A Singaporean In Australia

One of my favourite Minister of parliament is Mr Lim Swee Say. Over the years, he entertained the Singapore public with cute stories using small animals such as the Mouse that Barks like a Dog® and Deaf Frogs®. He was also the master behind the mind of cool slogans such as "Upturn the downturn™" and "Cheaper, Better, Faster™".  Everyone loves Mr Lim.

I can tell stories of cute animals too, though not as good as Mr Lim. Let me share a very unoriginal story about rats and cats.

Once upon a time, a little town was infested with rats and the Mayor didn't know what to do with them. One day, the Mayor saw a hungry street cat pounced on a rat and gobbled its prey up. Immediately he recognised the solution to the problem and brought in 100 cats from the neighbouring villages to aid his cause of exterminating the rat problem in his town.

It worked. The population of rats were significantly reduced within 1 week. The cats had nothing to feed on but they received plenty of food as reward. Soon the cats became lazy and refused to catch mice and the population of rats multiplied to the original number again.

Moral of the story: While applying solutions is a good quick fix to the problem, it is crucial not to overlook the root cause of the problem.

Let me now share an original story you're very unlikely to have heard it elsewhere before.

Years ago, an Ah Gong in Singapore loved greenery and thought, "How nice if I can turn the country into a Garden City." NParks was established and the rest was history.

Ah Gong loved Rain Trees (Samanea Saman) and they planted many many of these trees all over Singapore, particularly noted along the stretch ECP from Changi Airport to East Coast Park. Along with many other species of trees planted, Singapore established its unique reputation as the Garden City in the span of 2 decades.

Soon, it was decided that it was too expensive to plant and maintain trees in Singapore. The new strategy would be importing 'instant trees' from Malaysia and other countries. These trees grew much faster and could perform their duties such as providing shade, oxygen and beauty to the environment in no time. But there were drawbacks with these trees. As instant trees they had a much shorter lifespan and a more serious problem, these trees were susceptible to inappropriate planting which causes the root ball not to develop as well as normal trees thus many instant trees were not anchored as strongly as trees which were grew from saplings.

As a result, trees were regularly uprooted during bad weather, occurrences that was rare in the past. NParks had to double up on tree inspections to spot weaker trees and removed them before more could create problems during another bad weather streak.

Moral of the story: Humans, like trees, are better grown and nurtured than imported.


Combine the morals of both stories that's basically what I think is really wrong with Singapore's priorities today.