Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Sleepless In Singapore

After a few drinks at the lobby bar of the Sheraton at Shanghai, it was time to hit the sack. Our Norwegian chairman said he would stay on a bit, as sleep is more elusive at his age. We spied some cocktail hostesses in cheongsams - nice ones, not like the witch at the Hri Kumar Central Provident Fund (CPF) talk - and left instruction to keep him company.

It's a scientific fact: older adults are less able than younger adults to maintain sleep; sleep for them is lighter and more fragmented with brief arousals or longer awakenings throughout the night. Insomnia and disrupted sleep in elderly people are a common side effect caused by many chronic medical conditions such as arthritis, congestive heart failure, depression, and gastroesophogeal reflux disorder.

Maybe the senior citizens watching the public World Cup screenings organized by the The People's Association (PA) do not suffer from sleep disorders. More likely they are kept awake by the spectre of the Minimum Sum (MS) being raised at higher than inflation rate, and with it, the drawdown date pushed further and further into infinity and beyond. They may not be entrusted to spend their own money, but PA seems to have no problems with paying Singtel for the mioTV broadcasts.

Elsewhere at the APEC TEL Workshop & 9th IAC forum on 16 June, the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) is saying it is looking into using high-tech gadgets like wearable monitoring devices, robotic legs and pets to help Singaporeans cope with ageing. What the IDA Director for Strategy & Innovation Division did not enlighten his audience was how the fancy toys will be funded. All roads lead to Rome, and the worrisome thought giving all of us nightmares, old and young alike, is how much is routed from our savings. We will have to wait for the conclusion of the City Harvest Church court case to really understand how round-tripping is defined legally.

10 comments:

  1. Where does the 0.5 month bonus comes from...

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  2. When the Gov.'t said to improve mrt, bus frequencies, you know you have to pay higher fares. When they improve footpath, walkways, you have to pay higher S &C chrgs, when they said better hospital services, you have to pay higher bills, when the places look dirty, they will increase littering fines, when people drink, they increase liquor taxes, etc. Every problems solve by money, that we the consumers are forced to pay.

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  3. The future with a PAP led govt....wearable monitoring devices and robotic legs for elderly folks who must keep working because their CPF monthly pay out will always be overwhelmed by inflation.

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    1. And the new medishield is going to take away their life savings.

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  4. bloody bastards!

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  5. Haha - the point-scoring CEP-rated GDP-bonus incentivised senior civil servants are at the game of creating GDP growth out of taxpayers spending yet again. The cycle goes like this:

    Step 1: Imagine a problem - in this case sick people who may or may not need amputation

    Step 2: Invent a solution to make them more sick, in this case get the hospitals to lop off their good limbs and replace with bionic $6m wifi-enabled ST-certified robotic limbs. All paid for by medisave. Its all justifiable, right cow?

    Step 3: When the robotic limbs start breaking down like some SMRT trains, send the bionic folks back to hospital, remove the wifi limbs and replace with "new improved versions" costing only 30% more, all justified with gerald's smooth talking. More medisave increases, more CPF set aside so THL wonlt ever have to have their portfolio size reduced to pay you back your CPF :)

    Repeat to create the perpetual motion machine (aka - perpetual GDP bonus-creating machine). High CEP folks are indeed more gifted than us!

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  6. Confused or sleep walking or...? On 1st December 2005, during a welcoming ceremony with military honours for PM Lee Hsien Loong in the Chancellory in Berlin, instead of stopping and bowing in front of the German flag, together with Chancellor Merkel, according to international protocol, he kept on walking and left the Chancellor far behind. Sleepless in Germany? And he is our Prime Minister, OMG. Any hightech gadget from the IDA to help him cope with his attention span? Or should his protocol chief have been sacked?

    Incidentally, the MFA protocol chief who served as the go-to guy on diplomatic protocols for over 10 years was suspended in October 2013, and jailed for 15 months, for a scandal or heist involving 10,075 boxes of pineapple tarts and 248 bottles of wine, to the tune of $88,997. C'est la vie.

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  7. Someone mentioned that you are not allowed to bring in your own food and drinks to watch the World Cup at the CC, that you can buy them there. Judging from the attendance in the pic above, it will take more than 50 years to recoup the cost of this once in a lifetime public screenings.

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    1. The PAP MPs have obviously overlooked the pathetic response. However their grassroots leaders should know the standard PAP drill of rounding up elderly folks to fill up the seats with free supper as incentive... of course they can always opt for plan B, i.e. fill up the void with life size dummies and get SPH to proclaim it was fullhouse. LOL

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  8. All these robots devices... Looks like the predictions in the 1981 book by Joel Garreau "Nine Nations of North America" came true. You should read it (If you haven't) it's a great book.

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