A Night at SCWO

The Workers' Party Chairman, or rather Chairlady was invited by SCWO (Singapore Council of Womens' Organization) to their premises for a speech. Topic of the speech was 'Leadership'.

I was among one of the invited guest. Upon reaching, the President of the Organization volunteered to bring us around the place. Its a condusive 4 storey high building with nearly everything in order. The last storey is for housing women who ran away from home due to reasons like abusive husband, etc. Yes, it serves as a temporary hide-out for women who have no one to turn to.

Close to about 60 women turned up for this speech. Both members and public have to buy tickets to be seated there. It was a good turn-out and the speech kicked off at about 10mins after 7pm. Chairman touched on how she joined the party, the decision to take up the Chairman responsibility and pitfalls of leadership. She also cited a few examples of leaders whom to her had displayed good leadership skills. The session ended with a Q & A Session, the ladies were pretty responsive towards it.

The night ended with light buffet dinner held in an open area. During dinner, we had the privilege of conversing with the first President of 'AWARE'(Association of Women for Action & Research). She was sharing with us on the disadvantages of certain laws that were passed down from the government with regards to women who were abused. Much were debated on that and very soon she has to leave. With that, I remembered some time ago last year, Perry Tong, WP Youth Wing President, was invited as a speaker to the 'White Ribbon' project, which was a subcomm of 'AWARE'. At around 9.15pm we left SCWO which was a fruitful session with ideas being exchanged and communicated.

太阳之歌 = OH MY GOODNESS!!!

This is the best variety programme I had ever came across...

An elderly couple was supposed to sing this song called '太阳之歌' which sounds like vulgarity if its mis-pronounced. The celebrities invited on the show were not supposed to laugh.

If you don't laugh till your stomach ache, something is wrong with you.

Youth Day outreach @ Orchard Road

The Workers' party Youth Wing Exco and members did a public outreach on 24th June 2007 along Orchard Road.

This outreach was to create greater awareness and exposure of the Workers' Party Youth Wing which a lot of people is not aware of. People often associate the hammer with WP. Therefore, for this outreach we only wanted to use the WPYW logo.

We were divided into two groups of 8 people with Perry (YW President) and Salim (YW Vice-President) leading these teams. Initial response from the public was quite cold. People refused to accept the pens even though its FOC and some would shun us too. I don't know was it because we were from the WP or these people just could not care? Oh yes, we were surprised to find more foreigners than locals along Orchard Road on a Sunday afternoon!

However, as we went on we got the hang of it too. Very soon, everyone in my team is engaging with people and we were very on the ball. We started to look out for people and some even approached us :) We walked down from Orchard MRT to Somerset MRT, at times we stopped at traffic light junction to talk and reach out to people. And yes, we welcome feedback on this event and we hope to make it better the next time round.

The message on the card says, "On behalf of the Youth Wing, we would like to wish everyone a Wonderful Youth Day!!! As part of our growing process, we are constantly looking at expanding the Youth Wing. If you think you have what it takes, drop us an email at: youthwing@wp.sg or you may visit our website at www.wp.sg/youthwing/index.php"

We ended the day with an excellent picture taken in front of the Youth Park :)

Long day!

It was a pretty long day for me today. In the morning, the Workers' Party organised a Hammer Sales briefing cum Thank you lunch at HQ. Choong Yong and myself were involved in the briefing and therefore we had to be there earlier. This briefing cum lunch was from 11-2.30pm.

In the afternoon, Youth Wing had organised an outreach programme at Orchard Road for Youth Day. We also gave out pens to commemorate Youth Day.

2 groups of Youth Wing exco and members walked down from Orchard Road to Youth Park under the scorching sun. We started the event at about 3.30pm and ended it in about an hour time. We all met up at the Youth Park because its a youth outreach done by the Workers' Party Youth Wing :) All of us had done an excellent job, give ourselves a round of applause!

Picture on top: Workers' Party Youth Wing Exco

Oops! Not done yet....after the outreach, we had a Youth Wing meeting which ended at 6pm. Shortly when I reached home, I'm on my way to a Hougang Temple dinner!!!! Exhausting day it was.



Oh! But we certainly enjoyed ourselves :)

1-Day Pengarang Trip

Yesterday, our agency (H42-Peggy Lim & Associates) went on a 1-day Pengarang trip. We met at Marsiling MRT at about 8am and we made our way there. The females form the majority of our agency :)

It was more like an educational tour. Fruit farm, mango plantation (the mangoes were so good that everyone left the place with at least 3 kg on hand to carry back home), Herbal farm (where some of our girls learn about herbal leaves, etc) and Ostrich farm.

The picture above shows me carrying a 2 day old ostrich. Apprehensive was the word to describe my feeling. I was afraid of hurting the ostrich which looks so fragile. The farm had quite a number of ostriches. We also managed to catch a pair of mating ostrich :)

The highlight of yesterday's tour was the viewing of the fireflies. Peck San brought a bottle of mosquito repellant which was definitely useful. All 15 of us got onto a boat at around 8.30pm and we were off to the very deep and remote side of the JB river. Oh ya, we were all told to wear life jackets before going onto the boat.

When we finally reach the area, a whole stretch of fireflies greeted us. Oh, what a sight! It was so beautiful and amazing. None of us had ever seen fireflies before and everyone was mesmerized by it. Some of them even managed to catch a few to examine it.

We reached Singapore customs at about 11pm. It was indeed an interesting day. Thank you gals, you all had made the trip more fun :)

"H42 - RESCUE TEAM"

CPF Min. Age may be raised to 65

CPF Min. age may be raised to 65.

This is definitely not a surprise, especially for people in the Financial Industry such as Insurance. Day in day out, these group of people is always on the go, educating people on the importance of risk management, wealth management, retirement planning.

I remembered I was asked by one of my advisers on tips on how to sell. Ironically, I was using this example.

Our generation (70s era and above) will definitely face this issue. Its just a matter of time because our CPF min, age is to be 62 and min. sum is $120, 000. Unlike our parents, their min. age was 55 and the min. sum was not as high as ours. Therefore, we should all be planning for our retirement. Of course there will be people who are able to have this amount of money in their CPF, but how many of them? Will you be one of them? Don't forget you have housing loan, education loan to pay off.

So now you realise that you may not be able to get your hard-earned money out from CPF. What do you do? Invest your CPF money, give it the potential to grow, to make better returns, so that when you reach age 62 or now age 65 you will have money to take out.

Therefore, whoever is complaining about this change, have you seriously listened to what your adviser told you or you always take them for granted when these are the people that can give proper advice?

The Youth Parliament (Workers Party, 50th Anniversary Event)

The Workers Party is turning 50 this year!!! Hip Hip Hooray! We are the longest alternative party in Singapore. That is really quite a feat.

A series of celebrations will be conducted to mark this memorable event. The first in line would be the first and so far one and only 'Youth Parliament'.

'Youth Parliament'
Always wanted to express your views? Will you or your friends between 15-30 years of age be interested to participant as a debater for this event on 5th August 2007.

The Press would be present to mark this memorable event.

Please contact either Lilian (lilian@wp.sg) or Bernard (bernardchen@wp.sg) . We look forward to your participation in making this event a successful one.

What we should not learn from Eric Low

I came across an article from channelnewsasia.com on Mr. Eric Low. The headlines was ' Eric Low gears up for fight again'. The next sentence pisses me off... "..he would stop being taken for granted by Hougang residents." As such, he had decided to stop his free breakfast and medical check.

What does he meant by not being taken for granted by the residents? What was his initial intention for providing these goodies? Was it a form of br****y or Mr. Eric Low really cared for the needy residents of Hougang? If the reason was the latter, why said the residents are taking you for granted? If one did not come with the heart to help but to pull votes and win sympathy, the residents cannot feel any empathy or sincerity and thats why the vote was not given to him.

Therefore, lesson learnt was - Be sure what you are doing, don't contradict yourself because it can get really ugly.

In the article, it was also mentioned that, Mr. Eric Low had stopped his Meet-the-people session after his defeat. He gets a handful of letter from residents seeking help and he is CONSIDERING whether to see them a not!!!

The above sentence is ridiculous! Being Hougang grassroot Adviser and probably the likely candidate to contest that area again, he actually said something like that. I think anyone in the right mind will tell you, when you lose, work harder. What is Mr. Eric Low doing here? Stop Meet-the-people session, considering whether to meet these people? Are these signs that he is genuinely interested in running this ward? Or he just have to had it because its not a PAP ward? I cannot believe that this came out from his mouth. Its an irresponsible act.

The Workers' party lost by a slight margin in Aljunied. But did they work lesser? Did they stop what they are suppose to do just because they lose? The answer is NO, Miss Sylvia Lim and her group of people go door to door visit at least once a week. Mr. Rahizan will also lead another team and start walking the ground every week. This is gracious and its how political figures should behave.

Therefore, lesson learnt was - Accept defeat work harder.

Most expensive country to live in...

The article below was abstracted from http://www.channelnewsasia.com/ I wonder if its a piece of good or bad news??? But I do know that our government strives to be No. 1 in every aspect. So probably next year we could clinch the first spot in Asia.
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Singapore is 14th most expensive city to live in: survey

SINGAPORE: Singapore has jumped three places to become the 14th most expensive city in the world for expatriates.

This is according to a Cost of Living Survey conducted by Mercer Human Resource Consulting.

The survey covers 143 cities across six continents and measures the comparative costs of over 200 items.

These include housing, transport, food, household goods and entertainment.

The cost of living Index for Singapore rose from 92 points in March 2006 to 100.4 points this year.

Mercer says the spike in house prices and climbing transportation prices have contributed to the higher ranking on the global list.

Moscow remained as the world's most expensive city for the second year running while Asuncion in Paraguay ranks as the cheapest for the fifth consecutive year.

London is second on the worldwide list, scaling three places compared to 2006. This is due to the stronger British pound against the US dollar and steep property rental costs. Mercer added that the strengthening of the Euro has resulted in some European cities moving significantly up the chart this year.

Four of the world's top 10 costliest cities are in Asia and they are Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Osaka. Within Asia-Pacific, Singapore moved up one spot to be the fifth most expensive city.

More on Hougang Community Awareness 2007

Motiono by 78lilian - Upload videos

Valueable Experience...

As one know, The Workers' Party so far has one ward on hand, Hougang. The party has got 4 area committees which we are working on. We have NEAC (North-East Area Committee), EAC (East Coast Area Committee), CAC (Central Area Committee) and NAC (North Area Committee).

Besides the weekly walk-about that each individual group does there is nothing much we can do currently in terms of grassroots work. Therefore the only training ground for grassroots experience comes solely from Hougang.

16th June 2007, that is today :) A Community Awareness Day was held in Hougang. The objective was to help residents who were looking for jobs, of course this will be done with the help of a family service centre. The event also promised lots of fun for the children of Hougang. Apart from members of HGCC, a number of Youth Wing Exco and members were there to help out too.

It was indeed an experience for Youth Wing Exco which includes myself. I had definitely gained experiences and joy from today's event. The art of organising, preparation work, executing plans, brainstorming of ideas, mingling with residents and children, handling children and teamwork, everyone involved did our best to make the event successful. During the event, I saw some of our members trying out the games too :)

I look forward to more such events and I would like to thank HGCC for giving us this opportunity to help out and of course gaining valueable experiences too.

Oh ya, two thumbs up for all Youth Wing Exco and members for helping out. It was a meaningful event and of course definitely a rewarding one for me!

PS: Below is a video clip taken during the event :)

Great Advice :)

I received an interesting email from a friend today.
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GREAT ADVICE!

If a dog was a teacher, you would learn stuff like:

-When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.

-Never pass up the opportunity for a joyride.

-Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.

-When its in your best interest, practice obedience.

-Take naps.

-Stretch before rising.

-Run, romp and play daily.

-Thrive on attention and let people touch you.

-Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.

-On warm days, stop to lie on your back in the grass.

-On hot days, drink plenty of water and lie under a shady tree.

-When you are happy, dance round and wag your entire body.

-No matter how often you are scolded, don't buy into the guilt thing and pout; run right back and make friends.

-Delight in the simple joy of a long walk.

-Eat with gusto and enthusiasm. Stop when you have had enough.

-Be loyal, never pretend to be something you are not.

-If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.

-When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close them and nuzzle them gently.

Ha ha ha!!!! I could not stop laughing!

This is soooooooooo hilarious, I could not stop laughing. This is a Japanese game show whereby all participants are not allowed to laugh or giggle. Punishment will be given for committing that. Take note of the small box on the top left and right hand corner to look at the participants facial expression. Enjoy!

The Electric New Paper

The below article is an interesting article which I would like to share....

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Young Singaporeans: We relate more to Chiam & Low

DO younger voters see Mr JB Jeyaretnam as the Rip Van Winkle of politics - away for too long and too old for the job?

In a random poll by The New Paper, seven out of every 10 young people surveyed said that age does not matter when judging the performance of opposition MPs.
We spoke to 100 Singaporeans, aged between 18 and 30.

'Any age is fine with me, as long as they can fulfil the role of an opposition politician,' said Ng Ying Ying, 23, a student.

But 19-year-old full-time national serviceman Wong Kin Mun felt that 'being too old will just hinder their progress', given the physical demands of politics.
When asked to choose, almost half said that their preferred age band is in the 30 to 40 range.
POLITICAL EXPERIENCE

Julian Chua, 28, an insurance agent, said: 'If he's between 30 and 40, chances are he'll have had some experience in dealing with politics. He won't be rash but he'll still appeal to people my age, and understand the problems we're going through.'

So where does this leave longtime opposition gadflies like Mr Jeyaretnam?

More than one in three young voters did not know anything about him.

And when we asked which older-generation opposition MP could relate to their generation, his name was not picked from a list of names shown to those interviewed.

Those on the 'old list' included Mr Jeyaretnam, Potong Pasir MP Chiam See Tong and former Singapore Democratic MPs Ling How Doong and Cheo Chai Chen - both of whom were elected for one term in the 1991 elections. (Mr Low Thia Khiang, 50, who heads the Workers Party, is younger.)

More than one out of every four polled picked Mr Chiam, who heads the Singapore Democratic Alliance.

Student Yeo Kesheng, 24, liked it that Mr Chiam 'goes around and has direct interaction with people in his own constituency'.

Mr Low Thia Khiang was named by five out of the 100 polled.

'Somehow, he connects with me,' said undergraduate Danielle Zhang,23.

'There's just something about him- his sincerity maybe.'

So what do the young expect an oppostion MP to do?

Only one in 10 felt that their job was to provide an alternative government. A third said their role is to 'keep the PAP on its toes'.

The heart to help...

At 15mins before 8am today, all bus leaders that had volunteered their sleep and time gathered at 3 meet-up points for Hougang residents. The purpose of this post is to express how proud I was towards all bus leaders who came with a heart to help.

This is a yearly event organised by HGCC (Hougang Constituency Committee). Its a one-day temple trip. As the name suggest, the places that these residents had signed up to go to were temples, temples and temples. The last destination was the newly opened 'GIANT' at Tampines.
Taking care of 13 buses of residents, averaging about 40 people per bus was the responsibility of the bus leaders. Ensuring their safety and making sure that we don't leave anyone behind was the main objective. Its definitely not an easy task as one may meet unreasonable or un-cooperative people. Therefore, getting people back on time is not an easy task. Not to mention the warm, humid, tropical weather which can make one frustrated easily. Fortunately for me, my bus of residents were pretty on-time and not to forget I had a great partner, Linda.

As one can see from the picture above, our bus leaders came in different shapes, sizes and ages :) All of us were in our sky-blue T-shirt which is the colour of the party which is managing the Hougang Constituency, The Workers' Party.

To all bus leaders.....WELL DONE!

Treasure Life

I am writing this post with a very heavy heart.......

Yesterday evening, one of our WP member, faced the most tragic event of his life. His son who was only 3 years old, passed away. His son had been under ICU observation for about a week in NUH until last night. I was not able to attend the ritual as I was not feeling well.

Needless to say, both mother and father must be really heart-broken. Some of our members who turned up shared their grief. It was indeed a sight that nobody would like to witness.

Treasure life because its unpredictable...

Ugly Singaporeans!

Yesterday was Vesak Day, as usual my family and I went to the temple at Anchorvale Walk to pray and had our vegetarian meal.

This is our yearly routine, every Vesak Day we will be there to pray and offer our blessings to our love ones.
After praying, the committee of the temple will always prepare vegetarian bee hoon to serve all devotees. This year, I guess due to the humid weather, the committee had decided to give out ice-cream. These ice-cream were free for all to take.

I could not help it but took a picture of this. This was a picture of we, Singaporeans, fighting and bickering over a small tub of ice-cream. This was really ugly, these people don't understand how a queue works despite repeated pleas from the volunteers requesting for them to queue. Tons of people were blocking the passage way and squeezing their way through to get that ice-cream.

I was disgusted by the sight...I could not help but wonder..are these people here to pray or for freebies?

First-world government, take a look at this....