Hi,
2015 has been good to me mostly, and this blog post is to commemorate such a good year, that is SG50 for Singapore, the first time of many things that happened to me in my life.
The year started off being sad as I celebrated being single for yet another year again. However, not long into the new year, I found Chiwawa, the girl who gave colours to an otherwise boring and aimless life. With me being attached would mean lesser time for Dota and Yong Sheng, whom I play NBA 2k15 together every weekend, which is the only activity i look forward to as a zombified working adult.
She wasnt working when I first got together with her. This is a stressful thing not because i have to provide for her; she is fiercely independent, but because she have too much time on hand and i have to deal with a project that was nothing less than a pressure cooker. As every start of a relationship, especially that she is my first, she was my everything. Juggling with work and her would mean that i ended up exhausted physically and mentally, leaving me with no time for any other things, including visits to AWWA, meeting up with friends and doing my own sports and leisure.
Idling is also bad for health. With too much time on hand, she has no idea what to do, and her self esteem suffered very badly, especially when her peers are doing pretty decent while she does nothing for a living.
Things got better as she devoted more and more effort into finding opportunities everywhere, learning new things from reading and surfing the internet. And she finally found her job!
She was my lucky charm. With her around, i felt that i am the luckiest man on Earth. And so i started joining Facebook contests that i have always dismissed as waste of time. It wasnt long before i won something. The first of them all is a pair of computer chairs. Then things gotten more interesting. I won things ranging from Collagen drinks, vouchers, Beerfest tickets to foodstuff goodie bag and even a Diskette, a useless relic in the age of Cloud storage. But my best win is still a Braun Buffel clutch and long wallet which eventually went to mummy and Chiwawa. I have to apologise to my mummy and lao sis that they have to accede to my requests to go get my freebies as collections are usually Monday to Friday working hours.
Work have not been easy this year. But despite tough times with the project, being there allowed me to get into contact with another group of people that are mostly unrelated to the rest of the company. You see, most staffs that are hired into this project have only ever worked in this project, and have never felt the warmth nor the good working culture of my company. So being there makes me felt like being in a different company. These people are generally nice and funny. They taught me many different things, both technical and soft skills. They also showed some negative examples. 9 months in the project was enough for me as firefighting for a prolonged period took a toll on my mindset and turned me negative. Fortunately for GTAP program, i have a legit reason to move out of it.
In my new department, people are even nicer. they understood that i have been firefighting and they are very supportive of me when i requested to clear my leaves, despite them having manpower issues as well. They are willing to teach, and while they do not give you everything, they would always give you a guiding light instead of letting you chase down the wrong tunnel.
I was also given a chance to attend high level meetings. Such meetings are eye opener as being at the lowest food chain of the company, we are non contributors in the meeting, and will only take up space. However, company doesnt think so and gave us chance.
This year also gave me chance to go overseas with someone to accompany me. Though we only made a major trip, that is Taiwan, we made mini trips like going to Penang to visit her Maternal Family members, and to Batam for a super short birthday getaway. We also have a rolling good time having a staycation at Xiuhui's hotel.
These small experiences were my first, and every time i see you falling asleep, I JUST FELT LIKE PULLING OUT THAT OVERFLOWING NOSTRIL HAIR. LOLOLOLOLOL. okay, i just feel so blissful.
But not all went well.
Some time in May, me and Chiwawa almost met with a fatal accident where a single lamppost stopped a car charging in our direction.
Quarrels still happened.
My regular visits to my old friends have became irregular until to almost none.
Less time at home and seeing popo getting older is also a painful process.
New home have yet to have any positive news as the year ends, moving towards a another new year.
weight wasnt lost.
OT and weekends working became more common.
Well, thats abt it! shall add more when im free!
Saturday, December 26, 2015
Sunday, December 6, 2015
The epic trip to Taiwan 2015
Hi,
I really think my Taiwan trip is a freaking interesting trip, and therefore I would really want to introduce our itenary in this blogpost.
I do not claim any credit for this itenary as it is done up by my super detailed friend, Alvin Ng.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25169194/Taiwan%20Itinerary%202015.docx
So since we started our trip slightly earlier than others, we explored the area for Wen Quan. And yes, we did found it. It was a pretty comfortable experience, although the place looked like an old children water playground. No photos taken inside, but here is the exterior.
Nearby, there is this pretty epic fishball soup.
And since we explored this place without following the itenary, this place is known as Da Keng, which is damn near the Carton King that we would go on the next day...
this is pretty stupid. we went to the same region twice, two days in a row. The bus ride was nightmarish. the theme park is pretty boring, but if taking nice photos is your objective, this is a good place to go to.
So after 1 day in the mountain, we went down to half way in the mountain. The tea garden minsu is pretty. but no aircon, which is okay, since the weather in the mountain is still quite cold. To me, we could have decided to explore alishan den gotten to halfway mountain to stay, instead of spending the night in alishan. this is because at alishan, there isnt much to do. and neither is there much to do at mid mountain during the night.
I really think my Taiwan trip is a freaking interesting trip, and therefore I would really want to introduce our itenary in this blogpost.
I do not claim any credit for this itenary as it is done up by my super detailed friend, Alvin Ng.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25169194/Taiwan%20Itinerary%202015.docx
So since we started our trip slightly earlier than others, we explored the area for Wen Quan. And yes, we did found it. It was a pretty comfortable experience, although the place looked like an old children water playground. No photos taken inside, but here is the exterior.
Nearby, there is this pretty epic fishball soup.
And since we explored this place without following the itenary, this place is known as Da Keng, which is damn near the Carton King that we would go on the next day...
this is pretty stupid. we went to the same region twice, two days in a row. The bus ride was nightmarish. the theme park is pretty boring, but if taking nice photos is your objective, this is a good place to go to.
And of course, since we are at Tai Chung, and staying in the midst of Feng Chia,nighttime would definitely be to scout Feng Chia Ye Shi for food and deals. For that, no photos were taken because of how devoted we are to our shopping and eating.
So the last full day at Taichung, we decided to book a van for the 6 of us to visit some Meh meh, building and some flower place.
The Cai Hong Cun has nothing but decorated graffiti all around the place. While i find the place underwhelming, the history behind the place is pretty rich. An old man who refused to be relocated, started painting his area with weird yet striking graffiti, and ended up drawing enough attention to let him preserve the place and became a tourist attraction.
Pardon my 3 month pregnant stomach
Next, we head to somewhere with flowers. This place is pretty high up and hence it was kinda cold. At first look at the place, we thought it was a natural outdoor flower garden, with the temperature of Gardens by the bay Glass Domes. But as we zoom in into the flowers, we realised that not all the plants there are real. Some are plastic. But i enjoyed the place anyway, as i get to feed some ducks.
The last place is CingJing Cao Yuan, where sheeps roam and eat food off your hands. My suggestion is to get a big pack of sheep food and walk around and feed those hungry sheeps. Although there are shitload of grass all around the place, im pretty sure those sheep food pellets are akin to our titbits because they definitely prefer them to eating those lush green grass.
So after that day, we took a bus to Ri Yue Tan. To be honest, Ri Yue Tan is a place that i will only go once in my lifetime, similar to Ali Shan.
At Ri yue tan, since 4 of us stay in a different hotel as the other 2, we happened to know that the other 2's hotel have better deals, as well as better services.
I would suggest you go Mei Jen house if you are able to book it.
Anyway, there is a tour that you would require to buy ticket for the boat ride, and they are selling at 300twd. This is a price that you can try to haggle if you are lucky enough. Some people bought their tickets at 150, some 200. but mostly locals gotten cheaper tickets.
I would say the island hopping was pretty much dull, apart from 1 of the island with an old street selling amazeballs food, which was mentioned in the itenary.
the dinner at ri yue tan as suggested is this!
The next day, we headed for Ali Shan, and thats the first and last time i go there. because going there is a PAIN and there isnt much to do. if you are expecting to see Ali shan de Gu niang who would serenade you with beautiful voices, sorry. all you get is shitload of trees, that are very pretty as well.
the minsu is expensive, but that is because there isnt any cheap hotels in that region.
And anyway, the only place we can go in mid mountain is fen qi hu. this place is worth going IMO, because this old street is pretty good to walk about, with some pretty decent food like the epic donut we ate there. oh, and not forgetting the squarish bamboo forest.
After this, we are back to Taipei, which is pretty much all about shopping. At there, we didnt have any photos as it is only 1 night for us before going back. but the rest stayed on, and the itenary also covered some of the nicer place to go in Taipei.
Taipei is all about ye shi. So do remember to visit all of it, and take it easy during day time. their ye shi closes late, so u can shop till late, and wake up later.
Thats all folks!
This is a wonderful memory, and since i have no permission to post photos of others, i shall only include photos of 2 of us!
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
My Zenfone Selfie
Hi,
Disclaimer:
I am not a professional phone reviewer. So dont bother if you want those hardcore technical reviews. you can easily find it online. i am sharing a more personal review. read on and you will understand.
While everyone is hardcore to get their Apple product, i was damn excited that Zenfone Selfie came.
And if you have been reading my blog, which i doubt anyone does, i wrote a short review about the Zenfone 5 . You will think i am a spendthrift to buy a phone within a short period of time, but its not true.
Apparently the Gorilla Glass is that Zenfone 5 came with is just a pretty name, and it has nothing to do with being able to withstand a Gorilla attack. I didnt even attack it. It fell from my pants pocket, approximately less than a meter(im only 1.7m short, and im pretty sure my legs are short), and tada!
What's more interesting is that no repair shop is willing to repair it in Singapore (talk about reduce reuse recycle), and in Malaysia, it costs a whooping $60sgd to repair the screen despite SGD to MYR is 1:3. To put into perspective, this exact new model is going for $199sgd now, and a Iphone screen maybe cost less than $100 to repair in Malaysia.
I wanted to let Asus repair it since my set is still under warranty.
But their Global support don't seemed to be friendly(ask them got trade in, say no, ask them got price range, say dunno), and their service center is really FARRRR.
OKAY, enough of my whining about my destroyed phone.
Zenfone Selfie
Price: $379 (some promo now due to launch in sg)
Freebies: Free lolliflash and 16gb OTG from sandisk
Bought from: AMK Hub Challenger (you spend above $60, free $8 AMK hub voucher)
Bought on: 27 Sept
Apparently, despite their launch on 26th, nobody actually cared about the phone. There are display sets in some stores but most of them told me they dont have stock. Newstead at Jurong Point is selling at Original price of $399. Jurong Point Challenger have stock. But all other shops like Harvey Norman, Best Denki, all no stock.
When i buy on 27th (sunday), they had a hard time keying my order.
This is because stock came on a Saturday and nobody have time to key it into system nor unload it. So the set i bought was the first Selfie AMK Challenger sold.
My next challenge is to get Accessories for the phone. Screen Protector and Case. NO SHOP HAVE STOCKS FOR ZENFONE SELFIE AT ALL. I tried buying from Challenger and all main retailers, they say they dont have either.
Free Lolliflash when Selfie have flash for front and back camera. I RATHER THEY GIVE ME A HANDPHONE CASE.
Just a little tips for buyers:
if you are a Challenger Member,
This itself makes it worth the $30 to be member, since my reason of changing phone is due to a destroyed screen. Of course, since i have yet to test their service to see if it is really no cost replacement or not, i shall not comment more on this free warranty. Maybe its free material but you pay labour etc. Well, lets hope Gorilla Glass 4 is better.
The phone is a bit laggish when you first use it, but after awhile, it stabilizes, or i gotten used to it.
but no big concern here. The camera is as good as they tell you. please play around a sample set if you are a person who cares a lot about camera.
I loved the zen touch the most.
I have customised to swipe "W" on a sleeping screen to open whatsapp immediately, and "Z" to show instagram.
Its a fun, albeit "can do without" function.
My Chiwawa likes the function too.
The smart battery saving thingy is pretty irritating too. I on it to optimize my battery. but every time it sleeps, it will off my 3g, which means no Whatsapp Call and Whatsapp Web will go offline. Once i wake the phone up, the 3g is reactivated again!
Ended up, didnt use that either.
Calling is a bit irritating. Since it have a big selfie camera, the speaker is slightly placed on the right, which sometimes dont fit my ear.
Verdict
I would strongly recommend this phone if you are on a budget, and is okay with the severe lack of choice for accessories. The camera and functions are really decent for its price tag, and despite destroying one Gorilla glass previously, i really think the phone screen colour is pretty and nice to fondle. Its like a Phablet, so i dont really like the size of the phone since i prefer a smaller phone. But well, the screen is really pretty.
I liked Zen UI, despite it having more bloatware and trash installed as compared to Zenfone 5. Maybe its Lollipop that i liked, but nevermind.
Disclaimer:
I am not a professional phone reviewer. So dont bother if you want those hardcore technical reviews. you can easily find it online. i am sharing a more personal review. read on and you will understand.
While everyone is hardcore to get their Apple product, i was damn excited that Zenfone Selfie came.
And if you have been reading my blog, which i doubt anyone does, i wrote a short review about the Zenfone 5 . You will think i am a spendthrift to buy a phone within a short period of time, but its not true.
Apparently the Gorilla Glass is that Zenfone 5 came with is just a pretty name, and it has nothing to do with being able to withstand a Gorilla attack. I didnt even attack it. It fell from my pants pocket, approximately less than a meter(im only 1.7m short, and im pretty sure my legs are short), and tada!
What's more interesting is that no repair shop is willing to repair it in Singapore (talk about reduce reuse recycle), and in Malaysia, it costs a whooping $60sgd to repair the screen despite SGD to MYR is 1:3. To put into perspective, this exact new model is going for $199sgd now, and a Iphone screen maybe cost less than $100 to repair in Malaysia.
I wanted to let Asus repair it since my set is still under warranty.
But their Global support don't seemed to be friendly(ask them got trade in, say no, ask them got price range, say dunno), and their service center is really FARRRR.
OKAY, enough of my whining about my destroyed phone.
Zenfone Selfie
Price: $379 (some promo now due to launch in sg)
Freebies: Free lolliflash and 16gb OTG from sandisk
Bought from: AMK Hub Challenger (you spend above $60, free $8 AMK hub voucher)
Bought on: 27 Sept
Apparently, despite their launch on 26th, nobody actually cared about the phone. There are display sets in some stores but most of them told me they dont have stock. Newstead at Jurong Point is selling at Original price of $399. Jurong Point Challenger have stock. But all other shops like Harvey Norman, Best Denki, all no stock.
When i buy on 27th (sunday), they had a hard time keying my order.
This is because stock came on a Saturday and nobody have time to key it into system nor unload it. So the set i bought was the first Selfie AMK Challenger sold.
My next challenge is to get Accessories for the phone. Screen Protector and Case. NO SHOP HAVE STOCKS FOR ZENFONE SELFIE AT ALL. I tried buying from Challenger and all main retailers, they say they dont have either.
Free Lolliflash when Selfie have flash for front and back camera. I RATHER THEY GIVE ME A HANDPHONE CASE.
Just a little tips for buyers:
if you are a Challenger Member,
This itself makes it worth the $30 to be member, since my reason of changing phone is due to a destroyed screen. Of course, since i have yet to test their service to see if it is really no cost replacement or not, i shall not comment more on this free warranty. Maybe its free material but you pay labour etc. Well, lets hope Gorilla Glass 4 is better.
The phone is a bit laggish when you first use it, but after awhile, it stabilizes, or i gotten used to it.
but no big concern here. The camera is as good as they tell you. please play around a sample set if you are a person who cares a lot about camera.
I loved the zen touch the most.
I have customised to swipe "W" on a sleeping screen to open whatsapp immediately, and "Z" to show instagram.
Its a fun, albeit "can do without" function.
My Chiwawa likes the function too.
The smart battery saving thingy is pretty irritating too. I on it to optimize my battery. but every time it sleeps, it will off my 3g, which means no Whatsapp Call and Whatsapp Web will go offline. Once i wake the phone up, the 3g is reactivated again!
Ended up, didnt use that either.
Calling is a bit irritating. Since it have a big selfie camera, the speaker is slightly placed on the right, which sometimes dont fit my ear.
Verdict
I would strongly recommend this phone if you are on a budget, and is okay with the severe lack of choice for accessories. The camera and functions are really decent for its price tag, and despite destroying one Gorilla glass previously, i really think the phone screen colour is pretty and nice to fondle. Its like a Phablet, so i dont really like the size of the phone since i prefer a smaller phone. But well, the screen is really pretty.
I liked Zen UI, despite it having more bloatware and trash installed as compared to Zenfone 5. Maybe its Lollipop that i liked, but nevermind.
The most expensive Cabinet!
Hi,
Disclaimer:
I am Apolitical. But I am totally against gutter journalism. Even though we are in an Information Age, people are usually lazy to cross check their facts and take sensationalised news as facts and consume them, which in turn breed some hatred in them.
I am by no means trying to call out anyone, but I am trying to cross check the facts given.
And I am interested in numbers.
My personal profile can be found here.
So i was browsing through facebook and chanced upon a certain ex-presidential hopeful's sharing. It is about "New Singapore Cabinet cost S$49 million a year excluding bonuses" by States Time Review. It also states that "Ministers with different portfolios will only be counted once, and the calculation is as follow:"
However, I do realised they still do double counting for some people like Desmond Lee, Sam Tan etc.
I understand that they are trying to simplify calculations using the below as a simple number calculation. These numbers are the pay our ministers get BEFORE bonus.
"Prime Minister – S$2.2 million
Minister – S$1.1 million
First time Minister – S$935,000
Parliamentary Secretary – S$572,000"
Disclaimer:
I am Apolitical. But I am totally against gutter journalism. Even though we are in an Information Age, people are usually lazy to cross check their facts and take sensationalised news as facts and consume them, which in turn breed some hatred in them.
I am by no means trying to call out anyone, but I am trying to cross check the facts given.
And I am interested in numbers.
My personal profile can be found here.
So i was browsing through facebook and chanced upon a certain ex-presidential hopeful's sharing. It is about "New Singapore Cabinet cost S$49 million a year excluding bonuses" by States Time Review. It also states that "Ministers with different portfolios will only be counted once, and the calculation is as follow:"
However, I do realised they still do double counting for some people like Desmond Lee, Sam Tan etc.
I understand that they are trying to simplify calculations using the below as a simple number calculation. These numbers are the pay our ministers get BEFORE bonus.
"Prime Minister – S$2.2 million
Minister – S$1.1 million
First time Minister – S$935,000
Parliamentary Secretary – S$572,000"
Being curious, I am interested to know the real number instead.
So i dug out some interesting reports from
http://www.psd.gov.sg/white-paper/white-paper
http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Singapore/Story/A1Story20120104-319812.html
http://www.salarysingapore.com/minister-and-president-pay-cut-36-to-53-percent.html
According to these reports,
I gather that Minister of States, and Minister have a difference in pay, and according to this awesome picture, we seemed to only have them as Full Ministers.
Picture from Straits Time, taken from PM Lee's Facebook page.
Of course, since we do not know their grades, there will be some assumptions and guesses to be done.
Minister Grading System
The grading are:
PM (Prime Minister)
DPM (Deputy Prime minister)
MR1
MR2
MR3
MR4
SMS (Senior minister of state)
MOS(Minister of state)
Mayor
SPS (senior Parliament Secretary )
Parliament Secretary
Pay Framework
Their pay structure is similar to our pay structure.
13 months of fixed pay and the rest Variable.
Their worked example states that
So, with this example stated, I can determine a MR4 Minister pay is $715k excluding bonus.
This table here provided by the white paper states that a MR4 is getting $1.1mil, which is the equivalent of 20 months pay for comparison.
So by doing some back counting, we will be able to tabulate that their pay without bonus is actually far lesser.
So how much does our cabinet really cost?
$99 of course!
Okay lameee.
With the assumption of their grades, here is a simple calculation of their combined cost.
Strictly speaking, this is the cost of the cabinet, but according to that article, they included Minister of States and Parliament Sec into the picture.
A grand total of both the numbers would be
$41,987,000 based on 20 months (1 Month AVC+ 3Month PB + 3 Month NB, realistic)
$27,291,550 based on 13 months (0 months for all)
$55,632,775 based on 26.5 months (1.5 month AVC + 6 month PB + 6 month NB, Maximum)
In conclusion...The article that states that 49 million for our cabinet without bonus is super sensational. The real number is a number closer to 28 million. But the number is indeed closer to a realistic payout to the cabinet INCLUDING bonus. But that doesn't change the fact that our cabinet are indeed paid well. Thank you for reading, and please do point out my wrong calculations, if any. All assumptions made are random, and i do not have a formula nor reason why i assume their grades as that. I just randomly group them into an average of 4 of each grade, with MR4 only 3 because the 2 SMS will eventually become MR4. |
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
GE 2015 by the numbers
Hi,
Disclaimer:
Disclaimer:
I am no politician nor statistician.
I am apolitical as well.
Whatever posted here is a series of googling and hoping that the figures are accurate.
I am just a lowly engineer and you can see my profile here.
Please do tell me to.change my numbers or remove my post should it offend you, and in what way are you offended. My purpose is to do some mathetical calculations and logical analysis.
My personal profile http://b3nchai.blogspot.com/2015/05/my-personal-profile.html
So i was inspired by a facebook post claiming that there is an increased in voters this elections, and it is due to "new citizens" that oppositions lost votes percentage.
Is it really true that the "new citizens" were to be blamed for the lackluster results of the Oppositions? Unfortunately the original poster removed his facebook posting already.
Hence I done some research of my own and here are my findings.
By the numbers
Referece
http://www.straitstimes.com/politics/ge2015-voter-turnout-at-9356-per-cent-improves-slightly-from-2011-record-low
http://www.eld.gov.sg/pressrelease/ParE2011/2011_05_11%20Press%20release%20on%20total%20voter%20turnout.pdf
http://www.singapore-elections.com/general-election/2011/
With the basic numbers, it is obvious that oppositions actually lost a lot of support in terms of number of voters, even though they have contested in Tanjong Pagar GRC for GE2015. An approximate of 800k voters in GE2011 compared to 680k voters in GE2015. Its a good 120k voters gone.
(i have classified all as oppositions, even though there are some who are independent like HHH and the bukit batok guy, just for simplicity sake)
If the oppositions supporters numbers are similar, we could have blamed the swing on first time voters. But nope, the oppositions lose supporters, and a huge chunk of it, despite having 25,943 in Tanjong Pagar GRC added to their vote count. We are not even talking about percentage. Why have 120k supporters switched sides?
There are also an increment of ~110k voters. Some crazy people claimed that it is due to influx of "new citizens". But from what I found out, it doesn't seemed to be the case.
The increment in electorate is also mostly birth citizen as stated below.
Citizen or "New Citizen" ?
Death of citizen
By using an average of 18k for death rates, 18k x 5(2011-2015)=90k (it should be lesser since the year in not fully over)
Do note that there is only information from 2011 to 2013 currently. So it is a simple assumption.
Citizen by birth
Eligible first time birth citizen (1990-1993)
In GE2011, people born in 1990 are not eligible as they need to be 21 at 1Jan 2011.
Similarly, in GE 2015, 1994 will not be eligible.
Hence, Birth Citizens eligible are 51,142+ 49,114+ 49,402+ 50,225 = 199,883
Total expected Delta
200k-90k=110k new voters in GE2015
Difference in electorate number: 112,053(between GE2011 and GE2015)
Of course, we cannot count a perfect number as we have not included people who have migrated, ineligible voters who gave up their voting rights and such. But with these numbers, we can comfortably say that it is not "new citizens" that swing the vote in favor of PAP.
Why would i have such a conclusion?
If we have approximately 110k new voters expected due to birth Singaporean being eligible to vote, and there are an increment of 112k of new voters. A naive calculation would be to say that "new citizens" are only approximately 2k in numbers.
To negate the issues of first time voters who should be excluded from this 110k voters due to migration and being ineligible due to various reasons, let's drop the number by 20k and give this 20k to "new citizen"
Even with 22k "new citizen", it constitute to approximately less than 1% of the eligible electorates for new voters.
So seriously? "New citizen" swing votes?
i disagree.
Reference
http://www.ica.gov.sg/data/resources/docs/Media%20Releases/SDB/Annual%20RBD%20Report_2013.pdf
Is it really true that the "new citizens" were to be blamed for the lackluster results of the Oppositions? Unfortunately the original poster removed his facebook posting already.
Hence I done some research of my own and here are my findings.
By the numbers
Referece
http://www.straitstimes.com/politics/ge2015-voter-turnout-at-9356-per-cent-improves-slightly-from-2011-record-low
http://www.eld.gov.sg/pressrelease/ParE2011/2011_05_11%20Press%20release%20on%20total%20voter%20turnout.pdf
http://www.singapore-elections.com/general-election/2011/
With the basic numbers, it is obvious that oppositions actually lost a lot of support in terms of number of voters, even though they have contested in Tanjong Pagar GRC for GE2015. An approximate of 800k voters in GE2011 compared to 680k voters in GE2015. Its a good 120k voters gone.
(i have classified all as oppositions, even though there are some who are independent like HHH and the bukit batok guy, just for simplicity sake)
If the oppositions supporters numbers are similar, we could have blamed the swing on first time voters. But nope, the oppositions lose supporters, and a huge chunk of it, despite having 25,943 in Tanjong Pagar GRC added to their vote count. We are not even talking about percentage. Why have 120k supporters switched sides?
There are also an increment of ~110k voters. Some crazy people claimed that it is due to influx of "new citizens". But from what I found out, it doesn't seemed to be the case.
The increment in electorate is also mostly birth citizen as stated below.
Citizen or "New Citizen" ?
Death of citizen
By using an average of 18k for death rates, 18k x 5(2011-2015)=90k (it should be lesser since the year in not fully over)
Do note that there is only information from 2011 to 2013 currently. So it is a simple assumption.
Citizen by birth
Eligible first time birth citizen (1990-1993)
In GE2011, people born in 1990 are not eligible as they need to be 21 at 1Jan 2011.
Similarly, in GE 2015, 1994 will not be eligible.
Hence, Birth Citizens eligible are 51,142+ 49,114+ 49,402+ 50,225 = 199,883
Total expected Delta
200k-90k=110k new voters in GE2015
Difference in electorate number: 112,053(between GE2011 and GE2015)
Of course, we cannot count a perfect number as we have not included people who have migrated, ineligible voters who gave up their voting rights and such. But with these numbers, we can comfortably say that it is not "new citizens" that swing the vote in favor of PAP.
Why would i have such a conclusion?
If we have approximately 110k new voters expected due to birth Singaporean being eligible to vote, and there are an increment of 112k of new voters. A naive calculation would be to say that "new citizens" are only approximately 2k in numbers.
To negate the issues of first time voters who should be excluded from this 110k voters due to migration and being ineligible due to various reasons, let's drop the number by 20k and give this 20k to "new citizen"
Even with 22k "new citizen", it constitute to approximately less than 1% of the eligible electorates for new voters.
So seriously? "New citizen" swing votes?
i disagree.
Reference
http://www.ica.gov.sg/data/resources/docs/Media%20Releases/SDB/Annual%20RBD%20Report_2013.pdf
In conclusion...
I get it that we are afraid that "new citizens" will cause social problems for us. But are they a great cause of concern that will cost the oppositions votes?
Please do not be xenophobic and blame everything on the "new citizens"
The Opposition lose a lot of votes, and there are various stuffs that could be a contributing factors.
If you say voters became humji, then why would those 120k voted for opposition last election and decided to be hum this time?
Unless all 90k who passed away are opposition voters, all 150k+ who didnt vote are opposition voters or all 47k rejected votes also belonged to opposition voters, then it might be a different story.
Regards
Benjamin Chai
Saturday, September 19, 2015
My Education Route as a Singaporean Citizen
Hi,
Disclaimer:
My personal profile can be found here.
I am no professional educator, nor am i some anti government personnel. I am apolitical and i am pro singaporean.
this post have some comparison with foreigners and i assure you, i love foreigners too.
I believed in meritocracy, so even if you are a foreigner, and good, you deserve a place in our local university.
Instead, i would want to look at why foreigners are mostly better than us, Singaporean. Is our education system really that praiseworthy?
Now that we are in post GE2015, and that I would like to comment a bit about Education, which was brought out in several speeches by oppositions.
I have absolutely no intention to criticise the education system, but i would like to share my education route and hopes that more should be done so we can be "industrial ready"
(1996-2001)
I spent 6 formative years in Ai Tong School, one of the best primary school during my time.
Being there would mean endless remedial lessons, enrichment classes both weekdays and weekends, and my parents were pressured to provide me the best basics to excel. This in turn pressured me to study like crazy, which made my first few years of my life being quite miserable.
During Primary 4, i was streamed into EM2, but my parents insisted that i opt for EM1, which again, started another nightmare time for me.
Though EM1 meant that i will have to study Higher Chinese, the pace of teaching in EM1 classes are also a lot harder. Ended up, i was the 2nd last in the cohort.
PSLE came and i didnt do too badly, scoring 224/300.
(2002-2005)
When i entered Mayflower Secondary School, my life changed. Things werent as pressurising as Primary school, though things are definitely a lot of difficult. Failing subjects became norm and we were not being condemned when we fail. Doing badly doesnt mean the end of the world.
I guess my character was formed in such an environment where i slowly made friends that would ended up growing up with me.
In Sec 2, I didnt do well again.
So in Sec 3, i was placed into what people called the last class of Express Stream, with subjects like
Combined Science (Physics/Chemistry)
Arts
Maths
English
Literature
Social Studies (History)
Chinese
I didnt do well either. When O levels result came, even before i see the result, i asked my teacher if it is good or not.
I remember vividly that she replied that it wasnt bad, but its nowhere near good.
(2006-2009)
So at 17 years of age, i have to make a decision to affect my entire life. My results is bad enough so i dont have a choice of going JC. But being able to make it to Polytechnic was a bonus, since in Secondary School, my results have been bad.
I chose BioElectronics in Singapore Poly.
3 years in SP was fun, with us growing into our teenage years, flirting with opposite sex and suchs. It also meant more freedom to do things that we loved, with less controlling parents.
During secondary days, i wasnt allowed to play computer and i even got into a fight with dad for playing computer.
But in Poly, with my own laptop, i gamed as much as i liked, and he couldnt stop me anymore!
I had a bunch of classmates who pushed to go University, and as a result, i was pushed together with the flow, aiming to go into University.
But again in Poly, i was never good enough to be near the A student, settling in the midst of B+ again. And it is only in poly that you started to feel the competition from foreign students.
They are not only smart, but they are also hardworking. However, this isnt something that actually surprised me. Because some of them are older than me, having to retain because of language proficiency. Hence, i believed their experience would have made them want to strive harder.
If hardwork is something that they have more than me, i would have gladly concede in this meritocratic education system. But sometimes, when i talk to them, they told me that some of the stuff taught are something they have learnt since during their younger days.
Here i am, in one of the world's "best" education system, but yet, what we have learnt are something others from other countries have learnt since young.
This gave us an unequal footing in poly.
During my days, the influx of foreign students are still minimal, but as times goes on, it became really apparent that the foreigners are indeed better than Singaporean student, and the reason was not simply because they are more hardworking or smarter. It is simply because their education background are far more superior than us.
The time came and with a GPA of 3.50 flat, i made it to NTU, to study Computer engineering.
(2009-2011)
But before that happens, the 2 years that my governement want of me came.
(2011-2014)
When i was matriculated into NTU, i have a hungry vision to do well, to study and struggle as much as possible to be the very best, that no one ever was.
After 2 weeks of school, i realised that it is near impossible for me.
We are exempted for 1 year due to being posted into University from a Polytechnic.
I was exempted almost all electives, and only have to study purely Cores.
But i soon realised that such exemption not only shorten my education time, but also shorten my life in the process of it.
Doing 6 cores subjects and having to excel in it is too hard. It isnt impossible since some people are definitely doing it. But having served 2 years and forgetting a lot of my previous education have made it harder.
The university also judges our grades on a bell curve. It is not the case that where you score 80/100, you will get an A grade. A bell curve system would meant that only a top 10-20% will be given an A. So imagine being in a cohort of 100 person, only 10-20 people will get A, despite how many of us scores higher than 80points. And this is also the reason why university never release your final exam scores to students.
Again, foreign students are doing better as a whole.
I am not against them being here in university. Rather, I just felt that we are really weaker as compared to them because of how shortchanged we are when we follow the Singapore Education system.
A good example is to have a classmate being our peer tutor for one of my math module. He have done bridging course in NTU and scored almost full marks for the math module. Instead of having him being exempted, he was required to take the module again, making him qualified to be a peer tutor while having to take the module at the same time. Usually peer tutor are selected when they gotten A for that module. But he was a special case.
From my conversations with him, we realised that he have done such maths during his time in China, in Secondary school. And according to him, these math are considered easy to most students who came from China, which proved to be true, as my Chinese classmates tend to not come for the lessons, and yet scored very well for that particular math module.
2 years are not helping either. 2 years of NS would mean we practice math lesser, but work out physically more. A friend of mine who signed on did well in math type of modules. He came back to school after 1 year of NS as he signed on. With less rust to his brain, he indeed do better. But being a scholar would also mean that it isnt a fair comparison.
Another gripe point that even my professor have brought up is that Polytechnic wasnt teaching enough.
During my poly days, there are some harder "stuffs" being taught, and my lecturer would say that it will not be tested as it is too difficult for our level, and says that it would be taught more in university. He would then briefly go through and forget about it.
Fast forward to University, my professor would then lament that he dont have enough time to teach through everything, and briefly go through the portion that was skipped in Poly days, stating that we were supposed to learn them during our days in a lower education system tier.
Ended up, we were lost after lectures.
Does it affect our foreign students? Some of them are affected like us, but majority of them have no issues with it since it was something they learned since young.
I am not saying that i represent the entire graduating class. But i do feel that there are unfair advantage towards the foreign students.
Yes i get it that by merit they are better and hence they deserve their class of honours and their position in the university. I also know that they are extremely hardworking and whine less than us in many aspects.
But have we really questioned why are they always better than us? is it really true that our students are not working hard? is our "world class" education system really good?
i honestly doubt so.
Without strong foundations, we would definitely lose out as times goes by, as the lack of basics would compound and snowball into an inability to comprehend some theories or solutions, causing us to be weaker than those who have better basics.
Modules dependency would then cause us even more trouble. if you are good, you will do better at the advanced module. but if you are bad, both your modules will suck.
One of my prof once told me before:
all the Polytechnics requested the university to give exemptions. But the quality of our foundation is so bad that many stuffs are to be retaught in university. With such short teaching period to teach more stuffs,students are the ones who will suffer as they are forced to absorb like sponge, and in many situations, ended up memorizing instead of appreciating the information they were supposed to learn. this would then cause us not to know when we should apply what we have learned, ending with many equipped with Degree, but mostly not knowing how to solve problems with it.
This is especially true, as surveys have stated many with Engineering degrees are not doing Engineering anymore.
And just in case you asked, I graduated with 2nd Class Lower Division in NTU, Computer Engineering.
(2014-now)
Now being in the industry, working for a year already, i have realised that many stuffs i learned in my 16 years of education are pretty redundant.
I have done 2 internship, but none of it have prepared me enough for the real working life that i am expecting.
As interns, we were guided most of the time, and whatever we were asked to do are pretty menial, which in my opinion, are jobs that will take us 1 day, but a full timer 1 hour to finish.
Now that i am working, and we have an intern attached to us to learn, i honestly feel that i am shortchanging him. Things that are assigned to him are jobs that require a lot of manpower, and yet doesnt require any thinking. We want to teach, and yet we have no confidence in the intern's aptitude. I think this is because we came from the same educational route, which is why we know just how underprepared are these graduating class of students are.
One of my most interesting experience is that i was scolded for not knowing SQL. Being a graduate from Computer Engineering, working in software development and yet have no knowledge in SQL was a joke to my team lead. But its true! I wasnt taugh SQL in poly and uni because my Poly thought uni will teach it, and my uni taught i would have learned such basic stuffs in poly.
It is not difficult to self learn this, but it just showed how "industry ready" we are.
Like what i have previously stated, we have a lot forced down our throat, but are we really able to apply them in real life scenarios? Given my 1 year of working experience, i have a lot of difficulty appreciating whatever i have learned in school being implemented in work.
So much for being promoted to top 30 university.
I would sincerely hope a revamp in education syllabus to teach enough so that we can be university ready, industry ready.
if our foreign students from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar and even Malaysia are having better education background and basics than us, shouldnt we change the way we teach Primary and Secondary schools?
there is no point getting so much accolades for our education systems only to have our employers retrain us from scratch to get some work done.
Then what for we study for those long and arduous years?
Last but not least,
Why do we have low birth rates?
Singaporean Males finishes education at 25 years old, Female 23 years old typically.
Starts Primary 1 at 7yrs old, finish primary at 12.
Starts Express/NT stream of Secondary School Education at 13, finishes at 16.
Starts Normal Stream of Secondary School Education at 13, finishes at 17.
Starts Poly at 17/18, finishes at 19/20.
Starts JC at 17/18, finishes at 18/19.
Female JC students starts Uni at 19/20, end earliest 22/23 for 3years course, 23/24 for 4 years course.
Female Poly students starts Uni at 20/21, end earliest 23/24 for 3 years course, 24/25 for 4 years course.
Singaporean Male starts University at 21/22, end earliest 24 for 3years, 25 for 4years course.
For my case, i studied 6 years primary, 4 years secondary, 3 years poly and 3 years university.
started at 7years old, finished at 25years old, inclusive of 2 years NS.
Poly School Fees
This is the current school fees for Poly Student.
http://www.sp.edu.sg/wps/portal/vp-spws/spws.fsu.financialmatters.coursefeesandfeespayable
My school fees at that time is slightly cheaper. I count it at 2k per year, 6k for a diploma.
University School Fees
This is my school fees for NTU.
http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/oad2/website_files/finaid/tutionFees_1112.pdf
7K per year.
21K debt for 3 years university Degree course.
Before I even start working, i already owed 21+6k= 27k school fees.
This is exclusive of debts incurred for other misc like halls, laptops, materials, and books. It is also exclusive of interests and such. It is a super underrated amount.
A total of 54k if a pair of couple were to get married, just for a super simple calculation of school fees alone.
Lets take a estimate of Singapore Wedding cost from:
http://dollarsandsense.sg/abasicguide-to-the-cost-of-a-singapore-wedding/
And it is 44k at lowest for wedding costings.
54k+44k =98k for 2 to get married.
So if both are graduates and earning an average of 3k/mth.
http://www.salary.sg/2015/graduate-employment-survey-2014-published-2015/
Their per annum per pax is approximately 40k. Let us increase it to 45k for a better more accurate portrayal for those with more bonus, or higher basics.
45K x 2 =90k per year for 2 university working adult.
Their disposable income is a lot lesser, at approximately 72k after 20% CPF.
Even if they are able to save strictly, they will only be able to clear all debts at approximately 2 to 3 years time.
And at age of 28/29, how many babies do you think i will make, and how much more will it cost, while factoring in housing and taking care of the elderly.
I dont believe in free education, and i think the subsidy is really good enough. But if we were to make changes to education, we might be able to graduate slightly earlier, which would give us enough savings to get married earlier and maybe have more babies.
Teach less learn more is good, but can we teach more of relevance, cut down study years, increase yearly study hours, and get ourselves more "industry readiness"??
My suggestion
I believed there are many researches done on how well someone can learn something at a certain age and such. But I really think that 10 years to achieve O Levels is too long.
Can we do it in 8 years?
Once single session Primary school is in place, maybe we can have longer daily education hours and starts to determine a student's strength and weaknesses and interest at an earlier stage.
If a student have aptitude for Math and Science, maybe we can start doing specialist track for the student to aim for Engineering or related track.
If a student is a high flyer, do away with O levels and straight to A levels in 9 years (just like thru train program, just shorter).
Since parents do not have time for students after school hours due to working, why couldnt we have longer teaching hours so as to save cost and opportunities for students to loiter around.
I get it that we would then require more teachers and allied educators, but isnt it for a better Singapore?
Will students feel a lot more stress, since more are taught?
I would believe if we can streamline education syllabus to reflect real life application scenarios, it would be easier for students to appreciate and comprehend.
Cut down the teaching of language.
I dont see a need to learn english for 10 years.
Once you have a certain basics, i believed that we will be able to grasp the rest of the English Language by ourselves.
There are nothing more to learn in English Lessons after Secondary 2, and like math, from Secondary 3 onwards, english lessons are more for practicing how to write compositions and to understand passages.
We can incorporate such learning in Science and Math lessons too!
Some might argued that if we do that, our english command would go downward spiral. But if we were to teach all subjects apart from Mother Tongue in English, I seriously doubt it would cause a big problem.
2 years saved is a lot.
Graduating at 23 would mean that i would be happily married at 26/27 being debt free from education fees and marriage expenses.
I would be younger, healthier to make better babies.
I would also have longer working years to contribute to Singapore.
Regards
Benjamin Chai
Disclaimer:
My personal profile can be found here.
I am no professional educator, nor am i some anti government personnel. I am apolitical and i am pro singaporean.
this post have some comparison with foreigners and i assure you, i love foreigners too.
I believed in meritocracy, so even if you are a foreigner, and good, you deserve a place in our local university.
Instead, i would want to look at why foreigners are mostly better than us, Singaporean. Is our education system really that praiseworthy?
Now that we are in post GE2015, and that I would like to comment a bit about Education, which was brought out in several speeches by oppositions.
I have absolutely no intention to criticise the education system, but i would like to share my education route and hopes that more should be done so we can be "industrial ready"
(1996-2001)
I spent 6 formative years in Ai Tong School, one of the best primary school during my time.
Being there would mean endless remedial lessons, enrichment classes both weekdays and weekends, and my parents were pressured to provide me the best basics to excel. This in turn pressured me to study like crazy, which made my first few years of my life being quite miserable.
During Primary 4, i was streamed into EM2, but my parents insisted that i opt for EM1, which again, started another nightmare time for me.
Though EM1 meant that i will have to study Higher Chinese, the pace of teaching in EM1 classes are also a lot harder. Ended up, i was the 2nd last in the cohort.
PSLE came and i didnt do too badly, scoring 224/300.
(2002-2005)
When i entered Mayflower Secondary School, my life changed. Things werent as pressurising as Primary school, though things are definitely a lot of difficult. Failing subjects became norm and we were not being condemned when we fail. Doing badly doesnt mean the end of the world.
I guess my character was formed in such an environment where i slowly made friends that would ended up growing up with me.
In Sec 2, I didnt do well again.
So in Sec 3, i was placed into what people called the last class of Express Stream, with subjects like
Combined Science (Physics/Chemistry)
Arts
Maths
English
Literature
Social Studies (History)
Chinese
I didnt do well either. When O levels result came, even before i see the result, i asked my teacher if it is good or not.
I remember vividly that she replied that it wasnt bad, but its nowhere near good.
(2006-2009)
So at 17 years of age, i have to make a decision to affect my entire life. My results is bad enough so i dont have a choice of going JC. But being able to make it to Polytechnic was a bonus, since in Secondary School, my results have been bad.
I chose BioElectronics in Singapore Poly.
3 years in SP was fun, with us growing into our teenage years, flirting with opposite sex and suchs. It also meant more freedom to do things that we loved, with less controlling parents.
During secondary days, i wasnt allowed to play computer and i even got into a fight with dad for playing computer.
But in Poly, with my own laptop, i gamed as much as i liked, and he couldnt stop me anymore!
I had a bunch of classmates who pushed to go University, and as a result, i was pushed together with the flow, aiming to go into University.
But again in Poly, i was never good enough to be near the A student, settling in the midst of B+ again. And it is only in poly that you started to feel the competition from foreign students.
They are not only smart, but they are also hardworking. However, this isnt something that actually surprised me. Because some of them are older than me, having to retain because of language proficiency. Hence, i believed their experience would have made them want to strive harder.
If hardwork is something that they have more than me, i would have gladly concede in this meritocratic education system. But sometimes, when i talk to them, they told me that some of the stuff taught are something they have learnt since during their younger days.
Here i am, in one of the world's "best" education system, but yet, what we have learnt are something others from other countries have learnt since young.
This gave us an unequal footing in poly.
During my days, the influx of foreign students are still minimal, but as times goes on, it became really apparent that the foreigners are indeed better than Singaporean student, and the reason was not simply because they are more hardworking or smarter. It is simply because their education background are far more superior than us.
The time came and with a GPA of 3.50 flat, i made it to NTU, to study Computer engineering.
(2009-2011)
But before that happens, the 2 years that my governement want of me came.
(2011-2014)
When i was matriculated into NTU, i have a hungry vision to do well, to study and struggle as much as possible to be the very best, that no one ever was.
After 2 weeks of school, i realised that it is near impossible for me.
We are exempted for 1 year due to being posted into University from a Polytechnic.
I was exempted almost all electives, and only have to study purely Cores.
But i soon realised that such exemption not only shorten my education time, but also shorten my life in the process of it.
Doing 6 cores subjects and having to excel in it is too hard. It isnt impossible since some people are definitely doing it. But having served 2 years and forgetting a lot of my previous education have made it harder.
The university also judges our grades on a bell curve. It is not the case that where you score 80/100, you will get an A grade. A bell curve system would meant that only a top 10-20% will be given an A. So imagine being in a cohort of 100 person, only 10-20 people will get A, despite how many of us scores higher than 80points. And this is also the reason why university never release your final exam scores to students.
Again, foreign students are doing better as a whole.
I am not against them being here in university. Rather, I just felt that we are really weaker as compared to them because of how shortchanged we are when we follow the Singapore Education system.
A good example is to have a classmate being our peer tutor for one of my math module. He have done bridging course in NTU and scored almost full marks for the math module. Instead of having him being exempted, he was required to take the module again, making him qualified to be a peer tutor while having to take the module at the same time. Usually peer tutor are selected when they gotten A for that module. But he was a special case.
From my conversations with him, we realised that he have done such maths during his time in China, in Secondary school. And according to him, these math are considered easy to most students who came from China, which proved to be true, as my Chinese classmates tend to not come for the lessons, and yet scored very well for that particular math module.
2 years are not helping either. 2 years of NS would mean we practice math lesser, but work out physically more. A friend of mine who signed on did well in math type of modules. He came back to school after 1 year of NS as he signed on. With less rust to his brain, he indeed do better. But being a scholar would also mean that it isnt a fair comparison.
Another gripe point that even my professor have brought up is that Polytechnic wasnt teaching enough.
During my poly days, there are some harder "stuffs" being taught, and my lecturer would say that it will not be tested as it is too difficult for our level, and says that it would be taught more in university. He would then briefly go through and forget about it.
Fast forward to University, my professor would then lament that he dont have enough time to teach through everything, and briefly go through the portion that was skipped in Poly days, stating that we were supposed to learn them during our days in a lower education system tier.
Ended up, we were lost after lectures.
Does it affect our foreign students? Some of them are affected like us, but majority of them have no issues with it since it was something they learned since young.
I am not saying that i represent the entire graduating class. But i do feel that there are unfair advantage towards the foreign students.
Yes i get it that by merit they are better and hence they deserve their class of honours and their position in the university. I also know that they are extremely hardworking and whine less than us in many aspects.
But have we really questioned why are they always better than us? is it really true that our students are not working hard? is our "world class" education system really good?
i honestly doubt so.
Without strong foundations, we would definitely lose out as times goes by, as the lack of basics would compound and snowball into an inability to comprehend some theories or solutions, causing us to be weaker than those who have better basics.
Modules dependency would then cause us even more trouble. if you are good, you will do better at the advanced module. but if you are bad, both your modules will suck.
One of my prof once told me before:
all the Polytechnics requested the university to give exemptions. But the quality of our foundation is so bad that many stuffs are to be retaught in university. With such short teaching period to teach more stuffs,students are the ones who will suffer as they are forced to absorb like sponge, and in many situations, ended up memorizing instead of appreciating the information they were supposed to learn. this would then cause us not to know when we should apply what we have learned, ending with many equipped with Degree, but mostly not knowing how to solve problems with it.
This is especially true, as surveys have stated many with Engineering degrees are not doing Engineering anymore.
And just in case you asked, I graduated with 2nd Class Lower Division in NTU, Computer Engineering.
(2014-now)
Now being in the industry, working for a year already, i have realised that many stuffs i learned in my 16 years of education are pretty redundant.
I have done 2 internship, but none of it have prepared me enough for the real working life that i am expecting.
As interns, we were guided most of the time, and whatever we were asked to do are pretty menial, which in my opinion, are jobs that will take us 1 day, but a full timer 1 hour to finish.
Now that i am working, and we have an intern attached to us to learn, i honestly feel that i am shortchanging him. Things that are assigned to him are jobs that require a lot of manpower, and yet doesnt require any thinking. We want to teach, and yet we have no confidence in the intern's aptitude. I think this is because we came from the same educational route, which is why we know just how underprepared are these graduating class of students are.
One of my most interesting experience is that i was scolded for not knowing SQL. Being a graduate from Computer Engineering, working in software development and yet have no knowledge in SQL was a joke to my team lead. But its true! I wasnt taugh SQL in poly and uni because my Poly thought uni will teach it, and my uni taught i would have learned such basic stuffs in poly.
It is not difficult to self learn this, but it just showed how "industry ready" we are.
Like what i have previously stated, we have a lot forced down our throat, but are we really able to apply them in real life scenarios? Given my 1 year of working experience, i have a lot of difficulty appreciating whatever i have learned in school being implemented in work.
So much for being promoted to top 30 university.
I would sincerely hope a revamp in education syllabus to teach enough so that we can be university ready, industry ready.
if our foreign students from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar and even Malaysia are having better education background and basics than us, shouldnt we change the way we teach Primary and Secondary schools?
there is no point getting so much accolades for our education systems only to have our employers retrain us from scratch to get some work done.
Then what for we study for those long and arduous years?
Last but not least,
Why do we have low birth rates?
Singaporean Males finishes education at 25 years old, Female 23 years old typically.
Starts Primary 1 at 7yrs old, finish primary at 12.
Starts Express/NT stream of Secondary School Education at 13, finishes at 16.
Starts Normal Stream of Secondary School Education at 13, finishes at 17.
Starts Poly at 17/18, finishes at 19/20.
Starts JC at 17/18, finishes at 18/19.
Female JC students starts Uni at 19/20, end earliest 22/23 for 3years course, 23/24 for 4 years course.
Female Poly students starts Uni at 20/21, end earliest 23/24 for 3 years course, 24/25 for 4 years course.
Singaporean Male starts University at 21/22, end earliest 24 for 3years, 25 for 4years course.
For my case, i studied 6 years primary, 4 years secondary, 3 years poly and 3 years university.
started at 7years old, finished at 25years old, inclusive of 2 years NS.
Poly School Fees
This is the current school fees for Poly Student.
http://www.sp.edu.sg/wps/portal/vp-spws/spws.fsu.financialmatters.coursefeesandfeespayable
My school fees at that time is slightly cheaper. I count it at 2k per year, 6k for a diploma.
University School Fees
This is my school fees for NTU.
http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/oad2/website_files/finaid/tutionFees_1112.pdf
7K per year.
21K debt for 3 years university Degree course.
Before I even start working, i already owed 21+6k= 27k school fees.
This is exclusive of debts incurred for other misc like halls, laptops, materials, and books. It is also exclusive of interests and such. It is a super underrated amount.
A total of 54k if a pair of couple were to get married, just for a super simple calculation of school fees alone.
Lets take a estimate of Singapore Wedding cost from:
http://dollarsandsense.sg/abasicguide-to-the-cost-of-a-singapore-wedding/
And it is 44k at lowest for wedding costings.
54k+44k =98k for 2 to get married.
So if both are graduates and earning an average of 3k/mth.
http://www.salary.sg/2015/graduate-employment-survey-2014-published-2015/
Their per annum per pax is approximately 40k. Let us increase it to 45k for a better more accurate portrayal for those with more bonus, or higher basics.
45K x 2 =90k per year for 2 university working adult.
Their disposable income is a lot lesser, at approximately 72k after 20% CPF.
Even if they are able to save strictly, they will only be able to clear all debts at approximately 2 to 3 years time.
And at age of 28/29, how many babies do you think i will make, and how much more will it cost, while factoring in housing and taking care of the elderly.
I dont believe in free education, and i think the subsidy is really good enough. But if we were to make changes to education, we might be able to graduate slightly earlier, which would give us enough savings to get married earlier and maybe have more babies.
Teach less learn more is good, but can we teach more of relevance, cut down study years, increase yearly study hours, and get ourselves more "industry readiness"??
My suggestion
I believed there are many researches done on how well someone can learn something at a certain age and such. But I really think that 10 years to achieve O Levels is too long.
Can we do it in 8 years?
Once single session Primary school is in place, maybe we can have longer daily education hours and starts to determine a student's strength and weaknesses and interest at an earlier stage.
If a student have aptitude for Math and Science, maybe we can start doing specialist track for the student to aim for Engineering or related track.
If a student is a high flyer, do away with O levels and straight to A levels in 9 years (just like thru train program, just shorter).
Since parents do not have time for students after school hours due to working, why couldnt we have longer teaching hours so as to save cost and opportunities for students to loiter around.
I get it that we would then require more teachers and allied educators, but isnt it for a better Singapore?
Will students feel a lot more stress, since more are taught?
I would believe if we can streamline education syllabus to reflect real life application scenarios, it would be easier for students to appreciate and comprehend.
Cut down the teaching of language.
I dont see a need to learn english for 10 years.
Once you have a certain basics, i believed that we will be able to grasp the rest of the English Language by ourselves.
There are nothing more to learn in English Lessons after Secondary 2, and like math, from Secondary 3 onwards, english lessons are more for practicing how to write compositions and to understand passages.
We can incorporate such learning in Science and Math lessons too!
Some might argued that if we do that, our english command would go downward spiral. But if we were to teach all subjects apart from Mother Tongue in English, I seriously doubt it would cause a big problem.
2 years saved is a lot.
Graduating at 23 would mean that i would be happily married at 26/27 being debt free from education fees and marriage expenses.
I would be younger, healthier to make better babies.
I would also have longer working years to contribute to Singapore.
Regards
Benjamin Chai
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