Park Benches & Public Transport Standards

Now that I've given up on serious sociopolitical blogging, I see that in fact we live in a very humorous country:

ST Oct 14, 2008
Costly park bench nap
Nappers can be fined $200 for misuse of park facility.

WHAT was supposed to be a free 15-minute nap on a park bench turned into a costly snooze for one Singaporean.

The New Paper on Tuesday reported that a 62-year-old, who only wanted to be known as Mr Kassim, was fined $200 when he dozed off on a Sun Plaza Park bench while taking shelter from the rain.

The National Parks Board (NParks) fined the private bus driver for having misused the park facility by sleeping on the bench.

In Singapore, popular beaches such as East Coast Park, Changi Beach and Pulau Ubin are also classified as "parks". Therefore they fall under the purview of the National Parks Board. So do be careful, the next time you go to the beach on a sunny day and lie down on the sand to get a tan. You just might be committing an criminal offence. Or maybe the trick is not to fall asleep. That way, you can get up and run away, if you see a park officer approaching.

Here's another fine story about Singapore:

Oct 15, 2008
SBS, SMRT fined again
They did not meet certain service standards.
By Christopher Tan

SINGAPORE's two bus operators were fined again for not meeting service standards as the Public Transport Council enforces a year-old penalty framework.

SBS Transit and SMRT Buses were fined $9,300 and $1,000 respectively for failing to meet standards such as scheduled trips operated, scheduled headways as well as passenger load for the six-month review between Dec 1 and May 31 this year.

In April, they were fined $300 and $200 respectively for similar shortcomings.

SMRT is an SGX-listed company with more than $1,300,000,000 of assets (based on its 2007 annual report). And for failing to meet national service standards in public transport, it gets fined $1,000? Ouch, that must hurt. It's like being caught five times, for sleeping on a park bench.

Family, Home, School and Money

Next year my son goes to primary school. It's a very good school - not the best, but very good. Importantly, the school has strong Chinese traditions (being affiliated to a SAP secondary school).

I don't care whether my son soaks up the Chinese culture. I do care whether he learns the language and becomes fluent in it. His world will be in the era of a very significant China. For general career purposes, Mandarin may well be the most important language that he'll ever need to know.

In two years' time, my daughter will also go to primary school. Since my son's school is all-boys, my daughter has to go elsewhere. Fortunately, there is a girls' school in the neighbourhood which is also quite good. To increase her chances of admission, I am toying with the idea of moving house (applicants who live closer have higher priority in the admissions process).

The plan would be to move somewhere halfway between the two schools. That way, both children can walk (in opposite directions) to school every day. This is a daily convenience for the next six years. After primary school, if they choose to go to the respective affiliated secondary schools, they get to enjoy another four years of convenience each (because, in both cases, the secondary school is right next to the primary school).

All in all, it could be a very good idea to move.

What about the costs of moving? The area between the two schools is mostly terraces, bungalows and one or two condos. It is rather costly. I could afford it (fingers crossed), but my strong preference is to live with as little debt as possible.

According to my crystal ball, residential rentals must fall sharply this year. A host of new, big residential projects (all of which were launched in the recent bubbly years), will get completed soon. What happens next? The market will be flooded. At the same time, due to the economic slowdown, many expats might predictably pack their bags and go home. This would lead to a further collapse in residential rentals.

The stock market has also crashed very badly. Many Singaporeans would have lost serious money. Bonuses will shrink. Thus many potential property buyers would be eliminated. Furthermore, a real recession is very likely to be on the way (the technical one is already here). Some people will lose their jobs. And among them, the highly-leveraged home-buyers of the past few years will be blown apart.

In these days of uncertain liquidity, local banks will be quicker than usual, in deciding to foreclose on defaulting borrowers. There may be much less tolerance for alternatives such as rescheduling the borrowers' payment schedules etc. In other words, if a borrower fails to pay on time, the bank will be quick to say, "Sorry, game over", to grab the property and to put it up for public auction at a firesale price.

All this points to a crashing Singapore property market. I am sorry for all those who will suffer. However, it does bode well for a genuinely interested buyer like me. Furthermore I don't have to buy immediately. I can adopt a wait-&-see approach. My deadline is around June 2010, when my daughter is to register for primary school. That gives the property market slightly more than 1.5 years to hit bottom, which seems quite ample.

In other news, Mrs Wang and I have been talking about having a 3rd child. In economically uncertain times, most people tend to err on the side of caution and put off such "projects". However, the logic of such putting-off is somewhat dubious to me. Why?

Well, if a couple has a child, they might expect to financially support the child for at least 21 years. However, there is no such thing as a business cycle that stays good for 21 years. In other words, if you have any child at all, you must expect that in the first 21 years, the world will go through several cycles of good and bad times.

And it is not evident to me that going through bad times with a baby is worse than going through bad times with a 5-year-old, or a 11-year-old or an 17-year-old. To put it another way, all parents must expect the world to go through some bad times, regardless of when exactly they first become parents.

So the key question still remains the same - do you want a child or not?

I think I do. I will think more about it, but I think I do. My kids are growing up so quick. I do miss having a really young one toddling around the house. :)

How To Protect Your Money in Singapore Banks

I have never really paid attention to the Singapore Deposit Insurance Scheme. Until recently, it seemed irrelevant to me as a bank customer. But now the world is bidding goodbye to the good old days when banks were strong, solid institutions that couldn't possibly fail. So today I am surfing the Internet checking out what the SDIS is all about.

The scheme is for the benefit of individuals and charities. If you, as an individual, deposit your money with a bank or finance company that is a scheme member, your money will be insured for up to $20,000. This means that even if your bank fails, the Singapore Deposit Insurance Corporation will compensate you for up to $20,000.

The SDIC is able to do so (or supposed to be able to do so) because it has been regularly collecting insurance premiums over the past few years, from all its scheme members. Let's briefly discuss a few technical details.

Firstly, the coverage is net of liabilities. This means that if you have $10,000 in your DBS savings account, but you owe DBS $7,000 for your credit cards, then the SDIC protects you for only $3,000. That's because on a net basis, DBS owes you $3,000.

Secondly, the coverage is only for Singapore Dollar deposits. So if you have a USD account or a fixed deposit in Australian dollars, those savings won't be covered.

Thirdly, the SDIS basically covers savings accounts, current accounts and fixed deposits. Money in the form of funkier products, such as structured deposits, will not be covered. Neither will any unit trust investments.

Fourth, who are the scheme members? There are 34 institutions in the list, including the most well-known retail institutions in Singapore such as DBS; UOB; OCBC; Stanchart and HSBC.

Now, let's discuss a few simple ideas on how to maximise your SDIS protection. Basically the trick is to get the protection where you can; to max out the $20,000 protection where you have it; and to reduce any excess you have, over that limit. A few examples to illustrate.

Suppose Mr Tan keeps all his life savings (SGD 80,000) in DBS. Since $20,000 is the protection limit per eligible account, $60,000 of Mr Tan's money is left unprotected. However, Mr Tan can open three new accounts (say, with UOB, OCBC and Stanchart) and place $20,000 in each of his four bank accounts. Now, the SDIS will fully cover Mr Tan's $80,000.

In our next example, suppose John has $20,000 in an OCBC savings account. He also has an outstanding OCBC mortgage of about $200,000, and he pays the monthly instalments using his CPF. Note that John's $20,000 doesn't enjoy SDIS protection at all (because on a net basis, he owes OCBC about $180,000). To get such protection, Mr Lim can transfer his $20,000 to another bank.

In our third example, suppose Lily has $30,000 in her UOB account and $10,000 in her Stanchart account. Although all her Stanchart money is covered, one third of her UOB money is not (because it's over the $20,000 limit). However, by withdrawing $10,000 from her UOB account and placing it on fixed deposit with Stanchart, Lily ends up with about $20,000 in each bank. Therefore her money is now fully covered by the SDIS.

If you have quite a lot of cash, it may be difficult to find enough banks to place all your cash, such that you have no more than $20,000 with each bank. There may also be some banks (among the scheme members) that you don't want to open an account with (either because you don't trust them, or because they don't provide the range of retail services you need / expect).

However, in such a case, you can still increase your SDIS protection by spreading some of your cash, among the banks you do trust (relatively speaking) and don't mind banking with. Better than nothing.

Next week, I will be going around town opening a few extra bank accounts and placing some SGD fixed deposits here and there. Just up to $20,000 per new account.

[If you found this article useful and informative, do tell your friends and relatives about it.]

The Mysterious Universe of Fraudulent Spam

You know what I mean, right? I'm talking about the unsolicited email that arrives regularly in your Gmail, Yahoo! or Hotmail account. The ones that tell a long story about someone in Nigeria or Botswana or Kenya.

Somebody's grandmother died and left money; or someone was wrongfully arrested for life and left money; or someone came across a big pool of money accidentally left behind by corrupt government officials. Stuff like that.

The email ends with the sender asking if you will help by providing your bank account details to him, or by sending him some money so that he can get out of some terrible emergency.

Naturally, such emails are quite fake and you can smell fraud all over them. Typically we should delete them without a second thought (if they have't already been caught by the spam filter).

However I've often wondered how exactly the perpetrator plans to go about cheating his gullible victim (if he does find one). So yesterday when I received one of these emails, I decided to play along, just to see what happens next. The email address sounded more authentic than usual (it had a Chinese Singaporean name) and the message was as follows:

How are you doing today? I am sorry i didn't inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program called "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which is Ghana , South Africa and Nigeria . It has been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition i found myself is very hard for me to explain.

I am really stranded in Nigeria because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport, documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because i have no money on me. I am now owning a hotel bill of $1050 and they wanted me to pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me over to the Hotel Management.

I need this help from you urgently to help me back home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $1250 to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of $2300 to sort out my problems here? I need this help so much and on time because i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don't even have money to feed myself for a day which
means i had been starving so please understand how urgent i need your help. i have decided not tell my family so that they will not be worried. when I return I will tell them and they will understand.

I am sending you this e-mail from the city Library and I only have 30 min, I will appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me for now and I promise to pay back your money as soon as i return home so please let me know on time so that i can forward you the details you need to transfer the money through Money Gram or Western Union. Hope to hear from you. James.

So last night I replied as follows: "hi james, sure. It's not a big sum and i an glad to help. Please give me the hotel's name and bank account no. and i will send some money for that bill".

What happened next? This morning I checked my emails and sure enough, there was a reply. Here it is:

please ignore the mail..my email account been hacked... ;(.

So now I may have uncovered one possible step of the modus operandi. It seems that the fraudsters hack the email accounts of innocent folks, and use those email accounts to send out their fraudulent message.

Any of you know the rest of their tricks?

The Adventures of Being Homeless and Broke

A few days ago, a man named Karthik Rajaram shot his mother-in-law, his wife and his three sons (aged 7, 12 and 19). Karthik then proceeded to shoot himself.

This happened in an upscale neighbourhood in Los Angeles. According to Karthik's suicide letter, he had decided to kill his family and himself because of their financial difficulties.

Karthik was a well-educated man with an MBA and used to work for major accounting firms such as Price Waterhouse. However in recent months, he had been unemployed. One speculates that recent events such as the stock market collapse might also have wiped out his investments.

Coincidentally, this week I received an email from another American. Adam has just published a new book (his first) and he asked if I would review it on this blog. I said yes, and the book is now in the mail on its way to me in Singapore. I'll write again about the book, after I've received and read it. Apparently it has received considerable media publicity in the US, but so far, not outside the US.

Briefly, what is Adam's book about? It's a true story. It's about Adam's personal 1-year adventure to investigate whether the American Dream is still alive. One day, Adam left his home and family, and took a train to a randomly-chosen city. He carried only $25 and some clothes in a haversack.

His goal? To see whether he could start from zero and within one year, have $2,500 in his wallet, a car and a furnished apartment. The rules of Adam's game were that he would not rely on his education qualifications (he is a graduate), and he would not ask any of his personal contacts, friends or relatives for help.

Since I have not yet read the book, I don't know how Adam's adventure turned out. (I do know that he spent some of the time staying at a shelter for the homeless). For the current times, the book's theme is very topical, especially in the US. How bad does it really get, when you're homeless? How do you survive, when you're broke? Can things get better? If so, how?

I just have a feeling that Karthik might have done some things differently, if he had had a chance to read Adam's book.