A PAGEANT WITH A DIFFERENCE

Minister in the PM's Office, Mr Lim Boon Heng, presenting trophies to the winners Ms Lilian Lim, 62, and Mr Andrew Yap, 59. (Image: Straits Times)

The inaugural Mr and Ms Singapore Senior 2010 was a pageant with a difference. It was open only to those aged 50 and above. Contestants were judged not so much on their looks but more on how they presented themselves on stage, how active their lifestyles are, and how much they have achieved in their community.

The event attracted 170 participants and a boisterous audience of 1200 supporters who cheered their favourite contestants with loud whistles, cymbals and even pots from their kitchen!

Eventual winners Ms Lilian Lim and Mr Andrew Yap are role models of seniors who have adopted very active lifestyles in their retirement. Ms Lim, a former VP at HSBC, enjoys tennis and in-line skating while Mr Yap a former MD of an MNC is very much into sports. He cycles 20km almost daily.

Organisers the People's Association Active Ageing Council and Resorts World Sentosa must be pleased to have found their first Ambassadors of Active Ageing in Ms Lim and Mr Yap.

TEACHERS DESERVE A PAT ON THE BACK

Teachers in Malaysia have been getting a lot of flak lately, no thanks to some black sheep in the profession who have hit the headlines for the wrong reasons, from making racial slurs to peddling sex enhancement products.

Teachers in Singapore, on the other hand, must be feeling on top of the world as the republic celebrates Teachers Day today. Here are some announcements that caught my attention. I think it's wonderful that both the Ministry of Education and the corporate sector show their appreciation and gratitude to teachers for a job well done.

Having been in the teaching profession for more than 30 years before I retired in 2004, I feel for the teachers when they complain about the stress and the workload. But still they soldier on, knowing that they have been entrusted with the huge responsibility of educating young minds.

 

This one's for pre-school teachers who have the unenviable task of teaching our children their 1,2,3s and A,B,Cs. If you have ever tried to teach your little ones how to read, write and count, you will appreciate how challenging that can be.

The Ministry of Education published this form in The Straits Times so that students or parents can create a message for teachers. What a great idea.

A little appreciation like this goes a long way to revive flagging spirits and jaded souls in the profession.

THE MERDEKA GENERATION

RHB print ad

Am writing this on the express bus somewhere along the north-south highway to Singapore. Just finished browsing the papers. Today being Merdeka Day, there's plenty of print ads celebrating Malaysia's 53rd National Day.

 Proton print ad

What struck me as rather peculiar about the ads is that except for one, all of them feature children. Makes me wonder if there's a problem creating an ad around adult Malaysians celebrating our independence. Perhaps children best represent the true Merdeka generation? Hmm...

Astro print ad

Anyway, my favourite Merdeka photo in today's special edition of the Star is this one below. To me, that's the true Merdeka generation. And I am proud to stand up and be counted. That was a generation of Malaysians that studied together, worked together and played together - in genuine harmony.

All images from The Star 31 August 2010 

Those were truly the good old days. But I am optimistic those days are not all gone, and there will be better days on the horizon with the new generation.

HAPPY MERDEKA HOLIDAY!

TAINTING EVERYONE WITH THE SAME BRUSH

The Star 25 August 2010

Every action has a reaction. How we react often depends on our ability to control our emotions and think through the situation to the likely consequences.

Some recent examples:

• The sacking of Filipino maids by some families in Hongkong in retaliation for the deaths of eight HK tourists in Manila. Why should these maids be held responsible? What have they got to do with the incident?
• Protests against the building of the Cordoba Centre near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan because it was deemed 'insensitive' to the families of those who died in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre, NY. What has the Muslim group behind the Cordoba mosque project got to do with the Al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attack?
• Indonesia's nationalist group Bendara's threat to throw out all Malaysians from Indonesia in response to the detention of three Indonesian maritime officers by Malaysian authorities. What have Malaysian expats in Jakarta, for example, got to do with the incident? 

The answer is NOTHING in all these cases.

It is dangerous to blame isolated incidents on a whole race of people. When we taint everyone with the same brush, we are holding them guilty by virtue of a common denominator, which is often race, nationality or religion. This is much worse than cultural stereotyping and can easily ignite deadly conflagrations.

Read Andrew Sia's column in today's Sunday Star.

So far, we have been fortunate that the majority of Malaysians do not allow negative emotions to rule their heads. Let's pray that our good sense will continue even as some of our leaders continue to stoke communal tension with their outrageous accusations and racial slurs.

SHOULD ADULT CHILDREN REPAY A LOAN FROM THEIR PARENTS?

It is our parental duty to provide a good education for our children. That can mean right up to post-graduate studies. Scholarships offered by the public and corporate sectors are very competitive, especially in Singapore. Not all parents can afford to support their children through university. To meet this need, both the CPF (Singapore) and the EPF (Malaysia) allow parents to withdraw funds for educational purposes.

Unlike the EPF education scheme which is a withdrawal scheme, the CPF education scheme is a loan scheme. CPF members are allowed to use up to 40 per cent of their accumulated Ordinary Account savings for their own or their children's full-time local diploma and first-degree courses. The total amount withdrawn for tuition fees plus accrued interest has to be repaid IN FULL WITH CASH. Repayment starts one year after date of graduation or date of leaving the institution, whichever is earlier.

According to a news report in the Straits Times today, about 5% or 7500 of borrowers have defaulted on the repayment of their educational loans and have failed to return money to CPF accounts for at least four consecutive months.

Even when the children have graduated and found a job, repaying their parents seems to be at the bottom of their list of priorities. Taking precedence are buying an apartment, paying for a car, starting a business, going for an overseas vacation, preparing for a wedding, ... the list goes on. And when their credit card debts start to snowball, their banker of last resort are...their parents, of course!

The end result? Their parents are left with depleted savings in their retirement funds.

Call it parental love or a reluctance to lose face, most parents are unwilling to take action against their children, or seek help from the Tribunal. They would rather work longer years or cut down on their living expenses to compensate for the shortfall in their retirement savings.

If parents are committed to shouldering their parental responsibilities, shouldn't adult children be just as committed to their filial duties? Or is filial piety on the wane?

It comes as no surprise that many middle-aged wage earners with limited retirement savings are facing this predicament. What would you do if your adult children did not repay a loan from you? Would you pursue it? Or let it go and consider it an early gift already allocated for in your will? Or silently hold it as a grudge against them and cut them out from your will?

OF SUGAR DADDIES AND COUGAR WOMEN

I must admit I have never heard of 'cougar women' till yesterday while reading the Sunday Times. The fact that the paper carried the article with pictures of local women surprised me. For those as clueless as me, the term 'cougar women' refers to older women who are attracted to much younger men. Think Madonna, 51 and her latest toy-boy, Jesus Luz, 23, or Demi Moore, 47, and her much younger husband, Ashton Kutcher, 32.

I can understand why older men go for younger women. It's the Law of Physical Attraction, of course. For the younger women, it's likely the Law of Financial Attraction. 'No money, No honey. So bye-bye, if you're a sugarless daddy!

But what do older women see in younger men, and vice versa? Methinks the same Laws apply too! In most cases anyway.

Women marrying a partner seven to nine years younger increase their relative mortality risk by 20% compared with couples where both are the same age. But the relative mortality risk of a husband who is seven to nine years older is reduced by 11%. (Source: Sven Drefahl)

Older women, take heed.  A study by Sven Drefahl at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rosktock, Germany, shows that the greater the age gap between a woman and her husband, the shorter her life expectancy, regardless of whether he is older or younger. That should be enough to scare off any cougar on the prowl!

But the problem with research studies is that you can always find another one that says exactly the opposite. And there are also studies that claim cougars do not exist.

Personally, a 5-7 years' difference is fine, but a 70-year gap? I can't imagine any virile young man would want to marry a great great grandmother 70 years older than him, unless she is Mek Wook Kondor!

Mek Wook Kondor, 108, and her husband, Mohd Nor Musa, 39. Source: NST 

Click here to view some celebrity cougars.

THE CASE FOR PROMOTING ENGLISH

Something is not right in our English language classrooms. Despite studying the language for nine years in the public school system, the majority of our high school students leave school unable to write or speak basic English. The situation gets worse when these students move on to local public universities. By then they are so uncomfortable using English they completely give up on it altogether.

The allowance and programme fees are fully funded by the government. Unemployed graduates get paid to learn new skills.

Is it any wonder that annual surveys carried out since 2005 have consistently listed poor English as one of the top five reasons why 40,000 to 60,000 graduates from our public universities fail to get jobs?

• 
  
  In 2004, there were 4,594 unemployed graduates of whom 163 were Chinese, 207 were Indians and 4,060 were Malays.
• 
  
  In 2005, there were 2,413 unemployed graduates of whom 31 were Chinese, 70 were Indians and 2,186 were Malays.
• 
  
  In 2006, there were 56,750 unemployed graduates of whom 1,110 were Chinese, 1,346 were Indians and 50,594 were Malays.
• 
  
  In 2007, there were 56,322 unemployed graduates of whom 1,348 were Chinese, 1,401 were Indians and 49,075 were Malays.
• 
  
  In 2008 (as of June) there were 47,910 unemployed graduates of whom 1,403 Chinese, 4,694 Indians and 41,813 were Malays.
• 
  
  By March 2009, Najib was talking about 60,000 unemployed graduates. This was more or less in line with the 57,701 graduate registrants on the Exchange in March 2009.
• 
  
  By October 2009, we were looking at 81,046 active graduate registrants on the Labour Exchange – and another 70,747 active registrants who are diploma holders.

The government keeps flip-flopping on measures to raise English proficiency in the country. They bow to pressure from anti-English groups. These groups have so little confidence in the strength and power of their own language that they consider any move to promote English as a threat to the national language. They regard English as the language of our former colonial masters. They label Malay Malaysians in particular who want their children to learn English well as traitors to their mother tongue. Such parochial thinking shows they are the ones still clinging on to colonial times while the rest of us have long moved on to 21st century forward thinking.

This video shows why the rest of the world wants to learn English. It's about time Malaysians do the same. There's a lot of catching up to do.

A shorter version of the video appears on the TED TALKS channel on YouTube.

Related Article:

TIME OUR LANGUAGE POLICY MAKERS REMOVE THEIR BLINKERS