By: B Goode

Mr president. Gusto kong batiin ka sa nanalong ang halalan Pilipinas upang maging ang susunod na Pangulo ng mahusay na bansa. Pagkalooban nawa kayo ng Diyos ng lakas upang mamuno sa pagkahabag, karunungan at lakas ng loob na gawin ang Pilipinas sa isang mahusay na bansa dahil sa kaniyang bayan . Ikaw ay magpakalakas at manatili ang kurso Mr President sir !

-El Goode

I just hope my Filipina friend gave me the correct translation and not trying to troll me. And by Filipina friend I meant google translate.

He has been called many things. Trump of the east. Dictator. Murderer. Womanizer. Those are just the printable ones in this family-oriented website. But lest we forget, he is also the newly elected President of the Philippines. We might want to underline and bold the word `elected’ just to remind ourselves once again that he has the mandate of the people of the Philippines. So at the very least, we should respect that.

Mister Rodrigo Duterte does not become a President through a coup-de-tat. Nor does he become a ruler by poisoning the heir to the throne.  He is a true legitimate leader of the Philippines. A colourful one no doubt but who are we to question the sanity of the Filipinos?

Lee Kuan Yew too was given almost similar unsavoury terms when he was alive. And dead. And many of us took umbrage with that. But we persevered with our dictator and he persevered with his plans, ignoring all his detractors. When LKY died, world leaders came to pay their respect. When Saddam Hussein died, some of the world leaders were responsible for his death.

Just like what is happening to the Philippines now, many people just could not understand how Singaporeans could have voted in a dictator. They couldn’t understand simply because they didn’t understand the circumstances.

I have only been to the Philippines once. But I have been touched by Filipinos a lot of time to feel very close with the country and the people. The last time was when I had my colonoscopy at SGH. When you have been touched by a Filipina nurse during a colonoscopy, you too will feel that special bond.

The Philippines is beset with corruption, nepotism, crime and crony capitalism. But at one time the country was among the richest in Asia. But decades of mismanagement has turned it into what it is today. Nothing has worked. Presidents of all shapes and sizes have come and gone and the country has remained stagnated in poverty and income-inequality. There was a military ruler, a housewife, a general, an actor, a founder’s daughter, the son of the housewife but they all seemed to be bogged down by the corrupt system that simply refused or could not be changed.

So why not give a sex-crazy (his own words) cowboy a try? And this is no ordinary cowboy. For 22 years he was the mayor of Davao City. If you have not heard of Davao City, think Mindanao, lawlessness, Muslim extremists and you’ll get the drift. But if you go to Davao City now, you’d be surprised at how safe, clean and orderly the city is. And it is all because of Duterte’s no nonsense approach to administration just like LKY. Screw human rights when you have your people to feed.

If you looked beyond his rhetoric, drama, sabre-rattling and soundbytes which were primarily aimed at getting the votes, Duterte is a man with proven track record. To put it into perspective, cleaning up Davao City is like turning Geylang into a family-friendly amusement park.

And you know what? The Philippines have got nothing to lose. Their constitution only allows a President to serve one 6-year term. No more. So if Duterte turned out to be a fraud, Filipinos would only have 6 more years of the same thing. But if he turned out to be a saviour, the Philippines might go on to realize her full potential into becoming a great country once again.

I really hope Mr Duterte has the strength and wisdom to whip the country into shape and not to get distracted by the entrenched elites with their own selfish interests.

God speed.

By: B Goode

If you looked at the Cabinet members, you’d notice that none of them are trained in politics. Yes ladies and gentlemen! We are being ruled by a bunch of unlicensed politicians.

Let’s see. We have a mathematician, an electrician, a lawyer, an accountant, a defence specialist, a smattering of economists, doctors, businessmen, a lot of engineers, a beautician or two, and one who I suspect is turning into a tree-hugger.

Politically speaking, we are passengers of an airplane piloted by monkeys on auto-pilot. The thing about auto-pilot is that whilst it can bring you to your destination, it cannot change course to avoid turbulence in the horizon.

I think I have just described in a nutshell Singapore’s foreign policy vis-a-vis Indonesia.

Having technocrats in government is not bad if they only served as members of the board of directors of Singapore Inc. And it showed. Economically Singapore is par excellent.

But when it comes to steering Singapore through the intricate waters of International Relations, you’ll need more than just people who are good at counting, laying cables, talking, amputation or making lots of dough. You’ll need people who are good at reading nuances, second guessing the hidden meanings of words uttered, posturings, behind the scene negotiations, exchange of goodwill, kite-flying and if needed, footsies.

In short, you’ll need a real diplomat. Someone born with the necessary skills. The late LKY (sorry I have to raise him from the dead to make this point) was a lawyer by training. But he had diplomacy in his blood honed by years of haggling, fighting, negotiating with the British, communists, Malaysians and whoever that was willing to talk to him.

One wonders as to what LKY would have done to solve the haze problem. I think he’d just fly over to Jakarta to discuss things over a four-eye meeting with the President and that would be it. Problem would be solved. Either there would be no more haze, or Singaporeans would be urged to just live with it.

Our present leaders though, unsurprisingly, decided to take the economic and legal approach. And it wouldn’t work because as far as the Indonesians are concerned, their argument would be; help us if you must but don’t punish us. Because that’s what Singapore is trying to do with its convoluted legal framework in combating the haze.

The common sense of it all is that, thousands of livelihoods are dependent on the palm oil and forestry industries in Indonesia that bring in billions of dollars in foreign exchange. And then we have Singapore wanting to persecute and punish the companies that provide them with these just because we do not want to make the extra effort of wearing masks for three months of the year.

To the Indonesians, Singapore is prosperous and wealthy because its neighbours enabled them to be what it is. Would Singapore be rich with belligerent neighbours at its doorstep? No.

Have Singapore leaders thought of what would happen if the companies were forced to shut down thus depriving thousands of families of their livelihoods? Unrests and riots that may result in an unstable Indonesia.

We can argue that the haze has caused Singapore economy a few billions of dollars. The counter argument however, is that an unstable Indonesia would cause Singapore even more.

By: B Goode

Indonesia has just announced that starting from next year new maids will have to be housed in dormitories. It’s not something new though.

In some Scandinavian countries, maids are not allowed to live-in with their employers. And yes, unlike in Singapore where maids are called by other terms such as helpers, housekeepers etc because it makes us feel better, maids in Europe are simply called maids, because Europeans do not attached any negative meaning to the word `maid’. In fact, maids are considered respectable and highly paid.

The reasons why live-in maids were made illegal were many, but basically they boiled down to:

1. Preventing maids from being over-worked. Let’s face it. If your infant cried in the middle of the night, most probably your maid would have to tend to the child whilst you continued sleeping. In short, your maids are not your slaves.
2. Maids are not supposed to assume the responsibilities of parents, wives, husbands, daughters or sons. They are supposed to assist you in taking care of your household, not to be the parents to your children, or the child of your parents. In the evenings and on the weekends when you are home, you are supposed to assume those duties.
3. To prevent the acculturation of your children. If your child spent most of his childhood with say a Filipina maid, chances are, your child would grow up having the world-view of a Filipina.

So should maids in Singapore be housed in dormitories? You decide. But in order for you to make an informed decision, I have made a list of the things that would happen should your maids be housed in dormitories:

1. When your infant cried in the middle of the night, you’d either kick your partner or be kicked by your partner to tend to the rascal,
2. you’d sleep more peacefully knowing that your husband would not sleepwalk into the maid’s room,
3. on weekends, you could no longer ask your maid to bring your children to the playground because you wanted to have some afternoon delight with your partner,
4. or your husband asking you to bring the children to the playground so he could have an afternoon delight with your maid,
5. you could no longer bring your maid to dinner just to look after your children so that you could eat in peace,
6. you could no longer go on overseas family holidays leaving your maids to take care of your pets and plants, and your old parents,
7. you’d have to eat your wife’s cooking on weekends,
8. you’d have to listen to you mom-in-law’s nagging on weekends,
9. after a hard day’s work, you could no longer vent your anger at your maid,
10. which would be a good thing because you’d no longer drink your maid’s spittle in your coffee the next morning, or
11. afraid that your maid would murder you in your sleep,
12. your maid would be free to meet her boyfriend every night,
13. instead of having to wait for you to sleep before she sneaked out for some tlc at the staircase landing
14. which would be a good thing because she’d be smiling when she saw you in the morning,
15. or vomiting because of morning sickness.

By: B Goode

Nary a day passed by without news of a death of a migrant worker in a worksite accident. This year alone, many have perished. Many more have been maimed.

There are of course many reasons for the accidents ranging from negligence, faulty equipment, safety issues, carelessness and the list could go on for as long as Captain Obvious could fly before running out of excuses.

But there is one reason that has never been spoken out loud because people are afraid to discuss it openly for fear of being accused of indulging in profiling, stereotyping, typecasting and all those big words that social justice warriors love to use when they are in denial of the truth.

I am talking about accidents due to the effects of alcohol.

There is no denying the existence of a drinking culture amongst the foreign workers. You just need to visit any of the dormitories in the evenings, regardless of the day of the week to find the residents enjoying their beers in the open spaces within the compound. I am not saying all of them but there are enough to worry you.

There is a law against drinking in public places after 10.30pm. There is also a law against selling alcohol after 10.30 pm. Yet, they will be drinking beyond those hours and the shops inside the dormitories will be selling alcohol beyond those hours too sometimes under the very noses of the police who patrol regularly.

And on weekends it’s even worst.

For us who drink, we already know the effects of alcohol. If it is not the intoxication, it’s the hangover. Whatever it is, it will impact on our work performance. It is one thing to be working in the comfort of an air-conditioned office, and another to be working in a construction site under the hot sun surrounded by heavy machineries.

Everyone; the employers, the migrant workers, the NGOs and the enforcement agencies must work together to ensure the safety of the migrant workers. And this includes ensuring that they are at their peak physical conditions when they are at work.

We could start off by educating them. If that doesn’t work, a more drastic action may be required like banning the consumption and sales of alcohols in the dormitories during weekdays.

By: B Goode

Singapore Health Promotion Board (HPB) vicious attacks on white rice have continued unabated aided by the brown-nosing government media. As a lover of white rice, and a healthy one at that, I place it upon myself to launch a counter-attack.

Let’s put this stupidity in perspective.

For thousands of years, Asians have been eating rice. Presently, there are more than 3 billion Asians on this earth. If rice was all that bad, there wouldn’t be that many of us would it? And you don’t see that many people with amputated legs hobbling around in Asian cities do you? In fact, the rate of diabetes amongst Asians is about on par as that of the non-rice eating Caucasians.

So what gives?  Apparently those folks in HPB have got nothing better to do. They should have focussed on fast foods instead because even the Americans have realised the health hazards of processed hamburgers, chickens and whatever the Americans love to eat that have caused them to be the fattest people on earth. But nope. The HPB decided to train their sights on white rice because rice farmers would not hit back. Try that on the big fast food corporations and all hell will break loose.

Speaking of fat, if you’d look at the list of HPB officers, you’d notice that some of them didn’t appear that healthy. They are fat! Yes I am fat-shaming them because they started it first by trying to shame my favourite staple grain.

So apparently some of the people in HPB did not practice what they preached. Fatties trying to educate others to be healthy are too damn funny.

What I am ranting about is that there are many causes of diabetes. But to concentrate on one factor that is the mainstay of Asian diet whilst ignoring others because they are afraid of the wrath of Ronald Mcdonald, Colonel Sanders  et al is dishonest and disingenuous.

By: B Goode

So here’s a quick rundown:

A 6-yr old child fell into a gorilla enclosure in Cincinnati Zoo. Afraid that the animal might harm the child, the zookeepers decided to shoot it dead because tranquilizing it would be insufficient. Savage beast dead; boy saved and you’d think that it would be a story with a happy ending.

Wrong.

Some people; tree-huggers and animal lovers, are actually condemning the zoo for killing the gorilla. Never mind that a boy’s life was saved. One of the reasons was because the gorilla was cute. You know what else is cute?

This:

That incident exposed the thoughtlessness of animal lovers. They would protest any action they deemed to be against animals even if that action was meant for the good of humans.

Which inevitably brings me to pigeons. If I was the zookeeper during the incident, and if a pigeon happened to fly by, I’d shoot the pigeon first, then the gorilla before saving the boy. Yes. My hatred towards pigeons knows no bounds.

Pek Kio food centre was recently closed down for 2 days because of a mass food poisoning. The authorities apparently had left no stones unturned in order to find the source of the rotavirus. They couldn’t find any.

However, had they looked up to the ceiling they would notice pigeons and their dastardly cousins the mynahs roosting on the metal bars. Birds being birds, they shit every five minutes. If the shit didn’t land in the pots of gravy, soup and what not, or god forbid, in your plate of mee rebus, they’d be left on the metal bars to dry into powder form. A gust of wind would then disperse the dry powdery shit into the air and would of course end up in your food and drinks.

There are pigeons everywhere in Singapore now. Most food centres and coffeeshops are infested by them. As I’ve said before, these birds are not native to Singapore. They are imported pests and are unhygienic. The authorities are not doing anything about them because they are afraid of the backlash from the hippies.

Trafalgar Square was renowned for its pigeons because, I have to admit, fluttering pigeons look good in photographs and postcards. But it took the British hundreds of years to finally realise that pigeons are bad for health. So if you go to Trafalgar Square today, you will not see a single pigeon. They have all been, how do I say, deported to somewhere else.

We should all love animals. But if those animals threatened our health and lives, the animals should be exterminated. Period.

By: B Goode

Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan has urged the two train operators in Singapore to copypasta Taipei Metro’s maintenance regime to ensure improved reliability.

If we wanted a lip-service, we would have gone to this guy:

The thing is that, you cannot just copy a small part of something and expect it to work fully. It is akin to saying that you need only a boob job to look like Amy Yip. You will need to emulate the whole package.

And there exists an immense flaw within the Singapore’s transport model that no amount of copypasting can help. It is something that is unique to Singapore. It is the `dual ownership’ of the system.

The infrastructure belongs to the government under the purview of the LTA. But the operations of the system belong to not one, but two private companies.

Let me give a simple example of how wonky this model is.

Train operations are owned by SMRT and SBSTransit. But trains require power to operate and the power cables belong to the government. So if there was a service disruption due to a cable fault, whose problem was that?

If you extrapolated the above example to other parts of the system, you’d then notice the conundrum. And since it would inevitably involve costs, and because this is Singapore where the word `sustainability’ has become the by-word for pseudo success, it would result in cumbersome argument between the government and the two private operators as to who should bear the costs.

The government, as we all know, is stingy, and the private operators’ main aim is to maximise profits. And with both owners reluctant to fork out the money, the system suffers.

So unless the government had the will to revamp the whole transport model, any talks of service improvement would just be baloney.

I have a few suggestions on how to improve our transport system:

1. Have only one owner and that will have to be the government. And this will have to involve the rescinding of the service contracts that the government had given to the two operators.
2. Since most of the problems were from the NSEL, suspend the operations of the two lines totally for as long as needed so that a thorough health checks could be conducted and whatever faults rectified. This could be done after the completion of the two parallel lines one of which is the Thomson Line.
3. In the meantime, stop train operations earlier, say at 10 pm to allow the maintenance crew more time to do their work. By 10pm, most trains are not crowded. Buses should be deployed during these hours instead.
4. Put someone with the experience and expertise in running successful transport companies at the helm and not some gene…nevermind. I am not going there.

The above points might seem preposterous, but they were no more preposterous than having the same old problems besetting the MRT systems practically every single day.

By: B. Goode

Pink Dot is just around the corner. If you plebs do not know what a Pink Dot is, it is an annual extravaganza where homosexuals, people who like to have sex with anyone and anything, gather in Hong Lim Park in their best pink dresses and wigs, dancing and prancing whilst being entertained by fellow homosexuals. And at the end of the event, they will huddle together in a tight ball, just like how they like it, and flash pink lights to the sky for a photoshoot. And thus the name Pink Dot duh…

Then, being drama queens that they are, they will declare the event a huge success with tens of thousands of attendees, discounting the fact that the small park could only accommodate at most 5000, and to add more drama, they will say that the pink dot can be seen from outerspace.

Then they will go home to continue with their unnatural lives.

Did I get it right?

Maybe not but if so then Pink Dot and other LGBT++ organisations will have to apologise for my ignorance.

Because frankly, like many others, I do not know what the fuck they are doing.

Ok I’ll admit that perhaps it is tough for them to reach out to the mainstream society to educate them about the virtues of the LBTQ++ lifestyle. I mean, they simply cannot approach someone and say; `Hi! My name is Angel Chanel Desiree. I am a transvestite and I want to be your friend’, without expecting a reply; `How much?’ or a tight slap.

But how about reaching out to their own kind?

First of all a disclaimer: What I am about to write is solely from what I’ve heard from my friends. Yes I know. I’ve got terrible friends.

If you’d go to Woodlands Park carpark at night especially during weekends, you’d find transvestites and gay boys offering sexual favours for money. And if you’d go to Boon Lay park on the strip of land just beside SAFRA, under cover of the night, you’d find gays having orgy under the trees just mere metres away from families having night strolls. And most toilets in MRT stations have gays ogling at other men’s dicks.

The LGBTQ++ community have been trying hard to justify their existence and contribution to society by showcasing their success stories. But if a straight person’s first encounter with a gay person was an old man staring at his dick in an MRT toilet, that first impression would linger with him and traumatize him to such an extent that he would not be accepting to what the LGBQ++ community had to say.

So Pink Dot should not only be about fun. It should be more than that. And if the community wanted to be accepted, they would have to first educate their own.

The world’s greatest sportsman Muhammad Ali is dead. He was 74.

After suffering from Parkinsons for more than 3 decades, he finally succumbed to the disease.

There is nothing else to write about him that others’ have not.

So we just gonna leave this video as a tribute.

By: B Goode

A video showing a fat woman scolding, cussing and shouting at a cleaning uncle who also happened to be deaf and mute, is making the rounds.

The uncle had wanted to clear the empty plates from the fatty but since she had yet to lick the plates clean, she burst into a rage-filled tantrums oblivious to the presence of other diners and her own children. Mother of the year she is definitely not.

She has since been identified as Alice Fong.  She is an active grassroot volunteer in Yishun although the People’s Association and the PAP have since denied any link with her. So the internet is lying then. Ok…

They say a picture paints a thousand words and so I shall explain it.

Alice Fong is the triple-chin fatty in the middle surrounded by what else but food. On her right is the PAP MP Lee Bee Wah. Do you remember Lee Bee Wah? She was the one who claimed not to have ever seen a shrew before. Now we know why. Because her best friend Alice Fong might have eaten them all.

And that skinny man on her left is the fatty’s husband. Again now we know why. She must have eaten all the food in the house.

I am sorry. I think I am being mean to a very very very mean fat slob.

So I’ll stop.

By: B Goode

I was at Pinkdot2016. Yay go me!

It was what I’d expected, more or less. There was a guy in pink tutu, and another guy in an excruciatingly tight yellow extremely short shorts. He looked like he was in his sixties. A transvestite in pink saree. A group of elderly gays dressed as the Village People. A group of possers with their dogs. Some straight couples and families who wanted to be seen as oh so cool. Some Caucasians who shouldn’t been there. Lots of queers and lots and lots of pink.

I felt like a crow amongst the flamingos in Lake Nakuru. I was wearing black because pink didn’t go with my black sandals and no way in hell would I be caught with a pair of pink shoes.

It was fun. But the music sucked though. I mean, not a single song from ABBA? A gay event is not gay enough without an ABBA song. Period!

And what was up with the speakers? It was a pity-party with them lamenting about how sad and unfortunate they were to be gays in Singapore.

Oh girl puhleese! Just shut up. You guys were sponsored by Google ffs! At least you were not deaf and mute working as a cleaner in JEM.

And you know what were missing? The gay gentlemen and the lesbian ladies. To me at least, Pink Dot has been hijacked by the loud transvestites and the queers. The very type of people with their colourful lifestyles that are so flagrantly intimidating to the straights, even to some of those in the community whom I managed to talk to who found their antics to be too gross.

Anyway, as I was making my way back home, I stopped by the MRT toilet. As I was going into the men’s room, I saw two tomboys coming out of the ladies’, and in the men’s there was a sissy wiping off the pink glitter from his cheeks.

Again this is where there exists an insurmountable chasm between the LGBTs and the straights. It has got something to do with privacy and personal space.

If a straight man was not allowed into a ladies’ room, how could a lesbian permitted to? Similarly, how could a gay man allowed into a men’s toilet?

The answer, as some had argued, was for toilets to be classified based on gender identity instead of sex. Meaning, a man who identified himself as a woman should go into the ladies’. But the problem would be a pervert would enter a ladies’ toilet and if caught would simply identify himself as a female.

Which means there is a need for a third toilet for the LGBT community, with a pink door perhaps. But then again, this would bring out a slew of other issues and problems. For example, in what form should the gender identity be? Should there be another column in our NRIC to state our gender identity? If so, at what age should it be inserted because obviously a child would not be able to decide their own gender identity yet. Most importantly, would the LGBT be brave enough to honestly and openly state their gender identity? I suspect many wouldn’t.

My point is, and this is for the LGBT community to ponder, their clamour for acceptance and equality vis a vis the society at large is not as easy as simply changing the laws. There are other things that need to be changed as well; social, cultural, behavioural and religious mindsets to name just a few. And it is not only the mindsets of the straights that need to be changed, but the LGBT community’s as well. If the lesbians were not comfortable to go into the men’s room, it meant that there were a lot more things that needed changed before the laws could be changed.

I don’t know. I am confused now. But one thing I am sure of is that I am a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. Go figure.

By: B Goode

I am not British but like most of you, I have been a hardcore supporter of Leechster, Lescester, Looseter, Leicester City Football Club since March this year. Therefore whether Britain will stay in EU or not will have an impact on the type of players this great football club can buy for next season. Or I’d have to revert back to supporting Arsenal.

So what is Brexit? I will try to make this as simple as possible for you plebs.

The European Union (EU) allows the free trade and movement of people amongst member states. Some argue that it is too free. They said that someone could enter Greece one night and rape a woman in London two nights later.

However, as far as trade between the EU bloc and the rest of the world, it is as protectionist as the chastity belts worn by the Carmelite nuns. Try exporting an orange into the EU that is not of the `approved’ size, colour, texture and taste and you will get what I mean.

So whether Britons vote to stay or leave the EU boils down to two things. One, do the British want to be a fish in a pond or a fish in an ocean? And two, does the British consider the EU as a pond or an ocean?

If I was a British, I’d vote leave because Britain once carved the largest empire known to the modern world not by being insular but being curious and inquisitive of what the rest of the world had got to offer. Their sense of independence opened up new discoveries of the brave new world. And it was this sense of independence and civility that caused them to wage many wars across the world.

So to continue to be in the EU is to surrender their sense of wonderment and independence and to subsume their spirit of adventure under the tutelage of continental idealism.

The battle of Waterloo was won by the British being nimble.

And Galileo discovered planetary laws by looking beyond the shiny apple that had just dropped from the tree.

Oh wait. That would have been Sir Isaac newton. But my point being, Gallileo would have complained that the apple was not of the proper size and colour, whilst Sir Isaac Newton would go on to discover gravity.

#voteleave

By: B Goode

When the news broke about the mass shooting in a gay bar in Orlando Florida, my first thought was that the shooter was a Muslim. And when I trawled the forum pages to get more detail, almost all the forum posters thought the same.

Something has gone terribly wrong when any violence anywhere in the world is attributable to the Muslims first. Whether it turned out to be right or wrong would not make this gross misperception any less sad.

In the case of Orlando, my suspicion was proven correct. Fifty people and still counting, massacred in cold blood by an American Muslim of Afghan descent who had declared his affiliation to ISIS. The fact that he was a homophobe with a violent streak was lost in the cacophony of noises generated because of his religion.

A mad man killed someone not because he was mad, but because he was a Muslim. A mad narrative in a mad mad world. And if the world, especially the Muslims could not see the error in this and try to do something more concrete than just lip-service to correct it, bigots like Donald Trump would triumph.

And if that happened, the world would indeed be a very sad place to live in.

By: B Goode

When you needed the Prime Minister himself to clear the air regarding an issue, you knew that someone somewhere had screwed-up big time. And if that someone was supposed to be in-charged of government communication….nevermind, we’ll let it pass since this is the fasting month after all.

I am of course talking about the government directive that came out of the blue to delink the internet from civil servants’ workstations. Because the communication wasn’t handled properly, the internet blew up with allegations and accusations of the government taking the country back to the stone age. Mostly from the nerds though.

If you put a nerd in solitary confinement and denied him internet access, he’d beg you to put a bullet through his head to end his misery. I am not even joking. So when there was a directive stating that civil servants would no longer have internet access, the rage from the nerds actually put Singapore on top of the internet trending. Then we had the ministers and even the prime minister wading in to calm the situation down because it was not the type of trending that we should be proud of.

When I first heard of the directive, my reaction was: WTF? Why wasn’t this done earlier?

Allow me, your Captain Obvious to give a simple analogy as to why de-linking government’s workstations from the internet is a good idea and should have been done much, much earlier.

Imagine you walking into a CPF branch to enquire about…CPF (duh!). Most probably you will be entertained by a CPF auntie. She will ask for your particulars and input them into the workstation in front of her and voila! Whatever you need to know about your CPF will appear like magic on the screen.

But it is not magic. Her workstation is actually connected to a huge database containing not only yours’ but every single CPF member’s particulars and data. If you were a fan of the X-men, imagine the workstation as Professor X and the database as Cerebro. Nerd detected!

Imagine after you are done with your queries, you leave the place and because it is an off-peak period, the CPF aunty has got some time in her hands and decides to check her private e-mail from the workstation. She sees an email from some obscure website that offers free facial. She decides to click on the link and lo and behold, it is actually a virus!

Imagine that workstation has now been infected by a trojan or keylogger and a hacker somewhere in Pyongyang is happily accessing the workstation and all the data that the workstation has accessed to.

Now imagine the smartnation initiative, a project that links all government databases into one. That CPF workstation is now connected to the databases of the NRD, ICA, CID, NEA, HDB, POSB and whatever four-letter words you can think of.

Now imagine one day you decide to check on your CPF and find it empty, your ICA record shows that you have travelled to Syria, you are wanted by the police for an offence that you didn’t commit, wanted by the ISD because you have transferred some money to a Muhammad Islam in Bangladesh, wanted by the FBI for some dodgy accounts in Panama, wanted by the LTA for some parking offences although you don’t own a car, and your name has been changed to Kim Jong Nam.

The above scenario is not a figment of my rampant imagination. Truth be told, I’d rather imagine having sex with Kim Kardashian. But unlike my imagination which will never happen, the above scenario can and will happen if the government’s internet architecture is not hardened. And the best way to harden it is to totally delink all the workstations from the internet.

But the government servants will not be deprived of an internet connection. They can still access their favourite porn sites or update their facebook from standalone computers or from their smartphones.

And because it doesn’t require an internet connection, they can still play solitaire.

By: B Goode

No. This is not a joke post.

Had Omar Mateen, a muslim gay, not massacred fifty gays in a gay bar, he’d be lauded as an open-minded muslim; an example of how muslims and gays could get along and live side-by-side. He might even get lucky.

But because he murdered fifty gays, and because he was also a muslim, suddenly his religion took centre stage and he was branded a muslim homophobe. But the fact is, Omar Mateen was also gay.

Breaking News: Omar Mateen was married. So he wasn’t gay. He was a bisexual.

Po-Tay-to, Po-Tah-to…..

So how did they reconcile a gay being a homophobe as well? They couldn’t. So they focussed on his religion instead.

And so the gays rallied together and turned anything and everything rainbow-coloured and lamented that they were being attacked left, right and centre, just because someone from their own community who also happened to be a muslim rampaged through a gay club in a western country.

Breaking News: Arab gays are being slaughtered and thrown off the roofs daily in Syria and Iraq.

Only western gay lives matter.

Meanwhile in Singapore, someone decided to rant about opening fire at Pinkdot2016. Not surprisingly, the gays seized the opportunity to highlight their plight, like the ST forum writer who wrote that it was due to the rise of fundamentalism in Singapore.

What the ST forum writer was trying to imply was that, since fundamentalism was the number one enemy of the LGBTs, it must also be the number one enemy of mainstream Singapore.

Girl, it doesn’t work that way.

Fundamentalism is not a bad thing. Fundamentalism does not teach anyone to kill gays. It also does not teach anyone to threaten to shoot at a gay pity-party, as much as liberalism does not cause a man to sodomize a boy in a toilet cubicle.

Those were actions borne out of pure hatred. It had nothing to do with fundamentalism. As for the sodomy, it was borne out of pure lust. It had nothing to do with liberalism.

So a gay muslim walks into a gay bar…..

….and shoots some people dead.

Suddenly, he is no longer gay but a muslim fundamentalist with an anti-gay agenda.

By: B Goode

Lately, each time I entered a lift, I’d first check where the alarm button was before I pressed it to make sure that it was working. Just in case. As it most probably would nowadays, if the lift was to break down, I wouldn’t have to search for the alarm button in pitch darkness only to find out that it was faulty. And it would be pointless to call the emergency service from my smartphone because there would be no signal.

And if the lift’s electrical wiring was as cocked-up as that of the MRT’s, if the lift was to break down due to an electrical fault, the alarm button would be affected too. Duh…

So chances were, they’d discover my bloated body 7 days later with my decomposing middle finger pointing upwards.

It seems like Singapore has been plagued by breakdowns. Train breakdown. Lift breakdown. Rain-shelter breakdown. Communication breakdown. Hygiene breakdown. And as a result, mental breakdown.

Trolls and opposition opportunists would want us to believe that the breakdowns were due to the 70% who voted for the PAP. Apologists on the other hand would say that breakdowns happened in other countries too.

To the trolls I’d say; go fly a kite.

To the apologist I’d say; just because breakdowns happened in other countries would not make them any more acceptable.

And for breakdowns in other countries, we’d be quick to attribute them to corruption, government interference, inefficiency, lack of money and other imaginable excuses just to make us feel good about ourselves.

But this is Singapore we are talking about; the best country in the world with the cleanliest government and most efficient system, or so we are made to believe. Surely such frequent breakdowns should not have happened?

But they did. So why?

I would attribute it to the malaise that was slowly creeping into our system. We are becoming more forgiving towards inefficiency; more benevolent towards incompetence. When once we demanded the best, now mediocre has become the new normal.

How else would we explain the SMRT CEO getting a fat bonus despite the frequent train breakdowns and despite the death of two technicians during his watch?

How else would we explain the sudden discovery of more than 30 mosquito nests in an estate just because one of the residents was infected with the Zika virus? Surely there must be a lapse somewhere but no one was made accountable.

Just like no one was made accountable for the putrid durian cakes. Was the hotel fined? Not that we know of.

Benevolence is not a bad thing. But there is a fine line between being benevolent and closing our eyes to the dereliction of duty.

We need to bring back the attitude of old when we rewarded good work but reprimanded the shoddy and the bad. It was this attitude that had made Singapore what it was today and without which, we would slowly but surely spiral down towards mediocrity.

It is a cliché, but without natural resources, Singapore cannot afford to be normal. We must be extraordinary and in order to be one, at times we must be brutal in our assessment and actions.

By: B Goode

That picture above was that of Mohamad Daniel, a two-year old boy who was abused by his mother and the mother’s lover non-stop for five weeks until mercifully he died in his sleep.

I cannot and will not re-read or re-write the atrocities inflicted on him because I have feelings. But you can read more here.

The prosecutors decided to charge both of his killers for child abuse instead of murder and they are asking for 10 years imprisonment.

10 years imprisonment for the brutal death of an innocent child.

But despite my seething anger, I cannot blame the prosecutors because they must have some good reasons.

So if the law of the land could not mete out the appropriate punishment, we could only pray that the celestial law could.

So I pray to the Big Alien in the sky for the killers’ souls to be yanked in the most painful way imaginable and to burn them in hell which I believe is planet Mercury.

So burn in hell you motherfuckers!

By: B Goode

So a white man decides to leave an exclusive whites-only club and everyone expects the earth to stop revolving.

There is a reason why Turkey is not a member of the European Union. They are not white enough.

But racism aside, prior to the referendum and even after the momentous event, old ideologues in suits have warned of the dire apocalyptic-like consequences to Britain’s and the world’s economy. Some even said that it was a step backwards for humanity. Words like Armageddon (insert other similar words that you could get from thesaurus here) were bandied out like as if Russia had just launched a nuclear attack on the US.

Dear sheeples. Take a look outside of your window now. What do you see? Yes that’s right. The spiders don’t give a fuck!

True. In the immediate aftermath of the referendum, the stock markets crashed, the financial markets crashed, oil prices crashed and whatever else that were related to the economy went KABOOM! The price of fish at the Jurong Fishmarket didn’t crash though. Dafug.

But anyway, most of that was either due to kneejerk reactions or to speculators who got themselves, burnt. In the next couple of days you might hear of some punters committing suicide. But you might also hear the laughter of aunties because the prices of their gold bangles and necklaces have just shot through the roof. And already Singaporeans are planning their trips to London because of the pound sterling’s depreciation.

Win some. Lose some.

I have read many reactions from the Negative Nancies but the worst, or rather a comment that truly epitomised their blinkered views was from our very own Ambassador-at-Large Bilahari Kausikan who said:

“It isn’t often you see a country commit suicide before your eyes.”

“We are also witnessing the tragically irrational consequences of western democracy. The UK is only an example of the dysfunctionality of a system taken to extremes.”

His words were only matched in their callousness by those from another Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh:

“The result is a tragedy for the UK and for the EU. The global wave of populism which is sweeping the world is a danger to democracy and to democratic institutions. Let us hope that it will not invade Singapore.”

What they were basically saying was that:

“If you disagreed with us, you were stupid.”

Aah angry old ideologues in suits. Don’t you just love them. Their anger has so clouded their rational thoughts. I have never seen anyone this angry since a friend of mine lost a fortune in the stock market many years ago. Hmmm I wonder….

So as the old ideologues in suits scratched their balding heads for answers, the real answer was lying in plain sight.

To the #voteleave campaigners and supporters, it was never about the economy. It was never about globalisation. In the first place, how would being a member of the most protectionist economic bloc in the world be global? Unless Europe is the world and the world is Europe. But it is not.

Those who voted leave were mostly the older folks. They were the ones who still remember the reasons why the EU was formed in the first place. They were also the ones who cherish the many wars that their forefathers had fought to ensure the independence of their little Islands from the threats of the mainland Europeans.

After so many years in the EU, the British realised that the mainland Europeans sitting in Brussels were slowly usurping their independence and free-will. How could a group of men who didn’t speak their language, who didn’t enjoy their food and weather, who couldn’t understand their culture, decide on what they could and could not do? How could those same men decide that their tax money should help to pay for the extravagance of the Greeks and the Romanians?

And most of all, how could those men decide that the British should accept thousands of un-screened refugees from the Middle East? After more than a thousand years of wars to keep the British isles safe from the invading Vikings, Normans and the like, they were not about to let the warring Arabs in via the backdoor.

So to the #voteleave supporters, the economy can wait. Given time, the markets will recover. Trade will continue.

But once a nation’s identity and free-will are lost, it may be forever.

So yes. The British got it right.

By: B Goode

A new Hari Raya fashion trend has taken Singapore by storm and it is not in a good way.

As seen in the above picture, someone with a brilliant idea (not!) decided to come out with a new concept to the traditional Malay garbs, the Baju Kurung. The general consensus amongst the Malays is that the concept, to put it in one word, is … gay.

And so the internet is ablazed with ridicule and accusations that the gay agenda is slowly creeping into the Malay traditional sphere.

I don’t know. I thought the ones worn by the men looked real cool…ON MAKCIKS!

And what’s next?

A traditional Malay kueh that looks like this?

Sigh….

By: B Goode

Mr Boey Tah Han, 53, an SMRT bus driver, was today hailed as a hero by the LTA for his act of selflessness and extreme professionalism in driving his commuters to their destinations.

In a statement, the LTA said that Mr Boey exhibited an exemplary conduct in performing his job.

“Mr Boey worked tirelessly during his shift to ferry his paying passengers to their destinations. His achievement was more commendable considering the fact that he accomplished it without a single toilet break for the whole 2 hours journey. For his dedication, gallantry and performing his job above and beyond the call of nature, he deserved to be recognised as a hero!” the statement read.

When contacted by TSB, Mr Boey said that he was humbled by the accolade.

“If the gahmen say that I am a hero, then I must be a hero lor..” said Mr Boey.

When asked if he was happy for the recognition, Mr Boey said: “Of course I am happy. Even the doctors and the nurses who save people’s lives every day never get the Hero title.”

“I just hope they are not jealous of my title and to continue working according to their job scopes. I am sure one day they also will be recognised as heroes,” he added.

In other news, Changi Airport also hailed its firefighters as heroes for….fighting fire.

So our heartfelt congratulations to all our heroes! It is indeed rare and special for anyone to be called a hero for doing a job they are trained and paid to do.

Kudos!

#specialsnowflakes