Wah Freakin' Lau
Once again I'm stuck deep in HTML mess because I glibly agreed to do SJ's website for her. Talk abt shooting myself in the foot, I think I kicked myself in the arse as well. Bleah. At least this time it ain't so bad, cos I've finally discovered the wonders of Dreamweaver 4.

[angels above: Hallelujah. come to think of it, has anyone ever wondered why we pronounce it "ha-ley-lu-IAH" when's spelt with a J? Hee...]

Now the only thing left is to figure how to get a form online.... urgh.... more trips to the library....... n more javascript madness........ will publish the site on this blog when it's done, cos right now, it's so under construction, it's liable to collapse anytime. [and we sure won't want you to walk around the site with yellow helmuts. Not to mention how incredibly stupid you'd look wearing a yellow helmut in your own house]

Also got a new tuition job, [FINALLY!!!] teaching in Geylang east of all places. The place is abt half an hour's MRT ride from my place, and the pay is less, but I'm despo so who's complaining? The kid is pri 6 come the new school year, and I'm teaching English only. At least there's a library near their place for me to hang out if I reach their area early.....

Watched LXG and Nemo FINALLY! Good movies, though LXG is kinda mindless hollywood entertainment. Animation in Nemo: Fantastic. Kudos.

We Don't Want Kids...Unless they pay their own way
And currently on the News as I hear it, Singapore experiences its lowest birth rate, despite Govt. baby bonus. Like, DUH! With all the education, tuition and other unsavoury influences to worry about, why the heck would I want to raise a child in Singapore and subject him to the same shit that I went through? Why, he could grow up learning Hokkien expletives, be an utter disgrace in Chinese, turn nigh-suicidal from the homework at school, turn into an overly-pragmatic, materialistic, money-grabbing glob [for lack of a better word] and *gasp* vote PAP and wear white his whole life. [while this might mean he could go to RI....]

Ok, forget about the above paragraph. I have nothing against the PAP or RI, so don't blast my mail or my blog. But frankly, there's very little in our society and culture today that's actually helping the birth rate right now. In Europe, they have paternity leave and maternity leave that's way, way longer than ours, and not to mention the shorter work weeks. On the other hand, you have our gahmen, CUTTING CPF, RAISING GST, in order to become more COST competitive with China, and urging us to not be so PICKY in jobs and TAKE what you can while you can..... I have to ask: why are they wondering why we're not having babies? Because it's not COST-EFFECTIVE anymore!

To put it into crudely concrete terms, a child is a money-losing investment these days. You pay for all those years of raising a kid and in the end, when you've drained all your CPF seeing him grow up, he's off making his own millions and leaving you in an old folks' home. [unless you had the foresight to instil a strong sense of filial piety in him] While I doubt that most people think in such monetary terms when it comes to kids, I believe with all the COST, COST and COST being mentioned in the papers today, our gahmen has managed to subliminally condition us into thinking about MONEY, MONEY and MONEY all the time. There are plenty of examples of this. When they ran an article on why service was so lousy in Singapore, they found out it was because we put price and quality over service. Look at the crowds at the Robinson's Sales. And when something is being given out free, you can bet there'll be a queue of people, whether it be free food or free bras.

Everything we do in our lives revolves around money, and how to maximise the money we already. When you've led entire generations to think this way, what makes you think we're gonna have babies? Because frankly, unless you have a really strong sense of parenthood, [not to mention god-like patience and self-sacrifice] you're not really likely to have a kid at all. With the pay we're getting, and the CPF cuts, our generation will be lucky if we can even save up enough cash for retirement if we're SINGLE. What about when we're married? What about when we have kids? If we ourselves are struggling just to earn enough for ourselves, how the heck are we gonna afford kids? The gahmen was so worried about us losing out to China, they forgot to worry about us losing out ourselves. [gee, did that last sentence make sense?]

The gahmen had better think real good about their long term plans for Singapore.