To Slayer: Er, so flying to a country you hate for the 3rd time is preferable to staying in Singapore? :p Even if it is semi-free? What's the logic in paying, even a subsidisied price, to go all the way to a place that you hate? Where nobody speaks the language that you do and in desperation you call someone in Singapore just to speak English to them? :p :p Wahahaha...

So either you have to find something you haven't seen in that country, or just don't go lah! Go somewhere else that ain't too expensive, like Thailand or something... Why do you keep going to a place you hate?

Krystal I'll take you up on your offer........ If I wasn't so damn broke at this point of time. *hangs head* Haiz... But KL maybe I'm alright for a weekend, and I know the place a little too. Hee... Might have to wait till I come back from my trip though, cos all my reserves are tied to that.

Almost a month and a half before I fly off, and there are still disagreements within the group about where to go. The LON/PAR part of the journey is set, but it's where we go after that that's causing us the problems. Gotta find some budget flight from PAR to either Copenhagen/Brussels/Stockholm and see where we end up by then. Turtle wants to go to Brussels, because he's been to Cop [lucky devil him *sulks*], Me and Julian were thinking of Cop, of which neither of us have been to, and wherever we go, we wanna try to end up in Stockholm. Then there's the matter of transport and accomo booking. Argh. Argh. Argh.

Am tempted again to do the Piscean thing and curl up in a shell somewhere, and hang a sign on the entrance that says "F**K off, World".

So... here's another of my literary contributions to the world:

Charity starts at... the Purse

The S11 at Bishan was abuzz with activity last Sunday night. This was not due in any part to a wonderful new hawker stall opening, but rather due to the NKF stunt about to be performed. For those who didn't watch/hear about it, the stunt was performed at the block just next to the CPF building and the coffeeshop. 6 stars [I donno who] lowered themselves from the 10th floor to the 6th, where they performed some aerial acrobatics. Like, "1...2....3....Go!" and the 6 people who were hanging in a row would transform themselves into a pyramid. Today in the newspapers, we read that the NKF has earned almost $2m from the 2 shows held over 2 weekends.

These few days, local charities have come under a most uncomfortable scrutiny, in light of the Joachim-Kang controversy. [the priest that allegedly embezzled church funds to pay for his 'goddaughters' computers and condominiums] So suddenly, a lot of people are interested in what happens to the money. What the average man in the street wants to know is, is the money I donate going to pay for meals for poor folks, or the priest's new handphone?

And is it any wonder that they wonder so? Take a walk down Orchard one Saturday afternoon, and you may be accosted in the face by more than 5 different charities, all asking for funds to various needy and worthy causes. [btw that no wasn't chosen arbitrarily. that was the no that accosted me one Saturday afternoon] There are so many people out there that need your money, who will starve if you don't give, who will die if you don't give, quick empty your wallet into my box now or this old lady will die, take off your clothes now because there's a family who needs it more than you, and hey, they need your shoes too.

No wonder people feel so stressed, what with all the guilt being thrust in their faces. The NKF uses this tactic to its deadly fullest in its show. They show clips of kidney patients crying into the camera, stars crying into the camera, asking for funds to keep them alive and on dialysis. Naturally you feel guilty and reach for the phone.

Then one day, 3 strikes. One, it's made public that the NKF has almost $180m in reserves, sitting in the bank. Everyone's like WTF?? They had so much money in the bank and they still want more from me??

Second, Joachim Kang becomes news. Every charity comes under scrutiny, and none more glaring than the one on the richest local charity around.

Third, the gold taps in the CEO's toilet, although admittedly, this probably won't cause such a huge ruckus as the above 2.

But it's true that people nowadays are more wary of the money they give, and who exactly is receiving it and what they're doing with it. If I give you $2, I give it to you in the faith that this money will help someone out there. I give part of the money I earned to someone, because I think he needs it and I want to give it to him. I don't give it to him so that he can upgrade to the latest model, or so that your CEO can buy that new BMW or build that new extension to his house. With all this charitable controversy going around, people are getting more wary about who exactly is receiving the money and what's going to be done with it.

Then further muddying the waters are the 'paid social workers', the kids who get a commission off each ticket they sell. Whether this is moral or not is a moot issue. There will be some for, there will be some against, and it's pointless facing each one off the other. The part I want to highlight here is the behaviour of some of these kids, who sometimes act more ruthlessly than some of the more experienced MLM, insurance or property agents. Maybe they think they have an added advantage by tugging at the heartstrings and hereby letting loose the knots on the purse strings. All they did was piss off a whole buncha people and getting themselves, and other reputable charities, in the same stereotype as MLM, insurance and property agents.

And who are the losers of all these tactics? Only the people who are most in need of the money. They put their faith and hope in an organisation to help them, and when this organisation, or its appointed representatives, acts poorly...... the nearest comparison would be to a lawyer who screams to a presiding judge, "Godammit!!!! Are you blind or what? Can't you see he's innocent???"

Charity organisations have to be more careful than anyone else in the handling of funds. No one gets morally outraged when the CEO of an MNC is caught embezzling funds from his own company. In a weird sense, we aren't so surprised because in business, the first principle is that of self-interest. Look out for your own arses first. People [especially employees, of course] will get pissed off if the CEO has his own Boeing jet or gold plated toilets, but they expect that, because he's the ultimo supremo, the boss of the entire company. Nobody's fooled into thinking he's some philantrophic soul, because if he has to, we know he'll fire our asses off in a minute. Anyway, he's also the one signing our paycheques.

But when we're doing the giving instead of the receiving, we naturally have an interest in what the charity is doing with our cash. I give money so that some family out there will have rice to eat. I don't give so that the CEO can have abalone for dinner. Charities have to make sure that their representatives act responsibly and morally. They also have to keep their slate clean of any speck of dirt that may affect their reputation.

Otherwise what's the cost? Ultimately and ironically, it's always to the people that need the money most in the end.

as an aside, I would like to say that I fully disapprove of guilt marketing. This is when the organization makes you feel guilty for not contributing, ie "If you don't give, they will die" "He died for you, what can you do for him?" and is extensively used by NKF in the former, and Christian groups in the latter. These people wanna make you think that charity is an obligation, which goes against the whole concept of charity itself. If I had an obligation to all the charities out in Singapore alone, I'd be in serious need of charity myself. By using the "If you don't give, they will die" line, they make it sound as if this man's life was in my hands, and that I have the power to let him live, or die. This is not true. As much as I'd like to think so, I'm just not that powerful. My money might help him live for a while, but it's certainly not the be-all and end-all. The more you throw this into people's faces, the more hardened and bitter they will be as a result, like moi here. If I earned my own money, I have a right to decide how to spend it. The more you force this supposed obligation onto me, the more I'm just gonna refuse. If you let me be, you'd have a better chance of getting my money.