Category: Dilemma

A Premier To Terrorise Singapore (Part 1 of 2)

What is terrorism? How are we going to prevent ourselves from such attack?

The answer is simple. Do not let technology to be integrated into your lifestyle. Technology only compliments our lifestyles and not replacement.

Seriously we have to ask ourselves:
1. Can I contact my friend if I do not have my mobile phone with me.
2. If I do not have a computer, can I get my document send out?
3. If I do not have a cashcard (problem passing through the ERP gantry), can I still drive and go to the CBD?
4. Do I have a problem travelling with public transport without the linkcard?
5. Can I make payment without NETS and VISA cards?

These questions sound trivia but will disable our lifestyles and give us hell if our lifelines are depending on it. If your answers to the above questions are all ‘no’, you have a serious problem with your lifestyle. If some are ‘no’, you are still ok. If ‘yes’ is all your answers, good!

In Singapore, we are so dependent on technologies and if one day not available to us, we will stop our life, our work. I am serious. I have ask around what happen when you computer breakdown or when your corporate network becomes unavailable for a day. Most will tell me, they cannot work. Some companies even have policy to request staffs to go on compulsory leave.

If one day you are on the street and you forget to bring your mobile phone out or the battery is flat and you need to make a phone call. If you are in Singapore then you are in deep shit because you hardly find public phone on the street anymore. If you manage to find one, you will be shocked you need a prepaid card to use it. Adding more shock to it, you have to buy a $10 prepaid card to make a ten-cent call.

In Singapore, even you have the key to a car, does not mean you can drive. You need a cashcard too. What happen if your cashcard value is low or the card is damage? You will be as good as a cripple or handicap having a car. So your cashcard is damage and you need a replacement. Do you know where to get it? 7-11 store? Are you sure you they are selling it?

Recently I am back to Singapore and have been visiting our civil department. All these department no longer accept cash payment. You have to use NETS or cashcard. Some may offer payment through credit card. Sound cool, huh! Our government looks high-tech. Imagine a guy like me back to Singapore without all these cards or expired cards to facilitate payment. I am so handicap and cannot even make a $15 cash payment for my identity card renewal. By the way, why do I have to pay for my identity card? I have to borrow a stranger’s card to make my payment. Imagine a network disconnection in such department. The whole unit cannot transact?

In our present times, nothing is eternal. Everything is volatile. HP can takeover Compaq, IBM sells the notebook division to Lenovo. New York’s twin tower flatten to ground. Enron’s disgrace. Singapore is a safe place to live, do not mean no risk. We cannot take life for granted.

I remember once, I park my car at Raffles City. My cashcard is low and I top up at a top-up machine in the carpark. Then come along an American lady making payment for her parking fee.

She also wants to top up her card to make payment for her parking fee. But her ATM card cannot work with the machine. It is late in the night and there is no customer service officer at the counter to assist her. She is so helpless and rushing to go off to fetch her little child. So I decide to help her by using my ATM card, but she only have a $50 bill and I do not have change for that. In the end, she write me a cheque of $10.

With all these unspoken problems I mention. How much worst can it be to affect our life if one day a terrorist strikes the electronic heartbeat of Singapore. This is what is terrorism all about in our modern age!

Fifteen years ago, I was asked many times where was Singapore. I told them it was at the end of Malay Peninsula. I gave them all the geographical description to pin point where was it on the map and a quickie on our young history. Some foreigners thought Singapore was a town or province in China because I was a Chinese. Many also thought Singapore was a third-world country with poor people and old villages. Singapore was too small to be printed on the map.

At that time we were so insignificant to the westerners but we, Singaporeans knew that we were a small but powerful country. Powerful not just in term of military defence, but in economic, international diplomacy, nation building and so on. By this time we were recognised by the world of our world class seaport, indisputable number one Changi Airport, government efficiency, etc.

Then ten years later, I asked foreigners if they knew where Singapore was. This time many westerners knew there was this hidden country called Singapore some where on the map. By now Singapore had spread it great name to the end of the earth. We were well respected and welcomed to foreign lands.

Add another five years, which was now, I asked this question again, “Where is Singapore?” but this time I asked my fellow countryman. Our forefathers, which was my grandfather, immigrated here and toiled together. Forty years had past, now we were coming into our third generation.

The third generation Singapore would be led by my generation. We would continue to run the race with the baton that was passed on to us. We understood how our nation was developed because we gone through the process side by side with our forefathers. We had seen how they toiled and learned from them. We had inherited their spirit of fervency, and grew up seeing and feeling their hardship and how they built our nation.

Forty years from now will be fourth generation Singapore. If I ask this question again “Where is Singapore?” forty years later. I am questioning the future of the nation. The leaders after my generation, how will they lead the nation like our forefathers?