Ploblems with our Garment

you know how in Singapore, everyone keeps complaining about the "Gahmen"? a friend of mine just pointed out that "Gahmen" actually sounds like "garment" (duh... so blindingly obvious right?). so to the untrained British/American/Ang Moh ear, not used to our mangled form of English, it would appear that our clothes are giving us major grief.

anyways. so i was at a Gahmen slamming session yesterday. it was ostensibly an open forum organised by the FBU for ordinary folks to go in and offer suggestions of how the public service can become more efficient and effective. but as usual, people went with their own personal gripes, "wah... how come Gahmen take so long before I get response for this thing har?", "Gahmen not very flexible leh! I wan to have HDB flat near my Grandma to take care of her, but HDB say must ballot one.", "Gahmen not good leh... give us people a lot of ploblems leh."

for a fact, i know that Jurong East has shops that sell rather good quality garments at reasonable prices. perhaps these people should go there and get a few good pieces of clothing that don't give them 'ploblems'.

another thing that i realised about the session was that there were disproportionately more males than females. i'm not sure whether it was peculiar to that day or whether that is generally the case for such forums. actually, for the few that i've been to, it does seem that the latter is more likely. and if it really is, i wonder why that might be so. is it because males are more perceptive when it comes to social/governance issues and hence have more to say? or is it because the females can't care less and hence would rather spend their time shopping? or perhaps the females realise that you can't really achieve much with these sort of forums and are actually out there doing something about what's wrong, rather than sit around and complain?

some other stuff from that evening:
someone mentioned that civil servants should be more open, more flexible, less risk averse. then someone else mentioned that one way to make the civil service more efficient and effective is to hold civil servants accountable for all mistakes and be punished harshly for any mistakes committed. does anyone spot anything wrong?

see... if we punish harshly for mistakes, then people will only hide behind the rules, following them as closely as possible, they will only become more risk averse, less likely to want to change, to challenge the system, to institute changes, all for fear of making a mistake and being punished. but it is true that people who make mistakes should be punished accordingly. but it should be done in such a way that we do not create a culture where people are just out to cover their asses, protect their territory and consolidate their power. civil servants should never lose sight of the broad strategic intent of the civil service as a whole: to serve the people and country without fear or favour.

someone else also mentioned that most of the opinions raised at the forum that evening were very parochial, taking a rather piecemeal approach to the issue. he suggested that we should take a more holistic approach of treating the root cause of the problem rather than just the symptoms. that drew a lot of flak. it would seem that most people want immediate gratification of having their problems solved. nothing wrong with that, but if it is just only that, then we will always only be firefighting, never really improving, but always jogging on the spot. so, we must not stop at solving the immediate problems, but should look into at the problem from a deeper, broader strategic level.

someone mentioned that civil servants should remember that they deal with people. and thus, while there are rules and regulations, there should be a touch of humanity when applying those rules and regulations. i reckon that that is one of the problems with our society. we have become more mechanical, less human. it's like kubrick's clockwork orange.

to end off, another problem of the Civil Service is the language used. this is from one of the slides of the presentation from the forum:
"Proactively ensure a sustained and effective approach in continuous government regulatory review."

what a mouthful! i'm sure you don't need "continuous", afterall, we already know it's "sustained". and what do they actually mean by "regulatory review"? did they mean "review of regulations"? and is it really necessary to say "government"? i think given the context of the slides, it's hard to think of it as anything but government regulations.

perhaps this might be better:
"to provide a proactive, sustained and effective approach in reviewing regulations"

didn't that make more sense? of course, i'm sure my suggestion isn't the best, but i think it's a lot less clumsy.

and the use of the word "revert" in the civil service. what the hell is up with that? revert what? a dumbass? i think the proper word should be respond.

anyways. i'm sleepy from watching much anime. kenshin just whooped some shishio ass.