Who Moved My Singapore Cheese

Some helluva rich PR just paid $653,000 for a 4-room HDB flat...just imagine what its doing to the valuations of other flats (and condos) which are marked-to-market...
Well done Prime Minister Lee and Mah Bow Tan.

I'll be forwarding this piece of news to all my Singaporean friends who are currently overseas so as to warn them against coming home. I hope everyone does their part and forward their friends this news out of good will, lest they might be happily planning to return home, unaware of what they are walking back into.

This particular flat was bought for $262,000 4 years ago...now going for $653,000, before we are even out of the @#%^ worst recession. Has something gone terribly wrong with PAP's immigration and housing policies? Is this a joke? It must be right? Either I am crazy, or they are. This was a definite case of our cheese getting moved...again.


Nov 13, 2009
$653k for 4-room HDB flat
Industry players caution high price for unit in Queenstown is a one-off
By Jessica Cheam
A FOUR-ROOM Queenstown HDB flat has sold for $653,000, setting a new record for price per sq ft (psf), amid continuing red-hot demand for resale flats.

The buyers, a male Indonesian permanent resident and a Singaporean woman, could have bought a condominium unit in an outlying area for the price.

But they were won over by the location, just five minutes walk from Queenstown MRT station, and on the top, 40th floor of the block, with unblocked views of greenery from all windows.

The four-year-old 969sqft unit at Forfar Heights, Strathmore Avenue, sold for $68,000 above valuation - a level determined by an independent valuer.

This works out to $674 psf, smashing the previous record of $609 psf, achieved in January last year, by about 10 per cent.

This may be an unusually high price but resale prices have been moving up.

Read the full story in Friday's edition of The Straits Times.

Life is exactly like trading;
It's full of ups and downs.
The only certainty is uncertainty.
You'll never know where you'll end up eventually.
You can do nothing and pray for the best.
Or you can do all that you can, not knowing if it will truly make a difference in the end.

I get a lot of opportunities to interact with taxi drivers because my company sponsors my cab rides due to the odd hours. I'm sure most Singapore-netizens are aware of the taxi driver blog by Dr Cai Ming Jie...well I am not as entertained by my encounters with cabbies as he is with passengers, but I'd just like to share a bit of an epiphany I had derived from my daily brief meetings with them.

First of which - they drive so damn aggressively. Why do you think they do so? Were they all ah-bengs who used to sport a souped-up mitsubishi lancer/honda civic in the 80s and now only get to express their fast-and-furious ambitions through their toyota crowns and hyundai sonatas? Nope. I think that it is because they, just like the Singaporean pedestrian whose walking speed is crowned world's number 1 [see link], are under a lot of pressure in the Singapore way of life. They are driving this crazy because life as a taxi driver in Singapore is getting harder and harder. According to them, the authorities have indiscriminately released too many cabs onto the market, scouring the roads for business at such cut-throat manners that they have to be absolutely the fastest and quickest to bring home enough bacon.

Second, their number 1 concern in life, aside from bashing the PAP government, is to find money...money...more money. I am not a complete idealist nor a pragmatist, but I think it's a sad depiction of life when everything that occupies one's mind 24/7 is money. Every so often, they'll ask, "Oh you work here as a so-and-so? I heard so-and-so can earn a lot of money? Good hor? How much bonus can you get?" It's just our culture, I hear some of you say. Yes and no. Yes we do have a culture whereby asking about the price tag of a recent holiday or a newly acquired car is the social norm, but we do have the general understanding that it is not so great to ask about one's salary. The question, however, often leaves the lips of the questioning party with the thought that if there is another job out there that he or she can have for this much more money, then "I also want!", to hell with social niceties. Such is the dire need for more money in Singapore that not many of us, cab drivers or not, can say money is only the second factor in our career choice. If you still don't buy my story, just observe the long lines we have at the TOTO and 4D lottery booths e-v-e-r-y-d-a-y. This is not the case in other developed nations. If you are brushing aside my case-in-point because you are thinking "of course money is the number 1 factor what!", then I'm afraid you have been so indoctrinated in the Singapore system that it might be tough to ever get you to see it from a perspective outside of the little red box.

Third and last, many of them had a higher-social-class job prior to becoming a taxi driver. Don't come after me with your steely knives just yet. It is the politically incorrect truth and I am but saying it out loud.
On occasions when I feel conversational enough, I'll speak with them enough to find out that they used to be engineers, engineering sales executives, production managers and so on, before something untoward inadvertently happpens to their careers and they were "too old" to turn things around, and with mortgage payments and a family to feed, they got ushered by our Singapore system into becoming a cab driver.

Could this be you in the future? Ask yourselves now. Don't hide behind your educational certificates or your current career status and think it will never happen to you. Trust me, due to our small geographical size, structural unemployment is a very strong likelihood in your next 20 - 30 years. Remember your spanking new 30 year mortgage? Do you have a kid to support? There you have it. The recipe for becoming a cab driver one fine day.

Could things be different in Singapore? Well, I honestly don't know. But if the past 20 years is any guide, this current brand of leadership thinking will never lead us down a better path. Never.

I especially liked the efforts directed towards creating a New Energy economy in America. I also liked how President Obama acknowledges that GDP growth does not equate to job growth, or rising income. He gets in touch with the Americans via such videos on his blog on a weekly basis! I believe there will truly be a great American economic recovery because they have him, and more importantly, because if he goes away, their democratic system will allow the next true political maverick to emerge. Singapore does not have that.

PAP takes fight online
[See Link]

I refer to the above linked news article.

I don't think PAP nor PM Lee understands the core issues that are going to decide which camp the electorate is going to be in come the next election. It's not about taking the "fight" to a new platform, nor is it about taking on any sort of fight...heck it is not even a fight between PAP and the opposition.

The current climate that I see and hear around me, of the middle and lower class citizens, does not concern itself with the quality of the opposition parties anymore. Singaporeans are tired of the empty promises, of the endless mirage of a better four years. We are, if my eyes and ears and heart serves me well, simply a bunch of new generation citizens awakening to the possibilities of change for the better for our nation, even if it means taking a leap of faith with a less proven political candidate.

As a good friend once so sharply remarked, there are really such an astonishing number of angry Singaporeans who are feeling shortchanged by the current batch of leaders that he doesn't understand how it is even remotely possible that anybody with the half-hearted, pre-medidated intention of promoting PAP online can stand to be counted. The tirade of disillusioned and disbelieving citizens will white wash any of such efforts, barring legal threats to spread fear among citizens of course.