It often puzzles me on how we refuse to see the right person when we have troubles. When we are sick, we go to the doctor right? Using his expertise, were able to gain a deeper insight on the problems that plague our body, and he might send us to a specialist if need be.

However this is not the same for our financial health. We do not see a financial advisor when we have questions regarding our insurance and financial planning aspects of our lives. Once I read on hardwarezone, a local popular forum, that someone has questions regarding purchasing of private shield plans. A financial advisor offered to help, but the threadstarters reply was that she dont need or want to see a financial advisor. And this reply of hers garnered popular support.

It sure is sad to see how the reputation of a financial advisor stink like that, but unfortunately I think that the smart man or woman would consult an advisor rather than asking clueless people on forums because they do not have any idea on the clauses in the insurance contract.

Whilst it is sad, nobody can blame these people for feeling that financial advisors are just out there to con their money. To put it simply, the name stinks. How many advisors are genuinely there to help a client? The number of people who do a fact find before proceeding to recommendations are considered to be extremely rare.

There are a couple of reasons why I would think that financial advisors have a hard time, and I believe that the industry has to improve for its reputation to go up. But the smart move now would be to find a trustable advisor to begin advising you on any matters.

1. It is easy to be a financial advisor
A doctor has to undergo specific training up to 6 years in duration before he is allowed to practise. An advisor only needs a pass in o levels? Furthermore, how convinced can you be of an advisor selling you an investment plan in a mutual fund if he has no qualifications regarding finance? Only a handful of financial advisors proceed on to get their CFAs. Can you imagine your advisor recommending you to select a fund, but he does not really understand how it works? Telling me it will go up does not convince me at all.

2. Lousy standards with respect to learning about new products
I have participated in the launch of new financial products. Advisors have to sit in for a few hours of lessons and then take a mcq test. Throughout the lesson, certain words are emphasized in a different colour to signify that it would be tested. When the mcq is being taken, people discuss despite being told not to. If our A levels are conducted like this, Im sure no one would have any faith in our qualifications. Similarly, how much faith can I put in my advisor if their knowledge on new products are built on shaky foundations?

3. Not following proper procedures
Do you know that advisors are supposed to get your financial details like salary, CPF contributions, dependents details, monthly expenses, existing insurance plans etc before recommending you any product? However, how many advisors truly adopt such a measure? How many times has your advisor called to say that theres this new product and arranges for a meeting? As opposed to having yearly reviews before saying I think this product suits your current needs or I have a new product, but I dont think it suits your needs at all. This layer of transparency and integrity would go a long way in improving the reputation of financial advisors.

Although there are many black sheep in the industry, there are good ones too. Ask your trusted friends if they have any advisors they trust. I do not like talking to agents on roadshow particularly because I do not know them enough to trust them. But the main lesson of the day is to seek proper help and never ask a completely untrained person for financial advice.

A few months ago our education minister seemed to have suggested reducing the weightage of mother tongue in our school examinations, resulting in plenty of discussions that led to an apology of not choosing the right words which led to a misunderstanding. Recently our dear MM Lee also spoke on the topic of our mother tongue, highlighting the issue that very few Singaporeans actually manage to master both languages, and that compared to English, our mother tongue is used less frequently. English is still the medium of instruction in subjects like math and physics. He is also right to point out that university students do not get exposed to mother tongue unless we choose to take related modules.

I agree that most of us cannot master both languages, myself included. Ever since NS, I have had difficulty remembering how to write Chinese words, but I can type farely well. My vocabulary is limited to those that I use frequently; only when I get into a more poetic mood do I have an improvement in the choice of words used.

But like a friend pointed out, just because it is hard, should we stop trying? Although I was exposed less to Chinese ever since I became an undergraduate, I felt that I could better relate to the language, and accept the language more than I was in school. In fact, I discovered I enjoyed the process of learning the Japanese language in my adulthood more than chinese in my kid days.

Yes, perhaps I am much more older and more matured, hence I could enjoy it more than anything I studied whilst I was young. However this does not mean that no steps could be taken to possibly improve our current methods of teaching mother tongue.

Perhaps a revamp of the education method with regards to the mother tongue should be adopted before we give up and throw in the towel. For us Singaporeans should be more resilent and stronger than that. If the problem was the method, and we chose to give up now, we would be denying our children the chance to have a greater mastery of both languages compared to my generation.

Hence before we adopt the drastic measures of reducing the weightage of mother tongue, we should consider adopting better systems to teach the language.

The reason why I enjoyed learning Japanese is simple. I had access to the Japanese dramas, which, in my own biased opinion, is more entertaining that local productions. I loved the Japanese anime, and their songs are nice too. I loved visiting the country, and I loved the food. What this means is that I had viewed the language as a pathway to embracing the rich culture of the Japanese. Now that the focus is on the culture and not the language, learning becomes more fun.

So this is what we should do. Whilst we cannot transform china because we have no right to, what we can do is to make people interested in the Chinese culture. The stories of legends, history of the emperors, even popular works like Legend of the Condor Heroes etc could help in teaching the language.

myPaper has done it. In the paper, certain english words are in bold, meaning their Chinese equivalents would be shown somewhere in the article. Since reading newspapers is not what most students consider entertaining, I would suggest putting the focus on television dramas instead.

For a start, we could focus on dramas with potentially high viewership. Selected words in the script could be displayed in a different colour in the subtitles with their Chinese equivalents stated. Since these dramas are in the chinese language, pronouciation would be taught too. The list of words could be provided in MediaCorps website.

Additionally, we could change the system in the classroom, but since it had been discussed at length, I shall not mention it.

The point of this post is this: we should exhaust all means necessary to improve the learning process before deciding to play with the weightage.

Note: I know the proper word is Mandarin, but most of us use Chinese as if it was the right word to use. It has already become part of our language.

I think being in a government is a tough job. No matter what you do, there will be people complaining about your governance. As long as someone’s life is hard, they will complain. When you say CPF is there to provide for old age, they will complain and say people now know how to save. When you say the purpose of raising GST is to help the poor, they only think of how raising GST will increase the prices of the goods they are buying.

As long as you are at a higher position over someone else, you will be bitched about. Even in the working environment. Sometimes it might be due to a miscommunication, but most of the time people at the bottom just bitch to feel better. Even managers, yes, as long as there is someone above, most people will complain and complain. There is just no satisfying everyone.

The CPF is there to save money for you. Just treat it as auto saving 20% and more (since there is employer contribution). Even if the government give you the money, you will still save the 20% up in the bank isn’t it? This is because you want to buy a house etc. And the interest rates in CPF is 4% (conditions apply. Only first $x in OA), which is better than the pathetic 0.01% in banks?

Put it simply, the government cannot end up in a situation where retirees have no money and start asking money from the government. When that situation occurs, the tax money would be used, and hence now we get a situation of the young paying for the old. CPF is NOT taking the young’s money to put in the old’s account. We cannot afford to have everyone on social support, so for those idiots who cannot save money properly, the rest of us have to suffer the inflexibility. Yes some of us might be able to generate better returns, but sadly most of us cannot. Hence for the majority, it is logical for the minority to have to sacrifice. Balancing the needs of everyone and the needs of the few is a delicate task the government has to do.

On another topic, how many times have we seen fellow Singaporeans take up our minister’s quotes to make fun of? Especially the one about social support, about how much do you need? Hawker center food, food court food, or eating in a restaurant.

I don’t think our minister was wrong at all in saying that. For a person living on social support, how much does one really need? Do we need to give them enough money so they can have a super comfortable life? Eat at Jacks Place everyday? Watch movies at GV Gold Class? As long as they have enough to live on, with a roof over their heads and food to eat, I think, we have done our part as fellow Singaporeans. After all, we work hard for ourselves, not to benefit other people who don’t.

Sometimes I wonder, what is the government’s role? We elect representatives of us as our leaders, to go to places like the Parliament and discuss things for the benefit of the country. However, might I ask, whether their role is to represent public opinion and implement popular policies for the masses, or to move with unpopular policies that will inconvenience the masses but is good for the country subsequently? Both are logical. And what is popular with the masses might be detrimental for the nation.

Take for example, National Service. If we allow the citizens to vote, we’ll probably scrape it. But is it vital? Is it really needed? I don’t know the information the government has, but I guess they do look into it and determine if we have this level of threat existing in the region. But I guess it is always good to question the government, so there’ll always be a thinking process there. But sadly most of the questions are noise. Lacking in standard and are mostly whine.

Should we inconvenience the minority who know how to save for the majority who don’t?

Should we implement NS to deter aggressors or cancel it to lessen the inconvenience for the Singapore born males.

Should we invite FT to play for us in sports, so that the excitement generated would be good enough to produce our own talents in 30 years time, or should we use our talents now who might not win anything, hence not generating enough excitement and not changing the situation? FT now and local later, or local forever?

They are all difficult choices to make, and so many things to think about. But at least when I am able to feel secure about myself and my future, and I can live happily here, to me, I guess that’s great. We’re already so fortunate compared to other places. Caning vandalisers, hanging drug murderers. Cruel? Draconian? I guess, I like this Singapore.

There has been so much discussion on the recent education debate on the weightage of the mother tongue examination in primary school level. Indeed, mother tongue may have been hard for us to learn, and not everyone is able to cope with two languages. But sometimes I feel that the arguments used against mother tongue is really weird.

I remember someone once wrote to the forum and argued that there are people who are good in all subjects other than the mother tongue, and so mother tongue should be reduced to have lesser impact on scores. That’s retarded. There are people who are good in all subjects other than english too! So that’s not a logical argument!

But what I think is that there is some truth with respect to mother tongue being too difficult. But I also agree that reducing the weightage would result in people allocating less importance and time to the language. So perhaps what we should all look into is to change the way we conduct the lesson? Make mother tongue fun so that it would be interesting. Language doesn’t have to be boring.

But I guess we’re in a national crisis now. You need good teachers to bring out the fun in any subject and adopt innovative ways that make it easier to learn. But yet, after having decades of using the wrong method to teach (hey this is what our MM said ok), we have perhaps produced very few people genuinely interested in the language. And from the small pool of people who end up pursuing mother tongue as a major, we would not have much choice of selection. And from that, it would mean we won’t have the best talents teaching the language.

And this is a vicious cycle. The teacher isn’t good, and hence the student won’t be great either. Mother tongue continues to be boring and difficult. Students continue to shun it, and they become the teachers and the cycle continues. It doesn’t help when people see teaching as a tough job. Plenty of people do not want to become a teacher. Tough time, long working hours, CCAs on top of making homework. Having to organize school activities on top of the already heavy workload. And not so high pay. We can’t attract true talents to pursue a career in teaching. And this contributes to the problem.

So maybe we should tackle all these issues first. Having advertisements on “If you said both, you should be a teacher” or “Leave no child behind” simply does not make me feel like being a teacher. After tackling the issues and making mother tongue fun, then can we consider the rest. We should exhaust all means before reducing the importance of mother tongue. Other people are learning Mandarin already. Why should we forsake the things we have built? My generation has gone through it and survived, so we should all try to continue trying to be bilingual. And bilingual might not mean being good at both language. I just feel that knowing the language and being able to use it in normal everyday conversation is also good enough. It would be sad to have our future generation only care about english and what is practical. The beauty of other languages must not be eroded. We must protect the culture behind the languages.

Do you all remember the advertisement from OCBC where they tried to portray their warm nature and how they value each customer by noticing that the cute daughter is drawing a birthday card for mum, and then they bought a birthday cake and sang a song as a surprised for the delighted mother?

Well some blogger actually did that, all in good fun I guess, but a little too much in my opinion. You can read her story here. I did glance through the comments, and as I expected, there are supporters and there are people who criticize the blogger. I myself have some comments about this whole “prank” which I thought I’ll share on my blog rather than as a comment and risk getting flamed. I’ll try to do it in an objective manner.

Fun
I think I must at least commend the blogger on her attitude to cheekily demand a birthday cake from OCBC. I think spontaneity is something lacking in the Singapore culture, and we should all try to inject a little fun in our daily lives. This reminds me of the video where a group of people sang their orders to McDonalds via the song “I’m yours”. It is a little fun to inject in our daily monotonous lives. But..

A little overboard
I think it has gone a little overboard that it needs to take that long and that much effort to demand a birthday cake. After a while it starts to feel less fun, and getting a little draggy I would say. In fact, in my opinion, getting a birthday cake by forcing them to become desperate doesn’t seem like my idea of fun. If I were to do that, I would probably cease the “prank” and go home. There’s just not much pleasure in getting that cake anymore.

Misleading advertisement?
Some people commented that this shows that the advertisement is misleading. I think any sane people would scold you and say, “In what sense is that advertisement misleading?” But before you come to any conclusions, just finish my post first. I do not think that the advertisement is misleading, because the advertisement’s purpose was to show their warm and caring side. To show that they notice the minute details and is meticulous in their job. The advertisement was not to say “Come and join us on the Sunday Banking on your birthday. We will give you a free cake and a nice warm happy birthday song”. Hence in this case, the advertisement was not misleading. Advertisement’s purposes is to get you to understand the hidden meaning, or to portray a sense of emotion in a person. In this case, it is to portray a warm feeling, the feeling that goes “OCBC cares for me”. Not the birthday cake. Anyone automatically assuming that the advertisement is advertising about a free cake needs more education. So those people who claim misleading advertisements are seriously mentally backward.

Why mentally backward? From another perspective, we wouldn’t assume POSB tellers know each of us and our children, and when it rains they bring an umbrella to shelter our kids home, do we? We wouldn’t assume that using that cream thing on your knees would allow you to rapidly accelerate a trishaw to the same speed as a car? Or drinking Tiger Beer would allow you to become Tarzan or some strong arm person? Or a pretty girl. Maybe tiger beer would make you drunk until you feel like becoming a girl.

Advertisement is ALSO misleading
Now would you scold me? I said that it is not misleading but now I said it is misleading. What kind of nonsense is this? It is misleading because OCBC staff are not warm at all! They are not meticulous because they took the I/C from the blogger and did not notice that it is her birthday! Now, a simple happy birthday would suffice and make a customer happy wasn’t it? Not to mention that they found it so hard to offer a “Happy birthday” which cost nothing and wouldn’t hurt anyone. In this way, the advertisement is misleading. They mislead the public into believing that OCBC’s staff is passionate, caring, fun, spontaneous and believes that they can do more to improve their level of service. Whether they are “delighted to be of service”, as mentioned in the ad, remains much to be seen.

Establishments only want your money
Some people commented that you shouldn’t expect anything because banks only want your money. And applauded the blogger for getting a birthday cake since they use our money. Personally I think that is stupid. Some complain about low interest rates. That’s utterly stupid. We have a right not to put our money in this bank. There’s so many other banks. Besides, all of them offer low interest rates. Look at the 3 month Treasury Bills. The rate is 0.6%. It is pathetic. Lousier than inflation. If anyone has any sense to beat inflation, we would be looking at alternative investments.

Some people complain about banks not refunding the money when the principals are lost in some funds. Well, putting aside mis-selling, if mis-selling did not occur, all of the customers would have knowledge that the principals are not guaranteed and there is investment risk. As such, they willingly took on those risks. It is utterly retarded to ask the bank to refund the money if mis-selling did not occur. There are no investments in the world that are guaranteed and have high returns. Face the fact and stop whining about it.

No matter what, banks are businesses too. You don’t run a business to lose money; you make money. Hence there are some things banks cannot do so that they can reduce their costs. If banks were to guarantee all investments, they would lose a lot of money in a recession! No matter how banks portray themselves to be, the consumers must be witty enough to understand that advertisements do not portray absolute truth.

Banks keep your money for you in a relatively safe place compared to inside your house, and you get money on top of it, although the sum is pathetic. The interest generate on loaning money out pays for your free parking of money in the bank. If we think of it as a transaction, we would have also gained. A win-win I would say.

That said, it was still a fun attempt that backfired. I quite pity the staff on the grounds because it would seem like they are facing an unreasonable customer. If it had ended earlier with a smile, the whole thing would be perfect.