I've been busy

But.......

What is wrong with the West?

Early this week as I listened to the news on the memorial service in Norway to commemorate the massacre a year ago, I thought of an incident that happened a long time ago.  I was standing in a queue to go on a ride in Disney World, Orlando when a pleasant elderly lady asked me how I liked America.  I told her it was fun.  Come on, I was in Disney World.  She asked me if I ever thought of living in the States.  I replied in the negative partly because I could tell that she, like most locals in any country, would welcome tourists to her country but not immigrants who would compete with locals in the job market.  I jokingly mentioned my own native food which I was more used to as a reason.  She didn't seem convinced and she asked me to tell her the "real reason" why I wouldn't want to live in America.  There was a shooting spree (I now forget which one) in the US just months before and I could tell from her tone of voice that she was alluding to this.  Being an obliging chap and one who is careful not to offend others, I told her that one day, I would have kids and if I was told that there had been a shooting spree in my child's school, I would laugh my head off because such a thing couldn't possibly happen in Singapore.  I told her I liked to be assured that my children would be safe when they were in school.  She told me she knew what I meant.  A close friend of hers was shot just months before.  "What do you do to people who smuggle guns into your country and use them?" she asked.  "We hang them.  Capital punishment," I replied without flinching.

Proponents of the abolition of the death pealty will go namby-pamby here.  The State shouldn't take the life of a human being.  Well, Breivik took the lives of 77 people.

At the memorial service in Norway on 22 July, Norway's prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg told the people, "He [Breivik] failed, the people won."  In Oslo Cathedral, Bishop Helga Haugland Byfuglien told Norwegians: "The light shines in the darkness; darkness hasn't been able to overcome it."

Let's be serious and not babble like fools here.  How have the people won?  Breivik killed 77 people.  The people DIED.  Breivik lives and will continue to live.   You can say a million times that Breivik failed and the people won but words don't mean a thing if they don't reflect reality.  Who would you rather be? Breivik or one of the 77?   Knowing how hospitable penitentiary facilities are in Norway, I would rather be in Breivik's shoes any time.  I might even write a book about the day I killed 77 people.  Have I missed something?  How have the people won? 

Just two days before the memorial service in Oslo, there was a shooting incident in Colorado at a cinema screening the new Batman film.  12 people were killed.   Hours after the shooting, Republican Louie Gohmert suggested on a radio show to the host Ernie Istook that the shooting was caused by "ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs." Gohmert also wondered aloud why nobody else in the cinema had a gun to take down the gunman.

Instead of banning guns, Gohmert is suggesting that Americans should all carry guns to a movie.  It's back to the Wild Wild West, folks!

Singapore should hold its head up high and make no apology for its death penalty.  Breivik could never have done what he did if he had lived in Singapore.  And I mean NEVER.  Even if he did, he'd by now be swinging by his neck after which doctors would harvest his body parts for transplant purposes.  At least there would be some use for Breivik's carcass.  A curse to humanity while he's alive, Breivik can at least be of some benefit to patients when he's despatched with.  As he should be.

Stoltenberg was dead wrong - the people have not won.  They're dead and buried.  Breivik has won and let's make no mistake about that.  The West must stop using words to change reality.  The people can only win if you do two things - ban guns and kill anyone who disobeys.

The West has no moral right to tell Singapore what to do.  They can't even keep their house in order.  It's that disgraceful.  I have lost count of the number of shooting massacres in the West, especially the US.  Criminals and potential criminals in Singapore who don't like the harshness of its laws should just get the hell out.  Go to Norway or the US and buy as many guns as you legally can.  There's no room in Singapore for criminals.  It's the noose for the likes of Breivik here.  They swing and decent people applaud.

Hey, the war is over!

When I was a young boy, my Uncle who was a great fan of Lee Kuan Yew explained to me that the system Singapore adopted for its Government was rightly termed "benign paternalism".  Today, "paternalism" is viewed in a negative light by most people.  The dictionary in my computer includes in its definition of paternalism the idea of rights restrictions "in the subordinate's supposed best interest".  But what if the restrictions in the past were REALLY done in the nation's best interest?  It's very easy to decry today the human rights restrictions of yesterday but what if we're here today because of the rights restrictions of yesterday?  I'm not saying that this is so but the fact is we don't really know, do we?

Every country has its embarrassing past.  The right thing to do is for the Government to acknowledge they were wrong and to apologise to the people.  They do that quite easily in the West.  Many countries have apologised to their people of aboriginal descent for all the wrongs done against them in the past.

Asian countries are usually reluctant to apologise. They seem to think that the matter will fade from our memory when nobody talks about it and so they ban publication of articles on the topic. 

In this age of the internet, it's impossible to conceal the past.  Google will lead you to websites of all kinds including those that are highly incendiary and to youtube videos too and you can listen to the voices of past political detainees and the human rights abuses they suffered.  China has tried to conceal some of its past and it is to some degree successful because it ruthlessly bans many sites online and even dips its fingers into major search engines to block out searches for potentially embarrassing topics such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre.  Its small success is also due largely to the language barrier - the people of China prefer local Chinese sites for social networking, blogging and all their other internet needs and it's easier for the Chinese Government to control and monitor these homegrown sites while it bans many foreign websites.

What if China apologises to the people for the Tiananmen Square Massacre?  Its leaders can always issue an apology and admit they were wrong.  They can compensate the families of victims of the massacre.  The amount can't be more than a tiny fraction of what China spends in one day in monitoring and keeping vigilance over the internet.

What will happen if China admits it was wrong and apologises to the people?  I can't think of anything bad that can possibly follow.  Will there be a riot?  Of course not.  It can only please the people that the Government is now acknowledging its wrongs and is prepared to take responsibility for the past.  It may even give some assurance to the people that they can expect justice and fair play in the future.

Singapore today is very different from what it was a couple of decades ago.  What happened 25 years ago won't ever happen again today.  Everyone knows this.  Even the most hardened anti-establishment person knows this to be true.  It's a different Singapore today.  The past is gone.  It's all hunky-dory now.

The reason why I was motivated to write this is because of an article I've just read on Yahoo News about M. Ravi dancing in the Speaker's Corner.  I have a lot of respect for people who are passionate about human rights and are willing to sacrifice themselves in the service of others but sometimes, it's easy to go overboard with what we are passionate about and this can affect our health, both physical and mental.

I am reminded of a story about a British soldier who hid himself in the Malayan jungle during World War II after Japan invaded Malaya.  It was decades later when he emerged from the jungle looking for Japanese soldiers.  He hid behind a tree just as a group of people were passing by and he could hear them speaking Japanese.  Suddenly, he jumped out from behind the tree and pointed his rifle at a group of frightened Japanese tourists and he was about to pull the trigger when an Indian rubber tapper who had been observing everything from behind him shouted, "Hey, the war is over!"

Yes, the war is over!  Forget your angst!  It's party time!

The Church and Your Money

There's been a lot of publicity about innocent people being unduly influenced into giving huge sums of money to religious organisations to which they belong.  Various religious leaders have been charged in court, some have been convicted and what's puzzling to most people is not so much the crimes committed by these supposedly holy men of God but the reaction of the congregation.  The blind, dogged, persistent support given to the church leader even when there have been accusations that he has improperly used the money of these very supporters is something most people find puzzling.

As a long-standing Christian (and a devout one, even if I say so myself), I am in the best position to explain the psychology of these believers.  I have heard of a couple who sold their only home and gave the entire proceeds to their church.  They are obliged to rent from their meagre salaries a modest flat to live in.  You'd probably think they are insane.  But the reality is they aren't any more insane than you and I.  Why then do they do what normal people wouldn't dream of doing?

I'm sure this happens in every religion but I will only give the Christian perspective which is the only one I'm familiar with.

Every organisation needs money and the church is not unique here.  The church needs money and it's not wrong to give to it.  First, I would like to classify churches into traditional churches and non-traditional churches.  By my definition, traditional churches are churches that do a lot of charitable works.  They build schools, hospitals, hospices, old folks' home, orphanages and other kinds of welfare homes.  These churches do a lot of good for society and giving to them is good and right.  But these are churches that usually don't demand money from parishioners.  They don't threaten parishioners or frighten them into giving money.  By my definition again, non-traditional churches are usually new-fangled churches, usually independent and sometimes they become really large and they are called mega-churches.  A mega-church almost always has a single person who holds all the power in the organisation and nobody questions his power and authority and because his church is new and probably started by him, there aren't any real checks and balances to curb his untrammelled power.  Another feature of a non-traditional church (remember, this is entirely my own definition) is that it does not build schools, hospices, orphanages and other welfare homes.  It probably does some charitable work but nothing as major as running welfare homes.  Not all churches that are non-traditional and don't run charitable homes, hospices and orphanages are bad.  I'm sure some are all right but those churches that have been getting bad publicity on the local press are almost always non-traditional churches that don't run welfare homes.  I have to make this clear because it's not my intention to tar all independent churches with the same brush.

I'm sure many people will disagree with my classification and I really don't bother about the distinction.  I'm not out on a crusade to draw people to traditional churches and frankly, I haven't got any evangelistic zeal.  I am all for everyone following his own religion and the religious culture of his community.  What I want to examine here is not which church is good and which is bad but I want to peer into the minds of believers and see what makes them tick.  What makes a person give the bulk of his money to the church and when accusations are made by impartial authorities against the church leader, what makes this same person defend the leader mindlessly and with the ferocity of a wild beast?

A lot has to do with the teachings of the religion.  In Christianity, the worthlessness of man is something that is stressed all the time.  We are like dust at God's feet.  As the famous hymn goes, "Amazing grace.... that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see".  Or as St Paul writes, he is nothing without Christ, that Christ should increase and he decrease.  The worthlessness of mankind leads to the concept commonly called the "total depravity of man".  We are told from the cradle that we are utterly worthless and not only are we worthless, we are totally and irredeemably depraved.  Irredeemable?  Well, not quite.  There is one redemption open to us and it's only through Jesus Christ, the Redeemer that we may be saved.

Together with this idea that we are utterly worthless and depraved without Christ is the concept that we own nothing.  As the book of Job tells us, "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither".  And the New Testament carries on the same imagery with St Paul saying "For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out."   All things come from God and when we give our money to the church, we aren't giving God what's ours.  We are returning to God what is really his.  As the hymn goes, "We give thee but thine own".  We are but stewards of the property that belongs to God even though the law of the land says we have a legal title to the property.  We hold all our possessions in stewardship for God's ultimate use and for the purposes of his Kingdom.  These are lofty-sounding words that don't mean more than that the money should be used by the church.

That is in fact the correct teaching of the church.  It's not something the mega-churches cooked up.  What the mega-churches have done is to build on this concept as I will illustrate later.

What Christianity has done to the average parishioner is to make him in a sense vulnerable.  This was vitally important in the history of Christianity when the church was always fighting tooth and nail with the State and controlling the parishioners was what the church sought to do.  Of course many of us don't really care what the church teaches and we don't give a hoot for this concept of stewardship and we would use our property any way we like and the church can go to the blazes for all we care.  That's the stand of the majority of Christians even though they may not admit this and many don't even realize this.

But there is always a group that feels keenly the pricking of their conscience every time they fail to give huge sums to the church and it is this group that can fall prey to errant pastors who know this weakness of a segment of their flock.

In traditional churches, there are some safeguards against exploitation of these faithful few.  Traditional churches NEVER coerce parishioners into giving money.  Giving is always considered a matter between the parishioner and God.  Everything is left to the individual to decide for himself or herself how much, if any, he should give to God. The guiding principle is what St Paul says - to give cheerfully.  So, if you don't feel good about giving, don't give. It's that simple.  Traditional churches too have a proper system of accounting and they have rules in place and the money given by the parishioners do not go to the pastors.

Now I have to be careful what I say because, like I have already explained, not all non-traditional churches are bad.  What I'm going to say next is not applicable to all non-traditional churches but only to a very few of them. What do these very few errant churches do to ensure their ecclesiastical coffers are filled to the brim?

First, they teach their members properly.  These churches always refer their members to the practice in the Old Testament.  Now, the structure of the temple in the Old Testament is very different from the church that we have today.  They had Levite priests and much of the giving to the temple went to the Levites, a group of people who were by birth ordained to be priests.  The traditional 10% or tithe comes from this practice.  But in the Old Testament, the giving of tithe was not all there was to the financial obligation of a devout Jew.  He had to give from his crops to the Levites, something which is called "First fruits".  The system is extremely complex and if you want to cream off your parishioners, you can do it quite effectively by going into detail on what exactly the ancient Israelite had to give to the House of Levi and of course you extrapolate the whole thing and you, the pastor, becomes the Levite in order to give profitable meaning to that Old Testament practice.

Next, you tell your congregation that because they are obliged to give so much to the church, withholding it from the church would be tantamount to robbing God.   This is a frightening allegation - that the Christian is robbing God!  But you can always find something in the Bible to support anything you want and all you have to do is to turn to the book of Malachi (that's the last book of the Old Testament) in which the prophet tells the people that they have robbed God.  I assure you it's very effective when used on a compliant congregation.

Now is the time when you can talk about God's curses.  He who has the temerity of robbing God must surely expect curses from the Almighty.  Extend the curses to the entire family and to the children of the sinner.  That's usually very effective in bringing a hardened person to his knees.

But a good pastor will not just stop there.  The Gospel of Christ is always called the Good News and that's what the congregation wants to hear.  You tell them that God will break the curse if they are obedient (ie give abundantly to the church).  Say to them, "Jesus is waiting at the door to give his blessings.  He wants to give his blessings but as long as you are disobedient, he can't do so.  What will your answer be today?  What is YOUR response to Jesus who now stands at the door with his blessings?  Will you let him in or will you chase him away?"

Now, you do not end there.  If you end there and let the congregation leave the church, you have failed.  It's natural for even the most pious parishioner to have some sense knocked into his head the moment he leaves the church.  What you should do at this point is to ask everyone to pray with you.  Of course you lead in the prayer.  You speak for the people to God.  You tell God how WE have sinned against him.  We have robbed him, you confess.  We have disobeyed him.  But we now repent of our grievous sins.  At this point, you should look over the pulpit to see if some in the congregation are beginning to weep.  There should be some, usually among the ladies if you have done it right.

You thank Jesus for his patience and his compassion.  There he stands at the door with blessings in his hand and we have shut him out.  Lord, we open our hearts to you.  We invite you in.  We receive your blessings.  NOTE: You mustn't say anything about giving money to the church because that would be too obvious but you need not worry.  Everyone knows that that's what he's supposed to do and it's their hateful disobedience and sin that have prevented them from doing so.

At this point, you don't end the prayer but you go into a period of silence but before I continue, I should say something to those who attend traditional churches.  Those who attend traditional churches will no doubt notice that there is a departure from the Liturgy but we are not talking about traditional churches with boring liturgy cast in stone.  We are talking about the modern non-traditional churches that do things "as the Spirit leads".  What I have said is not something I have made up myself.  It's something I draw from my personal experience when I attended non-traditional church services a few times in my younger days.

Let's go back to the pulpit.  Because you have not ended the prayer but have lapsed into silence, the congregation would still be in a prayerful mood.  You break the silence with an admonition: "The Spirit is speaking to you now.  Listen to that still small voice."  This last bit is important.  Of course nobody really hears the Spirit of God speaking.  I mean if you really hear something audible, you'd do well to see a psychiatrist.  That's why the Bible refers to the "prompting" of the Spirit and the voice of the Spirit is always described as the "still small voice".  A devout Christian is trained to "hear" the voice of God by the IMPRESSION that he "senses".  Basically, an impression is no different from a thought.  Of course the parishioners will "hear" the voice of the Spirit.  The pastor has just spoken at great length about the importance of giving to the church and it is impossible that the parishioner senses no impression that should go along the same line.  The devout Christian will believe that he "hears" the Spirit "in his heart".  He feels that the Spirit is telling him to give more money.  Just in case some of them are a little obtuse, you should help them along.  "Is the Spirit of God telling you to do what you have thus far neglected?"  Again avoid talking directly about filthy cash.  You are above all that, surely!

Next, you can add this which I have actually heard in youtube from a sermon taken from a mega-church.  You tell the congregation to put God to the test.  Give him a fixed amount and see if God will shortchange you.  There is something in the Bible about God giving a ten-fold blessing.  Seize that verse for this purpose and tell the people that God has promised a ten-fold return.  Try him out and see if he will go back on his promise.  Give $1000 and see if you do not receive ten times that amount in return within the week or month.  Or if you are wise, give God $10,000 and you'll get a lot more in return.  A website I have seen even talks about a hundredfold blessing, which is better.  Google "tenfold blessings" and "hundredfold blessings" if you don't believe me.  This is religion - you can't sue the pastor if you don't get your ten-fold or hundredfold return.

Sometimes, a bit of soft and slow music can go a long way to goad the believer to reach deeper into his pockets.  Tell the organist to pick a familiar slow hymn.

I recently learnt from a friend who attends one of these non-traditional churches that the pastors force all the members to give their payslips and income tax returns to the church which will ascertain that tithes are collected.  He assures me it's true but I find it preposterous.  Honestly, I know people can be stupid but I really doubt there's anyone in Singapore who wouldn't walk out of a church that asks for your payslip.

Another thing I understand from people who go to non-traditional churches is that they are given a lot of lessons on tithe-giving, etc.  They are always told to look at Malachi 3:10 which reads, "Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need."  It's funny that although I have been a devout Christian all my life and have served the church from being an altar boy to various ministries in adulthood, I have never heard such a creative reading of Malachi.  The Levites' storehouse becomes the church!!!

What they tell their congregation is that their duty is to give 10 percent of their earnings to the church (the Levites' storehouse) and once they have done that, their duty is fulfilled.  If the church misuses the money, God will deal with the perpetrators himself.  But your duty to give 10 percent to the church remains.  Can you believe this?

But this is all perfectly legal.  It's more than legal.  It's religious and nobody dares to say a word against religion.  But to be fair, in most churches, all money goes through a proper accounting process and everything is above board.  Churches generally do a lot of good in society and the scandal of a few black sheep should not tarnish the good name of the holy church, the Bride of Christ.

The local papers again!

I do sometimes try to give the local press a chance.  I happened this evening to see a local newspaper article online and it was about Rajaratnam and I read it for I like the man.  Who wouldn't like Rajaratnam?  He was such a nice chap and quite an intellectual too.  And I thought to myself that the local newspaper wouldn't say anything silly or leave out important information as they did when they wrote about an opposition leader (see my previous blog entry here) because Rajaratnam was after all a Government man.

But I was wrong.  You may read the article here.

It's fine to praise Rajaratnam.  Like I've said, I like the man and anything said in his favour is agreeable to me.  But this line didn't strike the right chord in me:

"Hailed as a leading Indian short story writer, he was published alongside the likes of Rabindranath Tagore and Mulk Raj Anand, whose short stories are today considered literary classics."

Rajaratnam was a great man but in the world of literature, he did not stand anywhere near Tagore or Anand.  True, defenders of the Singapore Press Holdings will say that line came from the preface of a collection of Rajaratnam's short stories but no responsible newspaper will print that quotation without qualifying it somewhat. That sentence may very well be suitable in a book that compiles the works of Rajaratnam and whose readers are probably aware of the works of Tagore and Anand or they must at least know the kind of reputation both these writers enjoy in the literary world but when a newspaper quotes it without some qualification, it becomes highly misleading especially when most Singaporean readers know very little about who the great literary giants really are and they may very well be led into believing that Rajaratnam was as great a writer as Tagore and Anand.

It's obvious the local press hasn't quite made it yet.  I have no doubt the day will come when I will pick up the local papers and read them as I would real newspapers but alas, that day hasn't come yet.

To cut or not to cut

A German court has ruled that circumcision of young boys amounted to bodily harm.  This has prompted Germany's Medical Association to tell doctors not to perform circumcisions.


Here's what the BBC says:

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18807040

Ignoring Russell Crowe's impetuous comments about circumcision for the moment, surely a surgery that is needless and irreversible should not be done on a child who is unable to consent to it legally?  There are medical conditions that require circumcision but we are not talking about those.   What about female circumcision which is commonly done in some parts of Africa?  Everyone agrees female circumcision is wrong and barbaric.  We say it's purely cultural and not religious but who are we to say that the traditional beliefs and practices of people in some parts of Africa are merely cultural and not religious?  Would we think differently if one of the major religions adopted female circumcision as a requirement?  Why does a practice suddenly become right when it's religious?

But religion is a touchy subject.  For the moment, two major religions adopt circumcision of young boys as its religious prerequisite.  Was the German court wrong to rule against religious practices?

Concert in Ostrava

To all my friends in Ostrava:

As you are aware, I'm a camera-happy kind of chap and I have captured just about everything on my cam.  For the concert of 7 July 2012, I filmed EVERY performance and I have uploaded a lot of them on youtube with a private link.

As many of you know, I have publicized these links on my facebook page but some of you may not have seen it because we haven't connected on facebook or in one particular instance, rare though I must say, the person has no facebook account and does not intend to have one.  For this reason, I will post on this page all the links to your performances on youtube.

I know many of you are impatient to see your videos uploaded but please be patient.  Uploading the videos can be quite a chore.  Each video can take anything from 4 to 8 hours.  To be fair to all parties, I'm uploading the videos in the order in which the concert was performed.  I will try to upload as many as I can but because of the length of the videos and the large number of them, I trust you will pardon me for my tardiness.

All the performances are excellent and to the best of my knowledge, all of you are happy with the uploading of your videos.  But I still try to have some measure of privacy and as you can see, I have set the privacy level in my youtube account such that the videos are accessible only to those with the private links.  I have also taken the step of posting this blog post in the 7 July entry which means visitors to my blog won't see this post easily unless they have a specific link to it since it's buried under a heap of other postings of mine.  But just in case some of you would rather have privacy for your performance, please let me know.

Many of you have asked me about the teachers' performances.  As you know, our teachers are top-notch, world-class musicians and are renowned not just in Europe but also the rest of the world.  These virtuosos are naturally very careful about having videos of them posted online.  Just as I have done in the past, I will do the same for this year; all the teachers' videos will NOT be posted online unless I have direct written instructions from them to do so.  As some of you know, last year, I posted on Facebook a video of the teachers' performance the year before that.  I did that only because I was requested by them to do so and I had the permission of every one of the performers in that video.  We owe a debt of gratitude to the teachers and giving them privacy is but a small token of our thanks.  

Here are the links to the students' performances:

1.  Saxofonove Trio! My friend, Zuzka, is the beautiful lady closest to the camera. Click here!

2.  The brilliant Eva on the clarinet.  Click here!

3.  Tereza and her cool saxophone.  Click here!

4.  My wonderful roommate, Paweł Kroczek (actually, we were only roommates in 2010 but he's such a great musician I continue to call him "roommate" in the hope of sharing some of his fame when he becomes famous soon) Click here!

5.  The great Lukas Broda.  Click here!

6.  The petite and beautiful Katerina Jurenova.  Click here!

7.  My good friend, the vivacious and beautiful Katerina Cermakova.  Click here!

8.  My buddy, the great Michael Jermar, the coolest musician ever.  Click here!

9.  My friend, the great clarinettist, Lukasz.  Click here!

10.  The beautiful Anezka on the saxophone.  Click here!

11.  My good friend, the beautiful and magnificent Ania on the clarinet.  Click here!

12.  Martin Forst, my friend, the King of Jazz.  Martin Forst is to the saxophone what Martin Frost is to the clarinet!  Click here!

13.  Marcin the great clarinettist.  Click here!

There are many more videos to upload and I will do so from time to time.  Keep an eye on this page!

New additions:

14.  The Saxophone Quartet Part 1 Click here!

15.  The Saxophone Quartet Part 2 Click here!

16.  The Saxophone Quartet Part 3 Click here!

17.  My remarkably talented friend, the amazing David Lenz.  Click here!

Concert in Church

PRIVATE

Friends performing in church.  It was beautiful but that was what I expected.  My friends include some of the world's top musicians and of course they are sure to be excellent performers.

Ugly business considerations

Scenes such as this can be quite distressing.  I walked round the Square, completely lost and unable to recognise it until I saw the Astronomical Clock.  I could hardly believe that this was the famous Old Town Square.  Gone is the spirit of fun and festivity that this Square was famous for.  There are still the horse-drawn carriages but everything seems somewhat subdued and very sad. 

Here's a pic I took two years ago:

Such a huge difference, don't you think?

I'll go down to the Square again in a while and see if it gets any better towards the evening.

Farewell, folksies!!!

PRIVATE

I'll soon be travelling but I thought since I have been blogging almost daily, which is quite uncharacteristic of me, I should post a note to inform my readers that I'll be away for a couple of weeks.

There is a reason why I have been blogging more assiduously lately.  I started keeping a diary since I was 7 and since I turned 9 or 10, I have kept to the present day a DAILY diary.  Yes, every day of my life is meticulously recorded.  But recently, instead of keeping a detailed diary, I have turned to blogging.  I have always intended this blog to be personal and a record not just of my musings but of my life as well.  I am aware that personal matters will bore readers who do not know me personally and even those who know me personally probably aren't interested in my personal life and so I will label all posts that are personal as "PRIVATE" both in the blogger label and on top of the post itself, as I have done for this post.  Readers who aren't interested in my boring personal records may simply skip any post that has this label and title.

Well, folksies, it's time for me to put the finishing touches to my packing.  Cheerio and have fun always!

Important lesson from the Kong Hee Affair.

We must not forget one uncomfortable fact in the Kong Hee Affair.  4 other persons are slapped with charges, some of whom received more charges than even Kong Hee himself because they were in charge of the financial books.  The charges relate to the allegation that monies were diverted illegally for the purpose of boosting and supporting the singing career of Kong Hee's wife.  Nothing is said about the 4 receiving any benefit from their actions.  Now, these 4 persons who have not received any benefit from their actions are charged for offences that carry sentences of life imprisonment.

Even if they are found guilty of doing what they are alleged to have done, the question that looms in my head is "Why the heck did they do it when there's no benefit to them at all?"

People are prepared to incur heavy costs to themselves for their families and loved ones.  A Singaporean actor was willing to go through a hazardous surgery and give half of his liver to his girlfriend (who became his wife) because of his love for her.  I remember reading in the papers about a father who threw himself in the path of a charging rhinoceros in the Terai jungle to divert the attention of the rhino from his young son.  The father died but the son was saved.  But such self-sacrificial acts are perfectly understandable and laudable in that the party performing the acts do so to protect or benefit their loved ones.  These are instances of heroic actions done by someone for his family.

But there are also instances of people who commit crimes for their families and loved ones.  I can think of mothers who steal to feed their children.  I've read of drug runners who risk getting the death sentence to give their families a good life.  But in a normal situation, nobody would do anything illegal and hence expose himself to heavy penalties when that act does not benefit himself and his family but it benefits someone else totally unrelated to him.

But obviously there are people who do sacrificial acts that don't benefit themselves.  Suicide bombers are a good example.  Many Palestinian suicide bombers in fact harm their own families because Israel takes reprisals for every suicide bomb incident and would send the bulldozer to level the homes of suicide bombers' families.

There is only one reason why anybody would do anything insanely sacrificial and even criminal and that does not benefit himself or his family and the reason is always religious.

I must make it clear at the outset that I'm not against religion.  I must also make it clear that I am not commenting in this post about Kong Hee's particular case.  He has not yet been tried and nobody knows if he is guilty or innocent at the moment.  I am only drawing a lesson from his arrest and I'm focusing on the broader picture and it doesn't matter if he is totally innocent; a lesson can still be learnt from the whole episode.

As a devout Christian myself, I'm naturally aware of how the average believer thinks and acts.  When Lee Kuan Yew gave the advice in his book that in his opinion, Muslims should learn to be less religious, I thought it was an excellent piece of advice that he should extend to people of all religions, including mine.  Religion is based on faith and I won't go into the details since I have written extensively on this elsewhere in my blog but in a nutshell, religion is not based on fact and reasoning.  As Martin Luther rightly points out, "Reason is the greatest enemy of faith".  Once a person goes into a system that requires him to lay aside his powers of independent reasoning, he is in fact entering dangerous territory and there is no telling what the outcome may be.

I know too little about other religions so I'll just concentrate on my own.  This is the sort of advice that I'll give to myself and people who bother to listen to me but it's of course extremely personal and lots of people will probably disagree with me.  Basically my advice is simple - if I have to be religious, I must be as moderate as I can and I must choose a time-tested church, particularly a church that has checks and balances in place.  The head of my parish church shouldn't be the overall head.  He must be answerable to someone else.  If he says he is answerable to only God, that's not a good answer because, as we have seen in reality, that usually leads to all kinds of abuses.  It is always possible for someone who is the overall head in a parish church (I use the term to mean a single church building as opposed to a whole church or denomination) to be idolised the way Kong Hee was idolised by his parishioners.  For an understanding of the extent of how he was hero-worshipped, see the video of his birthday celebration in my previous blog entry by clicking this.

So, the pastor of my church must be answerable to someone above him and ultimately the bishop who doesn't run any particular parish church.  There are other checks and balances that can be put in place.  There is something that my church does which I think is really quite good.  They rotate the pastors round the different churches in Singapore.  I've heard stories of parishioners being really upset by this because they have got used to a particular pastor and they want him to remain but of course the parishioners have no say (as should be the case) and the head or bishop has ultimate say on the matter.  But that's precisely how you can prevent a "cult leader" situation - by rotating the pastors every now and then.   Don't forget - religion is antithetical to reason.  It's very easy for people to hero-worship someone when they aren't using their heads.  Incidentally, in the birthday concert the church held for Kong Hee (if you have seen the video link in my blog), they called Kong Hee their "hero".  But independent churches can't rotate pastors because they exist on their own, ie each parish church is all the church they have.  So there must be other mechanisms they should come up with that can remove this potential for hero-worship.

It's very easy for someone to obey without question a hero-idol even if the obedience may lead to a situation where his own interest is seriously compromised.  But alas, the law does not recognise this as undue influence and my fear is the 4 people who are charged with Kong Hee will have to stand on their own.  But it is sad particularly when these 4 did not benefit one bit from whatever they were alleged to have done.

Rumour: Ho Sun Divorces Kong Hee

[For the background to this post and some information on what news item the whole of Singapore is abuzz with at the moment, please see my post yesterday by clicking this.]

There is a vicious rumour making its rounds on the internet at the moment that Ho Yeow Sun is going to divorce Kong Hee.   I know enough of human nature to know that there isn't a grain of truth in the rumour.   But of course you won't just take my word for it.  So, let's get to the bottom of this. 

What is the source of this rumour?  If you do a search on google for "Kong Hee and Ho Sun", you get a pop-up that says "Kong Hee Sun Ho Divorce".  And when you click on it, this is what you get:

The first link leads to a forum on Channel News Asia's website.  But when you click it, all you see is this:

"Invalid Forum specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator".

The second link is to Hardwarezone which anyone familiar with the internet will tell you, is best ignored.

The third link is to the Huffington Post which leads you to this (sorry for the overlap - I used the screen shot on my MacBook rather inexpertly):

If you click "Read Whole Story" at the bottom, it just just leads to a page that talks about the charges against Kong Hee and other details which have already been splashed on the local newspapers.  There is absolutely nothing about a divorce even though the word appears in orange on the title page.  I suspect it's a technical glitch in the Huffington Post although I must admit this is the first time I have seen anything like it.

I searched further and I found what I think is the source of this rumour:
Click here

Or rather, don't bother to click on it.  It's so obviously false and untrue.  No sources are given and a cursory glance at it is enough to tell you that it's unsubstantiated nonsense.  I won't even give it any credence by publishing its screen shot here.

Now, that is probably the source of this rumour circulating on the internet and I hope I have quashed it.

It's funny that the Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean had to assure the public that the police action was against an individual and not against the church.  From my observation in Christian circles, people are crying out for their pound of flesh from Kong Hee.  Most Christians are stunned when details are given of the luxurious lifestyles of Kong Hee and Ho Yeow Sun.  And their $28,000 a month house in Hollywood isn't the only thing luxurious they can boast of.  Asia One Business traces the couple's amazing rise from a $127,000 HDB flat to a $9.3 million Sentosa Cove penthouse.  Click here for story

I've been told by quite a few devout Christians that they are pleased to note that the maximum penalty is life imprisonment.  But their greatest worry is Kong Hee might have connections in high places and his sentence would be very much reduced.  Of course I assured them that the Singaporean courts were just and the correct punishment would be meted out if he was found guilty.  I had to remind them that he hasn't yet been tried.  But the fact that many Christians I know are clamouring for the maximum sentence even before the poor chap has been tried is an indication of how the general population feels about Kong Hee who will no doubt take the spot that TT Durai (of NKF fame) used to occupy.

Obviously, Teo Chee Hean did not have to assure Christians of the pure intentions of the police.  If the court finds that a crime has been committed, the guilty party must be punished to the full extent of the law.  And as most Christians will agree, if the guilty party happens to be a church pastor (who should have known better and who should have set a better example), our Christian conscience will demand that he be given the maximum possible punishment.  Of course, as in all cases, Kong Hee will have among his parishioners his diehard supporters but from what I know, even within his church, there are many who are getting pretty disgruntled with what's been going on.  They together with the larger Christian community and together with the rest of the citizenry are crying for blood.  Yes, false rumours should be quashed but as for justice, not only must it be done, it must also be seen to be done.

Kong Hee in the limelight

Standing in the limelight on a stage is not uncommon for a self-styled clergyman of an independent church, City Harvest, which is said to have the largest pool of parishioners of all the churches in Singapore (if you count each church as an individual building and you don't group them by denomination).  Nor is it uncommon for his wife, Ho Yeow Sun, who is an entertainer.

But what Kong Hee probably didn't bargain for is getting arrested and charged with criminal breach of trust.

Let's look at what the Straits Times has to say:

Source:  Straits Times:  http://www.straitstimes.com/The-Big-Story/The-Big-Story-1/Story/STIStory_815169.html

I did a search on youtube and I found this video of the church celebrating Kong Hee's birthday in a big way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_uc1tAlqRc&feature=related  (blogger doesn't seem able to link this video to the blog).  But here's the video:

I'm just amazed at the huge differences between the average parishioner in one of these independent mega churches and a parishioner in a traditional church.  For traditional church goers, if the church decides to hold a birthday celebration of this proportion for any clergyman, all of us will feel that something is seriously amiss.  The giving of glory to a clergyman is totally unheard of.  Come on, I don't even know when my bishop's birthday is.

I'm not interested in whether Kong Hee is guilty of the charges against him.  That's for the court to decide.  What I'm interested in is what makes a worshipper in one of these independent mega churches so different from the rest of us.  I did a bit of search on the internet just to understand what makes them tick and I think I have the answer.

We all know that the Bible can always be used to justify anything.  Matthew 10:41 says this: "Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward".  It's not difficult to include the pastor into the definition of a "prophet" or at least a "righteous person" and by increasing the ambit of "welcome", one can almost accommodate that sort of a birthday celebration and parishioners will think it's all perfectly in order to glorify their leader in a way that will make a traditional Christian frown.

I've heard many stories about mega churches and their pastors but I can't be sure they're all true.  I was told that one of them bought a million-dollar sports car (I'm sure it's probably a cheaper sports car).  Another goes skiing in the US once a month with his entire family (again, I'm sure this is an exaggeration).  Ho Sun herself is no stranger to the good life.  She rents the house she lives in in Hollywood for $28,000.00 a month.

The Bible is hardly where you can find justification for wallowing in the lap of luxury.  What Jesus says to the rich young ruler about wealth and Jesus' statement that you can't serve God and Mammon (ie money) are all uncomfortable sayings that the church has to live with.  These verses don't attract worshippers who like the rich young ruler in the Gospel story, aren't prepared for a change of lifestyle.  Mega churches need to preach a new kind of gospel if they really want to be mega.

Prosperity gospel which is preached in many of these independent mega churches teaches that wealth is a symbol of righteousness.  He who obeys God and is righteous will be blessed by God with wealth.  With that sort of teaching, it is no shame for a pastor in one of these churches to throw away his cassock and strut around in the most fashionable outfit styled by award-winning designers.  Pastors in these independent mega churches don't wear cassocks anyway.  To those who preach prosperity gospel, the trappings of wealth are but a symbol of one's inward righteousness.

That may go some way in explaining why nobody bats an eyelid in City Harvest Church despite the publicity given to the lifestyle of Ho Sun in Hollywood.  These are all God's blessings to reward her for her righteousness.  If Kong Hee were a clergyman in a traditional church, his wife would have at least had the decency to choose a more modest place to stay in.

When these independent mega church pastors or their wives make forays into an arena which is usually dubious by Christian standards and would normally be viewed as secular, the reason given is that Christians must "claim" everything for God.  Ho Sun's involvement in the entertainment industry is one such example.  She's doing it for God so that the entertainment industry is not monopolised by non-believers.  And there are believers who really believe that.

A friend who worships in another independent mega church tells me that his pastor has put in a lot of time and effort (not to mention money of course) to turn his magic show into a huge success. What? A pastor has a magic show?  There is a lot of heavy equipment which has to be bought for the magic show and it's not just a simple pulling of a rabbit out of a hat kind of trick.  It's more like a David Copperfield kind of magic show.  His pastor has even had performances of his magic show in the Esplanade and all the church members eagerly bought up the tickets.  What possible religious motive can there be?  The magic show is totally secular, so my friend assures me.  What the church says is that the entertainment industry has gone too much the way of the world and it's now time for the redeemed of the Lord to claim back the entertainment industry from non-believers.  This is their rallying cry which of course will be answered by the pious with fervour as they buy tickets to the magic show and invite their friends to the Esplanade.

Some supporters of Kong Hee say the same thing in the newspapers today (see page 7 of today's Straits Times - 27 June 2012).  They say that it's a way of reaching out to the secular world through the music of Ho Yeow Sun.

I just did a simple search on youtube for one of Ho Sun's pious videos and I have linked below the first video of hers I came across.  Let's get our Bibles, sit back and enjoy this delightful video performed by Kong Hee's wife.  Observe her revealing clothes and the implication of her being a bar girl in a bar frequented by Afro-American customers. 

How has Ho Sun or Kong Hee, through her music, reached out to the secular world?  How instructive, profitable or edifying is this video that you have just watched?  It seems more to me that Ho Sun simply wants to realise her dream of becoming a successful entertainer of Hollywood proportions.  I have no objection to that.  But placing a self-righteous veneer over an otherwise legitimate secular dream just sickens me.  And it puzzles me to no end that Kong Hee's parishioners can't see this.  Do they really think she was glorifying God in this video?

Is it really Canada or is it only Justin Bieber

Everyone is now talking about how dumb Justin Bieber is.  See this video from youtube and elsewhere - it's really gone viral:

David Letterman jokingly blames it on the Canadian High School from where Justin received his education.  How would Singaporean students rank here?  I checked with both my kids but that's not fair because they have been to the Sistine Chapel. But they insist that they knew about the Chapel long before they went there.  They are also absolutely certain that all the kids in their schools know about the Sistine Chapel.  That's one up for our schools but then schools in Singapore do rank very high in international assessments.  One school in Singapore beats all the top public schools in England when it comes to entrance into Oxford and Cambridge.  Outside of the USA, this same school in Singapore has the most number of students enrolled each year in Ivy League Universities.  So I suppose the answer is clear - our schools don't produce a Justin Bieber.  I'm talking about brains, not fan appeal which is so arbitrary a village idiot could hit the fan charts tomorrow.

But Justin really has a history of serious intellectual lapses.  In this interview with David Letterman last year, he showed himself to be not just dumb but also incapable of understanding simple English words.  Again the audience laughed and David Letterman had a good time.

But I suppose the moral of the story really is you don't need brains to be rich and famous and Justin isn't the only one.  Just look at Beckham.

Will Europeans stop eating dog meat?

When my daughter attended classes in Germany some years ago, a German girl asked her if she ate dog meat.  My daughter was of course horrified and said she had never heard of anything so disgusting.  The girl insisted that she had read on the internet that people in China ate dog meat.  Of course my daughter found it hard to believe since most of her friends were of Chinese descent and the thought of eating dog meat was so repulsive to the collective conscience of the people of our country that she was certain the girl must have read about some isolated minority tribe in China.  But the girl insisted that all Chinese people ate dogs.  My daughter was annoyed and responded by asking the German girl if she used soap made from Jewish fat.  She said she read accounts of Nazis in Germany gassing large groups of Jews and using their fat to make soap.  That shut the girl up.

My daughter then asked me if it was true that there were Chinese people who ate dog meat.  I do not know a single person who eats dog meat.  Honestly, I would find it very hard to be friends with anyone who eats it.  Call me prejudiced or bigoted if you must but I really would find it very hard to have a chat over a cup of coffee with a dog eater.  Every Chinese person I know has never eaten dog meat.  No relation of mine has eaten this forbidden meat.  I know someone who is very adventurous and has eaten exotic food including crocodile meat, snake meat and wild game.  But he would never dream of eating a dog because as he rightly points out, dogs are pets and friends.  Eating a dog is like eating a human child.  It's repulsive and an absolute taboo.  And he is of Chinese descent.

Why then do some Westerners insist that Chinese people eat dog meat?  A simple search on the internet reveals posts of Chinese, Koreans and Japanese eating dog meat.  How reliable are these posts?  I have also seen a photograph of a Chinese-looking man eating a well-formed human foetus.  Of course there are all kinds of strange people eating strange meat but they are not limited to Chinese people only.  Jeffrey Dahmer was a cannibal wasn't he?

I did a search on the internet and guess what?  Many Europeans have a tradition of eating dog meat too!  Let's look at what different Europeans do with man's best friend.

 1910 photo taken in Paris.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grande_Boucherie_Canine_a_Paris.jpg

Let us explore this dog-eating habit country by country.  Let's begin with.....

USA

The terms "sausage" and "dog" have been used as synonyms since 1884 and accusations that dog meat was used in the making of sausages dated to at least 1845.  These accusations were sometimes justified.


France

Dog meat has only become taboo in France today.  In the past, it was not so.  See the photo above of a dog butcher in Paris taken in 1910.  French Press described dog meat in the late 19th century as "beautiful and light" and ran stories of people buying dog meat in France.


Germany

Germans have eaten dog meat since the time of Frederick the Great and it's commonly called "blockade mutton".  Dog meat continued to be eaten in the 1920s.  Even a meat inspection law in 1937 mentioned the following animals as commonly used for meat: "pigs, dogs, boars, foxes, badgers..."   It was only in 1986 that Germany prohibited the consumption of dog meat.


Belgium

In the early 20th century, dog meat was widely sold in Belgium.  The average price was 12 francs a kilo ($1.30 per pound) in 1916.  Even the Council of the Veterinary School of Belgium recommended dog meat for human food.


Poland

In Poland, the meat of dogs is culturally not eaten; it's considered taboo.  However, in some rural areas in Poland, there is a tradition of eating dog fat in place of lard.  Dog fat is considered beneficial to one's health, particularly the lungs.  As recently as 2009, a farm near Częstochowa was discovered to keep dogs which were subsequently killed and turned into lard.

Switzerland

Switzerland has a long tradition of eating dog meat.  Eating dog meat is not illegal in Switzerland.  Less than 7 years ago, Switzerland enacted a law merely to prohibit the production of food from dog meat for commercial purposes.  This is provided for in Ordinance of 23 November 2005 on food of animal origin. 

Wikipedia puts it most succinctly and I attach a screen shot from wikipedia:

Source:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat

So, the next time you are asked by a European if you eat dogs, you should feel perfectly justified in turning the tables on him.  After all, he has a rich tradition of eating dog meat whereas for the Chinese, it's a recent madness that has affected only a few people.


EDITOR (added on 29 November 2014):

See this news article on the BBC about the tradition of eating dogs and cats in Switzerland:

Stop eating cats and dogs say animal rights campaigners in Switzerland

Double Joy

This is what I had for dinner, a chicken murtabak.  The murtabak originates in the Middle East - in Yemen and Saudi Arabia and it's a pancake with a rich stuffing of chicken or mutton.  Although it's full of calories and artery-clogging cholesterol, it's really something you won't mind dying for.  You can tell when you're anywhere near a place that sells murtabak.  The aroma just hits you right in the face and you know you have to eat it and everything you've ever read about what constitutes a healthy diet is quickly forgotten.

Arab traders brought the recipe to the East, beginning with India, in the region of Kerala and then to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.  Probably because of its origin, the best murtabak in Singapore is sold by Indian Muslims.  Come to think of it, I don't know of any murtabak seller who is not an Indian Muslim.

There are variations of the murtabak in places outside Singapore and Malaysia.  I understand that there is a sweet version in Indonesia.  When I was a student travelling in Thailand on a shoestring budget, I had a sweet murtabak that had condensed milk in it and it tasted heavenly.  It's hard for me to be certain now whether my delight for this milky murtabak was attributable to the unreliable tastebuds of a famished unguided youth as I was then or whether it was really delicious but I'm inclined to think that it must have been pretty good.  That was the only time in my life I ever had murtabak with milk as a filling.  I recall the bus that I was travelling in on a cheap ticket to Chiangmai made a pit stop in one of those little towns that had only one major road passing through it.  It was past midnight and there was this street vendor selling the milky murtabak.  It was more like a rolled up prata with condensed milk in it.

Whatever its variation, the murtabak is decidedly unhealthy.  Here's where I can sneak in the second joy, now that I have talked about the joy of eating murtabak.  That's the joy of cycling.  I cycled to dinner and as I approached my favourite murtabak joint, I saw what I felt I had to take a pic of.

Yes, that's how you can enjoy a huge plate of murtabak and still not die of a heart attack.  Plus you get to enjoy the fun of cycling, take lovely photos and you have the satisfaction of knowing that you're not burning up fossil fuel.

Is life in Singapore all that bad?

I've just read some of the blogs listed on the Singapore Daily and I'm amazed that most of the bloggers take the view that life in Singapore is pretty bad.  Gintai, in his account of his conversation with Shanmugam (the Minister for Law and Foreign Affairs), mentioned the better salaries of train drivers in the UK.  But would he really swop places with a UK train driver?

Well, here's a silly little ditty I have just composed.  The photos attached are all shot by me personally and I own the copyright, so google (the owner of blogger), don't mess with them or ask me if I am entitled to post them.  This is all just for a good laugh, so please take it with a shovel of salt.

WHERE THE PALM TRESS GROW

I am racking my brains for something to write
In my blog to set things right,
The grass here, they say, is not green, you know?
In the Land where the Palm Trees grow.

I have prata at eight with some curry beside

 And char kway teow to immediately follow

I can do that only because I reside

In the Land where the Palm Trees grow.

Across the Straits is a different place
Where the people are grouped by race
Is that what you want? I should like to know
Let's remain where the Palm Trees grow.

 The Land up North, has its Buddhist king
And its people do dance and sing

But they haven't got our kopi-O
so let's stay where the Palm Trees grow.

The Isle of gods have their temples galore

And white beaches from shore to shore
But they haven't got the security to show
So it's back where the Palm Trees grow.

I have gone far abroad, to another clime

 Where huge clocks tell out the time.

But the city is cold and surely you must know

It's not where the Palm Trees grow.

They have freedom, they say, they can do as they please

 They can do all things with ease

But that's not what I like and in my dreams I still go

To the Land where the Palm Trees grow.

In one land, they serve beer with smoke in it,
And it's drunk in one gulp as a habit.
They have there a quaint house with water below
But it's just not where the Palm Trees grow.

We have floods and the haze and it's humid and hot
We have ERP, GST and whatnot
There are cameras by the roads all in a row.
In the Land where the Palm Trees grow

But if I vow to be good, whatever my mood,
Not just me but the rest of my brood.
Then life is good and to all I'll crow
That I'll stay where the Palm Trees grow.

Mind Your Language

I've said it before many times and I'll say it again.  I'm not a stuffy pedant and I'm not bothered about grammar in speech and writing as long as the meaning is clear.  There are exceptions though and one of them is this - if you are going to write an article about grammar and you are going to highlight the errors of "the masses" (as some of these arrogant pedants would put it), you jolly well make sure that your article is something that won't make a grammarian frown.  For this reason, I used to write to the Straits Times to complain about grammatical errors in articles that talked about grammar.  I'll say a little more about the Straits Times later.

Sometimes an error is just screaming its head off.  It may be the sort of error that no person with an elementary knowledge of basic English grammar would make.  It's particularly bad when it appears in an official document.

That's what I noticed yesterday on a form that I had to submit to the hospital before they would remove a device that had been strapped to my body for 24 hours.  While waiting for my turn (waiting for hours is what you usually have to do in the Singapore General Hospital; see this), I took a shot of the form before submitting it:

What excuse can a hospital possibly come up with for such a glaring error?  One doesn't need a good education to notice the error.  Anyone, from the cleaners to the nurses and doctors, should have noticed the error and have it corrected.  So why has nothing been done?

It's different if the error appears in an email or a personal blog or some other medium that is not an official document.  Most email writers and bloggers are very much like me.  We don't go through what we have typed before we click "Submit" or "Post" or "Publish".  When Singapore Daily included my blog in their list a few days ago and my visitor counter started to jump to giddy heights, the first thing I did was to go through all my photos and remove those that might show me in various stages of undress.  This was supposed to be a private blog that nobody ever read and I had taken the liberty of including photos that I thought nobody would ever see.  But going through the two posts highlighted by Singapore Daily to check for errors was something I just couldn't do.  I can't understand why I have such an aversion to reading what I have written but I certainly have it.

I'm not alone in not reading what I've written before posting or publishing it.  I was just reading someone else's blog this morning (after clicking on a link in the Singapore Daily) and I spotted many errors that the blogger would not normally have made.  It didn't take me long before I noticed that the blogger was one of the journalists I corresponded with a long time ago when I complained to the Straits Times about serious grammatical errors in their articles on grammar!  I don't want to go into the details of my exchange with the Straits Times since I've mentioned them in a few of my previous blog posts and if you want to read them, click here or here or even here.   I will just say that in all the years that I have written to the Straits Times about such errors made by their journalists, they have stoutly refused to publish any of these letters.  They might acknowledge their errors in their replies to me and declare that they would alert the newsroom but they always refused to publish any letter that would show up their journalists' inadequacy in the language.  The only time they published my letter on such a matter was when I wrote on why I disagreed with Jenadas Devan's take on English poetry and the Straits Times editor probably thought that a difference in opinion on poetry interpretation was not so embarrassing as an outright blunder in English grammar.

Errors in her personal blog are of course excusable.  But errors in her newspaper are not, especially when the errors appear in articles on grammar. 

Medical costs in Singapore and how to get the best deal.

 The queue in the Blood Test unit at the Heart Centre, 

Singapore General Hospital. I took this photo at 8:15am.

There were already about 50 other people ahead of me when I arrived at 8am.

If you need to do a simple investigative medical test, say, a blood test to ascertain the level of your cholesterol, where would you go in Singapore if you want it cheap?  Such tests can't vary very much in quality.  After all, how different can a blood test be?  Most people will assume that a public hospital like the Singapore General Hospital will be the best bet for a cheap blood test.  And they can't be more mistaken than that.

A friend of mine has naturally high cholesterol from birth.  It's a congenital condition and he has to go for a blood test at least twice a year.  He tells me that he goes to Gleneagles Hospital for his regular cholesterol blood test because it's the cheapest.  I know that sounds surprising to you just as it did to me when I first heard it.  Gleneagles is a private hospital and one would expect blood tests done there to cost a lot more.

I just did my blood test for cholesterol at the Heart Centre in the Singapore General Hospital yesterday and the bill for the test alone came up to $62.49 (SGD).  Now, that's about twice what my friend pays for his blood test in Gleneagles Hospital.  I had to wait for an hour and a half just to get a sample of my blood taken.  In Gleneagles, the waiting time is probably about 10 minutes.

So, next time, don't just rule out a private hospital because you think everything there is bound to be more expensive.  It may not be.  Some of the investigations may be a lot cheaper than in public hospitals and the waiting time is always much shorter in private hospitals.

But there can be many other factors that will determine which hospital you go to for your blood test. I chose a public hospital because my cardiologist is there.  I have a lot of faith in my cardiologist who is honest and competent.  That rare combination of competence and honesty in a medical practitioner is very important to me and when I have found one who has it, I usually stick to him.  It's just that when I was waiting for my turn (and let's not forget that I waited for an hour and a half - from 8am to 9:30am) and I looked at the huge number of patients also waiting to have their blood samples taken, I could not help wondering if they were aware that at least for the blood test alone, they could get it faster and cheaper in a private hospital.