Were you satisfied?

They were in the local newspapers today (23 June)... unsatisfactory answers, that is. Were you satisfied with the answers given by:

Sim Lian Group, the developer of Centrale 8?

Did the developer say from the start that its over-the-top pricing of $880,000 for its top-end five-room units (we Chinese just love the number "8", don't we?) was just "indicative"? Anway, what the heck are "indicative prices"? Here's a good defintion, and it has nothing to do with property transactions:

http://www.investorwords.com/15471/indicative_price.html

The real issue here is a private developer had bid for 99-year state-owned land to build affordable middle-class housing under the HDB's Design, Build and Sell Scheme (DBSS). Otherwise,why did the state not simply offer the land to build a private condominium which does not come with the income-ceiling eligibility? So, there is an implied social contract to keep prices affordable (albeit that's now subjective in the current heady property market).

The pricing climbdown was of course a dramatic one: $778,000! That brought the psf from $750 to $663. One writer to ST's Forum today echoed many people's sentiments:

"All flats on Housing Board land should be built by the HDB itself, as was the case in the past, so that they are affordable to ordinary Singaporeans. Any profit from HDB flats should belong to the citizens, not to a small group of private developers."

The handling by the authorities of the bomb relic in Sungei Kadut?

Now, the police spokesman says there is a "protocol" in dealing with bomb relics found on private property, and that this protocol was used in over 20 cases in the past six months alone, presumably without any glitches. Essentially, since the police does not have its own explosives disposal unit, it relies on the military's bomb experts to make a first assessment. So, if the relic is "safe for removal", call the private specialist contractors!

Netizens were not impressed by the official explanation. It "bombed" as an exercise in  PR. Here's what was voiced by netizens in one thread (on Channel NewsAsia!):

http://forum.channelnewsasia.com/viewtopic.php?p=4430675&sid=9388efa886b5940fab34a1b15274394f

The police explanation did not say explicitly enough what I suspect was the real context: that if the discovery is deemed (a) a "relic" (b) it is safe for removal, then the military's limited number of bomb experts -- who must be on constant standby -- should, ideally, not be involved in what are typically the long-drawn steps needed to remove the item, even if it has been deemed safe (ie, inert).

On the other hand, a threat to public safety -- be it a relic that is still volatile, a current-stock item of "live" ammunition that has ended up in someone's backyard, or a device planted by, say, a terrorist -- will, I am sure, bring in the military's experts and their bomb-sniffing/bomb clearance robots super-pronto.

So, are there bomb jokes out there? Here's a good one from the philosophy book I recently read:

If you are getting on a commercial airliner, for safety's sake, take a bomb with you... because the overwhelming odds are that there won't be two guys on the same plane with a bomb.