Singapore Budget 2010 -- Not quite the expected 'ang pow'

I am relieved that Chinese New Year is over. Sure I enjoyed the visiting and the catching up with relatives and friends but it was exhausting.

The cookies and sweets on my table are at a respectable less-than-half strength, meaning that my guests have been busy. That pleases me. It means that my wife and I will not need to finish all those New Year goodies ourselves.

As we sorted out the kids ang pows (the red packets stuffed with cash traditionally given at Chinese New Year), the wife gave me one of her "You better do your fatherly duty of banking in all this money and not wait till Good Friday to do it" looks.

I am not very good with such financial matters. I hate going to the bank and queuing. So I tend to keep putting these things off. I reckon, at today's interest rates, leaving the kids' ang pow money in the family safe is not going to make much difference. But the wife does not agree with my financial analysis and since she is the Prime Minister and Finance Minister of my family, I have to do what she asks.

A friend suggested that we spend the cash from the ang pows, and do an Internet bank transfer from our accounts to the kids' savings accounts. That is a very clever idea, I shall certainly try it.

Speaking of ang pows, I think I speak for most of us when I say that the Budget this year does not seem very ang pow. Sure there are rebates and property tax cuts here and there but the Maybe-Election-Year ang pows did not materialize. Instead, we were told that a couple of billion dollars went into schemes to up our productivity and help small businesses. 

It reminded me of Chinese New Year in my childhood where you open the ang pow expecting a nice haul only to get $1.20 and a box of chocolates instead. I am sure the box of almost expired Unknown China Brand chocolates is good for my long term financial well-being and future productivity but nothing says Happy New Year to a kid like some cold hard cash.

I should be gracious, of course. Just like our Chinese New Year ang pows, with the Singapore Budget it is the thought that counts.

Besides, Singaporeans have been told that this is a "transformational Budget" and not a "distributive Budget". It is the kind of loving Budget that helps you take it to the next level, we are told. I suppose this means that the Budget is meant to make us better people, kind of like buying us some expensive gym equipment.

Senior Minister Goh even went as far as using an example of a popiah-skin maker to illustrate the power of investing in productivity. This year, he might make 50 skins per hour (the hypothetical popiah man, not SM Goh). Next year, he might make 100 skins per hour. Wow! A 100% increase in productivity!

But what happens if next year, even though he can make double the popiah skins per hour, he is replaced by a foreign worker who can make 1,000 popiah skins per hour at half the pay?

I bet he'd wish he got that ang pow Budget instead of the waste-his-bloody-time "distributive" one. At least some goodies this year can help pay for the bak kwa (roasted pork jerky). 

As our mothers taught us: "A bak kwa in the hand is worth two in Zoe Tay's".

(Zoe Tay is a local celebrity well-known for her acting, endorsement of products like bak kwa, and a beauty regimen that involves swallowing).

Speaking of bak kwa, children developed a taste for it this year. All three children, aged 4, 6 and 8, decided that bak kwa really tastes good and ate in three days like they were eating for the rest of the year. 

I saw the queues for the bak kwa in Chinatown when I was doing my pre-CNY grocery shopping with my Mom. It was a mad queue snaking around the block.

I don't see the point (remember, I hate queuing). Another friend taught me how he got around this bak kwa queue problem. He buys his bak kwa from the famous Chinatown store one month before the mad CNY queues start. Then the bak kwa is frozen in the freezer. When it is time to eat it, the frozen bak kwa is taken out and reheated in the oven. It tastes great and there is no need to queue. Clever. 

Another thing I will not miss, besides bak kwa queues, will be painfully happy television artistes forced to perform in cloying music videos singing Chinese New Year songs.

It is bad enough that I am not a fan of the Dong Dong Chiang (gongs and cymbals) genre of music but to see all these actors, actresses, and even tv newscasters trying to sing said genre is enough to make me want to shoot my big-screen tv.

As if sensing my lack of appreciation for these DDC music videos, the TV station decided to play them ad nauseum. Please give me back the cheaply made and frequently aired Hair Loss and Facial Spa commercials instead. At least those were entertaining enough to laugh at.

Dong Dong Chiang does not improve with modern arrangements too, I found. No matter how you try to put in a R&B groove or a hiphop backbeat to Dong Dong Chiang, it does not make it sound better. Imagine Seal, Lady Gaga, or Akon singing Dong Dong Chiang.

I know one thing Dong Dong Chiang music can be used for. I suggest using it to introduce the Singapore Budget this year. Make the ministers dance on TV while singing to the clanging cymbals and drums. Maybe it will make us feel like the Budget is a little more festive and generous.