More Systemic Disorders

Gosh. Uncle. Why didn't you make it clear you were captured by the Japanese in Malaysia. And gosh again. He was like captured not once but twice. Going by his accounts, the British were no better governors than the Japanese. Thinking the villagers were members of the communist party, the Britons beat up not only men but women as well. They burned down their homes and then built a new town for them. Uncle fled to Singapore in 1948 one decade later than my mother did, traumatised by both the Japanese and British overlords.

I confess. I was one of god-knows-how-many-others who had the cheek to send in a working paper for the educational excellence campaign in the private school umbra. However when I looked at that same working paper again and compared it with what the administrators had come up with since, they had become two disparate carts of fruits, as different as rambutans are from mangosteens.

I had never intended the proposal to be reduced to a half-baked scheme of factoring only the money part of the equation which coincidentally stifles the cash flow of the business while not completely heeding the educational aspects. What about the welfare of the teachers? That was not at all addressed in the final upshot.

Having underwriters needing a guarantor to vouch for my business defeats the purpose of underwriting which is essentially the undertaking of risks. That is what underwriters are in busness for. The onus is not on me, it is on them. They could always co-write or re-write in conjunction with co-insurers or re-insurers (note the difference).

Imagine approaching an undertaker (oops!) to underwrite my life and I need to bring in my 80 year old grandmother to vouchsafe it as well. A fine illustration of first-principles-first, don't you think?

As for inoculation versus immunisation, over the years, the two words have been used interchangeably although at first they had a subtle difference in meaning.

I can be a very verbal and combative person if I want to. But before I speak on a topic of which I know nothing of, I must do my research and read up on it. That is why I do not engage in so much loose talk as that can seriously do a lot of harm untill I have sufficient information to do so.


Which brings me to my earlier blog of the game of distorted or selective communication I played in a class. In fact on a recent occasion when I had a petition drafter write my appeal, I could see how his writing had diverged so much from my original intent and substance, I am glad I had mine all ready and his was only going to be a covering letter.

So what else can go wrong? Plenty, judging by how many things can be skewed and misinterpreted in so many different ways. You may scoff at all these as some highly fertile part of my imagination but if you were ever caught in such a situation, tough luck on being on the receiving end of a short shrift.

Let me give you two examples of how matters had gone complicated even though the intent was good.

First, the Electronic Road Pricing. Its original intent was to regulate travel patterns at certain times of the day, namely the peak and off-peak period. It did this by the use of a graduated payment schedule spread across a price range of between $0.50 to $3.50 based on 5minutes-30 minutes time slots throughout the day. It is to ensure equitable charges contingent solely upon usage.

What happens is that motorists now has such a long list of time slots to remember that I do not think anyone is keeping tab any more although that was what it was supposed to do. Motorists were supposed to travel based on decisions of peak and non-peak hours. It is fortunate the intra-unit device holds a cashcard for auto-deductions or I can imagine a balding and greying population happening sooner than Hurrican Katrina can hit home.

It is the same with cab fare metered charges and surcharges. In the beginning it was a flat 50% surcharge on top of the metred fare after midnight or at exactly 00.01 hrs. Now it has been graduated from 11.30 pm till 1.00am over 15 minutes to 1 hour time slots and at an ascending rate of 10% to 50%. This is automatically worked into the cab's meter but a passenger has to work his sums if he is on a budget or if he has change as sparse as the grassland in the desert.

And all the extras make a rational and economic being like a Man's mind boggle. I am like standing within a CBD zone at exactly 7.50pm, less than 5 metres away from the gantry with only $9.50 in my pcokets as I had not been able to withdraw cash earlier because there were no available ATMs within a 10km radius from where I was and an encroaching deadline of reaching my destination at 8.15 pm.

I have to decide if I should walk the whole way past the gantry, thus bypassing the CBD charges and making it there at precisely 8.01pm so I can both avoid the peak hour charge and travel within my $9.50 budget limit and yet to be able to think if today is the eve of any major public holiday.

Anyway the electronic road pricing just diverts trafflic flow from a congested one to a non-congested one. It does not solve the problem. It only pushes the problem to a different part of the road. The end result is an enlarged , evergrowing area of congestion that just balloons and balloons as long as new roads are identified as congested ones.

Our young people are attired in starchy, crisp and pressed uniforms. Given our tropical climate and the swirling fan phenomena of most schools, it is usually sweaty and stuffy. It is a disciplinary issue if shirt or blouse tails are untucked, which students tend to because of play or the sheer comfort of hanging loose.

If school attire wasn't school uniform per se, it would have been cleverly devised as a more comfortable cotton polo shirt without needing to tuck in. If girls had a choice between skirts or trousers, there would not be an issue of hemlines. Why are we reducing our relationships with our charges to one of talking down to rather than talking with or to?

Attention everyone! The Galaxy is on fire. Please evacuate all stations in 5 minutes or your life may be in danger. Attention everyone - all systems are malfunctioning.