A Singaporean In Australia

Legend has it that Singapore experienced terrible floods in the ancient days. Then the heroes in white came along and rallied their resources to fortify the village with a chain of wide channels as a defence so as to fight the flood demons. It worked. The victory, together with other legendary deeds, put the ancient leaders right on top of the perch acclaimed as heroes. The song of heroes continues to serenade the people, while the radiant aura of their statues illuminates their shady successors, who would be hiding in shadows otherwise in their vampic undead dogs form.

Oh really, are they giving up already? Knowing how the government sector operates, when the top dog says 

go, the rest of the pack will hound the target without question. Under the SOP, no rationality or common sense is necessary. Just follow, get the meat bone and go back to the kennel to savour it until the very next day. So when the CEO of PUB did the opposite and told Singaporeans to shove their flash floods complains up their own asses, let's imagine what is going to happen to the rest of the PUB team.

I think Mr Chew Men Leong should at least try a bit more, considering he wasn't the top, top dog around. Didn't the other bigger, shaggier, and furrier one plagued the country with his toxic, "Cheaper, Better and Faster," mantra sometime back? Chew was not being a very obedient subject for not trying to be better. I hope he doesn't run into the shaggy dog in the back street someday for he will have to hide his tail between his legs and cringe when Shaggy snarls, "Other than best, there is still bester and besterest!" while he cleans the gap of his molars with the toothpick he stole from Ding Tai Fung.

Chew should at least humor Singaporeans by providing us honest statistics depicting Singapore experiencing much higher rainfall in recent years, as well as the current volume of rainwater our drainage systems can handle, and justify why the PUB team is unable to solve the flash floods unless we increase our drainage volume. Period. Is that too much to ask from an engineer? Perhaps it is, if that engineer came from the SAF. Nothing good ever happened to a department headed by an ex-military personnel, this bias from the general public is fast becoming a reinforced wall of truth, with Chew just added another brick to the mix.

Is there any untold reason why Chew could not justify the flash floods? In any case it is the responsibility of any civil servant to tell the public the truth. As a Singaporean, I believe there is no truth so bitter than we cannot swallow. We are even prepared for a day where we are told that there is no more money in our CPF account so what are a few construction mistakes? Truth, rectification and move on. That's all we need, not the kind of hoodwinking efforts of coining terms like "ponding" by the PUB team or "No amount of engineering prevent floods" by one of the fallen heroes.