Author: Grievous

Commentary: Food Poisoning Cases

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I haven’t really been following the news on the food poisoning cases which have been raging for the past week or so, even when have been 154 casualties, 48 hospitalized, 2 deaths, 1 miscarriage and over 100 rats caught. The main reason being my pre-conceived notion that Singaporeans (myself included) really just have stomachs which are ‘too weak’ as a result of being ‘too clean’, and thus the violent reaction to even the most minuscule increase of bacteria in the stomach.

In fact, I only start paying attention to the news on the Geylang Serai case because some friends were discussing the alleged attempts of those assumed responsible in distancing themselves from the blame, and also the failure of due diligence in some areas: for e.g. regular spring cleanings.

Thanks to Plurker Lynette Low who provided me the article which I extracted the following excerpt:

By 938 LIVE | Posted: 08 April 2009 [ChannelNewsAsia]

The market’s management committee decided to push forward the spring cleaning because of the mass food poisoning outbreak involving an Indian rojak stall there.

But 938LIVE understands from stallholders that since the temporary market started functioning some three years ago, no spring cleaning had been organised.

On further digging on Google, I found this:

April 9, 2009 [Straits Stooge Times]

The NEA said yesterday that it was not directly responsible for hygiene at temporary markets, but only at permanent ones owned by the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources.

The care of each temporary market is the job of its management committee, although the NEA makes spot checks on hygiene at individual hawker stalls.

Mr Khoo Seow Poh, the director-general of public health, said: ‘If it is a hawker centre that comes under our charge, we will have our own pest-control operators and cleaning regime to maintain it.’

Hmm… so there maybe some truth to all those comments going around Cyberspace after all. But what is (or who are) the Geylang Serai Temporary Market Management Committee?

I tried digging up information about this committee by searching with the parameters ‘Geylang Serai Temporary Market Management Committee’. I gave up after looking up 5 pages (containing 10 results each; 374 results in total) as the entries contained too much irrelevance, usually blog posts containing the same old news articles. (This reminds me once gain why I hated shitheads who reproduces complete news articles from the media on their blogs: the freaking shits clogged up the search engines and knocked relevant and important articles so far down it make searching the Internet time consuming, futile and meaningless.)

Personally, I wondered whether the astounding number of rats kill and the affirmative actions taken by the committee, such as pushing forward the spring cleaning, have so impressed our ‘responsible and credible media’ that they see no need to follow up on with this committee why there haven’t been a spring cleaning for years. While some may consider that I am nitpicking here, don’t the public has a right to know why they did not consider cleanliness a priority? Other than that, the committee should be allowed to explain (and defend) itself as it is being portrayed as failing to perform its duties here.

Next, it also amazes me that the media apparently also didn’t consider the persistent rat problem (which was already there since the old Geylang Serai market days) would be an issue. Should the reporters find out whether there is a rat infestation in other markets so those which have it can ‘pull up their socks’ as well? In fact, our media didn’t even do the minimum, such as checking the NEA on what existing plans or preventive measures are already in place to deal with rats in all our markets. Alas, our much acclaimed media is apparently only good at reporting matters. It sorely demonstrates the dismal state of journalism in this country for they failed to even do what the media would have done in other countries and no one is even asking them to serve as agent provocateurs or to agitate the people against our *erhem* ‘good and caring’ government gahmen! Certainly, they can do less in reporting events like the outburst of the likes of Patricia Mok regarding the so-called ‘Star Awards’ or couples french kissing in the swimming pools of private condominiums.

Fortunately, whatever the problem with our media, it’s not all doom and gloom because I’ve managed to learn something new from them! I could now blame one particular bacteria as the cause of diarrhea whenever I go for a steamboat buffet – Vibrio parahaemolyticus.

What has Vibrio parahaemolyticus got to do with that? Simple, we pick up cooked food from the steamboat and put into our bowls. While the food is still too hot to eat, we leave it to cool and use the same pair of chopsticks to pick up raw seafood and put into the steamboat. After that is done, we start eating the food in our bowls with the now contaminated chopsticks.

In short, this is my theory: It is not the steamboat that is unclean or the food is unhygienic. It is in the thoughtless way we use our chopsticks. The solution is simple: Use one extra pair of chopstick for the raw seafood. It makes your steamboat sessions far more enjoyable and spares you from the agony of the stomach.

Incidentally, that’s what I suspect happened at the Geylang steamboat place too… and of course I am quite sure cleanliness of a place will go up if the Prime Minister visits more often.

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Lothlorien Forum: Making Babies

Commentary: Limit These Reserves!

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The recent events that have transpired – from the court case of Venerable Shi Ming Yi to a certain unnamed individual in New Creation Church drawing $550,000 of annual pay probably left many disillusioned with charities and organised religion.

And as if that isn’t bad enough, there is also the case of the North West CDC giving a 8-month bonus to a staff, and several Town Councils losing part of their sinking funds in high risk investments. All of these on the heels of the not so distant case surrounding the NKF and also the City Harvest Church’s jaw dropping 47-million dollar Titanium-clad Church building built on 30-year leased land in Jurong West.

It is really amazing how any of these organisations managed to accumulate so much wealth. In the case of the NKF, Renci, the CDCs and the Town Councils, the reason is always the same: maintaining reserves for some designated purposes. (I don’t know what are the reasons for these two churches to accumulate that much of assets though.)

Now, while it is sound to maintain a buffer for emergencies and possible lean years ahead, the question is how much would such a buffer be for the organisations to be comfortable. It is becoming a concern that having large amount of money in these organisations would leave much room for fraud and misuse in the future even if it hasn’t happen now.

Simply put, shouldn’t there be a limit to the amount of money they can have? While costs will not remain the same every year, then this figure should be allow to increase a certain amount a year to ensure it keeps up with inflation. In my opinion, any excess funds should either be donated to another charity organisation that might be struggling for more funds, or be given back to the people who provided them. In fact, in the case of the CDC where the government gahmen is also providing some of that funds, then some of that money should be diverted where it is much needed since the CDC obviously doesn’t need that much funding.

To put it in an analogy, it is wise to accumulate when there is surplus, but it is also wise we don’t accumulate so much that some of that surplus now gets eaten away by parasites and pests.

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Internet: Twitterfall for Dummies

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This simple guide on Twitterfall is written for Twitter users and the instructions are based on the Firefox Browser running on Windows. My recommendation is that you also download an add-on called IEtab as that will allow you to avoid launching more than one browser.

To start, launch Firefox, and go to the Twitterfall site at http://twitterfall.com. If you already have IETab installed, then open one more tab, and go to the same site, then right click to bring up the menu and select ‘View Page in IE Tab’ [1].

When you are done, you will now be running one session of twitterfall on Firefox, and another in Internet Explorer but embedded as a tab within Firefox itself. (If you do not have IEtab installed and have no intention to install it ever, then you can load another session by launching Internet Explorer [IE].)

Leave the IE tab alone for now and look the Twitterfall page loaded in Firefox. There will be 3 columns: the left column will contain several sections that allows you to customize what Tweets you can view, the center column is where all the Tweets will appear, and the right column I hardly used.

Now, on the left column look for the section that says ‘Login to Twitter’ [2], then click the portion that says ‘Authorize Twitterfall with your Twitter Account’. This will load a new page [3], and in here you enter your Twitter username and password, and click Allow. When completed, this should return you to the Twitterfall’s main page, and almost immediately you will get flooded by a whole load of irrelevant Tweets.

This will likely not be what you like to see, so look at the left column and under the ‘Trends’ section, move the mouse pointer over ‘All Terms’ and uncheck the box beside it [4]. The deluge of Tweets should now stop and at the top part of the center column, click ‘Clear Page’ [5] to remove all the Tweets currently displayed. If there are still no Tweets from the people you follow shown after awhile, then look at the left column again and look for section ‘Logged in’. Ensure that the boxes beside both ‘Timeline’ and ‘DM Interval’ are checked. For those who lacks patience (like me) set the interval to ‘1 min’. [6]

Once all these are done, you will now get auto updates of Tweets only from people you follow on Twitter. You can click on ‘Hide Panels’ [7] at the top of the center column to hide both the left and right columns if you no longer wish to see them. This will extend the center column to cover part of the now empty sections. [8]. (To reverse this, click ‘Show Panels’ [9].)

Now, move the mouse pointer over a Tweet, and you will notice that a set of six icons will appear at the right end of it [10]. Their respective function – Reply, Direct Message, Retweet This, Follow, Favorite Tweet, View In Twitter – is shown when the mouse pointer stops over any of them. I believe their functions are self explanatory to a person familiar with Twitter. As a reminder, replying to a Tweet would mean that the reply is public, while a Direct Message is sent in private to the recipient.

Now, regarding the Twitterfall session either embedded as a tab in Firefox or loaded in IE itself. This session is used for the purpose of following the current popular trends on Twitter, or for you to set up custom searches to see what other users have to say using certain keyword(s). For e.g. I have custom searches for Windows 7, Blackberry Storm and Psystar [11], and here’s a partial screen shot on some of the Tweets [12].

Note that Tweets from people you do not follow are in Brown, and people you follow are in Green. When someone sent you a direct message, they appear in Blue, and when the mouse pointer is over it, it is in Black.

Why set up 2 different sessions when one can have all of it in one session anyway? The reason is that Tweets from custom searches and trends comes in so fast and furious, they push Tweets from your friends or the interesting people you follow out of the screen too quickly. You end up missing some of the Tweets that might matter more to you. If not do not intend to use custom searches or to look at the trends [13] at all, then you might not even need to load this extra session at all. Alternatively, if you don’t need the auto updates that Twitterfall provide, you can still use just use Twitter itself to follow your friends and not use Twitterfall at all.

And oops, I almost forgot about this, if you need to start a new Tweet, just click on ‘New Tweet’ at the top [14]. A drop down window with a message box will appear for to key in your 140-character long message.

So, if anyone is wondering why am I ‘promoting’ Twitterfall when I am already using Plurk, let me just say Twitter’s block feature allows me to get rid of the stench from some of the cockroaches currently infesting Plurk. It is just too difficult to exterminate vermin and thus it might be better to move elsewhere. On top of which, I am to lazy to hit F5 to refresh my Twitter page.

Anyway, I hope this guide will help to resolve some of the issues and answer some of queries people have when using Twitterfall. Enjoy!

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Commentary: Faith, Pastors and CEOs

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I read with a little amusement a news article on Yahoo News Singapore. Here are excerpts from the article:

AFP – Monday, March 30

The New Creation Church, which raised 19 million Singapore dollars in just one day in February for the construction of its new premises, paid one employee between 500,001 and 550,000 dollars in the financial year ended March 31, 2008, the Straits Times said…

Two other employees of the church were paid between 150,001 and 200,000 dollars, but no names were given, the report said…

One of Singapore’s fastest growing churches, New Creation had an income of $55.4 million and net assets of $143.36 million in its last financial year, according to its website…

I recalled that not long ago I was telling some colleagues that these days pastors sound more like CEOs and churches are becoming more corporate while meantime, CEOs (and even certain political leaders) sound very much like pastors. It wasn’t on the matter of their pay though, but rather on the topic that when CEOs or political leaders start sounding devouted, that means there’s something seriously wrong with the company or the country.

I jokingly said that certain pastors would be telling their congregations the percentage in membership growth of their church and also how God has increased ‘His blessings’ upon them by talking about the increase in offerings on a year on year basis. Now that would sound very much like a CEO’s annual report on the growth of the business and increase in profits, wouldn’t it?

On the other hand, some CEOs these days would talk about difficult times ahead, their ‘faith’ in their companies’ business model, and their ‘confidence’ that their companies would weather through the downturn fine. Much like pastors used to tell their congregations to have faith in God and confidence that God’s providence will be sufficient in the tough times ahead.

So, I really found it amusing reading up on all these – from 47-million dollar titanium-clad church building, to alleged ‘singing pastors’, to pastors paid almost the equivalent of TT Durai’s golden peanut (where 1 golden peanut = S$660,000, according to MGCI aka Mrs. Goh Commodity Index).

At times, I wanted to ask how is all that millions used to help the community but I decided not to, simply because I have no wish to be flamed. However, I still wondered when churches provide monetary assistance to the community, what criteria is it based on.

This is because I recalled that an elder of another church (not New Creation) once told a member that the funds are limited and is only to be used for believers and members only. When I heard that I let out a single laugh, because I really wondered whether Kuanyin Temple near Sim Lim Square ask and turn away non-believers who came for the free food when it was distributing them some time during the previous downturn.

No wonder a fellow Christian felt some pastors seems to have gotten everything in reverse these days and he made a lame joke about the matter. The joke goes like this:

Q: What is common between Reverends and Reverse?

A: They are both REV for shot.


Yep, I know it’s fxxking lame but some how, I am one of the few people who understands his cold / lame humor.

Either way, for some odd reasons this movie by Jordan Chan [陈小春] and Tony Leung [梁朝伟] called Heaven Can’t Wait [救世神棍] keeps coming up on my mind.

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Rantings: Remembering Raffles

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I have stopped reading the ST Forum for a long time, because I have considered some of the articles published to be so pathetically stupid. At times, I felt so ashamed at some of the things written, that I felt foreigners who read them must have considered all Singaporeans as either imbeciles or idiots. That’s not mentioning at times I felt the editors may have deliberately published them for nothing more than the purpose of ‘creating some debate’ or to let the writer himself be ridiculed. If not for dk99 talking about this article the other day, I wouldn’t have gone looking up the following:

Don’t go overboard

In his letter on Wednesday, Mr Philip Siow proposed constructing a replica of the Indiana, the ship that brought Sir Stamford Raffles to Singapore in 1819. He suggested displaying it along the Esplanade waterfront ‘to add historical richness and colour’.

Mr Siow described Raffles as one of the ‘two architects who created what is modern Singapore’. The other is Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. I do not agree with this proposal for three reasons.

# First, our colonial past is nothing to be proud of. Those who lived under colonial rule, like me, will tell you that it was not a beautiful experience. Raffles’ statue in front of the Victoria Concert Hall and the buildings, roads and other facilities bearing his name are reminders enough of the inglorious chapter in our history.

# Second, Raffles established Singapore as a trading post not for our benefit but for the benefit of the British Empire. He stayed here for only nine months. Thus, although he drew up plans for ‘a great commercial emporium’ and a ‘free port’, his achievements for Singapore could not have been very significant.

# Third, life in Singapore did not begin with Raffles’ arrival in 1819. Singapore was a vibrant ancient city, teeming with life and trade, as early as the 14th century. We would be going overboard if we accept Mr Siow’s proposal.

On the other hand, Mr Lee Kuan Yew certainly deserves credit for Singapore’s tremendous achievements. He led the charge to topple British colonial rule and orchestrated the transformation of the nation from Third World to First World. Indeed, he and the Old Guard accomplished more for Singapore in one generation than the British did in 140 years.

Anthony Oei

I do not know why it upset Oei so much to have a replica of the Indiana constructed ‘to add historical richness and colour’. I would have expected it to be a museum of sort and yet another tourist attraction for our little island, not to mention it would serve the purpose of educating our children of our nation’s history. After all, even Malacca has its own Maritime Museum. Is it too much to ask for one of our own?

Really, I find it amusing that Oei talks about Singapore’s history preceding the arrival of Raffles and the British, but selectively failed to mention to readers that when Cheng Ho sailed past during his voyages, Temasek (as Singapore was known then) didn’t even warrant a stop. Did it not surprise you that the Ming Dynasty fleet stopped by Malacca but not Singapore? That’s not mentioning that in 1613 the Portuguese set the settlement ablaze and until 1819 it was nothing more than a small fishing village. (You can find a record of the Portuguese attack on Fort Canning Hill.)

Oei may want to diminish Raffles founding of Singapore as merely taking it as a port for the British East India Company, but it was this very pivotal event that changed Singapore’s fate. The British Empire then took full control of the island of Singapore in 1824 and by 1869 it was a colony of 100,000 people.

Still, some may find nothing great or pleasant about British colonial rule. And indeed, even my parents do not remember their childhood days under British rule fondly. However, they also consider their hardships as the aftermath of the Japanese Occupation and the Second World War as much as British mismanagement. Now consider that period between 1945 – 1959, where nationalist sentiments run high and the Communist threat is real, as a part of the British Empire’s entire 137 years of rule. In all those years, did all the investments the British Empire put into building up the colony never in anyway benefited the inhabitants in it, no matter how insignificant?

If that is so, then how is it that British Singapore became a cradle for this nation’s founding fathers like Toh Chin Chye, Goh Keng Swee, Rajaratnam, the Ministor Mentor? And what about the others like David Marshall and Lim Chin Siong etc, who also contributed to Singapore’s Independence and the PAP’s domination in politics respectively?

In fact, it annoys me that when Oei expressed his gratitude to the Minister Mentor, he forgot the rest of the people who also made their mark in Singapore’s history. Even while what Oei has written nothing idiotic or wrong on their own, it still irks me because he selectively presents only the parts of history acceptable to him to make a point.

Is Oei telling us that because he views our colonial history as something disgusting and painful, it should all be expunged from our memories? While he is entitled to view Singapore’s history anyway he wants, clearly we can do better with a more balanced view of our nation’s history.

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