marina bay - meritocracy

after kk market, walk in little india, little middle east, opposite golden mile, marina bay, closed for f1.

eat lor mee in tekka($1.80), $0.10 for washroom, chinchau($1) in beachroad hwaker centre, $0.10 for washroom, danggui black chicken($4) in jln berseh hawker centre, 2 icescreams in albert street(2x$1), drink sourplum juice($1) in albert st. that's how to have breakfast and lunch on $10.

when marathon man arrived at marina bay, he lost his way, since most part of the esplanade was closed to the public for F1 race. he asked a man in his fifties who was jogging in the area,
"how to get out from here?"

"oh, you must cut thru the cemented path. he pointed to
the path. then he said, look this F1 thingie really
creates a lot of troubles."

"why? you mean inconvenience for people to come to the marina area?"

"yes. more importantly it shuts down a lot of business."

"are you one of the affected ones?"

"yes. i have a shop in suntec, now i have to close it for
one week."

"i thot f1 is good for the economics."

"i don't know. maybe good for the hotels nearby."

"and the gahmen is levying extra tax on these hotels."

"they should. but at the same time they should also
compensate us for losing business. they cannot just take
the tax on those doing good busines and forget us that
are losing business. where's meritocracy in this case?"

" i thot meritocracy means an elite group of people whose
progress is based on ability and talent rather than on
class privilege or wealth. what has that got to do with
your situation?"

"that's what the dictionary says. but actually, if you
look at the words merit and cracy it mean literraly, a
system based on merits of things - ie as long as you do things based on merits, it will be fair, and people should not
complain. like in my case, i lose business not because of
my fault but because of F1, which the gahmen benefits,
then the gahmen should pass some of it to us as
compensation, that would be fair."

"i see. i understand where you are coming from. and i also suspect the gahmen is not that
into the spirit of meritocracy. like they asked the private
sector to help small business by reduding their rents,
yet their own property companies, like mapletree did not do
it. they asked the companies not to resort to
retrenchment as a first tool to trim cost during
recession, dbs was the first one to cut people..... they
are not doing things according to merits of the nation, the people,
but according to the own interests their own corporations."

"yes. meritocracy is not just by putting able people on
the jobs. it's about doing things in a fair manner."

"in having the f1 race here, we should start our own F1
campaign - fairness number 1 campaign."

"campaign, not another one. let's just pray that, our gahmen don't think that we have IQ's of F grade."