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Singapore has a way of really milking a milestone. It seems like just yesterday that corporations, small brands, even hawkers, were jumping on the bandwagon to partake in the giant publicity stunt that was SG50. The nation as a whole has barely recovered from it, and 2019 is quickly shaping up to be no different. With every single event, launch and product imaginable themed after the Singapore Bicentennial, it’s going to take a Birdbox-scaled feat to get through the rest of the year without hearing about our 200th anniversary. And we’re already off to a bad start.

Soon after announcing plans for the Bicentennial, the Singapore Bicentennial Office (SBO) received accusations that it was condoning and even celebrating colonialism. They’ve since backpedaled in rather embarrassing ways, including reframing the programming as a “commemoration” rather than a celebration, and going so far as to extend the timeline of retrospective history an additional 500 years before 1819—effectively defeating the purpose of a Bicentennial anniversary. Although admittedly “Singapore Septcentennial” doesn’t have as nice a ring to it.

Then there was the gimmick of making Raffles disappear quite literally from the land—only to restore him to his former glory within a day. In a follow-up move that stank of insincerity, SBO introduced four additional statues of lesser-known historical personalities to stand alongside Raffles, to explicitly convey that Singapore’s progress was not the Englishman’s doing alone.

Photo credit: Singapore Bicentennial Office

All this, in an effort to play down the textbook-endorsed narrative of the British lifting our poor fishing village out of squalor.

To that end, numerous representatives from the SBO have taken pains to clarify that “it’s not about celebrating colonialism”. “It’s about looking at every aspect in the entire journey, and all the different characters that joined us at different times,” said Minister Josephine Teo, Co-Chair of the Ministerial Steering Committee for the SBO, at a press briefing ahead of the Bicentennial’s official launch.

As such, a full year of events and festivals await. In March, the Singapore Heritage Festival will return with events themed to the Bicentennial; later in the month, a new festival called Find Your Place in History will bring visitors around projection installations to learn more about less prominent points in our history, in what an SBO representative called the “darker sister to i Light”. June holds immersive experiences in Fort Canning detailing our 700-year history, while new exhibitions in August will look at nation-building in the “early days” (that’s the aforementioned 500 years before 1819).

Sails Aloft at i Light Singapore 2019. Photo courtesy of Urban Redevelopment Authority

But programming has been lacklustre thus far. Key events in the arts calendar such as i Light Singapore and the newer Light to Night Festival, formerly vibrant and well-attended among the public, suffered in terms of creative output in an effort to bend to the theme.

A reduced preparation time could have contributed to that. Typically held in March along the Marina Bay promenade, this year’s edition of i Light was moved forward to late January to coincide with the Bicentennial launch. Gone were the expansive, visually dazzling works that championed sustainability; in their place were uninspired, stilted pieces that spoke to specific moments in Singapore’s 700-year history, but left you walking away indifferent. Specifically curating works to the theme ‘Bridges of Time’ limited many of the installations to the various bridges along the Singapore River—which not only alienated visitors on foot, but also took away from the fun of getting up close and personal with an artwork.

Within the same month, this year’s Light to Night Festival saw more misses than hits. The festival’s projection mapping series on the facades of Civic District institutions returned, bearing good intentions but forgettable illustrations. Multimedia tributes paid to William Farquhar and composer Zubir Said felt more cursory than sincere. And a site-inspired interactive theatre piece titled Shadows in the Walls, touted as a highlight of the festival, took visitors through the National Gallery Singapore where roving actors put on cringe-worthy performances honouring lesser-known pioneers in Singapore’s history.

Sayang di Sayang, a tribute to Zubir Said

But boring art is not the Bicentennial’s biggest fault. Perhaps most troubling in all of this is how the underlying portrayal of Raffles remains unchanged. Singapore’s pre-1819 founders may be receiving more attention, but the pandering programming still conveniently ignores the British’s offenses as colonisers.

Commissioned programmes like the new augmented reality trail BALIKSG paints Raffles as a friend, allowing you to converse with him about signing the 1819 treaty—a bizarre thing to highlight, given that the treaty gave the British East India Company the right to set up a trading port on the island, marking Singapore as a British settlement henceforth.

While there have been some exhibitions that have dared to take a different stand, just as many skeptics have questioned their genuineness. An ongoing exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum, Raffles in Southeast Asia: Revisiting the Scholar and Statesman, paints the coloniser in a less than flattering light, pointing out his errors and outdated prejudices in curating culture during his time in Southeast Asia.

In a viral Facebook post shared on Feb 12, local author Alfian Sa’at pointed out the hypocrisy in presenting a show meant to undermine Raffles that still placed him at the centre. Sharing his frustrations after leaving a Q&A with the curator of the show, the vocal personality called out the curators for defending Raffles’ actions as being symptomatic of his time.

“I found this deeply troubling, because it smacked of wrapping Raffles up in a bubble wrap of immunity, as if he was simply acting out a historically predetermined role and that any attempt to critique him would be accused of as presentism,” Sa’at wrote.

Fellow writer and attendee of the talk Ng Yi-Sheng echoed these grievances in a post of his own. He criticised the exhibition for downplaying the significance of Raffles’ crimes, playfully mocking the colonial oppressor’s omission of key aspects of culture when it itself “erased the bloodshed of colonial violence”.

Indeed, it becomes problematic when even the government’s attempt to critically reevaluate a time-worn narrative presents the only faults committed by Raffles as mere human errors. If Singapore is sincere about wanting to present a fair picture of the country’s long, multi-layered history, we cannot simply brush aside Raffles as being a stupid white man “for his time”; nor colonialism as an unfortunate by-product of his misjudgement.

Photo credit: Vincent Ng

Logistically, it is not feasible to scrap many of the events to come—besides, some definitely do look promising. Two programmes happening in October will shine a light on Malay communities and non-European perspectives from the 16th to 19th centuries. But there needs to be a more concerted effort to objectively present history—even if it means confronting the uncomfortable reality that the founder of modern Singapore was an intrinsically bad man.

We're not here to start a debate on Raffles' contributions; there is a time and place for that. But subverting the narrative to bring home an unconcerted point and in the process reinforce existing messages is pointless to a disengaged audience. This country’s citizens are not dense; we’ll know to stop attending arts events when they all start sounding the same. Here's hoping it at least got people thinking of the Singapore to come in the next 200 years.

 

https://sg.asia-city.com/arts-city-living/news/its-only-february-and-weve-already-got-bicentennial-fatigue

SINGAPORE: An error in the computer system administered by NCS caused about 7,700 individuals to receive inaccurate healthcare and intermediate- and long-term care subsidies, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Saturday (Feb 16).

The affected individuals are among those whose applications or renewals of their Community Health Assist Scheme (CHAS) cards were processed from Sep 18 to Oct 10 last year.

The error arose in the computer system when it calculated means-test results. 

The means-test system calculates the healthcare subsidies which individuals are eligible for, based on their income information. Healthcare subsidies are means-tested so that greater financial support is extended to lower-income households.

"The means-test and subsidy tiers for all affected individuals have been corrected by Feb 16, 2019,” MOH said.

MOH said no proactive action is required on the part of the affected people at this point. The ministry added that it is working closely with healthcare service providers and scheme administrators to reach out to those affected.

"About 6,400 individuals received higher subsidies than what they are eligible for. The total amount is estimated to be about S$2 million. MOH intends to recover from NCS the costs and expenses incurred as a result of this incident, as allowed for under our contract.

"About 1,300 individuals received lower subsidies than what they are eligible for. The total amount is estimated to be about S$400,000. This will be reimbursed to the affected individuals," MOH said. 

MOH said discrepancies in the means-test results of a few CHAS cardholders were noticed by the CHAS card processing team in MOH Holdings when it was reviewing CHAS applications and appeals.

"We received three appeals for the group affected," MOH said. 

The first case of discrepancy was detected on Sep 24, 2018 and NCS was alerted immediately, MOH said.

“The issue was initially attributed to intermittent network connection problems. Five more cases were subsequently detected between Oct 9 and Nov 2, and a more thorough investigation was initiated,” added the health ministry.

In late November, NCS traced the root cause of the discrepancies to a software version issue on a server used by the means-test system when it was migrated to another government data centre in September.

“This resulted in the means-test results being computed without the requisite income information. NCS further discovered that their deployment team had in fact fixed the software version issue earlier on Oct 10, 2018 in response to an unrelated slow performance issue.

“This stopped further cases of errors but it did not correct the means-test results that had been generated from Sep 18, 2018 to Oct 10, 2018,” MOH said.

CORRECT SUBSIDY TIERS RESTORED BY FEB 16

On Dec 5, MOH received NCS' assessment that the glitch could have affected thousands of people across multiple schemes.

Before making any public announcements, MOH said that it was important to rectify the root cause of the glitch in the system to prevent more inaccurate means-test results.

It was also important to fully establish the different groups of people and subsidies that were affected, and how they were affected, as well as limit the impact of inaccurate means-test results from affecting more schemes and individuals. 

MOH added that it was important to have a clear rectification plan that can be deployed quickly after the announcement, to reach out to the affected individuals to inform and reimburse them, where applicable. 

"If we do not do so, we could cause confusion and uncertainty, not just among the affected, but the larger group of unaffected. Scheme administrators and service providers will also face many queries for which they are unable to respond," MOH said. 

MOH said that it worked with NCS from December to establish the extent of the impact, including the correct subsidy tiers for each individual under the different services and schemes. This was to determine who could have received higher or lower subsidies than what they were eligible for.

The final assessment was completed on Jan 14 and MOH worked with grant scheme administrators and healthcare institutions to finalise the remedial action plans, including how affected individuals will be informed and reimbursed.

The correct subsidy tiers of all affected individuals were restored by Feb 16. 

Service providers and scheme administrators will now progressively inform the affected individuals and arrange for reimbursements where applicable. 

“We expect all the affected individuals to be informed by mid-March 2019,” MOH said.

MOH said that NCS has acknowledged the error and has taken further remedial action by tightening the system deployment processes.

“Additional safeguards have been put in place to prevent any recurrence of such incidents. NCS has reiterated its commitment to being held to the highest standards as a service provider.

MOH takes a serious view of the incident, and has worked with NCS on appropriate remedial measures. MOH will work with NCS on measures to prevent such errors in the future,” the ministry stated.

NCS is an information and communications technology (ICT) and communications engineering services provider. It is a subsidiary of the Singtel Group.

According to its website, NCS offers services that include consulting, technology solutions, as well as systems development and integration. 

Someone really wanted to get lucky last night. On Valentine’s Day, passersby along the Tanjong Pagar stretch had been spellbound by a gargantuan bouquet of pink roses so big that it required four strapping men to carry it.

According to a witness who encountered the Godzilla of a floral gift yesterday, the massive bouquet had been first spotted by his colleague outside the Seasons Glamour Floral Arts store along Tanjong Pagar.

“So after lunch, we decided to walk over to take a look. There were already a lot of people ogling at the bouquet and taking turns to take pictures,” said the IT consultant who works in the area.

It just so happened that the bouquet — big enough to bump anyone out from the friend zone — was in the midst of getting delivered somewhere. The video he took showed how four workers struggled to lift it and carry the whole thing to the back of a truck parked nearby.

 

video: https://coconuts.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/valentine-day.mp4

 

“I wanted to take a picture and pretend that the bouquet was mine,” laughed the man who filmed the encounter. “My second thought was that somebody’s getting laid tonight.”

Indeed. If this doesn’t close the deal, we don’t know what will.

SINGAPORE: The results of the GCE A-Level examinations will be released next Friday (Feb 22), the Ministry of Education (MOE) said on Friday.

Students may collect their results from their schools from 2.30pm on that day, while private candidates will be notified of their results by post.

The ministry also announced on Friday that A-Level graduates who choose to further their studies at polytechnics can now skip the first semester for more than 100 courses.

Currently, most A-Level graduates apply for and enrol in a polytechnic only one year after getting their results. This is because most polytechnic admissions exercises would have closed by the time the A-Level results are announced.

From Academic Year 2019, eligible A-Level graduates can be admitted directly to Year 1 Semester 2 each October for 110 polytechnic courses, up from the current nine. This will reduce their polytechnic course from three years to two-and-a-half years.

The 110 courses make up about half the diploma courses offered by the five polytechnics, and span several course clusters.

“A-Level graduates who are not enlisting in National Service will be able to enter the polytechnics in the same year that they receive their A-Level results. As a result, this group will be able to graduate one year earlier,” MOE said.

 

 

Interested A-Level graduates will be able to apply to the polytechnics directly for these 110 courses in mid-August, for matriculation at the start of AY2019 Semester 2 in October this year. 

More details will be available on the respective polytechnics’ websites by March 2019.

200 A-LEVEL GRADUATES ENROL IN POLYTECHNICS ANNUALLY

Places for A-Level graduates will be separately catered for, and there will be no impact on the number of places for O-Level graduates or ITE graduates, MOE said.

"The number of places for A-Level graduates will depend on the demand from and quality of applicants, and hence will vary from year to year," it said.

According to the ministry, about 200 A-Level graduates are admitted each year to the five local polytechnics – Nanyang, Ngee Ann, Republic, Singapore and Temasek.

"These are students who are keen to pursue an applied pathway at the polytechnics, that matches their area of interest or aptitude," it said, adding that the number includes both A-Level graduates who have applied and those who did not apply to the local universities.

Education Minister Ong Ye Kung said he hopes the changes will encourage more A-Level graduates to consider enrolling in polytechnics.

"Every year, some students who receive their A-Level results wonder about their options if they do not enrol in one of the Autonomous Universities," he wrote in a Facebook post.

"We hope that these changes will encourage more A-Level graduates who are thinking about pursuing their studies through an applied pathway to also consider the polytechnic option."

For most polytechnic courses, A-Level graduates would need passes in two relevant H2 subjects to receive module exemptions. These requirements may differ for specific courses.

Courses which offer module exemption have "sufficient commonalities" between the A-Level and polytechnic curriculums, MOE said. The exemptions are mostly for polytechnic foundational modules, and students would have covered similar curriculum in preparing for the A-Levels.

For example, A-Level graduates in Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s Diploma in Information Technology may be exempted from the modules on Computing Mathematics and Programming 1 if they have passed H2 Computing or Computing Science, and H2 Mathematics.

Similarly, A-Level graduates in Temasek Polytechnic’s Common Engineering Programme may be exempted from the modules on Engineering Mathematics 1, Engineering Physics, Digital Fundamentals 1 and Circuit Analysis if they have passed H2 Mathematics and H2 Physics.

 

Dead lizards found in Irvins Salted Egg snacks by three different customers. (PHOTOS: Decha Holloway, Serina G, Kevin Nguyen)