Over the years I have witnessed enough not to expect much from politicians, but I certainly didn’t expect Lee Kuan Yew to blame the Singapore people for fugitive Mas Selamat Kastari’s escape from prison. I can’t find the original Straistimes’ article, but it’s quoted in entirety by many Singaporeans’ blogs, two of which are from Mr. Brown and The Daily Trackback.
It’s a beautiful world we live in:
An elderly woman, 60, collapses in a crowded shopping centre. She is seriously ill and needs to get to the hospital urgently.
Paramedics rush to the scene, place her on a stretcher, and get into a lift to take her downstairs to the ambulance.
But to the horror of the anxious family members, some shoppers refuse to give way. Instead, they decide to squeeze into the lift.
That’s not all. They then press the buttons for all the other floors where they want to get off.
Here is the full New Paper article.
[via SingaporeSurf]
This is from ex-Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed:
…(the) MIGs are given, are sold to us without any condition, if you feel like bombing Singapore, for example, the Russians are not going to object…
…But this great aircraft called F-18, which we bought from America, after buying it, after several months, I got to know that this aircraft cannot be used for any attacks against any country, even if this is not Singapore.
View video here.
I like this expressive comment: “Every country has its Bush.”
[via mrbrown and My Very Own Glob]
I thought the NKF stories were over, but that’s just not the case. Some lines from the full article:
Two out of every three Singaporeans have contributed to NKF, including many lowly-paid workers who pledge monthly contributions from their pay.
They’ve become bitter and distrusting because they’ve just learned that only 10 cents of every S$1 (RM2.22) of their donations was spent on the patients, not 51% as Durai had told them.
Durai last earned an annual salary of S$300,000 (RM667,300) but was also raking in a large fortune during his tenure by regularly paying himself, through creative accounting, overtime pay, converted leave and bonuses – backdated. In 16 months before leaving, he had made 16 overseas trips on first class tickets.
His executives, especially two lady directors, came in for special treatment. One of them had several pay increases a year, barely one or two months after the previous one.
丑陋的人性。
Funny stuff. Shows the high level of discipline in army:
When we were out in the field for the 10 days (out of 18) we were at Shoalwater Bay, Central Queensland, the optimistic among us took out our mobile phones to check for any semblance of a GSM signal.
Not much luck until one day, somewhere in the western sector of the middle of nowhere, 3SG Gerard Tan, Bravo Company 84mm Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle Specialist, took out his mobile, turned it on, and yelled, ‘Signal!’
This prompted a mad scramble, and I’ve never seen soldiers move so quickly, whipping out their phones and turning them on faster than they can reload their rifles.
Why can’t drivers just obey the traffic rules? Why can’t they just drive or park their cars the way they must have learned in order to get their driver licenses? Is that too much to ask for?
Well, apparently it is for this guy who illegally parked his car and caused a traffic jam for more than a hour.
I get ticked off just reading this article.
About two days ago my manager sat with us during lunch. One of the things that came up during the conversations was Michael Fay. To get to the point, both my manager, whom I believe is American, and I agreed that the punishment was befitting of the crime. It’s interesting how today I independently came across this link about Michael Fay on Wikipedia.
Found this folk song/poem on the net. It’s about the NKF saga (my post 1, post 2, post3).
[via mrbrown.com]