Chionging vivo with wj, gracia and jes was quite fun! And we managed to watch nancy drew, despite the fact that i nearly fell asleep during the pre-movie adverts. Sheesh, that was like one of the LONGEST adverts i had to watch pre-movie. GV must be hard-up for money. Do potential advertisers noe that pple hardly pay attention to the advertisements unless they're for the upcoming movie? Stop wasting ur money idiots!

And I hereby judge that Jumbodog or Superdog (whatever it's name is) has much better chilli fries than those at Carl's Juniors, which taste like a meat paste dumped over Macdonald limp fries. Soggy and disgusting. Bleargh.

I saw a nice grey skirt at River Island, with cute buttons at the waistband. However, it looks too poofy and short on me to be elegant. yes, long legs have their problems sometimes too...oh wells, but it looked good on the racks and i'm sure my hot date would agree with me.

We all agreed yday that Transitlink is moronic. Which idiot would put the expiry date of our jc ezlink cards one month before we get our uni transitlink card? By that action, we are forced to go purchase a new one which costs $15- since there is a non-refundable deposit, the card essentially costs $8, which blatantly screams daylight robbery. Some pple high up in the bureaucracy has a lack of brains. Severe lack thereof in fact.

Anyway, what's with the deal of trying to make politicians appear hip and cool? I read about the rockclimbing feat to be attempted by some MPs this sat at orchard. It's just one of those gestures to make them appear to be "one of us", and not stuck-up fops placed on a high pedestal. But seriously, I would rather have an MP who can get things done and fight RIGHTEOUSLY for the people, rather than a hip one who's only good at planting trees, or rather one that comes ard once every 5 years when it's election time to shake hands, which happens to be what my MP does. Seriously, anyone can hit a gong, cut ribbons or plant trees. He doesn't need to be paid $100 000 or more to do that.

Frankly, I would really like to see the people's point of view voiced out loud and clear in political debates. Sometimes I get the feeling that every policy implemented is just out of macro-economic reasons for Singapore's survival (at least that's what the official line is; whether it's true or not, we all know better) but the people's interests are overlooked or perhaps given too little importance. Take GST hike for example, students like us have no remuneration from the govt yet we have to bear the GST hike all the same.

More importantly, such a drastic (and unwarranted in my opinion) hike in the civil service pay for top honchos is not necessary to attract or retain talent. Firstly, I do not want money-grabbing, self-promoting people leading my country but rather people who are willing to serve because they feel the need to serve. Secondly, we should instead examine why there is such a high turnover rate in the civil service rather than just throw money at pple in order to retain them. It could be the bureaucracy existing in the civil service, or perhaps an inflexible working environment that make them feel restricted.

In fact, from an economic point of view, by offering artificially high prices to attract labour into the civil service, the labour market is distorted and the labour is receiving a high transfer payment (if i got the term right). Moreover, if a labour can be more productive in a private sector, by artificially altering its value, it will then go to its next best alternative, which is the public sector and we have in fact a misallocation of resources.

But of course, what's done is done and there is nothing we can do about it, even now, or rather, especially now.

Posted by -sherv- at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments