Pro-state And Pro-citizenship

The moment my house is stripped down, I could begin to appreciate its spaciousness when I compare it to the teeny weeny rooms I have visited. Not only is greenery and water important but also space if you want to live as any decent human being would. Neither in squalor nor crammyness.

Once again it is sorting out information galore. Can you blame moi if the ISPs have actually split territories and price plans among themselves in the spirit of "competition". I mean Singnet has a doubling in price after a base $20 subscription which only StarHub can fill in as an intermediary. Hotspots are equally divided. Thus moi has to analyse where I frequent most to decide which ISP is spot on.

My spring cleaning has taught me this painful lesson of being stuck with white elephants which are really the result of bad sales information anyway. Or stuff that can onlybe bought in a set or in twin packs.

Economics work in such wondrous ways, any Adam Smith's protege would be deemed economically unsavvy if he does not weigh the economic benefits of every little enterprise he undertakes. Right down from the apples he buys off the cart on the supermarket to the economic worth of his rubbish (pun intended).

Which, by the way, reminds me of how bad the fruits look on our supermarket displays nowadays. We have oranges all the way from China and South Africa. Apples from New Zealand, America and China. I haven't see good-looking and nice-tasting fruits for a really long time now.

We would be anti-state and anti-establishment too , wouldn't we, if state or company policies are anti-citizens or anti-people. Policies have to be seen as an approximate fair deal if people are to be able to accept them. Otherwise, people would rebel and try to beat the system every way they can.

I think I speak for all the John Does living on the backstreets that all the hoi polloi wants is just a little space to breathe and pursue the things he wants to do with a reasonable income without the state or anybody constantly boring down on him with a deluge of rules and regulations (most of which are irrational and silly in many ways, seemingly to exact tolls especially in the world of commerce). He can't just live day to day when retirement looms large where age and health may not permit useful occupation anymore.

All state policies impact every sphere of our lives, from the homes we live in to the education we get. Remember my blog on power ranking of the various ministries and you can determine which has a BIG BANG in our lives.

We did not exactly ask for statehood in the first place. The natives would have gone on with their lives the way they did if the Europeans did not swing by and tried imposing their will on their culture. Asia would have gone on as before if the colonialists didn't enforce the same.

What I am trying to say then is that the least a state could do then is to make living bearable, fair and a level field. More rational, sensible and wise. Not impose a slew of unwarranted restrictions, inflict unnecessary pain and sufferings, wring every cent out of us and induce complications every single step of the way .

Everything is money. I do not wish to sound money-centric but that is the way it is here. Removing clutter and garbage from my home was already a case in point. I actually have to pay for trash removed if not for the fact that I decided there and then to resell this to the recycling companies much like the schools do.

When you reflect on how the print is recycle for re-print, it makes you think how you are actually paying for that same daily read over and over again with this recycling business while it costs the producer only once and a fraction more each time.

All the new products are unnecessary when the used ones are actually still usable even after prolonged use but for the sake of turbo-charging the economy and generating consumerism and demand, new products keep cropping up, some with cosmetic changes.

To the arbiter for the realtor as to why I would engage the professional services of a rogue agent, I wouldn't have known until I do. We were only chatting over the phone before she came by one evening, made me sign an exclusive and I couldn't have backed out then, could I? And I don't think the selling price was the only selling process but all the after-sales service as well. This reflects on the sad state of her, her company and the industry.

Let me explain that I do not deny the revenue stream the "orphanage" wants to generate for itself so as to be self-sustainable. But speaking for myself, I can't be "volunteering" when I am not exactly having an income myself and just living by. Making me a paid volunteer sounds more equitable, like the doyen in NKF who works from 9am till 9pm in NKF and who apparently has a big say in everything that is run in the organisation.

The big difference between an entrepreneur in public service and private employ is that the public one toys with money not his own and he can have all the time and luxury to sit and wait out the returns on his investment. He does draw a wage every month, doesn't he? As a private entrepreneur, I can't. Every day, I sit still, I am doomed but I can't give up yet as my business practice is for 3 years and I have to see it through its tenure to justify its life-span. I can't be multi-tasking too much which M/s Mee Pok actually was, now that I think of it, frying kway teow and cooking up mee pok.

All this tender-driven thingy is ridiculous with a starting price of $3000 which is tantamount to a person's monthly wages. I can understand huge projects to the tune of hundreds of thousands and millions. But to put a measly $3000 on the block? The bar should be raised to $10 000. Why don't we put the government on the tender block as well and let the job go to the lowest bidder in the spirit of competition and hiving off? Let us see who can do the job better and at less cost.

In case you don't know, the tender runs on both a highest and lowest bid system, calculated only to benefit you-know-who.

A retired cabby puts it correctly when he laments that at age 60, people begin to think that he can just volunteer his time and service to charitable organisations. In all likelihood, he will appreciate even a token for his effort which will see him through a meal or a transport during this period of unemployment. Not that many here have sufficient savings to see them through their twilight years. Everyone seems to think they can only "volunteer".

Another cabby remarked that as parents they should just do their best for their kids and then leave them be to venture into the unknown. After all, he reasons, kids once coupled, fly the coop and leave their parents be anyway.

I agree to a certain extent. Which leads me to the question of kinship and blood-ties. What is the use of this if it came to end like what Mr Cabby said? When you think about it all, the person you marry wasn't a blood-relation either till you two coupled and had kids, which are.

In the world of the mammals, the parents actually would fend for their young, equip and teach them the ropes of looking for food and survival whilst their off-springs watch and learn. They do seem more bonded and nurturing while we as homo-sapiens, do not seem to bond as much, in most cases leaving kids in the hands of total strangers?

Running on open roads would have moi peeling my eyes out for human and vehicular traffic during peak hours. Thus I cannot concentrate on my thoughts. Running within a confined area would take away the vehicular hazard but the human traffic could serve to be as bad a distraction unless the running is done in the dead of night. That would be my reply to a simplistic suggestion of being able to run anywhere and everywhere.

Sending an old folk to a nursing home may not be an infilial act if the level of medical care has gotten to the point where medically qualified staff have to be on the watch 24 hours. A maid, you or me can't.

I will repeat myself again. Everyone is living in their own world here, with their little emotional baggages of personal history. I may have enough of my own, try as hard as I do to start afresh everytime I meet someone new. That is the reason why I refuse to extend my circle where it probably leads me to another concentric of someone's baggage.

Working in all the places I did and meeting with people, this is the everlasting imprint I always get. Caught up in bad experiences, they seem to make me fit into the mould of their past which I am not. It is disconcerting to have to deal with this everyday. I know one when I encounter it.

With dual income families, I think kids suffer the most, left alone, with a maid or in some full-day program in an after-care commercial school. Women go to work for a variety of reasons: fulfilment, financial need and financial independence.

For the third reason, it sometimes beats me why they got married in the first place if they could not trust and depend on their partner to be the breadwinner of the house. A ST writer wrote about this at length and very profoundly. There were issues of joint-account and so on. What a mystery, marrying someone and not trusting them after all.

I can understand that things can change and if there were ever a third party, guess what, it is most likely a woman again! So there, women! You people have just done yourselves in, among your very own gender.

To a woman's asinide remarks as to why I shouldn't just get married and be done with, life isn't a bed of roses like with her prescription. It is exactly with people like her that I have a problem with and even if she were the last woman on planet earth, I would have retreated into my own oyster shell and shun her to death. I would rather be a "masturbation expert" (to borrow a phrase from a PHD enabled "teacher" in a school) than to live my life out with a hag.

Kids are fortunately the most blessed in this respect. But once they step into schools, society and the workforce, it is a nuclear contamination as contagious as Chernobyl. Sigh. They pick up and learn to ape all the ways of the stinking world.

Incidentally I hope parents will be more consistent with their parenting. If you allow your kid out without a curfew, don't lock up the front door refusing him entry when he comes back. This is totally inconsistent. It is like you send your maid out to run an errand and then later scold her for going out upon her return. Get the picture?

We are not really communicating anymore. We are hearing past one another because of all the dissonance, cacophany and stresses of life. Therefore miscommunication ensues , trouble starts and wars follow.

I am going to recuperate from all the bad vibes I have been getting lately. See you around .