CPF Part 3: the Cheese Cake Conundrum

Since TRS has reproduced one of my recent article this website, I have received a reply from the person who has started this whole series in the first place, Mr "Vto PAP". Firstly, here is his reply to me.

"Limpeh FT, I have been following your articles and blog. First, just to let you know, I have built my retirement nest way before you started NS. What kind of financial gains can I expect from the government when I started out? Join grassroot/RC/CCC, not my cup of tea. My only 'gain' from it was to befriend those army friends and buddies, pp of different backgrounds and races. Most are still in contact. When I served NS, rewards and financial gains certainly did not crossed my mind. I just want to serve and get on with life. Post-NS, apart from my first HDB flat, I have never applied for any public assistance, bursary, scholarship. I came from humble background with 11 family members. My belief is that no one own me or owe my anything, let the deserving ones have the public assistance. Any vouchers, given prior to any GE, that I received go to charities.

I can retire today with my overseas properties, why do I choose to stay in Singapore? I still have loved one in Singaporeans. Family members, friends of all ethnic race, of different backgrounds. I don't know about you Limpeh FT, to me they are priceless and irreplaceable. I can work overseas, but family ties would still beckon me back some day. In reality, not many Singaporeans can migrate like you and me. Should I abandon them and live my own lives? Morally, I can't. I have never encouraged anyone to migrate but to seek overseas postings. To uproot a family required sheer determinations, support and consensus from them. Maybe it is my upbringing, they shown me love, passion, honesty and most importantly, to be selfless!!! Time to contribute, play my part, right the wrongs, live an honest life and have an safe environment for future generations to spout and thrive, just like my forefathers had done. VTO!!!"

The cheese cake reference will soon become very clear...

OK let me summarize what 'Vto PAP' has said, basically he has many friends and family who love him - he wants to remain in Singapore to be with them. I get it - it is a very common motivation for many Singaporeans to stay in Singapore despite being unhappy with the system. He's hardly the only one in this situation. However, his attitude reminds me of a story I heard a while ago - I am going to call this the cheese cake conundrum. This is a true story (taken from one of those medical/health reality TV-documentaries featuring real patients).

There was this fat guy who loved all kinds of cakes - chocolate cake, black forest cake, fruit cake, ice cream cake, cupcakes, red velvet cake but in particular, he adored cheese cake which he ate in huge quantities. Now his love of cheese cake has led to a serious weight problem and this fat guy's doctor warned him, "you must stop consuming so much cheese cake, it is so fattening. It is full of fats and sugars, you cannot eat so much of it everyday. If you want to lose weight, you must give up cheese cake or at least only have a slice once in a while. You really must lose weight."

Our protagonist has a love for cakes.

The fat guy looked at the doctor in disbelief, "but I love my cheese cake! It gives me this warm and fuzzy feeling each time I bite into the cheese cake, that familiar taste and smell that brings back happy childhood memories. I can't give up cheese cake doctor, it is too important to me. Is there some kind of fat-free, sugar-free cheese cake that I can enjoy without putting on weight? Is there a medicine I can take to allow me to continue eating a lot of cheese cake without putting on weight?" The doctor looked at the fat guy sternly. "Listen, let me make it clear to you. Either you stop eating so much cheese and lose some weight, or you can continue eating yourself to an early grave."

Back to 'Vto PAP' - this guy loves his friends and family in Singapore. I get it. Hello, you're not the only one with friends and family in Singapore. I grew up in Singapore too - I am the Ah Beng from Ang Mo Kio. My parents and siblings are still in Singapore (along with my mother's side of the family) and I do keep in touch with plenty of old classmates and ex-NS friends via Facebook. On my visits to Singapore, I do enjoy catching up with them and for the record, I also really hate the PAP's system. And so we have the cheese cake conundrum. Now allow me put them side by side.

He likes cupcakes too.

Option 1: Stop eating cheese cake all the time and only have a slice once in a while - this reduced calorie intake will allow the fat guy to lose weight and become healthier. The price he has to pay is that he will miss eating his favourite cheese cake if he wants to lose weight.
Option A: Move out of Singapore and only visit my family and old friends once in a while - moving away will allow me to be free of the PAP's system and enjoy my new found freedom in another country. The price I have to pay is that I will miss my friends and family if I want to have this freedom.

Option 2: Continue eating cheese cake all the time - the fat guy may have the short term pleasure of enjoying his favourite cake, but he will gain a lot of weight and literally eat himself to an early grave. The price he has to pay is that he will suffer ill health and an early death.
Option B: Stay in Singapore to be close to your friends and family - but in doing so, you have to accept that the PAP is in charge of Singapore and you will have to abide by their rules. The price you have to pay to be close to your friends and family is to live under the PAP's rule (NS, CPF, foreign talents, HDB, COE etc).

This is my homemade Malteser brownie.

May I state the obvious? There isn't an option 3/C where you can continue eating vast amounts of cheese cake and still lose weight or continue living in Singapore and change the political system to suit your needs. Quite literally, you can't have your cake and eat it. Mind you, I prefer the Albanian version of the same expression which is "te hysh ne uje e te mos lagesh" (you can't take a swim and not get wet - ie. you either swim and get wet or stay dry and not swim) and the French version, "vouloir le beurre et l'argent du beurre" - to want the butter and the money (from selling) the butter. The fact is, in life, there is always a price to pay and we have to make hard choices between having one thing or another but you cannot have both.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that I condone the PAP's system or that I like what they are doing - I clearly do not. I have so little faith in the PAP's system that I decided to leave Singapore and try my luck in another country - and I am so happy I made that choice as things have worked out great for me in the UK and as I look at what is happening in Singapore today under the PAP, I am so freaking happy that I am no longer a Singaporean. Such is life, so many people fool themselves into thinking that they have the power to make things better when the obvious thing to do is to simply accept that they have to make some hard choices given the circumstances. Let me give you an example from my personal experience when I had made such a mistake when I had made a similar error of judgement.

There is often a price to be paid for us to get what we want.

I once worked for this company and thought that I had a good job - I was making rather good money, I was in the industry I wanted to be in but the bosses were demanding and unreasonable. I was scolded, I was taken for granted, I was not appreciated, even when I did things well they went unnoticed, I was blamed for crap I didn't do - it was not a good working environment. I fooled myself into thinking that things would get better, I thought I could earn the bosses' trust, I thought that they would get to know me and trust me more over time, I thought that I could prove myself to the management over time if I worked hard and remained loyal to the company. And so I busted my ass in that tough environment and tried really hard - thankfully the money was good as I was so unhappy working there.

After 5 years, I finally realized - it's been 5 years and I am still being treated like crap - nothing improved and nothing is ever going to improve. I either stay here for the money (and accept being treated like crap) or I leave and hope that the next job would be better. But there wasn't a third option, there isn't a third option where I stayed and improve the working conditions and relationship with the management - it simply didn't exist and I had to accept the truth that even if I stayed at that company for another 10 years, I would still be treated like crap. So I made the hard decision to go - given that my loyalty was not rewarded in that company and the working conditions never improved, I saw little point in staying when I could be a lot happier doing something else. The opportunity cost of staying had become too great.

What is the opportunity cost of going this way instead of that way?

Gosh, if I couldn't even improve my working conditions in a small company, how is someone like 'Vto PAP' going to take on not just the PAP but the 60.14% of Singaporeans voters who do support the PAP? Time for a reality check here Just how much influence do you think you have - would screaming and shouting on social media change anything? Just because you love your friends and family doesn't mean you are going to get the kind of government you want - there is no correlation between the two. Your love for your friends and family is sweet - but it does little to alter the realities of the political situation in Singapore.

As for our friends and family, that this is something we have to create for ourselves through hard work. I remember when I was back in NS, there was this odd ball who kept to himself and had virtually no friends. He just didn't have the social skills to make friends and was awkward around people. (I'm sure you all know someone like that from work or from school.) Friends don't just happen - you have to make a genuine effort to be nice to someone before they will want to be your friend, you have to invest in that relationship. By that token, it doesn't matter if you a living on the street you grew up on or if you are living halfway around the world, you still have to make that same kind of effort if you want to create a meaningful network of friends in your life. There are Singaporeans who have little/no friends in Singapore because they simply have not made the effort to create that network of meaningful relationships in their lives.

Have you invested in the relationships you value?

So Mr 'Vto Pap' has friends and family in Singapore that love him - that's great,  it's better to have somebody somewhere to love you than to have nobody anywhere to give a shit about you. Let's not take that for granted - gosh, think about the people in this world who do not have friends and family who love and cherish them. So if he wants to be in Singapore to be with the people he loves, great - but do acknowledge that this will come at a price, the same way the fat guy who indulges in cheese cake is paying a price in giving in to his love for cheese cake. Is that fair? Probably not - but then again, whoever said life was fair? Why did the fat guy fall in love with cheese cake rather than something healthy and low-fat like raw carrots or apples?I have to state the obvious here - life simply isn't fair.

As for the actions of our forefathers, I fear that 'Vto Pap' is seeing them through rose-tinted lenses. Oh pullease. Time for a reality check please. Let me quote what he wrote, "Time to contribute, play my part, right the wrongs, live an honest life and have an safe environment for future generations to spout and thrive, just like my forefathers had done." Let me give you a bit of a history lesson here 'Vto Pap' - my parents were born in British Malaya (my dad was born in Johor, my mum in Singapore - but it was all part of the same country then). Singapore as an independent country did not exist until 1965, three of my grandparents were born in China and only my maternal grandmother was born in Singapore. I believe that it is time for a brief history lesson for our dear friend, Mr 'Vto Pap'.

Is 'Vto Pap' seeing our history through rose tinted lenses?

Given that the concept of 'Singapore' as a country didn't exist until well into my parents' adulthood, 'Vto Pap' is at best exaggerating when he refers to his "forefathers" - when it could be at best his parents who contributed to any kind of nation building. And as for his 'forefathers' - did they all spend their lives contributing? Righting wrongs? Living an honest life and creating a safe environment for future generations to spout and thrive? Good grief, is this guy descended from a family of superhero crime fighters? Somehow, I doubt it. Let's take my maternal grandfather for example. His life fascinated me despite the fact that I never met him as he died years before I was born. 

He was born in China and was sold as a child to a rich family where he was kept as a domestic servant by this rich family. As a young man, he was sold as slave labour to Singapore where he had to work off the debt of his passage before he gained his freedom. He then met my grandmother and as if things were not hard enough for my poor grandpa, WW2 broke out and the Japanese rolled into Singapore. He worked on a small farm in Bukit Timah and then after the war, he started a small business - buying and selling items like handkerchiefs, hair clips and other small items. He wasn't a particularly good market trader and times were hard, there was barely enough food on the table and my mother remembered going hungry a lot as a child - in fact she suffered from malnutrition. My grandfather had been sick since the war and he died soon after - my grandmother was then a widow with seven children. Imagine being a widow with seven children to raise, my grandmother had a very hard life too especially after my grandfather's death.

Yes so whilst my grandfather had a very hard life. But did he right wrongs? No he didn't. He wasn't some kind of crime fighter - certainly when the Japanese troops rolled into Singapore, he didn't take up arms and fight the Japanese. He chose not to, unlike the many brave volunteers who put up a very brave resistance against the Japanese onslaught (most of them were killed in the process). Did he live an honest life? Well, there are things I cannot write here, but no he wasn't completely honest - but he did what he had to do to get by during hard times. Did he create a safe environment for future generations? Oh please, he barely put enough food on the table for his family and often they went hungry. And you want to talk about such lofty, noble ideals? Get real. Time for a reality check, please.

If you were descended from someone like Tan Tock Seng or Lim Bo Seng, then fair enough. But most of us have fairly ordinary forefathers who were more concerned about bread and butter issues like paying the bills and putting enough food on the table, rather than any kind of grand acts of charity or nation building. Why is 'Vto Pap' seeing his so-called 'forefathers' through such rose tinted lenses when most of them were ordinary folk like my grandfather who probably had a hard life, struggling to make ends meet and were hardly the kind of noble heroes that 'Vto Pap' tried to make them out to be? My late grandfather wasn't a noble hero, nor was he a bad person - he was just an ordinary person who had a hard life and didn't achieve much. He had the odds stacked against him, he was born poor, he remained poor and he died relatively young due to poor health. Would you consider a man like that a hero?

So in summary: life isn't fair, life is massively unfair, life can suck and it often does. There may be things in life that you do cherish and value but they would often come at a price - so if 'Vto Pap' cherishes his family and friends enough, then he must be prepared to pay the price to live in Singapore and accept the rule of the PAP (who let's face it, are still a legitimately elected government). His reluctant to pay the price suggests that his love for his friends and family may not be as profound as he thought. Instead of confronting that disturbing thought, he is seeing his place in Singapore through rose tinted lenses - it does sound like he needs to sit down and think through this properly instead of simply blaming the PAP for everything. (And I say this as a person who hates the PAP.)

Here's a true story about a simple woman who understood what paying the price to be with her family meant. My sister has a Burmese maid from Myanmar back in 2008 - she had come from a very poor village in the Irrawaddy delta and was happy to be working in Singapore. She had a roof over a head, three meals a day and medical care - these may seem like basic things to most Singaporeans but to a poor maid from Myanmar, she had never had such a comfortable life. Then in 2 May 2008, cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar, causing a death toll over 138,000. The Burmese maid's village was destroyed by the cyclone and she lost many family members - for weeks, we couldn't even get any news from her village given the total devastation of the area. She cried everyday as she feared for the worst.

The Burmese maid was nearing the end of her contract and asked to return to Myanmar - my sister warned her that she would be giving up a relatively comfortable life in Singapore to return to her village which had been destroyed by the cyclone. She would undoubtedly face a very hard life in Myanmar compared to Singapore and my sister offered to renew her maid's contract, but the Burmese maid politely refused. She felt she needed to be with the surviving members of her family and take care of them and as for the hardship in Myanmar after the cyclone - well, that was a price she was willing to pay to be with her family. See? This simple lady understood what it meant to have to pay a price to be with one's family - 'Vto Pap' doesn't seem to grasp that concept. It isn't that complex, really.

So what happened in the fat guy's case? He accepted that it was the cheese cake (along with other sweet treats) that was making him morbidly obese but he didn't want to live a life where he was denied the pleasure of eating what he loved. So against his doctor's advise, he continued eating what he liked, when he wanted and literally ate himself to death as he became morbidly obese. You could say he died happy, doing exactly what he loved most - but more to the point, unlike 'Vto Pap', at least our fat guy understood that there was a price to be paid if he wanted to do what he loved most and he was willing to pay the price. 'Vto Pap' doesn't seem to grasp that concept - can you? Please do let me know by leaving your thoughts in the comments section below, thank you very much for reading.