Ian On The Red Dot

Whine Whine Whine. Singaporeans only know how to whine.

You want cheap housing. Move to Malaysia lah. There everything damn cheap. But see their roads, see their lighting. See how dirty their streets are. See how dirty their estates are.

You want cheap, fuck off lah.

Stop before you get angry with me because I also get dulan when I hear that argument above.

I seriously don’t care what is it like overseas. Want to compare, can compare until the cows come home also cannot find winner.

You got big guns, I got bigger wingspan. I win.
(I think only Singaporeans who were in primary school during the eighties might get the reference)

I remember a rather heated discussion I had with my father (who of all people should actually be agreeing with me) when I stated that I believe HDB flats were expensive and getting more expensive and that the government were doing the people an injustice with the current system of pegging to market rates (or whatever it is they use to justify the prices).

I also said we didn’t own the flat. Sure, I could eventually ’sell’ ‘my flat’ (actually I am selling the lease agreement) for more than I paid for it but does that mean I own the flat? Nope.

A useful analogy would be to think of a flat as the stock and what we actually own, when we pay HDB, as an option. I really wonder how the market would react as HDB flats start edging nearer to the end of the 99 year lease.

Or how the government would drop a bar of soap, ask us to turn around, and bend over. To get fuck. Again.

My parents grew up in a time when staying in a place that looks as decent as a HDB flat in a sanitized environment like our HDB estates seemed like a luxury.

They grew up knowing what kampongs and slums were. I can understand how what we have now is an improvement over what they had then.

And maybe, maybe, in the innocence of our nation’s birth, the HDB was really doing the people a service, to give us a better place to live.

But now, I think my parents and people of their generation who give the younger ones advice on how to cope (mind you, not live joyfully and meaningfully) with the changes are blinded to how the government has become a corporation that sees the citizens as purely economic entities to be bled dry for every dollar that is possible (without real blood being spilled).

My father’s very useful advice to me – ‘Earn more loh. Then can afford.’

I never really understood the scam we citizens of a nation allow ourselves to be in. I never understood the abusive relationship we allow ourselves to be in with the government.

It is almost like this:

Man beats wife. Wife cries. Man beats wife again. Wife cries. Man gives wife diamond ring. Wife thinks man is the best husband in the world.

Wife says, ‘He has his moments. I stay for those.’

We are citizens of this nation. Collectively, we own the land. The government just manages it for us. They take it, build whatever shit they want on it, and charge overpriced amounts for it.

The argument that there isn’t enough land in Singapore is bullshit.

1. I have been to NS. I KNOW THE AMOUNT OF LAND WE HAVE. We aren’t exactly facing scarcity there.
2. We are building up and down. Not sideways.

The abusive relationship has got to stop. This is my land. My nation. The government are just caretakers. They (the people who MANAGE HDB) should not be allowed to do whatever they want to maximize the profit of OUR LAND so that they can GIVE THEMSELVES big bonuses.

Something is broken and we have to fix it.

On a further more personal note:

Personally, I do not want to buy a HDB flat because I don’t want to be part of this vicious system. But I do want to get married and my gf is the kind of person who doesn’t seem to see the importance of this issue. More importantly, she is exactly the kind our government and HDB prey on – the kind who worries that the system will just race onwards without us and HDB prices will just go up and up and up and we will never have a place to stay, unless we spend even more on a private place (which incidentally, the government can also capriciously just take from you at rock-bottom prices).

It is this inability to remove yourself from the subjugation of the state that I do not want to have children. I refuse to contribute another modern day slave to this world.

Of course, my gf just thinks i think too much.