Just what I heard .... abt IMF

So word on the streets ....

I heard the IMF is the hottest thing happening right now and how our govt is spending big bucks to make our guests feel at home ....

I heard ... and i reiterate .. HEARD ... the following things:

- 3.5million dollars are spent on flowers that will make our green city greenier :) .... nice .. and they are engineered to last not one week, but a whopping 2-3weeks! :) .. impressive ....

- Taxi drivers are put through a course to teach them how to talk to our guests properly :) ... Etiquette class... upgrade courses for Free from the govt .. how nice :) All the things they are not supposed to say like .. ermm .. politics? :) How nice the government walking the talk .. how they encourages us to go for classes to upgrade ourselves, and now they do that for free for our very own homegrown driving talents :) I can see how they really appreciate our local bred talents. Now I wonder if the taxis themselves also feature hardware upgrades like bugging devices to ensure the guests' safety :P

- Hop on over to Cityhall area ... Thanks to our guests, we're getting free wireless internet access! ... Approved by IDA. This is so sweet. Don't you wish our foreign "kai ye" (godfathers) come by for a visit more often? :)

- Never had our government spent more efforts to improve our social etiquette since ... the courtesy campaign? Well, it is time we junk the courtesy lion and introduce a brand new campaign to welcome our rich visitors ... Smiles :) .... 4 million smiles to be exact :) :) :) and here's adding 3 more. Who doesn't when you see money? Right? :) :) :)

- Some companies even get to go home and work from home! ... How nice. A government sanctioned holiday at home! :) So instead of using the company's computers, networks and electricity, we help them save the cash and allow they to try out home office concept by having the staff share the costs of internet connection, electricty bills and of course, maybe someday, eliminate the office rental together some day ... some day :) ...

But still, there are some people I heard who are negatively impacted by the visits from the rich folks. I heard Suntec is a dead town this few days. I heard the restaurants are not doing too well. Even mine saw a drop of almost 30%-40% of sales. But really I think this is just silly thinking of how much more returns our government/society will gain from our visitors. The hotel, shopping, and foods that they are going to spend on? Plus the intangible benefits we will derive from a sudden surge of government spending on etiquette education, beautifying the surroundings with nice chrysanthemums during the chinese 7th month, and how we will become better singaporeans by surrounding ourselves with more smiles!

Be grateful folks. Let me present you with a chinese idiom that represent what I think our government want us to learn so desperately but finding hard to convey. Maybe they just need to improve our ministers' chinese language, then they can just use this 4 words in future to educate us more effectively. The idiom is "见钱眼开" (see money, eyes open). The next time IMF come around, the government should consider using these 4 words as their marketing campaign. It totally encapsulate the essence of what they are trying to achieve here but with so much more enlightening simplicity. I hope this message find them well and my suggestion will be put into thought. That's the very least I could do as a Singaporean, rather than complain all the time right?