Year in Review- The Year of Living Precariously.

In a couple of days, we’ll all be done with 2007. If there’s anything memorable about it, it will be remembered as the year of insane price increases. Every single day, you woke up wondering what the hell was going to be next. While most other countries are wondering what storm or hurricane is going to hit next, every singaporean is wondering what price hike is going to hit next. If there was nothing in the papers, you basically kneeled down and thank your 18 previous generation of ancestors that you lived to fight another day.

Today I was browsing through the ST and I can’t help but wondered if ST was actually written and published in an alternate dimension where nothing bad ever happens to singapore. The singapore that is written about in the pages of the ST sure as hell don’t seem like the singapore that I am living in. Their year in review basically contains glowing articles about the wonderful economy and how every singaporean are basically lying on a bed filled with money. Meanwhile in the real world, everyone and their grandmother is struggling to deal with the soaring inflation. Just about the only people who has something to smile about are the millionaire ministers with their 8 month bonuses and 21% pay hike.

Earlier in the year, when parliament was in session, the only things I remembered being changed is that you can’t hire a private investigator to snoop on a MP without applying for a permit first and that striking an MP in singapore could net you some serious time in jail. Besides that it was more infringment on your right to privacy in the form of doing a blood test on you if you go to the hospital. And of course, the usual talk about regulating the internet. Meanwhile some US marine could come and beat your ass until you bleed internally in your eye and make a dent on your car that is shaped like you and the only thing the police can tell you is that its a non seizeable offence. What it actually means in layman’s terms is “tough luck dude, its not our fucking business, but if you were an MP, we would’ve shot him on the spot.”

Meanwhile the bread and butter issues remains unanswered as the crazy inflation resembles an 800 pound gorilla sitting in your living room that no one talks about. Its there, but all the MP and ministers are seemingly oblivious to it. I shuddered to think about what the low income families has to deal with everyday.

I know I didn’t vote for none of these fuckers, so maybe it kind of justifies them not doing a damn thing for me, but if you voted for them the last election, I guess you must be feeling pretty foolish by now. Its a given of course, prices were all going to jump after the election, but not even the smartest and most clairvoyant of us expected this. Whatever official figures they gave us, double it and that’s the real figure you get for inflation.

For millionaires and supposedly world class talents, these people seems remarkably bad at maths and numbers. You’d think that with the millions of dollars they’ve “earned” , they would be quite good with numbers.