Work in progress.

Some things are broken round here.

  • #downtownlinetragedy Donation Drive to Close Tonight

    Published on July 27, 2012

    The donation drive for last week's #downtownlinetragedy victims will close tonight, Friday, 27 July, at 2359hrs.

    If donations marked “Bugis MRT accident” arrive by cheque after the deadline and includes contact information, TWC2 will email the donor to ask whether he/she would like a refund or if the donation should be put towards the organization’s general fund. Refunds, should you select that option, will be made promptly.

    If however the donation is received after the deadline marked “Bugis MRT accident” but without any contact information, the donation will be accepted into the organization’s general fund.

    Thank you so much, kind souls in Singapore, for showing all of us that Singapore still has plenty of compassion, empathy and dignity.

  • This Morning's Downtown Line Tragedy

    Published on July 19, 2012

    Closure of donation drive: TWC2 will stop collecting donations for the victims of the #downtownlinetragedy tonight (Friday 27 July 2012, 2359hrs). For more information please read this link

    Edit: The Paypal link we previously posted isn't working. To donate via Paypal, please to go the donate page on TWC's website, and click the Paypal icon there.

    Clarification: Questions have been raised in various comments about the commission we mention here. Just to be clear, the commissions are charged by the various online payment platforms. We do not receive a single cent or even come close to looking at it. It's all run through a registered non-profit.

    It is with a heavy heart that I write this post. This morning, we awoke to tragic news that two workers had died while building the Downtown Line in Bugis. They were buried alive by cement while pouring wet concrete into a mould. The scaffolding collapsed. They were stuck in the cement and the rescuers had some difficulty prying their bodies out. Investigations are now saying that the wet concrete was almost as heavy as a swimming pool. (link) Whatever the outcome, and whatever its impact on our labour practices will be, there is simply no other way to put this: these guys came here to build our nation, often at great risk to their lives.

    Singapore is what it is today because of the migrant workers that have built our structures, poured our wet cement while we were sleeping, dug and laid our roads. It was true when it was Samsui women doing that, and it is even more true now that we have migrant workers from China, Mongolia, India, Bangladesh and other countries coming here in droves in search of a better life, offering their services to us at minimal cost and maximum risk.

    As Miyagi said, these guys are doing our national service.

    A bunch of us spent all of this afternoon trying to figure out how we can do our part to help. We spoke with various government ministries, who are doing what they can on their part, and to organizations. The organization Transient Workers Count Too, which promotes equitable treatment for migrant workers in Singapore, stepped in. They've offered to take in donations for the victims. I must stress that as a non-profit registered under the Societies Act with experience in managing and disbursing donations, they have the structures and practices in place that Miyagi, mrbrown and I do not have. If you have queries about the accounting practices and methods of fund disbursement, feel free to reach out.

    In the meantime, what we would like to do is to create an avenue for those of you who want to help to do so. The money goes towards the families of the two deceased workers, as well as to the injured workers who are unable to work while they recover.

    This is how you can donate:

    BY CHEQUE:

    Make a crossed cheque payable to: ‘Tran­sient Work­ers Count Too’, write your name and “Bugis MRT Acci­dent” at the back of the cheque and mail it to: 5001 Beach Road, #06–27 Golden Mile Com­plex, Sin­ga­pore 199588.

    Send an email to info@twc2.org.sg with your name, cheque no., amount and “Bugis MRT Acci­dent”, so that the dona­tion can be prop­erly recorded and a receipt sent to you.

    BY SGGIVES (ONLINE)

    You can donate using your credit card here. A small com­mis­sion is charged by this dona­tion col­lec­tion agency. Under the “Spe­cial Occa­sion / Per­son” field, type “Bugis MRT Accident”.

    BY PAYPAL (ONLINE)

    You can use your Pay­pal account or credit card to donate here (scroll down and click the Paypal button). How­ever, a com­mis­sion of 4% or so is charged on every dona­tion. There is no field for you to input the pur­pose of dona­tion, so it is advis­able to drop twc2 an email after you’ve donated by this method.

    Whatever small amount you can offer goes a long way.

  • Five Questions on the MOE's revised SEd programme

    Published on July 6, 2012

    Singapore's Ministry of Education recently revealed its new sexuality education programme, now called SEd. (Read more about it on: Today Online, MOE's press release, MOE's SEd minisite)

    The abstinence-first message was not surprising. The continued insistence on couching the abstinence-first message in majority/minority, mainstream/fringe terms was, especially after 15 000 people showed up in Hong Lim Park this past weekend to express support for ‘the freedom to love'. Even after removing Pink Dot from the fray, it's a little hard to continue accepting the Ministry's insistence that the only ‘majority' that counts is the one that they view through their policymakers' prisms, with no consultation, data, any form of scientific inquiry or poll.

    Little else seemed new, but for the introduction of ‘new' elements such as the dangers of social networking. The rest of it may be summed up as such: say no to sex until marriage. No surprises there.

    Otherwise, the SEd component that raised the most eyebrows was the rather odd new declaration that "only specially selected teachers whose values align with the ministry's values on sexuality education may teach the Growing Years programme" (link). This was quickly interpreted by the hordes of trolling ‘netizens' (and I say troll in the most endearing way possible) to be: only virgins may teach sexuality education, if unmarried. If married, only those who practised abstinence until marriage can be selected to teach the programme.

    If this was already true and in practice prior to news of the revision, which I suspect it well may be (given the Ministry's dogged pursuit of ‘mainstream values'), the fact that they saw it necessary to spell this out unequivocally points at a worrying sign: the Ministry is moving to align itself on what it is not, rather than what it is. In other words: it never, ever wants to find itself in the unenviable position that it was caught in at AWARE-gate in 2009 (chronology, Economist article).

    That isn't surprising either.

    I'm afraid all this means for our nation is we now have a Ministry of Education that is cowering in fear from (1) unknown, invisible conservative forces who make their demands for mainstream, abstinence-only sexuality education through some unseen magic, but who are definitively in the majority (2) unknown, invisible liberal forces whose demands for comprehensive sexuality education must be quelled, as they are in the minority.

    How much longer before the cookie crumbles?

    The Ministry has limited options. One, continue to sweep everything under the carpet and stick its metaphorical fingers into its metaphorical ears, and tell itself it'll all be okay. Two, take a side. No matter which side it is, it will be ugly. Three, have the moral gumption to look beyond the limited prism of its Guidance Branch and talk to its own teachers in the field about what's going on out there. Word on the street is the teachers (especially the younger teachers) have their hands tied: every so often, a young gay kid (usually depressed) comes to them seeking help, and there is nothing they can do to help them in a professional capacity because they're not in the right department, qualified to speak on the matter, or allowed to step over the line where they can acknowledge their gayness and tell them it'll be okay. It's not like these teachers don't know how to handle the matter — they have gay friends, or are gay themselves, not that they'd ever say so, because they can't.

    Abstinence has not worked anywhere. What makes the Ministry think it can make it work here?

    Through this announcement, the Ministry hopes to avoid fire from all sides, but instead barrels itself further into an unenviable position. By hardly making a stand, it will never be conservative enough for our conservatives, and never progressive enough for those of us who would like to see change.

    Until the Ministry can elucidate further on the following points, this project is doomed: what is the long list of mainstream values? It keeps referring to mainstream values, but keeps us guessing. It's clear what sort of stand the Ministry of Education wants to take on this matter. Why won't they come out and say so? That their long list of mainstream values revolve around heterosexuality and abstinence? By being vague about the very thing that is meant to be the cornerstone of their programme, they're not doing themselves any favours. What are these mainstream values and by what measure are the specially selected teachers… selected for these values?

    I will watch this story unfold with much anxiety, with just five questions:

    1. What exactly are the mainstream values that the Ministry requires its teachers to have, and on what basis and characteristics are these teachers selected? Who makes the final decision to select them in every school?

    2. How are the (at least ten) ‘specially-selected and MOE-trained teachers' selected and trained? Parents in particular will appreciate having the contents of the special training curriculum shared with them, such that they may be kept aware of the latest developments in their students' knowledge of sexuality education.

    3. Who are the 12 external vendors which have been approved for this year, and in what way will they provide supplementary programmes? Parents ought to be kept aware of the types of activities that are available, and be clearly informed if and when these vendors have any direct or indirect religious affiliations.

    4. How are ‘fringe cases' handled? As with any other form of education, certain students may require special attention and education. Are these specially-trained teachers equipped to provide access to a further set of comprehensive sexuality education information and materials on demand, or provide access to educators who can?

    5. How will the specially-trained teachers in each school be assessed? Who will they report to, at school and at the Ministry? What are the KPIs?

  • Departing Thoughts

    Published on July 2, 2012

    1. I must watch too many scifi movies. I'd rarely been convinced of the malleability of time, but these days I measure out everything in two-week units. Time seems to race ahead of me. It always has, now more than before.

    2. When I say these days, I don't mean it facetiously. Yes, I turn just 27 in a couple of months, but I feel old, cranky and grumpy most of the time, especially around younger people. This must be what growing old feels like at first, not with a bang but with a grumpy whimper.

    3. I must tell my endocrinologist about my worsening memory loss problems. If only I didn't keep forgetting. I will set it as a Reminder in my iPhone, and tell it to alert me when I enter the hospital. I must also set another one to remind me of the same thing as I'm leaving the hospital, because… I really worry that I'm losing my mind.

    4. Walking away is hard. One would think you'd get used to it, after having done it so many times, but it doesn't get any easier. It sounds base, but it's when you pack up an apartment with all your physical possessions into many, many boxes and bags, and load them into the back of a car at 5am, that seems to be when reality bores into your thick, numb skull. I'll remember next time.

    5. Life has taken on an interesting turn. I've had to scale back on life and ambition in some ways, because I literally cannot remember things, and physically cannot do some of those things. I've undoubtedly become a new convert to the "quality of life" school of thought when it comes to work. That part I'm scaling up on.
      Some new favourite lifehacks: putting my phone on Airplane mode and not turning it on until I get to work, not checking email until I get to work, bringing a book to read in the bus so I spend more time reading books than email, reading and buying more physical books than ebooks, doing things differently (like buying an orange notebook instead of a black one), making it a point to take the women of my family out to lunch every Monday, among other things. All of it sounds trivial now that I write it down, but I'm also at that point in my life where I favour incremental, trivial changes over the huge coming-at-you-with-a-mack-truck changes I used to favour (mostly of the "I'm leaving the country for an indefinite period!" variety)…

    6. I've started making some tentative steps back into the world of meeting and dating interesting people. There have been many interesting people. But. c.f. point #2: I'm just older and grumpier these days, so you can imagine how that's going.
      Also, I have transformed into a crazy dog lady whose primary concern in life for the next 110 days is to spend as much time with her quarantined dog as she possibly can. I feel about as attractive as anybody who smells of dog kennels most of the time can be.

    7. Singapore has been really good to me since I came home. In some ways it feels like I never really left. I'm surrounded by incredible people in my industry who inspire me and others; I'm around people who really do walk the talk. It may or may not be naive optimism inspired by my homecoming, but I am so excited by what I see around me now in Singapore. My calendar of projects and events has filled up at a good pace. At this point, I have a just nice amount on my plate. It helps.

    8. The hardest part about breaking up with anybody is walking away from the memories of what you once wanted to accomplish together. I may feel like I'm losing my mind and my memory, but this isn't one of those that I've lost.

    If only it were.

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