On a lighter note, the Minister Mentor touched on what he calls assortative mating, that is, finding a spouse at your level - something he strongly believes in.

He said: “I have explained this. I think I lost votes after I explained the awful truth. Nobody believed it, but slowly it dawned on them, especially the graduates, that yes, you marry a non-graduate, then you worry about whether or not your son or daughter is going to make it to the university.”

Okay, I guess I’m not too well read and I usually don’t give much thought about this topic anyway. For a person who is still resisting contributing to the gene pool, this is seriously the last thing I would bother about ya?

But, assortative mating… that somehow caught my eye today. I think this term has a pretty catchy feel to it. I needed to know more. I did the next best thing and wiki’d “assortative mating” while googling “lee kuan yew assortative mating“. (don’t you just love tab browsing?)

I got to know what assortative mating meant, but I couldn’t find much material on the Minister Mentor’s view. Instead, I found a lot of people in the blogosphere flaming his idea.

I think I get his idea, and I think he has a point. I think I like it. But I don’t think his colleagues in the gahmen gets it. Otherwise, why would they put a foreign dormitory in a middle class residential area like Serangoon Gardens? Don’t they know that there are plenty of graduates and would-be graduates living in this type of housing estate?

I mean picture this… innocent ‘ol me, single and available hanging out in my cosy middle class estate when the ass of this cute female foreign worker catches my eye. I think I’m in love. I marry her. *poof* my valuable graduate genes is suddenly no longer available to a local blue blooded female graduate.

I want to be assortatively mated. A foreign worker dorm next to my house is not going to make it easy for me. I mean, sometimes dunno why ah, but when the planets are aligned and the moon is full, I think with me other head lor…

(Before I get flamed, I wish to make clear that this does not mean I think other housing estate don’t have graduates… I just wanted to point out that Serangoon Gardens have.)

Why postmen? Well, they said they would submit the letter and they did. The Minister for National Development said he received it. But I guess that was all huh?

It is so obvious that plans were already made to convert the former Serangoon Garden Technical School when the residents of Serangoon Garden got the wind of the news.

The access road to AMK Ave 1 was already being constructed as our leaders blatantly insist that no decision has yet been made. (Well, the road is now pretending to be a construction access for the CTE widening project.)

It is really one thing to be forthcoming with information and another to secretly make decisions to convert the former Serangoon Garden Technical School into a dormitory while pretending that it might not happen.

Our MPs could have just come out and say sorry suckers! Your votes are peanuts! Better you than me and get it over with. I think I would have felt slightly better.

Preemptive defence, saying that it is not up to them just makes things worse because it kept the hopes of the residents up. The the news today just dropped everyone’s hopes like a lead baloon.

They should have just said, ‘I’m afraid it’s gonna happen.’ and then go on to provide a timeline and road map. I think the residents in the vicinity should have at least been given a chance to work with the authorities.

My immediate question to the powers that be now are:

1. How long will the location be used as a dormitory?
2. Since the Government has been so secretive about the whole thing? Who do we turn to if there are problems?
3. What do I do if I see a foreign worker masturbating at my nearby neighbourhood park when I go for my run in the evenings? (This would not have been a question 2 weeks ago, but I just saw one doing it in Sembawang Park.)
4. Do I report a foreign worker if I see him having sex with a maid in the park? (I saw a FW and a maid behaving intimately just yesterday.)
5. What if my dog goes missing? (It hasn’t.)
6. There will be financial benefits being enjoyed from the lease of the facility. Will the residents benefit from this in return for such a sacrifice?
7. Will the dorm operator be decided via an open tender?
8. If so, when will the tender for the dorm operator be posted? 
9. Will Serangoon Gardens residents be given preference if they take part in the tender? I believe residents will be able to run the place better since they have local knowledge.

I mean, I settle my side you settle yours lor… why come and disturb me when I sprucing up my land right?

I mean, we need more space what… Malaysia got so much land, won’t understand one. I guess I was wrong and I am beginning to see the folly of my rationalization at that time.

Malaysia has every right to complain. Especially so since it affects the livelihood of her people.

Singapore was being an inconsiderate neighbour. The courteous thing would have been to inform our neighbours and work together right from the start to minimise any possible impact. Perhaps even to cancel the whole plan if studies show that there negative effects that affect the livelihood of thousands.

Without the slightest courtesy, they went ahead on land reclamation works. Malaysia had to go to ITLOS to get an interim stop work order before Singapore halted the works.

With regards to this, I sincerely apologise to our neighbours. Perhaps, to make the South Johoreans feel better, they might want to know that Singaporeans are not spared such inconsideration too.

I live in Serangoon Gardens. There is an unused school building 500 meters from where I live. It belongs to the Government. So my Government is also my neighbour. They have chose to employ the same approach on us as they did in the Pulau Tekong case.

They secretly study the feasibility of converting this school building into a foreign workers dormitory without seeking inputs from residents living in the vicinity, their neighbours. As I type this, plans are probably being made to proceed with the conversion. They say it is still in the feasibility studies stage, but I have my doubts.

I guess it is always when it starts happening to you that you see things from the other side.

Our neighbours in South Johor have it better. They can still go to ICJ and ITLOS to get stop work order and make some noise. At least they all managed to force Singapore to work with them for a resolution. I think we all in Serangoon Gardens lan lan. No where to go. Even our members of parliament say can help submit our pettition but this one not their department to decide.

I must say I was offended. I don’t believe these correspondents are angels either. I’ve lived in Serangoon Gardens all my life. Believe me, the residents of Serangoon Gardens are not as evolutionarily challenged as these ST correspondence makes us to be.

These are the same people that write articles I read everyday and depend on them for accurate reporting. Their partiality towards this issue has definitely hurt my confidence in the integrity of their reporting.

Don’t make xenophobia sound like a rude word. It is human nature to be suspicious of people or anything that is foreign or that we are unsure of. Humans would have been extinct if we do not exercise this trait.

The residents of Serangoon Gardens are afraid. We are worried about things that could go wrong. Who are these so called foreign workers? We’ve seen them around but never lived 500 meters from them. The only time we get to know them is when the papers report on crimes committed by foreign workers.

Want us to accept foreign workers? We had a couple of decades to do this. Maybe if foreign workers were given better publicity over the last few decades, it would have been more acceptable for residents to accept this proposed dormitory.

Obviously we did not learn anything from history. The anti-Blacks sentiments that happened in the 50s was a result of fear of people that looked and talked different. Black people that at that time, do not have the power to put a positive spin on themselves. People fear what they do not understand. Did we not learn anything from history?

I live in Serangoon Gardens and I do not understand foreign workers. Be it culturally, or linguistically. I fear them. Did I make an effort to understand them? Well, I never did feel the need to but I guess it is a bit too late now huh? The press over the last decade did not help much too!

• Maids impregnated by foreign workers. - Yup, happened. Read about it.
• Overcrowded buses. - Yup, still hapenning.
• Rape cases involving foreign workers. - Yup, read about it.
• Foreign workers eating up pets. - Remeber the koi incidents a couple of years back?
• Robbery and thefts by foreign workers. - Dunno. But after all these bad publicity, I think might as well add this in for save measure.

Was there any good press about foreign workers in the past? Hardly. But bad press? Well, I’ve been fed enough information from the press to be comfortably uncomfortable in the presence of foreign workers in my estate.

1,500 people who are foreign and different. Suddenly living next door to you. Can anyone honestly tell me that they are comfortable with that? I am not. But hey, its not my fault. This poor peasant here is getting a lot of information from the local press and it sure did not paint a pretty picture on foreign workers till 2 days ago.

Want to turn foreign workers into heroes in 2 days? Try 2 decades.

Am I xenophobic? I’ve neighbours who are immigrants. I studied with foreign students for years. Some have become very good friends. Well, I don’t really think I am a xenophobe. Heck, I’d probably not mind if my next door neighbour rented his house to 20 foreign workers, but if you put 1,500 of them 500 meters from where I live, I think that is probably where I’d draw the line.

I was damn pissed lor! I mean, it is a well known fact, by now that sub standard cashcards were sold to the public creating this inconvenience to the public and at a great cost to the gahmen.

So I wrote in to LTA.

There was no reply, so I paid lor… cussing at both LTA and the big banks that own NETS while typing in the payable amount on my web browser. I mean, better to pay up than to risk a fine ya?

Almost 2 months have since passed and I have since forgotten about the whole episode. This morning, I got a letter from LTA that says that they will reimburse me the admin fees! That’s a pleasant surprise!

I’m still cheesed of that NETS made my life so miserable. I have to waste about an hour to have my IU inspected for no reason. (Who’s paying for my time?) The guys at the inspection center told me that is was the cash card at fault (DUH!) and reluctantly issued me a replacement card.

Guess what? They were reluctant because NETS gave them the same crappy card as replacement cards! Trying to clear stock, I presume.

I still maintain my stand in my letter to LTA. They should take this up to NETS. Claim back all the loss admin charges.

Selling people products that do not work properly is just plain wrong. Complaining that ERP gantries are not compatible is just plain stupid. Without ERP gantries, there is practically no other use for the freakin thing.

It’s like selling a car that breaks down after three months and then put the blame on the roads for not being compatible.

A quick check with petrolwatch.com.sg would immediately show you how well coordinated their pricing are like.

Just because two price adjustments occurred over a single day hardly signals a price war! What effectively happend was a mere pump price reduction of about 12% (RON98) since the first pump price reduction was announced on 5th July 2008.

The monthly average price of crude oil increased by about 2% from May to July 2008 and has dropped by 9% since July. Pump price rose by about 4% from May to July 2008. This just shows that the prices are moving in tandem with crude prices. Nothing more.

Channel News Asia also noted that “Professor Chou Siaw Kiang, executive director of the Energy Studies Institute, noted how the perceived “closely coordinated group” of oil companies were “discoordinated” in this round of price cuts. “Perhaps they are not in unison this time round because therapid drop in oil prices is sending a signal, and there is no time to react in a unified way,” he said.”

I am not too sure about that. My cynical mind just thinks that after so much public outroar, these petrol giants just decided to create a little excitement for the press to feast on.

I also noticed this little statement that the Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang told Parliament in April the Government has no “evidence of collusion among retail petrol companies”.

Again, the cynical mind, when working overtime thinks that if no investigation is being carried out, then of course no evidence lor. (So, was an investigation ever conducted?)

I mean, if I went to the toilet to shit, but you never go to the sewers to look for my shit, and hence, no evidence that I crapped, then does it mean that I never shit at all?

While I applaud the price drop, I remain sceptical that these petrol companies are not a “closely coordinated group”.

He has shown that he will stop at nothing to become the next Prime Minister. Even at the expense of the country

Let’s see his track record…

The Asian Financial Crisis… as the then Finance Minister and DPM, he wanted Malaysia to get the IMF aid, including all the ridiculous measures that put Indonesia into turmoil. This subsequently ended Suharto’s reign in Indonesia while at the same time, subjected millions of Indonesians into extreme hardship. Indonesia was subsequently one of the last country in the region to come out of this crisis. Suharto died in ignominy.

I believe he knew his boss would meet the same fate as Suharto and without knowing full well what could happen to Malaysia, he pushed for it. This would likely prematurely get rid of his former boss Dr M, as Malaysia sinks into bankruptcy. This would leave Anwar with a nice empty PM slot to fill and a country with nowhere to go but up. History has shown that though Dr M handled the crisis in a somewhat unorthodox manner, Malaysia was the first country in the region to recover from the crisis.

It is not difficult to imagine the suffering Malaysians would have been put through if Anwar managed to get his way. Indonesia went through that.

His corruption and sodomy charges… If it was a government conspiracy of the highest level, he would not be out now. His years in the government has allowed him the connections to side step a few landmines and have them explode in the government’s face. This means we would not really know whether he is guilty or not. What we do know it that he has somewhat managed to come out of this in a more advantageous position.

Recent elections have also shown that he is able to turn former foes into pals, while putting himself as the unofficial leader of the coalition. Scarily brilliant.

Second sodomy charge. If by his claim that it was a conspiracy and that the police are working for the Government to get rid of him, then by the same claim, he could go around slaying people and the government would not be able to do anything. This guy has successfully put himself in a position where by he could get away with  murder in the country and blame it on a conspiracy!

Lucky for the Malaysians, their police force still have some balls left in them. It is after all their job to investigate into any reports made without fear or prejudice.

Up coming by-elections. He’s got his bases all covered by saying that massive vote rigging would occur. Now he can afford to lose this by-election and blame the government for it. If he wins, he wins. If he loses, he wins too!

Brilliant tactician. Unfortunately, he has still not shown that he is for the people. ‘Reformasi’? What good is a reform if the country ends in chaos? History has shown that reforms, when done in an overly zealous manner usually results in tragedy. Compare what happened to the USSR against the Chinese way of reforms.

If he is really for the people, then he should take things slowly and nudge the country into reform. There is no way to immediately reform a system that took so many years to evolve.

At the end of the day, it seems like he only wants to be PM at all cost. Sadly, he has only shown that he is a whiner that complains and cries foul everytime he hits a snag on his way to accomplishing his ambition to be Prime Minister.

Two of the Sources I managed to find are the The West Australian and The Canberra Times.

However safe the plane was is really history. I don’t know about you guys but I am not about to ride in a plane that was almost blown out of the sky previously so if I were to fly QF the next time, I’d look at the tail of the plane to make sure it ain’t VH-OJK.