From here

Klang Hokkien Association president Dr Ler Cheng Chye said simple logic would denounce even the remotest possibilty that yee sang was from Singapore.

"The custom of eating yee sang during Chinese New Year belongs to the Cantonese and given that people of this dialect are mostly from Kuala Lumpur, it must have originated from here," Dr Ler.

What kind of Dr is Dr Ler? What kind of logic is that? It takes only 1 person to invent the dish. It takes Singapore to have only 1 Cantonese to have a remote possibility that it is from Singapore. And we have much more than 1 Cantonese. What do he has inside his skull? Jelly?

And, according to mrbrown,

To be accurate, yusheng (raw fish) has always been around, but Lo-Hei was invented by the founders of Red Star restaurant. In Singapore.

Note: yee sang is yusheng in cantonese. Literally it means raw fish. But it's also another name for Lo-Hei.

Excerpts from CNA Forum

yenyenpark:

ex-SMRT staff on why SMRT breaks down...

The problem all started when the Sr staffs were retrenched, resigned, retired and asked to leave. When she took over how many senior staff with years of experience and trained by experts from Japan, England and Hong Kong that did not agreed with her was removed and replaced with young people with paper qualifications and have not the slightest idea of how to run a train system. There these young management staff tried to impress her by backstabbing each other, come out with hairbrain ideas or quick fix solutions that did not sound in the long run. Well guess what after 10 years of this type of sh.it from a well oiled and smooth running system she ran it to the ground. Mark my words as long as she is in the helm surrounded by her clueless dogs there will be no improvment.

That was the time I took a serious look at my retirement plan. Then came her waves of cost cutting measures, buying of cheap spares that looks good on paper but can't even last till the next round of preventive maintainance, reduce the manpower to all sections working at skeleton crew level. The last straw came when some of my junior staffs was not satisfied with the way they were graded and the amount they got compare to what their bosses got. They brough it up to the union and HR and they got the same reply " The door is always open". That was when I knew the sh.it has hit the ceiling and I took my earily retirment and joined my fellow former co-workers.

botak:

yenyenpark just copied from another forum

the info is accurate....some old birds retired, many gave up and joined LTA / SBS NEL....

can you imagine a very small group of key NEL staff has a combined MRT engineering experience of >200 yrs...while a much bigger group of SMRT senior management has <60 yrs of train and track experience

the most senior and well respected of the 1980s pioneers are leading NEL and Down Town Lines; the brightest of this batch is the chief of LTA MRT, now leading in the investigations.....

Ask anyone from SMRT, how many senior staff has more than 20 yrs railway engineering experience.....

It is not a surprise that ah Lui went to LTA to look for the answer, all the super insider old birds are there....they knew exactly where the root causes are, that explains why so many 3rd rail claws were found dislodged during the overnight inspections led by LTA.....

God bless S'pore. God bless ah Lui.

My friends know that I am critical of the current government. Some of them has given up on talking about current affairs with me.

Recently, 1 of them say that critising the government has become a religion for me. She think that I would blame the government for a friend's rudeness. Which, unfortunately, I did. Sort of. She think that I would blame the government for someone pretending to sleep while sitting on a priority seat with an old man standing standing in front of him. Which, unfortunately, I did too. I would blame the government for government for feeding the whole nation, which I didn't, though I would think the government can consider feeding some people.

There are people who will blame the government for their being jobless. They will blame the government for their been poor. I don't. I won't blame the government for my being jobless, nor for my being poor. But I will blame the government if our jobless rate is high. I will blame the government rate of increase of poor people are increasing.

Recently, a friend use a online service to ask guest to register to go for his wedding. This smacks of insincerity and rudeness. By registering for his wedding, isn't it like we are asking him to invite us to his wedding? It's like he think his wedding is so great that people want to register for his wedding? And it also suggest that he don't care if you attend for his wedding. A I-can't-be-bothered-to-ask-you-to-attend-my-wedding-personally-you-are-not-worth-the-effort-register-yourself-in-my-website attitude. Except that I don't think that's what he think. He is just being a typical Singaporean (the action is not typical though), to do things the most efficient way, ie, do things with the least effort. Fortunately, most Singaporeans still understand that not everything should be done the easy way. Unfortunately, for him, wedding invitation isn't 1 of those gotta-do-it-the-proper-way thing.

I blame this on the government for culturing a must-do-things-efficiently attitude. They keep harping on how efficient they are, how great they are. If they are great, and they are efficient, it must be good to be efficient? On top of that, they placed so much emphasis on getting a degree. Your career in civil service depends on what kind of degree you get. If you didn't have any? You get peanuts. The real kind of peanuts. And in order to get a degree, you need good scores in all exams before that. And exams in certain subjects only. And if you are not that inclined in those subjects, what can you do if you don't want to be doomed to life of mediocrity? You do it the efficient way. You memorise the textbooks. And worse, the school principal's and the teachers KPI are on how great the students results are. Such that they are not so much on nurturing the young anymore. They need to get good results from the young, the efficient way. There's probably more. Or there's nothing to it. I am reading too much into it. Doing things efficiently is mostly a good thing. But there is going to be side effect in some people. Side effects like what manifested in my friend. He may be wrong. But the society plays a part in him becoming what he is. If I have to be criticised of being critical of the government, I would appreciate if my critic know why I am like that.

Another thing I don't like what is government created is the meritocracy system. Meritocracy system should not a bad thing. But our system's side effect is quite serious. By right, it's good to reward people who do well. But it has evolved that the people who do well think the people who don't do well, they deserve whatever they get. Coupled with the government's policy of giving minimum welfare, which rubs of on citizens, there are people who do no think much of helping people who don't do as well as us. They deserve it for not doing it right in the first place.

I don't like this side effect. I believe in 取之社会，还之社会。 Those do well should help those who doesn't. But there's a problem in this of course. There are bad people who make use of nice people who do well for handouts so that they don't have to work for themselves. So sometimes there are nice people who won't help because they don't want to be "cheated". The why-should-I-spend-money-on-people-who-don't deserve-it? The questions are i) who are people who don't deserve it? and ii) what's the ratio of people who deserves it to those who don't? And what's the cost of knowing the answer? I don't like the current system, but I don't have the answer to a good system. I want more to be done to help the less fortunate, but I want the meritocracy system to continue as well. Whoever can give me the answer to that, gets my vote.

Back to the current meritocracy system, it's a thin line between not helping people who don't deserve it to not giving up priority seats to elderly. Both stems from selfishness. Some believer of our meritocracy are selfish without knowing it. They think because they give up their seats to the elderly, they are not selfish, which they aren't, in a way. Some people think people who don't work do not deserve to be helped, some people think people who don't get seats because they do not deserve it. And I must add, everytime you refused to help someone that you think don't deserve it, if you are wrong, then you are denying help to someone who do. It's about what cost are you willing to pay to help someone who deserve it. If 1 out of every 3 times you helped someone, only 1 deserve it, the cost to help that 1 person is what you spend on all those 3 times. If it's 1 out of 10, then it's all those 10 times. So how much are we willing to pay. Or can we spend some effort/cost to be more sure if the person deserves it? How much effort/cost to spend?

Some time back, I mentioned that I believe in jobless welfare. I have a reason for this. I feel there's a economic lost.Most of us have money commitments. Our mobile bill, our electicity bill, our 3 meals, insurance, etc. Not working is a huge cost, and we won't want to leave a job without a job. So we look for job while still working. I would say that when someone wants to leave, it's likely he won't be that willing toput in extra effort to complete his task. He can be professional about it, and put in best effort during office hours. Nothing more. and during that time, he is looking for job, so he's also likely to take leave to go for interviews. That is a cost to the company, and indirectly, the economy. And companies looking for people will also have to wait at least a month before the person they want to recruit can join them. When we tender our resignation only after we got an offer, we have to work for the company at least 1 more month, depending on company policy. Of course, with any welfare, there will be people who abuse the system. So the question is again, i) How much are there? and ii) what are the cost to find out who deserves to be helped? Again, whoever can find a good balance between helping people and not wasting too much money gets my vote.

My point for the previous paragraph is, I believe in welfare, but I don't believe in welfare for the sake of it. There need to be a good enough reason. I don't like to waste money, but if I have the proper numbers, only then can I decide if the welfare is feasible.

1 more thing. Our CPF. I believe the old should be staying at home and enjoy the fruits of their labour when young. Some country have a pension system. They use the current working population to pay the old people who are not working. This can be a huge strain on the society when there are more old people than young, which we are going to be. But we do not have a pension system. We have the CPF. The CPF makes us save our money so that when we are old, we have enough to survive. There's just a slight problem. We spend our CPF on buying an apartment. And on our medical bill and our parent's medical bill. So what we have for retirement is getting smaller. Such that the more suavy people will invest their cash wisely for their retirement fund. Such irony. Our future retirement money is spent on our current need (roof over our head), which is also an investment as it's supposed to bring us money when we rent it out, or when we sell it. And we spend our current investment for our retirement. For people who tell me CPF is a good thing, when I see so many old people working, whether be it a management position, taxi driver, metal cans collector, I will say CPF fails in what they are supposed to do. You can blame it on them not knowing how to manage their money when young, but the problem is still there.

So after pointing out so many faults of the government, do I think every bad thing is the government's fault? No. Whatever bad thing that befalls an individual, it's always their own fault. Because there must be some ways that they could have done helped themselves but didn't. But when it happens to many individuals, I place the blame on the government as well. Because only the government is capable of affecting the lives of all their country citizen. Even if the cause is not their fault, if enough people are suffering from something, only they could have done something to correct the situation, and if they didn't, they failed. If I see or know 1 person who don't give their seats to elderly, I can try to persuade him. I can even persuade 10. If I see 100 person who don't give their seats to elderly, I can train 10 person, so that they can persuade 10 each. But i won't be able to help 1000, 10000, 100000. Only the government can.

In my mind, our current government has done many bad things. Do I want them out at all cost? No. If they manage to change and improve, I am happy to have them. And if some other group manage to take over them, I would expect them to improve on the current system and yet not lose the good things. A good government, new or old, should be able to recognise what is good now, and what is bad, and improve accordingly.

Before I start, I'll state that this is just a rant. I have no answer for my question. I only want to say it somewhere.

I have been unhappy with my government, run by PAP, for a long time. Like most Singaporeans, I've been brought up with the concept that PAP, under the leadership of Lee Kwan Yew, is great. We have gone from a fishing village to a first world nation, with a number of first-in-the-world accolades.

Slowly, I started to be exposed to a few alternate views, and I find myself agreeing with them. PAP may have done a good job in the early years of Singapore's independence, but they do not start from a fishing village. Raffles did that part for them. I say this not to diminish the contributions done by the government of that time. They had done extremely well.

However well the government of the past did, most of them are not in the current government already. I speak of the current government and the early government like they are 2 separate entities. In my mind, they are. I am glad and grateful for what the early government did.

The current government did well for our economy too. My problem with them is only the way they go about doing it. I believe in helping the slower Singaporeans who couldn't catch up with the faster Singaporeans catch up.. I believe in taking care of Singaporeans who fell. For a long time, the current government had believe in trickle down economics, where they tried to make the rich get richer, with the hope that the riches amassed can trickle down to the poor. But what I've seen is that the income gap between rich and poor widening. While the rich made more more, the poor made less. I believe more should be done to make the poor benefit from the better economy.

I am also unhappy with the meritocracy system that PAP inplanted in our minds. I see many successful people who think that the government should not be helping the less successful because it's their own fault that they are not successful. They have only themselves to blame for earning less now. We are all Singaporeans. We should be helping everyone. And the cost of failure should not be so great that it made it hard to pick ourselves up and challenge again. And that do not mean that I believe there should be any cost for failure. There should be. We don't want people to be reckless when striving for success.

Now to the point of this article. I've had quite a few "arguments" with my friends about where I think our current policy is wrong. I realise that there will always be people who support the other side. If 1 day, a party who subscribe to my ideals become the government, there will be people who disagree with them. They will think that we are spending money frivolously. So we go into an elections every few years. A government is elected. For what? There will always be a sizeable section of Singaporeans with ideals not represented. And there can only be 1 government.

I've been following the #LFC channel for some time. Ever since Chelsea came in with their bid for Torres, much have been said. I'll try to give my 2 cents worth to some of those that's been said.

1) Why does he want to leave now?

Many are baffled by his decision, me included. If he had handed in request about a month ago, it might make more sense. Last season, when we finished at 7th, when we had bad owners, and when Roy Hodgson took over and bring us to even worse depth when we thought we are already at our worst. He has endured all those times and now that we are picking up, he wants to leave? And why now, where there's only 4 days left to the end of the window? Why not when the window just opened? Ever since Dalglish took over, our play had improved. Torres have started to show the form that make him so lethal. We have started winning games. We just signed an exciting player. What had happened in this month that changed his mind?

2) Hypocrisy of LFC fans. Some said that while we expect Blackpool's Charlie Adams to hand in their transfer, and that Blackpool should not stop their player from a brighter future, and yet rejected Torres's request and said it's a betrayal.

I don't agree with that at all. There's similarities, and yet much difference. For 1, the gap between Chelsea and us is not as great between us and Blackpool. We made our intentions known to Blackpool very early. Chelsea is our direct competitor in our project back to the top of England, Blackpool do not have such a project yet.

Another argument we have is that we did not ask Charlie Adam to hand in a transfer, he did it on his own.

3) Why Chelsea?

As I've mentioned above, the gap between Chelsea and us is not that great. We had new owners who has said they are going to bring LFC to the top again, they have a billionaire who has not been spending much in the past few seasons. Though Chelsea almost always finish above us in the league, we won our fare share of games against them. Their position this year so far is not that far from us. We have a chance to overtake them at 4th place. We have gotten out of our bad run, Chelsea has not.

Add to this that he has been part of the project of bringing LFC back to the top for so long, how can he join our direct opponent and undermine our project? There are other better and more appropriate team that he go to, why Chelsea?

4) Should we keep him?

When someone dear to us do something wrong, we forgive them if they admit to their mistakes. Similarly, if Torres decided against leaving, and apologise, I'll go back to supporting him. People have branded his actions as a betrayal, and I agree. But everyone make mistakes, we should be gracious and forgiving. However, if he should leave, I'll just say goodbye to him with no ill feelings. But it's going to be weird seeing him wear the Chelsea jersey and play against us.

It's been a long time since I last posted something. Thought I'll start with something trival.

I used the SG Pools app on my phone for the 1st time last night. The driver of my taxi told me he has not checked the numbers yet, so I checked for him and read to him in Hokkien, in fact, I chatted him for the whole journey from Yishun to my place in Hokkien. I wonder how much of it he understood.

Guess what I see in my spam mail folder today. I win a car!
Ya right. Yawn....

TOYOTA INTERNATIONAL LOTTO (HEADQUARTERS)
Customer Service Department Affiliate of Toyota Japan.
#281 Taizi Road Shekou Beijing, China.


Dear Winner,


We are pleased to inform you of the announcement made today, You are among the winners of the TOYOTA CAR INTERNATIONAL PROMOTION PROGRAM participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from 2,500,000 email addresses of individuals and companies from all part of the world as part of our electronic business Promotions Program.

As a result of your visiting various websites we are running the E-business promotions for. You/Your Company email address, attached to ticket number 523-958-2261, with serial number TL-909-P874E-69CN, lucky numbers 04, 07, 29, 44, 42, 30 and Bonus number 39 , Your INSURANCE Number: FLS433/ 453L /GMSA, Batch No:- 538901527-BB67 and consequently you won in the Second Category of the TOYOTA FORTUNE LOTTO DRAW.

You have therefore been approved for the payment of the sum of US $1,000,000. 00 in cash, including a Toyota car which is the winning present /amount for the Second category winners. This is from the total prize money of US$24,650,000.00 shared among the international winners in the Second category.

Congratulations !!!

Please be informed that your won fund of the sum of US $1,000,000.00 is now with the payee center. Contact our agent and give them your full names so that they will re-insure your winning fund under your full names. Together with the port where your winning car should be shipped to.

To begin your claim, please call our claim agent or send email immediately to:-

Certificate Agent, Toyota Email Lotto
Mr. Morris Wang
Email: toyotapromo@asia.com
Email: morriswang@asia.com
Telephone: 0086-135 3548 4911

NOTE: In order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications, Please quote your

1. Full name
2. Address / contact number
3. Country of origin
4. Age
5. Occupation
6. Tel/fax.


Kindly get back to us with the above required information so that we will start your awarded process and guide you on how to claim your already awarded fund.


Sincerely,
Mrs. Zang Chu Luo
Hon Online Coordinator.

This morning, as I was leaving my home for work, I saw this article in 新民日报, a local Chinese evening newspaper. link

It reported that some Malaysians made belachan (sambal chilli) using dye that may cause cancer. On reading the headline, my 1st thought is that, AVA should have that covered. The belachan that got into Singapore should not have that problem. Sure enough, it's reported in the article that ＡＶＡ　ｈａｓ　ｓａｉｄ　ｔｈａｔ　ｔｈｅｒｅ'ｓ　ｎｏ　ｐｒｏｂｌｅｍ　ｗｉｔｈ　ｔｈｅ　ｂｅｌａｃｈａｎ　ｉｎ　Ｓｉｎｇａｐｏｒｅ．　Ｓｔｒａｎｇｅｌｙ，　ｗｈｅｎ　Ｉ　ｒｅａｄ　ｔｈａｔ，　Ｉ　ｇｏｔ　２ｎｄ　ｔｈｏｕｇｈｔｓ．

Ｔｈｅｒｅ'ｓ　ａ　ｓｔｒｉｎｇ　ｏｆ　ｕｎｆｏｒｔｕｎａｔｅ　ｅｖｅｎｔｓ　ｉｎ　Ｓｉｎｇａｐｏｒｅ　ｉｎ　ｒｅｃｅｎｔ　ｔｉｍｅｓ．　Mas Selamat has escaped. Our MRT train got vandalized at the depot. Flood in Orchard Road. Jolly Hangman got published. Vignes Mourthi's case come to light. Looking at how the relevant people handle these crisis, I can't help having this feeling that, I know I could be wrong but I can't shake it off, they are more interested in keeping good public appearance than anything else. When something goes wrong, denial comes 1st. Pushing blame is next.

I sure hope I am reading too much into all these. I won't want to read about cancer causing belachan found in Singapore sometime in the near future.