TR EMERITUS

By Tan Keng Leng, Guest Columnist We are often told that the secret to the US’ success is its ability to attract the best talents from around the world, but even so, companies there that wish to employ foreigners are first required to prove that no American national is able to perform the job the foreigner is being recruited for. Another frequent argument given is that foreigners bring in valuable experiences that locals lack. That is true only up to a certain point; a middle-aged foreign professional who has worked in a dozen or more countries certainly would fit this description. However, a 20-something year old China national who has studied here at taxpayers’ expense since kindergarten up to PhD level definitely does not. Whatever knowledge he/she possesses, he/she studied it here, and whatever experience he/she possesses, he/she gained it here. So what valuable experience does he/she have to contribute to the betterment of the country? And for that matter, is the country even attracting truly talented foreigners at all? We would like to draw your attention to the following GeBiz tenders below: Proposal for 2009 EL Bridging Course (Tanjong Katong Girls’ School) Objectives: To help the foreign scholars develop proficiency and confidence in EL so as to be able to adapt to Secondary 3 lessons in English in the lead up to the ‘O’ Levels. Desired Outcomes/Deliverables Increased proficiency and confidence in EL Cultural awareness Familiarization with  ‘O’ level syllabus, format of EL paper and standards Course Outline Oral communications skills Reading skills Writing skills Grammar Usage Vocabulary building Commencement date of course Mid November 2009 – End December 2009 Resources Set and marked written assignments Vocabulary building exercises Grammar teaching Learning Journeys Multimedia resources Details of quote to include: Cost per scholar per hour: $6.00 per hour Number of hours per course: 250hrs Number of scholars: 28 - 34 Number of students per class: 14-17 Curriculum Vitae of the Course Trainers (please attach) ENGLISH LANGUAGE BRIDGING PROGRAM FOR FOREIGN STUDENTS ENTERING SEC 3 IN 2010 SPECIFICATION OF DETAILS OF PROGRAM Target group: 6 students from China Total number of hours of lessons: 200 Duration of program: November – December 2009 (lessons to be carried out over the 9 weeks in Nov – Dec.) Program Objectives: The program should amply prepare these foreign students for a smooth transition from a Chinese learning environment to the local education scene by teaching them the essential skills to cope with the Secondary 3 ‘O’ level EL Program. Qualifications of trainer(s): The trainer(s) must have at least a university degree in English Language / English Literature and some experience teaching English Language in a secondary school or to foreign students. The trainer(s) should be patient and encouraging in guiding these students. It would also be ideal if the trainer(s) is conversant in Mandarin. [The trainer(s) should submit his/her/their curriculum vitae to the school for consideration.] Program Approach: The program must create a conducive learning environment of diverse learning opportunities to hone speaking, reading, listening, and writing skills in the learners. The learners should also be engaged in a series of writing practices which should be graded and which should consist of constructive feedback on how the learners can improve their language competency. The program must include various forms of formative and summative assessment, such that the students’ learning should culminate in their eventual performance at an end-of-program test. Are we the only ones, or have others noticed the contradiction in the tenders as well? We are always being told that Singapore is a meritocracy, and that scholarships are handed out only to the best students. Is this really the case here? After all, if the PRC students benefiting from these programs are truly of scholarly caliber, then shouldn’t they already be sufficiently proficient in English so as not to require these additional lessons? Conversely, if they require such extensive English lessons just to keep up with locals as implied by the term “bridging program”, then doesn’t it prove that they are unworthy of their scholarships? Moreover, local students who are good in all subjects except for one or two have to undergo additional tuition lessons paid for by their own parents; why then shouldn’t these PRC students have to pay for their own English tuition lessons as well? Why should we taxpayers have to foot the bill for them, when we would much rather have the money put to much better use by nurturing talented local students to their fullest potential instead? Instead of paying for additional English lessons for these PRC nationals, shouldn’t the government provide more bursaries for needy local children?  Read More →

From our Correspondent Straits Times journalist Geoffrey Pereira appeared to have lost his cool as he fired another round of tirade against Temasek Review. (read article here) Last Friday, Mr Pereira published an article on his SPH blog attacking us for making "baseless" accusations against SPH. His article was completely dissected and debunked point by point by us. Not only did Mr Pereira tried to obfuscate the matter by putting words into our mouth, he even got the basic facts wrong such as the time during which the alleged "grabbing" of our content occurred. Perhaps peeved at being outwitted, outgunned and outflanked by a group of anonymous amateur bloggers, a visibly upset and emotional Mr Pereira continued to keep the issue alive by writing another (more) diabolic piece against us on his blog with the aim of destroying our credibility. While we have exercised utmost civility, restraint and courtesy in addressing Mr Pereira in our articles, Mr Pereira chose to resort to name-calling in a desperate attempt to demonize us which is completely uncalled for. Mr Pereira began by claiming that we have hurled "another piece of the usual nonsense at the company, often from the cover of anonymity." Since Mr Pereira regards our articles as "nonsense", why is there a need to post two articles to rebuke them on his blog? Surely readers will be smart enough to judge for themselves whether the articles posted on Temasek Review are coherent or not. Mr Pereira claimed that all our articles except our letter to SPH were "belligerent in tone and designed to ridicule his and his company." Mr Pereira took issue with the points we tried to made: - TR never accused SPH of having a go at its server; - he got the timing of the alleged attack wrong; - he got the explanation, involving spoofing in Denial-of -Service (DOS) attacks, was wrong. We don't see how our detailed explanation to defend ourselves was misconstrued by Mr Pereira to be an affront to his status as a SPH journalist. Serious allegations were made about us by Mr Pereira in his article. Just like we gave him the opportunity to defend his stance, surely we should be allowed to clarify the issues he raised as well? Nowhere in the original article, be it the title or content did we accuse SPH of launching a DDOS attack against our server. Because the "grabbing" incident occurred a day after our server was down, we took extra pains to explain what DDOS meant exactly. Mr Pereira obviously got his timing wrong. It was stated clearly in our article that the incident occurred between 10pm on 31 Oct and 1am on 1 Nov, but Mr Pereira claimed that no SPH journalist visited our site on 1 Nov from 1am to 6am. Did we write anything wrong by pointing out the factual inaccuracy in his article? Furthermore, we did not accuse Mr Pereira of getting his explanation about IP spoofing in DDOS wrong. Mr Pereira should have read our article thoroughly and carefully before jumping up and down again: IP spoofing is a common tactic used in a DOS attack, but in this instance, we are referring to content "grabbing" and IP spoofing is technically out of the question as we have already explained here. Mr Pereira then went into a detour about the other articles we had published such as in ‘25 SPH employees “caught” surfing Temasek Review in 3 days’, published on Nov 7. With due respect to Mr Pereira, we do not have to seek permission from him to publish any article we like on our site and it is really none of his business to interfere with our editorial policy. Before he ended, Mr Pereira took another dig at us for capitalizing on the controversy to increase traffic to our site. If Mr Pereira is a regular reader of our site, he will realize that our spat with SPH amounts to no more than 10 per cent of the articles posted on our site in the last one week. Our main focus for the week was on the issues of immigration, rising prices of HDB flats, Chiam See Tong's decision to move to a GRC and Mr Robert Amsterdam's White Paper on political repression in Singapore. Our traffic has been increasing for the last few weeks without or without this extra "publicity" from SPH. We can't help it if Mr Pereira chose to divert traffic to our site by linking his blog to ours. Strangely enough, Mr Pereira found fit to take issue with comments posted on his blog which was re-posted in an article on TR and accused us of "pelting and roasting" him: "On Nov 10 yet another article from TR.....This was a compilation of anonymous comments, mostly poking fun at my original blog, and which TR filed under “Top News”. It was back to pelting and roasting." If Mr Pereira is unhappy with the comments poking fun at him, he should have deleted them in the first place. We did not post the comments and neither did we edit them with the intention to ridicule him. In the last sentence of his article, Mr Pereira wrote: "Our checks found that neither SPH as a company, nor any employee as an individual, launched a DOS attack on TR's web server. There was also no attempt to "grab" TR material in a way that could overload its server." We have already clarified repeatedly that SPH did not launch any attack on our server and have apologized for any misunderstanding which may have resulted, so why is Mr Pereira still harping on it to divert attention away from the crux of the matter? As far as we are concerned, it was a non-issue from the very beginning. It was Mr Pereira who chose to blow it out of proportion on his blog. Perhaps, the sentence highlighted above in red can shed more light on what exactly happened. So is Mr Pereira implying that SPH did "grab" TR material, but not in a way that could overload our server? Well, that's what we have been trying to find out all along: whether content from our site as early as 2008 was "grabbed" by anybody or anything from SPH! Again, we did not accuse SPH of overloading our server with its "grabbing": it didn't because the software firewall on the server itself banned the offending IP address minutes into the action after the IP address exceeded 60 connects per minute, the threshold set by the system administrator. Since Mr Pereira had admitted that some "grabbing" did take place, who are the culprits and what are their motives for doing so? Can Mr Pereira or anybody else from SPH please answer these two questions point-blank without throwing smoke-bombs to confuse the public again? Lest that Mr Pereira accused us of "ridiculing" him again, we must stress that the gist of this article is not to put him or anybody down but to clear up the misconceptions about the case. We are sorry if we bruise Mr Pereira's fragile ego in the process. From the tone of Mr Pereira's article, it seems that he is more interested in ridiculing us and putting us down than engaging us. Mr Pereira should really cool down and don't forget the fact that he is a journalist by profession. As for his comments that what we are "wayang" and what we have published is "nonsense", we leave it to our readers to judge for themselves. Related articles: >> A freudian slip by Mr Geoffrey that SPH staff did visit TR during the period when the alleged “grabbing” took place? >> Debunking Mr Geoffrey’s claims in his misleading article: “Attack on Temasek Review: not SPH >> Attack on Temasek Review: not SPH >> SPH IP caught grabbing “content” from Temasek Review >> Debunking Mr Geoffrey’s claims on “IP spoofing”  Read More →

From our Correspondent An Indonesian PR had forked out a record high $653,000 for a 4-room HDB flat in Queenstown! The four-year-old 969sqft unit at Forfar Heights, Strathmore Avenue, is just five minutes walk from Queenstown MRT station, and on the top, 40th floor of the block. The price paid by the Indonesian buyer is about 2.5 times the $262,000 the seller and his wife paid a few years ago. The four-year-old 969sqft unit at Forfar Heights, Strathmore Avenue, sold for $68,000 above valuation - a level determined by an independent valuer. This works out to $674 psf, beating the previous record of $609 psf, achieved in January last year, by about 10 per cent. Recent Housing Board data shows resale flat prices surged 3.8 per cent in the first nine months of the year, reaching a historic level - surpassing even that of the 1997 property peak. The relentless influx of PRs and new citizens in the face of limited supply of flats is one of the reasons why the prices of HDB flats continue climbing up. According to a ERA report released a few months ago, 40 per cent of buyers of resale flats are PRs. Though PRs are entitled to less housing subsidies than locals, they are allowed to keep any profits they gain from the resale of their HDB flats. As PRs and new citizens usually earn a decent salary to be able to work in Singapore in the first place, they are able to afford to pay a higher than market price for HDB flats. Young Singapore couples are finding themselves increasingly squeezed out of the resale market by these cash-loaded PRs. When they tried to complain about their predicament to the authorities, they were given a rebuttal (complete with statistics) by National Minister Development Mah Bow Tan in the state media that that they were too "fussy". Mr Mah then went ahead to urge Singaporeans to buy a flat which they can afford and "plan well ahead" before they decide to do so. No explanation was provided as to why HDB did not increase the supply of flats between the years 2006 - 2008 which saw large numbers of foreigners coming to work and live in Singapore. Despite evidence proving otherwise, HDB continues to insist that public housing remain "affordable" to the majority of Singaporeans, not withstanding the fact that the tenure of housing loans is now raised from 25 to 35 years. With the prices of housing fast outpacing the meager increase in salaries, a substantial proportion of Singaporeans' CPF will be used to finance the mortgage loan leaving very little, if any funds for retirement purposes. Over 85 per cent of the Singapore's population lives in public housing built by the HDB, a government agency under the purview of the National Development Ministry. The government claims that it has provided "generous subsidies" to help Singaporeans afford a flat of their own. As the prices continue to sky-rocket, it will be increasingly difficult for HDB to convince a skeptical public that HDB flats are "affordable". Related articles: >> Home affordability: HDB versus the public >> Demand vs supply: so many applicants, so few flats >> Number of applicants exceed number of flats >> HDB to increase supply of flats >> Mah: don’t compare with prices in the past >> ERA: 40 per cent of HDB flat buyers are PRs  Read More →