Let me give you two examples from the parliamentary sitting of 9 January 2012.

Janil Puthucheary (PAP) posed a question about anti-tobacco efforts.

Dr Janil Puthucheary asked the Minister for Health (a) what is the total economic burden including lost productivity due to smoking, passive tobacco exposure and tobacco-related diseases; (b) how much is currently spent on educational and preventive measures for smoking; (c) how does this compare to the current expenditure on educational or preventive measures for other common diseases; and (d) whether there are plans to increase the expenditure on tobacco control.

The reply by Gan Kim Yong contains quite a lot of fluff. Perhaps he needed to bury within loads of positive statements (“stepped up our efforts”, “enhance its targeted, multi-pronged strategies”) the unflattering fact that smoking prevalence has been rising, from 12.6% in 2004 to 14.3 % in 2010.

Mr Gan Kim Yong: The annual social cost of smoking in Singapore was estimated to be between $600 million and $800 million in a 2002 study by the National University of Singapore. This includes the opportunity cost of tobacco-related work absenteeism as well as healthcare expenditure for tobacco-associated diseases.

Mr Yee Jenn Jong asked the Minister for Education for the last 10 years what was (i) the annual number of foreigners who were granted scholarships by the Ministry to study in our schools and universities and the annual cost of these scholarships; (ii) the percentage of foreign scholars who commenced studies in secondary schools and proceeded on to local universities; (iii) the percentage of foreign scholars in local universities who had graduated with Second Class Upper Honours or better; and (iv) the percentage of foreign scholars who completed their contractual bond period to work in Singapore after their graduation.

The Education Minister gave a reply that was more to the point than Health Minister Gan Kim Yong above.

Mr Heng Swee Keat: For students from ASEAN countries, MOE offers scholarships to promote mutual understanding and goodwill in the region. In the past few years, MOE awarded around 150 scholarships annually to students from the ASEAN countries at the pre-tertiary level and another 170 at the undergraduate level. The scholarships cover school fees and accommodation, and the annual cost is about $14,000 for each pre-tertiary scholarship and between $18,000 to $25,000 for each undergraduate scholarship. Around 65% of pre-tertiary international scholars progress on to our Autonomous Universities.

In addition, our schools, universities and the corporate sector also offer a range of scholarships to quality international students to create a diverse student body that encourages the learning of important cross-cultural skills, as well as to meet the manpower needs of our economy. With Singapore’s decreasing fertility rates, it is important that even as we seek to better develop our talent pool, we augment this with working professionals and students from abroad. This helps us to maintain our economic competitiveness and ultimately raise the standard of living of our people.

Of all the international students who graduated from our Autonomous Universities in 2011, around 45% did so with a Second Upper class of Honours or better.

Upon graduation, scholars are obliged to work in Singapore or Singapore companies for up to six years. More than eight in 10 scholars have been working in Singapore and are contributing to our economy. As for those who did not start work immediately, many had deferred their bonds to pursue postgraduate studies.

As Yee’s question and Heng’s answer showed, follow-up questions are often called for. Without them, it can be hard to grasp the significance of the answer given.

For example, it would have struck you that the Education Ministry’s 170 undergraduate scholarships annually to Asean scholars do not account for the thousands of foreign students in the National University of Singapore alone. That university has an undergraduate enrolment of about 27,000, with another 10,000 graduate students. I believe it was previously made public that about 20 percent are foreign students (can anyone locate some source statistics on this?), so where did the rest come from? Perhaps they are full-paying students, but since Heng added that the universities and corporate sector also give out scholarships, it would seem necessary to get a handle on these numbers if we are to make any sense of the situation.

I will hasten to add however that I fully support the idea that a significant minority of students in our universities should be foreigners, adding as it does an important dimension to education. This must necessarily include scholarships, which also help to create international goodwill for Singapore. Please do not assume from my discussion of this topic that I am anti-foreigner.

As for the other statistics Heng gave, we really can’t assess their significance unless there is comparable data for the student body as a whole, or at least comparable data for Singaporean scholarship holders.

Yee could have asked supplementary questions on the spot, but it would not be fair to Heng, as additional data need a bit of time to unearth them. Yee’s option would therefore be to ask his follow-up questions at another session of parliament. But parliamentary procedures impose limits on how many questions a member can ask, and he will obviously have to prioritise — which is to say, he may not have an opportunity to revisit this issue for a while.

* * * * *

By why should only members of parliament get a chance to ask such questions? If we want informed voters, which surely the People’s Action Party cannot disagree with, there has to be ways for the public to obtain such information. It’s time for a Freedom of Information Act.

“MHA had planned to make these announcements on 25 January 2012, but as news of the investigations had already appeared, MHA decided to advance the media release by one day,” said the statement issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday, 27 January 2012, desperately denying that its hand was forced by Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Wanbao.

The news in question was the arrests of two top civil servants by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB). While details are still scant, Singapore Civil Defence Force chief Peter Lim Sin Pang and Central Narcotics Bureau chief Ng Boon Gay had been placed under arrest several weeks before. The MHA statement said:

CPIB, which is part of the Prime Minister’s Office, commenced interviewing one of the officers [Ng] on 19 December 2011 and the other [Lim] on 4 January 2012 with regard to investigations against them.

In CPIB investigations, it is normal procedure for the person to be placed under arrest if CPIB assesses that there is some basis for suspecting that the person may have committed an offence.  The person can then be released on bail and is required to return for further investigations as needed.

Both officers were placed on leave when the investigations began.  At that point in time, it was premature to make any announcement as CPIB investigations had just started and the outcome was not known.  Furthermore, a public announcement at that point could compromise CPIB investigations.

The ministry was responding to an uproar over the delay in making the arrests public. Many in social media have suggested that the government deliberately suppressed news of these investigations while the debate on ministerial salaries took place in Parliament. One of the justifications for Singapore’s extremely high political salaries, and likewise, salaries for top public servants, is that handsome pay removes the temptation to be corrupt. To have two senior officers — both handpicked to be government scholars in their youth as well — under a cloud of suspicion would have undercut this argument.

Former editor of The New Paper and Today, P N Balji, called the scoop by Wanbao “a memorable and bold moment in Singapore journalism.” Writing for Yahoo, he creditted “a dogged reporter’s patience and persistence combined with a brave editor’s decision to throw caution to the wind” for bringing back “memories of the good old days of old-fashioned reporting” that had long disappeared from Singapore’s traditional media scene.

Indeed, a cursory look at the “standard operating procedure” (SOP) laid down by the powers on high for our traditional media could well explain MHA’s “plan” to make the announcements on 25 January. The SOP would have required every reporter to check facts with the government with the understanding that the story cannot run until the government has replied. This is evidenced by the curious style of newspaper reports in Singapore: the government’s reply comes first before the substance of the story is reported in subsequent paragraphs. For decades, reporting any story without the government’s stand incorporated within it would constitute “unbalanced” reporting, a cardinal sin according to the high priests of Singapore. My guess is that Wanbao would probably have tried to check facts with MHA, and MHA must have stalled for time. In other words, MHA would have known for days, (weeks?) that the news was likely to break.

For its part, the newspaper would have feared losing the scoop with every day that MHA stalled, since others might also have heard the rumours. For example, opposition politician Goh Meng Seng, online group blog TR Emeritus and others have since said that they were aware of murmurings even before the news broke on Wanbao. At some point, Wanbao might have indicated to MHA that it was going to run the story anyway, perhaps because they had other ways of corroborating their facts, whether or not ministry officials deigned to respond.

The ministry meanwhile was perhaps still paralysed, with part of it still unable to believe that a newspaper would dare flout the sacred SOP. Junior officers would have prepared a contingency plan to release the news; the problem was that senior officers wouldn’t give the plan the go ahead.

Now that the news has broken, outside their control, the ministry is probably trying to say that they had anyway planned to release the news. Of course, they had, except that they were trying to delay it for as long as possible. So, such a statement is both true, and yet from a wider perspective, hopelessly impossible to take at face value.

* * * * *

Lately, many reporters have come to me asking for my opinion of the “new normal”. Few of them got from me the answer they might have wanted to hear. I am quite sceptical about this term; I think too many people are being carried away.

While indeed society is changing and there is a gradual re-politicisation — though I hasten to add that it is very gradual and we are still very far from “normal” if one is use the term to mean something approaching the levels of political awareness and popular empowerment in truer democracies — I cannot convince myself that the government is “new” in any significant way.

In any earlier article, Some policies change as PAP government paddles furiously, I proposed a three-tier analysis. I argued that at the technocratic level, the government is trying to be more effective and responsive in meeting housing, transport and similar bread-and-butter concerns. However at the paradigmatic level, they are still complacent. They still believe that the old ideology of craving foreign investment, throwing pieces of gold at top talent, keeping less-than-top talent as cheap as possible, going for broke over GDP growth, going as fast as they can on immigration, remain the best ideas there are. If there is voter resistance, it is the voter who is wrong, not the PAP, though small concessions and dollops of public relations may be used to bridge the gap.

The third tier (which I called Group C in the earlier article) comprises the issues the party considers of existential importance. On these, they will resist as hard as they can. They are acutely aware that they risk losing power altogether if they let go of these old habits. Control of media, and the associated control of the national agenda are among them.

Balji was surprised that this incident shows “lessons not learnt” from the recent general election and the change in the media landscape, now nearly two decades long. He wrote:

That is really strange. This is not a stupid government, it has done a lot of good things for its people, it is respected overseas and its model of governance is highly sought after.

Yet, one of the basic attributes of a smart government — squaring with its citizens and carrying them along — seems to be missing.

I am not surprised. The PAP knows very well how the environment is changing. They just can’t bring themselves to contemplate changing their own ways. The risk that their hold on power would all unravel glues their feet to the tried and tested.

Let’s not imagine that the PAP government is going to bend flexibly with the times. The recent Chapter 11 filing of Kodak should be instructive. It is more than possible for an incumbent to remain in denial of changing circumstances even as it can see it all happening, and resist adapting. Fujifilm changed itself to ride the digital photography wave; Kodak was just paralysed till too late. Ditto, it is more than possible that what change PAP embarks on will be too little, too late. They may calcify instead.

When that happens, change comes through fracturing. Bits at the margins crack and crumble away. Junior to middle civil servants may turn heretical and walk away (or join the opposition). Old props, like once-reliable newspaper editors, may suddenly turn defiant. The great irony of trying hard to maintain control well past its use-by date, is that the end comes in a totally uncontrolled way.

Yet, a glance to my left made me stop. Here’s a photo opportunity, I said to myself, and the resulting picture is at left.

This was not the first time I have noticed it;. In fact, I wrote about it thirteen years ago in January 1999: Non-Chinese boys participating in the traditional lion dance. But this was the first time I had a camera with me.

In the earlier article, I wrote about Malay boys. They made up about half the members of the troupe going around marking the re-opening of shops and businesses after the new year. In this picture taken at the temple, one of them could possibly be Malay, the other looks Indian.

The cynical would say they’re doing it just to collect hongbaos (little red envelopes stuffed with money, traditionally given out at Chinese New Year), but I would say, why not? Does anyone think the Chinese boys (and a few girls) in the same troupes have a different reason for being there?

This is one instance when we can sing praises of money. The appeal of cash is non-discriminatory. If it promotes integration, go for it.

* * * * *

There probably was a time when, for Chinese Singaporeans, the city would be quite dead during Chinese New Year. I am talking about 50 years ago. Then, the different races tended to live in distinct parts of the city. The Malays were concentrated in Geylang Serai and further east, Indians were concentrated in Lower Serangoon and the Naval Base, the Chinese in several parts. It was also a time when adherence to community traditions was strong. Celebrating Chinese New Year would have been a really big thing for the Chinese, not like today when a good number would take the opportunity to travel.

The result must have been one where just about all Chinese would stop work and attend to family and celebration, and since the parts of Singapore they lived in were predominantly Chinese areas, they would have found their surroundings shut tight.

It’s a different Singapore today. The Chinese do not predominate to the same extent. My back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that they constitute about 60 percent of the total population, or about 3.1 or 3.2 million out of 5.2 million. (My same calculations indicate that Malays now make up around 9 to 10 percent, Indians around 12 to 13 percent, and others — Filipinos, Bangladeshis, Indonesians, Burmese, Australians, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, Koreans, etc — make up nearly 20 percent). With a larger percentage of non-Chinese, it has become easier for businesses to stay open through the holidays. Our growing ethnic diversity is giving our economy a resilience and flexibility we did not have in the past.

On the second day of the new year, for instance, when my friends and I wanted to have lunch somewhere, there was no difficulty finding a place that was open. We were attended to by a mix of Filipino and Indian staff. Not far away, a Vietnamese restaurant and a Thai place was open, staffed by Vietnamese and Thais respectively.  That said, many shops that were open had Chinese staff too; once again the prospect of extra pay for working on a public holiday must have been attractive, just as it was for those in the lion dance troupes.

* * * * *

A middle-aged Chinese woman rode the lift down with us. She must have come out of her own kitchen, dressed as she was in shorts and a half-faded, old Hello Kitty T-shirt. For footwear, she had merely slipped on her flat clogs. Yet, she had a handbag with her and was clutching several hongbaos in her hand. Surely, dressed as homely as that, she could not be going out to visit relatives — a custom at Chinese New Year? While, costume-wise, the Chinese don’t go overboard like the Malays do at Eid, there is still a minimum level of dressing that is expected, if only to show a bit of respect to the visited family.

What was she thinking? I wondered.

Coming out of the lift, she headed for the car park. But instead of getting into a car and driving off, she walked right across the car park it to a bin centre where two Bangladeshi workers were transferring trash from smaller bins into a larger skip car. Going  up to the men, she gave each of them two hongbaos, at the same time smiling and saying some friendly words.

She put me to shame. I hadn’t done likewise to the workers around my block.

So, I asked around a few people more knowledgeable than I, and I thought I might share with readers what I learnt (apologies if you already know all this).

It’s obviously an important topic for many parents. A few months ago, I noticed several among my acquaintances figuratively biting their nails as their kids sat for the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). This national exam for the 11-plus is often seen as a make-or-break point in their lives. The Education Ministry says it shouldn’t be (and rightly), and that our school system has several cross-pathways to allow slower developers to catch up. But I have the feeling that few parents know it or believe it. We more readily believe that the Singapore system is quick at judging and condemning, with no opportunities at remedy.

The diagram below should show the main pathways.

It looks like a board game, doesn’t it? But it’s a high stakes one.

The two secondary school pathways on the left side (Northlight-type schools and Normal Technical stream) rarely make it into our societal conversation. This may indicate the way Singapore’s priorities are permanently skewed towards high achievers, and the children of the rich and the privileged.

Normal Technical

Though seldom spoken about, the Normal Technical stream has been with us for quite a while. From an undated paper I found on the web,

The Normal Technical (NT) stream was established in 1994 to provide at least 10 years of general education to the lowest scoring students (approximately 15% or 7000 students) of each cohort (Ministry of Education, 2000) who were dropping out in large numbers after only 8 years of primary schooling. The government saw the need to equip these students who are deemed less inclined to academic studies with “the requisite skills and attitudes to enable them to contribute to the national economy” (Ng, 1993). The policy intent of the Ministry of Education (MOE) was not only to provide them with differential instruction, but a particular one that prepared them for further vocational and technical training at the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) after four years of secondary education. The curriculum was focused on strengthening students’ foundations in English and Maths. In addition to these, students are offered Basic Mother Tongue (Malay, Mandarin or Tamil, according to one’s racial background) and Computer Applications as compulsory subjects. NT students sit for the national GCE  ‘N’ level examinations at the end of the fourth year of secondary school.

However, they do fewer N-level exam subjects than those in the Normal Academic stream, to lighten the load.

Over the years, the pedagogical approach has become more practice-oriented, recognising that this group of students learn better that way. Nonetheless, from the same paper,

. . . low performance expectations coupled with narrowly defined vocational outcomes raise uncomfortable issues. It is impossible to talk of those at the bottom of the Singaporean educational system without acknowledging the dialectical tensions that exist within the wider society and educational culture which play out in schools and classrooms (Luke, 2005), principally, the tension between striving for excellence at the top while attempting to provide improving standards of education for all.

[snip]

In Singapore, students placed in the Normal Technical stream carry a social stigma that comes from being identified as being in the lowest stream in the education system. The Institute of Education has entered local lore for the corruption of its initials ITE as “It’s the End”. Parents’ hearts sink when their children are consigned to the stream. Their children’s climb up the academic ladder has only reached the lowest rung (Straits Times, 2004). Added to the anxiety of performing well in school is the discrimination against students in the lower streams face when it comes to the social scene. For example, a full-blown internet debate that highlights the divisiveness and elitism in Singapore schools started after a Raffles JC school-boy advised boys from ‘neighbourhood’ schools to “quit trying to climb the social ladder by dating students from top schools” (Seah, 2004).

Recently, it was announced that two new schools that are exclusively Normal Technical will be built, to open in 2013 and 2014 respectively. Previously these students were just in different streams alongside Normal Academic and Express in the same schools. The feeling is that this may impact their self-esteem and learning outcomes. The school may not be giving them a fair share of attention and its approach may lean towards the academic when Normal Technical students need different pedagogical styles. Education minister Heng Swee Keat said as much when he noted that the two new schools are being built on the success of schools like Northlight and Assumption Pathway, which are more vocation-oriented (Channel NewsAsia, 30 Dec 2011, First specialised Normal (Tech) school to open in 2013).

Another uncomfortable thing is that pupils in the Normal Technical stream are disproportionately Malay and male. We need an honest conversation about what may be needed to help them best. It may be an unpopular concept in this day and age when “gender equality” is an unquestioned ideal, but educationists have long known that boys need to be taught differently from girls — generally speaking. It may be that our school system is too “feminine”, thus serving our boys less well.

Northlight-type schools

Although the expectation is that Normal Technical stream pupils should make it to the Institutes of Technical Education (ITEs) to acquire higher skills, some still don’t make it. Thus a few years ago, a new stream, now consisting of two schools (Northlight and Assumption Pathway) has been created. They are designed for students who do very badly at the PSLE. Previously, these students would just drop out or have to stay back another year and try the exam again, but I believe officials have realised that this is a fruitless way to deal with the problem. Instead, there is a new realisation that these students need a whole different way of teaching and learning — more task-oriented, hands-on, with a quicker, shorter feedback loop. Rather than have them acquire abstract concepts in science and geography, or even more complicated technical facts, they need to be prepared for working life. Thus the pull-down menus of Northlight’s website has the following:

Among the learning outcomes for English (Years 3 and 4) are the ability to read charts, tables, schedules and maps, filling in forms with personal particulars, being able to understand and follow multi-step instructions, taking notes, and answering the phone. The Vocational > Hospitality section contains electives that include making breads, pastries and cakes, and running a deli. Listed too are hotel housekeeping skills and restaurant service skills.

A-levels versus International Baccalaureate

At the other end of the spectrum is the integrated program, in which students do a six-year course that skips the GCE O-level exam and aims for the A-level, the International Baccalaureate (IB) or something similar. I am told that this scheme was originally introduced in all-boys schools because it was felt that boys do better in an environment that is less exam-oriented. But gender equality — or more likely, prestige considerations — soon reared its head and all-girls schools now offer it as well. The jury is still out on whether it serves one gender better than the other.

What is however becoming common knowledge is that there are pros and cons between A-levels and IB. Apparently, those pursuing science subjects are better off with A-levels, because the exam demands a more structured curriculum that puts more emphasis on acquisition of knowledge. Pupils get a firmer foundation for university. The IB stresses self-directed learning and project work and is better suited for the humanities.

Specialised, independent schools

A number of specialised schools have recently been introduced into the system. They offer a core academic curriculum, plus intensive courses in their specialisations. We now have the Sports School, the NUS High School, the School of the Arts (SOTA) and latest one, the School of Science and Technology.

SOTA and NUS High School, which specialises in mathematics and science, only offer six-year integrated programs. I can understand that of NUS High School which aims to nurture the brightest young minds in academic fields, but it seems somewhat strange for SOTA to do so. A child can be artistically gifted without being academically gifted; is there no place for him there?

The Sports School, on the other hand, offer both O-level and integrated programs. Yet, here again, why not cater to the academically weaker students who need N-levels?

My contacts tell me that it’s parents that have largely determined this set-up. None of them will send their kids to specialised schools if the schools did not also promise a bright academic future. Singaporeans can’t shake off their skepticism about any kind of career prospects in sports, arts or such airy-fairy things.

One thing about the Sports School — its range of featured sports is rather odd. It has golf, netball, bowling which are not exactly what comes to mind when we speak of sports. Better known sports like gymnastics and sailing are tucked away under “other”, whereas tennis, rugby and basketball are missing altogether.

The School of Science and Technology is affiliated with Ngee Ann Polytechnic and offers a four-year program leading up to GCE O-levels. From its website, one sees that its emphases are on communication technology, electronics, media, and biotechnology, and it is probably meant to feed students to polytechnics, considering its use of language like this:

The Applied Learning approach is embedded in the SST teaching and learning process and it places a strong emphasis on the relevance of what is being learnt to the ‘real world’ and their own lives. This connection will aid in holding the attention of the students and motivating them to want to learn.

In SST, the Applied Learning approach encompasses learning that is active and relevant, authentic, integrated, community focused, learner centred, and process focused.

. . .  in other words, avoid the abstract and theoretical sciences.

So much for the scheme, what about content?

Singapore’s overall educational scheme may be nice, but what about the quality of content? If at all to be considered, it has to be a separate discussion altogether, which I didn’t set out to engage my discussants on. However, there were tantalising side comments . . .

Generally, Singapore students do well in international comparisons in math and science, though whether it’s related to cramming is perhaps a pertinent question.

With language and communication skills, there may be room for doubt. One person I asked said something to this effect: “If you want to know about the quality of the teaching of English, all you need to do is just hold a conversation with any English teacher in a neighbourhood school.” This may well be an unfair statement reflecting the jaundiced view of that particular speaker, but seeing the language skills the vast majority of school leavers have, I have a feeling that she isn’t all that far off the mark.

Another teacher — she teaches chemistry — said something that made me even more worried: “Some of my colleagues hold shockingly unexamined views about race and religion — and they’re teaching the social sciences and humanities.”

A third contact reported increasing disciplinary issues in our schools, but with so much flux in thinking about how much control teachers should exercise, and how much spontaneity to encourage, there’s been a very uneven response to this issue.

I wonder what they’re thinking of. Perhaps more closed-circuit cameras located all over the city? Perhaps extensive deployment of face-recognition software?

But why resort to such costly solutions — beside the question of intrusiveness — when a simpler one is available?

This is especially when the newspaper report, citing a statement made by the minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, said: “A recent National Environment Agency [NEA] study showed that almost 40 per cent of respondents would litter out of convenience instead of making a conscientious effort to bin their trash.”

I believe he was referring to a study carried out by the NEA (see soft copy of the report at http://www.publichygienecouncil.sg/news-and-events/news/87) which made the news a few months ago.

The year-long study found that 62.6 percent of the public always bin their rubbish, “whereas 36.2% are situational binners who do so only when it is convenient,” or “because they do not expect to be caught and fined.” 1.2% admitted to littering “most of the time”.

Buried amidst much of the usual lauding of past state efforts at keeping Singapore clean, the book also reports the findings of a sociological study, starting from page 28.  The fourth component of this study looked at the effectiveness of various intervention models. Five town centres similar in age an demographic characteristics were selected for the actual intervention study (results from page 125 on), in which measurements were taken at Weeks 1, 2, 3 and 5 with the intervention implemented during Week 2. Results from Week 3 and Week 5 would thus allow researchers to measure the continuing effect (if any) of intervention measures.

Four intervention strategies were tried out with the fifth town centre used as control.

• physical improvements to the infrastructure, i.e. more bins at closer intervals along walkways and a bin at the centre of a smoking area
• enforcement by uniformed NEA officers during peak hours
• promotion of cultural values, i.e. community invention involving volunteers and environmental messages
• public awareness campaigns, i.e. banners with anti-littering messages

The following table gives the average litter count per transect square after lunch/dinner for each of the town centres during the entire study period. Note that Week 2 was the intervention week:

In Week 2, only Tampines and Bedok gave statistically significant results, said the report. Making a bin more conveniently available seems to work best at lowering litter count, while community intervention (volunteers suggesting personal-prescriptive norms) also works.

Increasing policing does not work, nor do more banners and posters. “Singaporeans may be suffering from campaign fatigue, being tired of being told what they should do as good citizens,” the report noted.

The minister now tells parliament that a new campaign will be launched this year.

Renewed drive to Keep Singapore Clean

Singapore will launch a renewed Keep Singapore Clean campaign this year.

A recent National Environment Agency study showed that almost 40 per cent of respondents would litter out of convenience instead of making a conscientious effort to bin their trash, said Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources.

Therefore, while the Government will continue to ensure a comprehensive and effective public cleaning regime, it must also focus its efforts on fostering a stronger sense of social responsibility among all residents, he added.

The campaign will focus on education, engagement, enforcement, and improving the cleaning processes.

[truncated]

-- Straits Times, 17 January 2012.

Nowhere does the newspaper report say that more bins will be provided. Instead the ministry will explore “technological solutions”.

* * * * *

I noticed that post 9/11, many trashbins were removed from public areas. This happened not just in Singapore but in several cities around the world. Somebody must have imagined that  terrorists might leave bombs inside rubbish bins. Should one explode in a crowded area, the casualties would be considerable.

Today, it is a matter of practice that crowded public areas should not have any bins. Try looking for one at bus interchanges or metro stations and you will see what I mean. Yet these are the very areas with the most trash simply because they have the most people. This policy needs to be rethought.

The problem is compounded as landlords, including transport operators looking for rental income from their stations, discover that food outlets give far better yields than other retail trades. And, to maximise yields, food outlets are nearly all take-away. Why waste floor space by allowing people to sit at tables? But a lot of people don’t want to take away. They want to eat on the spot. So they stand around and eat out of plastic bags or styrofoam containers.

What we have is a situation where landlords and tenants have inadvertently embarked on a developmental strategy that generates public trash without taking any responsibility for it. Hence, a simple change in the rules will make a lot of difference: Require every food outlet (and they have to be licensed anyway) to provide at least one large bin nearby which they have to take care of.

* * * * *

The study also found that smokers were a major source of litter.

First of all, more effort has to be put in to reduce smoking. Previously, I have written about one good idea (Smoking out public service priorities) for which, regrettably, no one in government has shown any interest.

Regardless, the fact remains that for the foreseeable future, smokers will be among us. The thing to do is to designate smoking areas and provide sufficiently large sand trays and bins for them. As things stand, however, the report noted:

Smokers were observed congregating in one or two isolated, undesignated smoking areas in the town centres as they were prevented by law from smoking in sheltered areas and most were considerate enough not to smoke at high-traffic areas. Dr Goh (a researcher) identified one smoking area in each town centre and found that only two of the seven areas had a litter bin equipped with an ashtray. The bins were placed at the corners of the smoking areas and many smokers therefore did not make use of them. Given the volume of smokers who used the smoking areas, the ashtrays of the bins, if any, filled up quickly. The ashtrays were always full when the researchers checked and presented sight that would put off smokers from stubbing out their cigarettes.

* * * * *

In general, what the study found was that most people, smokers or not, were socially responsible. A majority would try hard to seek out bins for their rubbish. Even smokers took the trouble to congregate in customary smoking points, away from other people. What failed them was the state, in not providing sufficient infrastructure (bins), and profit-driven businesses.

That said, we need to recognise the fact that a good percentage of people are just plain irresponsible. Enforcement has a role to play, even if the town centre study didn’t show it to be effective, but maybe that has to do with the design of the study.

There is also a role for self-awareness and internalised social responsibility. This is probably best inculcated in the schools. Trying to do it with adults tends to end up as another preachy poster-and-banner campaign that only turns people off.

After decades of Keep Clean campaigns, it’s time to try a different approach.

If you have spare time this Chinese New Year, go see the digitally animated version of Qingming Shanghe Tu at the Singapore Expo (hall 3). It will be on until 6 February 2012. Admission for adults: $21; closes at 9 p.m.

However, do take a barf bag with you.

The Qingming Shanghe Tu, a 5.28-metre long scroll, is perhaps the most celebrated painting in Chinese art. Painted by Zhang Zeduan (1085 – 1145 CE) during the Song Dynasty, it provides a panorama of scenes from bucolic countryside to bustling city streets. It is generally believed that the city depicted was Bianjing, the Song capital, whose present name is Kaifeng, in Henan province. Containing 814 humans, 28 boats, 60 animals, 30 buildings, 20 vehicles, nine sedan chairs, and 170 trees, the painting gives a glimpse of life, trades, architecture and clothing during the Song period.

The original scroll is not on exhibit; only a copy is.

The highlight of the exhibition, which first went on show at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010, is a computer-animated wall, about 30 times the original. The houses, trees, city gate and bridges are almost exactly the same as in the scroll, but the people and animals are animated. They walk around, and gesticulate to each other. The boats on the river also drift upstream and downstream.

The digital wall flips from daylight to night. It gets quite magical when dusk falls and lanterns are lit. The restaurants and wine houses get crowded while life on the river calms down.

It is a fascinating marriage of computer animation and an old classic.

You will forget that you have a barf bag in hand.

But why is one needed? Because the preceding sections of the exhibition are so badly curated. Intended to provide context by sketching key features of life during the Song period — one  generally regarded as among the most prosperous and peaceful in Chinese history — the audio commentary threw it all away by:

1. Descending to meaningless comparisons with other countries, thus only proving how mean and insecure the Chinese are about their place in the world. At one point, to stress how rich and grand the Song capital was, it said Bianjing had a million population when London had a mere 15,000. For goodness sakes, one can pluck all sorts of comparisons from various time periods to “prove” anything. There is no need puff oneself up by running others down.

2. Sickening obsequiousness to Singapore state propaganda. Every time the commentary had something positive to say about Song China, it bent over backwards to suggest that Singapore shares the same “virtue”.

It’s alright if you speed through the preliminary sections, and spend time only at the scroll — both the copy of the original and the digitized version. You can easily spend an hour watching the figures on the animated wall. There is more than enough detail to keep you engrossed.

The revised ministerial salaries are probably at the upper end of Singaporeans’ tolerable range. While there have been the expected criticisms of the proposals issued by the Gerard Ee committee, the gross amounts being proposed are likely to take the sting out of this issue for the next general election.  The salary cuts of around 30% for cabinet ministers will assuage quite a lot of people.

It was never possible to arrive at a pay recommendation, or even a formula, that would leave everybody happy. The art of politics simply required that the government did enough to satisfy enough people, in order to reduce the penalty they have to pay at the next general election. My guess is that a 30% reduction is enough, but only time will tell.

On the other hand, it should be remembered that the sensitivity of this subject is not an independent variable. It is dependent on the competitiveness of the political landscape. Voters are less likely to take issue with high salaries if they feel they have real power to throw out incompetents or scoundrels at an election. One reason why high salaries became such an acute issue over the last two decades was because Singaporeans felt that the People’s Action Party (PAP) was raising its own leaders’ remuneration out of a sense of entitlement more than anything else, at the same time protecting their incumbency with all sorts of anti-democratic measures and guaranteeing themselves iron-clad job security.

This argument would therefore suggest the opposite conclusion. The issue of salaries, even if less feverish in the future, may remain a sore point so long as the political landscape is less than fully democratic. But how many votes that soreness may cost the PAP — ah, that’s the $64,000 question.

Although I think it is the general salary level rather than the specific mechanisms and formulae that most Singaporeans are interested in, there were a few specifics emerging from the report and the recent parliamentary debate that made me raise my eyebrows. I will discuss two of them below.

First however, let me outline the general principles behind the revised salary scheme.

Key features of the new salary scheme

A key reference — the report calls it a benchmark — is the total salary for an entry-level minister (MR4 grade). This will be 60 percent of the “median income of the top 1,000 Singapore citizen income earners”, said the report. Based on data from the income tax Year of Assessment 2011, the 60% figure is $1,100,000.

Total annual pay for other political appointments will be based on this benchmark through a scale of ratios.

By definition, the benchmarked total annual salaries are assumed to comprise 20 months’ salaries. Thus, the monthly salary for any particular grade is one-twentieth of the respective benchmark, as you can see in the right-most column of the table above.

The guaranteed salary is 13 months of that, not 20 months, since the total annual salary assumes 7 months of bonus payments. In other words, the basic salary of an MR4 minister is 13 x $55,000, or $715,000.

There are three different variable components of the total annual salary. The annual variable component is a government-wide bonus. The review committee assumes one month to be typical, but I have the impression that some years, they are in the three or four-months range. Perhaps readers can advise what the historical trends have been.

The performance bonus is determined by the prime minister for each individual office holder. Although the benchmark assumes 3 months’ performance bonus, as many as six months’ can be given out.

The national targets bonus will be based on four measures, of equal weight:

• Real median income growth rate
• Real growth rate of the lowest 20th percentile income
• Unemployment rate
• Real GDP growth rate

The review committee argued that these four measures will be sufficient to link ministerial salaries to the wellbeing of all Singaporeans. Among the suggestions it rejected was that of using the Gini coefficient as one of the measures. In doing so, it said,

Although some members of the public suggested that political salaries should reflect the level of income inequality, we prefer having real median income growth and real growth rate of the lowest 20th percentile income as indicators, as they focus more directly on raising the incomes of both average and vulnerable Singaporeans.

I shall come back to this further on.

Like the performance bonus, although the benchmark assumes 3 months’ national targets bonus, as many as six months’ can be given out.

This means that in a very good year, ministers can be paid:

• 13 months of salary
• Maybe 4 months (?) annual variable component
• 6 months’ performance bonus
• 6 months’ national targets bonus

For a minister at the MR4 grade, his total salary for that year would be 29 months’ pay, or $1.595 million (going by the 2011 monthly basic of $55,000). For the prime minister, it would be twice that, or over $3 million.

The president’s salary

For the record, let me just add briefly that the president’s salary will now be as follows: His monthly salary will be the same as the prime minister’s monthly salary (i.e. twice the MR4 monthly salary), with 13th month pay and the annual variable bonus. The president will not get performance bonus or national targets bonus.

The top 1,000

One of the two things that made me raise my eyebrows was the job distribution of the top 1,000 income earners. These, as recommended by the committee, would set the benchmark for ministerial salaries.

As you can see from the table published by the Straits Times (at right), those from the financial sector made up 38 percent of them.

It struck me that such a high proportion would mean an over-representation, a hunch I verified by looking at employment data by industry published by the Ministry of Manpower (below). In the third quarter of 2011, only 5.6% of employed persons in Singapore (not just citizens) were in the financial sector.

In an era when there is general disgust at the way bankers and money traders have brought the world economy to the edge of an abyss by their greed and short-termism, and at the way they have been paying themselves fat bonuses even through bad times,  it seems rather questionable to link ministers’ salaries to this breed.

Fat and easy national target bonuses

As mentioned above, the national target bonus is based on 4 measures. In the annex to its report, the committee set them out in greater detail, thus:

My immediate impression is that the mid-target (i.e. to earn three months’ bonus) is actually quite easy to achieve. Take the last measure — real GDP growth rate (i.e. adjusted for inflation). It’s a relatively low 3 percent.

The measure for unemployment rate is also problematic, because Singapore offers no unemployment benefit to those laid off and we have no system for people to register as unemployed. My guess is that our unemployment statistics are based on periodic sampling surveys. Besides the uncertainty that such a method produces, there is also the risk that the figure can change depending on how definitions are tweaked.

Then, the  targets for income growth rates for the median income earner and the 20th percentile earner are the same. This means there is no incentive to close the income gap. Not only did the review committee dismiss using the Gini coefficient, the measures it chose to use do nothing to incentivise a closing of the income gap.

There is also the difference between the GDP growth target and the income growth targets, with the former being higher than the latter. Why, if GDP grows 3%, should the median Singaporean’s income only grow by 2%? Well, it can happen, if the population of Singaporeans grow (and the growing national pie is divided by a faster-growing population), but with our extremely low birth-rate, we know this is not a likely explanation. You’d be forgiven if you believed that the median Singaporean ought to see a 3% rise in his income too, all things being fair, and that ministers’ bonus incentives should reflect that.

So where would the excess go? Which segments of our economy would grow by more than the GDP rate, to balance out median income growth that lags GDP growth? There are four likely categories: (a) the richer segments, (b) corporate profits, (c) increasing numbers of foreigners, and (d) the taxman. In other words, the incentive structure appears hard-wired to reward ministers for “business as usual”: Widen the income gap, keep up immigration, continue shovelling profits to corporates at the expense of personal pockets, and raise taxes and government fees.

Ho Kwon Ping, executive chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings, highlighted this in a talk he gave Monday, 16 January 2012, at a seminar organised by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS). The institute had prepared the statistics for him.

Doctors in both cities earn about the same. Likewise, both Singapore and Hong Kong are open to foreign labour. Yet there is this disparity.

If we look at other developed countries, again, Singapore looks like the outlier. Ho said, “First, professionals like doctors and lawyers are paid slightly better in Singapore than the average of the IPS sample of developed countries. Second, our lower-income workers fare much worse than their counterparts in developed countries.

“In fact, in Germany and Australia where immigration policies are more restrictive, construction workers earn about — believe it or not — half the salary of a doctor.”

An excerpt of Ho’s speech was carried in the Straits Times, 17 January 2012.

Ho didn’t want to try diagnosing the problem, except to say that after looking at nurses, the wage gap closes as skills go up – which is not a terribly informative finding since it is true everywhere. It is the enormous gap between construction workers and plumbers on the one side and doctors (representing professionals) on the other that requires explanation.

Instinctively, readers would say supply and demand lie at the bottom of this phenomenon. Singapore’s open-door policy to foreign labour is the direct cause of such low wages in lower-skilled sectors. And you would be right. Nor is it confined to foreign labour. There are spill-over effects on many other low-skill jobs where Singaporeans also work in, e.g. cleaners, airconditioner servicemen, food service workers.

Indeed, one can certainly boost wages by restricting supply, However, unless skills and productivity rise, what one gets is smaller output (because fewer workers) at a higher price. This is why many among us would say, let’s take a softly, softly approach. The middle class fear that if the wage gap closes, they will have to pay more for services that they consume. Cognisant of this, the government too is applying little more than the gentlest tap on the brakes.

What seems hard for Singaporeans to imagine is a worker in these industries being far more productive than he presently is, thereby earning more without sacrificing output. This inability to visualise how we can get the same done with half the people is holding us back. We take half-steps to address the problem, because we are fearful of withdrawal symptoms should cheap labour come to an end.

I said half, because Ho Kwon Ping said half. He cited something a Korean construction company told him as they were building one of our casinos. The Koreans had noticed that their subcontractors in Singapore had twice as many workers as would have been needed in Korea.

Just the other day, I saw an example of “the Singapore way”. A worker who had injured his back told me it came about from a fall while carrying 50-kg sacks of cement up makeshift stairs.

The immediate question I had – which is not particularly relevant to this article – was why he flouted the safety rule that no man should try to lift more than 20 kg. He had no choice, he said. His boss would fire him if he did not do as told. The small point of relevance here is that our foreign labour policies are so careful to please employers, they give carte blanche powers to bosses to fire workers at will; in the same way, our policymakers may be paralysed with fear when it comes to telling them that going forward, they need to pay workers more and use fewer of them.

However, more pertinent to this article was the worker’s answer when I asked him why it was necessary to carry sacks of cement up rickety stairs in the first place. There was no lifting equipment — was the answer.

And there you have it: a vicious cycle.  Assured of plentiful supply of cheap labour there is no incentive to mechanise. The result is that human beings are used as mules. Is it any wonder that our productivity is abysmal?

Lest the more hard-hearted among us see the issue merely as one of comparative cost of human muscle versus cost of machinery, I will hasten to add that relying on large numbers of low-skilled workers – not just foreign ones — generate a variety of social costs too. Overcrowding and social friction have been mentioned many times. Businessmen may not take these costs into account, but everybody else on this island pays the price for him.

But I want to add two more costs. The first is that — and here I am referring to low-wage Singaporeans — creating an underclass by paying workers in certain vocations a less-than-living wage breeds resentment. It changes the tenor of society. The rich actually feel more insecure when they are surrounded by the poor.

The second springs from the case of the worker with the injured back. He and other injured workers then put demands on our healthcare system. As we all know, in healthcare, costs can be considerable and bed capacity already very limited.

At the end of the day, it is a fallacy to think low-wage workers are cheap.

Clementi is the worst place to start from when going downtown, as I recall from a news story a month or two ago. Tampines also figured in the hellish-commute stakes. A figure of 20 minutes was mentioned, increasing to a little over 30 minutes at peak hour, if my recollection’s any good.

The times sounded too good to be true — 30 minutes is hell? –  and I did a double-take. Only on re-reading the article did I realise it was about driving. The study did not refer to the proletariat that had to rely on public transport.

It only upset me more.

Heck, some days, I am kept waiting 25 minutes just for a bus. You may have reached your destination, but I am still stuck at my starting point. It happened again over the Christmas weekend. It was raining and I had to rely on a feeder bus, which took forever to arrive. I resolved to write.

The service quality standards laid down by the Public Transport Council (PTC) can be seen at their website www.ptc.gov.sg. In a nutshell, these are the standards required of bus operators:

“Headway” means the time between one bus and another on the same route. However, the service standards only refer to headway at the commencing bus terminus. The 10-minute or 20-minute headway intervals mentioned above (with 5 more minutes’ allowance) do NOT apply to buses en-route.

Nor could I find a definition for “peak” and “non-peak”.  I would have thought it essential to set out the times clearly if the quality standards are to mean anything.

Just today, I see a report about SMRT Corp, the operator of the East-West and North-South metro lines, increasing train frequency:

Those travelling at the peak of the weekday morning rush hour will see trains arriving every 2.14 minutes to 2.5 minutes, while trains will arrive every 2.5 minutes to 3 minutes at the height of evening peak hours.

The morning peak hour stretches from 7am to 9am, and evening peak hour starts from 5pm and ends at 7.30pm.

– Sunday Times, 1 Jan 2012, More frequent train service during rush hour, says SMRT, by Royston Sim.

Many readers would leave with the impression that they can expect a frequency of 2.14 to 2.5 minutes during the morning peak of 7 to 9 a.m., but you would have been fooled. Read it again. It says: “at the height of peak hours”. What does that mean?

It is also rather irresponsible for the newspaper to place a sentence about peak period timings right after SMRT’s claim which DOES NOT refer to peak period timings.

Coming back to buses, commuters may need to judge if the standards are too lax. Is a 10-minute headway (ex-terminus) during the mysteriously undefined “peak” good enough? Is a 20-minute headway all other times good enough?

Of course, these are minimum standards. The bus operators SBS Transit and SMRT could well be doing much better than that for several services, but it would be hard for the public to know, since this is not published information.

More importantly, what matters to commuters is the headway en-route. We hear of buses bunching up followed by a terribly long interval before the subsequent bus comes along. The latter will likely be overcrowded as a result. In this respect the Public Transport Council has no quality standards in operation. It appears that the PTC takes the bus companies at their word that it all depends on traffic conditions and there is nothing they can do about it.

Worse, I haven’t seen any reports about attempts to measure headways en-route. It’s a known unknown, but we make no effort to find out?

* * * * *

This is where I beat the drums called Freedom of Information, and the related Open Data. If the PTC won’t act, let citizens act.

How?

All our buses use (or should be using) the Global Positioning System (GPS) or other systems to predict and record arrival times at bus stops. At several bus stops, we have electronic boards like the one at right.

You can also digitally query SBS Transit about the expected arrival time of the next bus of any of its services, at any bus stop.

Clearly, data is being collected. Release the raw data (in machine-readable format) to the public and some whiz-kid somewhere is going to find a way to crunch the numbers to reveal patterns and trends. We’ll be able to see how bad the problem is: Which routes tend to have the problem of bunching and/or long headways en-route, and at what times.

We can then focus on possible solutions such as looking at more efficient bus lanes along the most troublesome stretches of roads, or redesigning the service routes if their excessive length aggravates the delays.

SBS Transit and SMRT may well say, Oh, we’re already doing that. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. We, the public, don’t know. And that is the point. Since they are running a public service, we should have a right to know. We should have a right to monitor their performance.

In theory, the PTC is supposed to represent the public in monitoring the operators, but given the complete lack of information from the PTC — “peak” not defined? — and the apparent failure to even measure en-route headways, it may well be sleeping on the job. In any case, as a public body, the PTC too should be sharing information with the public. There shouldn’t be a cosy, opaque relationship between the regulator and the regulatees.

The time for open data is now.

But today, he was alone, and not a threat to our beloved racial model. And so he was ignored even though he had actually come to the coffee counter before three other customers — construction supervisors who perhaps came from the same worksite as the Indian guy. The difference was that the supervisors were Chinese, with at least one of them from China, judging by his accent.

The three women behind the counter — Chinese Singaporean, middle-aged — engaged the men in banter as they prepared their orders. There was an easy familiarity, possibly because the men had become regular customers from working nearby.

Several minutes and jokes later, the men left. The women returned to their usual stations, still chattering among themselves, the broad smiles and good humour lingering on. The one whose job was to stand at the cash register and take orders turned to the Indian guy, asking him what his order was.

I wasn’t really paying attention, and for a while was just glad that the loud, mirthful chattering from the counter had ceased.

But only for a while. The peace was soon disrupted when the first woman foghorned: “Dteh aw, not day war. You donno, ah?”

She then turned to her colleagues and, as if they had not already heard all that, repeated to them how hysterically funny it was that this dark-skinned guy referred to tea without milk by mispronouncing its Hokkien name. They all laughed, in easy continuation of distracted banter from just moments earlier with the Chinese men, and tried to teach him how to say it correctly, intonation included. Ha, ha, ha. Oh, what a scream, he just can’t get it right, can he?

Welcome to another example of Singapore’s sterling service standards — make fun of our clients.

But as you would also have guessed, this incident speaks of more than just customer service levels. Woven in here are issues of race, class, language chauvinism and nationality. The man himself might not be invisible to the women, but his feelings were.

* * * * *

On the matter of race, there was an interesting letter in the Straits Times, 31 December 2011.

I refer to Jeffrey Law Lee Beng’s letter, Put Locals In Ads (Life!, Dec 24), where he mentions ads are “promoted . . . by Caucasians” and “not Singaporeans”.

This implies that there are no Singaporean Caucasians. I know a few who have become naturalised Singaporeans. Does Mr Law not consider these Caucasians Singaporeans?

Gary Ow.

– Straits Times Life! Mailbag, 31 December 2011

It was interesting because both sides had a point. Pointing out that commercial advertisements all too often use lighter-skinned models, Caucasians particularly, is nothing new. It’s true in many countries too, from Brazil to India to Thailand, playing to widespread bias against dark pigmentation, and a tendency to see Caucasians as higher-class.

Without contradicting this, Gary Ow also had a point:  Why do we instinctively see Caucasians as non-Singaporean? Why do Singaporeans have such a race-delimited notion of nationality?

Is this equally true of other countries, or is this phenomenon unusually pronounced here? I honestly don’t know. One day, my opinion swings this way, another day, it swings the other way. Perhaps, our history has something to do with it. Ever since independence, we have spoken of Singapore as “multiracial”, an expression that only serves to highlight the “racial”. Moreover, we define what races constitute the “multi” — Chinese, Malay, Indian  and “other”, with the last, despite sounding like a catch-all term, usually understood to be quite specific: predominantly Indian with a small mix of British or Iberian blood.

Seeing our society in such rigid terms must surely have an effect, I tell myself. Yet, it is not hard to name other countries that have a similar race-delimited view of nationality. In fact, countries that have moved some distance away from it are the exceptions rather than the rule.

Nonetheless, I personally look forward to the day (not that I expect to see it) when we get over this. As I have said several times in the past, I think we’ll be a happier place when skin colour ceases jerking from one tone to another as one crosses a race boundary, to become a smooth continuum. This will come from interbreeding and more immigration. Breaking down the Chinese-Malay-Indian straitjacket through an infusion of Filipino-, Burmese-, Persian-, Kazakh-, Hungarian- or Bantu-Singaporeans will be blessing.

* * * * *

Yet, at least when it comes to race, society is moving in the right direction, albeit slowly. Most of us have stopped being proud of chauvinism, even if we’re hypocritically guilty of it. Most of us speak well of breaking down barriers, even it it is lip-service.

When it comes to religion, however much we keep speaking of the two in the same breath (“regardless of race and religion”), people quite often adopt a rather different position. There is no shame in being exclusivist.

About a month ago, at a philanthropy fair, I overheard one young woman greeting another like old friends. It soon became apparent that they had been in the same church. Out of politeness, the first woman introduced to her friend a twenty-something guy who had been standing next to her; he was Malay with a typical Malay name. She introduced him as a fellow volunteer with the Red Cross. Pleasantries over, he soon moved away to give the girls some space.

The second then asked the first: “Is he Christian? He’s not, right?”

Replied the first: “I don’t think so? Why do you ask?”

“Then how come he’s volunteering at Red Cross?”

“Why not?”

After a bit of to and fro, it dawned on the first woman (and myself) that the church friend thought Red Cross was a Christian organisation — something to do with the cross, I suppose. I had to suppress a shriek. The first did better than me, keeping her poise and explaining that it wasn’t, whereupon the second asked, “So why are you volunteering with it? Why don’t you volunteer with a Christian organisation?”

The shriek got much harder to suppress. I had to physically move away.

Let me hasten to add that I do not think she was representative of Christians in Singapore. Yet, I seem to come across people like this from time to time and it worries me if there is a significant minority who think the way she did.

* * * * *

The Arab Street quarter was in the news lately, and reminded me of an incident about one or two years ago. An American friend was coming to Singapore, and together with some other Singaporean friends, we arranged to have a meal together. I can’t recall whose idea it had been initially, but the group seemed happy to go Middle-Eastern at a restaurant in that district.

On the evening itself, we were a little surprised that the American had brought his Malay-Malaysian boyfriend along. The two of them had come down from Kuala Lumpur for a few days. None of the Singaporeans had met the boyfriend before, but no matter. It was a casual evening, and asking the restaurant to add one more place to the table was the easiest thing in the world. It was fortuitous though that we had chosen to eat where we did (or at least we thought it was), considering that he was Malay and probably Muslim.

However, as we left the restaurant, I overhead the guy whisper to his American beau something along these lines: Did you notice that the restaurant was not halal? They served beer at the other table. I wish I had known beforehand. Why didn’t you ask?

I pretended not to have overheard. Good thing I did too because I might have responded poorly had I been asked. Mixed feelings were swirling within me. On the one hand, I felt somewhat guilty that we hadn’t been careful to ensure a halal place. But like him, it didn’t really occur to us to ask, since it served Middle-Eastern food. On the other hand, I felt imposed upon. We had agreed in advance and had informed the American who offered no objection. We had made a reservation. We didn’t know the boyfriend was tagging along. Were we expected to shred our plans on his say-so? Added to that, I felt resentful that I was feeling partly guilty. Why should I be feeling that way?

* * * * *

Imposition can come from various angles. Just a week ago, the New Paper reported that the Education Ministry was amending its sexuality education package in deference to the Catholic Church. It will now stress abstinence and tone down the parts about preventive contraception. I shall want to write about this, but first I need to calm down.