Cantonese speech and food in Kuala Lumpur: culture shock

The photo above is of Kuala Lumpur all dressed up to celebrate Merdeka Day. The Federation of Malaya gained its independence on 31 August 1957. That was also the time when Singapore aspired to merge with it, which it did for a short while from 1963 to 1965.

In that era, almost everyone felt that Singapore and the peninsula formed a natural nation. Many people had friends and family across the causeway. Hardly any distinction, in culture and beliefs, could be made between the Chinese in Singapore and the Chinese in Malaya, and likewise for the Indians and Malays. Each felt their community spanned both geographic areas. 

Covington Catholic incident: no need for police or censorship

Covington Catholic dominated the news cycle in American media for several days through last weekend and beyond. The incident, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, may not seem relevant to Singapore, but I think there is one take-away we can draw from it — and an important one too. It is that despite the wildly differing accounts of what happened and the extremely provocative spins applied to the most isolated-from-context of moments, despite the racial antipathy displayed within the incident and augmented by the media storm that followed, there was neither government nor police in sight.

There were no calls to arrest people on account of “fake news” or “hate speech”.

CPF: Fact versus belief, but which will prevail?

The same day (15 Jan 2019) that Manpower Minister Josephine Teo reiterated to Parliament that the CPF payout eligibility age is 65, a Facebook post by Leslie Terh screamed

“Retirement Payout age moved to 70 years quietly…”

adding,

“…if we want to have payout to start at 65, we MUST OPT OUT.”

Simplify universal health insurance

The MediShield Life problem faced by Seow Ban Yam may no longer be topical in the news cycle, but it is now when enough facts have emerged that we can see the larger picture instead of being entangled by the details.

MediShield Life is a mandatory health insurance program run by the government.

The outline of the matter can be gleaned from this 31 December 2018 story in the Straits Times:  MediShield Life paid just $4.50 of senior’s $4,477 post-subsidy bill. Since the story is behind a paywall (though the details can also be found here at The Online Citizen), I will set out the gist of the matter here for convenience.

In trying to kill fake news, we lobotomise ourselves

Everything is fake until it is true. This sentence may sound glib but I think it is fundamental in epistemology. This is not to say that everything will eventually turn out to be true, but merely that everything we know as true was once easily dismissed as fake.

Truth does not emerge wholly formed. Truth is a consensus reached when empirical evidence and logical construction have attained a critical mass, enough to far outweigh any other plausible explanation. However, it can take a very long time for evidence to be found and the dots connected. Even then, ‘truth’ remains contingent on the evolving pattern of evidence.

Singapore bicentennial: Revising history, as it happens

These two sentences almost made me cough out my coffee:

“The journey towards prosperity and a First World status began only in 1959, when the People’s Action Party took over the government. Clearly, then, Sir Stamford could not have been the founder of modern Singapore.”

These assertions were contained in a letter to the Straits Times Forum, published 5 January 2019. Written by Anthony Oei, it was in response to an earlier letter by Loke Hoe Kit published on 31 December 2018.

Loke had been critical of the way the bicentennial narrative was focussing

“more on the island’s 700-year history with greater emphasis placed on the 500 years of history preceding 1819, instead of primarily focusing on modern Singapore’s 200-year existence.”

Anthony Oei’s response letter was full of poorly-founded statements, and I wondered how it made it past the editor’s eye. 

The general case: why Singapore’s security obsession is incompatible with meritocracy

For several years a decade or two ago, tiny Singapore was reckoned by defence analysts such as at Jane’s, to have one of Southeast Asia’s most powerful militaries. I don’t know if this is still true, but given this chart below which I took from this site, I won’t be surprised if it is. The bar graph shows that Singapore topped all our Asean neighbours save Laos, which isn’t included in the graph, in military expenditure in 2014.

Flapping wildly amidst the wreck

For the last few weeks, Singapore-based Keppel Offshore and Marine Ltd (“KOM”) has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. KOM and its wholly owned US subsidiary, Keppel Offshore & Marine USA Inc. have agreed to pay a combined total penalty of more than US$422 million (S$565 million) for making corrupt payoffs to officials in Brazil. Brazilian authorities will receive 50% of the penalty, while the US and Singapore authorities will receive 25% each.

This will hurt. KOM’s profit after tax for financial year ending 31 December 2016 was only S$326 million. Its business was already troubled as can be seen from the fact that its 2015 profit after tax was a much higher S$528 million.

Tunnel floods and the erosion of performance legitimacy

In traditional Chinese political thinking, emperors have absolute powers, subject only to the will of gods. The political duty of subjects is to serve and to obey. The Mandate of Heaven, however, can be withdrawn at any time. Flood, famine, earthquake and pestilence are read as signs that Heaven is displeased with the regime and has revoked the emperor’s mandate.

As recently as 1976, millions of people in China had reason to believe that this divine signalling was in operation. On 28 July 1976, a massive earthquake struck the city of Tangshan, killing over 240,000 people, though nobody really knows what the actual figure was. Six weeks later, Mao Zedong, supreme ruler for 27 years, died.

Clean hands to eat poisonous vegetables

The toilet at this coffee shop is quite serviceable

I wonder how many people are as surprised as I was to read that a coffee shop had its licence suspended for a day over the absence of soap in its washroom. Gee, if that’s the case, I said to myself, hundreds of food establishements should be shut down. Dirty, broken and ill-provisioned toilets are everywhere in Singapore.