Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Li Xiu Qi bullshits abt NaiNai's "frugality" (Frugal your Lao Bu CCB II)

(This article is by 李显涛, reproduced from Temasek Review. )


简单朴素?
作者:李显涛

李显龙的长女,李修齐企图要把阿嫲形容为一个简单朴素、容易满足的小女人,她追忆道:

“奶奶向来十分节俭,连买一个简单的发刷都得经过谨慎的考虑。她们在东京逛一座七层楼的日用品商店Tokyo Hands,李夫人看中一把发刷,价格不高,但是她还是挣扎了一番才决定买下。当时她说:“我已经那么老了,有能力买下它”,然后付了钱,快快乐乐地离开。”

“有一次我们到上海,我买了一双彪马(Puma)黑鞋给她,那是双有法拉利红色线条的漂亮鞋子。不贵,但她很喜欢。她穿上了觉得很酷,每次穿着都很兴奋,我也因为钱花得非常值得而感到欣慰。”

可是你只要记忆犹新,大概会记得她一口气买下两个或者三个单位乌节路Nassim Jade豪宅给自己的子女的大手笔 ****,据说不知道享有折扣的原因,是因为根本没有问价钱,也不必贷款,直接就还清了款项。同样的一个人,买一把梳子都要说:“我已经那么老了,有能力买下它”,然后付了钱,快快乐乐地离开?(Young Pay-And-Pay; She claimed she was unaware of the discount Hotel Properties had given her, because she did not even ask how much the condo costs! She did not have to take a loan and simply paid by cash to buy a million-dollars property whose price had been unknown to her! And this is the same person who, when buying just a comb had to consider: "I am already old, I can afford to buy it", and then pay and leave the shop happily? You believe such bullshit by Li Xiu Qi?)

或许假装平凡,是她人生的乐趣吧。这也容易理解,就有王子愿意和乞丐对调身份。

大马论坛
**** 作者:德仁
柯玉芝给国人留下深切的感动

1996 年,新加坡出现地产热,物业价格飙升,人们都在排队购置物业。而在这个时候新加坡的“旅店置业`”Hotel Property Ltd.(HPL)分别以5%和11%的优惠价出售 四座总价值数千万元豪宅给李氏父子,经手人是柯玉芝女士。付款方式是一次过现金付 清,完全不需抵押贷款。这次事件缘由‘旅店置业’在公开出售它的Nassim Jade翡翠阁和Scotts 28 两个物业前的三天前,邀请一些有关系的人士举行Soft Launching,李资政的弟弟祥耀是该公司的非执行董事,因利就便,邀请了柯玉芝女士参加了这次预卖会,她们一口气买下了有优惠价的大部分单位。造成许多后来者不得其门而入,因而议论纷纷,并且向新加坡交易所投诉,指责公司在未取得股东们的同意折价售卖公司物业。由于舆论压力,当时的吴作栋总理宣布设立三人小组来牵头调查,国会也准备进行辨论。就在万事具备时,‘旅店置业’却抢先召开记者会,解释他们公司以优惠价出售物业给李氏父子是因为希望有一个名人效应。据后来调查结果,参于这次预卖会的有老李妻,老李妹,老李弟,老李儿,老李女,老李甥,老李友等等。第二天,老李和老李儿在国会里七情八面地解释购买物业的原因不存在投资意图,也无意享受优待。都是妇道人家(婆媳俩)的愿望,为夫者全不知情。。 最后把所有优惠的费用全部捐献慈善作用。在这里,柯玉芝身为资深的产业律师难道不知道这些条条框框吗?为何明知故犯?为何 当时三缄其口,默不作声?为何自己不挺身辨解?这就是柯玉芝给国人留下深切的感动!



Young-PAP: Actually, that old bitch did not "三缄其口,默不作声". She produced a receipt from 10+ years ago showing that LKY had received a discount when he bought a car, to argue that receiving discount is something normal that they have always been doing for years, and thus could not be called a corruption. (But she dared not explain whether other civil servants, apart from her family, could receive such discounts without declaring and handing over the discounts!) She further told Singaporeans, via her husband's mouth in parliament, that she was very angry and that she thought Singaporeans were ungrateful to the Lee family for not allowing her whole extended family (including niece Kwa Kim Li etc) to buy several properties per family (she bought one, her daughter bought one, her son bought one, her brothers bought several etc) at 12-20% discounts before everyone else can buy the leftovers (if any) at regular price. (Ref: Frugal your lau bu CCB I)

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Vivian Balakrishnan carries balls, communist style.

This is from Temasek Review.
I am archiving it here for my own reference.

INTERNAL MEMO TO MCYS STAFF
Subject:Urgent: Passing of Mrs Lee Kuan Yew’s cortege along Thomson Road
From: Pamela TAN to MCYS-All

The cortege of Mrs Lee Kuan Yew will leave Sri Temasek at 4 pm and it will pass by Thomson Road on its way to the Mandai Crematorium.

As a mark of respect, we would like all staff in MCYS / SLF Building to line up along Thomson Road, opposite MCYS Building (cross the overhead bridge to the side of the Polo Club). Please leave the buildings by 3.45pm.

All staff should be in place by 4pm to await the passing of the cortege.

Staff should be solemn and bow your heads as a form of respect as the cortege passes by.

Staff wearing bright coloured clothes and who wish to pay their respects should cover up with a dark jacket / sombre colours.

Thank you and please be punctual.


Pamela Tan (Ms)
Assistant Director / Human Resource Division
Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports
| DID: (65) 6354 8163 | Fax: (65) 6354 8327 | Email: pamela_tan@mcys.gov | Website: www.mcys.gov.sg


They should have told the staff to wail loudly too. Might as well go for the complete act.

Are you the dead woman, Lee Wei Ling?

Are you dead yet, Lee Wei Ling?

If not, why did you write an eulogy like that - as if you were the one who's dead?

Look, every few weeks, the whole of Singapore already have to endure reading your narcissistic column in the Straits Times where you write about nothing but yourself:
  • how you had won many gold medals but do not feel important about such things (but somehow important enough for you to boast to every Singaporean, 40 years after they were won in your childhood in primary school!),
  • how you had refused to give some money to a beggar who gave you directions on the streets in USA (but which you distort to a heroic situation where you stood by your principles in the face of a fierce robber!)
  • and so on and on, weeks after weeks, ad nauseum!

Haven't you boasted enough to us - unwilling readers held ransom by the only major English newspaper in the country?

Now your mother is dead, not you!

You have to write an eulogy for her, not for yourself.

But no, even at such a moment, you can't resist the chance to boast about yourself yet again, can you?

Let me teach you how to edit your self-absorbing narcissistic eulogy:

Mama was the steadying influence on me for most of my life. I have always felt strongly about injustices, or the unnecessary suffering of humans and animals. I used to be very upset when the police came to shoot stray dogs in the Istana grounds. So from young, I was perpetually on "missions", as I saw them, to right wrongs most of which were not my duty to right.

Mama understood how passionately I felt about these missions.
She did not stop me but would calmly put things into perspective for me and gently bring me down to earth.

When I was miserable because I failed in a mission, she was simply there for me, knowing words would be cold comfort.

As I grew older, I was more controlled in the way I took on challenges, and confided less in Mama. But her very presence when I failed in any mission was comforting.

Between Mama and me, there were times when we seemed to read each other’s mind. She intuitively knew when something was bothering me and would often preempt my request for mundane items just before I verbalised my needs.

Once, I emailed to her: "I need a new tooth brush". She replied: "I must be telepathic. I just took one out from my store for you. But one day, the commissariat will no longer be around.If you don't know the word ‘commissariat’, look it up in the dictionary.”

Once I had a accident while on a holiday in New Zealand. The car was totaled and it was a miracle I was not killed. I carried on with my hiking plans after getting another vehicle from the car rental company. I did not inform my parents and thought to myself, "you are real cool." But I suppose the worry that my injury or death would have hurt them was subconsciously present in my mind. So when I landed at Changi Airport, I immediately called home and said, “Ma, I am home safe.”I had forgotten that my usual habit was to greet my parents only when I got home. My mother realized that I must have been in danger. She told my cousin Kim Li, “Something happened to Ling on that trip. I rather not know what it was.”


Mama’s (and Papa’s) most significant influence on me was to teach me to treat people from all walks of life with the same empathy and kindness. Neither parent taught me in words but by action. When the friends of our black and white maids visited our home, Mama treated the visitors with courtesy and as equals. Our maids felt that their mistress, who also happened to be the Prime Minister’s wife, gave them a lot of face in treating their friends so kindly.

She encouraged me to treat the children of the staff who lived in the Istana grounds as friends without any thought of status. To this day I remember Flora, Stella, John and Aloysious, the children of the butler, Peter, a Catholic Indian. I played rounders with them, and we watched the black and white TV in their small sitting room. Over the years since we parted company, I have met Flora or Stella in the hospital on the occasions their children are ill. They usually recognized me before I recognized them and they would call out “Hi Ling, how have you been?” The years fall away –- and we are back in the time when we played together, the children of the Prime Minister and the children of the butler, as equals. Mama wouldn’t have tolerated any other attitude on my part. She taught my brothers and me not to behave as the Prime Minister’s children.

Flora and Stella came to my mother's wake.

On the evening of 9th August 1965, the British high commissioner to Malaysia, Viscount Anthony Head arrived at Sri Temasek to see my father urgently. I was playing under the porch in my tee-shirt and shorts. I asked him: “Do you want to see my father?” I did not think I was rude. I would have greeted any unfamiliar adult who arrived at our doorstep in the same way, regardless of how distinguished he looked.

Mama herself treated people as her equals regardless of their status in society. Even during this last illness, she still treated her Women Security Officers or WSOs with kindness and courtesy. Many of her former WSOs SMS’d me for permission to visit her. In the initial months after her devastating strokes in May 2008, she was able to recognise them and continued to treat them as her young friends. One WSO related to me how Mama even after the third and nearly fatal bleed into her brain, joked with the young woman: “When are you going to have babies? You should not just be studying your books all the time!”

Mama was the one I ran to when I was hurt as a child, when I felt played out, or when I was simply sad because I felt life had been unfair to me or to my pets or to an injured wild animal in the Istana grounds.

As I grew older, I stopped bothering her with these "trivialities". But she continued to be there for me when I needed her most.

Mama taught me how to "xue zuo ren" – be an upright human being. On rare occasions when I was a child, she punished me by caning. But it was always in circumstances when I knew I deserved the punishment.

The final two and a half years of Mama’s life was painful – eased only by Papa’s enduring and limitless love. But we must remember Mama had 87 years of happiness, beginning from her childhood in a close-knit family, through her school years, and then University. She found a perfect partner and spouse in my father. She was happy with and proud of her three children. She enjoyed and was successful in her profession. While I mourn Mama’s passing, I am grateful to have had her for 55 years.

I am who I am partly because of my genetic makeup, but also because of the way in which I was brought up. I firmly believe that you should treat others in the same way you wish others to treat you. Mama taught me that social hierarchies exist, but we must not treat people differently according to their position in society

Even in a short piece like that, you manage to usurp your mother's position to "squeeze in" boastful nonsense about yourself:
  • your sense of "justice",
  • your "duty",
  • your "mission",
  • how "cool" you think of yourself,
  • how you "treat others"!
  • And yes, you even manage to repeat the toothbrush story that you have already mentioned in your Straits Times' column. Are you a broken record, like your father?

Go learn from your two brothers and your niece and nephew. They did not write their eulogies the way you did!

I shall leave it to others who have worked with you and who have seen your true colour to expose your nonsense about your sense of "justice" and how you treat others. Meanwhile, I just want to say, neither you nor your mother are the frugal person you keep boasting about in Straits Times and again in this eulogy.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Your attendance at the wake is duly noted

Channel NewsAsia
By Joanne Chan/Evelyn Choo | 04 October 2010
...
Workers' Party chairman Sylvia Lim and MP for Hougang Low Thia Khiang were also present at the wake.
...


Thank you for coming. We, at young Pay-And-Pay, will duly note your attendance down in our little book and take that into consideration when deciding who to field in Hougang in the upcoming election. Your $150,000/year allowance is assured for the next 5 years.

SHOCKING TRUTH abt Kwa's death

The BULL-SHIT:
Q: She can't speak. How does she convey how she feels to you?
A: She blinks. 'Yes', one blink; 'no', two blinks.
- Lee Kuan Yew, when speaking about his wife in an interview with The Straits Times for an upcoming book.


The inconvenient TRUTH:
[教育部兼国家发展部高级政务部长]傅海燕说,当李夫人的病情没有好转,李资政曾陷入是否要终止生命维系系统的痛苦挣扎。不过,当资政察觉到夫人意识到他的存在,并对他有所反应时,最后总狠不下心停止治疗,选择继续积极延续她的生命。
- 联合早报 04/10/2010


The Freudian SLIP:
李资政在《海峡时报》明年1月即将出版的新书中就透露:“她最认得的就是我,只要她听到我的声音,她就知道是我。”
- 新明日报 03/10/2010


The selfish REASON:
One doctor told me, you may think that when she’s gone you’re relieved but you’ll be sad when she’s gone because [at least right now] there’s still the human being here, there’s still somebody you talk to and she knows what you’re saying and you’ll miss that.
- Lee Kuan Yew's interview with Seth Mydans of NY Times and IHT on 01/09/2010


The HALLUCINATION:
The Minister Mentor had said that Madam Kwa would wait for him at night to come back home, where he would read poems to her and articles from various newspapers.
- Channel News Asia 04/10/2010


The million-dollar QUESTIONS:
  • Why is her "生命维系系统" (life support system) finally switched off now - and only now - even though she has been brain-dead for the past 2 years and 4 months?
  • Who ordered the switch-off?
  • Why did he order it?


The subtle ANSWER:
Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew was admitted to the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) yesterday for treatment of a chest infection.
- The Straits Times 30/09/2010


The not-so-subtle ANSWER:
李光耀资政日前因肺部受感染入院,目前是否已出院,不得而知。李资政入院治疗,却碰到夫人逝世,许多公众对他的状况表示关注。针对李资政目前是否已出院,他的新闻秘书接受《联合晚报》询问时表示,目前无法奉告。
- 联合晚报 03/10/2010



Meanwhile, each and every day in Singapore's hospitals:
We wished we could have more time [before my husband's life-support system was turned off] but we were given deadline [by the government HOTA team] until 25 Dec only.

As for the organ donation, since he is a PR and did not opt out for HOTA, he had to donate his organ. We were against the idea as we wanted him to pass away naturally, meaning the heart stop by itself.

But the HOTA staff did not allow us to do so, they kept on pressuring us to take off his life support. We begged repeatedly but they refuse to listen to our pleas. In the end, we got the HOTA co-ordinator in charge into trouble too as he took pity on us.
- Yenny Young, wife of Mr. Tong Kok Wai, victim of Romania embassy accident.