Ladies and Gentlemen,
A reading of the state controlled local Singapore's reports one recurring problem for which the island's millionaire ministers simply has no solution, Mother Nature.
Almost daily after a heavy rainfall, there is a report that several parts of the island have flooded and are in some places several feet underwater, causing untold water damage to countless motor car engines, property damage in houses and shops running into millions. Question is, how much more can they take?
It is not my intention to lecture to you on global warming but even a schoolboy should know that Singapore island, which is no more than 80 miles north of the Equator and just a few inches above sea level has no chance whatsoever.
Due to the island's location at the Equator, global warming causes atmospheric temperatures to rise, far faster than in temperate countries, which allows the same amount of air to hold much larger amounts of water vapor and with condensation resulting in that much more rain in a deluge and torrent.
Secondly the earth's rotation on its axis causes two high tides each day (or one depending on which way you look at it). And with water temperature rising, sea water expands causing water to increasingly encroach into the island.
In combination with high tides, heavy rain and a deluge of rain ground water, it simply cannot flow out to sea causing the almost daily flooding. We read almost daily of the nonsense put out by the island's million dollar ministers claiming to improve drainage to eliminate flooding but we know the problem is not one of drainage at all.
The island simply lies too low above sea level and it is simply at the wrong place, almost spot on the Equator. No matter what you do, you simply cannot halt global warming nor can you raise the island higher. This is a lost cause and the sooner they admit this the better for them, rather than to put out this nonsense of improving drainage.
And what is worse, with each day passing, the problem is becoming more and more acute; 2012 was worse than 2011 just as 2013 is going to be worse than 2012 and worsen with each passing day and each passing year as the world continues to get warmer. I reckon flooding this North East Monsoon season starting now up till March next year is going to be far worse than anything you have ever seen.
And the island being no more than a tiny speck, no more than 26 miles latitudinal and 16 miles longitudinally, and mostly flat, you have simply nowhere to run from the floodwaters.
Second insurmountable problem is their unhappy people. No matter how many roads and high rise apartment blocks you build, Singaporeans are simply very unhappy and they manifest this in the only way they know, which is to emigrate, not have any children and refuse to get married.
Although the state controlled newspapers no longer reports on the brain drain, it continues to mount. Increasing numbers of Singaporeans are heading abroad for an education or settlement and no amount of persuasion or cajoling, no less with high salaries, perks and benefits has resulted in the brain drain to lessen.
As for the fertility rate for childbirth, the island not only has the lowest fertility rate in the world, it is dropping even further. As a result the Singaporean has become an endangered species in his own island and it is widely believed, although not admitted by the government that foreigners have exceeded Singaporeans in their own island.
Another cause for the record breaking emigration rate and the rock bottom fertility rate is 90 year old Lee Kuan Yew himself. The state controlled newspapers in the island have not reported anything about him for the last few months, an ominous silence when in the past not a day went by without some news about him.
It is widely believed that he is gravely ill and it is anyone's guess as to how long he will remain. For an astute Singapore watcher, this fact has to be really alarming. In an island where even the Sun would not have risen without the all powerful Lee Kuan Yew's permission, it is anyone's guess what or who will take his place when that eventful day happens.
So rather than waiting for the Singapore dollar to be worth no more than Chinese Hell notes which they burn to appease ancestral ghosts during their Chinese Ghost month, it is far better clearing out now at least while the Singapore dollar has any value.
As for the island culture and identity, it is lost forever.
Today there are far more Chinese nationals from the People's Republic of China walking around the island's streets than Singaporeans so much so that you may as well be walking about the Mao Tze Tong street in the Wubi district in the eastern sector of Chengdu in China than Singapore replete with their boorish behavior and spitting in public.
For the native Singaporean, with at least a little more class, influenced at least a little under the British colonial administration, there is nothing more to fight for as Lee Kuan Yew has successfully, in almost a short span of no more than twenty years changed the character of the island unrecognizably. This is another reason for so many Singaporeans to want to get out. And this situation again is not getting any better, only worse.
In an island where you can be arrested for criticism, where teachers are ordered to indoctrinate their children to obey their government instead of independent thinking, where you don't have any room to run around in a concrete overcrowded sardine packed skyscraper island, where being English speaking you can live in Australia with at least some modicum of an independent free spirit, why should anyone with any capacity to reason want to remain under the grip of Lee Kuan Yew and his son?
As for the huge inflow of immigrants which the government brings in from China, they have no choice but to continue the practice, since they have decided to allow an indiscriminate numbers of foreign businesses into the island who obviously require workers and therefore any attempt to curb immigration would undoubtedly result in businesses closing and a devastating recession.
This outflow of locals and the inflow of immigrants is turning the island into China's Chengdu, People's Republic of China, if it has not already become one. At the same time, local Malay and Singaporean Indians finding they have no connection to the Chinese Singapore island whatsoever are either disappearing in population or are going abroad in even larger numbers.
With Mother Nature against them causing unrelenting almost daily island wide flooding, the huge brain drain and the vanishing Singaporean, I am afraid the million dollar government of the Lee Kuan Yew family have run out of ideas.
As for me, I have purchased the tide tables for the seas abound Singapore island to monitor high tides and spotting the Singapore's flooded areas, a hobby which can be quite interesting if one takes the trouble to study it.
Perhaps you can call me a tide spotter, something like an train spotter, predicting Singapore floods and how high they would be.
Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
A Singaporean in Exile
Fremont, California USA
Tel: 510 491 8525
Email:nair.gopalan@yahoo.com
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6 comments:
To understand Singapore, one has to come to grips with two things:
1. The Singapore Chinese
Trained from birth by their Confucian parents not to challenge authority and never to have opinions that might displease the authorities. Keep your head down, study hard and make money is what they tell their children.
Singapore used to have an involved Chinese populace, but almost all of these people are of Peranakan stock (including LKY).
If you were non-Peranakan Chinese and were active in politics, the odds then were that you were a Chinese chauvinist whose loyalties lay with the PRC. (LKY used this to brand them and communists and jail these people without trial.) Most of these people would send their children to Chinese schools,where everyone was Han Chinese, and not English schools where the children could mix with a wide range of races - Malays, Eurasians, Indians and Chinese.
Easy to understand why these people were willing to discriminate against the Malays and Indians.
2. Pavlov's Dog
LKY realized he could play all the groups against the other.
He used his progressive English education and command of the language to win the support of Singapore's English-speaking population.
For the PRC-loving Chinese, he preached bigotry and told them that they were special and superior to other races. He became a Sinophile and sent his sons to a pure Chinese school. (His son now rules over Singaporeans of all races, but it is telling that the Chinese school he attended never had Malays, Indians or Eurasians or ... only pure Han Chinese.)
LKY also exploited the blind obedience of the Chinese (both PRC-loving and others) to demand blind obedience.
He would ring the bell and they would then obey:
STOP AT TWO.
SPEAK MANDARIN ONLY.
GRADUATE MOTHERS SCHEME.
MAKES SON PRIME MINISTER.
CONTROLS CPF MONEY.
...
You can ring my bell, ring my bell, ring my bell ... Singapore's Chinese wake up each morning and go to bed with this 1980s song in their head.
No wonder we have a drain problem in Singapore. It's all the cr*p our PAP politicians and the Lee clan flush down every day that's causing congestion.
Some PAP stooges in Singapore just cannot speak English.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElKCso_muLs
Everytime I look at a Singapore politician I am reminded of the old Chinese uncle sitting with one leg up on a stool in a dodgy coffee shop having a coffee. I doubt the authenticity of their education and even the functionality of their peanut brain. Singapore has become such a joke that I left a couple of years back to Australia where I can be who I am without having to succumb to government rules and worry about having said the wrong thing in public or online. I'm encouraging all other singaporeans with the minimum capability to leave before you're oppressed and spat on by your PRC counterparts.
I remember Yugoslavia -after Tito . Singapore will have the same fate and scenario too..
Also cyprus after makarios, russia after communism, italy after mussolini. It is the same with dictators everywhere
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