Thankfulness

Recently, we switched our fourth son, Stephen, from three-hour kindergarten to a full day childcare programme.He used to attend our church kindergarten in the morning. I found, since the baby was born, it difficult to keep him occupied in the afternoon, he did not take his usual nap in the afternoon and...being an active little boy who wants do a lot,while I was not all the time available, he ended up to be left alone, or into some mischiefs.

We thought about some other enrichment programmes, but with a five month old baby, I am loath to drive around, plus, my elder son will have PSLE next year, he needs a lot of help in studies.

So we chose the little village which is just around corner of our neighbourhood. The cost of school of course is very expensive, but we felt it was out of necessity. The government gives subsidy for all registered childcare program, however, the school administer told me that only working mothers entitle the full amount of S$300, while the non-working mothers only entitle half. (*working mother, by their definition, is those who work for pay more than 56 hour per month.)

As I mentioned in my early post, this is one of classic examples which some of relevant of policies need to be challenged.

the sheer definition of working mother;

the purpose of subsidy, to whom and for what;

the underline calling or factors affect mothers'choice;....

.....

Ironically, mothers work for pay surely have more disposable income to spend for this kind of high end childcare service, while others probably have no means to afford basic needs even they want to.

That reminds me of my suspended research topic. The very reason I took up this research was to help some full time mother and foster a more family friend envirnment in this land. Due to my fifth baby's birth, I have asked for one year break.

Even after one year, my baby will be only one year old, I have four other kids need me , I am wondering "should I first practice what I am preaching?"

.........
Fortunately, Stephen loves his new school, especially many activities based learning which is suitable for his personality.

I am thankful!

Parents nightmare- 12 year old boy becomes father

Yesterday, I read report from The Straits Time that a 12 year old British boy has become a father with his 13 year old girlfriend. I must say that is a parents' nightmare.

The evil is really working hard to grip young people. I feel sorry for this pair young couple, for they may not even fully comprehend what parenting means to them. I feel ever more sorry for their parents, will they regret? heartfelt pain?

Singapore media also reported there is an increasing of sex activities among teenagers, the number of teenager pregnancy has increased 45% from 2007. Some of these young kids involve sex activities simple because of peer pressure "everyone else is doing it" or proving love "If not he may dump me"

It is really a perilous time! "Flee youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart." I am fearful for for my children. I pray that God will help me to watch over them, to deliver them from evil, to guide them in the way of righteous.

Social Actors.... who bother now?

We were discussing Evning Goffman’s Dramaturge concept in perceiving people as “social actors” in their social relationship. The lecturer asked us to give an example of such “acting” strategy under a university student scenario.

“A university student wants to stay at campus for more freedom, while his parents concern about his state of being. In order to negotiate what he wants and what he is expected to be, he has to “act” like ….”

I have long alienated from university life, but was interested to hear what other students to say. One of our teammates said “at university halls, there are too much sex going on.” Apparently, the lecturer was shocked, much embarrassed too, she didn’t think that had much to do with “acting strategy”.

“But, they don’t even act, they just lie to their parents, and their parents don’t know.” he insisted.

Privately, I asked that students “Is that allowed in university hall? Is there any authority to interfere?” He told me “They closed one eyes. The moral standard among students is terrible nowadays.”…

Goffman’s concept shows that people do “act” in their social dealings to conform the cultural and social shared expectation, if nowadays, no one has expection any more, who cares to “perform”

Appeal to all bloggrers

Some have argued that “since Blog is a private place, one can write whatever he/she likes.”

This statement is false and with qualification.

First of all, “Is blog a private place?”

Blog provides a platform for individuals self expression, that can be a very constructive and innovative, but it is by no means “private”. The statistics plainly shows how many visitors hit a blog. Blog has become a New Media challenging the traditional moral and political regime. It has also exposed the mass the great perilous danger of evil. Therefore, we need to exercise due care and caution. As a blog, we owe the mass a moral duty of what we write and post here.

Secondly, though we are now in the time of individualism. Without prejudice of one’s freedom of expression and writing, every social being is subject to the moral and legal rules and regulation in any given societies. No one lives on island. One should take responsible of his /her actions of public consequences. While law exercises legal sanction against deviances against law, the moral rules and regulations, perhaps one’s own consciousness exercise ever greater and more powerful sanction against deviance against such.

To everything, there is appropriate channel, time and place to be and not to be. It is grossly inappropriate and of base and low class to bring “inconvenient and private” matters into “public domain” without first considering the public benefits and consequences.

I urge you, blogger, to seek a noble cause. If you have nothing good to say, hold your peace but whenever you write and publish in blogs, write: “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

Be aware of such blogs

I was greatly disturbed as I came across one of popular blogs called “private garden” written by a woman, in which she claims that she does not care what others think “it was only for herself.” To my horror and disgust, she described the multiple accounts in detail of her sex experiences with many men.

Sex and love, by nature, is holy upon God and man. It is God’s gift for men to treasure and enjoy. it has become, in her pen, the unruly desire by which she is consuming and be consumed. What a sad state for a woman.

Unlike other pornography sites, it has an innocent blog look as many others, but the contents are as filthy as any pornography sites.

Though she claims “private garden” but in fact it publicly pours poisons to many innocent souls.

Be aware of such blogs!

That is perhaps one of worst evil of Internet communication brought into our society and our daily life. Blog has become a popular way for people to communicate and a new media, some could be constructive, informative and building up the relationship within certain communities. But it has also become a fertile ground to breed those pests. The ugliness, darkness, and evil through the internet can easily penetrate to anywhere to ruin the heart of men. Truly, the days are evil.

The freedom without responsibility is no longer a true freedom. Those who claim personal freedom on advocating such shameless acts are in fact themselves the salve of their sins. The true freedom is free from sin.

I cannot help but pity this young lady. May God have mercy upon her soul.

“THINK FAMILY. TALK FAMILY” FORUM

"Think Family. Talk Family" Forum is scheduled to be aired on Channel News Asia over the following 3 weeks i.e. from 21 Dec 07 till 9 Jan 2008. Thanks to Family Development Group(FDG), Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports and National Family Council to make this Forum a success.

The two-hour plus forum will be divided into three 30-min episodes.
Each episode comprises two different topics culled from the panel
discussion. The 1st episode is scheduled to be aired at 7.30 pm
(prime-time) on Friday, 21 Dec with 3 repeat telecasts on Sat (12.30 pm),
Sun (12.30 am) and Wed (5.30 pm). The 2nd episode will be shown on 28s
Dec and the 3rd episode on 4 Jan 2008 with repeats. Kindly refer to the
following table for the broadcasting schedule.

Episode	Initial Broadcast	Repeat Broadcast	Repeat Broadcast	Repeat Broadcast
Time	Fri, 7.30 pm	Sat, 12:30 pm	Sun, 12.30am	Wed, 5.30 pm
1	21 Dec	22 Dec	23 Dec	26 Dec
2	28 Dec	29 Dec	30 Dec	2 Jan 2008
3	4 Jan 2008	5 Jan 2008	6 Jan 2008	9 Jan 2008

Please view the above Forum and wish all the family a very blessed Christmas and New Year.

Newspaper report is not accuate on En bloc mess

From: The Straits Time Sep 23, 2007
En blocked: How Horizon Towers made history
The Leonie Hill condo was just one of scores of estates snapped up by developers in a collective sales frenzy over the past two years. Now its owners are being sued by a developer in a landmark case that will go before the High Court on Thursday. How did it all come to this?
Joyce Teo reports

THE first hint that the $500 million sale faced trouble can be traced to an anonymous letter dated April 25 that was sent to owners of the condo's 210 units.
It started: 'Dear fellow owners, Some of us begin to wonder if our en bloc exercise now makes sense.'

The letter writers urged decisive action, suggesting that the owners of the 25-year-old property were being short-changed and that a far higher price was possible.

'If enough like-minded owners decide to rescind the (agreement) and the majority falls below 80 per cent, the application to the Strata Titles Board (STB) can be repealed.'

The buyers were local developer Hotel Properties Ltd (HPL) and its two partners Morgan Stanley Real Estate-managed funds and Qatar Investment Authority.

They agreed in a private treaty deal in February to buy the 99-year leasehold condo for $500 million, which was the reserve price set last year. Until early February, it was a record price in absolute terms for an en bloc sale.

At that price, each owner of the condo's 199 units would get about $2.3 million, with the 11 penthouse units reaping $4 million to $6.28 million.

But the letter writers were unhappy. Prices of neighbouring properties had skyrocketed since the deal was struck.

'We are now believing that our en bloc price no longer reflects the true value of Horizon Towers and we strongly feel that if we sell our unit individually, we would achieve prices far better than what this en bloc has fetched us.'

One case the letter cited was neighbouring condo development The Grangeford.

Grangeford owners were asking for $660 million, or $2,016 per sq ft (psf) of potential gross floor area.

That was more than double the $850 psf of total floor area achieved by Horizon Towers. 'Deep down...many owners may now be regretting this en bloc. They may be willing to join this...movement,' the letter said.

It engendered enough discontent over the sale price to lead some owners to attempt a deal reversal. Also, 10 groups filed objections to the sale.

Mediation sessions before the STB to settle the dispute started in late May. But those attempts at mediation between the warring camps of owners failed.

A group of 42 disgruntled owners, who had hired a law firm for advice, called for an extraordinary general meeting at Horizon Towers.

They wanted to remove the sale committee, which was blamed for not consulting the owners when it granted the option to purchase nine months after the reserve price was set. This failed.

But most members of the first sale committee later resigned and were replaced by new ones - and a second committee took their place.

At this point, it is worth noting that when the original Horizon Towers sale tender closed in August last year, there were no offers at its reserve price.

But the property market picked up significantly after that. In late June this year, a developer said it wanted to buy The Grangeford for $592 million, or about $1,810 psf per plot ratio - the highest price achieved for a 99-year leasehold site.

According to an affidavit filed by HPL for the High Court case on Thursday, an anonymous letter was circulated around this time to Horizon Towers residents, asking them to 'act quickly and decisively' to salvage something for themselves as Horizon Towers was, the letter said, being given away at a relatively paltry sum.


The STB hearing

THE bitter dispute that had focused on the condo's sale price took an unexpected turn on Aug 3.

That was when the STB threw out the application for sale approval because of procedural errors - the sale paperwork was not in order.

There was another problem: The contract between the HPL-led consortium and the sellers included an atypical condition, according to market players.

The sellers were given the option to extend the sale deadline by another four months if the sale was not completed within six months of the original deal in February - that is, by Aug 11.

A senior property consultant said: 'The discretion to extend the time frame usually lies with the buyer in the first instance, and thereafter upon mutual agreement.'

With the deal now apparently dead, the HPL-led consortium, represented by lawyers K. Shanmugam and William Ong from Allen & Gledhill, immediately swung into action. They wrote to the sellers alleging they were in breach of the February contract and wanted them to extend the Aug 11 deadline so that the procedural errors could be corrected and the application to the STB refiled.

But the Aug 11 deadline came and went. By now, neighbour had turned against neighbour as the stakes grew higher.

The HPL-led consortium has now proceeded to sue the members of the first and second sale committees and is seeking an order to bind all the other sellers. If that order is granted by the court on Thursday, it will mean that all Horizon Towers sellers will be liable to pay damages to HPL.

HPL is seeking about $800 million to $1 billion in lost profits as a result of the alleged breach of contract. So the owners of each unit could be looking at a bill of more than $5 million.

Since then, some majority owners have reached out to HPL, and last Wednesday, a group of them met HPL chief Ong Beng Seng, where HPL made it clear that it will drop the suit only if a collective sale order is obtained.

A ray of hope emerged the following day, last Thursday, when a large group of owners met to appoint yet another - the third - sale committee. More significantly, they agreed to extend the sale deadline until Dec 11.

HPL and its partners are waiting for an official confirmation of the extension before they seek an adjournment of this Thursday's hearing.

Even if the High Court case is adjourned, the sale would have a long way to go, given the disputes so far.


Lessons learnt

THE case - which has involved more than 10 lawyers - has underscored the point that a collective sale agreement is a legal document and sellers may be liable to legal action.

This is a sobering thought for property investors or owners who believe that the only serious question they have to consider in a collective sale is the price they will receive for their units.

Lawyer Henry Heng from Tan Peng Chin LLC said: 'The case highlights and reinforces the potential consequences and liabilities of owners pushing for an en bloc sale when the en bloc process or application goes wrong.''

The Horizon Towers case has also changed the way collective sales are conducted. Owners, their property agents or lawyers involved would now pay more attention to procedural requirements, said Mr Heng.

The High Court hearing is fixed for this Thursday while a separate appeal by the sellers to the High Court to quash the STB order invalidating the original sale will be heard a day later.

If that appeal succeeds, the case could return to the STB. What would happen then is anyone's guess - though many owners are no doubt longing for signs of a resolution on the horizon.

joyceteo@sph.com.sg "

Horizon Tower Collective sales has been one of media hottest spots. However, how factual those media reports are? Report like this one, once again, casted partially wrong impression to the readers. Without advantage of publicity, the residents or more precisely the many consenting subsidiary proprietors(CSPs) are subject to unfair comments from media. In reality and truth, most of CSPs are willing to honor the collective sales agreement with HPPL, even when those anonymous letters were circulated, the majority CSPs rejected the "call for rescinding the contract". Therefore, in law, it is arguable, whether HPPL has any case to sue all CSPs for alleged breach of contract. It is like to use machine gun to shoot many innocent people, while they know that only a few mischievous ones in the group.

This is to show the truth may not necessarily line in the newspaper's report. We urge you to pray for God's justice and kind will to be restored among neighbours and among business partners, let all these En bloc mess be amicably settled.

SINGAPORE’S EN BLOC MESS

In the 1970’s and early 1980’s, Singapore’s building construction fever resulted in many heritage buildings including almost the entire China town, being bulldozed away to make room for modern, tall skyscrapers. Today’s en bloc fever has the setting for a remake.

We however should not just refer to solidly constructed buildings, giving way to taller skyscrapers, changing our accustomed landscape. Far worse is the legal mess popping out in en bloc sales, hogging the front pages of many newspapers. This in turn stems from the Building Maintenance and Strata Management Act that governs en bloc sales, which new changes coming into effect on 1 October 2007 are unlikely to solve. The fundamental problem is that a law originally aimed at ensuring the proper maintenance of apartment buildings has become the Code for takeover purchases of buildings for enforcing the sale upon reluctant minority owners.

In the case of equities, the law protects minority shareholders from forced selling, up to the point where a takeover offer receives 90% acceptance. For our homes, which are of far greater importance, a mere 80% acceptance if the property is older than 20 years would suffice for a forced takeover.

For equities, the offeror has to purchase all of the shares tendered in acceptance. In en bloc sales, the purchaser can walk away if the majority of owners fail to deliver an order from the Strata Title Board (“STB”) to enforce the sale upon the minority owners.

For en bloc sales, the minority owners are only allowed to rely on their historical purchase cost or valuations done at the time of the sales and purchase contract. No consideration is given for his convictions of future market appreciation.

Like Horizon Towers, now the subject of a bitter legal suit launched by Horizon Properties Pte Ltd against the majority owners. The Sale and Purchase contract terms set a 6 months period for obtaining the STB order, expiring on 11 August 2007, with an option to extend thereafter vesting in the Sellers, which is not a usual case. Due to many different factors, not least of which a heavily occupied STB, setting at one point a September 2007 date for hearing, the process was not as smooth as could be. Eventually, the application was dismissed on technical grounds.

The messy outcome of this is that HPPL had, even prior to 11 August 2007, threatened to sue, based on changes in market prices, which have gone up substantially in just a short period. Here is the most crucial anomaly of using the Building Maintenance and Strata Management Act to govern en bloc sales. The minority owners cannot rely on changes in market prices during the entire STB application process, but the Purchaser has this right!

As far as the statutes are concerned, which Parliament ostensibly passed in order to protect the minority shareholders, case law shows that in many cases where the STB had ruled in protection of minority owners, reliance was mostly upon administrative errors and not on the substantial current property values.

The above fundamental anomalies show that a separate Code on en bloc sales has to be drawn up, if this mess is ever to be prevented.

Sociological Imagination

This is the term that C.W Mills, a re-know sociologist,coined to explain what he sees as the essential task of the social science: to facilitate self-understanding. Mills argues that if we are to understand ourselves in particular, and human behavior in general. Ht thinks that when facing dramatic social changing and development, what the ordinary people need are not only information, knowledge and skills but the quality of mind, which he called "Sociological Imagination"

By this, one is able to transcend personal troubles into public matters, and all the individuals problems are determined by social structure and social function. If only can one develop this sociological imagination, he/she will no longer see his/her biographies as isolated events but within the context of our society and its larger historical context.

Understanding the interconnection or intersection of biography and history is the first step in self-understanding. To develop the intellectual capacity or quality of mind we call the sociological imagination, Mills argues that we must be able to understand how society impacts on us, how society is structured and works, and how society changes and develops.

It seems to me that, to develop "sociological imagination" shall not only for sociologists, but also for ordinary people. Every of us should, ought to allow, have the power of thinking to understand our social setting, our past and our future. The power of thought in fact is the most powerful human capacity one can have, if you are what you think of, and you will be what you think of. Unfortunately, every ruling class, looking back to all history, all try to influence the way of people's thinking. For seemly self-protective functional rationals, they also often cause their own destruction without realizing.

Karl Marx certainly possessed vast sociological imagination. Marx argued that human productive activity and production relations determine the course of social development and social changes. Those who have ownership of production forces, like technology, private property, institutional power and tools etc, made of upper class while others without such but only labor power to sell made of lower class. The different social classes always become antagonistic and the force of class struggles will be the engine to push social development.

I admire Marx's powerful capacity in this intellectual sociological imagination, but I cannot help but knowing that not all the labor has price tag, for example, the mother labour is often free, but yet valuable, so does labor out of love.

In this ever fast developing world, I wish we shall not lost this power of thinking and quality of mind.

Teenager Sex Education

This morning as I drove my children to school, I heard this week’s “Edu-talk show” on the air. The topic was “The teenagers’ sexual issue”. It reviewed an alarming statistics.

In recent survey to local secondary schools (I didn’t catch how many of them), they found that:

13% teenager students are sexual active
4% of them who do not use any contraceptive measures....

The main show carried on talking on how to make “sex education” more effective, in other word, how to teach more students to use more contraceptive measures. When asked why the students are more liberal and opened minded towards teenager sex, one of students in discuss panel answered: “The media influence”.

How true it is. The bombarded, massive “media influence” on TV, movie, computer game and internet has subtly disarmed our moral standard in our society. Teenager sex is no longer viewed as moral disgrace, but accepted as a life style. The lust replaces the love, the very thing a virgin treasures before is now be despised. The core issue of sex education is no longer on its sanity and honorability but mere functionality.

Jesus called the children of God to be light and salt to the world. Pray that our children will be equipped with God’s grace and knowledge to be able to stand on this deteriorating world.