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Thursday, June 21, 2007

Mac Donald's ! ~ The Retirement Haven!!


For those who are still lost ...please read this http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/283363/1/.html


Now, can you imagine a newscaster at the age of 65 on TV still going strong and reporting with the wrinkles of experience...hmm...i know one group of people who will definitely have their cash registers ringing...the plastic surgeons!


Everyone will now make the extra effort to look like 40 so that they can stay employed at 65! That is if people can get a job at 40 in this place. And i guess there will be more frequent visits to the bone doctor to get things oiled!Haha!


Hmm...think about it... We will have a battalion of Uncles and Aunties working at Mac Donalds ~ The Retirement Haven! armed with degrees and all the papers you can think of, asking punks if they want to upsize their meals while wearing alien green ears as part of the cheezy branding exercise! (GOD! We might even be those Uncles and Aunties if we mess up with our retirement plans!!)


Well...in the ever-so Singaporean fashion of 'Numbers must always be rising'...like ministers' pay, gst, postage, mrt fare, taxi fare,coe, erp gantries and all...the retirement age will not stop rising...Was 55, then 62 ..now maybe 65 and who knows by 2015, will be 80!


You see the problem is...we are not dying ...with the better healthcare...it's getting tough to hit the graves!And i think the people who are coming up with this retirement policy mambo jambo...are basing part of their research on life expectancy on one particular golden citizen who promises to rise from the dead to get the work done!! See not all of us are quite prepared to do that...some of us still stick to the R.I.P culture.


So some of us might not live to be 65 and enjoy our CPF drawdown entitlements. Irony, isnt it? We are not entitled to use the money we have toiled for our entire lives coz there is a law governing how we can use our own money...


Well..i have lots more to say about this but i shall save it for part 2 of Mac Donald's!~The Retirement Haven!!

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Purplerose @ 8:32 AM |  0 Comments

Sunday, June 17, 2007

FATHER'S DAY...


I have very mixed feelings about this day...I hate the fact that it's been commercialised to such great lengths.Why does it now seem that we only remember to love our dads on this one day and forget to bother about them for the rest of the year?... The sales and specials have made such a mockery of the love for parents especially in Singapore...


But save for this day, I know a group of fathers who are eternally grateful to have the chance to hug their little kids and spend a few hours with them. We did a project with the Prisons yesterday, to celebrate Father's Day. A very heartwarming one...the first-ever father's day celebration in prisons.


Operations aside, it was a heartwarming sight. Children who only got to write letters to their fathers and see them during holidays were given the rare opportunity to hug their fathers and make teddy bears with them and stay in their arms for the rare few hours. I saw one who was trying to get the father's attention. She had two other siblings and was the youngest. And she was like "Daddy, daddy see!" pointing to her little bruise on her knee, she was trying to get his attention and she did. I had a little lump in my throat when i saw that. She was less than 10 and probably pined for such attention.


We learnt from the dad later that his kids and wife were so excited to have been given a chance to celebrate together after many years a Father's Day.The kids kept writing to him to ask if indeed the program was confirmed. I almost shed a tear when i heard that. I can only imagine the misery they go through having to live away from their loved ones. Probably that's the harsher punishment compared to the confinement of the 3 walls and bars by law.


But I also have to salute the women, their wives, who are still willing to give these men a second chance and to raise the kids single-handedly without the father as the head of the family. Anyone knows it's not easy, takes alot of guts. Some had 4 kids, all very young. And some had to continue serving sentences for as long as 4 years. I did a brief calculation and realised one family had lost their father to prisons when the youngest child was only 4 years old and she's now 9 and will still be 'without' a father till she's 13.


I wondered how her mother copes with the raising of the family alone and how she used to have to answer questions like "Where's papa, ma?", "My friends all have fathers, where is mine, Ma?". I felt pity for the children. Did they deserve this? And that caused a strange dilemma, on one hand i was feeling sorry for the fathers who were in prison and on the other, angry at the fathers for not giving a second thought before committing their crime. I know i am being judgemental here but well, i just pity the children and the wives, who have to be 'imprisoned' too by society and have to pay for the crime that was committed.


But I guess this is part of how the world works. No one is perfect and a lesson should be learnt from this. It takes a lot for a family to stick together, and we should learn to appreciate each family member, beyond the commercialised days and never take our family bonds for granted. For sometimes, it gets too late to show the love u have for someone and u regret and pine for such opportunities.


Happy Father's Day, Daddy...I love you!!





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Purplerose @ 2:01 AM |  0 Comments

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