A Singaporean In Australia

Wah. Damn it. Whenever I make a joke about Christians the yolk will end up on my face, every single time. I wonder which church Peter Yu went to. You know you want a piece of that. After all, it gave him

See, being Christian is great and I stand corrected. He is courageous enough to be interviewed and reveal his noobish taxi driving record so far, using our legendary $7,000 a month Hasnor Hashim as the gold standard of course. If Peter works 30 days a month, he'll take in $4,500. That's only 65% of the benchmark. To be honest, that's not bad at all but you know Singaporeans lah, we will be normally shy to tell everyone we got a 65% in our exams if we know the bloody nerd freak next class got a 100%.

Whenever a journalist reports a piece of new, I believe he or she should ask this question: Who benefits? I don't know who really benefits from this. It's a subtle attempt to calm the public down, assuring their taxi drivers are earning well enough to support a family. Bear in mind, taxi drivers is one of our Big 4 vocations, namely Security guard, Mc Donald's, Recycling agent, Taxi driver (SMRT) that Singaporeans would take up at their last resort. So that makes our first few resorts seem a lot more rosy doesn't it, if the last resort doesn't sound that bad.

It benefits the Christian church for sure. After the City Harvest scandal, recruitment must be a tough thing for all churches across Singapore. Ah, now the recruiters can show this piece of news and say, "Want wife? (showing a picture of Serena Wee), join us lah!" before continuing on with the 10 folds, 20 folds, 100 folds bullshit. Singapore bachelors will soon be swarming to the church nearest to you.

Does Peter benefits from this? I'm not sure why Peter Yu agreed to sell his piece of story to the prostitute press. He probably did not get money (or much) for that. Perhaps knowing his ex-wife well enough, he knows that it will drive her mad to know that he now lead a happy life with his new family. So much win for him if so.

Did Singaporeans benefit from this? Well we can't expect every piece of tabloid to be beneficial or educational to us. However can we expect more responsible reporting? I think they just slammed another nail into the taxi drivers on the street. Hop on to a cab soon and ask, "Eh uncle, you earn $4,500 a month ah?" and see what responses you'll get. Or ask James [link] the Taxi Driver Blogger. Read about how he failed to break even on bad nights and then consider the fact it isn't likely he can make $400 another day to make up for it. Come on, do we still need blatant lies to hoodwink the general public?