Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Babies Babies Where are You?

SM Goh's speech, Sunday 20th Aug on, guess what? Babies shortage in Singapore

Drawing from his personal experience, Mr Goh said, "My wife and I are fortunate that our son and daughter are not DINKs. They do not have a double income. My daughter is not working; my daughter-in-law is also not working, so no double income. They have three children each, which means my wife and I have six grandchildren - and they are all granddaughters. And because they are all granddaughters, there may be a chance that my son and his wife, my daughter and her husband may want a boy - or that's what I hope!"

Mr Goh's son, Dr Goh Jin Hian, is a medical doctor and the executive director of Parkway Shenton.

And his daughter, Goh Jin Theng, is in England with her English husband, Lee Craven.

Let see, if my dad earn about S$1.5million a year = $115,000 / month (Safe estimate) and my hubby as Executive Director who is a medical doctor, I estimate monthly pay to be at least S$10K ($5K /month for junior doctor).

Gosh I affort to be a stand home mum too!

And I guess these salaries can buy lots of diapers and I sure can hired one maid each for my kids.

This again showed how detached out gahment are from the people on the street. SIGH… remember who said $600,000 is peanut?

Picture of the Week




I just recieve an article on the benefit of Bananas from my friend and I absolutely love this picture.... dunno why...haha.. keep remind me of the person who spoke on TV this week : P

Monday, August 21, 2006

Cut throat Cubbies?

As reported by The New paper.

http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4136,111960,00.html

Maybe this is what our PM meant by embracing Foreign Talents?

Haha...

More FT to stimulate the economy.

I personally had written a complaint letter to CAAS on limo taxi drivers touting at the airport. What a disgrace to Singapore.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Cost of living in Singapore

Singapore is listed no.17 in 2006 up from no.34 last year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_cities

Gosh! It is much more expensive to live here then in Rome, LA, San Francisco, Stockholm, Chicago, Miami and Toronto!!

And I am pretty sure they pay better in these cities, which implied that we are being screwed!

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Word Statistic

Check out this link.... very interesting

http://www.worldometers.info/

It is sad to note the rate of increase for abortions, death of children under 5, and people with no safe drinking water.

Lighter side, I am amazed at the rates of lighting strikes!! Better be careful when you are out there!

Babies in Singapore

From Channel News Asia 16th Aug

More babies born in H1 but Singapore still stuck in low fertility trap

More babies were born in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2005.

The Registration of Births and Deaths recorded 18,294 births in the first half of this year, some 300 more than the same period last year.

The Singapore economy is on an upswing and so are the birth numbers: 37,492 babies were born last year.

But in the first half of this year, more babies were delivered, compared to the same period last year.

Not only are there more first-borns, more parents are also having their second, third and fourth child.

But a population expert tells our reporter that this marginal increase is still not enough to lift Singapore out of its low fertility trap......

Here's the rest of the article

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/225038/1/.html

What ironic about this is during the 70s-80s, our gahment had extensive campaign of restricting 2 kids per family to prevent over population.

I remember my aunty was FINED for having her 3rd baby.

I also heard horror stories of Grumpy nurses and doctors scolding pregnant woman for coming in too early for delivery.

At the turn of the century, our Gahment realized that our population is ageing due to less babies being born every years. Is this due to the successful campaign?

Singapore had followed the trends of every “developed” national where birth rates are declining years after years.

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2054rank.html

Looking at the table , we only have about 9.34 babies born / 1000 population.

Therefore in recent years we’ve seen our gahment dramatically stepped up their encouragement campaign for couples to have more babies.

They were giving out baby bonus, increasing maternal leaves from 2 months to 3 months and airing pro-family advertisement during prime time.

But are they solving the root cause of falling birth rates? I don’t think so.

First let me analysis why birth rates are falling in Singapore.

Ask any of your young friends and the main reason they give are the cost of living is going up, stressful work environment and poor child care facitlitis.

Today it is not cheap to give birth. Note only the delivery are cost about $3,000, excluding those pre and pos delivery treatments.

http://www.kkh.com.sg/ForPatientsnVisitors/SOCs/Womens/Maternity+Services/index.htm

If a young couple had a baby, who is going to look after him/her? In the seventies, my mum can afford to be a housewife and she took care of my sister and myself.

Today with the cost of living going up and with salaries increment slowing down, there is a dangerous exponential increase in the cost of living. Therefore both parents HAVE TO work in Singapore.

Working environment is still not family friendly. Not to forget there should be more benefit to be given to fathers as well.

My company use to have only “child-care-leaves” for general staffs and none for executive. Only last year did they extends the leaves to the executives.

I am glad that there is some improvement but I wonder which idiot came up with the separation in the first place. Does it meant that executive’s babies and less subject to sickness?

Until the infrastructure of,“Pro families Singapore” and the cost of living improved in Singapore, I doubt there is any way the gahment can increase the birth rates. In fact I think they had already give up and try to “import” foreign talenst.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Personality Test

I took a online personality test and here's the result. I highlighted those I think is correct.
Haha...
Stability results were medium which suggests you are moderately relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic.

Orderliness results were medium which suggests you are moderately organized, hard working, and reliable while still remaining flexible, efficient, and fun.

Extraversion results were low which suggests you are very reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and secretive.
Trait :
does not make friends easily, secretive, introverted, reclusive, observer, dislikes leadership, somewhat socially awkward, does not like to stand out, dislikes large parties, values solitude, solitary, avoidant, ambivalent about fitting in, not dominant, unassertive, suspicious, prudent, unadventurous, worrying, weird, intellectual, frequently second guesses self
Note the high percentage in : Peter Pan Complex (Chidish), Individuality.
Low percentage in: Hedonism (Haha..I am a good person) , Work Ethic(WTF?)
Interesting to let me know yours!!

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Singapore......

1. A nation with the most campaigns.

2. The only nation in the world where you need a certificate to own a car.

3. We have the longest serving PM.

4. A nation where first they ask you to have only 2 kids and fine you for
having the 3rd but later ask you to have at least 2 and give you bonus to have the 3rd.

5. We fine you for almost everything.

6. We have urine detector in our lifts.

7. Where goodies mysteriously are given out in every 4 years.

8. Where joining an opposition party = Death wish.

9. A nation where people stand on the right side of the escalator when the signs ask you to stand on the left.

10. A nation where the people love to smell the exterior doors of the MRT when it pull up to the station.

11. Where putting tissue papers on tables meant, “This is my table and don’t you dare sit on it.”

12. We have one of the world best computer games geek.

13. The only country in the world where prostitution is legal.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Goal 2010

Back in 1999 when our gahment announce Goal 2010 project, I was immediate skeptical about it.

Come on how can a nation where you see, “States Land, No trespassing” signs on almost any open piece of land can achieve a World Cup Final Spots by 2010? Even China did not make it to the final this year.

No wonder FAS decided to ditch the project in 2003. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/cna/analysis/031223_soccer.htm

I am not saying a nation with small population will not be able to achieve excellent in sports but I believe our parents rather see their sons and daughter become a doctors, lawyers or a plastic surgeon. If they ever want to take up sports, take up those that are “more prestigious” like Golf and Sailing.

Maybe we should go for projects like WIND 2010 (Sailing) or EAGLE 2010 (GOLF).

So far I see the most successful sport is Table Tennis and even so we imported our players. SIGH…

Maybe if we import David Beckham, Ronaldino, Kaka etc to form the starting 11 then I think we shall not have a problem in getting into the world cup final. The project should be named GOAL 2004 long time ago if we started early.
Singapore Fifa world ranking = 111 position

http://www.fifa.com/en/mens/statistics/index/0,2548,25998-Jul-2006,00.html