Dear Sir/Mdm,

I am in opinion that the remarks on the NKF issue made by the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) in their newsletter are uncalled for. However, I could not help but wonder if the decision taken by the Prime Minister and Minister Mentor to litigate against the company that printed the newsletter would deter vendors from working with other law-abiding opposition parties in the future. It is noteworthy that the said company, Melodies Press Company, has ceased to do any further work for the SDP according to a letter of apology issued to both the PM and MM.

Whilst I concur with MM Lee that no government will help the opposition to displace itself, we must also be mindful not to penalise or stifle the voices of other law-abiding opposition parties through this incident lest we will never have a “first world opposition”.

Not published, by the way. Wrote this last week and got rejected by Today, again!

It is heartening to know that most people treat animal abuse with contempt, as evident from the plethora letters written in to the Straits Times Forum. If you have been like my friend, who is oblivious to anything beyond the scope of his medical text, a man was recently convicted of toturing a six-week-old kitten by rubbing its eyes and beating its head. Apparently, the injuries were so severe that the kitten had to be put to sleep (link, isn’t it sad that Singaporeans have to resort to India Times after the commercialisation of ST Online).

Some, like Dawn, Director of Operations, Cat Welfare Society, noted that CWS is pleased with the sentence meted out to this sick man while others like Ms Tini Abdul thinks that the sentence is way too light. I think we’ve made some progress since 1997, when it took CJ Yong Pung How to overrule a magistrate court verdict and hand down a one-month jail term on a 31-year-old who beat his neighbour’s dog to death. The day where we are able to treat animal abuse with the same severity as human abuse is one where we can truly call ourselves a civilised society.

So most people disagree with animal abuse, but just what are animals? Are they just cute and fluffy domesticated creatures like cats and dogs? I don’t know why people get all uptight and disgusted about people eating dog and cat meat but are fine with feasting on chickens, ducks, pigs, cows, sharks and what not. It seemed as if some animals are made to be eaten while others are not. Why the distinction, I can’t comprehend.

Xiaxue wrote an entry a while back on how her mum “prepares” a crab for cooking. Most of us would have been familiar with this gruesome process, but try it on a cat and you are labelled an animal abuser and could be subjected to the wrath of our law. I vividly recall my first cooking lesson in Home Econs class back in Secondary 1 where we had to cut a piece of chicken meat. I was pretty traumatised by the whole event – having to hold a piece of slimey raw meat and slice it up into pieces. I thought all mothers must be pretty brave to be able to endure all that and cook for us. Perhaps, it was partly why I gave meat up 5 years later.

A few years ago, I sold flags for SPCA for my college’s compulsory community service. At the end of the 3-hour community service, we returned our donation cans back to SPCA volunteers who happened to be feasting on a cocktail of chicken, pork and sotongs. Ironically, SPCA’s motto was “Be Kind to Animals”. In my brief meeting with Dawn from CWS, I learnt that she gave up meat as well after realising how inane it sounds to call yourself an animal lover and feed on them (ok, that’s animal lover in another sense). The point is, most of us are already inured to the sufferings of most animals. A handful of them are lucky enough to be classified as non-edible while most of them just end up on our dinner tables.

Why the double standard, I can’t understand.

Singaporean educators sure have a tough job. I mean, they’ve got to conduct spot checks on handphones and endure through gruesome sex flicks of their students (she made it to Wikipedia?!), scruntinize their students’ blogs to see if they’re being flamed online (and send them for public flogging after that), conjure impromptu and bombastic tirades on sly, crafty old rats who refuse to hand up assignments (and tearing up the the subpar ones after that, of course).

I mean, can you imagine having to do all that all the time while trying to fulfill your main job as a teacher? And just when you thought that’s all our poor educators have to do, The New Paper ran a featured story (“Punishment strips students of dignity”, Saturday, March 4, 06) today on teachers who ordered school girls to take off their coloured bras (and attend the rest of the school day without any) as a punishment for wearing a non-white bra!

According to the school’s principal, the rationale was because they “were concerned with the development of good values in our youth” and “[The school] would like their students to develop a sense of decorum and modesty”!

Noble aspirations, dear Principal. I’m sure all our school girls will become decorous fair ladies under your insightful and wise leadership. I fully agree that protruding nipples through translucent white blouses are much less distracting than coloured bras. The male teachers and students will also be able to concentrate better in classes with your policy. Thank you very much for protecting our young and naive children’s modesty.

Hey, I also read that the bras that were confisticated were never returned to these students. Some schools even have their prefects stash those evil bras away in a box at the prefects’ room. I wonder what do they do with those bras? Auction them off over eBay or just for perfuming the room with the “aroma” of the owners’ perspiration? Whatever it is, I’m very sure my children will be in safe hands with a group of ever-vigilant and hardworking teachers in future.

The report noted that it is not identifying the school as “they do not want to embarass the girls any further”. I am not quite sure about that – about embarassing the girls or the school, that is. I mean, if I’m a girl at the school, I’ll be damn happy to let everyone (and MOE) know about my wonderful school and principal. Must reward our educators for their efforts in inculcating decorum and modesty in our young children, mah!

I’m not exactly sure what to feel about Business Schools in general, but most would conjure images of happy, carefree, 3-day study week students hanging out at movie theatres when their engineering counterparts are slogging away in school. Students who have had enough of Science-based education, ‘A’ level graduates who are absolutely clueless on what to do in university and the gullibles who are sold on a course with hunks and babes all jump on the business bandwagon. All is good and well, but what exactly is the focus of business schools?

Being the time of the year again, universities are once again aggressively promoting themselves to prospective undergrads with full page advertisements, MRT posters and what not. Notably, NUS Business School (NUSBS) has been particularly aggressive this year, putting up full page advertisements with arbitrary charts and figures in an attempt to downplay their competitors. I saw an advertisement by NUSBS on Today that showcased what was probably their finest graduates; a Manager at KPMG, a Wealth Management Associate at Citigroup, a Product Manager at Maybank, a System Analyst at Prudential and a Research Analyst at Euromonitor International. SMU, for another instance, takes pride in that all their graduates land themselves a job within 6 months, with more half securing one before graduation (TODAY, February 17 2005). Sure, many of them work for big MNCs and probably draw a large paycheck, but is that all that is to business education?

“In America, if you work for a large company for a long time, people ask why. In Singapore, if people leave a large company, people ask why. This is a huge difference.” – Guy Kawasaki

To be fair to these schools, there are evidently a handful of enterprising students out there that had ventured out of their comfort zone and challenged the traditional notion of a successful career – the white-collar worker that works from 9 to 5, draws a handsome paycheck and drives a company car. Unfortunately, few must have been able to make it big enough to be recognised and mentioned by their alma maters in their recruitment efforts to attract prospective business students.

“As I look out before me today, I don’t see a thousand hopes for a bright tomorrow. I don’t see a thousand future leaders in a thousand industries. I see a thousand losers. What can you expect? Loser. Loserhood. Loser cum laude.” – Alleged commencement address given by Larry Ellison to Yale’s Class of 2000 Full Transcript

Business schools need to rethink and reinvent themselves. Are they proud of merely churning out first-class honours graduates that will eventually have their paychecks signed by former classmates that have dropped out of university? Are they doing enough to encourage entrepreneurial activities within their students or are they satisfied with featuring their graduates in stable white-collar jobs? Should our efforts in promoting entrepreneurship stop at a superficial level of business plan competitions? Granted, while the idea of the inculcating entrepreneurship in Singaporeans might sound as quixotic as running campaigns for courteous driving, the current climate of business school is aggravating and perpetuating the very problem that it ought to solve.