Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Is Singapore arrogant or what?

Recently I saw a TV commercial of one bank claiming that it is "Asia's safest. Singapore best". I was astonished.

This is that one bank which previously had 21 Internet banking accounts being hacked into by a Chinese national, who then made a USD62,000 fortune and ran away to Malaysia happily. How Asia's safest.

This is also the one and only bank in Singapore which not only had their Internet banking, but also all of its ATM machines suddenly gone down for one whole morning one fine day. How Singapore best.

Like some Great Man once said "This was a lapse, what to do, it’s happened", that one bank had definitely heed the advice and moved on. In fact, moved very far away. But it seems that besides one arrogant bank, we have one arrogant politician as well.

One politician said Singapore should not be shy about having one of the highest paid civil services in the world because Singapore's civil service is the world's best and most effective. And coincidentally, that one politician is the same politician who told us to work "Cheaper, Better, Faster". You know, it will really be helpful if that one politician could cite some example of how good and effective our civil services are, for example...

  • How the YOG volunteers' food were effectively improved only after a horrific lunch picture was posted online, or how the volunteers' free Formula One tickets were effectively sent to them after the event.

  • How floods in Singapore are effectively taken seriously only after Bukit Timah was flooded X number of times and Lucky Plaza Y number of times.

  • How the police had effectively searched for Mas Selamat who effectively escaped from the toilet and swam to Malaysia even more effectively on his floating device, and how in the end the Malaysia police had to effectively catch him and return to us. With a price.

  • How the MOE had effectively attempted to play down the importance of second language in PSLE, only to enrage the people and then effectively blamed them for mis-interpretation.

  • How more BTO flats were effectively built and pushed out in hurry only after the problem in getting affordable flat has been taunting the people long enough.

  • How the number of immigrants flooding Singapore is effectively controlled only after there are already too many of them here.

  • How the guys in SLA had effectively siphoned enough money to buy a couple of Lamborghini's to crush.


And while we are at this topic, I do wish that we could stop claiming that we have a world-class public transport system. That will mean that Japan's public transport system must be universe-class, best in the whole universe, including the Death Star.

4 comments:

putitthisway said...

you forgot to mention the time when their branch in HK destroyed properties inside their safe deposit box during regular maintenance

Sickleaders said...

Don't feel shy having the highest paid ministers in the world? Why don't they increase their pay by another few millions so that we can feel "proud", "prouder" and "prouderest"!

Alan Wong said...

Remember they once instructed their tellers to convince their customers into transfering their fixed deposits over to invest in their High Notes Investment 'Scam' opps sorry I actually mean Scheme and then play taichi when the Scheme turned belly over.

And remember our Manipulating Master even said tht they should have invested with their eyes wide open but never dared to say it to their HK Branch customers when the HK Govt instructed them to compensate their customers appropriately.

It seems they can only bully those who they think are daft. And come to think about it, they even dared to say it openly. Good gracious !

Unknown said...

which is why I still dun have a DBS saving account, and Standard Chartered is my preferred bank :)