Anxious about new PSLE?

I have been there done that. I am sure parents will always be anxious about the PSLE to the point that if the government scrapped it they will be anxious there is no PSLE. Government should already be smart about this behavior long ago.

The objective of the new PSLE from the little I have time for is that pupils no longer focus on beating their peers and shift their attention toward getting into the band they are aiming for. This is the same strategy we have been using in this household and I am sure we are not unique. What we have always done is to get the school's record and estimate the bands the kids need to be in in order to move on successfully. Say 70% of their secondary school cohort has 7 distinctions, 30% with 6A1s or better then if they are in the top 20% the chance of them getting into a good JC is very high. Then we repeat the same exercise using the JC past A level performance to target the results we want etc., which by then you want to at least have 4 H2 As.

MOE have simply made it easier for parents what I used to do with my children.

From my experience this new PSLE will for most families reduce academic stress and give them more confidence and time to pursue other interests. But to get rid of PSLE anxiety, forget it. That can only happen if you are a bo-chap parent or do not have any kids.

Change in car policies?

I think there is a smoking gun pointing to a change in government attitude toward car ownership and use here, which is not made known to the public. This first got my attention when they relax loan restrictions for buying new cars, the way they are accommodating industry disrupters like Uber and Grab. Now this.

What does Car-lite mean. To me it means the total number of cars go down but the existing stock of cars are run much harder. It also mean more cars will have more than just someone driving himself about most of the time as well. Eventually the majority of cars would be driverless. The end point is easy to tell but the journey there is much harder. This is tricky business as land transport is a highly politicised topic. I imagine this is best done with a little public interference as much as possible, by stealth if possible.

One of those changes could be a shift from fixing car population like we have seen since the 90s toward targeting prices as a higher priority leading to car population reduction. In other words COE prices will be kept high. Liberalizing car loans and shrinking COE quotas help to bring this about. Allowing Uber, Grab and their wannabes to compete for the same scarce COEs will help to achieve the same result rapidly. Eventually the taxi fleets would become smaller, which is probably helped by drivers quitting.

Car transport is becoming like our meals. We eat out often on plates that we do not own and wash afterward, we will also increasingly be riding in cars that are not registered under our names which we never need to worry about maintaining as well.

Huawei: PRC Chinese different understanding of honesty

Only managed to look at this old email this morning but it stayed with me because I connected it with Jack Ma bad attitude about fake goods sold on Alibaba platforms: he claimed often the fakes are better than the genuine, but the rest of us outside China could tell he has a serious blind spot about intellectual property. But what has that got to do with Huawei P9 phone? The link is blind dishonesty or you don't know you are dishonest. Because it is probably not wrong that the P9 Leica lens could take shots similar to the Canon 5D under certain conditions for certain subjects. To justify the deceit they probably tell themselves most owners probably cannot tell the difference. I am afraid lots of Chinese enterprises have a too practical attitude toward right and wrong. I have bought enough stuff from them off eBay to notice this habit.

To buy from the Chinese you need to know the product well because they will not hesitate to take advantage of your ignorance. Most of them who get a really good deal from the Chinese are the industrial buyers purchasing on specifications and tests for quality assurance.

Negative Surprises with Annuities

Got this in the mail from the Economist this morning which I no longer subscribe. I am sure I can find the same info elsewhere and often there is no need to either or I will end up the whole day reading instead of working. 

Just imagine if they achieve a big leap here and also a couple of major killer diseases. What would happen to life expectancy and how would it affect annuity plans? I think it would be under a lot of financial distress and the possibility of some of them going broke would no longer be theoretical. 

You might not want to work after you reached retirement age, but doing things you enjoy or do not mind and getting paid is going to make more sense. Retirement lasting decades without income is simply fantasy for most people. Even if you have robots to do most of the work, there would be endless argument and even civil war over income distribution. Technology is taking us farther and faster than we know how to handle. Time to prepare by reading some good Scifi which explore moral and social issues. 

Need stronger and more attractive Islam

This war against Islamic Terrorism is not about bodies but ideas and hearts. Many must be shocked to read that the perpetrators of the attack in Dhaka were all youths from affluent families. I suppose they had everything in life except meaning. Pity they didn't have something to worry about keeping them alive searching for answers. Since they were already nominally Muslim, what they failed to receive is a less known peaceful and truer Islam. If you are not a Muslim reading this you won't know what I mean. Myself I only know it not from Islam directly but Christianity. How true Christianity is not as often taught vis a vis Prosperity and Self Help Christianity. At least the Christian versions in this age do not resort to violence, which it once did. I hope we never return to that, but you never know do you?

Look at this, what sort of deviant Buddhism is this? Of all the religions, the commitment to non violence is clear in Buddhism but for the wickedness of man which exists across all religion. These people also need the peaceful and truer Buddhism.

Other pastors waiting to be jailed

One such pastor down, there must be some more to go. They probably know who they are but we don't. Time will expose them and each will have their moment of ignominy in the media. This is nothing exceptional. In Thailand it is the same but they are presented as saffron roped monks. For us it is pastors. How to tell? It is quite easy. Just examine the state of the religious community. If the the pastor presents as a tycoon Christ, live it up Jesus with the regular worship experience modeling on a band concert to match. Jesus as the self help guru perhaps but most important of all the word "SIN" is taboo. God has forgiven your sin past, present and future. There is no need to visit that issue. You see this happening and getting pervasive, they are also making such pastors like this one in the picture.

Then the churches is not where you find God but the door to somewhere else. Where else can it be right?

What is said in court judgement about the pastor and his victim.

In his 39-page judgment, District Judge Shawn Ho said both parties were like "chalk and cheese" - the pastor being "polished and glib" and Mr Tay "sincere, straightforward and artless".

Saving Syrian Refugees: The Canadian Response

NYT brings us a beautiful story! The Canadians tend to offer help from the heart and usually in an understated way. Now they are at it again. Work takes me away from setting aside the time now to read this. This is not something I want to rush through. So this post is a reminder to return and take it a its best pace.

Meanwhile I have found myself often contemplating if I should quit my Straits Times subscription. My siblings already have sometime back. Just buy the papers on weekends should be good enough.

Update: 1:30pm

I just have to read at least part of it. I think I read about 10% and know I have to return another time.