Tag: forum

Categories
Singapore

It used to be Jerry Cans for us

and share usage of 2-3 pep bottles… But apparently NPCC cadets nowadays are given 1 x 1.5L bottled water each everyday.

Talk about life getting slacker for uniformed groups.

[Source]

The flip side of a good idea

Letter from Teo Yong Hua
05:55 AM Aug 07, 2009

LIKE the rest of his schoolmates in the National Police Cadet Corps (NPCC), my cousin attended a three-day, two-night camp in Pulau Ubin recently.

These camps, indeed, give our youth a chance to become independent, and they should be encouraged.

However, I think about the amount of waste the usage of plastic bottles produces at each camp session.

Everyone was given two 1.5 litre bottles of mineral water each day.

With more than 200 students participating, there would have been more than a thousand bottles discarded by the end of the camp.

I understand that the water at the campsite was not fit for consumption, hence the need for bottled water to be handed out.

Nonetheless, there should have been a more environmentally-friendly way of making sure the cadets had drinking water.

Categories
Musings Singapore

And people want to know why S’poreans are not having kids

When there are people, and potential employers, who think like Mr Yeh Siang Hui.

[Straits Times Interactive]

Pregnancy no guarantee against job loss

I REFER to Ms Chin Hwee Chin’s Forum Online letter on Monday, ‘Provide better protection for pregnant women in workforce’.

Ms Chin did not say if she falls into a category of people expressly excluded from receiving maternity leave benefits by the Employment Act (Cap 91).

For instance, she may be in an executive position and thus is not an employee by definition under the Act – even if she may be an employee by her company’s definition. She was correct that the Act provides that maternity benefits are payable even if the pregnant employee is retrenched in the last three months of pregnancy.

However, she was five, and not six, months pregnant when her letter was written, and thus, she was not in the last three months of her pregnancy.

Accordingly, nothing in the Act, or in law, prevents her employer from retrenching her. Her letter gives the impression that there is a blanket prohibition on the dismissal of any pregnant employee per se. This is not so. A pregnant employee may be dismissed at any time as long as there is sufficient cause legally. In her letter, she did not shed any light on whether her employer may have terminated her services on justifiable grounds, such as misconduct or poor performance on her part.

In all, her employer acted within the law. The Government’s encouragement of couples to procreate should not be misinterpreted as an implied licence to do so at an employer’s expense.

Birth rates were much higher three or four decades ago than now, yet couples willingly procreated and raised children in the absence of the comprehensive set of incentives in place today. Ms Chin – and other like-minded pregnant women in employment – fails to understand the damage and loss caused to an employer (especially small and medium-sized enterprises) by having to maintain on its payroll an employee who, throughout her maternity leave, saddles her colleagues with heavier workloads, does not contribute to the company’s revenue and causes loss to the company by continuing to draw pay.

In the light of the counter-balancing needs and interests of employers, the law more than adequately protects pregnant employees, and thus needs no review.

Yeh Siang Hui

Apparently this is not his first attempt at blasting the Maternity leave issue. The original letter on ST Forum is gone, but simplyjean has a copy, aptly titled “Like that how to have kids“…

Beware what you say about him though, he’s a lawyer… Maybe EQ & social intelligence is inversely related to the ability to study.

Categories
Singapore

So now army boys are to be banned from taking the bus?

Troll or not, this JusticeLegal is seriously amusing.

She basically thinks that all NS boys should shun public transport cos they stink and spread germs to her daughters, and scare them so much that they will get nightmares about “smelly green monsters”. She suggests that they should all take taxis or get their parents to fetch them instead of fouling the public with their stench.

How….. Naive and narrow-minded she is.

I agree some of them stink. But that’s because they had been working out not too long ago. I used to be in the NPCC when I was in secondary school, and I bet I stunk after my 4 long ECA hours on Saturdays. Though I doubt I knew that, cos all of us stunk big time so my sense of smell is, rather fortunately, accustomed to it. Of course it would be very nice if they could have avoided stinking so much, but often, they are just so tired that they want to get home as fast as they could, and take a nice long and good shower, instead of a 5-min rinse. Furthermore, even non-NS men have body odour at the end of a long day. Much as I might not like it, I understand and just either bear with it or try to make myself feel a bit better by discreetly covering my nose or something. Keyword: discreetly.

However, she fails to see one aspect. NS is compulsory. That means you have to be conscripted whether you like it or not. We do have a good percentage of Singaporeans who are not well off, and the money that the NS men get from the army is so precious to their family income. How can we expect them to take the taxi, when they sometimes book out at 11pm at night? What if those who are allowed to book out every day? Are they to take a cab 5 nights a week?

And even if the army boy is rich enough to take a cab all the time, wouldn’t it be good to instill triftyness, and teach them how to wisely manage their finances, rather than giving them free reign to spend any way they want? Don’t forget, these boys are Singaporeans, and they form us, and our economy, and maybe even our government.

Of course it would be really nice if they could put some deodorant to minimise the smell, but do they always have a choice? The last ferry out of Tekong leaves at 11pm. If they had to do some corporal punishment etc and only managed to catch the last ferry, I hardly think they’d have time to spruce up. Don’t forget that they have to wait at the Changi jetty for the shuttle bus to reach Pasir Ris.. By the time they reached Pasir Ris interchange, they’d probably be dashing to catch their last buses / trains back home.

I don’t understand why we can’t all be a bit more understanding? And a little bit more intelligent… And  abit more open-minded… I think all these prejudices & discrimination stems from one thing. Ignorance.

The thread is a whopping 35 pages long, so please read it only when you have enough free time and want some laughs.

Edit: Oops, I forgot to add the link in. So please click here for laughs.

Categories
Musings

JRR Forums

JRock Revolutions forum open on Monday… I need all my sleep tonight & tomorrow.. To prepare to work through the night on Sunday.

How I wish the entire world is in the same time zone.