The Straits Times today touched upon the issue of foreign workers being housed in dormitories near to the HDB estates. Residents are mainly worried since the inclusion of those foreign workers actually increases their current population by 25%, which means in the future, one in five people there is actually a foreign worker.

It may sound racist, and even wrong, because everyone’s reasoning has a fundamental “flaw”, that is they seem to assume that foreign workers are the cause of crime, rowdiness etc. However I don’t think that it’s a flaw, but rather, all these shows how we are uncomfortable with the idea of foreign workers being around us, although we accept the fact that they are here to stay in Singapore because they are doing the work that we Singaporeans are not willing to do.

To digress a little, isn’t it funny how people are championing for it to be a right to have a university education? If such a case were to happen, everyone would be a degree holder and then everyone will expect degree level jobs. In the future, perhaps even our technicians, or our factory assembly lines would be powered by foreign workers. Because there is no one left who wants to do them. Everyone assumes that their degree gives them the right to demand better jobs.

Back to the point, I must say that I myself is uncomfortable with foreign workers. Do I have to do the same disclaimer that everyone does before they voice their views to the MP? Ok here goes: I have nothing against them. I appreciate their work in building Singapore blah blah blah. I think that’s nonsense. There is no need to say all these and justify that we arn’t being racist or whatever not. No one should have to be labelled a racist just because they oppose the housing of foreign workers near their estate.

Every Sunday when I go back home after my Japanese lessons at Orchard, I will pass by the MRT station Outram Park. At that station, and at that time period, there would be an influx of foreign workers coming into the train, and the whole place would be packed with them. (F*** the transport system for making it so damn packed).

I feel very uncomfortable when they swarm the trains. It’s probably because that we belong to different groups. Not based on elite ideals or what, but Singaporeans (people who’ve lived here for a certain period of time) vs these foreign workers. I find that they haven’t really acclimatised to our country yet, and there are many little culture bits and pieces that they do not grasp.

But the reason why I feel uncomfortable should be classified under a universal category, because I think everyone should understand it. It’s the concept of personal space. I hate it when people infringe on my personal space, whether its Singaporeans, non-Singaporeans, Aliens, fat, thin, rich, poor, male, female and what you have that’s contrasting. I am always rudely shocked to find my personal space being infringed upon by those foreign workers. I have no idea why they always like to squeeze me into a corner. When they come in, some of them grab two different poles with two hands, and they take up an awful lot of space. Their hands brush against my hair and they treat it like it’s something normal. I hate it. I don’t understand why people can’t position themselves properly when they know they are touching someone indirectly. It doesn’t help when your face is near his bloody armpit.

The thing is, I move, and I try to squeeze myself further in with limits, because I have to be aware that I cannot compromise too much on other people. I find my space getting lesser, and after 2 minutes that idiot’s hand is at my hair again. As far as it goes, I find myself having lesser and lesser space. What are they? Invaders of the MRT?

Not to mention that I find myself disgusted by one of the foreign workers recently. He was holding on to the hand grip provided by MRT. Those white triangular handles you can grab for stability. I was holding on to the one beside him. Suddenly, he held on to the pole (that links all the handles) and I don’t understand why he has to hold the pole in a way that his arm touches my hand. I mean, there is a distance between two handles, and why should you choose to hold it where someone’s hand is at? Knowing full well there’s the empty handle he just vacated.

He then proceeds to dig his nose in front of me. Hence, the former handle he grabbed is now out of bounds since it’s dirty. I know it’s already dirty because there’s other people who probably dug their nose and held there, but it feels worst when you KNOW someone dug his nose and grabbed that fucking handle.

My friend smsed me and then I use the handle hand to take my phone out from my pocket, since my other hand is full. That idiot took over my handle! Seriously, they are not foreign workers to me, but invaders of the MRT. They invade my personal space and invade the clean handle I was holding on to. Tell me if you’ll hold that handle again. And the best thing is? After holding it for 3 s he released it, and found a seat to sit. Whilst poor me have to stand without a mentally clean handle.

Hence tell me if the uncomfortable feeling towards foreign workers are unjustified. I think they are perfectly legitimate feelings. We are just not comfortable with them being too near us, for me when they compromise on my own personal space. If anyone of you haven’t realized yet, humans have a little space called their personal space. In a mathematical point of view, take the center of your body and draw a circle of radius r with its center being your center. r varies from person to person and we feel uncomfortable when strangers come close , however it’s perfectly fine when it’s a cute girl. I don’t mind the default squeezing. But what’s up with the indirect touches, even if it wasn’t intentional? What’s up with putting your hand near my face that I feel weird? That I’m suddenly conscious about how I breathe because if I breathe heavily your hand’s going to get the air?

Hence to me I feel that I understand. Safety issues, well, I understand too. It’s all part of how you are willing to accept other people. It doesn’t help when there are many stories about invaders of mrt touching girls in the orchard crowd during new year, or the maid with invaders having fun in the master’s bedroom. Or them loitering and looking at you, making you feel uncomfortable like you’ve been mentally raped.

Whatever it is, I understand their fears. But I don’t wish to debate on where they should be housed, because it’s a huge problem.

I just thought I would like to just voice out some of my own opinion on some issues, not that this is anything new or that it’s very important opinion, but yeah I just want to say some stuffs.

Recently our Singapore Table Tennis team won the silver medal. As expected, there are always issues with the fact that our team wasn’t born and bred in Singapore. In other terms, they are not Singaporeans by nature, but immigrants. I was actually quite disillusioned, and I wondered if I should be proud of this silver medal. In a way, I wondered what sports and the olympics was about. Is the Olympics about overcoming one’s personal best and trying to gain pride and honour for one’s country? I thought so, but it seems weird that we will hire people from overseas to help us in our quest for a medal.

Seriously, is a medal that important? To me, it is not. I felt that the process of doing the sports is the important one, even if the end result is a loss. I felt that Singaporean atheletes should be given more chances to try and even experience the Olympics, and that would be a proud moment for me even if they lost.

However, some discussion that I’ve seen over the internet made me wonder. There is an issue with the lack of a sports culture. Admittedly, the introduction of these table tennis players does raise our sports culture significantly. We get more interested in the going on’s of table tennis, and people learn that the game is set at 11 points unless the oponent is just 1 point difference from you. People are more aware of the Olympics. In fact, in a way, to have fellow Singaporeans all rooting for the same team and hoping they win, that feeling is perhaps priceless.

Is it that important whether they are true Singaporeans or not? I am not too sure now. They do have their advantages, especially in improving our sports culture. The thing is that other countries are doing the same thing too. We find that many countries employ former Chinese nationals.

Another interesting point to note is that, if they were trained locally, and not “ready made”, then it is something to be happy and proud of isn’t it? For they were given places to grow and improve by Singapore and not other countries.

On another topic, I am finding it puzzling with regards to the actions of the newly crowned president of the table tennis association. Yes I am talking about the minister who talked about shitting, in parliament. I find it puzzling that action has been taken so swiftly, and there is no room for discussion, no panel to inquire and advice on a suitable course of action. The culture seems to be a “if you can’t deliver properly, off you go”. Sadly, that doesn’t apply to ministers. In a funny way, I ask, if everytime we have a problem and we change table tennis coaches and managers, then how many people will want to be coaches and managers? Hence I propose that table tennis coaches and managers be given a high attractive salary of 3 million Singapore dollars a year. We can protect our ministers, but not the coaches, and I seem to think Mas Selamat is a bigger issue than the top male paddler losing a match. Our male paddlers have never seemed to have a medal chance anyway.

And how funny it is that our government keeps asking us to move on? When Mas Selamat escaped, we should move on. When the manager gets sacked and the coach in danger of being removed, the MP who’s also the association president asks us to move on when we make a big fuss. Is it becoming a norm where by when we the citizens question a policy or a course of action, we should just move on? I think not, we should not move on. If everytime there is a problem, we move on and ignore it, we won’t grow and improve, and we will eventually degenerate into a mindless society that does not question actions done by government level people. I don’t see why they have to ask us to move on. Rather, they should move on and tell us what they think about our queries. I find it disturbing that you can sack a manager without giving him official notification, and at such a time too, when we should be “celebrating” our first medal in 48 years. Quick to axe the peasants but not the nobles? Bleah.

On yet another topic, we have our neighbours having an election soon, with many controversies going on, ironically, in the same standard as the mp. Mp talks about shit, and we have people accusing Anwar of poking his dick in shit. Is shit a popular topic?

The funny thing I noticed is that the oaths thing is probably abused. People are calling for Anwar to take an oath of innocence. However, people assume one thing, that people taking oaths tell the truth. That is a fallacy. It may not be true. On the other hand, not taking oaths do not signify guilt either. What’s up with all the wayang, going to such lengths to swear on the religious book? The answer? Politics. Perhaps they find that they will lose the by-elections, and it seems that it is easy to sway peasants who do not understand that people can lie during oaths.

I don’t see the point in taking oaths, especially when they can be abused. But I do not like the idea that people seem to think taking oaths signify honesty and truthfulness, when it can also be a product of political manipulation. To mix religion with politics, I think that’s nasty.

Well I got it out of my system and I’m quite happy now. Feel free to comment.

In the past few months, I have been reading blogs from Ping.sg, and I am also aware of all the fuss that arose from arguments over how shallow a blog post is, or over DK’s outburst, and even recently, Noctourne’s criticisms. There are a few things we can think about from all these outbursts, and they may be lessons, or they may be not.

The first thing that I thought about was “Can we blog personal stuff at our blogs”? I say, sure, we can blog personal stuff on our blogs, and we can even rant and rave and take little heat from our opinions because it’s all in the name of a rant. Why then, do we have a big hoo haa? My opinion is this: Ping.sg is like a collection of blogs. We know each other through our blogs. I know Kris the blogger from his blog, same goes for DK, Paddy, bla bla bla. I do not know them for who they are, but I know them for their blogs. Their blog has become a personal identity.

Hence, the problem begins because we all know Daphne as the community manager for Ping.sg, and when we read her blog, we read Daphne the community manager’s blog, and we don’t feel that it’s Daphne’s personal blog. It’s like the owner and founder of Ping.sg. If Uzyn blogs about Ping.sg on his personal blog, we read his blog as Uzyn the Founder’s blog, not Uzyn the person. Hence, it is very important to note that in this case, the blog becomes the sole identity of the person, and anything written on the blog must be written in due care.

Of course, I can write nonsensical stuff on my blog, since you’re reading Ignorantsoup’s personal blog and not Ignorantsoup the whoever’s blog. That’s the difference, because I don’t hold any special rank in Ping.sg, and hence when people read my blog, they treat it like a normal blog. That is what I think perhaps went wrong in this case. Perhaps when one holds a certain position, one cannot afford to be indulgent in one’s own thinking, and must think for everyone’s sake. This is especially so in managing a community.

The other thing that I have learnt is that we have to be accountable for our actions, especially so in a community, or even more so in a business entity. For example, in the corporate world, it is always good and polite to inform someone why the company is terminating his/her service. Be it reasons like “always late consistently”, or “not productive and keep taking breaks”. In the end, we have to account to everyone and inform the co-workers why so and so will be terminated. Same goes for a community. So when someone is “fired”, we have to do a few things.

Firstly, inform the person why we are taking this action. This can be in the form of a formal letter, or an email.

We also have to inform the rest of the community or company why it has happened.

But the most important thing is, we must have a structured set of rules and regulations, such that when we dismiss any member of the community or company, the people around must be able to accept the reason wholeheartedly. For example, if we seek to ban someone because he has been putting up racist posts and disturbing members, we have a valid reason because we cannot tolerate race and religious flame wars. That is something we can all accept.

I must say, I’m not out to start a flame war or anything, but these is what I feel that we can improve, learn and reflect upon. If we can learn from past lessons and improve, we can become better. I do hope that the community can mature and grow, instead of sliding backwards. The first thing we probably have to decide is, is the community a monarchy or a democracy.

There seems to be much debate on organ trading recently after our Health Minister said that we should not reject organ trading entirely. I do agree though, because we can’t reject any solution outright without giving some thought to it. The main thing is, if we can tweak the system to accommodate various valid concerns of the public, then perhaps we may allow organ trading. Which brings us to a point on morality.

It has always been used as a stand against a particular action. 377A was like this. Majority minority. Majority saying it’s against morals blablabla. But I was thinking, what morals are then permitted to stand in debate? Which of the morals should we adopt and which of the morals should we not care too much of?

Singapore is a secular country, and we’re supposed to be having four happy races together. The thing is this, in Singapore, we have racial tolerance. Or religious tolerance for that matter. Which means, we tolerate your practices, even if they are different, and we respect them. We do not say your method is wrong or mine is superior.

So in this case, I was wondering, should religious morality be practised? In a way, since we do not use religion or race to impose values on other people, should we use religious morality to push for laws or used to state a particular stand? I think not. One good example would be abortion. The Catholic Church is against abortion, but there is no such “morals” or rules against abortion in some other religion. Hence, it is only right that abortion is not made illegal. Which is good that it’s not illegal in Singapore.

I’m not saying that there are religious morality in the organ trading issue. I’m just saying should any religious morality stand be made, talking about God doesn’t allow for organs to be traded, that they are sacred to humans, or that the human body belongs to God, it should not be treated as a universal moral. It’s perfectly logical to see why. If there is any religion that doesn’t explicitly prohibit the buying or selling of organs, then who are you to use your religion to impose on me and prohibit me from trading organs. Surely, in this viewpoint, using religious morals as a stand is surely wrong.

But I don’t get it. Sometimes the majority preaches morality, but they are preaching morality for everyone’s sake, but not everyone believes in that morality. If lets say religion X prohibits abortion, and someone in religion X aborts, that’s their problem isn’t it? But if someone in religion Y aborts, is it such a big deal?

Let’s move on.

Talking about organ trading, I did it as part of my Critical Thinking and Writing module in NUS in my first semester of study. I find that it is pretty interesting, and we are somewhat handicapped because we try not to be the first few countries to implement a particular controversial policy.

But I am very curious. If organ trading is allowed in Singapore, do you think Singaporeans will be the buyers or the sellers? I ask this because it seems to be an issue that people think the poor will be exploited. I somehow believe that there will be more buyers than sellers. The majority of Singaporeans are educated and will know that the risk of having one less kidney may lead to more chances of having renal failure. In a way, the majority are not so poor as to need to sell a kidney to maintain life. I do not know if people will sell kidneys to buy branded goods, but let’s not move into that.

If, we say that more often than not, Singaporeans are buyers and not sellers, can we take issue that the poor is being exploited? Knowing full well that Singaporeans are going overseas to buy kidneys for transplant, in China and many other countries. Plus, the government subsidies medicine to prevent Kidney rejection when these Singaporeans come back to Singapore with a new kidney. Hence, isn’t it hypocritical of us to claim poor will be exploited when it is perfectly find to buy a kidney elsewhere, just not Singapore? Hence can we say that the poor will be exploited? If so, then ban kidney trading in its entirety. Why encourage by giving subsidies?

In my stand in the paper I wrote, I believed that we can allow organ trading, but of course, with checks and balances. We must always have a well oiled system of checks and balances to prevent exploitation blah blah blah. One of the methods is to make the seller fully aware of risks involved. This includes a greater possibility of renal failure, as well as risks of the operation. The seller may not feel as fit as before since an organ is missing, and in some cases, it seems that people have difficulty lifting heavy objects after the operation. As long as the seller is fully aware of the risks involved, and makes an informed decision, I don’t see why not.

But I believe that Organ Trading will raise implications for the current system. For example, how will it coexist with HOTA? If we allow organ trading, who will remain in HOTA? People may end up selling their kidneys instead of giving it. For example, a youth is killed in an accident, his parents sold his kidneys instead of donating it to HOTA. How then, shall we overcome this problem? That’s for the government to decide.

I believe that there are many problems and I also believe that there are many people who have written letters giving suggestions and raising questions, and I think that’s good. Hopefully the government takes into consideration the various issues pointed out and come up with a solution that can benefit and coexist with HOTA. Perhaps we should put down our so called personal morality and think for everyone. For not all morals are morals to everyone.

There have been plenty of discussion lately about Stomp and how pathetically stupid Stomper are. In fact, I have blogged my fair share about Stomp, including titles like Stompers have magical eyes. I do admit, there are plenty of articles there that are totally stupid.

But what makes them stupid? Because they assume something, like the link above, that the couple in the water are having sex. But are they? Can we be sure? We can’t. Or photos criticizing someone’s way of dressing, which I thought, “What has it got to do with you?”. I remember one Stomper taking photos of a person wearing three quarters pants in Esplanade, and claiming that it’s the wrong way to dress in a “high class” event, but in reality, anyone can go there and people walk inside Esplanade in slippers too.

Lately, there has been a new website called AntiStomp. People have started to applaud it’s launch because its a website that talks about the stupidity of certain posts in Stomp. Whilst I was quite happy to read up on some posts, I was frankly put off by others. A thought came to me, “Who will guard the guards?”. In our haste to label Stomp as a lousy piece of citizen journalism, have we discovered that the makers of AntiStomp are also in a way, “citizen journalists”? And the best thing is, they are actually doing the same thing as what those Stompers are doing.

Take a look at this article. The Stomper claims that there was a near accident because the SSDC student had his left signal light on throughout, giving the impression that he wanted to turn, but in reality, he wanted to go straight. Instead of feeling sorry that the student made such a gross error, the instructor still gave hostile hand gestures. Is this a stupid Stomp? I don’t think so. It is perfectly easy to understand that the driver was upset and he is merely using Stomp as a means to complain about SSDC. In this matter, I think it is very clear who is wrong, that is, the student. It is totally wrong to say that students have been known to forget to turn off their signal lights, and pin the fault on the driver. Why should we criticize the driver here? The driver isn’t making any assumption.

And what about the article on the pervert stomper? This Stomper, a lady, is upset that the fish balls and the sausage was placed in a suggestive manner, that looks like a man’s crotch region. In my opinion, the photo really proves that the stall assistant is a gigantic jerk. There are so many ways to place two fish balls and a sausage and of all ways he chose that? It is obvious he is trying to be funny. But if you read Antistomp’s article, they are being funny and childish too. They said that the Stomper is probably trying to flirt with the stall owner, that she gave them the wrong impression blabla. Is this morally right? Is this the wrong kind of things to go on Stomp? I guess not.

With these two examples, it makes me wonder, are they making the same mistake? Antistomp, is actually not a platform to showcase the stupid posts made by Stompers. In actual fact, Antistomp is actually the biggest Stomper of all. Though they do not post on Stomp in itself, they are doing exactly the same thing that those Stupid Stompers are doing. They assume, and they lack certain feelings. They lack the feeling of compassion and neglect to think “perhaps the lady IS a victim”. Instead, they resort to assumptions saying she is seeking attention when the author is NOT present at the time of the sale.

Hence, who will guard the guards? Whilst some of us may applaud the emergence of this new website, let us think about it. Ultimately, journalism is something for professional journalists. A citizen journalism style blog fighting a citizen journalism Stomp is like the pot calling the kettle black. Unless there is some form of editorial integrity where they make sure that their posts are of some standards, they are just simply a copycat of Stomp? Down with Stomp? Down with those posts in AntiStomp first.

No offence meant, but I think that post was way offensive. Think about it. Who will guard the guards?

/*Some Updates*/
What is the purpose of Stomp then? I guess Stomp could be a place for discussion, of which most of the Stomps would become perfectly legitimate. Take for example the photo taken by a rather appalled driver seeing an SSDC car parking using real cars as guides. In reality, is there a need to blast the Stomper? We could just discuss it over Stomp and point things out to them. Or take for example the angry football fan who complained to Stomp. We could just tell them “It’s not Starhub’s fault”. There are so many sides to a certain thing, sometimes we should just be understanding towards certain Stompers.