I quote the entire forum letter that appeared in The Straits Times today. After reading it I felt a little need to address some of the fallacies inside this forum letter, fallacies which made me question if our Press Secretary has gone to university. At least I know I have learnt what fallacies are.

Anyway a little background. Recently the government (this is a confusing word) has decided to allow Potong Pasir and Hougang to have lift upgrading programs. After countless years of PAP wards first, I think this is a huge relieve for the many people in these two parts of Singapore, which didn’t see much development ever since they were “captured” by the opposition. And I actually was proud of this, until it seemed to be a little political move, which was clever, in my opinion.

The grassroots advisor was the one to helm this project, not the members of parliament, who were elected representatives of that area. And who are this advisors? They are the people who lost to the existing MPs. I think this is a sly and clever move because it gives the advisors more exposure, and may sway voters more in the next election.

So there were numerous complains and articles being written, and this is the latest one. In this letter, it is said that the government appointed advisor assists in implementing national programs. Well that sounds al-right other than there’s only two such advisors in Singapore since the rest are already “capable” of implementing national programs.

But what irks me is that the press secretary wrote that the lift upgrading program is a program that receives money from the government. And opposition MPs do not answer to the ruling party. And then there’s the word called Government.

And here I naively thought that the opposition MPs also formed the government. I thought the government was a collective term for all the elected representatives. Since when did the citizens approve the thesaurus change to say PAP = Government? That’s a dangerous line here.

If the lift upgrading program was government funding, does this mean that it is PAP funding? If it is not PAP funding, then shouldn’t the government include the opposition? If it actually means PAP funding, then we are in deep shit right now. What if the opposition wins (which I do not foresee for a few more decades)? Does it mean our money is gone?

I’m sure it does not. Our tax money should be government money, no matter which party forms the majority of the government.

So I’m confused. Because surely what they mean by government is the PAP. And this is a slippery slope because we’ll always associate government to be PAP, which may not hold true forever. In the first place, government should include the opposition, no?

Well, remind me why Singaporean’s are politically apathetic. Maybe they just got sick of all this. I, am starting to feel sick.

Advisers and MPs have different roles

IN HER commentary last Thursday, ”Adviser over MP’ raises many questions’, Ms Sue-Ann Chia has misunderstood the roles of Members of Parliament (MPs) and advisers to grassroots organisations.

The MP is elected by the people of a constituency, and represents them in and outside Parliament.

In Singapore, MPs also have an important role in running town councils. As provided for in the Town Councils Act, this role includes managing the common property of HDB estates and carrying out local improvement projects, thereby contributing to the well-being of the people of the constituency.

As for the government-appointed adviser, his main role is to assist in implementing national programmes, such as government campaigns, and HDB’s upgrading programmes, including the Lift Upgrading Programme (LUP).

The roles of MP and adviser are distinct and separate, even though government MPs, wearing their other hat of advisers, are expected to perform both roles.

Opposition MPs cannot be appointed advisers, because they do not answer to the ruling party. They have no constitutional or legal obligation to carry out national programmes on the Government’s behalf. Nor can the Government hold them to account if they perform this role unsatisfactorily.

Let me re-emphasise that the LUP is not a town council programme. It is a national programme which receives most of its funding from the Government.

Therefore, in opposition wards, it is the government-appointed adviser who is accountable for implementing national programmes like the LUP. In doing so, the adviser will work closely with the local town council and residents.

Lim Yuin Chien
Press Secretary to the
Minister for National Development

I managed to get tickets to the Kent Ridge Ministerial Forum 2009, which was held yesterday in the University Cultural Center, NUS. I must say that it was a little boring hour wait whilst everyone got settled down, and finally our Minister Mentor came into the hall and we started the forum.

There were a total of 9 selected questions, represented mostly by NUS and SMU, with only one from NTU if I remember correctly. If you want to know what type of questions there was and how MM’s answer is, today’s papers have them nicely done up.

I guess the highlight of the day was just to see MM walk in and answer questions. I was in the first few rows, and I got to see him close up. And from his answers you knew that this man is different. There’s something about him that we all should learn about. A trait which only the successful have, because by having such traits, people become successful.

MM Lee said that when he wants to do something, he’ll put in his best and make sure the things get done. This sounds simple, but here is a man who as done it. Most of us find it easy to say, let’s just do our best. But are we sure that that is our best? Because we can find many reasons to show that we could have done better, and we didn’t. Or we give up halfway, citing difficulties in accomplishing the task. Or the best thing of all, right at the beginning, we think about how to do things the easiest way out, even when it may not accomplish the task to the right effect.

Once, the was another man who gave a speech to a room of students, and he said this: “You can plan your life up to 90% accurate”. And Adam Khoo, in a speech I have heard live, said: “3% of Yale knew what they were doing. They knew what they were going to do when they graduate, and how much they are going to earn. And subsequent researched showed that this 3% of students earned more money combined than the other 97% combined.” It’s not surprising. The successful people have always planned their actions, and they knew what they were doing. Many of us are in school not knowing what we are going to do or why we are there, a reason why many of us are unsuccessful in school work itself.

Hence yesterday’s forum made me think again. What do I want to do with my life. Instead of the forum’s theme, which is “What will Singapore be like in the next 50 years”, I was thinking, “What will my life be like in the next 50 years”. I know what I want, and it’s time to find out how to get it.

Suddenly I feel that I’ve been bloody inefficient. You know why?

I don’t have a CCA to take up my time, yet I spend all my time on studying that I’m not doing anything else. What happened to the me that wants to be entrepreneurial? That wants to learn more about financial stuff so that I can start to invest and compound my money? Or what happened to the tutor website that I have built a few years ago?

I’ve just been lazy. Or just that I’m feeling sian because there’s nobody working on the same thing with me, talking excitedly about the project and then being enthusiastic with each other. Then perhaps I’ll feel more passionate about it? I don’t know.

But it’s always great to have an alternative source of income. Something that you can do as a student, and then supply a service or sell something. Tuition sites, well they are in “demand” but there’s too many such sites already. Just today I saw a pamphlet at TechnoEdge. What best tuition agency because they charge 40% commission. Bullshit. I charge no commission. Haha. But I’m not a tuition agency. Just a site that allows people to search for things freely. I think my ideas are good, but I never did market my site properly.

But I like the satisfaction knowing that I can build something, and it is being used by people. Maybe I should really continue working hard on my financial website, at least make me try and read more and just post for fun. At least I work.

Probably need to find someone trust-able with this sort of interest in starting something up, whether there is money to be earned or not. But there doesn’t seem to be anyone like this. Anyone has any special interest? Like baking cakes or cookies or stuff.

Haha. I used to think about setting up this mega online blog shop. A place where all the small time blog shops can place their wares in a very professional looking place. And then you can use the well designed search functions to find the things you want. See all options at one go instead of needing to find from all different kind of shops. Most shops are difficult to surf around and not very professional anyway. But then again someone told me its not a good idea, so well.

I guess my dreams have always been blown to dust. Shall think of something more viable that I can do I guess.

After a damn long installation over a few hours, my laptop is now running Windows 7. Having used it for an hour or two, I think I should just comment on the system.

The reason why I wanted to jump to Windows 7 was because I was running on Vista, which is lagging my computer by quite a bit. Hence I only wanted to change the OS so it would run a little more smoother, hopefully. It seemed promising though. The start up time is faster than Vista, but the loading of Firefox is still slow, so I guess it’s Firefox’s problem.

There’s still a little lag here and there, but overall it feels much smoother than Vista, and I think I wouldn’t need to keep waiting to access my files. But I have only used it for a few hours, and I can’t really comment much since I’m only using Firefox, MSN as well as Visual Studio. But I kind of like the new taskbar and it seemed like it would bring me much convenience.

Anyway updates on school, it’s week 9 already. 5 more weeks to the dreaded examinations, meaning its only 4 more weeks before every single project MUST end, and I’m still coding my Graphical User Interface and trying things out. It has been a fun journey, however, learning Visual Basic from scratch and feeling the sense of satisfaction when it actually works right before your eyes. Another reason why I enjoy programming. You can actually see your end product and feel proud of it, even though it’s quite noobish.

I’m also like rushing through my essay for Engineering Professionalism. Trying to finish it within this day or the next and then it’ll be time to combine all of our parts and then start writing the introduction and the conclusion, and then it’s one good essay ready to hand in next week!

Haven’t really done much on EE2007′s Monopoly project, although I wrote more than 700 lines of Assembly code, mostly to draw the user interface. The actual game hasn’t been programmed yet, but some features I have tried writing already. That will be built more tomorrow in the lab session.

As for baby duck, I think we’re on the process of understanding each other better, like tempers and stuff, but I should really not lose my cool so easily. Must control. Something’s wrong with me occasionally. But overall it has been great. Really enjoy her company a lot.

Work is getting busy and I probably should concentrate and be more efficient. I shall decrease my already low activity on Facebook, and do more work everyday! Start becoming a more efficient person by setting out tasks I want to complete everyday and making sure I complete it.

Oh btw if anyone wants Windows 7, and you’re an NUS student in ECE (FoE) or SoC, then you’re eligible under the MSDNAA program to download free Windows 7 legally. For ECE students, we won’t be notified of it. Google MSDNAA, find the list of schools in Singapore under the program. Find our department and find the email of the person in charge and email him. He’ll give you an MSDNAA account under ECE. Then you’ll be able to download Windows 7. Just in case you didn’t know, x86 is 32bit, x64 is 64 bit.

I seem to be twitting more than I blog recently. Especially when I linked my twitter account with an SGBeat account that allows me to tweet by sending an sms to a local number. Since I have unlimited sms to all local numbers, I thought it was super convenient for me to send smses to update my twitter account. Maybe one day I shall place my twitter account on my blog. For easier access.

Another week has gone past and to many people, the mid term exams week are finally over. I didn’t have mid term exams this week; I only had presentations of projects and tutorials to do. Nonetheless I have 2 upcoming tests, but not to worry, I am already half prepared for it. It’s the projects that I should probably be worried about.

Hence I’m going to dedicate this day to just doing Visual Basic. Following the book and learning how everything is done, so I can finally progress to more higher level programming to suit my needs for the project. Most of the project details for every module has been released, somehow I have a high level of excitement for a particular project, to create monopoly using assembly language. Yes, monopoly, the game. I think it will be interesting, and it won’t be too difficult if I adopt a good programmer mentality and plan the coding first before I actually do it.

And my hair is long again in front. I love it when my wax moves the hair up so it doesn’t irritate my eyes. Haha.

And I thank you for being there for me