Singapore Education: Why underdogs and late bloomers have the better end of the bargain
SINGAPORE - There is a popular phrase “if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen”. Our education system is somewhat like the proverbial kitchen. There are a lucky few who managed to escape the kitchen, and have the fortune of learning the ropes of life in a less stressful education system. The rest have no choice but to stay behind and face the heat head on.
Thanks in no part to our media’s endless glorification of academic high-achievers, read “President Scholars” and “SAF Overseas Scholars”, the heat merely intensified a few notches. I remembered the fateful day when I received my ‘A’ levels results, sullen expressions were synonymous with results slips peppered with “Elephants” and “Donkeys”. Nowadays, the odd B or a single “S” paper/H3 subject credit is sufficient enough to trigger that sullen expression.
Yet in the midst of all that heat, it can be argued that underdogs and late bloomers are at a greater advantage than their high achieving peers. Sounds strange, right? After all, the high achievers will be at the top of the academic ladder, successfully gaining entry into programs such as the Gifted Education Program (GEP), Integrated Program and NUS High School, all of which have the word “prestige” written all over them. Such programs are obviously aimed towards students with a high academic calibre, and are designed to further hone their academic ability. In short, the good just gets better. And alas for the late bloomers, it is the early bloomers who will be on top. The education system is unfortunately designed in such a way that only early bloomers are identified and further groomed.
So on paper, the score card reads High Achievers 1 Underdogs/Late bloomers 0. Yes, apparently the scoreline is in favor of the high achiever because they simply get better in the academic sense. However, the important life experience the underdogs and late bloomers gain place them at a commanding advantage.
The word “failure” is a familiar one in the vocabulary of the underdogs and late bloomers. This is not a bad thing per se. Encountering failures early in life will imbue one with important life skills. Besides acquiring the important ability to cope with adversity, those who fail will be in a good position to understand what it is like to bounce back from failure.
And such students will wizen up after experiencing failures. Wizen up in what sense? Well, in terms of planning back-ups in case of subsequent failures. And this ability to come up with contingency plans in case of failures is considered an essential lifelong attribute. It is sort of like “I have failed at the third hurdle. Perhaps I will try clearing it again. But what if I fail again? Maybe I should come up with an alternative plan then”.
Perhaps, I can use my experience to illustrate. I was among the batch of Primary School students who had to go through streaming into EM1, EM2 and EM3. I happened to fail a preliminary exam before the actual streaming examinations. Being the simple-minded kid that I was, I told myself that if I streamed into EM3, I would become a car technician after undergoing courses at a vocational institute (ITE) since I cultivated some interest in machines at that time. When I took my PSLE (at that time I wasn’t in the top stream either), one of my contingency plans in case I fail to meet my targets was to go to a neighbourhood school with low PSLE cutoffs, but a good athletics and field sports program in addition to having a strong value-added reputation (a school with value-addedness is able to significantly improve the academic performance of their students). When I had Elephants and Donkeys for my “A” level preliminary examinations, I was mentally prepared to pursue a diploma at any of our polytechnics should I get the same results for my actual “A” levels.
In addition to the pressure to succeed, the typical high achieving student who has achieved successes after successes and never encountered failure once may not have the opportunity to learn the important life skill of dealing with failure at an early age.
Another advantage is that those considered at the lower tier of the academic ladder will naturally have lower academic targets to meet. And this translates to less pressure, and more freedom to pursue other passions. Having less pressure to succeed can be considered a blessing. The annals of sports history are awashed with episodes whereby underdogs ironically perform their best when they were under no pressure to even draw in the first place. In addition, I also found time to pursue my other passions when I was in secondary school, which coincidentally opened GEP classes at the same time. Whilst I discovered that I could play ping pong decently (recreational at best) during our recess breaks, my GEP peers were still having their lessons, yes even during our recess time.
In addition to the pressure to succeed, the typical high achieving student who has achieved successes after successes and never encountered failure once may not have the opportunity to learn the important life skill of dealing with failure at an early age. And if they do encounter failure, all hell breaks lose especially for those who simply cannot deal with it. An analysis of student suicides usually yielded this common profile - higher achiever, under pressure to succeed, encounter failure of some sort, breakdown and finally suicide.
Every parent would naturally want their kids to succeed. Yet when their kids encounter failure, all is not over. We should see this as an early beckoning of what life has to offer, and hopefully, this would mould their character and benefit them in their subsequent careers.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24544.1
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Missing articles from ST and CNA on CDC
Missing articles from ST and CNA on CDC 8-months bonus fiasco
Not sure why hor, but Straits Times and Channel NewsAsia no longer have the news articles about the Northwest CDC 8-months bonus outcry.
In case you are not aware of this, the outcry was over the fact that two staff from the Northwest Community Development Council (CDC) received bonuses of eight months last year, including the 13th month bonus.
In response to the fracas, Northwest CDC’s mayor, Dr Teo Ho Pin said, "If you ask me, I do not know the salaries; I do not know the bonuses of all my staff."
According to Dr Teo, bonuses and salaries of CDC staff are decided by the People’s Association (PA) and the Workforce Development Agency (WDA).
People's Association (PA) deputy chairman (and Minister in the PMO) Lim Boon Heng said, "I think we should not begrudge the few people who get very high bonuses."
The bonuses were paid in 2008, when the economy was said to be good until the last quarter.
The missing articles:
- CNA: Northwest CDC mayor says PA, WDA decide on staff pay, bonuses (link to page is empty)
- Straits Times: CDC bonuses explained (404 page)
The internet moves in mysterious ways, you know. But never mind, I have the PDF of the pages, in case you want to read them.
- CNA: Northwest CDC mayor says PA, WDA decide on staff pay, bonuses (Yahoo CNA news PDF)
- Straits Times: CDC bonuses explained (PDF of cached page)
The deleted ST piece can also be read in Google's cache.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24645.1
Why Limit Learning?
Why Limit Learning?
Well, the great dialect wars are uppon us again. Minister Mentor Lee, the world's first banna (Yellow on the outside but White on the inside) got himself on the front page, urging Chinese Singaporean parents to speak to their kids in Mandarin. He's found that Singaporeans are using less Mandarin and he's most upset that people have talked about promoting their dialects. The message is clear - "Chinese, as defined by me, speak Mandarin and nothing else."
As always, Mr Lee has made some powerful points. Speaking Mandarin opens one up to the world's next super power - China. Let's make no mistake here - China is on the up and up. With it's billion plus population, China has market clout and even though it's yet to overtake the current superpower - the USA - the Chinese matter. Let's not forget that one of Hillary Clinton's first task as Secratery of State was to get the Chinese to "Continue Buying Our Bonds" - diplomatic parlance for "We need your money."
China is obviously important and understanding the culture of China is important. As any anthropologist will tell you - "Language is Culture," and since Mandarin is the language of China, everyone is learning Mandarin. If Singaporean Chinese are not keen to learn it, the "other" races in Singapore are and even Westerners want to learn Mandarin. One of my old friends in Germany took Chinese as a third language. In London the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) prides itself in the number of Westerners learning Chinese.
While Mr Lee is correct about the importance of learning Chinese, his obsession with getting Singaporeans to forget their dialects is silly. He asserts that the human brain does not have "1000" gigs to understand both Mandarin and a dialect as well as English and perhaps another forgin language like say Malay or an Indian or European lanague. As far as he is concerned, a good Chinese trying to live in the modern world should speak only Mandarin and English. In simple parlance - Mandarin Good - Dialect Bad.
Let's be honest here, Mr Lee's obsession with dialects and the Mandarin versus dialect issue has nothing to do with losing out in the modern world and the great China market. It has everything to do with Mr Lee's paranoia of "Real" Chinese culture. Mr Lee comes from Singapore's "English" educated community and grew up determined to speak "English" like and Englishman as opposed to "Singlish" - the bastardised version of the Queen's own tounge. Mr Lee reveled in being known as "Harry" and it was only when he entered politics and realised that his own kind did not start revolutions, that he decided that it was in his interest to learn Chinese - both Mandarin and Hokkien. Mr Lee was and remains a shrewed politician. The man was quick to see that the "Chinese Educated" he so despised (es) actually caused revolutions rather than talked about it. These were the people who would bring him to power.
So, he learned Mandarin and Hokkien, got them onto his side and made life so miserable for the rulling colonial power that they left and gave the place up to him. He then realised that the Chinese educated that brought him to power could also depose of him and so he made it a point to get rid of the culture that made these people. Race would be redefined - hence Indians in Singapore means Tamil just as Chinese means Mandarin.
Many Singaporeans will argue that this has brought unity to Singapore. I don't believe it was a necessary step. Human interactions have a way of redefining culture without the State's efforts. As long as the State can keep the peace, humans will find a way of mixing and matching of culture. Britishness and what it means to be British is a good example. If you look at London, you will not find a land of bowler hats. Curry, a traditional Indian dish is now a traditional one. How did it happen? People from the Indian subcontinent moved to the UK and although there have been tensions between communities, Britishness has been redefined and the UK has benefited from this cultural vibrancy.
I agree that some measures implemented by the Singapore government were necessary. Racial quotas in HDB estates has prevented the development of ethnic ghettos that you find in many Western cities. Forcing communities to work together created a common culture.
Then again, how much of a racial problem did Singapore have to begin with. "Kampong" or "Village" life saw races mixing together and developing a culture of cooperation that cut across racial lines in quite a few cases. Contrary to what Mr Lee argues, I find my generation of Singaporeans less unified and more chauvanistic than I do from people in my parents generation. Yes, the kids my age and bellow are less likely to make racial slurs than the people from my parent's generation. But the older generation seems to work together better. Why? They're able to speak more languages and dialects. It's not uncommon for Tamil Indians of a certain age to be able to speak Mandarin and several Chinese dialects fluently. Why is that? Is the Tamil community more gifted than the Chinese one? Sure, the language that people spoke was not as "pure" as the one in the mother land - but then again, language purity is not what its cracked up to be.
For example, my speech patterns change when I speak English to Singaporeans and to my friends from the UK. Why? It's the same language but cultural meanings change and in the modern world you need to be able to cross cultural barriers without thinking about it. It is true of English and it is true of Chinese and any other language.
People who aquire more languages are better able to understand more cultures and develop more relationships. If you are culturally confident in your culture, you become more self-reliant. I take Yong Koon, my former father-in-law as a good example. His English is broken, but he gets by. He speaks some Malay, Mandarin, Hokkien, Teo Chew and Cantonese. As such, he's developed business relations with people from all these communities. He is "self-reliant," and not waiting for the government to pluck him up.
However, the moment you lose your identity and have a new one thrust upon you, you start to think differently. This is precisely what Mr Lee wanted for Singapore. People lose their sense of identity - he gives them one and then they become beholden to him. I suppose if you have to be beholden to anyone, Mr Lee is one of the best people to be beholden to. He's brought Singapore miraculous things. However, he's in his 80s and while he's in good health, he's not immortal.
Languages are so simple. You learn them most effectively by practice. I grew up in a mono-lingual household. My mother takes pride in the way we grew up proficient in English and from time to time, my mother does make a few caustic remarks about my 'non-English' speaking friends. Although my father's first language is Cantonese (he speaks the refined version - so much so that he's considered a local in Hong Kong), its never been a priority to pass on the language. As such, I speak Cantonese exceedingly badly and I'm the only one from my generation who speaks it.
But then my mother moved to Germany and married a German. While she tries to fly the flag for the English language, she's learnt to speak German - as she says, "Gramatically Wrong" but "fluently wrong."
As for me, I still speak both Mandarin and Cantonese very badly. Then I started dating girls who were more comfortable in Mandarin than English. So, I spoke it more often and as a result, I've become more confident in speaking Mandarin. Yes, I am at my best in English but I actually enjoy being in situations where I have to speak Cantonese and on occasion Mandarin. When I'm with Caucasians, I enjoy being with Europeans and being able to converse in German or once in a while Spanish. I don't have a love to learn languages, or at least I don't love them enough to go out of my way to take a course, but just being able to say a few words to someone in their language is a pleasure. It makes me feel that I am not limited as a person.
Why set limits on learning? Yes it is important to be able to speak Mandarin but why does it have to be a Mandarin or Dialect - why not both Mandarin and Dialect? To assume that you need to know "Only" Mandarin to understand China is a total misunderstanding of China and Chinese culture. China is a huge nation and while Chinese has a common writen script, it has a linguistic diversity greater than Europe with its many nations - hence it is many cultures not one culture. If you look at the companies that succeed in China, it is those who take their time, build relations and understanding of culture. In big countries (which is non-city-states), culture is often diverse and understanding of culture means going down to the ground and understanding culture at its most basic.
All languages have dialects. Where possible one should learn these dialects in addition to the main language. I like to think I speak English - both the British (Hampshire) and Singapore versions. I speak basic Mandarin and Cantonese because a part of my environment requires it of me. I speak basic German because that is also a portion of my environment. How can you go to a country and not learn the basics of the language? If you live in a country for a good few years and don't pick up a basic understanding of the local language, you are not living in that country - you are living in a ballon.
Mr Lee whines about how our "English-Speaking" environment has grown at the expense of Mandarin. That's ironic - he's made it so. Brits, Australians and Americans have utterly no need to learn anything about the local culture because we're all English speaking. I hear its got something to do with attracting foreign investment. By contrast, Hong Kong has a culture where the expats need to learn a bit of Cantonese to survive. As such, there is a greater integration in Hong Kong - they're confident about they're culture.
Isn't it ironic that Mr Lee who prides himself in having brought Singapore up by providing education is now busy trying to create a limitation of the mind in his quest to remove any ressurgance of the people who put him into power all those years ago.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24542.1
Well, the great dialect wars are uppon us again. Minister Mentor Lee, the world's first banna (Yellow on the outside but White on the inside) got himself on the front page, urging Chinese Singaporean parents to speak to their kids in Mandarin. He's found that Singaporeans are using less Mandarin and he's most upset that people have talked about promoting their dialects. The message is clear - "Chinese, as defined by me, speak Mandarin and nothing else."
As always, Mr Lee has made some powerful points. Speaking Mandarin opens one up to the world's next super power - China. Let's make no mistake here - China is on the up and up. With it's billion plus population, China has market clout and even though it's yet to overtake the current superpower - the USA - the Chinese matter. Let's not forget that one of Hillary Clinton's first task as Secratery of State was to get the Chinese to "Continue Buying Our Bonds" - diplomatic parlance for "We need your money."
China is obviously important and understanding the culture of China is important. As any anthropologist will tell you - "Language is Culture," and since Mandarin is the language of China, everyone is learning Mandarin. If Singaporean Chinese are not keen to learn it, the "other" races in Singapore are and even Westerners want to learn Mandarin. One of my old friends in Germany took Chinese as a third language. In London the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) prides itself in the number of Westerners learning Chinese.
While Mr Lee is correct about the importance of learning Chinese, his obsession with getting Singaporeans to forget their dialects is silly. He asserts that the human brain does not have "1000" gigs to understand both Mandarin and a dialect as well as English and perhaps another forgin language like say Malay or an Indian or European lanague. As far as he is concerned, a good Chinese trying to live in the modern world should speak only Mandarin and English. In simple parlance - Mandarin Good - Dialect Bad.
Let's be honest here, Mr Lee's obsession with dialects and the Mandarin versus dialect issue has nothing to do with losing out in the modern world and the great China market. It has everything to do with Mr Lee's paranoia of "Real" Chinese culture. Mr Lee comes from Singapore's "English" educated community and grew up determined to speak "English" like and Englishman as opposed to "Singlish" - the bastardised version of the Queen's own tounge. Mr Lee reveled in being known as "Harry" and it was only when he entered politics and realised that his own kind did not start revolutions, that he decided that it was in his interest to learn Chinese - both Mandarin and Hokkien. Mr Lee was and remains a shrewed politician. The man was quick to see that the "Chinese Educated" he so despised (es) actually caused revolutions rather than talked about it. These were the people who would bring him to power.
So, he learned Mandarin and Hokkien, got them onto his side and made life so miserable for the rulling colonial power that they left and gave the place up to him. He then realised that the Chinese educated that brought him to power could also depose of him and so he made it a point to get rid of the culture that made these people. Race would be redefined - hence Indians in Singapore means Tamil just as Chinese means Mandarin.
Many Singaporeans will argue that this has brought unity to Singapore. I don't believe it was a necessary step. Human interactions have a way of redefining culture without the State's efforts. As long as the State can keep the peace, humans will find a way of mixing and matching of culture. Britishness and what it means to be British is a good example. If you look at London, you will not find a land of bowler hats. Curry, a traditional Indian dish is now a traditional one. How did it happen? People from the Indian subcontinent moved to the UK and although there have been tensions between communities, Britishness has been redefined and the UK has benefited from this cultural vibrancy.
I agree that some measures implemented by the Singapore government were necessary. Racial quotas in HDB estates has prevented the development of ethnic ghettos that you find in many Western cities. Forcing communities to work together created a common culture.
Then again, how much of a racial problem did Singapore have to begin with. "Kampong" or "Village" life saw races mixing together and developing a culture of cooperation that cut across racial lines in quite a few cases. Contrary to what Mr Lee argues, I find my generation of Singaporeans less unified and more chauvanistic than I do from people in my parents generation. Yes, the kids my age and bellow are less likely to make racial slurs than the people from my parent's generation. But the older generation seems to work together better. Why? They're able to speak more languages and dialects. It's not uncommon for Tamil Indians of a certain age to be able to speak Mandarin and several Chinese dialects fluently. Why is that? Is the Tamil community more gifted than the Chinese one? Sure, the language that people spoke was not as "pure" as the one in the mother land - but then again, language purity is not what its cracked up to be.
For example, my speech patterns change when I speak English to Singaporeans and to my friends from the UK. Why? It's the same language but cultural meanings change and in the modern world you need to be able to cross cultural barriers without thinking about it. It is true of English and it is true of Chinese and any other language.
People who aquire more languages are better able to understand more cultures and develop more relationships. If you are culturally confident in your culture, you become more self-reliant. I take Yong Koon, my former father-in-law as a good example. His English is broken, but he gets by. He speaks some Malay, Mandarin, Hokkien, Teo Chew and Cantonese. As such, he's developed business relations with people from all these communities. He is "self-reliant," and not waiting for the government to pluck him up.
However, the moment you lose your identity and have a new one thrust upon you, you start to think differently. This is precisely what Mr Lee wanted for Singapore. People lose their sense of identity - he gives them one and then they become beholden to him. I suppose if you have to be beholden to anyone, Mr Lee is one of the best people to be beholden to. He's brought Singapore miraculous things. However, he's in his 80s and while he's in good health, he's not immortal.
Languages are so simple. You learn them most effectively by practice. I grew up in a mono-lingual household. My mother takes pride in the way we grew up proficient in English and from time to time, my mother does make a few caustic remarks about my 'non-English' speaking friends. Although my father's first language is Cantonese (he speaks the refined version - so much so that he's considered a local in Hong Kong), its never been a priority to pass on the language. As such, I speak Cantonese exceedingly badly and I'm the only one from my generation who speaks it.
But then my mother moved to Germany and married a German. While she tries to fly the flag for the English language, she's learnt to speak German - as she says, "Gramatically Wrong" but "fluently wrong."
As for me, I still speak both Mandarin and Cantonese very badly. Then I started dating girls who were more comfortable in Mandarin than English. So, I spoke it more often and as a result, I've become more confident in speaking Mandarin. Yes, I am at my best in English but I actually enjoy being in situations where I have to speak Cantonese and on occasion Mandarin. When I'm with Caucasians, I enjoy being with Europeans and being able to converse in German or once in a while Spanish. I don't have a love to learn languages, or at least I don't love them enough to go out of my way to take a course, but just being able to say a few words to someone in their language is a pleasure. It makes me feel that I am not limited as a person.
Why set limits on learning? Yes it is important to be able to speak Mandarin but why does it have to be a Mandarin or Dialect - why not both Mandarin and Dialect? To assume that you need to know "Only" Mandarin to understand China is a total misunderstanding of China and Chinese culture. China is a huge nation and while Chinese has a common writen script, it has a linguistic diversity greater than Europe with its many nations - hence it is many cultures not one culture. If you look at the companies that succeed in China, it is those who take their time, build relations and understanding of culture. In big countries (which is non-city-states), culture is often diverse and understanding of culture means going down to the ground and understanding culture at its most basic.
All languages have dialects. Where possible one should learn these dialects in addition to the main language. I like to think I speak English - both the British (Hampshire) and Singapore versions. I speak basic Mandarin and Cantonese because a part of my environment requires it of me. I speak basic German because that is also a portion of my environment. How can you go to a country and not learn the basics of the language? If you live in a country for a good few years and don't pick up a basic understanding of the local language, you are not living in that country - you are living in a ballon.
Mr Lee whines about how our "English-Speaking" environment has grown at the expense of Mandarin. That's ironic - he's made it so. Brits, Australians and Americans have utterly no need to learn anything about the local culture because we're all English speaking. I hear its got something to do with attracting foreign investment. By contrast, Hong Kong has a culture where the expats need to learn a bit of Cantonese to survive. As such, there is a greater integration in Hong Kong - they're confident about they're culture.
Isn't it ironic that Mr Lee who prides himself in having brought Singapore up by providing education is now busy trying to create a limitation of the mind in his quest to remove any ressurgance of the people who put him into power all those years ago.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24542.1
Singaporean activists protest against naming of Orchid after Burmese General
Singaporean activists protest against naming of Orchid after Burmese General
3 activists including filmmaker Ho Choon Hiong, lawyer Chia Ti Lik and myself gathered at the Singapore Botanical Gardens this morning to protest against an "Orchid Naming Ceremony" hosted for the Burmese junta leader Thein Sein.
As Singaporeans we want to register our disapproval over the naming of Singapore's national flower, the Orchid, after a leader of the despotic military junta of Burma.
We made our way through the park in red t-shirts, intending to hand a bouquet of 8 Orchid stalks (symbolizing the '88 revolution) with a greeting card to the General, to request that he help deliver them to pro-democracy leader Miss Aung San Suu Kyi.
When we arrived at the location of the ceremony at 8.15 am however, we were approached by a group of National Parks staff who informed us that the event was over in 5 minutes and that the General had since left.
Plainclothes police officers who had also been present at previous similar events were spotted at various points in the park long after the General's departure. I noticed one particular officer who was pretending to take photographs of flowers and told him, "Hey, you damn obvious lah!". He took a nervous glance at me and then looked in another direction.
A decision was then made to walk to the Burmese Embassy on St. Martin's Drive to request them to hand the bouquet and card over to Aung San Suu Kyi. After a brief inquiry, the security guard on duty shouted at us from a distance that they refuse to accept the gifts.
Standing outside the locked gates the embassy, I went ahead and read out the contents of the card:
"Dear Aung San Suu Kyi,
Today marks an unimportant occasion whereby an Orchid will be named in Singapore after Thein Sein, a general of the Burmese junta.
We feel that it is more befitting to be named after you.
This bouquet of 8 Orchid stalks is to honour you and your countrymen who have sacrificed so much for freedom and democracy in Burma.
Respectfully yours,
Singaporeans for Burmese democracy"
We then unfurled a banner bearing the words, "Long Live Aung San Syu Kyi", and shouted out the slogan thrice with raised fists.
We left after placing the bouquet and card at the doorstep of the embassy, hoping that one day, an Orchid flower will be honoured in the name of Miss Aung San Suu Kyi, the rightful leader of Burma.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24540.1
3 activists including filmmaker Ho Choon Hiong, lawyer Chia Ti Lik and myself gathered at the Singapore Botanical Gardens this morning to protest against an "Orchid Naming Ceremony" hosted for the Burmese junta leader Thein Sein.
As Singaporeans we want to register our disapproval over the naming of Singapore's national flower, the Orchid, after a leader of the despotic military junta of Burma.
We made our way through the park in red t-shirts, intending to hand a bouquet of 8 Orchid stalks (symbolizing the '88 revolution) with a greeting card to the General, to request that he help deliver them to pro-democracy leader Miss Aung San Suu Kyi.
When we arrived at the location of the ceremony at 8.15 am however, we were approached by a group of National Parks staff who informed us that the event was over in 5 minutes and that the General had since left.
Plainclothes police officers who had also been present at previous similar events were spotted at various points in the park long after the General's departure. I noticed one particular officer who was pretending to take photographs of flowers and told him, "Hey, you damn obvious lah!". He took a nervous glance at me and then looked in another direction.
A decision was then made to walk to the Burmese Embassy on St. Martin's Drive to request them to hand the bouquet and card over to Aung San Suu Kyi. After a brief inquiry, the security guard on duty shouted at us from a distance that they refuse to accept the gifts.
Standing outside the locked gates the embassy, I went ahead and read out the contents of the card:
"Dear Aung San Suu Kyi,
Today marks an unimportant occasion whereby an Orchid will be named in Singapore after Thein Sein, a general of the Burmese junta.
We feel that it is more befitting to be named after you.
This bouquet of 8 Orchid stalks is to honour you and your countrymen who have sacrificed so much for freedom and democracy in Burma.
Respectfully yours,
Singaporeans for Burmese democracy"
We then unfurled a banner bearing the words, "Long Live Aung San Syu Kyi", and shouted out the slogan thrice with raised fists.
We left after placing the bouquet and card at the doorstep of the embassy, hoping that one day, an Orchid flower will be honoured in the name of Miss Aung San Suu Kyi, the rightful leader of Burma.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24540.1
Singapore again ousts the editor of the Asia Sentinel
Another Day in the Lion City, Almost
Written by John Berthelsen
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Singapore again ousts the editor of the Asia Sentinel
You can say one thing for Singaporeans. They have long memories. And if you think the place is loosening up, think again.
In 1988 — 21 years ago — my projected three-year stint as the Asian Wall Street Journal's correspondent in Singapore ended two years early when the Singaporeans refused to grant me another work visa, and I was forced to leave the island republic to its own devices. Singapore does not now take kindly to the practice of independent journalism, and it didn't then. The media watchdog organization Reporters Without Borders ranks Singapore 140th out of 167 countries surveyed in terms of freedom of the press. The country has been kicking foreign journalists out for writing critical articles about the republic since the early 1970s.
Fast forward through three jobs and several countries to March 17, 2009 – Tuesday – when I flew to Singapore for a one-day stopover as a formality to getting a new visa for Indonesia. The bullfrog-faced woman at the country's immigration counter, an office that is among the world's fastest and most efficient – stiffened visibly when she entered my US passport into her computer, and immediately called for backup. Twenty-one years later, I was being bounced out of the country again. The Burmese general Thein Sein was luckier. The junta member got a warm welcome and an orchid named for him. Perhaps there was a mixup, or perhaps he banks there.
Seconds after the woman passed my passport through her scanner, I was shepherded away from the usual scrum of passengers headed out into Singapore's tropical sunlight, and into a facility where a stone-faced immigration officer apparently busied himself making telephone calls. When I attempted to ask to inform a colleague on the same trip that I had been detained, he shooed me back into the facility, where I sat watching a couple of football teams contend for a half hour or so.
After what appeared to be a series of telephone calls to bureaucrats somewhere, ultimately, I was led away and into the upper reaches of Changi Airport. Changi is a great airport, with an array of stores that would cause envy to some of the world's best department stores. But there are parts of Changi that you probably aren't ever going to see. One of those parts was a barren room with a quote on the wall from J.M. Barrie, who created Peter Pan, that "it is more important to like what you do than to do what you like." It was equipped with a couple of racks of bunk beds and two television sets, where I sat with a half-dozen Chinese hookers who watched a Martha Stewart cooking show with considerable interest, considering that none of them spoke English.
An couple of hours later, a wholly polite and accommodating immigration officer acceded to my request and paroled my passport from other officials so that I could go to duty-free and liberate a couple of bottles of gin to take back to nominally dry Jakarta. He showed the passport to the duty-free lady to endorse the purchase, then took the passport back. Finally I was herded to seat 64D on SQ958 – the very last row next to the toilets. I wasn't to get my passport back until SIA officials escorted me to Indonesian immigration, where I, my passport and my duty-free liquor were liberated.
continued...
I am hardly alone in being bounced out of the island republic. Lee Kuan Yew and his prime minister son, Lee Hsien Loong, for decades have been suing for defamation and taking other actions against journalists who don't parrot their version of events. As far as can be determined, they have lost just one case – in 1984, when Senior District Judge Michael Khoo made the mistake of ruling that Lee Kuan Yew's mortal enemy, the late opposition politician Joshua B. Jeyaretnam, was innocent of making a false declaration about the accounts of his Worker's Party.
Judge Khoo was promptly transferred out of his position as a senior judge and sent off to the attorney general's chambers. No judge in the intervening 24 years has ever made the mistake of ruling against the Lee family, especially in cases involving the press.
The government or members of the Lee family have filed defamation or contempt charges against virtually every major publication in Asia, including the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, Time Magazine, the Economist, the now-defunct AsiaWeek and any other publication that refuses to toe the Lee line. The Far Eastern Economic Review, especially under the late editor Derek Davies, was a particular target. The Review in September was fined for having defamed the Lees pere et fils, in relation to an interview with Chee Soon Juan in which the serially jailed opposition leader said Singapore would never change until Lee Kuan Yew was dead.
After the renamed Wall Street Journal Asia was nailed as a paper for the biggest contempt fine in Singapore history – S$25,000 – the government apparently decided that wasn't enough. The attorney general filed suit against Melanie Kirkpatrick, a senior editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal itself, 15,339 kilometers away, in kind of the legal equivalent of Kim Jong Il deciding to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile because the powers that be weren't paying enough attention to him.
In a way, it's reassuring that the government could reach across 21 years to pick my name out of the mists of history. It probably means they are vigilant enough to continue to pursue Mas Selamat Kastari, the limping jihadi terrorist who somehow managed to escape in February of 2008 from the most secure prison on that most secure 650-sq km island, and elude capture for more than a year.
This is a government that is said to routinely monitor the telephone conversations of journalists and opposition figures, keeps them under surveillance, reads their computer traffic at the uplink, searches their trash and reads their mail before they get it. Kastari, they say, is still somewhere on the island. He won't get away, if Special Branch can take the time away from pursuing the press and the opposition to look him up.
John Berthelsen is the editor of the Asia Sentinel.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24538.1
Written by John Berthelsen
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Singapore again ousts the editor of the Asia Sentinel
You can say one thing for Singaporeans. They have long memories. And if you think the place is loosening up, think again.
In 1988 — 21 years ago — my projected three-year stint as the Asian Wall Street Journal's correspondent in Singapore ended two years early when the Singaporeans refused to grant me another work visa, and I was forced to leave the island republic to its own devices. Singapore does not now take kindly to the practice of independent journalism, and it didn't then. The media watchdog organization Reporters Without Borders ranks Singapore 140th out of 167 countries surveyed in terms of freedom of the press. The country has been kicking foreign journalists out for writing critical articles about the republic since the early 1970s.
Fast forward through three jobs and several countries to March 17, 2009 – Tuesday – when I flew to Singapore for a one-day stopover as a formality to getting a new visa for Indonesia. The bullfrog-faced woman at the country's immigration counter, an office that is among the world's fastest and most efficient – stiffened visibly when she entered my US passport into her computer, and immediately called for backup. Twenty-one years later, I was being bounced out of the country again. The Burmese general Thein Sein was luckier. The junta member got a warm welcome and an orchid named for him. Perhaps there was a mixup, or perhaps he banks there.
Seconds after the woman passed my passport through her scanner, I was shepherded away from the usual scrum of passengers headed out into Singapore's tropical sunlight, and into a facility where a stone-faced immigration officer apparently busied himself making telephone calls. When I attempted to ask to inform a colleague on the same trip that I had been detained, he shooed me back into the facility, where I sat watching a couple of football teams contend for a half hour or so.
After what appeared to be a series of telephone calls to bureaucrats somewhere, ultimately, I was led away and into the upper reaches of Changi Airport. Changi is a great airport, with an array of stores that would cause envy to some of the world's best department stores. But there are parts of Changi that you probably aren't ever going to see. One of those parts was a barren room with a quote on the wall from J.M. Barrie, who created Peter Pan, that "it is more important to like what you do than to do what you like." It was equipped with a couple of racks of bunk beds and two television sets, where I sat with a half-dozen Chinese hookers who watched a Martha Stewart cooking show with considerable interest, considering that none of them spoke English.
An couple of hours later, a wholly polite and accommodating immigration officer acceded to my request and paroled my passport from other officials so that I could go to duty-free and liberate a couple of bottles of gin to take back to nominally dry Jakarta. He showed the passport to the duty-free lady to endorse the purchase, then took the passport back. Finally I was herded to seat 64D on SQ958 – the very last row next to the toilets. I wasn't to get my passport back until SIA officials escorted me to Indonesian immigration, where I, my passport and my duty-free liquor were liberated.
continued...
I am hardly alone in being bounced out of the island republic. Lee Kuan Yew and his prime minister son, Lee Hsien Loong, for decades have been suing for defamation and taking other actions against journalists who don't parrot their version of events. As far as can be determined, they have lost just one case – in 1984, when Senior District Judge Michael Khoo made the mistake of ruling that Lee Kuan Yew's mortal enemy, the late opposition politician Joshua B. Jeyaretnam, was innocent of making a false declaration about the accounts of his Worker's Party.
Judge Khoo was promptly transferred out of his position as a senior judge and sent off to the attorney general's chambers. No judge in the intervening 24 years has ever made the mistake of ruling against the Lee family, especially in cases involving the press.
The government or members of the Lee family have filed defamation or contempt charges against virtually every major publication in Asia, including the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, Time Magazine, the Economist, the now-defunct AsiaWeek and any other publication that refuses to toe the Lee line. The Far Eastern Economic Review, especially under the late editor Derek Davies, was a particular target. The Review in September was fined for having defamed the Lees pere et fils, in relation to an interview with Chee Soon Juan in which the serially jailed opposition leader said Singapore would never change until Lee Kuan Yew was dead.
After the renamed Wall Street Journal Asia was nailed as a paper for the biggest contempt fine in Singapore history – S$25,000 – the government apparently decided that wasn't enough. The attorney general filed suit against Melanie Kirkpatrick, a senior editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal itself, 15,339 kilometers away, in kind of the legal equivalent of Kim Jong Il deciding to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile because the powers that be weren't paying enough attention to him.
In a way, it's reassuring that the government could reach across 21 years to pick my name out of the mists of history. It probably means they are vigilant enough to continue to pursue Mas Selamat Kastari, the limping jihadi terrorist who somehow managed to escape in February of 2008 from the most secure prison on that most secure 650-sq km island, and elude capture for more than a year.
This is a government that is said to routinely monitor the telephone conversations of journalists and opposition figures, keeps them under surveillance, reads their computer traffic at the uplink, searches their trash and reads their mail before they get it. Kastari, they say, is still somewhere on the island. He won't get away, if Special Branch can take the time away from pursuing the press and the opposition to look him up.
John Berthelsen is the editor of the Asia Sentinel.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24538.1
Prawn hawker suspended
March 18, 2009
Prawn hawker suspended
| By Yen Feng & Tan Weizhen | ||
 |  | This Tiger prawn measured 33 cm and weighs 400 grams. -- ST PHOTO: DESMOND WEE |
Now, Tanglin Best BBQ Seafood will pay the price: It must shut down for three months from April 1, and the worker who served the Americans cannot work there for one year.
This is the stiffest punishment meted out by the National Environment Agency, which regulates hawkers, against a stallholder in the past five years.
The punishment meted out on Wednesday caps an episode that has drawn much attention since it was first reported on Tuesday that six Americans, out for a taste of Singapore food on Saturday night, were charged $491 for a meal which included eight tiger prawns, some crabs, half a steamed chicken and a few bottles of beer.
At the centre of the dispute was the bill for the prawns, which came to $239.
The tourists complained to the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) and the NEA took up the case.
Though the stall has been punished, Mr Rigby's party will not be compensated, said the NEA. However, if they wish to pursue the case in the Small Claims Tribunal, the STB will act on their behalf.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=24523.1
China's Military After Taiwan
China's Military After Taiwan
by Ellis Joffe
Posted March 18, 2009
The recently concluded session of the National People’s Congress brought news of another double-digit boost to China’s official defense budget. While the 14.9% increase is a little less than the 17.6% rise in 2008, it is still substantial, especially in view of the looming economic difficulties and improving relations with Taiwan. Although the official line is that the money will go mainly for raising the living standard of troops, Premier Wen Jiabao in his speech highlighted the need for the continued buildup of the armed forces, which will presumably absorb much of the increase.
This fits with the existing trend of more than a decade, as the Chinese armed forces have been undergoing an intensive buildup that has substantially increased their combat capabilities. Although these capabilities had plummeted drastically during the Maoist period, no concerted modernization drive--primarily to acquire new weapons--was launched until after the Taiwan crisis of 1995/96, because the Chinese had perceived no strategic military threat to their security.
Joffe4
This perception changed dramatically when the dispatch of two American carrier groups to the vicinity of Taiwan forced a humiliating Chinese retreat from missile firing exercises that had been designed to put pressure on Taiwan. This crisis convinced the Chinese that the U.S. would intervene if they attacked Taiwan and confronted them with a new and urgent strategic threat that became the impetus for a major force buildup and a focus for its direction.
This threat, stemming from China’s determination to block Taiwan’s moves toward separation, had been the catalyst for China’s efforts to build up its armed forces. Their focus was defensive: to acquire a capability needed to invade Taiwan and to deter the U.S. from intervening; failing that, to delay the advance of U.S. forces by protecting the maritime approaches to the Taiwan Straits and China.
However, relations between China and Taiwan have improved greatly following the election of Ma Ying-jeou as Taiwan president in March 2008. Although the unification issue remains unresolved, Mr. Ma has rejected his predecessor’s policy of pursuing de facto independence from China.
This dramatic change has removed the specter of war from the Taiwan Strait. It has also removed the primary rationale behind China's decade-long rapid military buildup and the vast investment of funds that it required. However, no letup in this effort should be expected.
The reason is that other factors beside Taiwan have become operative, and these will continue to drive the buildup. The first is the strategic defense of China, which has become an acute issue, paradoxically, as a direct result of the Taiwan tensions. After a decade of gradual post-Mao military modernization, the Chinese greatly accelerated war preparations in the mid-1990s, prompted by the dispatch of two U.S. carrier groups to the vicinity of Taiwan.
However, these preparations have been viewed as increasingly threatening by the U.S. which, in turn, has adopted a “hedging” strategy aimed at strengthening American military power in the Pacific. The Chinese, for their part, have looked upon this as a threat to their security, requiring continuous enhancement of their military posture. It also requires the Chinese to be constantly on alert against what they view as U.S. probing of their defenses, as demonstrated by the recent incident in which Chinese vessels harassed a U.S. Navy surveillance ship.
The second factor derives from the military’s mission of providing support for China’s nationalistically inspired great power aspirations: to obtain for China the international respect, recognition, and ranking that has been accorded to great powers. Although China’s global status received a tremendous boost from its economic surge, China still lacks the military capabilities that are also essential for great power status.
The Chinese are well aware that until now these capabilities have been beyond their reach. Although they possess a minimal but credible nuclear deterrent, they still do not have the conventional forces needed to project military power in wartime for extended periods at a distance from China's borders, and they have only begun to acquire the capabilities necessary for protecting the maritime approaches to China. For this reason, China’s leaders have not viewed their military power as relevant to China’s global aspirations.
This situation is changing. China’s new global standing combined with its Taiwan-driven military progress has convinced the Chinese that they can begin narrowing the gap between their economic standing as a great power and their military capabilities and to begin playing a military role on the international stage.
More important is the desire to assert China’s regional pre-eminence. Whereas China’s global aspirations are long term and require currently unattainable levels of military power, its regional objectives impinge directly on national security and require achievable military backing.
These objectives are to counteract the presence of a potentially unfriendly power in its neighborhood--most immediately, the United States, but also India, Japan and Russia over the long haul. Critical to these objectives is the development of military capabilities that will enable the Chinese to respond to what they might view as a threat to their growing continental and maritime regional interests--primarily sea lines of communication.
The final factor is the sheer force of momentum. The military buildup has set in motion a wide range of long-term programs backed by powerful interests--such as the military-industrial complex--which cannot be easily terminated. There is no reason to assume, moreover, that China’s leaders will want to terminate them, since they and the generals share nationalistically inspired global and regional aspirations. Most important, China’s leaders need the support of their generals and, barring a severe economic crisis, continuous military modernization is a price they will readily pay out of both conviction and self-interest.
These are basic long-term factors that are not likely to change and they will drive the modernization effort for decades. After Hu Jintao became chairman of the Central Military Committee in 2004, new objectives were introduced to underpin this effort and to make it more relevant to current needs. Touted as new “historical missions” and “diversified military tasks,” these objectives clearly reflect Hu’s desire to put his own imprint on the military and to bolster his position among the generals. After the rapprochement with Taiwan, they also provide an additional rationale for China’s continued military buildup.
While Taiwan remains the Chinese army’s main mission, the new “military objectives other than war” include anti-terrorist operations, maritime security, rescue missions, and peace-keeping duties. To carry out them out, it is necessary to divert resources and energies from “core military capabilities.” How much to divert has apparently become a contentious issue among China’s generals.
The most forceful proponents of such objectives are presumably the admirals. Since 2000, the navy has commissioned five nuclear-powered and 22 conventionally powered submarines, in addition to 10 destroyers and six frigates, and nearly 30 amphibious ships. In a Taiwan scenario, the role of the navy would be central: to transport assault troops to Taiwan, and, more importantly, to deny access to U.S. aircraft carriers and warships.
Now the Chinese admirals apparently want to move beyond defensive perimeters and to position the navy as the prime military supporter of China's aspiration to gain recognition as a great power. This was an angle highlighted by Chinese comments on the dispatch of Chinese warships off the Somalia coast to participate in international efforts to protect shipping from pirates.
More important have been renewed reports that the navy is embarking on a program to build aircraft carriers--an issue that has been unresolved for years. If the Chinese go ahead, it is clear that the mission of their aircraft carriers will not be to defend China against the U.S. or to protect sea lanes in wartime. The mission, at immense cost, will be to augment China’s dominant political and military presence in the region and to bolster its international prestige.
The preoccupation with new missions--demands have also been made to upgrade the People’s Armed Police for security purposes and military units for rescue missions--has aroused dissatisfaction in the military, probably among conservative ground force generals. Criticism has been directed at the damage to combat training caused by performance of other tasks; at the inability of the military to effectively carry out both traditional and non-traditional functions; and at inadequate attention to the military’s basic mission of coping with threats to the nation’s sovereignty and vital interests.
There have been no demands to abandon the new tasks, only to focus more on combat preparations. At several recent sessions of the top military policy-making body, the Central Military Commission, such a compromise has apparently been reached. However, if the navy is allowed to go ahead with grandiose development plans, the question is how long it will hold.
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