TR EMERITUS

Click to enlarge Hand-crafted ‘lo bak go’ brimming with wholesome goodness and a taste of tradition. A well-loved proprietary recipe that often stole the limelight at celebratory occasions such as Lunar New Year, Amelia’s Homemade Carrot Cake is made with care, heart, quality ingredients, and no nasty additives. Crafted with carefully-sourced ingredients such as lup cheong, or Chinese sausage, dried shiitake mushrooms and dried shrimp, each carrot cake comprises a generous amount of daikon or Chinese radish; grated slightly coarser than usual, which adds bite and provides textural contrast to the otherwise smooth cake. Seasoned with a light hand – no MSG is added, Amelia’s Homemade Carrot Cake showcases the innate sweetness of daikon, which is matched perfectly with the savoury notes imparted by the Chinese sausage and dried shrimp. Extremely versatile, this moreish snack is excellent steamed and paired with some chilli oil, or fried with XO sauce, eggs and beansprouts a la dim sum restaurant style, and owner Amelia Teh also recommends cutting 2-cm thick slices and pan-frying with just a dab of oil till golden brown and the edges crisp. A home-based business, owner Amelia Teh only prepares a limited quantity a day to ensure consistency and quality, and the cakes are delivered the day it is made so customers can be assured of optimal freshness. Each 700g rectangular box is priced at $12. Customers who order five boxes and more will receive free delivery while a $8 delivery charge applies for orders of 4 boxes and less. An advance order of 2 days is recommended. Orders can be made via Whatsapp at +6594519040.   For more information or assistance, please contact: Amelia Teh: 9637 7874 Elger Kua: 9451 9040 Official facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ameliacarrotcake      Read More →

Mr S.W. Yoong Is Singapore a democratic and egalitarian society? The answer may be an intriguing one especially with government tongue-in-cheek. I come from a very humble beginning and could only manage to receive basic education. Tertiary education was only meant for scholarship holders and scions of affluent families. I joined the Singapore Police Force because it was a good career option for one with basic education. I joined with an open mind and conviction. Singapore was under the Emergency Regulation to combat communist armed struggle to seize power. The situation was extremely turbulent. I was posted to the Special Branch amd was in the front line fighting the communists and we were prme targets for assassination by the communist killer square. Lee Kuan Yew had already returned to Singapore as a Cambridge-trained lawyer and was an up-and- coming barrister who was also a very ambitious politician. He was handicapped in his mission in that he lacked a mass base. So when Lim Chin Siong emerged out of nowhere to become the undisputed leader of the Communist United Front end of 1953/54 Lee Kuan Yew saw him as a godsend to provide a mass base for his political ambition.But he was later jolted out of his fantasy when he realised that Lim Chin Siong was an insurmountable obstacle to his ambition. He formed the PAP in1954 to advance his political standing and ambition but the mass base was really with Lim Chin Siong.Lee Kuan Yew and his sturdy fellow combatants were simply no match to the communists with Lim Chin Siong showing his prowess of his leadership. It was Special Branch with the imprimatur of Chief Minister Lim Yew Hock who rescued Lee Kuan Yew and his fellow combatants from being devoured by the communists and paved the way for Lee Kuan Yew to capture power with a land-slide victory in the 1959 general election and propelled him to the post of Prime Minister. In 1961 the US Central intelligence Agency (CIA) tried to recruit me to be their agent to supply them with sensitive security intelligence. I played along in an ambivalent role which resulted in a crackdown on the CIA and the arrest of four CIA top officers. This had an earth-shattering effect which reverberated right up to the White House and rattled the American President John Kennedy and his coterie of ministers. Lee Kuan Yew exploited the situation and raised his world political standing to such a dizzying height that he overawed the Americans which was his intention. There was a demand for USD 30 millions but John Kennedy was no pushover and offered Lee Kuan Yew USD one million which LKY considered an insult to accept. Will PM Lee Hsien Loong or any of his gutsy ministers be able to emulate this patriotic performance? I think it must have been Divine blessing that George Bogaars became the Director Special Branch. He was such a consummate outstanding Director in the maintenance of national security that it mesmerised Lee Kuan Yew who relied heavily on Bogaars for his survival and existence. When Lee Hsien Loong took over from the seat-warmer PM Goh Chok Thong, he was quite oblivious to the sacrifices made by civil servants like us to make it possible for him and his cabinet stooges to sit on their fat asses to enrich themselves with millions of people's money to wallow in the luxuries of their high office. When the president and vice-president of the Pensioners' Association approached them for a raise of the pensioners' poverty-level pensions they were peremptorily dismissed with a most inhuman admonition :You have served your purpose. What you get is enough. We are waiting for you to die. No one who is a human being will say such inhuman utterence. Lee Kuan Yew for no reason at all defamed me with a blatant lie which he delivered in the august Parliament House and telecast to Singapore and the world. No Singapore judge had the courage to convict him if he was sued. I requested PM Lee Hsien Loong to make a public apology for his father's sin abd he simply remained dumb like a dummy. The paradox of this comic opera is while PM Lee Hsien Loong treats me with animosity I am making a modest contribution to ISD. How valuable is my contribution Lee Hsien Loong can easily get ISD to apprise him, if this had not already been done. I am doing this because I think that God wants me to do and not to take it with me to my grave. I am living on borrowed time at 95 and would like to keep a low key while waiting to be called home to be with the Lord.   Yoong Siew Wah   * The author was the Director of Singapore’s Internal Security Department (ISD) from 1971 to 1974. He was Director of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) in the 1960s, and had a distinguished career in the Singapore Special Branch in the 1950s.      Read More →

One of the biggest signs that things have returned to normal has been the return of the Singapore Formula One (F1), which the government has proudly reminded us is the world’s only street race to be held at night. The fact that F1 is back, means that the government can now return to its favourite activity – showing off to the world’s rich and famous. As an ordinary sap earning below the wage of intelligence (judged at $500,000 a month), normalcy is negotiating between the happy headlines of how all the five-star hotels are fully booked and praying that your regular bus to work has not one of the many disrupted by the holding of the race. People of significance are creaming their jeans at the thought of returning to normal. Landlords are celebrating the return to the office, and the ability to cream off productive people. Food outlets are getting happy because there are crowds waiting outside to be fed. More importantly, the government has been able to do what it likes to do best – selling Singapore. It's returned to reminding the locals that Singapore needs to be attractive to the best and brightest and has gone as far as to work out a new visa for the extra wealthy. Everyone in government seems to be slapping themselves on the back as headlines as to how Singapore has done things like become the world’s fifth richest city (only four other cities have more billionaires and centimillionaires) and how we have replaced Hong Kong as the third largest financial centre of the world. The government’s point is that we need the world’s best and brightest if we’re going to have any form of a future, let alone a bright future. We are told that we need “foreign” money and talent in order for us to have great, well-paying jobs. I am, for the record, not against foreign talent or money. The three greatest moments of my working life, came from foreigners. The Saudi Embassy and the Indian IT community were willing to give me, a small nobody the chance to do high level work, while native born Singaporeans wouldn’t look at me because I never worked for a big company based in either New York or London. Without our foreign arrivals, I would probably remain waiting tables and having to take orders from village idiots. Like or not, Singapore is a small and vulnerable place. Our prosperity and even our basic survival depends on being open to the outside world. Border wall policies will simply not work here. Having said all that, what is clear from this new found zeal to attract the world’s richest and brightest, is that we’ve failed to learn anything from the two-years of limited movement that Covid forced upon us. Sure, I get it that everyone wants to get back to making their pre-covid revenue but we wasted the two-years of limited movement because it gave us a chance to slow down, reflect and make the effort to restructure the economy in a more sustainable way. Instead of reflection, it’s been a rush to return to normal. [LINK] None of the bright sparks in government have asked if “normal was really normal” to begin with. Why is the government doubling on a policy that cost it a GRC in 2011 and another one in 2020? It’s as if the idea that the world’s wealthiest has become a religion rather than a carefully thought-out policy. Let’s look at another “religion” disguised as political policy – low taxes. Talk to any “conservative” politician in the world, be they Republicans in the USA or Tories in the UK or even PAP politicians, and they’ll all tell you that low taxes are essential to prosperity because that’s what the world’s rich want and you need the world’s richest to create prosperity. How has this doctrine worked? The UK’s latest Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Kwasi Kwarteng believes that its essential to cut taxes to get the UK humming again and a week ago, he produced a mini-budget that came up with the deepest tax cuts seen in several decades. The market reacted by sending the currency to historic lows and the Bank of England has had to intervene in the markets to prop up UK government bonds and the British government has just been rebuked by the world’s lender of last resorts, something usually reserved for “s*** hole” countries run by tin pot dictators instead of the world’s sixth largest economy. This is what happens when you think economic policy as a religion. Now, the economic markets have not reacted to Singapore’s new drive for the world’s richest the same way they’ve reacted to the British government’s tax cuts. However, its not wrong to ask if doubling down on a policy of going all out to bring in the world’s rich. How exactly does a huge number of billionaires camping out in my neighborhood help me? In Singapore, it appears that the answer is not much. Billionaires are invited to buy very expensive property and that’s about it. We got very excited when Sir James Dyson bought the most expensive piece of property around. Did it create jobs? Did it give Singaporeans a chance to shine at something or another? So, while it is important to be attractive to the world’s richest and best, we need to remember that the backbone of any economy is not with the one percent, who can go to where they’re treated best. Surely, it is more important to focus on ensuring that the 99 percent are capable of looking after themselves. Unless the government understands this, we’re going to find that we’re heading the way of the British Pound in a race to give things to the people who don’t need them.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →