In Defence of Singapore

A friend forwarded me this article yesterday on FB and it got me so hopping mad. Have a read, and you would probably see why I was almost ready to murder someone:

By Vijay Kumar from Malaysiakini

In between the glamarous buildings and shoppings complexes of this city state, there is huge suffering that the world has never seen. Something that the Singapore government or media will try to hide from the rest of the world. And this is the lives of 80 percent of ‘true’ Singaporeans who live in the republic’s Housing Development Board (low cost) flats.

I, like many young youths, went looking for a better future in this Lion City of opportunity, After four years of working experience in Kuala Lumpur. It was my first experience outside Malaysia and I was very happy to be offered a job in Singapore with a basic salary of S$3,500.

Then, with huge hopes, I started looking for a master bedroom to rent being single. I finally got a master bedroom in Clementi for S$700 a month but only after being rejected by many other landlords for being Indian. The ensuing eight- month ordeal that I spent in this HDB flat really opened my mind to what Singapore is for those who can’t earn.

It made me ask if this is the type of development that I ever wanted in my country Malaysia. This is the first time that I felt gifted to be born in Malaysia. Anyway, I lived with a family of three (husband, wife with one daughter) who rented out their master bedroom to me while they slept in the common room.

It was a three-room flat (but unlike in Malaysia, a three-room flat has only two bedrooms). I did not believe it was the master bedroom that I was staying in until I went into the other room and saw that there is no attached bathroom there. I was given a bed and a mattress and also two fans. Then I noticed that the couple with their daughter sleeping on the floor with a thin mattress in the other room. Not even a fan in that room.

Both husband and wife are born Singaporeans and were employed. It was after one month that I realised that the daughter was not going to school regularly and most of the time there would be a quarrel in the early morning between the father and daughter as there was not enough money to pay for the bus to go to school.

There were times when the daughter was very sick and father had no money to take her to see a doctor. It was a real pain in the heart to hear a small girl suffering through the thin walls of this HDB flat. It was unbelievable for me to see this happening in this ultra-modern city. It took me another two months to realise that what was happening in this flat was not an isolated case of urban poverty in Singapore.It was every where in those HDB flats. There was a Chinese neighbour (an elderly man) and his son had no money to get a taxi to send his father to the clinic for daily diabetic wound-dressing. I soon understood that poverty in Singapore transcends racial boundaries. The whole family of my landlord got a shock that I own a car in Malaysia.

My landlord would keep pestering me every time I come back to Malaysia to bring my car over so that his whole family could go sightseeing in Singapore. In all my life, I never believed people in a developed country like Singapore would ever consider car ownership a privelege.

Three months later, one fine day, I came back home and realised that there was no electricity in the house. This time, my landlord did not have the money to pay for the utility bills. I was back in the Stone Age, using candles. This lasted for days until finally he borrowed money from somewhere and settled the bills.My landlord as a person I have known during that period never come back drunk or looked like a gambler. He had to pay for his mother’s medical expenses, that much I know. This was the time in my life when I learned what is was like to live in that poor quality HDB flat, drying clothes in the rooms and listening to what the couple talked about in the next room via the thin walls.

It was this time in life that made me to think, ‘Is this what I want Malaysia to be? For those who talk great or look up to Singapore’s success, have they ever come and lived in Singapore like I how I did? Have you seen a HDB flat and how it looks like?

Bring your whole family for a dinner using public transport and then rush to catch the last bus. Is this what a 10% growth rate a year is about that we want boast? Does this growth figures mean anything in the first place? Do we want to open our country to expats so that they can progress at the expense of our own Malaysians?

Do we want to ‘progress’ to a level that even our children can’t buy a house in our own land? Last, I ask myself. Do we Malaysians look at GDP growth as the only measure to choose our government or are we much more matured than that? Achievement at whose expense?

Source: wayangparty.com


This article is riddled with nonsense. I bet that isn't even the writer's real name. Coward.

There is no denying that there is some sort of a sibling rivalry, a love-hate relationship between Singaporeans and Malaysians. While I do not encourage mud-slinging between Singaporeans and Malaysians, I think if it has to happen, then the writer should at least have the decency to get his facts right.

Did he say there is "huge suffering that the world has never seen"? I think Singapore's biggest suffering is our history of once being part of Malaysia and the existence of morons who continue to insult Singapore.

While it is true that as of June 2008, there are 900,000 HDB flats in Singapore housing over 80% of Singapore’s population, it is absolute BOLLOCKS that HDB flats are low cost housing. Does he fucking know how much a five-room flat in prime districts like Bishan costs? Between S$400,000 to S$550,000. Is that low cost to you?

And mind you, these are beautiful apartments that are within easy access to public transport, supermarkets, malls, schools, libraries and more.

Despite claiming that HDB flats are “low cost”, he went on later to say that the next generation of Singaporeans cannot afford to buy a home. Can he make up his mind?

No doubt his stories about the impoverished families may be true, as there will always be poverty in any country, no matter how great its government is, how highly educated the majority of its people are or how mighty its economy is.

But it is bloody wrong and unintelligent to assume that the rest of the population is suffering to the deepest depths of hell just because of a couple of sob stories.

If the writer has legs and eyes - and I'm sure he does - he could have taken a stroll to the town centre of the estate he is living in and he would have seen the number of people who meander through the maze of shops and dine at hawker centres and restaurants all day DESPITE the current economic crisis.

In fact, I've so often wondered aloud, "WHAT ECONOMIC CRISIS?" whenever I hit the shops in town because there are always just too many people in the malls and queues at the cashiers are just too torturously long!

If he has a proper brain and not a lump of ghee in his skull, he would have been able to deduce that most Singaporeans are able to acquire beyond their basic needs. Most Singaporeans have enough for the occassional family treat at Swensen's and Crystal Jade, a weekend shopping getaway to Bangkok perhaps every quarter and at least an annual holiday that involves taking a flight, even if it is on a low cost carrier.

The writer then pondered: ‘Is this what I want Malaysia to be? For those who talk great or look up to Singapore’s success, have they ever come and lived in Singapore like I how I did? Have you seen a HDB flat and how it looks like? Do we want to ‘progress’ to a level that even our children can’t buy a house in our own land?"

Seriously now, kid, it is not a question of whether this - the false pretences of Singapore you have so claimed - is what you want Malaysia to be. Rather, the real question is, can Malaysia even be a fraction of what Singapore is now?

Can Malaysia truthfully say there is racial equality on the streets, in schools, businesses and government bodies in ALL states? Can Malaysia swear that bribery is now a thing of the past? Can Malaysia achieve over 90% of literacy rate, especially in English, in ALL its states? Can Malaysia roll out proper city planning, complete with clean, well-lit roads, quality sewage system, neighbourhood security, safe public housing and buildings, in ALL its states and not just Kuala Lumpur and the bigger commercial cities?

Here's a couple more statistics I would like to stick up his hairy black ass:

According to the Singapore government's statistical compilation, home ownership rate in 2008 was 90.1%. And 74.7% of resident households lives in four-room or larger flats or private housing.

Does that fucking sound like the majority of Singaporeans are suffering to you?

In 2008, private car ownership stood at 107 per 1,000 people. Sure, owning a car in Singapore is an expensive affair, but it is not such a privilege that it is shocking to hear that someone owns one. Just look to the roads and tell me why there are always massive jams during peak hours if too few Singaporeans can afford to own a car.

Anyway, it borders on moronic exaggeration when the Malaysian writer said "The whole family of my landlord got a shock that I own a car in Malaysia."

Were his landlord's family all mental retards? Have they seen the state of cars in Malaysia? They are mostly absolute wrecks that have been driven to death and should have long been retired to the scrap yard. They are nothing compared to the fancy, sparkly cars we own here. *smirk*

If this writer is so disappointed with the false facade of political, economic and social stability that the Singapore government has painted, then he should cease his employment here and take his curry-scented ass home to Malaysia.

Does his employer even know they have employed an ungrateful Malaysian who is slinging mud at Singapore in his free time?

But you know, it was not just the unintelligent, poorly informed views offered by this writer that pissed me off. It was the number of Singaporeans who responded with support to his article. Singaporeans who feed off this land, live under the care of our competent government but turn around to blame the motherland and the government for their own incompetencies.

Singaporeans, ask yourself. Who are the ones who always bitch about how life in Singapore is tough? Are they not the ones who lack decent education, do not hold a well-paying job and are filled with bitterness about not being able to lead the lives they so desire? They are also probably stuck in an unhappy marriage to an ugly troll and have equally useless, lazy offsprings who do nothing but add to their burden.

People like that only have themselves to blame. But of course, being weaklings, they prefer to take the easy way out and blame the government for everything that do not go their way.