Blog-A-Thought

As promised, a blog on observations during the past week.

Civil servants can expect a smaller bonus of less than 2.25 months as compared to last year. Therefore this would be a great concern for discontentment. They must be kidding! For all my working life, it would be a laugh if I ever got my 13th month. My chit-chat on the ground reveals bonus payouts at some multi-nationals going for as high as 5-7 months and our NKF ex-Chief Execuitive had a year of bonus.

I can imagine a mere clerical officer in the government service on a monthly wage of $1200 having a small windfall of $2700. And $2700 can at least buy a reasonably branded 26inch plasma television. I am now making do with none at home.

Considering how pompous and officious some of these civil servants can be in their dealings with the public, I spit at the pay perks they are granted.

The economy has exacted such a great price on its people that I sometimes observe people with a limb or a phalange missing. It could be due to diseases but my bet is some industrial disaster when I can see peeling skin and the person look ethnically disposed towards blue-collared occupations, though this is no basis for an assumption.

The ghettoes I mentioned in the previous blog would hopefully be spruced up. Even if I don't decide to move into any of these slum areas, I would have at least fulfilled my obligations as a global citizen by airing the plight of these slum-dwellers.

It is ironic that the "seven wonders" (incidentally the "Twin Peaks" pop up in my mind as a quintessential illustration) as a parlimentarian chose to label some of our public buildings are ostentatiously opulent, replete with fountain and koi pond themes and big screen televisions while in the slums, residents have none. These buildings are for working in, not living, yet they are so much better retrofitted that I might as well chose to live in one with its "hotel-like " bathroom facilities.

I have mentioned in my earlier blogs how I would like to pen my travelogues. Here is just one snippet of my travel to China.

My first destination to the Heaven and Earth Imperial Land was Beijing. When the plane nose-dived to land on the taxiway, the ground swelled up showing a Beijing, remote, untouched , barren, rural, hot and arid (it was summer). Groups of early morning health practitioners (as it was almost like six at dawn when I touched down) were doing the palm-fan routine.

At the airport , there were military-dressed men and women, some replete with beret and rifles in ram-rod straight posture. It didn't exactly earn itself kudos for the foreboding sense of discomfort it stirred within me. If a nation dresses its people like that at its international airport, it shows its militaristic, rigid and possibly inflexible stance.

Getting myself out of the airport, I was greeted by a myriad of touts for cab and coach services. These touts didn't leave me a very good impression, the thugs that they were. A lady struck up a conversation with me and I can feel it in my bones that she was up to no good. I also remember this other woman at the old Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport (which has been shifted to Pudong) who actually wanted to weigh in her luggage along mine.

The Beijing Railway Station was a scene of huge milling crowds, larger than any I have ever seen before. As I headed for the bus interchange to board a bus to my hostel in the suburbs, a horde of vagrants were giving me the eye over and I could sense something intuitively wrong.

True enough, as I climbed the flight of stairs up the bus, they squeezed me into a tight corner and it was a synidcate who pick-pocketed me and handed my wallet in my back trousers down the line. The Chinese official at the hostel was no help, a strict time-keeper to the hours of his shift work. I think swindlers abound in that developing country, each trying to make a fast buck . The gay movie "Lan Yu", on reflection, is such a commercialised effort, I am sure the producers were cashing in on the tide of "gayism".

A call to the Singapore embassy was no help either. It actually wanted me to remit money to them first before they would lend money to me. I wouldn't need their help would I if I had cash on me? I was pick-pocketed for pete's sake. That means I was penniless.

Even the trishaw rider who sought to ride me to the bank to withdraw cash from my plastic account, wanted to extort from me.

My first day in Beijing and this had to happen. If China cannot keep its streets crime-free, please do not ever think of inviting foreign investments into its shores or even tourists. Imagine the kind of impression and ordeal tourists have and endure.

This is exactly the kind of society we breed when the economy takes hold, disrupting people's lives and creating rifts in human-to-human relations, based primarily on money as the fodder for feeding and growing our lives.

More observations coming up in the days ahead.