Covid changes everything. But it had nothing to do with Covid when I unfriended/unfollowed a couple of opposition politicians on social media. No, I’ve not gone over to the other side. I’ll elaborate on that in a moment.
First, let’s take a look at the latest Covid news and it looks like the situation could be stabilising in Singapore. Let’s hope for <2,000 by the end of November and 3 figures or less by the end of this year.
But Covid changes everything. At the beginning of this year, sources within ICA informed me that there was a flood of arrivals from China. It seemed that unemployment was soaring over there and they were eager to look for jobs in Singapore. Then, just these couple of weeks, folks who have been employing workers from China told me that they were all going back. When we first decided to go endemic, the WeChat groups were already buzzing with discussion on how reckless we were, accepting the “inferior” Western ways of doing things. Let’s see how good things are over there. Author Fang Fang wrote in her Wuhan Diary that those who ordered online were given rotten leftovers while food donated by neighbouring provinces last year ended up being sold at supermarkets because there were no storage and distribution facilities planned for it. Once the items were handed over, the cameras stopped rolling and the wayang was over.
This video was taken recently and while Zhong Nanshan said that the cost for going endemic will be much higher than that of aiming for zero transmissions, many Chinese nationals who have arrived in troves earlier this year now think they are in grave danger because 新加坡防疫躺平 Singapore laissez-faire about preventing Covid. Some workers have become cocky, demanding substantial salary increments. Others just packed up and showed their middle fingers. Let’s remember all this and have more self respect than to throw out the carpet for them when they decide that the situation in their 祖国 is not like what Zhong Nanshan would have them believe. Actually, the most qualified person in China is head of China’s CDC Dr George Gao, a Harvard and Oxford graduate. He has been silent from day 1 and was silenced again when trying to extol the benefits of mRNA vaccines.
I have to stress that I have nothing against the whole idea of opening up. It’s just that not known for investing in redundancies, our government has been caught somewhat unprepared when the virus (yao mo gao chor ah?) did not follow their script. I think that from the very beginning, our government should have warned us to prepare for war. Yes, don’t play play, it’s a war. We have been invaded by Covid. Some of us will fall and die. The government can only do this much. When we see a bullet coming, we take cover on our own and not wait for the government to run to us with a shield. In a war, people get KIA. What do we do when people die? We send our condolences and donations. In war, leaders salute those KIA and compensation is paid to the families. Maybe every member of the MMTF should take turns to present a token to the families of those who perished in this war. Something is better than nothing. But no. What did they do?
They would have died anyway! Yao mo gao chor ah? What a thing to say! Covid changes everything. It also reveals a lot of things. These folks are not that incompetent. They are just callous and insensitive. There is little to cheer about so far. The results may take time to show but so far, our paper generals have not demonstrated anything reassuring apart for the occasional, unintentional comic relief.
By the way, assisted breathing/breathing aid are called 辅助呼吸/呼吸辅助器. See, Covid changes everything. Our new prime minister in waiting is doing his own version of cotton sheep. Perhaps the only thing worth celebrating, is the stay of execution of convicted drug mule Nagaenthran Dharmalingam (thanks to Covid but not his intellectual disability). Like most people, I take a dim view of his crime. Unlike some people, I have absolutely no wish to see him die. Drug trafficking is a serious offence anywhere and a capital offence in Singapore. But I’m sure if the folks who have been baying for blood calling out “hang him! hang him!” have any loved ones whose lives have been destroyed by drugs. Maybe that’s why they find folks like Nagaenthran so repungnant. Personally, I don’t know anyone who has been destroyed by drugs (including folks who are former drug addicts), but I do know quite a number of people who have been destroyed by gambling. In my mind, gambling is a far more toxic addiction than drugs. Not a popular or even “correct” point of view, but it’s based on personal observation and facts.
And talking about addiction, in a Facebook post to anonymous confessions platform NUSWhispers, one man wrote that he was an NUS alumni who graduated 10 years ago. He added that because he earned about S$20,000 a month by working at a multi-national corporation and doing a side business, he was able to afford a condominium and about S$1 million in savings. He became addicted to this SYT and he “lost control”.
This is of course, one of my pet topics, so I posted my comment which you can see below, then some wise guy by the name of Ong See Suan reply that “it” is very real. Hmm, what is very real? Black magic? He obviously hadn’t read my book, Spellbound in Chiangmai.
Just imagine a guy who has lost all sense of self worth and self respect from incessant berating chants from his wife at home. He meets a SYT who makes him feel great again. He may or may not know that it’s only an illusion, but he as sure as hell wants that illusion to last for as long as it can. Thais are brought up to be great pleasers. They are trained to say the nicest things in the sweetest ways and behave in ways that lift the egos of their superiors or potential benefactors. Do they need to resort to “black magic”? Of course not. It can all be logically and scientifically explained. Some guys actually think that the illusion is worth every penny they spend on their sugar baby – until they can’t afford anymore. Perhaps Covid really changes everything.
Next, we take a look at Amos Yee. He is accused of exchanging nude photos with a 14-year-old girl via messaging service WhatsApp. The alleged incidents happened between 1 Feb and 30 June in 2019, involving thousands of texts. When their relationship soured, the girl contacted a group of people “interested in exposing paedophiles” and Amos Yee was thus arrested. Yee has been in remand since his arrest, with a US$1 million (S$1.35 million) bond. If found guilty, he could lose his asylum status and be deported back to Singapore.
What kind of reaction would you expect to see on social media? Keep him, America. Don’t send him back here. Some were even mocking those who fought for his freedom when he was imprisoned here. This is unfair. I think initially, everyone thought that Amos Yee would be a valuable addition to the league of political activists like Roy Ngerng, Martyn See, Thum Ping Tjin etc. He certainly seemed promising at that point in time. But instead of maturing into a voice to be reckoned with, he became silent on sociopolitical matters and started feeding his obsession with child pornography – to the extent of trying to justify it in one YouTube video.
Yao mo gao chor ah? Had he gone nuts? This is America and one thing that American society has zero tolerance for, is child abuse. Shouldn’t he have gone to India and taken up a dozen child brides instead? Suffice to say that the Amos Yee we see today is very different from the Amos Yee we saw making videos that mock the Singapore government back in 2015. Do the folks who fought on his side need to hide their faces in shame? Of course not, even though those who detested him from the very beginning would probably like us to believe that they knew that Amos Yee was a paedophile all along. Yeah, right.
But then, even though I don’t approve of what Amos Yee had done, that 14-year-old he had a relationship with should not be the main offence. She is old enough to know what she’s doing and she knew what he was doing was wrong and yet she allowed things to continue and decided to expose him only after the relationship soured. Isn’t this the same as the argument that Nagaenthran , in spite of his intellectual disability, knew what he was doing? If Nagaenthran should be punished, then shouldn’t the 14-year-old be considered a precocious teen trying to take revenge on an ex-lover after the relationship soured?
Then there’s this uncle who did more or less the same thing, except that I don’t think he’s really a padeophile. We need to make the distinction here. Most 15-year-old girls here already have the body of a grown woman. In this case as well, age is only a number. It’s normal to be aroused by that nubile body. So what actually happened? It was a trade that went wrong.
Horny uncle met a 15-year-old student on an online dating app last year and asked if she was willing to provide sexual services in exchange for roughly $200 each time. He told her he would book a hotel room for them to meet and asked her if she was working or still in school.
The pair agreed to meet at Hotel 81 in Dickson Road at around 5pm on Sept 1, 2020, but they were turned away when the girl could not produce her NRIC for registration when they tried to book a room. They were rejected again at Haising Hotel in Jalan Besar for the same reason and the girl suggested that they head to the man’s residence in Marsiling Drive. At his home, they engaged in sexual activity in the toilet before going to the bedroom to perform sexual acts using the toy.
He passed her $250 once they were done and she left. The man was arrested on Sept 15 2020 at his home after the girl made a police report about being paid for sexual activities. Something just doesn’t seem right here. She knew he was committing an offence with her. She went along with it and then reported the offence. Does it not look as if she had a part in the offence as well? Maybe that’s just the minority view of people like me 少数”明”族.
Finally, going back to the beginning of this post, a word about our opposition parties. The WP has never been my favourite opposition party. Apart from the issue of the Elected President, they have focussed mainly on bread and butter issues and not the democratic and nationalistic ideals that concern minority voters 少数”明”族 like me. Recently, I’ve found a couple of their members (not elected MPs) openly supporting authoritarian regimes and justifying draconian measures. Not only that, I’ve found them to be rather cocky when communicating with nobodies like me. For this reason, I decided to unfollow/unfriend them. Dr Vivian is right, the PAP could have written the WP’s manifesto. Supporting them means supporting roughly the same system we’re having today. There lies the secret to the WP’s “success”. They don’t really rock the boat and make people or the government nervous.
The disappointing results of GE2015 are so telling. Just loosen the purse strings a bit and you’ve got the kiasu, kiasi and gian png people on your hook. It doesn’t matter if they don’t have press or speech freedom. With goodies and subsidies ramped up, punishing policies get forgotten or become tolerable. There can be no real changes with the WP and that’s fine with most people because the only changes they want are more goodies. WP may be a good start for some balance of power in our Parliament, but make no mistake, we don’t and won’t have a first world parliament with real debates- not by a long shot unless the nationalistic ideals of the PSP and the democratic ideals of SDP are also embraced by the populace. We hear a lot of complaints and so much swearing about how they are going to vote them out during the next GE on social media, but majority are just kiasu, kiasi and gian png Singaporeans. Covid opens our eyes, but it’s not going to change the majority’s mindset.
New Book!
