WHEN the Yan Kit pool opened in 1952, it was only the second public swimming pool here after the first on Mount Emily.

Named after dentist Look Yan Kit, its official opening had then-Governor of Singapore John Nicoll and City Council president T.P.F McNeice as guests of honour.

It was often packed, given its location in a densely populated area, as well as the lack of public pools at the time.

But as commercial activity in the area flourished and residents moved out, the pool's decline was inevitable.

By 2000, it drew an average of 100 people a day - a very low number compared to the 1,900 using the Tampines Swimming Complex at the time. The Singapore Sports Council closed it in March 2001. The council runs 24 public pools today.

We are in the middle of a political earthquake in the Arab world and the ground has still not stopped shaking. To make predictions when events are so fluid is risky, but there is no doubt that the uprising in Egypt—however it ends—will have a dramatic impact across the region and within Palestine.

If the Mubarak regime falls, and is replaced by one less tied to Israel and the United States, Israel will be a big loser. As Aluf Benn commented in the Israeli daily Haaretz, “The fading power of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government leaves Israel in a state of strategic distress. Without Mubarak, Israel is left with almost no friends in the Middle East; last year, Israel saw its alliance with Turkey collapse

Educate – give precise instructions, show by example
Encourage – praise when done right
Enforce – make sure it is done right
Evaluate – if the child fails, ask yourself what YOU did wrong

http://thegoodchinesemother.wordpress.com/just-like-mommy/

Something tells me I could bet my life savings that her two daughters are going to “crash & burn” very soon. All kids need to rebel. Kids of strict parents massively rebel. Drugs & teen pregnancy is on the way to one Harvard Prof’s home! I do agree 100% with Summers ( above) as an engineer, I quickly noticed all the “straight -A” students were less than useless in industry. After a few years, they become little more than clerks in the engineering groups. Engineering is about solving problems that have no “academic” or “Book” solutions. Its about solving things that seem impossible with methods no one has ever even dreamed of. Straight A students just don’t have the creativity and imagination to solve real world problems.
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the pen is mightier than the sword
the mouth is mightier than the pen
the sword is mightier than than the mouth

or

the Law is mightier than the votes
the govt is mightier than the Law
the votes is mightier than than the govt

Chip Eng Seng Contractors (1988) had been sued by subcontractor TTJ Design and Engineering for $9.4 million - the balance due for work done and additional work from design changes.

more & more citizens will wake up to the fact that they're mismanaging the country and/or sleeping on the job, putting economic growth ahead of citizens' well-being ... prosperity has not filtered down to the man-in-the-street anyway, and the income disparity is comparable to that of other countries where dictatorship reigns ...

A MALAYSIAN, who was only 19 when he became a drug mule last year, was ordered to be hanged on Friday.

Yong Vui Kong was found guilty of trafficking in 47g of heroin on June 13 last year by Justice Choo Han Teck.

During the two-week long trial, his lawyers had argued that Yong was unaware of the contents in the packages in his possession.

They said Yong was merely following the instructions of his boss in Johor Baru to give 'presents' to people here.

These were wrapped in colourful wrapping paper and Yong had been assured by his boss that he would not land in trouble.

His boss had also made him promise not to open the packets.

Although Yong had told police he stood to receive $2,000 for running the errand, he denied it in court, saying that he had made up the lie as the police would not believe if he had told them he was just helping his boss.

The identity of the ringleader, who Yong said drove a Singapore-registered car, is unknown.

Dismissing the defence arguments, Deputy Public Prosecutors Peter Koy and Stella Tan argued that some of the packets had their ends opened and Yong would have seen the drugs.

Perhaps most damaging was the evidence of Yong's accomplice Reggie Gwee Chin Hian, 22, who testified that he had received drugs from Yong five to six occasions between May and June last year.

There had also been two past instances when the drugs were not wrapped when he received them.

The court heard that Yong would drive into Singapore with the drugs.

Once here, he would receive an SMS message with the telephone numbers of the recipients. On his trip on June 12, Yong, an odd-job worker, asked his friend Chai Hor Hsiang, 24, to accompany him.

They drove in at about 10pm and went to Yishun where Yong passed about 14g of heroin to Lim Foo Seng, 51 and received $5,000 in return.

Not realising that they were being trailed by Central Narcotics Bureau officers, they then tried to drive to Meritus Mandarin Hotel in Orchard Road.

They got lost and Yong boarded a taxi with his friend following in the car.

When arrested shortly after midnight after his delivery to Gwee. Yong looked shocked and asked for his mother.

His lawyers, who were assigned by the State as Yong was unrepresented in a capital case, told the court that Yong's father passed away many years ago and his mother was very sickly.

Both Gwee and Lim have been jailed for 22 years for trafficking in drugs.

Yong's friend Chai was given a discharge not amounting to an acquittal as there was no evidence he knew of the drugs.

Yong looked devastated when the death sentence was passed, and was seen wiping tears away as he was manacled.

His case will now go before the Court of Appeal.

The house of God has become the latest victim of the property crunch, according to a survey. Nearly 200 US churches have had their properties seized by lenders since 2008 – compared to eight in the two previous years – and more are to come.

Religious leaders were just as swept up by the property boom and bust as their parishioners, according to a survey by CoStar Group.

During the years of feast religious leaders took advantage of easy credit to build bigger churches and cater to bigger, richer congregations. Now the years of famine mean smaller, poorer congregations but still facing the bills for the bigger houses of worship they built.

Foreclosure proceedings against US churches have more than tripled since 2007, when the recession took hold. All religious denominations have suffered as donations have declined. But the financial crisis has hit independent churches hardest because they lack well funded governing bodies capable of bailing them out.

Last year Ebenezer AME, one of the biggest churches in the US, with a congregation of 10,000, ran into trouble with its lenders. Banks demanded the church cut expenses as it struggled to make its mortgage payments.

An investigation by a Memphis, Tennessee, television station found hundreds of churches in the city fighting foreclosure. There are 200 churches in Atlanta alone facing foreclosure, according to Reverend Jesse Jackson, founder of civil rights organisation Rainbow/Push.

Jackson said African American and Latino communities had been hit particularly hard: "It's communities not just churches that are in foreclosure. We have paid more for less, churches and their members are being dragged down by debt," he said. "The church is the centre of our community."

Chris Macke, analyst at CoStar, said the boom in foreclosures was due to the financial squeeze on parishioners and overly aggressive projections of future income from churches.

Churches had fallen victim to "recency bias," he said. "Whatever happened most recently is what will happen in perpetuity, which is ironic considering that churches deal in issues of perpetuity," he said.

Singaporean actress Le Xuan revealed that many actresses in the republic were asked to “sleep” with directors in exchange for better movie or drama roles, reported Sin Chew Daily, which reproduced the story from a Singaporean paper.

The 30-year-old said directors would ask female actresses and models to “do it”.

She added that it was not a rule in the film industry but most actresses knew about it.

Le Xuan also said many new artistes would sleep with directors to advance their careers.

From: 2LT Li Hongyi, _____ PC, _____
Sent: Thursday, 28 June 2007 9:36 AM

To: ___ ____ ____, Minister, MHQ; MG ______ ____, CDF, CDF Office; BG -___ ____ ____, COA,
COAOFF; COL _______, CSO, _______; zz All in ____, _________

Cc: zz All in ________, _____; zz ALL IN ____, _____; zz All in _____, _____; zz All in ______, ______
Subject: A complaint about the quality control of SAF officers
Dear Sirs and alI,

I am about to disrupt my national service to pursue further studies, and this will likely be my last email sent out for the next half a decade. Unlike the common "ORD letters" that you read, this letter unfortunately cannot be as cheerful. I am using this last opportunity to issue a letter of complaint against the quality control of officers in the SAF, more specifically against LTA X. During my time as his subordinate, LTA X was AWOL on at least 2 counts, attempted bribery, and lied to his subordinates and his superior officer. The battalion HQ has effectively given no punishment, and has not even made these infractions known to the rest of the battalion.

Let me first give you some background. I am the ____ ____ platoon commander from __________. In order to maintain operational readiness my duties are performed at _____ camp where our ops bus and servers are instead of at stagmont camp where our battalion is. The company is structured like so

OC
|
Centre Head
|
PC

The duties are therefore shared between the PC's, PS', and the Centre Head. LTA X is the centre head of the __________.

LTA X, was originally supposed to be on duty at _____ Camp as the duty commander for the _______ on the 20th and 22nd of April, a Friday and Sunday respectively. I was on duty on the 21st of April that Saturday, to minimize the changing over, I contacted him and asked if he would like to swap duties for the Saturday and Sunday. To this he agreed, and thus he was to be on duty on the 20th and 21st of April.

On the Friday however, LTA X called to inform me that he was busy during the day, and if I could cover for him until the evening. To this I agreed to do so. At about 1600 hours, I received a call from LTA X, informing me that he was on the way and that I could leave first, thought this would result in a time where there would be no duty commander in camp, he informed me that this had already be cleared with our OC. I therefore left camp.

On Sunday the 22nd of April I arrived back in camp to take over duty from LTA X. After he had left camp the men informed me that he had not arrived in camp on Friday at all, and that he only arrived in camp at 1800 hours on Saturday the 21st of April. On Saturday they had tried to contact him to ask his whereabouts, to which he told them that he was in fact in _____ in ______ camp getting some work done. The men contacted their counterparts in ______ camp to verify this, however no one in______ camp had seen LTA X. 1 further confirmed with the ______ duty personnel on Saturday that none of them had seen LTA X, this was also with confirmed with that day's BDO.

This news obviously was very distressing, I confronted LTA X regarding this information to which he confirmed that he only arrived in camp on Saturday at 1800 hours, but that he was at _____ for a while then left later to run some errands. Upon learning that I was to bring this information to our OC, LTA X then made an offer to do some of my duties for me to which I declined, his words were "You know if you need me to help you do some of your duties.."

On Wednesday after I had completed my personal investigation and confirmed that these events had indeed transpired, I informed our OC of these offences. Our OC spoke to LTA X regarding these issues, and let him off with a warning.

I would like the story to end here, however LTA RX was again on duty at ____ Camp for _________ on the following Saturday the 28th of April. At 0030 hours on Sunday the 29th of April I received a message from the duty personnel. The duty personnel of the platoon had just spotted LTA X's car, a white Mitsubishi lancer driving out of camp. I responded by telling them to check all the car parks and look for LTA X in camp. I received a call at about 0115 hours, the duty personnel informed me that they had checked the whole camp, and that LTA X's car was no where to be found. They also informed me that LTA X was no where to be found, not in any of the bunks nor any of the offices.

On Monday the 20th of April when I arrived back in ______ Camp for work, I confirmed with both the guard commander and the duty officer for Saturday the 28th of April, that at white Mitsubishi lancer had indeed driven out of camp at about 0030 hours on the 29th of April. This latest information was told to our OC.

When confronted by our OC, LTA X told him that indeed it was his car driving out of camp, he claimed however, that it was not him driving the car but that he had lent it to friend to drive out of camp. After checking with the person in question this was established to be untrue. Finally, LTA X admitted that he had lied, and that is was he who had left camp.

I have been informed that LTA X was to be given 10 extra duties, though this may be considered an extremely light punishment there is a further problem. To date, which is to say, 2 months from the incidents, none of the duties have been published in the battalion RO, in addition, LTA X has not served any of the extra duties he was supposedly awarded. In addition, this system of leniency is not consistent throughout the battalion, or even the company. The following was published in the RO on 1 1th of June 2007:

SXXXXXXXX CPL _____ ________ Non-compliance with a lawful duty or order. stoppage of Leave for 7 days

This was the punishment for CPL ______ for leaving camp an hour before he was supposed to. This was published less than a week after his infringement. If you were to calculate the time AWOL alone, LTA X was missing for a minimum of over 20 hours. This does not take into the account the fact that he repeated the crime less than a week after being reprimanded the first time. This does not take into account the lying to his superior officer. This does not take into account the fact that he is an officer, and thus should be even more liable than corporal.

Absence without leave
22. -(1) Every person subject to military law who is absent without leave from service in the Singapore Armed Forces or from the place where he is lawfully required for the time being to be shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction by a subordinate military court to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years or any less punishment authorised by this Act.
(2) It shall be a defence for any person charged under this section to prove that his absence was a result of circumstances over which he had no control.

this is where the report ends and the editorial begins. LTA X's continued service in the SAF is an embarrassment the entire officer corps. In the SAF we are constantly being told that we have very high standards expected from our officers. As an officer cadet any one of these actions would have you put immediately out of course. Here you have a person who lied to his subordinates, went AWOL, attempted to bribe a civil servant, went AWOL again not even a week after being reprimanded, then lied to cover himself, and tried to implicate another person in these lies. He discarded his second chance just days after being given it because he thought he could get away with it. I how ask you what exactly are these high standard that we speak of? I am realistically asking you how much worse than this can an officer really go? Does a person have to commit armed robbery or murder before he fails these supposedly "high" standards of officers in the SAF? I simply fail to understand how someone who would undeniably fail the standards expected of a cadet or even a private can continue to be an officer.

The decisions of the battalion HQ are equally saddening. How can a lower standard of discipline be expected of officers than of men? In the our society, when a police officer commits a crime he is held to an even higher standard, and given even greater punishment than a normal citizen, this is because he has betrayed the very values it is his duty to uphold.

I was told that one of the reasons this was so was that they did not wish to ruin his career with a summary trial. However the SAF is not a charity organisation and does not owe anyone a career. I feel that as a regular his status as an officer and his career should be under even closer scrutiny than that of an NSF, to intentionally withhold such information is effectively tricking the SAF into continuing to pay someone whom if all is known, has no place in the organisation.

Another reason told to me for LTA X's lighter punishment was that it is in light of the work he has done for the battalion, I feel this is unacceptable for several reasons. Firstly in our country we do not mitigate punishments based on past achievements, Durai was not excused despite the amount of money he helped NKF raise, and a doctor would not be excused from molestation no matter how many lives he has helped save. Secondly such mitigation is nothing more than justified corruption and no different from a criminal paying off the police to escape arrest, the very thing we fight so hard to keep out of our society, Finally even if the previous two points are conceded, what LTA X did was not a mistake, mistakes are done by accident. What he has demonstrated is a systematic failure of character and unacceptable as an officer.

Even if you attribute the lack of punishment to extreme leniency, the decision to not inform the battalion is even more suspicious. Especially in a _____ unit such as _________ where the importance of being on duty cannot be over emphasized, to not even inform the battalion of the occurrence is to send a signal that there is nothing wrong with his actions. If it was unintentional it shows gross negligence for something which is clearly an important matter, and if intentional shows a level of corruption that I need not elaborate on.

While some might say this is just a small matter, a story of a single bad officer, the fact that it was not dealt with more severely is indicative of a bigger problem. It shows the lack of quality control being practiced for the leaders of the SAF. The following quote was taken from the army's own intranet homepage:

"In the 3rd Generation SAF, the quality and commitment of our people will continue to be the most important determinant for advancement" - Member of Parliament Ms Indranee Rajah

We can take criticism about having second hand equipment, outdated training methods, and even questionable relevance to modern day operations. But one thing that cannot be tolerated is a reputation for having bad leaders. Such a reputation would compromise Singapore's defence credibility far more than using refurbished tanks or old training manuals.

While I may only be a 2nd lieutenant, I am a citizen of this country. And as a citizen I have the right to demand high standards from the leaders of the SAF While it is true that high standards are hard to come by and even harder to enforce, for such events to come to light and yet nothing be done about it is to say the very least, unacceptable and disappointing.

Yours Sincerely,
2LT Li Hongyi

Repression, Sir is a habit that grows. I am told it is like making love – it is always easier the second time! The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked on this course with constant repetition you get more and more brazen in the attack. All you have to do is to dissolve organizations and societies and banish and detain the key political workers in these societies. Then miraculously everything is tranquil on the surface. Then an intimidated press and the government-controlled radio together can regularly sing your praises, and slowly and steadily the people are made to forget the evil things that have already been done, or if these things are referred to again they’re conveniently distorted and distorted with impunity, because there will be no opposition to contradict.” – Lee Kuan Yew as an opposition PAP member speaking to David Marshall, Singapore Legislative Assembly, Debates, 4 October 1956
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Public debt has difference between internal and external. Most of Singapore's (and Japan's) public debt is internal, i.e. the government owe debt obligation to their own people. That's why SgD and JpY are so strong in forex, they're actually net creditors in the international debt market. It's unlike US where foreigners hold most of their debt and even their public join in the borrowing. That's why USD keeps sliding down.
While SGD remains strong but SG people keep sliding down because the terms of repayment keep changing?

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I discover the rat on sunday night, call HDB and town council for help on Monday morning, pushing responsibility, so I'm have been calling them (to & fro) the whole afternoon and the town council actually ask me to call them back 2 days later as the officer in-charge of our area is on course, will only be back on Wednesday. So without choices, I called my own pest control, found the rat's dropping and urine but no sign of the rat, glue boards place in the kitchen and wait.... till about 530pm, I called the town council again, call center (a 3rd party company answer calls on behalf of Town council) pick up my call and response to me fast, they willing to send their man to my house to put mouse traps (this is the response I want in the morning), I'm wondering why the call center is more responsible than the Town council itself, why?? That's not the worse part, my wife actually went to meet up the MP for help on that day, waited for about an hour with my 4 years old son, and the MP actually said:" It's NO BIG DEAL" I'm so angry that I called NEA, Newspaper & Xin Ming Ri Bao, but only the Xin Ming's reporter called back.
Then thing happens, town council send their man to my house the following day, HDB called me and asked about the states....Wow, do you believe that....