Sunday, August 22, 2010

Advertisement to get singles to settle down and start families.

Today is a double-shot weekend. Here's my idea on a different way of positioning family life which the Government might consider.

The advertisement starts with two characters.

Toyboy is a guys with model killer looks, some sort of a Aaron Kwok figure.
FatFish is the opposite, a fat and ugly but with laughing eyes.

The first scene shows Toyboy working in the office. It shows FatFish dating FatChick.
The second scene shows Toyboy sipping on a martini and cruising in a Ferrari. It then shows FatFish proposing to FatChick.
Third scene shows Toyboy visiting the Eiffel Tower. The scene shows a quick scene with FatFish in bondage gear being pulled back into his bedroom by a chubby pair of arms.
Fourth scene shows ToyBoy playing a Playstation next to his pool in a bungalow. It also shows FatFish with FatChick pushing a pram full of babies and laughing amongst themselves.

Final scene shows ToyBoy aged to about 50 years old walking around the Orchard Road of the future. To his horror, everyone in Orchard looks like a carbon copy of FatFish or FatChick. A little kid walks by with FatFish's face photoshopped to his own. Policeman looks like FatFish, foodcourt lady looks like FatChick.

Screen blacks out.

White words appear with the MCYS logo.

"So who has won ?"

Fairness is what we strive for. But equality may turn out to be a really bad idea.

Well I think the GE fever will be upon us very soon. I just want to spend a short amount of time to talk about two concepts which tend to confuse voters and get them to support the wrong causes.

First of all, if I'm reading my fellow citizens right, Singaporeans want to be treated fairly. Singaporeans want to be hired for jobs which they are qualified for and given a days fair wages in return for a day of hard work. Fairness means that you get paid for your contribution and folks who who contribute less should get less. The mechanism to price your labor should be the free markets. It's not a perfect system, but if one works towards adding value to others, it's not going to be hard to get 3 meals a day here.

I'm personally all for fairness.

I'm a little upset at how liberals in Singapore want some more equality. Equality is a more disturbing concept. There are overtones that people will get something no matter how much contribution you make. I don't think Singaporeans want the hardworking nurse or the taxi driver to be paid equally as the poet who write poems about fornicating dead cats ( Unless this poet is a Lady Gaga like figure who attracts hordes of tourists who like seeing him fornicate dead cats at the Esplanade ).

While I want more opposition parties to gain headway I'm very disturbed that some of the more left leaning parties want more equality and the best way of doing this is by minimum wages and welfare.

Make no mistake, minimum wages will push business to create fewer jobs and if unemployment goes up, we'll lose our rock solid stability. Welfare is not going to come out from minister salaries, it will come from taxation. You either pay for welfare with a larger GST or higher income taxes.

Just want to remind readers once again to keep your eye on the government if you're not happy with them. But don't declare war on your fellow citizens. Some local people like this place because it allows them to raise decent families with low taxation.

Once again I appeal to the opposition to create a good framework for Singaporeans to draw their CPF out in difficult times rather than resort to taxation and welfare schemes. It's populist and the low road towards prosperity. It's also high time Singaporeans get to do more with that CPF-OA instead of being stuck with investing only 35%.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Article on my iPad and homemade stylus.

I took a recipe from the web and made an Ipad stylus that also works on my android phone.

http://polymathprogrammer.com/2010/08/16/homemade-ipad-stylus/

Somehow a friend found it interesting enough to make a blog article out of it.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

National Day Rant : No one is out to ruin your Singaporean Dream, lah !

I don't really feel like blogging these days. But occasionally some things occur in the blogosphere and I suddenly find that I can't really help myself.

This National Day, a lot of bloggers have taken this opportunity to talk about the Singaporean Dream and of course partake in the tradition of PAP-bashing. A lot of what the Internet has been for the last few days can be summarized by something said by a famous blogger called Kitana who wrote this classic :

" In Singapore, it is difficult to dream. Difficult to dream of anything beyond the material. I don’t wish for a future where I am stuck in my dead end job wondering what the fuck I want in my life. I don’t want a future where I die to myself, murder my idealism and my dreams of being different, simply because ‘different’ is a bad word in Singapore. "

If Kitana is reading this, I'm really sorry.

I don't buy your message.

Sure, I had my share of failures and disappointment in Singapore and I was certainly not part of the scholar-mandarin caste in Singapore. Note that I will probably also vote opposition next election too.

This is my opinion, and I welcome you to challenge them here:

a) No society is obligated to make your dreams come true.

Sure, liberals want welfare and minimum wages. That is the Singapore Dream for them. With a welfare society, a liberal can spend his days drawing pictures of the Singapore River or compose poems about his dead cat. But welfare comes with taxes and wages come from the businessmen creates the jobs. Do we want some dreams to be funded from the nightmares of other people? Too much of the gripes are disguised as attacks on the PAP but they are actually thinly disguised attacks on fellow Singaporeans. Yes, fellow Singaporeans who work hard on their jobs and enjoy low taxes or work hard to CREATE jobs for other Singaporeans.

b) No society is out there to stop the pursuit of your dreams.

While Singapore is not obligated to realize the dreams of everybody, Singapore can never stop you from pursuing your dreams. You cannot be stopped from chasing your dreams. You might be stopped from actually attaining it but that happens to the best of us.

The ultimate power of a citizen is that he can give up his citizenship and take his productivity elsewhere, that's if he refuses to vote in the next election. Singapore has to fight for global talent too. Don't like MM Lee, no problem ! Pauline Hanson will welcome you with open arms down under.

c) Materialist dreams are not spared in this society.

The truth is that my own dream is a fairly materialist one. My dream is to live on dividend pay-outs generated from my earned income. When i shared my dream with readers, all I got was 21 pages of hate-filled postings on Channel News Asia. I don't believe that materialist dreams will be spared from the wrath of the disgruntled fellow citizen. People will attack you if potentially what you are doing is interesting and will make them look stupid.

d) If disapproval from fellow Singaporeans is preventing you from dreaming your dream, you must be quite a sad person.

One of my formative years which made me like this way was at the age of 10, my ACS kid neighbors decided that my ET BMX bike which my dad got for me was not cool enough. They said it was fake and I spent a large part of my youth dodging 7mm plastic pellets from their Thunderboy handguns.
The RI kids were'nt any better, they made fun of me because I went to a neighbourhood school.

If I'm going to gripe about the years where I was a geek kid getting wedgies, developing complicated neuroses about branded secondary schools, I would miss out making friends with many ACS and RI alumni today, many have become my best friends and they can count on me if they need help.

I'm just using this story because like many of you unhappy Singaporeans, I was too poor to qualify for ACS and too dumb to qualify for RI. ( Too Ang-moh to enter Chinese High )

I worked on my academic credentials in university and now I'm going through the journey on financial independence bit. I'm confident I'll get there before I'm 40.

The fundamentals of success does not vary from society to society. It certainly would not vary whether RP or PAP is in power.

Work your butt out, strive to be likeable and don't take things for granted. Look after your family and everything will take care of itself.

As a bonus, you'll earn the respect of your most vicious critics.

That is my Singapore Dream.

Sunday, August 01, 2010

ipad is overrated?

Well I just got my iPad and am writing my blog using the device. While the device scores on ease of use and user friendliness, I am personally not sure if it's all that useful for Singaporean users. You can't really get kindle books with it unlike my google phone and iBooks will not sell you any books as well.

This just illuminates a point that we need to protect ourselves from marketing hype.

I'll look forward to an android tablet later this year. Hope that my investment returns will let me get one then.