A better life

Shamelessly stolen from Shane of MyLifeInaCube.com

Just read this post of a Chinese University Student's outtake on dating and settling down with Chinese men. She decided instead to look towards the west and marrying ang mohs for a better life. Something which I guess Singaporean ladies are already famous for being SPGs.

But seriously who is to blame them. Even in Singapore we have our grouses. Young couples who want to get married and if they are typical fresh graduates trying to set up a family. They will be endowed with hefty 20-30 year housing loans because our nation's "subsidised" housing costs S$300-700k alone. My Malaysian ex-colleagues have often wondered how we can survive or retire in Singapore. His monthly maintenance and expenses for 3 cars and his "freehold" bungalow and 3 persons at home at most costs him S$500 and that is extravagance living. His move back home is because of the recent manufacturing retrenchments in Singapore and there is no way he can survive alone on $500 in Singapore.

Thinking about being stuck in a mortgage, and if you want a car, a 5-7 year loan will further strip you bare of savings. Further insights with a friend who is in the education sales line shows that he has to scrimp and save for his child's education and even mere expenses to bring his family out for a evening of basketball would have cost him his monthly utility bill of ~$240; which to me looks scarily high! I live with my parents and my father's constant grumbling of $300-500 monthly utility bills was now a reality. Seriously if you do your sums of mortgage and a car loan, and par it with anywhere else in the world, you realised why we are now the 10th most expensive city in the world!

We are enslaved in poverty even though we thought armed with an education and a decent paying job, we can get by. Our world class lifestyle is often envied by many tourists and expats but little they know that most citizens are crippled with mortgage loans and possible high medical costs in our retirement age which can wipe us out of our savings anytime. These sort of enslaved mentality could only stiffen our souls and limit our creativity. This is all seemingly too medieval, where in the ancient times of farmers or lower caste peasants are dictated by royal pricks as they do not own the land they live, they are merely loaning them or tending to the farms. And strangely it all seems so familiar, perhaps just packaged into 99-year HDBs, ERPs and GSTs to collect the $...and now I know why we are called lesser mortals.
Also with many people just living day to day with worries for just putting food on the table, you are effectively not thinking...about anything. Seriously, do you think Singaporeans really know what is happening in the world today? Are they concerned with what is being debated in the parliaments? I have friends who walked past the Singapore President without knowing who he was, just wondering why a black guy has so many people surrounding him like he was Brad Pitt. And mind you, my friends are mostly armed with "world class" education.

We are in the situation caused by the result of our own actions. We decided on the life we want, we are driven by the lack of knowledge. Spoon fed local degrees are not exactly an education. Do they really know what is out there? Instead of looking out into the stars and wondering if there is life on other planets, I guess I should start looking for a better life overseas. Do my peers know the rat race they are running in is taking place in a cage?