S'poreans evicted to make way for FT
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http://young-pap.blogspot.com/2009/05/sinkies-evicted-to-make-way-for-ft.html
Families bid farewell to College Green
Tenants vacate Dunearn Road estate to make way for NUS students
By Debbie Yong
The Yaps will say goodbye to their College Green home today. The family of five, and another six remaining families, have to vacate the estate off Dunearn Road by the end of this month to make way for new tenants. Petitions by residents to stay on, and meetings with the relevant authorities over the past year, have been unsuccessful.
The 35,000 sq m estate contains 63 pre-war terrace homes which are owned by the Singapore Land Authority and managed by United Premas. Come July, they will be leased to the National University of Singapore.
The units will be converted into hostels for about 240 overseas graduate students of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
'It's a great place for children to grow up in. They can roam about freely in nature, as children should,' said market researcher Yap Miew Leng, 32, who has lived there for two years.
About 60 per cent of the estate's residents are Singaporeans, while the rest come from countries such as Australia, the United States and Japan.
...Each unit will house about four students, according to a spokesman for the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
The units, sports facilities and multi-purpose hall will be refurbished at an estimated cost of more than $3.5 million. -
Born To Serve Foreigners
The year was beginning of the 21st century, we saw the influx of foreigners into our society and in a real moment, for the very first time, we begin to feel the impact of it. Unlike the 90’s where we still were tolerable about it, something like an intrusion of privacy, as in human instinct, we are bound to territorial protectionism, there should be no intervention from people of a different culture and countries. This is true and proved in history where tribes fight against tribes and in modern time, occupation of land and wars. Therefore it is not surprising that many were in shell shock when they feel that their jobs were at stake and life getting disarrayed from the norm. We are talking and seeing peoples unlike us, they are youthful, can be ill mannered, lack of gracefulness and more importantly, renewable. Therefore they always look youthful, always talking loud and always different from us. Unlike our own, we are aging, falling health and getting less and less both in population and opportunities. From here, the outcry and outpouring is going to be a daily process from our very own aging population.
For who can blame us, your land is invaded by the so call economical foreigners (with doubts), your jobs and pay check is getting from code green to red and your physical strength is getting weaker and weaker to match them. The pleadings, the complaints, the non satisfying feeling and the ultimatum of some getting into mental disorder are gaining it momentum. No country has ever allow foreigners to flow into it land like tap water free flowing, massive amount of them causing further crime rates and some society instability. So why are they here? To helps us or to help themselves? It goes both ways, it was claimed that when they are here, we get the jobs, so that mean to say that when they are not here, we get no jobs? Weren’t we survived and built this nation from swarm lands to industrialisation with our bare hands and intelligent brains without any of these peoples? Oops, yes, we are getting old and we are not producing to generate the next batch of wage earners, and when there is insufficient peoples, we simply cannot operate this nation that link it economic to the global arena.
All right! Fair enough, we need peoples, we may go automation, but we still need peoples otherwise we will have to go down from the first world to the third or maybe even the fourth world again. Is it that bad to be in the third and fourth world? Well, if one wanted a blissful life with a slow pace of living and less stress to take care of, why not? Back to kampong and fishing village life, some don’t mind, we just have to be thrifty, lower the cost of goods and slowly build our population again, just like before, each couple producing 5 to 10 children at ease. But how about the rich and the middle class citizens, that bulk of them is not going to agree because they are going to loose all their luxuries materialism, and there are about 80% of them leaving the 20% keep on cursing and complaining. So what is the option? Well just by looking at the 80%, you can forgo the other 20% poor, old and less educated. And that is how and why the foreigners are still flowing in to tap the sweet juices that we and our fathers and mothers laboured hard to give them. Aren’t we the servant of the foreigners?? In the end, we can only conclude that we are not united and never face a problem with the same frequency of mind. And that goes well with the policy makers who had planned not for us to get united. After all, class differentiation and multi racial can be a blessing in disguise for our govt as the best choice of ruling this place.
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Originally posted by angel7030:
Born To Serve Foreigners
The year was beginning of the 21st century, we saw the influx of foreigners into our society and in a real moment, for the very first time, we begin to feel the impact of it. Unlike the 90’s where we still were tolerable about it, something like an intrusion of privacy, as in human instinct, we are bound to territorial protectionism, there should be no intervention from people of a different culture and countries. This is true and proved in history where tribes fight against tribes and in modern time, occupation of land and wars. Therefore it is not surprising that many were in shell shock when they feel that their jobs were at stake and life getting disarrayed from the norm. We are talking and seeing peoples unlike us, they are youthful, can be ill mannered, lack of gracefulness and more importantly, renewable. Therefore they always look youthful, always talking loud and always different from us. Unlike our own, we are aging, falling health and getting less and less both in population and opportunities. From here, the outcry and outpouring is going to be a daily process from our very own aging population.
For who can blame us, your land is invaded by the so call economical foreigners (with doubts), your jobs and pay check is getting from code green to red and your physical strength is getting weaker and weaker to match them. The pleadings, the complaints, the non satisfying feeling and the ultimatum of some getting into mental disorder are gaining it momentum. No country has ever allow foreigners to flow into it land like tap water free flowing, massive amount of them causing further crime rates and some society instability. So why are they here? To helps us or to help themselves? It goes both ways, it was claimed that when they are here, we get the jobs, so that mean to say that when they are not here, we get no jobs? Weren’t we survived and built this nation from swarm lands to industrialisation with our bare hands and intelligent brains without any of these peoples? Oops, yes, we are getting old and we are not producing to generate the next batch of wage earners, and when there is insufficient peoples, we simply cannot operate this nation that link it economic to the global arena.
All right! Fair enough, we need peoples, we may go automation, but we still need peoples otherwise we will have to go down from the first world to the third or maybe even the fourth world again. Is it that bad to be in the third and fourth world? Well, if one wanted a blissful life with a slow pace of living and less stress to take care of, why not? Back to kampong and fishing village life, some don’t mind, we just have to be thrifty, lower the cost of goods and slowly build our population again, just like before, each couple producing 5 to 10 children at ease. But how about the rich and the middle class citizens, that bulk of them is not going to agree because they are going to loose all their luxuries materialism, and there are about 80% of them leaving the 20% keep on cursing and complaining. So what is the option? Well just by looking at the 80%, you can forgo the other 20% poor, old and less educated. And that is how and why the foreigners are still flowing in to tap the sweet juices that we and our fathers and mothers laboured hard to give them. Aren’t we the servant of the foreigners?? In the end, we can only conclude that we are not united and never face a problem with the same frequency of mind. And that goes well with the policy makers who had planned not for us to get united. After all, class differentiation and multi racial can be a blessing in disguise for our govt as the best choice of ruling this place.
You know, angel, I often dreamt and reminiscent going back to the bungalow in Bali, relax on an easy chair overlooking the calm blue South China Sea with the cool breezes blowing around me, as I read my novel, awaiting the beautiful sunset to end a lovely day.
But those days are gone, as I have to be realistic and work doubly hard to earn a living. These are the worse of times, most unstable of periods, and ever dangerous juncture of employability and sustenance of our lives.
I am aware many are hurting, just as I am, and worried of what the future will bring. Some may be out of jobs, desperately looking for one, taking buses and trains, walking under the hot sun dripping with sweat, attending interview after interviews, only not to be hired because there were limited vacancies and even though only for Singaporeans.
Some stuck at a job that they do not love, or even hate, or earning way below their capabilities, but at such times, had to grin and smile, at obnoxious smug bosses or managers who never hesitate to show you the chop if you so much as look sideways wrongly.
Whomever you are, you are not alone. No one is. The whole wide world is suffering right now just as you are. Totally unprecedented. However, there is hope and will always be hope as long as mankind do not give up, and never did as history had shown.
I read your piece and enjoyed it, in fact, i almost wanted to find comfort in it. But being educated, I cannot afford such luxury. It's flaw and fallacies are hard to swallow, as much as i try to bluff myself.
Eversince independence, when had we not been 'born to serve foreigners', as you crudely put it?
Who were the industrialists who set up factories in Singapore post independence? Who were the managers whom our forefathers had to kowtow to? Worse still, they were scolded by the Japanese engineers, whose very fathers had exterminated ours!
Yet we survived and thrived, because our forefathers believe in a future in our homeland, and one day successive generations will learn and form our own companies, which many of them did.
But unfortunately, our home market is only of 2-3 million people. How could entreprenuers hope to survive relying just on our own market alone?
Small food cottage industries may survive, but certainly not electronics or big biz How would they dare to pit themselves against MNC and lacking the massive funds from massive markets to compete against?.
Instead, foreign MNCs were welcomed here. . Even right up till today, senior management were still foreigners. So long as we get our cheques and a stable career, who cared, until this unprecedented and unpredicted global event hit us?
Only the govt have acess to such massive funds for international expansion. Some say the govt should give out the money and help our entreprenuers to expand. Good idea, but give to who?
Should Singapore go the Malaysian cronyism way? And who will be responsible for OUR money when such companies go bankrupt, whereby the CEO just pat his backside and walk away?
Perhaps it would be better if our ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES handle such funds and be fully accountable?
80% are middle class, but we are funding the other 20% to upgrade and keep their jobs. I doubt if we as a society had cruelly cut our ropes and left them high and dry as you presumed. Even as i speak, plans are already afoot on how to help our middle classes more. It may not be enough, but NO ONE WILL BE LEFT BEHIND.
I know what i say goes against the grain of some personal beliefs here. The truth hurts, and is painful, but we must acertain what are the fully analysed facts and only by acknowledging such facts with rationality, only then can we hope to find solutions, improve, and grow.
To dream, or hanker after lost hopes, is regression and will only do more harm to our society and the precious next generations, if not ourselves. We are still breathing, thus we are still alive, after 6 months of this crisis.
We arent dead yet and will never be as long as we dont give up hope on ourselves and others. Not hanker after or delude ourselves of a paradise that didnt happen - where we Singaporeans were masters of ALL enterprises on our island.
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Originally posted by Yxxxone:
http://young-pap.blogspot.com/2009/05/sinkies-evicted-to-make-way-for-ft.html
Families bid farewell to College Green
Tenants vacate Dunearn Road estate to make way for NUS students
By Debbie Yong
The Yaps will say goodbye to their College Green home today. The family of five, and another six remaining families, have to vacate the estate off Dunearn Road by the end of this month to make way for new tenants. Petitions by residents to stay on, and meetings with the relevant authorities over the past year, have been unsuccessful.
The 35,000 sq m estate contains 63 pre-war terrace homes which are owned by the Singapore Land Authority and managed by United Premas. Come July, they will be leased to the National University of Singapore.
The units will be converted into hostels for about 240 overseas graduate students of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
'It's a great place for children to grow up in. They can roam about freely in nature, as children should,' said market researcher Yap Miew Leng, 32, who has lived there for two years.
About 60 per cent of the estate's residents are Singaporeans, while the rest come from countries such as Australia, the United States and Japan.
...Each unit will house about four students, according to a spokesman for the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
The units, sports facilities and multi-purpose hall will be refurbished at an estimated cost of more than $3.5 million.It broke my heart to read this piece on the eviction, and at such troubling times.
But then, harsh as it may be, we MUST acknowledge the facts. Those houses were not their personal property and had only period leases on it. The tenants know full well when they sign on the dotted line. Plans already had long been laid for the better use of such leased properties for our society
In truth, they had been living in priviledge on low rent when we were living in HDB flats or Condos paid with our money at higher costs, a priviledge we never had. Some of them were not even Singaporeans.
They still have other options to move to other premises. It's not like they will be irresponsibly evicted out and left to live on the streets.
I would like to find fault with the govt and vent my frustrations on them, but we have to be rational if we are to survive and grow as society seeking maturity. Attempting to sow differences and dislike in this manner is not the way, for it only depresses others.
This is only my personal view. Go ahead and vent yours if you must. I cant continually spread true hopes based on rationalized facts. I'm tired of this all.
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Originally posted by xtreyier:
You know, angel, I often dreamt and reminiscent going back to the bungalow in Bali, relax on an easy chair overlooking the calm blue South China Sea with the cool breezes blowing around me, as I read my novel, awaiting the beautiful sunset to end a lovely day.
Can one view sunset in South China Sea from Bali? In your dreams perhaps.
