Category: Rants

Short Takes

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Sometime ago, I was having a chat with Nicole about filing tax returns. Even though my tax returns are automatically filed, I decided to log into ‘myTaxPortal’ on the IRAS site to confirm that. As I did so, I noticed the tax calculator – an online tool which allows me to calculate the amount of income tax I need to pay for 2010.

Out of curiosity, I transferred the figures from my IR8A onto the tax calculator. I was a little surprised to see that the total amount of taxes I need to pay for the year comes was a mere 2.5% of what I earn in 2009. I also found out that the 20% mandated CPF savings actually serves as a tax relief as well, though some might consider CPF to be as good as money ‘given’ to the government gahmen. I realized that all these years I have never bothered with the details of my tax returns, and I had merely just fill in the figures blindly.

Still, 2.5% of this year’s income is a surprising low tax rate, and that probably explains why there is this relative lack of of welfare in Singapore. It was rather sobering to realize that I lived in one of the countries with the lowest tax rates. Christopher aka Modeus pointed out that this is a fact that few Singaporeans appreciate while many complain endlessly about COE, Road Tax, ERP and GST. In my opinion the first three is more or less self inflicted with a car purchase, though I wouldn’t deny that adds on to the costs of businesses which require transports. That’s not mentioning I am a big fan of the ERP.

As for GST, the fact remains that even if you spend every single cent of your disposable income (i.e. 80% of your income), the total amount taxed will only be 5.6% of that year’s income. Even when I add the 2.5% I paid as Income Tax, that’s just about 8.1% of my total income for the year. That’s not mentioning that since I won’t be spending every cent I earn, the real effective tax rate would be far lower than that! And that’s something I can be happy about.

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I read this on the New York Times recently: Members of Congress from both parties sought to put more pressure on China to allow an increase in the value of its currency, saying Beijing’s policy of holding the value down to give China an edge in export markets was holding back job creation in the United States.

In short, the Americans are accusing the Chinese of currency manipulation. I’ll admit I know nuts about finance and economics, so I am totally confused as to how that came about. After all my understanding about economics and finance is as good as Mahathir who thinks currency trading involved traders trading physical bags of different currency.

I suppose that when the Chinese pegs the Renminbi (or Chinese Yuan – CNY) to the US dollar (USD), that means that as the Obama Administration prints more money (which it did, since it’s broke and has no money to bail the banks out), Chinese currency would have necessary appreciate against the USD. For China to maintain the current exchange rate, China will simply print more money as well because I don’t know any better way than this. In short, China has definitely printed more money since it had pumped a lot of money into its own economy last year to mitigate the impact of the crisis that originates from… well… the US. Where is all the money going to come from when China is spending money on infrastructure, while also buying US Treasury bonds?

Based on my understanding (or misunderstanding) of the state of affairs here, I think the real currency manipulator is the US. US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says that the US would like to maintain a strong USD policy. That simply means the US expects everyone to start printing more money – except well, China. If China is going to do that it’s the equivalent of slamming the brakes on its economy and we all know what disastrous consequences would result from that! Now, I call that evil.

Next, China is the second largest buyer of US Treasury bonds – i.e. China is the second largest creditor (after Japan) of the US gahmen’s debts. I take it that the reason developing (aka poorer) China is lending money to developed (richer) US is to preserve value of its own currency.

Since these loans are denominated in USD, that means when the US gahmen pays the Chinese gahmen it would be in USD. If China has appreciated its currency, it would suddenly discovered that it might have gotten the short end of the deal because after making the exchange back to CNY, the Chinese maybe left with less money than it paid for the bond. Just who lends people money, and get back less than its principal sum even after interest? Maybe to friends and when you lend friends money you generally can forget about getting it back anyway. Not to mention that it would be hard for China to consider the US a friend in the first place!

In short, the freaking Americans are telling China: ‘I am expecting you to forgo the interest you are going to make from the loans you gave to me so I can create jobs for my people. Yep, I am saying that you should be paying to create jobs in the US for Americans. If you aren’t gonna do that, I am gonna punish you.’

The Americans probably forgot that as Russell Peters once said the Chinese is the one race that is best at making money out of someone else. I am glad China stayed put and told the Americans to fxxk off.

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I recently made the comment that ‘Apple is a piece of shit company that’s only good at packaging its low tech stuff as being more superior… and has always resort to legal action to harm competitors who simply think they could do the same with their own products.’

I am basically saying Apple makes no technical innovation but the way I worded it made it sound like Apple does not innovation at all. When read that way, obviously such a comment pushes the limits of patience in everyone and it isn’t going to earn me any friends other than those who already hate Apple as much as I already do. In no time someone disagreed that Apple is not doing any innovation. He pointed out that Apple was ‘the first’ to put GUI (Graphical User Interface for the uninitiated) and the mouse in its own computers, and also ‘the first’ to bring in the power of linux/unix into the the hands of everyone.

It is a fair view from someone I have always know to be fair in his opinions. On retrospect, he was right to point out that Apple innovated personal computing or the way we use personal computers. Unfortunately we are disagreeing on different perspectives. As far as I am concerned, I was simply pointing out that Apple made no technological innovation and I quickly went into defensive since none of these – GUI, the mouse and even Linux / Unix – were invented by Apple.

It is a fact that Xerox beat Apple to in both the mouse and GUI as far as application of these technologies are concerned. Unfortunately for Xerox, its focus was more for research and business application, and not for the mass consumer market. And as for Linux in specific, my perception of it is that it was something like Unix, but created for use on personal computers because someone had enough of Microsoft’s buggy products.

From my point of view, if Apple or any of the iFreak faithful of Steve Jobs Stiff Drop was to claim Apple as a technology innovator, it will be as good as Nazi Germany claiming credit for the rocket when all it did was find application for it in warfare, while it was the Chinese who invented it and the Americans who put several men on the moon with it.

I’ll still stand by my comment.

Rant – Of wusses and douchebags

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Not too long ago, I was accused by someone of finding every little opportunity to bash the gahmen or criticise its policies because of what he called my ‘intense hatred of the government gahmen’. It doesn’t matter that I have been quite a big fan of the ERP, and at times I have presented the viewpoint of the gahmen after I receive a better understanding of the policies. While I do not deny I can be rather vehement in my anti-gahmen stand, that doesn’t mean I allow that to cloud my decision all the time.

Ironically, the accusation was thrown in my face after I had in fact agreed with this person and put up my own opinion in support. I could only speculate why my comment upset him. He probably thinks only he had the proper justifications or he had better reasons to do so. If not, he must have thought that his way of bashing the gahmen was the only acceptable way. Another friend suggested that the person was upset because he had considered his comment to be perfect, and my ‘greatest sin’ was for adding on and ‘marring his perfect comment’. Whatever the case is, I took this as a grave insult, as it suggests that I am insane and incapable of reasoning as far as the gahmen is concerned. That’s not mentioning that when I started to defend myself, this person waved it off with a comment of ‘whatever’.

What a wussy!

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Next, it amuses me that a 40-over year-old someone was denouncing another person as ‘self-righteous, antagonistic, extreme and hypocritical’ on his blog after he ‘visited his blog and the forum he was running’

Since I am the only person who runs both a blog and a forum, and we once disagreed strongly on how to run my forum, I take this accusation personally. As far as I am concerned, he is apparently still bitter over the fact he was not allowed a free reign on my forum almost four years ago. The fact is he repeatedly threatened me with leaving the forum if not allowed to do things his way. Though I did not object to him creating more than one account, he ultimately created a fake account with a fake email address that caused some concern with the business owner of the hosting server. After she advised me to delete the fake account, I announced publicly on the forum and asked to be informed if anyone wants to create such accounts in the future. He then confronted me on MSN Messenger and again threatened to leave. I decided I had enough of his childish tantrums and simply reply with these two words: Go ahead.

It probably never occurred to this self-centered sorry excuse of a man that there’s only so much emo shit I can take from a bachelor in his late 30s (then!) like him. I suspected he was shocked and angered because I did absolutely nothing to try and pacify him. I simply left him with no choice but to make good his threat. As far as I am concerned, whether he stayed or not would be a great loss of face to him.

Left he did, and the actions he took thereafter simply convinced me that I have no reasons to remain acquainted with such a person. I have been on the receiving end of his tantrums more than once whenever I disagreed with him. That’s when I wasn’t even rude or being an ass to begin with! I simply wasn’t even allow to express a different opinion or to stand firm on my disagreement. His sudden mood swings in a cordial conversation shocks me, as it is even more intense than those I have seen among my female friends or colleagues under pressure. Perhaps a serious hormonal imbalance has caused this oddly feminine behavior… and might probably even hint why my recent posts upset him.

He apparently still behaved just like I first knew him almost two decades ago. I am convince I made the right choice to cease all communications with this douchebag and blocked him on Facebook right after I joined. He has the honor or being the first to be blocked on Facebook and the only person blocked for the longest time compared to the rest in that ‘roll of (dis)honor’

Recommended Reads:
新加坡文史达人　当梁婆婆变成梁假虎 – 从《妇女宪章》谈起

Random Discourse – Give us a break!

5 comments

The local media has certainly made a mountain out of a mole hill over Jack Neo’s Affair. More ink and paper have been wasted in reporting this utterly insignificant affair instead of matters of more importance, such as the proposed Constitutional changes to have more Single Member Constituencies (SMCs) and more Nominated Members of Parliament (NMPs), the details of the budget debate, or even the merit of Sylvia Lim’s proposal for more concession for the handicapped on our public transports. The local media didn’t even give a more even report on the entire context of Low Thia Khiang’s alternate proposal to control the employment of foreign workers. It chooses simply to take one of his statement to completely remove the levy on foreign workers out of the context and focused on how the ruling party’s MPs ‘gang banged’ on that to make him look like an utter crackpot who doesn’t know what he is talking about.

There is of course, the matter of a church wasting $310 million to purchase into SunTec City so it can now find a place in the city to house its congregation even though it has previously built a 47-million titanium-clad monument to God Capitalism in Jurong West. Hopefully someone like Jack Neo who is a member of that congregation has contributed a large part of the $310 million.

None of the above matters other than the obsession with Jack Neo. In spite of all his awards and his seemingly family man image, I have been told by a friend who has worked with J team previously in the course of filming some of his movies, that he hasn’t been a fair paymaster. From my friend’s perspective, they have been taken advantage of, and unfairly treated.

The papers certainly made Jack Neo looked like Singapore’s equivalent of Tiger Woods even when the entire matter doesn’t even come close. While there was probably half a dozen (or was it more?) women involved with Tiger Woods, there was only one involved with Jack Neo – a cock-eyed 22-year-old model named Wendy Chong. I really don’t give a shit who else Jack Neo had tried to hit on or sexually harassed.

What is most appalling, is that the pathetic local media actually can’t tell the marked difference between having sex with those women and harassing them. The over-exposed ‘Jack Neo Affair’ isn’t even ‘Tiger Woods Lite’. Not to mention, even Tiger Woods’ affairs were nothing compared to that of Edison Chen’s. After all, while Tiger Woods’ may have had more partners than Edison Chen ever did, there are no photos (or even an alleged video) to prove any of those even took place. On top of which, Edison Chen beats Tiger Woods hands down in stupidity by keeping all the juicy stuff on his hard disk, and then sending the Macbook containing them for repairs! But what can I really expect? My impression of Mac users like him is always one who really have not a clue about IT but deliberately buy one so he can act geeky because he can afford it.

As if the lameness of the media and seriously yawn inducing drama of Jack Neo isn’t bad enough, you have one of our local politician from the ruling party making harebrained remarks like this:

Over the years, to me, Jack Neo is a good son, father and also a good husband. Since he is remorseful over this incident, he should be forgiven. Actually, a man who has good career development would find such scenarios unavoidable. – Lim Biow Chuan, MP Marine Parade GRC.

I sincerely hope Lim isn’t a minister and he will never be one. There is however still a glimmer of hope for Lim if he already understand the reason behind my contempt before I start to explain it.

First of all, the comment certainly has the element which suggest that ‘men with good career development’ would have women throwing themselves at them as a fast track to personal advancement. Next, the comment has the element which suggest that ‘men with good career development’ will all succumb to treating women as play things, and they would go as far as harassing 16-year-old girls with proposal to have sex in hotel rooms, or have affair with young impressionable female staff with promises of career advancements. It maybe possible, only if you are a Chinese Emperor living in a palace restricted to commoners.

Whichever way you looked at it, this is certainly not a remark worthy of someone whose party claims to have the best talent to offer to run our little red dot of a country city. Considering the precedence of Teo Ho Pin on the losses by the town councils on minibonds, and Charles Chong’s ‘lesser mortal’ remark, such thoughtless statements seem common place and are hardly surprising at all. It is my considered opinion that the ruling party take note of such mediocre riffraff which had miraculously got past their stringent screening to be fielded as candidates and replace them quicker than someone can say ‘change underwear’.

On top of which, I wondered why Darth Dana Lam of AWARE hasn’t yet already bared her fangs and start growling and barking at a comment which denigrates and objectify women as play things. As an MP, Lim issomeone who actually has some social standing, no? Then again, this is hardly surprising… since AWARE always seem to have a more pressing and happier ‘gayer’ agenda. On second thoughts, perhaps it is already concocting another exemplary display of meaningless ideological babble with big words that would rival ‘objectification of women’. Perhaps it won’t be long before the world will be shown yet another piece of literary masturbation which serves no real purpose other than to impresses those suffering from vocabulary deficiency.

Anyway, while I certainly don’t think that the entire Jack Neo Affair is staged as some kind of publicity stunt for his latest movie, I am wondering if the deliberate playing up of it is to hoodwink us or direct our attention from some other matters that is more worthy of our attention… whatever that maybe. SPH can just give us a break from all these Jack Neo craps already!

As for Jack Neo and men like him, this following Youtube video will demonstrate an ancient technique which should be used on them to cure them of their… *erhem* ‘overly heterosexual disorder’.

Commentary – Love, really?

5 comments

Rony Tan has certainly not only caused a great rift among Christians and practitioners of other faiths with his comments on them, he has also caused a small rift within the Christian community itself with his remarks on homosexual people.

Whatever objection to the manner Rony Tan present his comments, I will take the matter up with him in person. I would not write a lengthly blog post condemning him, or ‘conduct a trial by social media’ – something which I have been against for a long time. While I will make no apology for Christianity saying that it is the only religion with the answer (to morality, the question of life and everything), I will admit that it is offensive for Rony Tan to ridicule how other religions present their answers. I do feel some shame and anger, because in spite of all the reminder from our own leaders to be sensitive to another person’s faith when evangelising, a leader of the Protestant Christian faith has done the exact opposite.

Other than with a few of my fellow believers, I have kept from discussing the matter with anyone from another religion. I would have kept it that way, until a chat with a non-Christian friend led to that topic.

With some apprehension I told this friend that Rony Tan has criticised two other religions, and that the remarks themselves were made readily available on the public domain. I told him my opinion that Rony Tan is not the first, nor would he be the last to make similar comments. I had expected nothing more than an angry reaction from him for my indifference to such a serious matter.

What surprised me was his reaction when he said, “I don’t really understand why are all these people upset. What he has said is something that a large part of the population would have considered as correct. All I could say was that he put it on the Internet so he ‘dai sei’ (Cantonese 抵死 – meaning ‘deserved to die’). What I meant is that all religions are somewhat closed in nature and I would find it news if a medium for a certain Chinese deity tells one of the followers looking for an advice to go seek a second opinion from Jesus Christ.”

Upon hearing his ‘second opinion’, we broke out in laughter. Though I doubt my friend was suggesting that all religions are intolerant of one another, he was simply pointing out that no religion (or someone of a certain faith) would actually suggest that another religion has a better answer. His comments hit me with the realization that those ‘crying for blood’ over Rony Tan’s comments suddenly don’t look very ‘open minded’ anymore.

Still, it is my opinion that an apology should go freely only to the Buddhists and Taoists. Anger will make them to close their minds to the message of Jesus Christ and they are lost to God forever. In spite of the Christian opinion of their beliefs, Christians do not deny that a large part of those beliefs also teach them to be morally upright people. In fact, I am in the opinion that these people ‘do by nature things required by the law (of God)’ (Romans 2:12).

However, on Rony Tan’s remarks on homosexuality, I cannot and will not stand with those who would go so far to spread a message of appeasement – especially in appeasing those who demand the right and the legal right to do what God has considered abominable.

The ‘message of appeasement’ masquerades itself as the Christian message of love. In some version of this false message, we are to close a blind eye even to sin – as long as it happens away in privacy and among consenting individuals or we should ‘leave them alone’ because they are ‘they simply seek to love’. The fact is Christians have always ‘left them alone’ and we only began to speak up when there is an attempt to legalised their deviant sexual acts or teach it as normal. Have pastors constantly preach against homosexuality before the furor surrounding the repeal of Section 377A and the fiasco at AWARE?

A brother-in-Christ once asked me this after reading another version of this false message, “Will you love someone so much that you will not tell him the truth simply because that truth might hurt him or offend him?” It is a question that those who spread the false message should bear in mind. The failure to warn someone from danger which could result in his death is a sin – the sin of omission. Do not forget that the Christian message is not entirely about love, it is also a message for us to repent, i.e. to turn away away from sin and seek the forgiveness of God.

In another version of the message of appeasement, someone has said we have failed to love our neighbours. And in explaining who our neighbour is, he cites Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25 ~ 37). The phrase ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ is first found in Leviticus 19:18. I would like to point out in Leviticus 19:17, it is written: ‘Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt.’ It is somewhat amusing that the proponent of the false message applies his definition of neighbour in Leviticus 19:17 only against fellow Christians, but not against the rest of the world. It probably also never occurred to the person abusing Jesus’ parable that the love referred to here simply means meeting the needs of one’s neighbours.

Based on the Good Samaritan Parable, which Christian has been like the priest or the Levite who refused to help the homosexuals in need? Is there any church which would bar a homosexual from just coming to church and listen to the message of Jesus Christ even though it may preach against their deviant sexual act?

What differs between Christians and homosexuals is the definition of needs. Christians believe that the homosexuals need to turn away from their deviant sexual acts and learn that it is considered sinful by God. While Christians have long lost the fight against sexual immorality, it does not mean that we won’t continue to fight when it threatens to expand its influence into our daily lives. After all, even non-Christians would stand up and resist when prostitution extends itself from its traditional strongholds into our neighbourhood!

If homosexuals disagree with the above perspective, there can be no compromise. Love does not extend into condoning or endorsing deviant sexual acts / sin. Do not expect Christians to give or calling us hateful because we are only defending the values that we hold dear. Homosexual activists make it sound like Christians are taking away some of their so-called ‘rights’ which never existed.

It is sad that even some Christians fall for that which I considered the greatest deception of our time and joined them in propagating that falsehood. Be warned, there are serious consequences in leading Jesus’ sheep astray.

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Anti-Social Media – Facebook Friend Lists

2 comments

An active user on Facebook would inevitably gather a large number of friends. Yet not all friends will share the same opinion with the user or even one another. So at times the wall postings end up a common battleground between friends on a different end of the divide. It also become a chore to do damage control and peace keeper among friends, and it becomes annoying and time wasting when certain idiots incessantly rant on without getting the point in ‘agreeing to disagree’ or ‘just shut up and shove it up the other end of their alimentary canal’.

Fortunately, with privacy settings and ‘friend lists’, you can now create lists so certain exceptionally pesky individuals can be shut out of your wall posts, or target wall posts and specific users. The purpose of this post is to demonstrate how to create ‘friend lists’, and how to manipulate the privacy settings in Facebook to deny your wall posts to certain users, or to deliver them to a group specifically.

This is exceptionally useful if you can’t stop yourself from the urge to say something about your colleagues or your employer, which might later come back to haunt you later or cause you to lose your job. Personally speaking, I would prefer no one say anything about his work on social media platforms be it Facebook or any micro-blogging facilities like Plurk or Twitter. After all, there is no reason to take the risk that Facebook won’t make certain changes which have the drastic effects of exposing stuff previously hidden from certain groups or individuals.

1. Click on “Account” on top right corner in Facebook, then select ‘Edit Friends’. This will load the ‘Friend Page’.
2. The ‘Friend Page’ is where Facebook recommend people to add as friends (usually friends of other friends), or where you can search the address books of Yahoo, Windows Live Mail etc for friends. Any list created will be on the left sidebar on the ‘Friends Page’. A truncated example of mine show here.
3. Assuming there were no list already created, click ‘Friends’ on the left sidebar to have all your friends listed. ‘Friends’ is the first item under ‘Lists’ on the left sidebar. When the browser finish loading the first page of friends, the following will appear on the top of the list (see below.)

Click to proceed with creating a new list.
4. A small window appears inside your browser. Give your list a name and select the contacts for this list and click ‘Create List’ when done.
5. The name of the list just created will appear on the sidebar. Click it to list check who are listed. Beside the names of contacts in the list, it will also indicate how many other list they are already in.
6. Having create all the lists required, click Home on the top right corner to return your feeds page. Then click in the box for add links or to input the status. Immediately below the input box, a set of icons will appear on the left, and small ‘Lock’ icon and the ‘Share’ button will appear on the right.
7. To shows default privacy settings, mouse over ‘Lock’ icon.
8. Click on ‘Lock’ icon and select ‘Custom’ to edit settings
9. Example: This is what I do if this wall posting should only be visible to the list named ‘Premier Soccer’ but hidden from ‘Island Paradise’. Do not that you do not have to type the full name of the list. Facebook will suggest it as you type in more letters.

To hide from a list is to explicitly deny it from viewing this particular wall post.

Click ‘Save Setting’ when you are done on who can and cannot view this wall posting.
10. To confirm list visibility before posting, mouse over ‘Lock’ icon again. Click ‘Share’ after you are sure this is what you intended.
11. To identify the a wall post’s visibility setting after it has been posted, look at the information displayed under it.

The example on the right shows the information displayed beneath a wall post visible to everyone. (Note: No ‘Lock’ icon at all!)
The example below shows the information of a wall post with visibility settings. Mouse over the lock to show visibility settings.(Note: Except indicate the list which this particular wall post is hidden from.)

Here’s a crazy idea that I thought up when discussing the above matter with a friend. Assuming that your girlfriend does not like you partying with a group of friends, you can now create a list for your girlfriend and mutual friends, and one for the partying gang. In your Facebook profile, you can then still share photos and comments with your otherwise ‘not approved’ activities with your partying gang without your girlfriend knowing.

Isn’t that cool?

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