Attention Everyone - All Systems Malfunctioning

A blog straight out of the space age except for one difference - the blundering kind. I am going to take you on a tour of several of the systemic malfunctions amidst us. See if you can see what I see or think.

I walk past the electronic light sensor panels of the public library with a bagful of previously borrowed books. When I sail pass the same partitions making my way home, the sensors beep. So how did this happen? Why was I able to come in without a sound but not when I leave? The books have been scanned and borrowed were they not?

On an earlier blog I have highlighted some fatuous aspects of the public library on-line system. With the opening of the Central Lending Library it had a brand new system but somehow over time, it reverted back to the old inane one.

If you care, take a peek and you will see how when you are on a screen to view book titles, you have on the left column an array of unnecessary menus. I have tried most and none seems to click with what I require. Seems like someone just put them there for the sake of putting them there rather than for any utility purposes.

Just like someone asking a question for the sake of asking a question. Not so much to really understand something but to show off his prowess, vindicate that he is listening and following or to put someone down. I have come across many questions which in any case have been answered by my earlier conversation which shows that he has not grasped my points.

Best of all, you check a box on the system and you can't yet place a reservation. What are the boxes for then? Display screens for the catalogue system differ in degrees at various community libraries, depending on whether if it is the OPAC system. Even within the OPAC system, some highlight book titles available at their branches with capitalised branch names.

Type a string of search keywords differently and display information can and will be different again. Librarians' display screen system differ from the public display ones. Even the borrowers' enquiry systems are displayed differently at the different locations.

The private school section registers private commercial school, asking for among its long list, fire safety certificates and a syllabus. What it does with the syllabus and who they are to audit it are of course issues in themselves. By registering schools, they confer some "authencity" or "stamp of approval" to the schools they so register.

But then they devolve the responsibility of another round of audit with CASETRUST. Mind you CASETRUST handles complaints from the public on issues ranging from insurance to maid agencies to breasts augmentation beauty centres. It is also the consumers' watch-dog and advocacy agency. I am sure you can draw on the conclusions.

This is like the classic Palestinian-Israeli conflict of one overseeing party who simply walks away and washes its hands of any responsibility for the creation and partition of the Palestine/Israel state. Except in this international scenario, it was like leaving the parties to fend for themselves to kill and die over a historical/religious site. "Xi le kai dai chee"

Then we pass through a final round of audit of the curriculum with the Student Protection Scheme team of underwriters. Underwriters auditing my "Historical Sciences" curriculum. Can you imagine that? What the fuck does it know anything about paleontology or stratigraphy?

Worst of all these blimpos, bimbs and wimps cannot differentiate between land owned by HDB, URA and SLA. They keep insisting on a URA search (search for what, your fucking two hairy rambutan balls with a banana is it?) when the land is HDB owned.

Fire safety standards entail having to apply to the authorities for a fire safety certificate. Chow Chee Bye! This fire safety certificate has already been issued to the building owner.

I am only occupying one unit of a whole floor. Does that mean that I have to apply for changing the whole fire safety structure of the entire building which is what the papers is asking for? This is the building owner's onus, not me. One tenant in an entire building?

What difference does it make anyway if the fire safety structures are already such in the building. Will my one application change anything? For sure within my unit I can do whatever is necessary for fire safety precautions (like fire-extinguishers) but I can't change what is outside. The building's peripherals. Do you get it, stupid fire authorities?

One last observation and that is I seriously pray for all our sake that the infrastructural developers will build to fit form to function and not the other way. Please let us not leave ghost towns in the blaze of our wake.

Do you feel sometimes how something is constantly nagging away at your insides, telling you that something is not quite right somewhere somehow. Welcome! You are probably right in your instinctual feels. Do you feel that something crucially missing in your life and you know it isn't sex or a pet or a boyfriend or girlfriend or a family? That missing yearn for meaning within your life which is not the economy. Weclome too! You have just felt the pangs of being a spiritual and thinking human. A soul not of religious calling that makes us humankind.

For sure there are more systemic dysfunction than these, but I am just going to whet your appetite with a few first. Later you can have the main course of a full 8-dish dinner. How's that for soup of the day?