New Formula: We = Complacency ?!

com·pla·cent [kuhm-pley-suhnt]

–adjective 1. pleased, esp. with oneself or one's merits, advantages, situation, etc., often without awareness of some potential danger or defect; self-satisfied: The voters are too complacent to change the government.

2. pleasant; complaisant

Recently, the most talked about word is 'COMPLACENCY'. MM Lee Kwan Yee mentioned it.

“Complacency sets in when a people have not suffered any shock or setback for a long time, as in Singapore without jihadist terror attacks, although we have ceaselessly talked about it and prepared out (sic) defence.”

The Goverment matter-of-factly brought it up.

“People’s Action Party MP Lim Wee Kiak called complacency a ’side-effect’ of an overly successful Government and civil service.

‘This has bred a dependency mentality in our population who will blame the civil service and Government if any of their needs are not met,’ he noted.”

Newspaper published it. Netcitizens quoted it. A friend of mine told me she is loving her current state - complacency.

Seriously, how did this word get to be in such a state of popularity? I think it is more used than our favourite "Wah Kao" nowadays. I reckon the Mas Selamat Kastari case which had hit the headlines for weeks kickstarted the whole thing.

So are we Singaporeans complacent? Have we become self-satisfied? Have we become less aware of potential defects? Or had this word become the replacement for "tai-ching" blame? How did the blame get shifted from you-know-who to us?

Well, of cos you know the existence of Mas Selamat before he got this famous isn't it? If not, shame on you, shame on us. Cos Wah Kao, ignorance is not a bliss here, so stop being complacent !

I'm in the Mood for ... Baking !

After watching the chinese variety show "Qiang Tan Chen Gong", it got me in the mood to bake. Called Val, and asked her if she and the kids are keen to bake fruit bun aka rock bun. Got my sister excited and she agreed to come earlier so that we could bake in the afternoon.

After the kids woke up from their afternoon nap, we started the baking session. Initially, we just asked Jo to pour flour into sieve and Bryan to sieve the flour is a good idea. Then, I decided to promote them to next level and involve them in the rub-in-method of the butter into the flour is a major disaster. They are not too quick with it and most of the butter are on their hands instead of being rubbed into the flour. The recipe was for 24 cookies, but we ended with 16 cookies. No prize in guessing where the portion for 8 went to.

Val and me got excited and decided to try our hands at muffin. Partner didn't read the method in detailed and in the end, muffin ended up not looking strange and they tasted strange too.



Well, will experiment again and hopefully, the next batch will look like muffins. Most importantly, they should taste like muffins.

Kowloon, Hong Kong (30 Jan - 3 Feb '08)

Went with Felicia to Hong Kong to organise an event for a medical company. On the last day of event, we finally had some action. As there was some miscommunication between hotel and us, so we need to release the rooms to the hotel way earlier. Hotel staffs and us were all congregating in the foyer to wait for rooms to finish early so that the hotel staffs could turn over the rooms. Rooms that we anticipate will end later, we switched them to rooms that could be returned later. In the end, everything went well and boy, were we all glad.

The team




Tram / Metro System aka MTR


"Star" Ferry / Streets of Hong Kong


Some places that I visited ....


Scenary from Hotel Room

Skyline of Hong Kong


All in all, Hong Kong was fun. It had great food and great shopping. Whatever I saw from the drama serial or movies, I saw it all ! Looking forward to going back Hong Kong again. This time as a tourist.