Virus

If a Human Battery, retrenched and in his 50s, approach you one day, and ask you to recommend him what job to apply, would you tell him to go drive a taxi?

Don't.

He won't qualify!


联合早报. 今日观点. 2007-03-28
申请德士执照的困惑 - 何镜强

　　友人50岁出头，不幸的给公司裁了，以这年龄要找一份适合的工作是非常困难的。为了自救，就想考取一张德士执照，希望自雇能干活到70几岁。

　　但问题是他去申请时，才知道上课和考试全以英语进行，那就是一个很大的障碍了，因为他是上世纪受纯华文教育，只会说一点生活上的英语，至于书写、阅读和理解就不能应付了！

　　关于德士行业，只要对条规熟悉，道路熟悉，能听懂路名，基本上就能胜任了，当然驾驶一定要小心。

　　既然新加坡面临年长者的难于觅职的切实问题，那恳请主管德士的机构能对语文这一要求稍微放松，以中文教导一些不谙英语的年长工友，或在课本和考题上中英并用，让他们自立。以华文教导应该不会影响德士业的水平，毕竟驾德士是自雇的，他们在从事这行业时，必定会尽力的做好本份。

　　这一来，一些年长失业者也多了一个选择，多一个机会自救！请有关当局帮帮忙！

Non-literal summary: "Nowadays, if you cannot read and write in English, you cannot even take the taxi-licencing exam, conducted 100% in English. How can be like that? Many of our retrenched 50 years old cannot read or write in English. But they can speak and understand simple English. Isn't it good enough for them to be able to take a passenger from one location to another? Why be so unreasonable, force them to take written english exam and deprive these people of an option to self-help..."


This is the consequence of having an artificially-created caste system where the elite ruling class grows up in an exclusive school environment due to repeated streaming at multiple levels. Their classmates, classmates' parents, friends, friends' parents etc come mostly from the same background as them.

When these elites become policy maker straight after obtaining their foreign university education on elite scholarships, they don't understand that the people they had mixed around during their school days is not representative of the larger society at all!

Therefore the needs of those who cannot speak English never enter their mind. They cannot imagine the predicament and great difficulties these people face everyday.

They do not even know of the existence of a large number of human batteries who cannot read or write in English: "Got such people on this Island meh? Cannot be wat, all my friends and their parents can speak English, even if broken"!

They do not know that these people, in fact, are a majority, the silent majority - human batteries who have eyes but cannot read, who have ears but cannot hear, who have mouth but cannot speak! Human Batteries who live like foreigners who cannot comprehend the natives' language, even though they are in their own country!

That's why we need politicians who are attuned to the people's needs, who are from the masses, who are commoners! While the best civil servant may well be defined as an academically intelligent person who can analyse issues well and come up with various solutions, the best politician is one who can understand his people's constraints and needs well, such that from among these many policies, he can sieve through and pick one which will serve his people best! This precisely is the one thing that separates a politician from a civil servant:.

And in Singapore's context, the more academically elite a person is, the more frog-in-the-well his education experience is, and the less suitable he is to be a politician!

So yes, we want the best politicians. But the best politicians is not the super-academic type that supposedly can only be enticed to enter politicis by millions of dollars. Let these academically-bright people be bankers, or entrepreneurs, or be in academia, and let the private sector pays them millions of dollars. It's good for the economy.

Citizens should vote for the best politicians based on how "in tune" they are with the commoners. Such politicians can be ordinary folks doing ordinary jobs such as taxi drivers, actors (Ronald Reagan was one) etc - jobs which allow them to come across people from all segments of the society, and which broadens their understanding of the people's needs and constraints. Such politicians do not require millions to employ and they make great politicians, as we have seen in many western countries with real democracy. (Such politicians will have academically bright civil servants working for them, remember?)

But alas, human batteries have taken too much red pills: they vote for politicians based on which politicians has more brain!

These gullible human batteries are allowing virus to spread all over our beautiful Matix Island - human viruses who demand and demand until every bit of our money is consumed!

Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.