Stupid Genius

- Making mistakes is our rights, learning from them is our responsibilty.

- "I have no choice" is another way of saying "I've have chosen the easier option"

- Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration - Thomas A Edison

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Location: Singapore

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

I came across this recently: Link.

The author said that Singaporeans should be thankful of what we have. I have some thoughts on that.

  1. We have portable drinking water that other countries do not

    Not every country has it, he says. This saves us the hassle of having to buy bottled drinking water from supermarkets. Far as I am concerned, many countries has it, and even if there isn't, what's the problem of buying bottled drinking water together with all our groceries? This is such an insignificant hassle that we will have got over it in no time. Having portable drinking water is good, but it's not going to be a very big mitigating factor for other screw ups that we may see
  2. Safe and secure living environment

    Singapore has hardworking police that keep our crime rate low, he says. Our crime rate is low no doubt, but I would think it's more due to our education than the hard working police. In fact, the years of having low crime is causing our police to be less skilled in tackling crime. They lacked 1 important attribute when it come to crime fighting, which is experience. Of course, it's good problem to have, just don't expect too much from them when something big happen.

    Examples of not so brilliant police work:
    • When Mas Selamat escaped, we have more than 1000 officers comb Bukit Batok hills looking for him, and nobody to monitor his brother's place, where he hide in for a few days.
    • The plot to bomb Yishun MRT station was discovered because a surveillance video was found in the rubble of a house bombed by the Americans, and they told us.
    • In April 2010, 2 taxi drivers was assualted by 3 Caucasians at Suntec city and was seriously injured. The police couldn't find the culprits in 2 weeks, but 1 of the witness managed to find them in 30 minutes after getting frustrated by the lack of result from the police.
  3. Our clean streets

    This point I agree. And like he mentioned, we have tons of cleaners making sure our streets are clean. We spend a fortune on that. I would hope that our cleaniness is due to the clean nature of our citizens though.

I would also like to add a few more points of Singapore that we could be thankful of, but we aren't.
  1. Pur economy is doing well and we are one of the richest country in the world

    Stagnant or negative wage growth for the middle to low income for the past few years somehow blind us to this fact. What good is a bustling economy if the majority of citizens are not enjoying the benefits?
  2. Garden by the Bay

    Featuring an exotic diversity of plants from all over the world, it's a technology feat that we can even have the plants here. But it being manufactured, with a slightly high carbon footprint, cost a bomb, and having a real nature reserve (Bukit Brown) demolished to make way for more roads, contribute to remind me of the Chinese saying 打肿脸皮称胖子。

Of course, there are other real good things in Singapore that we are appreciative of. We have many nice food that we like. We have good people out there trying their very best to make Singapore a better place. We have our friends and family here. Etc. We keep them close to our hearts and not brag about it, but that does not mean we do not appreciate it. Due to our low crime rate, we can wander the streets at night without too much worry of not making it home.

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