Reality check 102

The past 2 weeks have been interesting now that I think about it. But it didn't seem so at the start of that period.

But I've learned something in this time. When a person starts to settle for less and tell himself that it's ok to be content with reduction he is handed with, that's really the start of a bad end for him.

Whether a person is happy or not, depends on how he looks at things. That's very true. But frankly I don't think it should include telling yourself to be happy with what you have when you KNOW you can do better.

That's what I had been doing for the past few months.

I should have left my current position last year around this time. I had stagnated on the job quite simply. Working in the shadow of my employer.

Of course the Australian opportunity came along and that gave me something to think about as well as some hope. But when the unexpected spanner got thrown in. I fell back to my comfort zone and habitually forced myself to accept it and be contented with it even though I wasn't happy about it.

It's a bad mistake.

In life we should always live with hope. If you don't, then you essentially live a life of despair.

And despair is never good.

Hope however does not equate to success. And success does not equate to happiness. Happiness is an internal state of mind. You can essentially psycho yourself to be a little bit happy or not unhappy.

Which would you rather say to yourself?

I live a life of despair with no hope and am happy with it?

or

I live a life filled with hope and am happy with it?

I think I'll take the latter.

No more stagnations for me. As I learned in TCM. When Qi and blood stagnates, it is a harbinger of certain doom.

Reality check 101

It's one thing to be contented in life and be happy with what you have. That's what most people say when talking to others who seem to be unhappy with their lives because they cannot "see" how lucky they are.

Well I think it goes further than that.

What happens when the things that you are so contented with, and "lucky" to have get taken away from you? Then you just have to be contented with less and less. But till what level?

There is a saying that the key to happiness is good health and a very bad memory.

I tend to agree.

I realise that some of the happiest people are those who live day by day. They never plan for the future. They never worry about the future. They just live for today.

Two quotations come to mind :

1) Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

2) When you can think of yesterday without regret, and tomorrow without fear, you are near contentment.

I find it difficult not to think of tomorrow without fear. But I do think of yesterday without regrets. At least I'm half way there.

3.5 year old Evan plays the Xbox!

My 3.5 year old son playing Kung Fu Chaos on the Xbox!

He's playing the pink ninja with rabbit ears!

Radioactive poisoning tests?

Patient : Doctor I suspect that the blower at my factory is blowing radioactive substances at me for the past few months. Is there a test that I can do to prove that I have radioactive poisoning?

Doctor : I don't think so. Do you wear any radioactive shielding at work?

Patient : None at all!

To myself : Either this guy is nuts, or he is going to be the whistle blower in the biggest radioactive pollution scandal in Singapore's history!!!!

"But he doesn't want to eat anything....."

Parent : So doctor, can my son take the medicine on an empty stomach?

Doctor : It shouldn't be a problem but it is better if he could have some food before taking it

Parent : But my son doesn't want to eat any food.

Doctor : Well that's because he is having a fever and is feeling unwell. If you let him take his medicine, and his fever comes down, his appetite will return.

Parent : But my son doesn't want to eat any food.

Doctor : Then give him the medicine and sponge him.

Parent : But my son doesn't want to eat any food.

Doctor : ............

Issues churning at NUS Business School

The Today paper reported about issues churning at NUS Business School that involve mainly its Dean.

Reading the article I get the impression that Prof Earley thinks that he can spend the school's funds as he sees fit and then justify it later.

This is consistent with the modus operandi of many other "foreign talents" that we have hired in Singapore.

Was the TV commercial for the NUS Business School well received? Nope it was not.

I wonder whether all this money spending achieves anything besides putting a smile of satisfaction on the "foreign talent" who spends it?

It is sad that in Singapore we value these non-performing foreign talents who have reputations that flatter their true worth to our country.

Molly's suggestion

I like this suggestion from Molly.

check out the last part, what we can do to enure that mainstream media posts only articles that are non-partisan

http://mollymeek.livejournal.com/#114761

quote from Molly's (solly molly!!)

"OK, someone once complained that more than 85% of Internet postings are anti-PAP and so there is a need to have some “balance” by managing the Internet. Now, allow Molly to suggest that since probably more than 90% of mainstream media articles are pro-PAP BUT the PAP wants the mainstream media to be non-partisan, we might have to do our parts as citizens to remind the mainstream media to be non-partisan.

So, every time we spot a partisan article (pro-PAP or pro-opposition) in the ST or in Today or any other local paper, we might want to politely write to them and tell them to be non-partisan. We need to work together with the government to ensure that the mainstream media is non-partisan.

Template for Letter:

Dear _______,

I refer to the article “_________________,” in the paper ____________________. This article is dangerously partisan and I hope you will make amendments to the article and perhaps suspend the journalist who wrote the article.

As Ms. K Bhavani once wrote to the press, “[i]t is not the role of journalists or newspapers in Singapore to champion issues, or campaign for or against the Government.”

Kindly issue a public apology for publishing partisan articles.
Thank you very much.

Yours truly,
_____________

" unquote

do your part citizens!!

GIC returns impressive? I beg to differ

And so the GIC has released information on the performance of its investments.

According to the reports " .....GIC has significantly enhanced the value of Singapore's savings.......Over 25 years, GIC has grown to an outfit that invests in over 40 countries through nine asset classes, handling over a hundred billion dollars.

And its track record has been good.

Over a period of 25 years to March 2006, the annual rate of return on the foreign reserves managed by GIC averaged 9.5 percent in US dollar terms, and 8.2 percent in Singapore dollar terms.

The average rate of return over global inflation was 5.3 percent per annum."

The report makes it look like the returns are good. But really they are not.

I would have done better simply parking my money with the US S&P 500 index.

The Standard and Poor's website writes " From January 1926 through March 2006 the annualized total return for the S&P 500 was 10.46% per year up from the annualized 10.44% rate in December 2005. The dividend component consists of 40.97% of the return, down from the 41.16% value at December 2005."

10.46% vs 9.5%. I think a Primary 5 student will be able to tell you which is better. I wonder why we pay so much to these GIC people to give us returns that underperform against the S&P 500 which is just an index of stocks and not actively managed! We are wasting our money!

And the Chairman gives us further insight into their strategic thinking : "GIC invests the government's reserves abroad in assets which carry higher risks like equities, bonds, real estate.

Therefore these are expected to earn higher returns on average over the long term."

That sounds totally ABSURD to me! From what I understand high risk investments positions are usually taken to maximize returns over the SHORT TERM and not the long term! As it is for all the "good" high risk investment options that GIC took up, they achieved poorer returns compared to the S&P average! I would consider that a massive failure!

Even more shocking is the next statement by the Chairman : "The CPF invests members' savings only in absolutely risk-free Singapore government bonds. CPF members are paid market-related interest rates based on the 12-month fixed deposit rates and the savings account interest rates of the major Singapore banks, subject to a floor, he said.
CPF members who are willing to accept higher risks for higher returns have many channels to do so on their own through the CPFIS scheme," he added."

If the GIC is so good at achieving long term higher returns in high risk investment positions, then it makes no sense why CPF should only invest in absolutely risk-free Singapore government bonds!

I am no financial wizard but I am not naive either. It is safe that CPF invests members' savings in very low risk (there is no such thing as risk free) bonds. It is the people's money.

But please don't play with figures to proclaim that GIC is doing well when it is clearly the contrary! We are not fools.

Courage in the face of adversity

MOH gave an award to the team who investigated the recent fungal infection outbreak among contact lens users!

Well done team! Great work.

Mr Khaw's comments however throws up some questions for me.

Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan said: "Certainly when you decide to do something like this, you're taking on a very big multi-national corporation and as I said, they're armed with teams of (scientists and) lawyers. And if the advisory was pre-mature or without basis, or could not be proven, I'm quite sure there'll be a legal suit on our table.

"But more than legal suits, it's also our own reputation. In this instance, the reputation of SNEC and of course Ministry of Health and Singapore. So I'm quite glad. More importantly it ended up well."

Why should that be mentioned? You mean to say that if the MNC or "organization" is big or important enough, then the advisory would not be published?

In any case, if there were an instance where it was the reputation of MOH vs say Temasek Holdings, whose reputation would be more worthwhile protecting?

I suppose things are never as simple as they seem.

I feel Mr Khaw would have been wiser not to have made such statements at all. All it does is highlight that such considerations were made by MOH and that the possibility of overlooking the issue for the sake of reputations is real.

Not good.

"Liak Boh Kiew"? "Catch No Ball?"

Today's Sunday Times carried an article about Singapore doctors being unable to speak the dialects. Especially the younger doctors.

Well the question is whether young doctor are expected to know how to speak 3 or more dialects, Mandarin and Malay? Why is it so surprising that young doctors can't speak those languages?

Let's see. In the 80s the government decided that all Chinese TV drama serials from Hong Kong would be dubbed in Mandarin. There was a speak Mandarin and not dialect campaign as I recall. Children studied English and their Mother Tongue ie Mandarin, Malay or Tamil. So it's obvious that young doctors should NOT be expected to speak dialects and 2 "Mother Tongues"!

But the way the article was written makes it sound like it's the fault of the doctors that they are not multi-lingual! That's a tad bit unfair I feel.

The problem is really with the older uneducated elderly majority. (I have previously written that this group of Singaporeans needs special medical care and communicators)

These patients also are one kind. The young doctor may be trying his best to speak whatever broken, half past six dialect to them but these old folks would show unhappiness or disgust and even lecture the young doctor for not being able to speak his dialect! No appreciation for the young doctor's effort are shown most of the time.

Is Singapore truly and English speaking country? Well perhaps for a certain majority of the pre-1965 generation, they are still stuck in that era.

Is this for REAL?

The latest Health Facts statistics for Singapore are out.

At the MOH website they have listed that the total government health expenditure as % of GDP was 1.2% for 2003 and it dropped to 0.9% for 2004. Figures for 2005 were unavailable.

Government Health Expenditure




















I was just curious to know how Singapore ranks among other countries going by this statistic.

I found this site which displayed data from WHO in a 2002 survey : International government expenditure on health care as % of GDP

The results were rather surprising to me!





















There's not much surprise that USA is at the top with 14.6%. Australia and Canada spent about 9.5% of their GDP on health care. The UK was ranked #48 and spent 7.7% of their GDP on health care.

So where was Singapore?

Singapore ranked an impressive #149 out of 186 countries! But WHO listed Singapore's GDP expenditure as 4.3% and NOT 0.9% or 1.2%!

Well these were 2002 figures from WHO.

Iraq's expenditure on health care was ranked the lowest at 1.5%. I suppose you don't spend very much on health care when all you are doing is killing most of the people!

But something has to be wrong here. Singapore's spending of 0.9% would make it the lowest spending country in the entire world! Is this for real?

I have always wondered how Singapore can spend so little on health care and yet have a relatively efficient, competent health care system. My suspicion is that the statistics are fake, or that the health care workers are actually severely underpaid for the good work that they are doing.

Poor Mr Brown. All he did was follow Daddy's instructions!

Poor Mr Brown. Our big brother has been caned like the older brothers before him. And all he did was to follow instructions from Daddy.

These were Daddy's instructions and comments that we got in the past :

"feel free to express diverse views, pursue unconventional ideas or simply be different."

"You can get anything you want in this family. You can travel, you can bring it in. You can - you can organize what you want. You can say anything you want, and all sorts of things are said and debated in this family" - Aug 2005

"We encourage the children to express their views and to have a view. Our problem in this family is that many children don't really have a view." - 30 June 2003

"We don't mind if you have different views, but you must have some views. If you have no views, I have a problem. If you have different views, we can talk about it and let's do something about it together."

"Whether the children fully agree with Daddy's point of view is less critical than whether the children are following the issues at all." - July 2001
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This is how Singapore has developed over the years. It's a bit like the old traditional families.

Daddy always makes the decisions. He works to feed the family, to earn the money for the household. He decides what home to buy/rent, he decides what the colours of the walls are, he decides what Mom should cook for meals.

Initially the young children don't feel any wrong with this. Because they are helpless, know nothing of the world and trust Daddy wholeheartedly.

But as the years go by......the children become teenagers, and then young adults. They are educated. They have studied history, science, and read about social family structures and systems around the world.

Soon the older children start to make noise. They don't like the colour of their room walls. They want it blue and not white. They want to eat different types of food and not the constant rice and soup Dad always wants.

Dad realises he has a problem at home. He talks to the older children. They make it known they want to have a say in the home, in the family. So Dad says, ok I will listen to your feedback. Let us sit down and discuss things.

So they have regular meetings at the dinner table. The older children trash ideas. They give suggestions. Dad doesn't say very much. He just nods and write notes and at the end says he will consider all the suggestions seriously.

And at each subsequent meeting, Dad explains to the children why the walls have to remain white and not blue. Why it is more healthy to eat rice and soup rather than hamburgers. He justifies all his previous decisions. He also tells them that they are young and the world is good for them such that they can afford to be concerned about the walls being white and not blue when in the past, Daddy had to fight to get food on the table. It was his efforts that have brought the family to where it is today. Hence he knows best and all the children know nothing!

Increasingly, the older children realise that it is a waste of time talking to Dad. He is merely listening to the suggestions but doesn't intend to act on them at all. All it gives him is more information so that he can justify and rebut the requests of the older children. Everything is to be EXACTLY THE WAY HE WANTS IT TO BE.

After a while, the older children get disgruntled and decide that if they really want to have things how they like it, they have to leave the family. Set up their own. Or join some other family where the Daddy is not like their Dad and is more open to suggestions for improvements.

The dinner table meetings continue. The younger children attend because Daddy says they must continue to have it. But it is a silent affair. Daddy just keeps saying "How anybody got any feedback today? We are here to listen to feedback. That is what you all want right? A channel for feedback"

And all the younger children just keep quiet. And Daddy asks "How come you all so quiet? I don't mind if you have different views, but you must have some views. If you have no views, I have a problem. If you have different views, we can talk about it and let's do something about it together"

And the younger children think in their mind "Yeah Daddy talk talk only. I remember how last time when big brother and big sister got different views, how he beat them up with the cane. Better don't have different views lah"

And Daddy adds finally to the silent family " Aiyah, if you all not happy, I always tell you all that Mom can go find another Daddy for you all what! But I also warn you that all of the other men out there are simply not up to mark!"

My comment on the recent ban of smoking in hawker centres in Singapore

Well everyone has their rights. Smokers have a right to be able to choose to smoke. Non-smokers have a right to breathe air that is not polluted by exhaled smoke from smokers.

So who has the bigger right? That seems to be the argument on today's talkback show on 93.8FM.

To put things in perspective, smoking doesn't do any good to the smoker nor the non-smoker. In fact it is very harmful.

As such I support the recent ban on smoking in public areas like coffee shops and hawker centres. It is a law designed to safeguard the health of people.

So to smokers out there, if you can't smoke, because you simply can't find a place to smoke, it's actually good for you. Remember that.

On the other hand, to ask non-smokers to breathe in 2nd hand smoke that is detrimental to health is simply not advised.

As for the debate about whether Singapore should ban smoking across the island, I too feel that is a bit too drastic. However having said that, Singapore is a very small country, and you don' t have vast open spaces where there are few people around. So inevitably, when a smoker lights up, some non-smoker around him will breathe 2nd hand smoke. That's not good.

Just something for all to think about......if you have smoking sections in a restaurant or enclosed space, isn't that akin to having a peeing section in swimming pools?

Think about it.

Managed Health Care.......

There is this managed health care company that reimburses clinics in this manner

For acute cases : a flat rate of SGD$15+ (inclusive of medicines)
For chronic cases : a flat rate of SGD$21+ (inclusive of 1 month's supply of medication)

And there are several GP clinics that subscribe to such plans.

I suppose this is very much polyclinic rates already isn't it?

Why doesn't the government simply do the same for all private GP clinics then?

Offer SGD$15 for every patient? As it is there will be many GPs who will take up the plan.

Also I think those disgusting managed health care companies should close down as they do nothing but siphon money away from the actual health care for patients. Why have a middleman at all? I wonder how much the companies pay the MHC to let the MHC pay the clinics SGD$15 for every patient? How much do these MHCs make? Perhaps they make >SGD$15?

For the matter, the cost of medicines is not cheap. Even if you go for generic drugs the number of medicines and amount of medicines has to be low in order not to LOSE money. So patients walk away with a small quantity of cheap medicines.

SMA's guidelines on consultation fees should be thrown to the dogs! SGD$15 isn't even half of the SGD$30 they recommend GPs charge. It's a mockery!

I think the health care system in Singapore has gone down the drain.

I'm losing it here. I spent an hour talking to a patient who has hypertension, diabetes, weighs 106kg and is 42 kg overweight with a BMI of 38, his father passed away in his 40s due to complications arising from diabetes and hypertension. And after that the fella argued saying he did not want to pay SGD$10.50 for the consultation fees. SGD$10.50!!!! Under the SMA guidelines, the first 20 minutes would be SGD$30-SGD$55, and for every 10 minute block above 20min, SGD$20-SGD$25. So in reality I should be charging SGD$70-SGD$105 for a 1 hour consultation! And yet people argue and shout at me for $10.50!!!

What's the point in being a good doctor these days? Nobody wants to pay for advice. I much rather just talk little or better still don't talk, give some cheap medicines and collect my SGD$15. And some patients ask why doctors don't talk or say much. Well that's because you bloody people don't want to pay for it! DAMN IT!

TO HELL WITH IT! THIS IS SINGAPORE. IT IS TIME I ACCEPTED IT AND BE LIKE EVERY OTHER DOCTOR IN SINGAPORE.

Say little, give more medicine = value for money for the patient, no arguments. They don't know anything anyway.

TO HELL WITH IT!