TR EMERITUS

(Read Dr Allan Ooi's farewell letter to his family and friends here) Friends of the Singapore Armed Forces doctor who was found dead in Melbourne, said the 28-year-old did not contact any of his family members since he went missing last October. Reports say Captain Allan Ooi Seng Teik was found under the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne. In an e mail reply to 9338LIVE, Mindef says Dr Ooi had been absent without leave since 15 October. The SAF had tried to contact the serviceman but he remained uncontactable. Friends who knew him said word went round the medical community about his absence without official leave, but none of his friends whom 938LIVE spoke to had any news of him since then. One friend who last saw him in September, said even Allan's older brother did not receive any word from him since he went missing. Another friend who does not want to be named says he was shocked over what happened. " He's a nice guy, nice friend, so we don't meet each other because now that everybody's busy working. I mean I didn't even know he went AWOL, until the papers and people start talking about it. I mean you wouldn't expect right I'd think he's doing well, being a doctor, stable career, well-to-do family. " His other friends in the medical community said he was keen in pursuing his medical career in Opthamology. They knew him as a 'jovial' and ' popular ' guy with many friends and was close to his family . Doctors Alex and Lucy Ooi, who are the parents of the late Singapore Armed Forces medical doctor Captain Allan Ooi, have been described by neighbours as being warm and nice. During a visit to the Ooi residence, which is a three-storey house in the Holland area, 938LIVE understands that family members are expected to return soon Their neighbours, when approached say they were stunned to learn of the tragedy from media reports. The Ooi family who moved into the area some six years ago were described as being very nice people. One neighbour, a teacher said she's had dinners with the family during festive occasions in the past. But she recalls hardly ever seeing the Ooi's children as they were seldom home, either studying or living abroad. Source: 938live  Read More →

Prologue: Two weeks ago, a Singaporean wrote to the Straits Times Forum imploring Potong Pasir MP Chiam See Tong to retire soon for the sake of his constituents. His letter brought a sharp rebuttal from Mr Chiam himself and other netizens who want him to stay for as long as he can. Mr Chiam told Lianhe Wanbao in a recent interview that he will only consider retiring if he wins a GRC. What do Potong Pasir residents think of this ? Do they want Mr Chiam to continue to serve them ? We bring you to Potong Pasir to find out. Excerpts of interview: "I feel that we ought to have better facilities here and I find it difficult to get it......after living here for over 20 years." "Well, sometimes I feel the locality is good, but very lacking in facilities and maintenance unlike in other estates. For example, the lift is not upgraded and is very slow....other things when you ask for any problems regarding maintenance, it is far behind time." "Other than that this area is a very nice place, it is like a village, a kampung, back to the good old days, I feel very blessed and fortunate to live in this estate." "We are sacrificing ourselves not to enjoy the facilities like the other constituencies. We sacrifice and in the end what we get, after these years of thinking, actually I suppport Mr Chiam all the years, but time round I am very saddened, things are not improving. I certainly hope we can be happier and enjoy like other estates." Addendum: The resident in the interview complained to us that the lifts at Blk 143 were very old and one of them - No C is malfunctioning. It only stopped at level 1 and 16 and not in between. We wrote to Singapore People's Party Assistant Secretary-General Mr Desmond Lim who promptly referred the case to the Potong Pasir Town Council. The maintenance manager, Mr John Koh sent a team to check the lifts and found them to be in working order. We made a personal trip down on 1 March 2009 to test the lift in question ourselves. We noticed that if either of the other two lifts are coming down, it will be stuck perpetually at the 16th floor. However, it does stop on levels 5, 9 and 11 which is contrary to what the resident had claimed. We also took the opportunity to ask other residents about the lifts and according to them, they may go "hay wire" sometimes and they may have to wait for 5 to 10 minutes to take the lift down. Those staying at the low levels usually walk down the stairs without bothering to wait for the lifts. Our conclusion: Although the lifts are still functioning to a certain extent, they are quite old and worn out and it is time for a complete overhaul to upgrade the lifts so that they stop at every level. Results of interview: Total number of residents interviewed: 63 Do you think Mr Chiam See Tong should retire ? Yes: 20 No comments: 6 No: 37 What do you think of Mr Chiam's performance as your MP over these years ? He has done a lot for residents: 40 No comments: 6 He needs to do more: 17 Will you lend your support to Mr Chiam in the next election ? Yes: 28 No comments: 10 No: 25 Do you feel it is important to have opposition MPs in Parliament ? Yes: 57 No comments: 3 No: 3 If you are given only one choice, will you want to have an opposition MP to represent you in Parliament or to have better facilities in the estate run by a PAP MP ? Opposition MP: 10 No comments: 11 Better facilities: 42 (This page has been viewed 647 times as of 5 March 2009 at 11.50pm)  Read More →

By Darkness, Guest Columnist Tell me could Temasek and GIC have done a better job in outperforming the markets? Was it such a good strategy to put so many of our chips on banks? Was the melt down foreseeable? Is it true to say, paper losses are just paper losses? What about profits then; could they just be paper profits as well?   You know what? I dunno. As these days, the MSM seems to be very evasive about the whole idea of delivering news – content is definitely king even if it resembles the idea of bottling Himalayan air - but if you want to know more, then perhaps you can check out these excellent links to gain a deeper understanding of the salient. Go on blow your mind out.   GIC’s Conversion from Preferred to Common Marks the Beginning of the End  / “2008 Was a Year to Forget” - 2009 Probably will be One to Forget, Too  / How did our SWFs manage to invest in the 3 worst performing CDO issuing banks???  / UBS Tax Fraud Makes Lee Kuan Yew Look Like a Dufus Dumbo   But that is not the point of my essay – that’s really just the garnish. My main dish is a boney fish – question: why is it so hard for elites to admit they screwed up?   Why is it so hard to come to terms with the most basic human quality: fallibility? Some people say it has something to do with the whole idea of run-away train ego – I don’t buy into that crappy logic as no one in his right mind is going to go the full nine yards just for ego sake alone – I mean no one, not even the Shah of Iran had the stamina to bear out the naked truth – at some point most people will just make peace with their mistakes and move on as best they can.   There has to be something more to the whole business of denial. From my personal experience the vast majority of ordinary folk don’t suffer from denial syndrome – if they screwed up, they just come clean, most of the time, at least. Like when I once went out with this girl who was really into organic food produce – she thought I wasn’t getting enough beta carotene into my system; so she started lacing all my food with carrot everything behind my back – one day when a colleague remarked I reminded him a bit of a jaundiced yellow AA tow truck. I just said to her, “look what you’ve done to me? I trusted you with my gut and look what I’ve turned into?” And she just came clean and that was the end of that.   My point is there is absolutely no mileage in going straight up against the unsavory truth especially when it’s coupled with irrefutable evidence – taken to its extremes – digging in and taking a not-one-step-back defensive position only exacerbates the situation; as all too often it comes across as a form of intransigence and that’s bound to create a impasse in the psyche of those who seek to understand – result: it squeezes out all prospects of forgiveness, healing and hope for reconciliation.   Again why do elites find it so difficult to come clean when they screw up?   Most of us know there’s no profit in dealing with a mistake by sweeping the facts underneath the carpet or dumbing down the facts. Neither does it pay to ignore the evidence and hope with time no one will remember and all the evidence will just disappear.   Again why is it so difficult for elites to come clean when they screw up?   I guess one reason why elites feel the need to sell the charge of light brigade as a sound enterprise is they have invested so much their raison in the myth of infallibility – never mind that most people don’t see either the exceptionality or value in the whole proposition of how if good wins over bad its simply because of the whole idea of a few good men; that’s what happens when the idea assumes the end rather than a means to an end – the show simply has to go on for better or worse, right or wrong.   One clue why most of us perceive a dissonance (real or imagined) is because we don’t have much trouble making out those gaping fault lines - where myth gives way to inconvenient truth. But once you’re in gyre – its not so simple – the line of sight gets cloudy; periphery vision narrows. Result – you only see the world the way, you want to see it.   That in a nutshell is what elitism excels in embellishment – it matters little whether it’s the idea scholars are the most reliable people or perpetuating the departmental claptrap there is an acute scarcity of talent – observation even suggest elites aren’t really elites in the true sense of the word – otherwise why aren’t they regularly making the red carpet walk to collect the Nobel prize every year? I mean if you want anecdotal gold standard proof then it doesn’t get higher than that, unless you can convince the rubber dodo bird award happens to be a higher standard for individual and organizational excellence.   Like I said, it matters little whether it’s the Samurais who once banned gunpowder just so they could perpetuate their class politics by nurturing the cult of the sword; or the Manchu’s who developed the art of loosing arrows from horseback to monopolize a valuable skill-at-arms to allow them to assert their hegemony – my point is at some stage; the whole idea elitism gets so ritualized and stylized that form eventually supplants function so completely that it ceases to be a reliable way to deliver excellence; that’s when it becomes so sclerotic and sedentary that it can only be worthless – if you are wondering why ST cannot seem to find the entrepreneurial imagination to prosper in the digital age – wonder no more, there you have it the reason in the palm of your hands – if you’re wondering why the Lehman bros, Madoff’s and Satyam’s of this world took an ignominious swan dive – there it is again.   In every single case without even a single exception; the myth i.e ONLY a select chosen few can be entrusted to be sole purveyors of goodness played out to deadly effect – and the post mortem all revealed, none of them even so much as considered looking twice at the error of ways to even consider changing course to avoid disaster - its a sad, sad tale.   Its suggestive; something akin to slow acting poison must have played out to make it all but impossible for elites to even come to terms with their own failings, limitations and need to reinvent themselves – tragic realism it seems, requires them to insist on their version of rightness even when everything goes down the chute – but what’s even sadder is not because it serves the imperative of the truth and greater good; but rather by that late stage in the game; the die is truly cast and it conceivable; they may not even control the system any longer; as much as the system owns them lock, stock and barrel to even demand of them to insist on their version of the truth, at every opportunity and turn – and with that, the last stanza can really only read like the last flight of Icarus; all that remains now is the epic fall from grace. It’s game over.     Darkness 2009 (This article has been viewed 433 times as of 5 March 2009, 11.55pm)  Read More →