Giving HOPE, or HOPElessness?

I was at the Central Singapore Community Development Council on 28 June 2008 (Friday) for a sit-in session as part of the People's Association YOUTHSLead programme to better understand the various social assistance and employment schemes made available to residents within the Central Singapore district.

While the presentation by Suzanne was moving along, one particular scheme left a particularly bitter aftertaste in my mouth and heart. Inappropriately acronym-ed the HOPE scheme, or Home Ownership Plus Education scheme, its claim "to assist young, low-income Singaporean families get out of the poverty trap by providing comprehensive assistance." in my personal view, has dark undercurrents and darker purposes.

• That the scheme's targeted economical and age demographics would appear to disproportionately affect a specific racial group in Singapore; I encourage you to research at Statistics Singapore to make your own assessment on this.


• That the agenda of encouraging these young, low income Singaporean couples to be provided with incentivized sterilization, both reversible and non-reversible, with a far higher cash incentive for the latter.


• That should the young, low income Singaporean couple fail to ensure that they have only a maximum of 2 children, that the scheme will be revoked unless the couple accepts a state-provided abortion-on-demand backdoor.

While I have no doubt that the HOPE scheme has its merits in providing for key pitfalls faced by such young, low income Singaporean couples such as:

• a Conditional Housing Grant of S$50,000.


• a training grant of up to S$10,000 per Singaporean family given over a 10-year period to enable parents to attend skills training.


• a one-off cash grant of S$1,000, payable to Singapore Power Services, to help the Singaporean family offset utilities bills


• mentoring support from a social service agency to guide the Singaporean family and help them resolve any issues.


• a cash grant of S$6,000 - S$9,000 to help Singaporean couples with family life education, family planning and parenting skills.

I personally cannot accept the financial blackmail approach taken with regards to the literal exchange of death-on-demand for cash just so to have lesser births from "lower society" Singaporeans.

It is said that a drop of sewage in a barrel of sewage is sewage, and a drop of sewage in a barrel of fine wine will still be sewage. With such outwardly beneficial schemes put forth targeting simple, lowly educated and low income Singaporean folks would lap up without much thought, much less read the fine print nor consider the future ramifications, I am filled with the bitter aftertaste of truly knowing how cheap life is in Singapore.

Professionalism and acting one's age

It came as an amusing update from Yusheng, a fellow volunteer in Project:Senso that the ever eccentric Bill Ang Siow Chen of SmartVirtualOffice graced the book launch and mini-talk session held on the 14th of June 2008 and, before entering Geek Terminal, had the following short conversation with Yusheng.

Bill Ang Siow Chen: I am here for the event, (looks around suspiciously) does Nicholas have anything to do with this event?

Chew Yusheng: No, he is not the organizer for this book launch, what's about it?

Bill Ang Siow Chen: That's good, because if he is here, I don't want to attend (throws a pout).

Apparently he ran away from the last event where Abang Abu was speaking because he saw me by peeking out of the corner of the lift. While this may be put aside as his irrational, intense hatred and bad blood for me for having repeatedly exposed his con jobs in his early days in the ACE Forum of which he created multiple accounts in an attempt to fool users of the wonders of his newly formed virtual office company, and the subsequent threatening calls and strange baseless allegations of my intention and supposed action to harm his family of which eventually nothing could be proven, what irked me most was his constant nipping at the heels of me and my old classmate Peter Tan, CEO of Virtual Office Singapore which ranged from his constant vandalism of Peter's wikipedia entry to his constantly inflammatory and defamatory blogs and other actions which honestly appear to be nothing more than the act of a 6 year old lout.

Not even police reports with recorded evidence of his threats over phone, printouts of his postings on forums and pages upon pages of threatening emails sent from him to both me and Peter Tan was able to stop him, not even when his partners pulled out totally in name and in investing from his firm barely weeks after SmartVirtualOffice went live, it baffles me on what drives a maniac hell bent on making life hard for people who exposes his lies.

While much proof can be easily obtained via google on his increduous lies, such as going to the USA with not a single cent and having stayed there for years and built a business empire there while simultaneously serving his Keppel Scholarship bond in Singapore is beyond me. Such people sully the good name of entrepreneurs, but sadly in a world where anyone who is vocal enough is assumed to be an expert, or anyone free enough to blog is naturally assumed to be "the real deal", and where people who are busy making a living and can't spare the time to bother writing prose, there is little that can be done of such scum.

Perhaps someday there will be a way where such individuals can be publicly named and shown in their full unadulterated glory of lies and deceit, and of which the public warned of their existence. Until then, we, the consumers and entrepreneurial community will have to live with their unprofessionalism and childish antics as a stubborn blemish we can't remove.

Kaspersky Anti Virus + Mozilla Thunderbird + IMAP = Big Problems

I just uninstalled my Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 software after having found that even after turning off the mail scanning function, it still interfered with the moving of emails from one IMAP account to another in Mozilla Thunderbird. Even after following their proposed solution it still did not work.

Previously if I left the mail scanning function on, it prevented me from using the Offline -> Download/Syncronise now function by continually downloading data that never ends, and that never gets any messages down in the end (From my firewall software, I saw that over 10 Gigs was downloaded from an IMAP account with just 600 Megs of mails).

After turning off the mail scanning function, the Offline -> Download/Syncronise function works but moving large messages from one IMAP account to another just gives the same problem of never ending downloads/re-uploads.

Simply put, I put in AVG Free an hour ago and everything's working fine and useful information for anyone wanting to figure out which antivirus plays nice with Mozilla Thunderbird.

No politics please, we are entrepreneurs

I caught up with Robin of Envisage Reality on Thursday afternoon to discuss about a new project his company is working on at the moment which he hopes would encourage and empower local game developers, and on his end, in helping his own company expand exponentially. Things are still very much in the preliminary stage but are looking good and on track.

As we chatted and caught up, we broached onto the topic of service to society and he commented on whether I would consider serving the country in a political capacity, and was surprised when I said I honestly doubt I will ever consider contributing in such an arena. My take is relatively simple, I contribute a lot better with my two hands than my mouth or my words. Additionally, in politics, it would be a near-impossible battle to perform my duties based on my guiding principles which are at times, abhored by my fellow countrymen. These would be:

1. Pro-Life: The protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception to natural death. In Singapore, abortion is fully legalized and will not be going anywhere anytime soon.
2. Pro-Family: The recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family -- as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage -- and its defense from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its de-stabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role. In Singapore, alternative lifestyle groups are growing and gaining support from the public.
3. School-Choice: The protection of the right of parents to educate their children. In recent years, there has been progress on this aspect, and I am glad for it.

While I will not be able to actively pursue the realization of these principles at-large in the capacity of a public figure, I believe that by doing my part in improving the economical well being of my fellow countrymen, be they fellow entrepreneurs, charities or individuals living below the poverty line that I may assist in getting them up and running, I may inspire them to do as I do and to help others as I have helped them.

On a lighter note, I am finally able to get to grips on knowing what I am actually doing on a daily basis by using Twitter as my makeshift timesheet, time flies...