::Homework Crapbox::

last SG · 2007-06-10T09:23:59+00:00

LOL. i guess u didnt really sleep to complete ur assignment?

UltimaOnline SG

[Humor] - Cute Lovesick Boy, or future Sexual Psychopath in the making?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xvuHrcYYaUU

UltimaOnline SG

An interesting topic on internet ethics.

http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/2012/05/faces-of-haters.html

UltimaOnline SG

Marina Bay and big part of Sentosa are reclaimed lands of Singapore. We should applaud our founding PAP leaders (eg Goh Keng Swee and Toh Chin Chye) for having the vision and Singaporeans’ interests at heart to embark on the land reclamation program, knowing that with the increase in population and progress in development, Singapore will inevitably need more land.

Billions and billions of Singaporean taxpayers’ money were invested in the land reclamation. Our founding leaders must have had in the their minds and plans to earmark all these heavily capital invested lands to be used for more productive and wholesome purposes for the benefits of all Singaporeans, their children and the children of their children.

But today, we see two casinos occupying these reclaimed land. Our MM Lee Kuan Yew proclaimed that casinos would only possibly be built in Singapore over his dead body and he is not dead yet but his son and the Ministers have already allowed the foreigners to build two casinos with the intention to build more on these valuable reclaimed lands.

PAP not only has to grant the valuable lands, it also has to further invest huge sum of taxpayers’ money to build the infrastructures like roads, MRT stations , bridges, staff housing , etc and to provide security with our young Singaporeans in blood, sweat and tear as NSF soldiers and police to ensure that the casinos are secured, viable and profitable.
Correct. No doubt, the casinos do generate a few billions of dollars a year for our economy. But who are benefiting from this lucrative vice activity?

Certainly, not the common Singaporeans. The first direct beneficiaries are the two foreign owners of the casinos. They probably reap a few hundred millions a year each. Mind you, according to reports, majority of the casinos’ patrons are still Singaporeans. Therefore, majority of the money that the casinos’ owners put warmly in their owned pockets are probably taken out from the Singaporeans’.

Next is our betraying PAP govt. It has benefited handsomely from the taxation on the casinos’ profit and the entrance fees from the local Singaporeans it has collected. Singaporeans have to pay $100 each to enter the casinos.

However, these revenues collected are not filtered down to be enjoyed by the public. Singapore is totally a non-welfare state. A Singaporean may consistently pay personal tax for the last 30 years, but once he or she is unemployed the next day, he or she will not get a cent from the govt as temporary unemployment benefit.

Our govt is one of the richest in the world now. But nothing is really subsidized by the govt in Singapore, even for the poorest. In fact, for most common Singaporeans except for the Ministers, they have to pay much higher prices for the basic public services like health care, public housing, transportation and total education as compare to their counterparts do in Taiwan, Hong Kong, S Korea or Malaysia.

One of our Ministers paid only $8 for his by-pass heart surgery but a common Singaporean has to pay at least $20 for just an outpatient consultation at the public polyclinic.

Our public services are not only not subsidized by the govt but they are virtually systematically managed and operated to make profit out of the people. As such, the welfare of the people, if any, is all self-providing. The govt provides nothing.

So, how the PAP govt utilizes the nation’s wealth, is everybody’s guess. But from records, we know for sure that the two PAP controlled companies, GIC and Temasek which have acquired most of the nation’s wealth under their assets have lost billions and billions of dollars in their overseas investments.

The casinos may provide jobs but for mostly foreigners. Most jobs in the casinos require you only to stand and serve without really having to use the brain. You may even be forced to call the customers ‘Your Highness’. Casinos are labour-intensive. Therefore, they always offer low paid jobs. There is certainly no long term prospect even if one works for 50 years in the casino. Surely, most Singaporeans will naturally reject such jobs.

Besides, casinos will not bring in any technological-know-how for our country. A casino will still be a casino after another 100 years.

Casinos also cause many social problems for Singapore. I believe the PAP has purposely understated or denied the severity of the social problems caused by gambling. MM Lee had let the cat out of the bag at a recent Japanese conference. He said he would like to see the entrance fee for the casinos increase by five folds, from $100 to $500 for Singaporeans. We can infer from his statement that gambling is now a serious problem and the govt has to do much more to mitigate the problem.

I can also attest to the fact that pathological gamblers are increasing at an alarming rate after the casinos are allowed to operate in Singapore. I am a taxi driver. Although, I don’t drop or pick up pathological gamblers everyday at the casinos, but I do often meet enough of these Singaporeans who have gambling problems or are prepared to divulge their gambling problems to me while they are sitting in my taxi to safely use them as a reliable sample to represent that casino gambling has indeed caused increasing social problems.

I do go to casinos to gamble myself but perhaps only once in a few years if only I have a chance to go to gambling cruise, Macau or Genting. It is only for leisure, may be win or lose a few hundred dollars. But the gambling problems faced and told by my passengers which I am going to relate as follows are really disheartening.

One drizzling night at about 10.00 pm, a 70 year old woman with a swollen eye and a baby grand child in her arms suddenly rushed to my taxi from the HDB void deck and nervously told me to take her to the Sentosa Casino. On the way there, she pleaded me to also help her to find her son who she confirmed was gambling in the casino. She said not matter how, she must find his son immediately. Her daughter-in-law had just assaulted her and threatened to kill herself and the grandchild if her son did not return home by midnight. She said her son who works as a delivery man has often stayed overnight at the casinos since the casinos opened. I told her it was impossible for me to locate her son. I suggested to her to use my mobile phone to call her son first. She said her son seldom answers her calls at these times but she tried anyway and fortunately, the son answered. My phone was on speaker mode and I could hear that as soon as the son recognized that the caller was his mother, he started yelling vulgar words on his mother and said that he had just lost few hundred dollars in the casino and was on the way back home. The woman then shyly asked me to turn back worrying she might not have enough to pay me the taxi fare. Indeed, she was short of few dollars in paying me. I told her not to worry and to please take the time to alight the taxi and go home. The baby needs to sleep.

This time, I was ferrying a 40 years old male home at Hougang from Marina Sand Casino. He was quiet all the way in my taxi until we reached near Hougang. He suddenly tapped my shoulder and said that he had no money at all to pay me because he had lost all the money in the casino. He said he would call his wife to bring down the money when we reached his house. I said no problem. It was about 3 am at that time. We waited for about 10 to 15 minutes for his wife to come down, then I told him to forget about the taxi fare and I had to go. But to my consternation, once he saw his wife who looked much older than him approaching us, he aggressively rushed out of my taxi, then slapped his wife and snatched the money from her. After politely paying me the taxi fare, he slapped his wife again. I just drove my taxi slowly away.

Another woman but this time much younger, about early 30s. It was at Marina Sand Hotel, also about 3 am. The moment she stepped into my taxi she started sobbing. She said uncle could you drive me around. I said you must tell me exactly where you wanted to go. She said never mind, just keep driving to Changi Village. I asked, “are you sure?” She said she needed some fresh air. When we hit the ECP, she suddenly said loudly that all men are beast. I replied softly, may be not all and asked why she was so upset. She started to confess that she divorced one year ago and has custody for her 4 years old son. Her ex-husband had forced her to sell their condo and she was renting a room in a HDB flat to stay with her son. She had some cash after selling the condo. She was depressed after the divorce and started to patronize the casinos with her friends. For the first few weeks, she always felt euphoric because she always won. But later, she began to lose more often and bigger. She had used up all her cash saving and began to borrow from siblings, relatives, friends and finally she had to borrow from the ‘Ah Long’. In fact, she told me she just had a discussion with the Ah Long’s runners at Marina Sand Hotel. The runners directly told her that she could sell her body if she could not repay the debt. I did not know what to say. I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist or social worker to advise her accordingly. I just softly asked her where was her son now. She said it didn’t matter and changed her mind that she wanted to go home at Bedok South.

This was a young man, may be about 26 years, probably just started working in the financial district of Shenton Way. He flagged my taxi at the road along the Marina Sand Casino and asked me to drive him home quickly. It was about 4.30 am already on a weekday. He had to rush back to take a nap, then change and go to work again. He told me he would go to the Marina Sand Casino immediately after work and gamble until 3 to 5 am the next morning and then went to work again, at least 2 or 3 times a week. He said he often lost lately and had almost maximize his credit cards to finance the losses.

I can go on but it will probably bore you.

You will never able to read all these despairing stories in our prostituting state-controlled mass media. I believe they purposely not report them in order not to discredit the gambling industry which the PAP has been supporting. PAP and pro-PAP psychologists, psychiatrists or sociologists may say that gambling is a problem that is self-inflicted. It is certainly not the fault of the govt or casinos. Nobody force you to gamble.

But metaphorically, I would like to ask them a question. If hard drug is legally allowed to be sold in Singapore, will there be more drug addicts. The answer is an obvious YES. It is the same for gambling. If the govt allows more casinos, there will be more gamblers.

The death victims of the recent Ferrari accident saddened PM Lee and DPM Teo. I hope the despaired gambling victims of our two casinos also sadden them. After seeing first hand of some of the gamblers’ problems, I must say I am certainly saddened by the social problems caused by our casinos on our fellow Singaporeans.

Singapore is too small a city nation to have casinos. It is just too convenient for any Singaporean to take a bus, taxi, MRT or drive and within few minutes he or she can start gambling in the casino.

I hope all Singaporeans will join hands with me to reject this evil industry. Let’s boycott going to the casinos. Without local Singaporeans’ patronage, the casinos will wind up in no time.

UltimaOnline SG

An enlightened nun.

http://myfox8.com/2012/06/04/us-nuns-book-on-sexuality-criticized-by-vatican/

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on Monday sharply criticized a book on sexuality written by a prominent American nun, saying it contradicted church teaching on issues like masturbation, homosexuality and marriage and that its author had a “defective understanding” of Catholic theology.

The Vatican’s orthodoxy office said the book, “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics” by Sister Margaret Farley, a member of the Sisters of Mercy religious order and emeritus professor of Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School, posed “grave harm” to the faithful.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that in the 2006 book, Farley either ignored church teaching on core issues of human sexuality or treated it as merely one opinion among many.

Farley said Monday she never intended the book to reflect current official Catholic teaching. Rather, she said, she wrote it to explore sexuality via various religious traditions, theological resources and human experience.

The Farley critique, signed by the American head of the congregation, Cardinal William Levada, comes amid the Vatican’s recent crackdown on the largest umbrella group of American sisters.

The Vatican last month essentially imposed martial law on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, accusing it of undermining church teaching and imposing certain “radical feminist themes” that were incompatible with Catholicism.

It ordered a full-scale overhaul of the group and appointed three bishops to carry it out.

The crackdown on Farley, a top American theologian, will likely fuel greater resentment at Rome among more liberal-minded American sisters.The Vatican examination of the book began in 2010 and involved seeking Farley’s responses to its concerns. After her replies failed to satisfy the Congregation, it moved to a full-fledged “examination in cases of urgency” that concluded Dec. 14.

Pope Benedict XVI approved the decision last March and ordered the decision published.

In its statement, the Vatican singled out specific problems in Farley’s book which it said “affirms positions that are in direct contradiction with Catholic teaching in the field of sexual morality.”

Farley, for example, writes that masturbation doesn’t raise any moral problems and can actually help relationships rather than hinder them. The Vatican asserted that according to church teaching “masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.”

Farley wrote that homosexual people as well as their activities should be respected. Church teaching holds that gays should be respected but that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”

On gay marriage, Farley asserted that legal recognition of gay marriage can help transform the stigmatization of gays. Levada wrote back that approving gay marriage would not only signal approval of “deviant behavior” but would obscure the value of traditional marriage between man and woman in society.

“The principles of respect and non-discrimination cannot be invoked to support legal recognition of homosexual unions,” he wrote.

In her statement, Farley said she had aimed to propose a framework for sexual ethics that “uses a criteria of justice” in evaluating sexual relations.

She acknowledged that her responses to certain issues do depart from traditional doctrine, but said they nonetheless were coherent in theological and moral traditions.

“The fact that Christians (and others) have achieved new knowledge and deeper understanding of human embodiment and sexuality seems to require that we at least examine the possibility of development in sexual ethics,” she wrote.

She said she appreciated the Vatican’s work but lamented that her positions weren’t reflected in the Congregation’s final document.

The Rev. James Martin, a liberal-leaning Jesuit author, said the notification will sadden many Catholic theologians who consider Farley a mentor.

“It will also, inevitably, raise strong emotions among those who already feel buffeted by the Vatican’s Apostolic Visitation of Catholic sisters in the U.S., and its intervention into the LCWR,” said Martin, who has been a vocal critic of the Vatican’s crackdown on U.S. sisters.

UltimaOnline SG

http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/stomp/sgseen/this_urban_jungle/1146200/not_for_the_squeamish_frog_served_alive_at_japanese_restaurant.html

UltimaOnline SG

Recently I have asked some questions about discrepancies in our national accounts. These seem to indicate that our reserves are not as buoyant as we might have been led to expect by past surpluses and the supposedly class-leading returns achieved by our sovereign wealth funds. No answers have been forthcoming. Instead there has been a deafening silence from the State media. Whether our reserves have been depleted through poor management or were never there in the first place or whether there is a relatively simple explanation is something we can only speculate about.

The PM’s speech to the Economic Society of Singapore did not set my mind at rest. Instead it exacerbated my previous concerns. Already Tharman, in his 2012 Budget speech, said that not much more could be spent on health by the government without tax rates rising significantly. He said that doubling health expenditures as a proportion of GDP would require a top income tax rate of around 60% and a GST rate of 25%. My immediate thought was that this did not square with what the government has told us about its cushion of assets built up through years of austerity. However I put this down to nothing more than the PAP government’s usual desire to hide the crown jewels from the peasants.

It was thus even more alarming to hear much the same story from the PM. The PM talked about taxes needing to rise in the medium term if we were to deal with an aging population and rising healthcare expenditures. He also said that returns from investing our past reserves only contribute about 2% of GDP (or S$6.5 billion approximately). This does not square with the total level of assets (about S$700 billion). Neither is it compatible with Temasek’s reported annualised return of 17% p.a. since 1974 or even GIC’s reported long term returns of around 7%. I have already pointed out in my letters to the Finance Minister the alarming and rapid increase in public debt. This is now some S$367 billion according to the latest Monthly Digest of Statistics. Why would the government be borrowing so much? Particularly when it only seems able to achieve a return of less than 1% of total assets which is less than it pays on its debt. I said earlier that if the reserves had indeed been depleted through bad investments and were not sufficient to repay the CPF then the government had two alternatives. It could print money but in view of the likely implication for the currency it was more likely to raise the money through a combination of higher taxes and more borrowing. This seems to be becoming an increasingly probable scenario.

You would think that the government would want to reassure the people that all is well. However all we get is a deafening silence. Like when Tharman said we did not need to know the reasons for Chip Goodyear’s resignation as CEO-in-waiting at Temasek. The stunning arrogance of a government that thinks we are its employees and is not answerable to us.

I have already ridiculed the PM’s use of those well-worn phrases “An Inclusive Singapore” and “Politics That Works” in a separate article. Here I will devote the remaining space to a critique of the rest of the PM’s speech. In particular I will focus on his assertion that the Nordic model will not work in Singapore. What is remarkable is that despite new buzzwords the PAP model remains the same one of adding more inputs to produce higher output. This has not changed for fifty years. The only way the government knows of keeping the growth rate up is by bringing in more cheap foreign labour. In the section entitled “A Successful, Growing Economy” there is the seemingly deliberate confusion of raw growth with what should be the relevant measure which is productivity or growth in GDP per hour worked.

Where Are We Today?

This was the usual blend of misleading statistics to buttress the PM’s case that PAP policies have worked well. Given the fact the flaws in these statistics have been apparent for some time you would think that the PM would come back with slightly more sophisticated arguments. Instead he has opted to use the same old discredited statistics.

The PM starts with a comparison of GDP per capita. It is true that this puts Singapore nearly at the top if measured on a Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) basis. However if we then normalize this as GDP per hour worked (Singapore both has a high employment to total population ratio because of the large number of foreign workers and one of the highest numbers of hours worked) then the reality is more prosaic. Singapore is near the bottom of the international league table when it comes to GDP per hour worked.

Even the lowly position it has owes much to a highly suspicious enormous one-time jump in productivity in 2010 of 11.1%. This happened right after I criticised Singapore’s poor productivity performance way back in 2009. After that we had the report of the Economic Strategies Committee which was all about the productivity problem. Subsequently Tharman devoted most of the 2010 Budget to the issue. And then this was followed almost immediately by a massive jump in productivity. The gain is enough of an outlier given Singapore’s historical record to arouse suspicion. It seems to stem from a revision of the way Singapore’s PPP exchange rate is calculated. This has had the effect of pushing up the value of Singapore’s output. Could it be connected with the fact that our CPI does not track the rise in housing costs accurately? Even if there has been a genuine underestimation of Singapore’s PPP output, the Statistics Department allocation of the change to a single year rather than spreading it out over past years looks fairly dubious.

The PM goes on to say that the appropriate comparison for Singapore is with other cities. He is absolutely correct. On that basis Singapore’s economic success looks distinctly pedestrian. We fall out of the top 20 down to number 40 or so in the Brookings Global Metro Monitor of the top 200. The top positions are all held by American or Nordic cities. However again the PM does not normalize the figure for GDP per hour worked. This would surely push Singapore’s position further down the rankings.

The PM also says that our real median wages have risen in the last decade. I am not so sure. Firstly, if like Tharman in the Budget speech, he has used income per household member this has not been corrected for changes in the number of dependents per household. Secondly there has been a big rise in the number of new citizens and PRs whose incomes you would expect to be higher than native Singaporeans and who have fewer or no dependents. However I believe the real problem lies with the way housing costs are calculated in the CPI which uses imputed rents. Tharman himself pointed out that this may not be an appropriate measure when most Singaporeans are leaseholders. I wrote about this in “Inflation a Problem? Just Change the Way You Measure It.” Since HDB properties are leasehold, capital costs strictly should be amortized and included in the calculation of total housing costs.

An Inclusive Singapore and the Nordic Model

Just as, not surprisingly, foreign heads of MNCs are happy to sing the PAP’s praises if a generous tax break or two is tossed their way, so in the question and answer session that followed this speech we had the usual sycophantic foreigners ready to jump in and say that the freedoms and benefits their countrymen enjoy are not appropriate for Singaporeans.

When the Danish ambassador says that Singaporeans have decided that the Nordic model does not work for Singapore he should qualify that by saying that Singaporeans have never had a choice. Much as it pains me to say it, the Scandinavian countries also do not support the view that high levels of taxation and an overly generous welfare state destroy incentives to work and innovate. They have historically been among the top performers in innovation and growing new start-ups and world class companies. This may have something to do with the fact that all of these countries spend more than double what Singapore spends on education as a proportion of GDP.

PM Lee’s arguments that the Nordic states enjoy many natural advantages over Singapore which allow them to have generous welfare states can easily be refuted. At the very least it can be shown that Singapore has equal and offsetting advantages. Norway sits on huge oil reserves which Singapore lacks but then the other Nordic states lack oil as well. Much of their land area is frozen and unsuitable for human settlement. They are on the periphery of international trade routes whereas Singapore sits in the middle of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Far from being a malarial swamp as LKY would have gullible Westerners believe, Singapore was already the second richest city in Asia after Tokyo at the time of independence.

Other than saying that the Nordic model was not right for Singapore, the PM spent the rest of this section of his speech trying to show how PAP policies have worked towards a more inclusive Singapore. However I fail to understand how spending less on education than any major developed country as a proportion of GDP is “equipping people with the skills and ability to do well for themselves”. Singapore fares poorly on any measure of private sector innovation or new start-ups. Almost all the growth comes from foreign MNCs lured here by cheap labour and low tax rates and from the GLCs.

While welfare spending may have risen marginally it still remains very low as a proportion of GDP, particularly when compared to what we spend on defence. It may just be that the PAP elite are against greater welfare despite a steadily growing positive net asset position. However a less charitable explanation is that the assets are much smaller than we thought and that the money simply is not there.

Conclusion

The PM’s speech was shocking on several levels. It showed the PAP are bereft of ideas on how to transform the economy other than continue the same old tired policies of extensive growth. Just as was the case with the Soviet Union, a fear of creative destruction and losing their grip on power will prevent the PAP from taking the steps necessary to foster innovation and new technologies.

.
Kenneth Jeyaretnam
* Kenneth is the Secretary-General of The Reform Party. He is a Cambridge trained economist who could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school. He is also a successful ex-hedge fund manager and a liberal opposition politician who contested the 2011 General Election with his party. After economics and politics, his greatest interests are history, film and makan!

Summer hill SG

love this drama series

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Circle_(TV_series)

UltimaOnline SG

[Humour] - Car Wash Service from Hell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pJ1BnS68YzE

Maeanneteng SG

Homework is pain lah but sometimes its good for us to learn. I want to enroll in dance lessons but don know where i enroll. Can you help me?

Summer hill SG

10 Surprising Ways To Offend People In Other Countries

10 Things Apple Should Have Done With Their $100 Billion Surplus

10 Extremely Dangerous Insects

UltimaOnline SG

Time for Generation Y to shape up or be prepared for a life of mediocrity

Posted by temasektimes on June 24, 2012

There was a recent debate online on young Singaporeans becoming increasingly ‘soft’ like ‘strawberries’ who are unable to withstand the harsh realities of life.

As a Singaporean employer manager a SME of over 200 staff, I can attest to the fact that young Singaporeans nowadays are plagued with all kinds of attitude problems and have taken for granted the good life that their parents have bestowed on them by virtue of their hard work.
Just to give a few examples:

1. My company put up a job ad recently hiring full-time administrative staff at $1,800 monthly (office hours, five day work week, no shift work) looking specifically for Singaporeans. We received a number of inquiries over the phone, but most just want to bargain for higher pay first without making the effort to make a trip down for the interview to discuss the details. We eventually hired two fresh polytechnic graduates. One did not turn up for the on-the-job training without giving a valid reason and another left after two weeks citing a better offer elsewhere.
2. One staff who has been working for over a year tried to hold me to ransom for a higher salary via SMS in spite just being given a pay rise of $200 three months earlier. She rejected my offer to negotiate in person and ‘MIA’ the next day without giving a month’s notice.
3. Spending time on Facebook, surfing the internet, using the company’s PCs to watch Korean dramas during working hours are commonly observed among some Singaporean workers. Sometimes, they even act blur when I walked into the office as if nothing has happened. Despite repeated warnings by the HR, they persist in their ‘activities’. When one was threatened with the sack, she simply threw all her work aside and walked off without saying the word, disrupting the company’s operations and causing it to make a loss.

4. Taking MCs and leaves in the last minute without passing their work and responsibilities to fellow colleagues. There were times when they left office early to ‘see’ a doctor only to come back hours later without a valid MC.

5. Job-hopping: reading the classified ads during working hours, using the company’s phones to call for prospective employers and arranging interviews and giving short notices when leaving the company.

I could go on and go and I have not stereotyping young Singaporean workers. While there are some good, motivated and responsible ones around, such workers are the exception rather than the norm.

We are a home-grown company which employs more than 90 percent Singaporeans. As far as possible, we will try to employ Singaporeans first before foreigners, but with so many difficulties faced in hiring Singaporeans and retaining them for a number of years, we may have no choice to turn to foreigners.

For those of you in the SME sector, you will know the many constraints we face – many of us struggling to keep afloat in the face of intense competition from the giant GLCs for the same pool of clients in the small Singapore market. We would love to offer higher pay for Singaporeans provided they are able to contribute to the company, but if they come with the mindset of just earning quick and easy cash, why should we invest in them?

Young Singaporeans seriously need to wake up their bloody idea that they are guaranteed an iron rice-bowl upon stepping into the workforce. When I graduated twenty years ago, I worked seven days a week, 12 – 18 hours each day for five years to earn enough to start my own company. My wife and I saved every single cent we have for our family. We had no car, no paid holidays and no luxurious pursuits or products. Just plain, honest and solid hard work to get to where we are today.

If you refuse to plant your feet solidly on the ground and work your socks off, then don’t expect money to drop from the sky. If you do not have the earning capability, then spend less and don’t splurge on expensive holidays and branded stuff to show off in front of your girlfriends and relatives. And if you do not have the will, hunger and desire to succeed in life, then be prepared to live in mediocrity for the rest of your life.
I know I will get flamed for this article, but this is the HARD TRUTH for young Singaporeans – your diploma or degree is only a stepping stone in life, not a fast-track ticket to success. Nobody is going to give you a car, a career and a flat for free. You have to fight hard for them yourselves and you have nobody to blame but yourselves if you fail to make the mark. I am sorry, this is how the real world works outside and you folks seriously need to shape up or get ship out! Lastly, but not the least, please get out of your mama’s shadow, stop whining and start behaving like adults!

LAM C K

UltimaOnline SG

"Taken" sung by Wendy Foo :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3hUW4BKER0

UltimaOnline SG

Posted by koohansen
lol, mine was something weird which I can't explain. Happened many years ago.
Wake up, cannot move body at all. this experience lasted for about 5mins, i'm awake, I'm aware of my surroundings. But I just cannot move at all. Damn scary.

SYY posted :
similar...mine was when i was on the bed trying to sleep...but then i remembered smth and wanted to stand up, suddenly whole body cant move a single shit for abt 2 mins...i still rmb panicking and kept praying for "them" to "leave me alone" before everything returns to normal and i left the room for abt 30mins to walk ard...dam scary sia....and dat happen a couple of times...

DragonFire posted :
We call these episodes sleep paralysis. Sometimes accompanied by hallucinations or loud noises which are sensory phantoms. I get these now and then, especially when sleeping face up. Just learn to enjoy the show and know it is not real. You might get some really lucid dreams later on.

I (UltimaOnline) posted :

These are not necessarily merely sensory phantoms or hallucinations. Hypnogagic paralytic states result from the partial disengagement of the consciousness from the physical body and biological brain, and as such the consciousness has momentary awareness (particularly auditory awareness, eg. hearing voices of non-physical beings) of other realms or planes of existence beyond the physical, what has been called the astral or extraphysical realms.

The memory of these experiences, may or may not be downloaded into the brain when the consciousness realigns with the physical body and biological brain, which is why some people remember having such experiences only some of the time, while other people do not retain such memories at all.

The observation that lucid dreams may follow from such hypnogagic paralytic experiences, further supports what I'm saying : lucid dreams are functionally a cognitive bridge into full-blown projections of the consciousness into the extraphysical realms, what has been commonly labeled astral projections.

UltimaOnline SG

Jocelyntxh SG

study so much future also cannot use rahhh... haha

UltimaOnline SG

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekc1Ctdg_nQ

Darkness_hacker99 SG

UltimaOnline SG

http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php?122813-W…

UltimaOnline SG

Imagine time travelling such technology back to the Medieval and Dark Ages.
http://vimeo.com/45316779

UltimaOnline SG

laksaboy posted :

Everybody should go read this book. It explains a lot about what's going on in churches/Christianity these days.

Short summary: Modern evangelical Christianity consists of an elaborate network of front groups for American imperialism (economic, cultural or military). These front groups come in many forms: charities, think-tanks, mega churches, cell churches, seminaries, business leaderships, corporate trainers etc. Some may not even be overtly religious in nature.

Lawrence Khong's name appeared more than once in this book. Apparently, in the grander scheme of things, he is higher up in the food chain than Kong Hee. Lawrence Khong had also attended a very important meeting with several key proponents of the Dominionist ideology in 1999.

The concept of Christian 'spiritual warfare' is also quite similar to Islam's jihad. The definition is very elastic, and 'Satan' the enemy changes according to the context. For example, after Sep 11 2001 the radical Muslims were demonized. Yet if you turn back the clock 20-40 years, the communists were the devils. Using religion as justification is easy to generate support for war, be it against Iraq or Vietnam.

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