It's time to tighten our belts

Seen in the Sunday Times, that Singaporeans are feeling upbeat about year 2008 and 7 out of 10 persons are expecting pay rises.

But will that be enough? I don't think so. People like me are feeling the pinch and fully aware of the rising cost of living -especially the transportation cost, the utilities cost.

Don't talk about the ridiculous ERP rates that can suka-suka increase, the petrol prices, even the prices of public transport like bus and taxi have gone up. This for most of us, cannot be avoided as we need to go work on Monday - Friday, transport is a must unless you are those lucky ones that live near your workplace. If it is food or beverage, we can have other alternative like eating roti and drinking water. Public transport is simply unavoidable!

The annual inflation is 4.2 per cent. I doubt my pay increase can't even match the inflation rate.

It's time to tighten our belts.

A light-hearted looks at the new year's ahead with Christmas jingle

Rising cost of living - Joy To The World tune

Joy to the world, my pay has come!
Let me receive my due
Let every hand, get bonuses
Then all the tills will ring
Then retailers will sing
And all in the family will want something

Joy to the world, the dollar reigns!
Let men stay in employ;
While wheat and oil, feed, meat and grains
Go up in price oh boy,
Go up in price oh boy
Go up, go up, in price, oh boy

Shopping not my cuppa tea

I had never like to shop.This is probably due to my size. Walking through the aisle is a challenge. I mean, not only have I need to avoid my clumsy self from knocking off those display items from the shelves and breaking them, I have to watch out for those kids running around the store.

Fine, this to some maybe just an excuse, don't talk about my clumsiness. With the festive seasons, the crowd is super huge. Shopping without an idea what to buy is painstakingly tough.

And with the crowd, I could not think straight as I would hear people yakking around. Kind of distracting for a person like me who gets distracted easily.

After successfully manoeuvring around the store and have an eye on something to buy, getting assistance is like a nightmare. No one seems to care or offer help. It's so ironic, when you need assistance, no one is there and when you don't, they come after you.

And then, comes the closing of a transaction, oh my god!, the queue at the cashier is long. Read somewhere that the cashier is the most important section in a store. It's human, some potential customers may want to get something from the store but seeing the queue, will turn them off. Do the retail stores aware of this fact?

(But, I do have some good experiences with cashiers. One is many months back in Robinson @ Raffles City, whereby the cashier are friendly and recommended me to shop for shoes as there's a discount sales when I am paying for a bag. Good services.
The other one is Watsons' @ Bugis. This is well-known for the long queue during weekends. I'm totally surprised that the cashier wears a smile and apologizes for having the customers to wait in a queue! Nice touch.)

Choosing a present is definitely not my cup of tea. I am a very boring person, and one cannot find a hinge of creativity in my choice of present.

I could have shop for weeks and find nothing. In the end, I would resort to giving gift vouchers. Boring huh? I totally agree.

That's what I have gotten for my family members! Haiz.

As for my friends, I have purchased something for them. Now I'm keeping my fingers' cross that they like what I have bought for them. At least not perfume, eau de toilette, gift sets from Body Shop, Crabtree & Evelyn, etc.

《喝彩》

由知名导演高志森和金牌编剧杜国威指导的粤语音乐剧《喝彩》于去年在香港首度公演，掀起了巨大回响，不但热卖35场，而且场场爆满。原汁原味的《喝彩》 已在于2007年11月23 - 24日首度在新加坡D'Marquee, Downtown East公演。而我也去看了。

《喝彩》故事讲述三位才华横溢的少年人Leslie（谭伟权饰）、Paul（郑家俊饰）和Danny（陈健豪饰）为多年好友，他们刚刚踏足社会，本应前 途无限。Danny在歌唱比赛中展露音乐天分，成为流行乐坛的新宠儿，但面对成名后的种种压力，竟渐渐依赖药物去逃避及减压。Paul口才了得，成为电 台当红 DJ，但却爱上赌博，欠下无法偿还的巨债。Leslie当上歌手，面对挫折从不放弃，终创出骄人佳绩，但长年累月绷紧著的神经却令他渐渐染上抑 郁的情绪。昔日的三个好友，在成长路上渐渐越行越远，分道扬镳。

故事透过以三位主角的自身遭遇带出现今香港青少年面对情绪、滥药及赌博等问题，题材励志，带出青年人面对逆境或困难时要有勇于面对的精神，而且为加强感 染力，演员在剧中更演绎张国荣和陈百强40首经典歌曲。

《喝彩》真的是一部有旺盛使命感的难得佳作，向大众传扬珍惜人生，为生命喝彩的正面讯息。

非常enjoy!




From Hong Kong, SpringTime Stage’s cantonese musical Shooting Stars is a tribute to the forever-missed Canto-pop stars Danny Chan and Leslie Cheung, who suffered from drugs abuse and depression respectively in their last years. The musical features more than 40 songs from the two artists and portrays some of the common problems youngsters face nowadays, including drugs, gambling addiction and emotion instability.

Enjoy the musical show. No regrets though my butts and back had suffered due to the cramp seatings.

父母親

A meaningful article that is worth reading...

I've learned...

They're written by Andy Rooney, a man who has the gift of saying so much with so few words.

I've learned... That the best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.

I've learned... That when you're in love, it shows.

I've learned... That just one person saying to me, "You've made my day!" makes my day.

I've learned... That having a child fall asleep in your arms is one of the most peaceful feelings in the world.

I've learned... That being kind is more important than being right.

I've learned... That you should never say no to a gift from a child.

I've learned... That I can always pray for someone when I don't have the strength to help him in some other way.

I've learned... That no matter how serious your life requires you to be, everyone needs a friend to act goofy with.

I've learned... That sometimes all a person needs is a hand to hold and a heart to understand.

I've learned... That simple walks with my father around the block on summer nights when I was a child did wonders for me as an adult.

I've learned... That life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.
I've learned... That we should be glad God doesn't give us everything we ask for.

I've learned... That money doesn't buy class.

I've learned... That it's those small daily happenings that make life so spectacular.

I've learned... That under everyone's hard shell is someone who wants to be appreciated and loved.

I've learned... That to ignore the facts does not change the facts.

I've learned... That when you plan to get even with someone, you are only letting that person continue to hurt you.

I've learned... That love, not time, heals all wounds.

I've learned... That the easiest way for me to grow as a person is to surround myself with people smarter than I am.

I've learned... That everyone you meet deserves to be greeted with a smile.

I've learned... That no one is perfect until you fall in love with them.

I've learned... That life is tough, but I'm tougher.

I've learned... That opportunities are never lost; someone will take the ones you miss.

I've learned... That when you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.

I've learned... That I wish I could have told my Mom that I love her one more time before she passed away.

I've learned... That one should keep his words both soft and tender, because tomorrow he may have to eat them.

I've learned... That a smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.

I've learned... That I can't choose how I feel, but I can choose what I do about it.

I've learned... That when your newly born grandchild holds your little finger in his little fist, that you're hooked for life.

I've learned... That everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.

I've learned... That the less time I have to work with, the more things I get done.

Mix Tongues?

Janadas Devan – on words

PUBLIC discourse in Singapore, conducted usually in English, has been studded of late with Chinese and Malay expressions. Consider these examples from the past months.

NTUC secretary-general Lim Swee Say, in arguing why companies should be required to the reveal the age profiles of their workforce, said: This way, even if the “CEO sumpah (‘swears’ in Malay) ‘I never discriminate against the older workers’, he will have to explain himself.”

Dr Amy Khor, chairman of the government feedback unit Reach, when speaking in Parliament of the CPF changes, reported that some people feared the changes would leave them with “bo chi, bo kang (‘no money, no job’ in Hokkien)”.

A grassroots leader at a dialogue session, who felt that elderly Singaporeans should be given access to their CPF savings early so they can “have a good time at the IR”, asked Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong what would be the use of having money when one is old and bo gei (“without teeth”).

Mr Lee replied: “If they win (at the IR) they will tan tio (‘benefit’). If they lose, their children will take care of them. If they have no children, the Government is there. Bao jia (‘definitely win’).”

But that would be disastrous for the country as a whole, Mr Lee warned – “bao si (‘sure die’).”

He added “Bo gei you cannot enjoy, but bo gei, bo lui (‘no teeth, no money’) is worse.”

The longevity insurance, the Prime Minister went on to tell his audience, is a winner – “bao ying (‘sure win’)”. “If you look at obituary pages… you read, mo mo gao ling jiu shi (“So-and-so is 90’ in Mandarin). So many 90-years-olds… and some over 100.”

Mr Lee speak three languages – English, Mandarin and Malay – fluently and some Russians too. But I do not recall him mixing it up – code-switching, as it were, between tongues – to the extent that he did at this dialogue. What is going on?

Well, obviously, Singapore’s leaders have discovered that breaking occasionally into Chinese or Malay, even when they are speaking primarily in English, can be rhetorically effective. The examples above also indicate a more relaxed attitude on their part towards Chinese dialects.

According to the General Household Survey, one in five Chinese Singaporeans habitually speaks a Chinese dialect other than Mandarin at home. For this reason, Manpower Minister Ng Eng Hen urged MPs recently to “spew forth with passion your Hokkien lyrics and poetic metaphors” when speaking to their constituents about the CPF changes. It is doubtful if poetic metaphors, in any language, can ever be persuasive on financial matters, but it is significant that Dr Ng mentioned Hokkien, not Mandarin.

We have certainly come a long way since the early days of the “Speak Mandarin” campaign. As my colleague Peh Shing Huei noted recently, there was a time when ‘even simple dialect phrasers in locally produced Mandarin drama serials were scrubbed out”. Yam seng, for instance, the traditional toast, was in the early 1980s replaced on television with “the politically correct Mandarin phrase, gan bei”. That may not qualify as “a kind of linguistic genocide”, as Mr Peh quoted the film-maker Tan Pin Pin as saying, but it would certainly qualify as an authentic case of asinine inauthenticity.

Singaporeans do speak a variety of languages. Almost all of us are bilingual, if not trilingual, to some extent or another. Even people like me who communicate primarily English, do occasionally break into Malay or Hokkien or Tamil – to clinch a point of contact with our interlocutors. That is how we habitually cakap-cakap among themselves. This newspaper always provides English translations of even the simplest Chinese or Malay expressions it cites – even cakap-cakap, amazingly enough, even bo lui – but most us above 50 years old don’t need them.

This facility of ours for bi-,or tri-lingual citations is I think wonderful. It is boring to be always speaking in only one tongue. There are Malay expressions that convey thoughts English cannot. There are Chinese and Indian sayings that encapsulate insights unavailable in English. Since we are bilingual, there is no reason why we should not occasionally slip into our English speech and writing the odd phrase or two from one of the other languages we know. The variety achieved thus would be pleasing; the variations would lend our communications a certain multidimensional quality.

As a matter of fact, English writers have been doing this for centuries, sprinkling their writings with quotations from both ancient and modern languages.

“Five words sum up every biography” Video meliora proboque; deteriora sequor”, I read the other day in an essay by Aldous Huxley. “I see the better way and approve; but I follow the worse way”. The English translation conveys accurately enough the same thought, but it lacks the precision of the Latin original.

“What is she really like? It is hard to judge beneath the joie de vivre.” How often have we not read sentences like that? Joie de vivre is usually translated as “joy of living”, but the English version lacks the panache, that certain je ne sais quoi – other French phrases with no exact equivalents in English – of the original.

“Looking into the heart of light, the silence./ Oed’ und leer das Meer.” That comes from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The German line, a quotation from Wagner’s Tristan, means simply “Desolate and empty the sea”. So why couldn’t Eliot have written just that? Well, read the lines again and it would be clear their affect and sound turn crucially on the German intrusion.

All this is quite different from bo gei, bo lui, admittedly, but only in degree, not in kind. If magazine writers can routinely invoke someone’s joie de vivre, there is no reason why Mr Lim cannot utter the odd sumpah. If British and American writers can break occasionally into Latin or German to achieve particular effects, there is no reason why Singaporean writers cannot break occasionally into Mandarin – or Sanskrit or Arabic even – to achieve similar effects.
Mixing it up in this way would be far preferable to mixing it up in Singlish. This maintains of the integrity of the different languages; Singlish doesn’t.

“Bo gei you cannot enjoy, but bo gei, bo lui is worse” – that remains a grammatical English sentence despite the Hokkien intrusions. “Ah Pek no teeth, siong. Ah Pek no teeth and bo lui, worse one” – that is Singlish, a grammarless confusion of English and Hokkien.

Faham, tak?

Chocolate

Life is like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're gonna get - Forrest Gump (1994)





Some time is good to live life impromptu..


And for chocolates, this Apple Chocolate from Royce is one of my strong recommendations!

Achievers less prone to Alzheimer's

- ST 07102007 -

People who are disciplined and organised are less likely to get the illness

A SURPRISING study of elderly people suggests that those who see themselves as self-disciplined, organised achievers have a lower risk for developing Alzheimer's disease than people who are less conscientious.

A purposeful personality may somehow protect the brain, perhaps by increasing neural connections that can act as a reserve against mental decline, said study co-author Robert Wilson of Chicago's Rush University Medical Center.

Astoundingly, the brains of some of the dutiful people in the study were examined after their deaths and were found to have lesions that would meet accepted criteria for Alzheimer's - even though these people had shown no signs of dementia.

'This adds to our knowledge that lifestyle, personality, how we think, feel and behave are very importantly tied up with risk for this terrible illness,' Wilson said.
'It may suggest new ideas for trying to delay the onset of this illness.'

Previous studies have linked social connections and stimulating activities like working puzzles with a lower risk of Alzheimer's.

The same researchers reported previously that people who experience more distress and worry about their lives are at a higher risk.

The new findings, appearing in Archives of General Psychiatry, come from an analysis of personality tests and medical examinations of 997 older Catholic priests, nuns and brothers who participated in the Religious Orders Study.

At the start of the study, none of the participants showed signs of dementia. The average age was 75.

Everyone took tests, including a standard personality test. Then the researchers tracked them for 12 years, testing yearly for cognitive decline and dementia. Brain autopsies were performed on most of those who died.

During the 12 years, 176 people developed Alzheimer's disease.

Those with the highest scores for a personality trait called 'conscientiousness' at the start of the study had an 89 per cent lower risk of developing Alzheimer's compared to people with the lowest scores for that personality trait.

The conscientiousness scores were based on how people rated themselves, on a scale of 0 to 4, on how much they agreed with statements such as: 'I work hard to accomplish my goals', 'I strive for excellence in everything I do', 'I keep my belongings clean and neat' and 'I'm pretty good about pacing myself so as to get things done on time'.

When the researchers took into account a combination of risk factors, including smoking, inactivity and limited social connections, they still found that the dutiful people had a 54 per cent lower risk of Alzheimer's compared to people with the lowest scores for conscientiousness.

Could lower conscientiousness merely be an early sign of Alzheimer's?

The researchers think not. At the start of the study, the less conscientious people were no more likely to have lower mental abilities or more memory problems than the most dutiful people in the study.

Renee Goodwin of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health was not involved in the new study but has done similar work that found a connection between conscientiousness and better health.

'It's having self-discipline and energy, doing the healthy things,' she said.
Because priests and nuns are an unusual group, the findings may not apply to the general population, Goodwin said, but she noted that there was a normal range of personality types among the participants.

The research may lead to strategies for developing dutiful personality traits as a way to prevent dementia, she added.

CPF changes a fair deal, so why the hesitation?

Sep 29, 2007

THINKING ALOUD

CPF changes a fair deal, so why the hesitation?
By Zuraidah Ibrahim, POLITICAL EDITOR

ACCORDING to a certain fortune teller, I will live to 103.

That's the age an online longevity test, www.poodwaddle.com/realage.swf, spat out after quizzing me on my medical history and lifestyle.

That would mean I have over 61 years left. Despite the stories of contented centenarians one sometimes reads, I confess the prospect filled me with dry-throat dread.

My sense of trepidation was so overwhelming, I momentarily entertained thoughts of picking up smoking so the computer would shave a few decades off my life expectancy.

Like many other Singaporeans, my unwillingness to contemplate old age is connected to fears about what my health will be like, how to deal with loneliness that will envelop me if my loved ones die first, and how to cope financially.

The announcement of the latest changes to the Central Provident Fund (CPF) ran up against a natural resistance to confronting such difficult facts. The Government's announcements were as welcome as someone forcing you to stare into a photograph that has caught you with a particularly unflattering expression.

The instinct is to deny the person in the image represents you.

Similarly, many do not want to connect with the picture the Government is presenting, of people who will grow old and who risk real suffering unless they are forced to start saving more now.

People have been reluctant to embrace the obvious. The facts are that many will live longer than their parents did, with fewer young people to support them.

The other set of facts has to do with just how much savings people have put aside in their CPF. In a recent Straits Times Insight survey, seven in 10 said they knew their CPF would be inadequate for retirement. They also listed as other options for financial independence - continuing work, tapping on other savings or their family.

Judging by this survey, certain realities have actually sunk in. Singaporeans know they do not have enough for old age. Whatever they have set aside has, for the most part, gone into their home, not an inconsiderable asset they can monetise later.

So why has the debate witnessed an undercurrent of tension between Government and people?

Some attribute the unhappiness to the longevity insurance. If that is so, one suspects it is over the modification of the CPF system from one of forced savings to incorporate the element of risk pooling.

When it is forced savings, the understanding is, it is my money and it will be returned to me or my beneficiary.

When it becomes an annuity that premises its continued funding on risk pooling, I am contributing to a pool. Yes, I am betting on a long life and someone else underwriting it but I do not like the fact that if I exit too early, I 'lose'.

But the extra one percentage point members will get from their CPF balances will pay for the annuity, as the Government has explained. Hence, they will not be out of pocket by taking up an annuity.

Seen that way, it is a pretty fair deal.

However, what complicates the matter is the other issue being debated, which is whether the Government ought to give better rates of returns.

Why can't it match the returns made by Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) and Temasek Holdings, which invest on its behalf?

The reasons it has given are compelling. First, this is as good as it gets for a product that is virtually guaranteed. Put simply, for the majority of CPF account holders - seven in 10 of them who have balances of less than $60,000 and stand to gain the most from the changes - this is a sure-win proposition.

It must be flattering to GIC fund managers to hear that Singaporeans have such confidence in their abilities, but as the saying goes, past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

GIC investments certainly seem like a good bet, but they are not guaranteed, and it would be irresponsible of the Government to claim it was.

Second, exposing CPF members to higher risks may not be something they can live with. The ST Insight survey found that nearly half of those polled did not know how much interest they earned on their CPF.

That surely is an indication that many are not financially savvy and would probably be better off leaving it under a risk-free, guaranteed scheme.

Indeed, most of those polled were largely risk-averse. Asked about investment choices, close to four in five would opt to invest their CPF Ordinary Account savings in those with no or low risk.

Beyond these reasons, there are two lessons from other countries worth paying heed to.

One is that pension funds by companies are untenable and national pension funds are in a fiscally calamitous state. In the United States, for example, the social security system has gone from a worker-to-retiree ratio of 16 to one in 1950, to three to one today, and is expected to be at two to one by 2030, at which point spending on old-age entitlements will make up two-thirds of the federal budget.

Italy is faring even worse, with a mere 0.7 worker for each retiree, which means there are more people collecting benefits than paying taxes.

The second lesson is this: Financial strategists in the West have come to the conclusion that with longer life expectancies, annuities to hedge against longevity make sense. The latest issue of the magazine, Financial Planning, makes this case that the elderly should have 'at least some fraction of their nest egg' annuitised.

Perhaps, these concerns over longevity insurance and interest rates hark to a larger underlying issue, which is over the question of subsidies and just how much direct subsidy the Government is prepared to commit upfront to fund the people's retirement needs.

It is ideologically opposed to the pay-as-you-go system of other social security funds, which end up burdening future generations. It is also against dipping into past reserves.

As of now, it says these are non-negotiable issues. But the pressures it will face on this front will only grow and the hard reality is that it will need to continually explain and defend its position to new generations of retirees.

As Second Minister for Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam set out on the previous page, there is a chunk of assistance given over the course of a low-income worker's life through Workfare, housing grants and so forth, that amount to one-third of his retirement savings.

Another step the Government is taking is in the redefining of net investment income or NII, which will unlock more money than is traditionally put away. This, if anything, signals that it is putting its money where its mouth is.

It is unfortunate that the Government's sincerity is sometimes obscured by its zealous emphasis of the anti-welfare, self-reliance message, as well as the coincidence that its biggest give-aways seem serendipitously to match the electoral calendar. As a result, the level of trust in the latest moves is surprisingly low for a Government with such a strong record.

All in, it has its work cut out for it. Singaporeans will probably take longer to be convinced, which is a pity.

The sooner the country hunkers down to map a realistic strategy for its ageing population, the better off it will be.

And that should be obvious even without the aid of a fortune teller.
zuraidah@sph.com.sg

Time Management

This is one topic that I always fail. What I am refering does not cover punctuality. I mean I am punctual most of the time. And even if I am going to be late, I will keep the other party informed.

There's 24 hours in a day. Ideally, I would have 6 hours of sleep from 1230hr to 0630hr, 2 hours of prep and transport to office, starts work at 0830hr and ends at 1800hrs, catch a bus home by 1930hr, quick shower and dinner, I should left with FOUR hours personal time before bedtime. This never happens! Not even once !! (excluding weekends and days that I'm on leave or with appointments)

Is that crucial? That I've kept asking myself countless time. I mean after all it is quality time not quantity that I'm looking for. More than ever, my answers is a 'YES'

What is quality time? That's when one fully uses it to do something beneficial. For instance, read a book, catch up with news, talk to family members, watch a movie, etc...

At times, I will tell myself, hey it's ok, stay an hour extra in the office means sacrificing a bit of sleep or personal time. No big deal.

That is not the case... many occasion, the lethargy sets in once I step out from the building and true, I have 3 hours of personal time but it is not quality time at all!

I have tried to rest an hour or 2, then start my book or something, it never works, I will end up doing nothing except maybe to do channel surfing or just flipping the papers or daydreaming.

So how to overcome this? I guess I have to learn to "Move On". It's time to SUMO - Shut Up Move On.

Still learning...

I picked it up again?

Used to have a blog back in 2005, when I'm still in TT. I've diligently maintained the blog for a while till my mentor told me "What is past is history, we live in the present, we should live life the fullest now and plan for the future. Why waste time on the past, is history the field that you major in? Or have you done something so meaningful that it's so worthwhile to document it?"

He is right, even as I start posting this up. Contradictory of me eh? But that's me. Don't we women have this little right to contradict ourselves? Especially for an old single fat woman?

I shall see for how long I can upkeep this blog. The last one is being spammed and that's the other reason I have removed it.

Rules are set for me. I will not waste more than 30 mins per posting and if I don't update the post within a month, I will stop the whole idea.

Will continue later...