Secret blog of a P65 MP: Part 3

The Straits Times

Dear Blog,

More good news for Sin­ga­pore­ans. It’s cash bonus time. What am I going to do with the extra $200 I am get­ting? I will donate it to char­ity of course.

But I must be hon­est. I did think about putting it to a new iPod nano for my wife, and she said, “what will the other MPs think? Besides I don’t work out to music, so it’s ok”.

The Budget’s $1.8 bil­lion sur­plus turn­ing into $3 bil­lion worth of cash pay­outs for Sin­ga­pore­ans is really some­thing. I mean, if you do the Math (which I’m not good at), you will see that math­e­mat­i­cally, that is an impos­si­bil­ity. Kudos must be given to the peo­ple at MAS and MOF. They can crunch num­bers so well you get $3 out of every $1.80.

We must give credit where credit is due. Even where debit is due in this case. Just like Jayaku­mar said yes­ter­day in the papers. One slip up doesn’t mean we dis­count all the good work we have done.

I like the fact that we work as a team so well. MHA is strug­gling with the Mas Sela­mat inci­dent, and Jeya steps in to boost their Home Team Morale. We can’t just depend on the Home United Foot­ball Club to boost the people’s morale because not that many peo­ple watch the S-League, espe­cially after the recent scan­dals.

And when there is some­thing impor­tant, like the Pedra Branca inci­dent, we get Jaya and Tommy Koh to take George Yeo’s place.

In fact, we get a lot of other peo­ple help­ing George Yeo out, because the For­eign Min­istry is a big respon­si­bil­ity. I mean, it’s not just local mat­ters the min­istry has to deal with. It’s the whole world! And lately, there has been so many things hap­pen­ing in the world too. Every MP should be capa­ble enough to step in as a Deputy For­eign Min­is­ter to help George Yeo out, espe­cially in cases of FTA and other nego­ti­a­tions where Sin­ga­pore needs to ben­e­fit from.

That is what team­work is about.

Hav­ing said that, I am under pres­sure to brush up on my Math. I don’t know how to explain to my con­stituents how the Gov­ern­ment used their secret for­mula to cal­cu­late how much money was enough to cover the increase in the costs of liv­ing per house­hold. I know that if I don’t buck up, I will just keep get­ting shuf­fled across the back­bench. I over­heard one Old Timer (haha, you think only Old Timers know how to eaves­drop?) talk in front of my back, say­ing that I’ll be out before 2011, and that I was only good enough to be “Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary For Meet The Peo­ple Sessions”.

One of my nephews, who is still young and head­strong, is a vocal oppo­nent of the gov­ern­ment and our poli­cies, and is also my most vocal critic. He told my wife (she is very fond of him, say­ing he’s very smart) that I have been shuf­fled across the back­bench so much I must have a lot of splin­ters in my backside.

I laughed when I heard this. Because I think humour is a very impor­tant tool in dif­fi­cult times like this. We really mustn’t take our­selves so seri­ously. Besides, the back­bench has leather seats, so how to get splin­ters, I ask you?

But jokes aside, I do want my con­stituents to know that I do under­stand their strug­gles with infla­tion, and I am not insen­si­tive to their complaints.

The other day, my wife told me that the rice we were eat­ing was not as fra­grant. So I asked the maid how she cooked the rice in the new rice cooker I bought. I thought she didn’t put the auto­matic set­tings prop­erly. You know how maids are. The coun­tries they come from don’t have such high tech appli­ances, so it takes time for them to learn.

It turned out that our maid had taken the lib­erty of buy­ing cheaper brands of rice for the house­hold instead of ask­ing for more money for groceries.

The les­son here is that she is strug­gling too. But she has taken the ini­tia­tive to adapt and make do. I am very proud of her ini­tia­tive, and I have asked my fam­ily to buckle up and eat the less fra­grant rice for now.

–P65 Roxx!