Monday, 21 September 2015

Singapore General Election 2015 - Types of voters

Now that GE2015 has settled down, we have seen many theories on why the result swing to back to PAP. Was it SG50? Was it the passing of our founding father? Let's do a breakdown on the types of voters.

We have three main categories that we can branch out from

1) PAP supporters
This group of supporters will support anything that comes out from PAP mouth. Be it daft, hard pills to swallow or poor stock. They will gladly acknowledge whatever PAP says is the doctrine that everyone must follow. Even if policies don't make sense or there is an alternative, they will support PAP wholeheartedly.


2) Opposition supporters
This group of supporters claimed they will support anyone or anything other than PAP. As long as it is not PAP they will support. They even go as far as voting for a monkey if not PAP. They can be seen like majority in cyberspace, especially in social media due to their loud roar. However in reality they are the minorities that doesn't matter much when it comes to election.

3) Swing voters
This group swings side wherever the wind is blowing. During GE2011 this group of supporters sway to the opposition causing PAP worse performance since our independence. However they once again sway to back to PAP in 2015 and cause the biggest win for PAP.


PAP supporters

1) Civil servants.
These groups of supporters are normally loyal to PAP because of their rice bowl. They vote PAP out of not just loyalty but also fear of losing their jobs. There are some of them who are opposition supporters however they belongs to the minority. Most of them time they will tell you how good PAP is and how their intended policy can help out the citizens. They truly believed their work can benefit the masses. However try to say anything bad about the system, they will come out with their guns blazing on how Singaporeans like to complain.

2) The Elites
The elites, well belongs to the elites. They have truly benefited from the PAP way of running the country. Heck most of PAP ministers and MP are elites themselves. They send their children to top schools in Singapore like RI and then to oversea top universities. Mundane issues like having to squeeze in crowded MRT does not concerns them. Bus breakdown is far away from them. Even foreign worker dorms are built far away from their homes. Singapore GDP benefits them and so they are the stronghold of PAP supporters.

3) The pioneer generations
Well we shouldn't be surprise that many pioneer generations are hardcore PAP supporters. These old folks have got everything they wanted from PAP. In a system where their life make the biggest changes from a third world country to first world. They have everything to thank for due to the early PAP works with LKY at helm. This is why it is very important for PAP to keep on talking about track records. These group of folks remember the track records very well. With this group, PAP has never fail to win more than 80seats since 1965.

4) The anything also PAP group (AAP)
This group of supporters normally are women in their 20-30s. They are normally not interested in politics or even read any news at all. They are more concern about their own looks and well being. However when it comes to voting they will always vote for PAP. They will tell you PAP is good without giving any explanation. After pressing them for more answers their reply usually will be, without PAP there will not be HDB and no nice clothes for them to wear. They are not interested to hear about policy and shut themselves up if you dare to convince them to vote for oppositions.

5) Business owners and employees dealings with government bodies.
This group will never vote against PAP because of their business dealings with government. There were even talks on the street that if one of their employee ever dare to side with opposition they will be sacked.

6) New citizens
When a PR converts to be Singaporean they get voting rights immediately. Automatically they will be PAP supporter, this is because they support the PAP policy by converting and has been gaining the benefits of being PR. They have no complains but all gratitude to the party that has allowed them to settle in Singapore. These are sizable numbers as PAP continues to convert 10,000-20,000 of them every year.

Opposition supporters

1) The anything but PAP group (ABP)
Many of the hardcore opposition supporters comes from this group. They are truly fed up with our current government and hopes to changes the system. Even if the opposition puts in a monkey to contest against PAP they will gladly vote for the monkey. However many of them become disillusion and opt to migrate oversea in search of the system they believe in.

2) The prosecuted
No surprise here why they are the opposition supporters, as they are screwed by PAP themselves. Or a result of the PAP's system screwing them. Namely a few younger generation like Amos, Hui Hui, Roy who are actively protesting against PAP system. Also there are the older generations who supported the old PAP until LKY convicting Lim as a "communist". Yes these older generation still exist but they are fast dying off due to old age.

3) The "enlighten"
These people don't believe in a one party system. They have gone overseas and studied how various countries run their parliament. They liken our system to China and N.Korea where freedom of speech is almost close to zero. They want to change our system to have better voices. This is the group that PAP has been targeting for been dangerous and close to bringing our country down. Fortunately for PAP but unfortunate for opposition there are so little of them that they don't amount to much during voting.

Swing voters

1) Taxi drivers
Many will think this group are opposition supporters due to the multiple complains from the taxi driver during their trip from A to B. However in reality these are the swing voters. Many of these uncles complains about the government but when it comes to voting, they may be swayed by the carrots dangled by PAP. It's no wonder the biggest taxi operator is gov linked. As long as government keeps increasing the taxi rates and make these group of people happy, they can catch in more votes.

2)  Keyboard warriors
Keyboard warriors reside in cyberspace and complain from anything to everything under the sun. They can link about any problems to PAP. However when it comes to the actual voting, they are swayed by the factors played out in their dwellings. Common quotes are as follows
"My ward is contested by lousy Reform party leh, if Worker party come here I sure vote for them".
"I scare of my HDB prices drop if I vote for opposition leh"
"I scare no more upgrades if I vote for oppositions"
If only opposition candidate has the power to say "vote us and you will have new hawker center". These people are the true swingers, if opposition candidates address them on their level, they might swing them over. 

3) Vote wisely people
This is by far the largest group of swing voters. These people are intellects and does mostly white collar jobs. They will go to opposition rallies, read all the news about both candidates they wanted to vote for. And they will vote wisely normally this is in favor of PAP candidate as often PAP presents a more credible candidate for them to choose. PAP always has the upper hand in getting new and better candidates, it is no wonder "vote wisely people" will always be convinced who to vote for. During GE2011, opposition sudden influx of credible people made some of these voters swing.

4) Middle class aka sandwiched class
This group of people have no loyalty to anyone. Although not poor they have problems on their own, namely like upgrading their cars, their condos. Many will vote according to their own desire and if the party they vote benefits them. PAP did very well to woo this group in GE2015 as they have allow these group of people to own HDB flats and implementing policies that address the needs of middle class.

5) The poor
Yes, the poor are swing voters. Mainly they get their help from the government. Also because of MSM promoting PAP, there is no way for them to understand there is a better system for them from alternative sources. Many poor seek help from their MP and some have indeed gotten help from PAP but if they don't get any help, they may swing their votes the other way.

So there you have it. This is the list I have compiled up. I'm sure there are many more, let's keep an open discussion here.

Tuesday, 28 October 2014

Getting that Letter of Administration : In life, in death and post death we need money

In my previous post, I've promised to share the information on how to obtain a Letter of Administration.  If you are reading this post, looking for more information, high chances that you are told you need to obtain L.O.A in order to withdraw any money from the banks. Also I'm sure the decease didn't have a will that you can exercise. This is the reason why you need that L.O.A.

First, I will like to send my condolences to you. I know losing a loved one is not something that you can just forget and be happy the next day. Other than having to deal with the heartache and memories of all the love ones. You have to deal to alot of mundane task like obtaining a L.O.A. I know what you are feeling right now, I've been through it and wished someone had guide me through these times. So I'm writing this down in order to help you. If you need to ask me anything, do post a comment to me, I'll try to reply as best as I can based on my experience.

You should already have realised in Singapore whenever a person dies, his assets is frozen. You cannot withdraw money from his bank account. If the bank account is a jointed account, then you are in luck. Before the death certificate is prepared, go withdraw out all the money and close the account. Bank will not be able to stop you.

If you have neither a will or a joint account to get the money from, you can try to call up the bank to ask if they are able to release the money through good will. Sometimes they do if the money involved is a small sum. DBS mention if the amount is less than 8k, they are ok to release them. When the bank refuse to give you any cent, normally they will advise you to contact public trustee.

https://www.mlaw.gov.sg/content/ipto/en/public-trustee/deceased-cpf-estate-monies/information-for-next-of-kin-cpf-monies.html

The website of public trustee are as above. Normally they only handle amount less than 50k. I find this amount to be ridiculously low, this amount probably was set like 30yrs ago and has never been increased since. Nowadays even in CPF we need at least 120k of minimum sum to withdraw anything. 50K is a joke. Anyway this is an argument for another day. If your amount is less than 50k, then you are in luck. Public trustee is able to handle all the estate for you without a charge. Just submit whatever documentations they require and it will be done.

By now if you have exhausted all the above options and still couldn't get any money. You truly need to get the L.O.A from a lawyer. Lawyers charge anything from 3k to 5k. Basically they just leave the paper work to their clerks, so it's actually not paying for their time. I did some googling and researching, I found a blog from Tan Kin Lian who mentioned about L.O.A way back in 2011. He did give a URL link that was suppose to be instruction on how to D.I.Y kit a L.O.A however the kit has since been removed. Going to the state court website also didn't give any information. I guess the state court must have received too many incomplete or wrongly done L.O.A that they totally removed it. Leaving the professional lawyers to handle it.

I am lucky that I have a good friend that works in a law firm. They charged me 2k and disbursement charges totaling up to $2437.90. I have to a make a few trips down to the lawyer firm. First trip I had to go down is to bring my mum to forfeit her rights and titles to Letter of Administration. For rights to L.O.A this is done by the party who has the biggest share of the assets. Usually the wife/husband will have 50% rights to the assets and another 50% split among all the children. So in this case, this is my mum. Forfeiting the rights however doesn't mean she forfeit her rights to 50% asset. It only means she choose not to proceed with handling of the L.O.A.

Unfortunately my mum is not educated. She does not understand english, she know knows a few mandarin words. She has basic speaking ability in cantonese only and top it up, she is hard of hearing. I had alot of problem telling her what I was doing. Since my friend and lawyer insisted she understands she is signing her rights to forfeit to L.O.A. This is because she needs to sign this document in front of the commissioner for oaths. I believe I repeat the same story to her about 100 times, in the end I had to lie to the lawyer that my mum understands. Good thing about my mum is, even if she doesn't understand anything she will just say ok and smile. This is like a loophole for people with dementia. This reminds me of Yang Yin who got his Godmother to sign all her assets to be controller by him. 

Anyway after convincing the commissioner of oaths, we are allowed to finally sign the documents. Now I finally got the rights, things is easier with me making a few more trips down to deal with the rest of the documentation.The lawyer firm will ask you all the assets the decease have. Anything from HDB flats, property, bank accounts, insurance, CPF etc. After giving them all these information, they will contact all the relevant parties, eg DBS for a statement. Once they have compile the list. You will get the much needed L.O.A and grant of probate.

Armed with L.O.A, I first went to Bank of China (BOC). Bank of China seems very willing to give me the money. They just issued me a cheque however I had to pay $5 for closing the account. I've no idea why you need to pay to close an account, but anyway they deducted this amount directly from the account. I was immediately given a cheque and I can choose to bank in to anywhere. Next I went to DBS, before I got in, I was stopped by a young chap which I explain I had to withdraw and close the account. This chap asked if I have open an estate account. Now this is new because before I actually went down, I call DBS up and was assured I didn't need to bring or do anything other than the L.O.A which I was the person to administer. He insisted I need to open an estate account, which I told him this is not what I was told. Fortunately I insisted to go to the counter and ask the counter lady. True enough the lady asked if I have estate account, which i told her no. However she said I could bank into my personal account since I didn't want to open an estate account. The lady did all the paper work, however she told me they couldn't transfer until the next day which I was fine with. DBS didn't charge me anything for closing the account unlike BOC. However they seems less than willing to part with the money if I didn't open an estate account.

I reimburse myself for paying the lawyers fee. Finally this entire ordeal that took place 2 months ago was finally coming to a closure. I really have to say this in life, we need to pay for living, when we are sick we are burden with heavy medical bills which may require your close family to pay. Our government dictates we need to take care of our own family and not take handouts from gov. When we die, our close family needs to pay big money to cremates you. Doing a 3 days funeral and choosing to put ashes into a temple costs us about 10k total. Even after death when we need to withdraw money from the account, it cost 3-5k just to get that L.O.A.

You could have argued that if my dad did a will before he dies all these will be easy. However please don't forget some parents are old and have no idea what they needs to do. All these legal problems are just self made by a government who just want to do the "right" thing but don't want to acknowledge that alot of these can be avoided if they bothered to change the law to help people. Public trustee handling only 50k is really a big joke. It's not like 50k is very big in our current economy. It's not even enough to buy a COE paper. What do you expect from a government who only cares about making big profits but not taking care of it's own citizen. There are so many things they can do to improved our life yet they choose to concentrate their resources to make foreigners more comfortable here.


Thursday, 23 October 2014

Remembering the year of horse - 2014. My Ups and Downs.

2014 is a strange year. At least for me,  it's the year of the horse. This means I'm now 36 years now. 3 x 12 years has passed since I am born. This year begins with joyous mood as I had ended 2013 by proposing to my long time girlfriend. From that till the middle of the year, we were just busy preparing for our wedding. We had plans and more plans were made in anticipation of our big day.

At the start of July, we were still discussing on bringing my parents to the tailors to make suits for our big day. You know the thing about planning is, it never goes the way you wanted it to be. There is always that something that will be unforeseen. On 5th of July, I was in JB with my Louise to shop for clothes. I remember I told Louise that I don't feel very well on that partial cloudy day with a little bit of rain fall. My heart and mind is giving me trouble. Something just something was bugging me. I couldn't shake off that ominous feeling the entire day. When I reached home that night, I notice my dad was rather late. He was not home even at 10pm, usually he would be home by 9pm having his dinner. There were times when he came back around 11pm, because he was slow in his work, but that night. I had a very bad feeling. By 11pm, I went out circling around the area looking for him. There was no sight of him, then the phone came. My sister inform me of the bad news and to come back home as police officers were there.

Those few days went in a rush, it was truly one of the saddest day in my life. Thankfully I had very good friends to came to give me support and my best buddy who came back to Singapore in a short notice just to talk to me. That event make me understand a lot of things. I'm lucky I have a bunch of people who I know for many years. Louise has always been there for me.

One - No matter what plans you make, things never go your way.
Two - Life is short, you never know when you go. Even if you have dreams, ambition, wishes. All can be gone in just one second.
Three - One mistake is all that cost your life.
Fourth - In life you need very good friends to tide you through bad times.
Fifth - In life, in death, in after death. Everything cost you money.

Those days pass along quickly. From the initial sadness, quickly came the times to settle my dad assets. Getting money from banks is not that straight-forward if you are not prepared for it. I will write another post on this for the benefits of others who encounter this.

Fast forward to month of October, my big day finally came. Louise and I were looking forward to this date. We had plan and executed it, it went on without any major hiccups. I was really happy to see again all my good friends. I remember Nix telling me about how good a wife Louise is going to be. I also remember Vincent telling me to appreciate Louise and how scary marriage is going to be. Vincent as usual weight in his 2cents advise, which I often term them as grumbling. But I do appreciate his concern and advise since he always warn us about the potential pitfall before we actually drop into it. Liam chip in as well. I was really half-hearted when told I had to perform a 15min gig to impress the judges of jie meis  and Louise herself. My reasoning was that it was so last min and I had other things on my mind to do a good job. But Liam had nothing of it, he told me to do a performance, it must be the best. He force me to practise my lousy singing with his perfect guitar skill. It was like trying to sing in front of my music teacher who love correcting my tone deaf voice. Fortunately, everyone chip in on the actual day and Louise is pretty impressed. To say it was my happiest day, is no exaggerations. These day, staying together with Louise let me appreciate her more. Even just simply staying at home gives me the peace and rest that I sorely needed. 

Year 2014 has not ended yet but already it's proving a year for me to remember. One of the saddest day and one of the happiest day happens together. In life we can't always hope we be happy, but when we are sad, you will know there are someone who always be there for you. So please don't forget them when you are happy. A simple greeting, a simple chat, a simple link up to your loved ones. Do it now or you will truly regret it when it is too late.






Wednesday, 18 January 2012

Congratulation to my good friend.

Yesterday my good friend finally is a father. I still can't forget the innocent days where we just endless play games or kick a ball aimlessly. Now he has so much responsibilities and in a far away land that we can't do any of those anymore. At least now he can't claim to have no purpose in life.

Another friend commented he wished he had inform directly to us of his recent updates and not letting us only find out in his facebook or blog afterwards. After all we are all his personal best friends. I know he is right but I have no comments on that. The only thing that comes to my mind was

Congratulation, my brother. 

Monday, 14 November 2011

Are you happy?

An old woman once said..."When we are younger we always think to find happiness we must go the hard way. It's actually much simple than that"

Tuesday, 18 October 2011

CPF review to address longer lives or is there more to it???

Any more excuses to lockup our own savings? Greedy...greedy...greedy...

CPF review to address longer lives

If Singaporean can be trusted at age 16 to handle guns with live ammo, why can't we be trusted to handle our own money when we are 60?

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Fatigue or Lazy?

Bzzzzzz. bzzz ...the sound getting louder and louder in my head. My head is spinning, most likely due to lack of sleep. Ironically I used to sleep so much less but didn't feel as tired. Nowadays I sleep much more and earlier but I still feel like I've not slept for years. Gone were the days where I could do a whole night gaming without closing my eyes. Gone were the days where I could just barely sleep 4hrs and still feel fresh. I understand I am no longer young. I felt the full effects of aging at 30 when I woke up one day. It felt like one of the gear had a chipped tooth and things don't run as smoothly.

That starts me thinking, my life isn't exactly hectic. My usual routine will be going to work in the morning. Going out with friends for dinner. Going home to watch TV and set myself to prepare for the next day work. Nothing particularly tiring or even consider tough. I know a few friends who are working day and night with no chance to see the sun. I always consider myself lucky that I got an easier job compare to them.

However In my heart there are so many more things I want to do. Yet my body and brain doesn't seems to be able to connect. My head starts giving me jolts of pain whenever I tune my brains to do things. I attribute this to fatigue....or my laziness. So very often I will push these thoughts aside and convinced myself that I will do it when I'm free (another sign of laziness). Come to think of it, I have never snap out of my fatigue ever since I started working. Can I afford to wait until I retire? By then I might be even too weak and slow to start anything. Can't say I'm very motivated, if you know me for most part of my life nothing much motivates me. I don't even have the urges to try new things. To explore, to understand, to learn is all just a distance memory. Yet I will feel that rejuvenation whenever I come across something new and exciting. However that kind of feeling eludes me greatly nowadays and I am in no hurry to find it. That's laziness but I'm very sure I'm tired. Or is fatigue an excuse I give for my laziness? My mind starts drifting out again....and sitting here feels rather comfy.....yawn~

Today's weather is rather cold. Especially in hot and humid singapore it's very seldom we get this kind of temperature.

Enjoy while it last.....