Four-five rocks!

1. 110 months of jail and 18 strokes of the cane. Impartial decision by the judge or too light of a sentence?
Firstly all SAF personal are to uphold the Oath of Allegiance, which is to protect Singapore from threats, not to be a threat. Dave Teo Ming became just that. Wielding a SAR-21 rifle, he went out of the camp with reasons for taking the weapon, and no matter what he intends to do with the rifle, he is in clear violation of the law. Singapore has very strict gun control laws, so even taking a spent bullet can land you in the courtroom. Therefore I feel that the 20-year-old should've been given a heavier sentence. Why, you may ask. I say: Why not?
You would then argue about his family history. He has a jailbird dad, an abusive mum and his own sibling died prematurely. Plus his love life had gone to the dogs and his grandmother was diagnosed as ill. With so many unfortunate events, he definitely would be very depressed. Desperation soon got the better of him and he resorted to taking the rifle. He needed it for money(robbery) and for his girlfriend(threatening for her return).
Everyone has problems, and every problems has its solutions, whether right or wrong. Mr Dave used the wrong solution and he must pay for it, no matter how dire the situation was. I just hope he had learnt his lesson and can recuperate after his jail term.

3.Recent articles usually talk about rising food and oil prices, the struggles to cope with inflation and a possible economic recession. Yet somehow, although Singapore definitely is affected, the impact on the republic is not as devastating as other countries.
Dwindling resources in Australia is just going to raise food prices up, thus importers of Australia, namely Singapore, will be affected. Maximising resources seems the way to go if resources continue to dip.
Or is it?
Maximising resources can mean using food as biofuel to supply to those ever big oil-consuming nations. One way to do it, but it also further raises food prices, as some of the food will be for fuel, which means lesser for consumption and higher prices will follow.
All Singaporeans, one way or another, will feel the pinch in their wallets. But i daresay we got off quite good. Sure people here will try to find discount prices, but in other countries, it is a totally different story. Africa, in general, is already so devastated, so poor that the governments are having a hard time to recover. Their average GDP is much less than ours, their economies are backlash and the political system is just so courrpt. Couple these problems with the rising prices, the Africans will end up suffering the most. More people die of hunger. Singaporeans rarely die of starvation.
Of course, from now until the point of recovery, we all would be relying on cheaper food products and petroleum. Trying every way to scrape and save in order to save more money. We would see a hike in the sales of less oil-consuming cars and local food products. Forking out that extra fifteen-cents for that bag of chips and whatnot. Whatever we do, the current affairs will be responsible, whether directly or indirectly. We just have to adapt to it, else things will turn for the worse.

Kang Shiong