Tag Archives: irl: burning stupidity

Jun 15 2011
doctor

Medical Certs in Singapore

I don’t like this obsession with MCs in Singapore. I realise it’s just another consequence of the lack of trust combined with the fear of being taken advantage of that every Singaporean grows up with but I think that require MCs every time you take leave is stupid and doesn’t stop people from taking sick leave willy nilly.

Let’s say I have a common cold – an ailment that will pass with time and some rest. But because I want to rest at home, I need to see a doctor. Thus, I either see a doctor at a polyclinic if I can afford the time (or I don’t have the money) or one in private practice. Not only will the doctor give me an MC, he will also prescribe a variety of medicine aimed at tackling my symptoms but really, I know I will recover with or without the medicine. Some might even give me antibiotics for no apparent reason. Now, if I reject the medication, then the doctor will suspect that I am only there to get an MC, which I am, and might extrapolate that to mean that I am not actually feeling unwell*. So I take all the medication home and leave them in a corner where eventually, their expiry date will arrive and they will get dumped, together with the money I paid for them. Because I don’t need the medication and I’m not taking them for the fun of it. The point is that getting an MC creates a lot of waste and the whole thing is some sort of charade the patient and the doctor goes through because we need to get an MC for sick leave.

More annoyingly is when I get bad menstrual cramps – something I am able to deal with using a hot water bottle, some panadol and some rest. Unfortunately, it makes teaching very, very difficult. Either I am in too much pain to throw my voice or I am unable to stand for long periods. So sometimes, I stay at home but I still need to pay a $40 bill in order to get that precious MC and a bunch of painkillers I already have at home. And the whole thing is stupid because I know why I am in pain, I know what to do and yet I have to get my discomfort certified by someone who simply listens to me and then just hands me an MC.

The rational for all this theatrics is that this will cut down on people taking sick leave when they aren’t sick. Frankly all that happens is that people now simply pay for an MC and stay at home, sick or not. Perhaps this is how we create a market for the doctors in private practice. Does this practice of requiring MC actually cut down on the number of people taking sick leave? I can’t imagine that it does. But maybe Singapore is full of cunning, lazy people whose only reason for existence is to game the system. We already have a cap on how many sick days one can take a year and if someone wants to spend them all recklessly, then so be it. Perhaps he will get away with it. Perhaps it will bite him in the butt when he gets sick later in the year and has to take no pay leave instead.

May 31 2011

A Splash of Paint

Reading Yaw Shin Leong’s blog post about loansharks and how they harass people who owe them money brought back memories of when my house was splashed with blue paint (and it was quite a nice shade of blue too). Actually, due to my laziness, the blue paint is still on my gate. The paint that seeped through the gap between my door and floor however took me a good hour plus to clean off.

If you’re wondering if I owed people money, I don’t. Nor does anyone in my house. It’s actually some chap living on the 4th floor (as stated quite clearly on my lift landing). For some reason, the runners decided to hike up several floors (ok, they probably took the lift) to my floor and decorate my home as well.

According to Yaw Shin Leong:

However of late, they seem to have ventured beyond harassing borrowers’ households by splashing paint on borrowers’ neighbors’ households too.

I suppose that’s what happened in my case. Although I’m not too sure about the reasoning behind this. I mean what was I going to do? March down to Mr 4th Floor and demand he pay back the money? It’s not going to be much use if Mr 4th Floor has no money is it? Or maybe I was to offer to pay on Mr 4th Floor’s behalf? Yeah that’s going to happen. Or perhaps I was to enact my own vengence on Mr 4th Floor and splash some (more) paint on his door. Who knows? The loansharks left no instructions.

So I just scrubbed off what I could as I cursed under my breath, made a (pointless) police report – which led to a most on-hindsight-hilarious conversation with the investigating officer and my life went on as usual. Even the blue paint on my gate no longer bothers me. My mom even suggested we just paint the gate blue.

I’m hoping the runners come by and help us with it.

Anyway, Mr 4th Floor? I hope you paid off your loans already, for your family’s sake if not for your own.

 

Apr 19 2011

Pull up your socks

I’m not sure why The Online Citizen displays its mobile site when I visit it on my laptop. It’s rather annoying.

I don’t like the message or the tone in this article Take responsibility by Brandon Ngo. Not only is the tone smug and condescending, the content is offensive and obviously written by someone who has enjoyed significant privileges in his life.  If you were hoping for people to pat you on the back and congratulate you for being self-sufficient and successful, you won’t get it from me. Instead, all I have to say to you is that you are a selfish person and I hope that you are young for then, you might mature a little and learn a bit more about the world.

It’s so easy for anyone to say “work harder” and expect that the simple act of working harder should improve people’s life. Unfortunately, meritocracy or not, that isn’t always the case. For one thing, we don’t all start on a level playing field.

Some of us, through no fault of our own, are born with a silver spoon. Others are born into less fortunate situations. Tell me how this doesn’t matter. Some of us are born into positions of privilege – perhaps you are Chinese or perhaps you are male or  perhaps you are not disabled or perhaps you are straight. Tell me how this doesn’t matter in life. There are so many things that affect a person’s life and to completely ignore all these variables and insist that hard work is sufficient is either naive or dumb.

The sentiments expressed this article are exactly those that the government wants us to believe so that they can continue to refuse to provide adequate aid and support to the disadvantaged. After all, if their poverty is a result of their own reluctance to work hard, then why should all the other citizens, who supposedly worked hard and are thus successful, have to pay taxes to support them?

And let’s be honest. How many of these people living in poverty are just bumming around, being lazy? How many of them are working their asses off and yet still not earn enough money? It’s difficult to be poor – you have children but you can’t afford childcare. Without childcare, you can’t work but if you don’t work, you can’t put food on the table. Or maybe you or your child has a major medical problem and the bills have taxed you. Perhaps you had to sell your HDB flat and now you’re homeless and you can’t afford another flat or even rental on the market. And all people do is tell you to work harder. Because clearly, you didn’t work hard enough. Go get another job. Who needs sleep anyway?

So instead of looking at the structural inequalities and other issues that impact Singaporeans and instead of looking at how to ensure a minimum level of welfare for those who are floundering, we turn on them, accuse them of being lazy and simply stand by the side exhorting them to work harder.

Feb 24 2011

Runaway Maids

You know, maids are people too. And they are people working in a country full of people who see them as nothing but cheap labour without their friends and family. Who are you to decide that homesickness or too much work are trivial reasons? Are you them? What may be trivial to you may not be trivial to them. Are you working for less than minimum wage with no off days in a foreign country where you have no friends or family?

Maids aren’t our slaves. And what the hell is this?

If maids are made to manage their own recruitment fees, they would be compelled to hold on to their jobs to pay their creditors back home lest their families are harassed if they fail to do so.

You think that it is reasonable to wish that the maids’ families are harassed by creditors so that you can have a maid who won’t quit on you no matter what? What kind of person are you?

I know maids have become incredibly important in the Singapore lifestyle but since when did that give us the right to treat them as property with no feelings. Of course there are rogue maids out there, just like there are rogue lawyers and rogue teachers. Should my family live under the threat of harassment to ensure I serve out my teaching bond?

I just … I have no words and really, it’s embarrassing sometimes how selfish and heartless we are. Instead of dealing with the causes of them running away, let’s ball and chain them instead.

Stop them from running away for trivial reasons

MAIDS running away has obviously become a disturbing trend, and unless this is addressed appropriately, it could become an infectious habit (‘Number of runaway maids rises to 4,000′; Feb 11).

Except in cases of abuse and severe deprivation, refuge should not be granted to maids. Some of them cite trivial reasons such as homesickness, inconvenience and heavy workload for leaving.

Runaway maids should, in fact, be handed over to the police. So long as live-in facilities are made available for these maids, this unhealthy trend will continue.

One would have thought that raising the recruitment age to 23 years would give them the maturity to stand by their decision of seeking employment and abiding by the two-year contract.

The practice of bringing in maids without them having to pay their share of the recruitment fees in their home country should also be discouraged as it breeds resentment in those who have to work for between nine and 11 months without a salary.

In desperation to get out of their poverty, they agree to this clause, realising little the financial, psychological and emotional impact it will have on them later.

If maids are made to manage their own recruitment fees, they would be compelled to hold on to their jobs to pay their creditors back home lest their families are harassed if they fail to do so.

They would also have the satisfaction of receiving their full salary in hand even if it means having to send most of it home.

Employers, too, would be spared forking out nine to 11 months’ salary upfront on top of having to pay their share of the recruitment fees to their local agents.

Padmini Kesavapany (Mrs)

 

Nov 27 2010

Teaching and making money

This annoys me to no end: stop telling me that I’m so lucky to be a teacher because of the nice year-end bonus this year. I don’t mind it if you do it once or if you are a close friend or family but to harp and harp on it is annoying. And it’s more annoying when you play the “poor me” card.

1. All civil servants get the year-end bonus. Go bug the non-teachers about their massive bonus. Amazingly, some civil servants earn more than us teachers which means their bonus is even bigger!

2. You chose not to be a teacher or work in the civil service. Suck it up.

3. You don’t say anything when you know we earn less than our peers who work in the private sector, especially those who work in finance.

4. You don’t say anything when we don’t get a bonus (see last year).

So don’t come up to me and expect me to humor you when you want to “joke” about my windfall because I worked damn hard for it and deserve every cent. It’s not luck and it sure as hell is not funny either to hear people go on and on about how I’m rolling in cash now.

Life isn’t a competition so stop comparing yourself to others. It really gets on my nerves.

Sep 13 2010

It’s just so strange sometimes

Sometimes, you get the feeling that people are of the notion that the world is an evil place and that everyone is out to cheat them. I agree that generally we are selfish people but I also doubt that the majority of us go through our life wondering how we can scam someone. Or am I being too naive?

Anyway, so this appeared in last week’s ST online forum:

Don’t let school teachers double as private tutors.

WHILE private tuition has its value and place in our highly competitive education system, the Ministry of Education should act to minimise its abuse by unscrupulous teachers at the expense of their students.

A school teacher doubling as a private tutor may deliberately gloss over or omit certain areas of the assigned subjects in his teaching. This, so that the “weak” students would see him for private – and paid – tuition outside class.

These glossed over or omitted areas are then privately tutored and later reproduced as examination questions.

Of course, the tutored students do extremely well, whereas even the brighter non-tutored students would falter or fail. The teacher’s reputation as a private tutor soars and demand for enrolment in his tuition classes rises in tandem.

To avoid any conflict of interest, teachers who wish to earn extra income as private tutors should be barred from giving paid private tuition to their students on the subjects that they are officially assigned to teach.

Yap Swee Hoo

Do people really believe this is going on? In the first place, it’s highly unprofessional to tutor your own students (or even students from your school) and I bet it is against our code of conduct as well. Unless, of course, Mr Yap thinks this is a conspiracy by the teachers who tutor. I cannot imagine any teacher getting away with this really – how do you get money from students when they see you for extra help? I’m sure if a teacher demanded pay for every hour they stayed back with their students, parents will rise up in arms at our greed and unprofessionalism so I’m not particularly inclined to think there are many teachers who do this.

Lastly, do ST Forum writers read what they write? Barring teachers from giving private tuition to students on the subjects they official teach makes no sense as all. So as an English Language teacher, I should instead go out and give tuition in Maths?!

Jul 23 2010

Superman died for our sins

I’ve tended to avoid writing about religion because of how sensitive it can be in Singapore and the fact that I know a number of people who occasionally read my blog are religious.

Still, the idea that the Westboro Baptist Church has decided to go picket at Comic-con (why am I not there?) was vaguely amusing. It became even more amusing when I saw the response of the Comic-con attendees this morning. It’s things like this that makes me quite fond of fan culture.

Here’s a pic I snagged off Comic Alliance. Click on the link above to see the rest of the hilarity.

On a similar note, I want to go to Comic-con! It looks fun and this year, Merlin is there as well! One more reason to not be a teacher …

Jun 21 2010

Plagiarism

To be honest, I have not really been following the whole CHC saga very closely. I have kept an eye on the things unfolding mainly for my own amusement but otherwise, I have not been chasing down blogs or reading much more than the Straits Times. Still, today’s quote in the ST made me react.

Ms Justina Choon, 43, said she was surprised to hear the news, but did not think it was an issue.

‘It’s just a lack of citation. He just has to add the citations in future,’ added the secretary who attended the service at the Expo.

The next time I need to submit an assignment and plagiarise something, this is the defence I will use. It’s brilliant.

So I did a quick google to see what this whole plagiarism thing was about and it seems that in some publication, the pastor more or less copied articles wholesale from elsewhere. And it seems that the publishers claimed an oversight. Clearly not much editing went into the book – probably because it was mostly copied I guess. Also, I’m not sure why I cannot find an apology from the pastor for this. Surely, he should be gracious enough to offer people an apology for his “oversight”.

Then again, what do I know about Christianity or religion?

May 31 2010

No exams for P1 students

If a teacher told us that our daughter did not do well in her show-and-tell, we frankly wouldn’t be the least perturbed and motivated to take remedial action, as we are now about our daughter’s poor mid-year grades.

Umm, and whose fault is it that you dismiss it when the teacher tells you your daughter did not do well in show-and-tell? Parents, really.