea invitations” and lured with the ministerial salary celery dangled in front of them.

See, if they have to be lured with an obscene salary, guaranteed success, and never having to fight every step of the way to prove your passion and conviction, the dough will be well on the way to the oven to be churned out as nice uniformly cut cookies.

***

Speaking of Singapore’s ministerial salary scale, our Minister Mentor, Lee Kuan Yew, openly admitted that our obscenely high salary scale for ministers serves its purposes of both eliminating the possibility of any corruption (note: that to him, it should be monetary compensation, and not a strong sense of integrity that should eradicate corruption) and to be on par with the private sector so as to persuade these chosen people to move from their comfort in the private sector to that of serving the people humbly. What a sacrifice on their part!

To me, this argument is severely skewed in terms of logic and reason. Moreover, where do we draw the line between blatant corruption and cronyism otherwise euphemistically known as “nurturing a business relationship”? Also known in layman terms as “you scratch my back and I scratch yours?”

How about the wives of the ministers who run private businesses and obstentiously ride on the political power of their husbands to surge forward? Are there any checks in place to stem that in the bud? No. Not only do they not have adequate policies in place to check such potential abuse, our ministers proudly proclaim that they do not require constitutional checks to ensure a balance of the political/ sociological quotient as ‘Within the PAP itself, there’s a self-checking system’.

The arrogance of monopoly is never surprising. In addition to feeding the citizens with regular government (read:PAP) slanted propaganda based on their long term strategy of creating a conditioned nation who will not be independent to think and analyze, and who will be lead by a government-controlled media to arrive at pre-determined decisions of which of course, the government approves, they are telling us now subtly (or not so subtly) that we, the citizens do not require an Opposition. They, of course, are too honest, as “honesty is one of their core values” to require an Opposition that they would spend “too much time fixing”. Do the comments in quotes sound disturbingly familiar?

Uttered from the very lips of our very own Prime Minister and the various other party jesters.

Remember the fiasco of the son-in-law insurance from Khaw Boon Wan? And many more gaffes here…

You see now why I am so unimpressed with the ruling party? Elite…. my ass.