It has been just a week into 2009, I finally found some time to look back at 2008 and ponder upon that year and what I should look forward henceforth.
The local media has splashed achievements for 2008 running up to New Year's Eve, achievements we should be proud of and indeed I am.
1) We had the Singapore F1 Grand Prix - First night race, which was exciting and deafening for me, being my first live racing event.
2) We did well at the 2008 Beijing Olympics - paddlers Li Jia Wei, Wang Yuegu and Feng Tianwei finally secured a silver medal in the Table Tennis Women's Team event for Singapore.
3) The world's highest observation wheel started in Feb 2008. - Managed to go for free ride thanks to a friend!
And many more wonderful achievements listed here.
But not forgetting the boo-hoos which I think nullifies and magnifies, dragging Singapore 2008 into doldrums.
1) The sheer "cost" of staging the Grand Prix and the pending 4 possible flagging years as the global economies chews up many teams. I for one, will not be going for the 2009 race. - I wonder if the hotels and the SingaporeGP company will sustain the costs, or will taxpayers' money be used to subsidize?
2) The immediate sacking of table-tennis team manager Antony Lee by its new president, Ms Lee Bee Wah, and the eventual departure of the head coach Liu Guodong as well. - Tsk tsk..where's the grace?
3) The frequent breakdown of the Singapore Flyer and eventually holding 173 tourists and locals in a 6-hour hostage crisis which resulted in embarrassment and caused the Flyer to be suspended from operations pending investigations by the Singapore Police.
4) Escape of Mas Selamat. Where are the apologies? I've seen Indian officials resigning over the Mumbai incident. While ours came out as -
'This should never have happened. I am sorry that it has.' - Wong Kan Seng
That is not an apology.
5) Rising inflation - raised further by more ERP gantries, increased utility bills. Is the ivory tower so high up? Have our leaders forgotten about the common man in the streets?
6) Foreign workers dormitory location issues as well as companies not paying their salaries. It pains me knowing that these people borrowed, beg, steal in hope of a better future and working hard on our soils to provide us with infrastructure, cleaning services and jobs that many locals won't do - only to be played out. How many times have we seen cases like these?
7) DBS minibonds fiasco - its not just about how these complicated products came about to simple investors who wanted to place them in fixed deposits; but how the Singaporean investors are being treated as compared to the Hong Kong investors. Where was our government? How long it took for them to even make a statement? Where is that million-dollar leadership? If it costs us taxpayers so much $ for such a F#$% up leadership, I wouldn't mind standing in for 1/4 of what they costs!
8) The boastful GIC/Temasek splurging billions on bad foresight and claiming long-term investment. Damn it..and they said I didn't study enough, the number of brains in those enterprises got clouded by their obscene salaries? I can make such bad investments in 8 days as well, in fact give me 3 days, I can make just as bad investments!
But what saddens me most besides the amount of money thrown out - from saving global banks, learning centres (lost count of all the bad investments to date).. etc, to investments by town councils smoking to a tune of $16 million. And this one takes the cake -
We started off with (the name) and after looking at everything, the name that really tugged at the heartstrings was in front of us. The name itself is not new, but what has been used informally so far has endeared itself to all parties." - Mah Bow Tan on the $400,000 exercise to rename Marina Bay as Marina Bay.$40Gs can feed a lot of people for a very long time!
Will the repressed citizens come forth in making a statement that enough is enough, we need to have people take responsibilities, be accountable; we need transparency in the system - in charities, public corporations, in GLCs. Where is the last straw? Where do we draw the line between acceptance and sheer ignorance? Doesn't that money belong to our forefathers, even us and our future generations? The power of one or an elite class is dangerous as we all have seen in the global meltdown of the financial system. Greed and the elitist thinking of 'outsmarting' the system to their own massive gains is causing the impending great depression we are facing right now.
The elitist should never be encouraged, or even be admired. They have climbed so high up in their ivory tower, they seem to have lost touch with the ground and the need to be empathetic to the less fortunate. This high flying civil servant chose to spend his legally earned tax-payers money learning how to cook, but the sheer arrogance of mentioning about his ivy league undergraduate son, well-to-do wife as well as his superb management skills, makes no sense to an article which I thought was about a french cooking school. The numbers in the article popped out to me like a brag in a pretentious way.
Enough complaining as we all know, there isn't much else we can do about it but accept life. I just hope the government do their bit for the less unfortunate, the sick, the disabled. Hear the sounds of cries of your people before the inevitable happens. And I beg to differ that Singaporeans are apolitical and repressed as the internet will be a forceful weapon in time to come, we all just need patience for an opportunity to present itself.
“It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” - Henry David Thoreau
I hope to end this entry with at least a positive proud moment I had as a Singaporean. Our very own true-blue Singaporeans with pretty little publicity, support/sponsorship and carrot$ dangling in front of them, doing pretty well.
Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games
Bronze Medal in Equestrian Individual Freestyle Championship - Laurentia Tan
Bronze Medal in Equestrian Individual Championship - Laurentia Tan
Silver Medal in Swimming Women's 50m Freestyle - Yip Pin Xiu
Gold Medal in Swimming Women's 50m Breastroke - Yip Pin Xiu
I salute you! Now let's hope our government learnt some lessons and avoid more hiccups in 2009.
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