Best of 2014: Biggest complaints made by Singaporeans this year

Singapore isn’t affectionately referred to as the City of Complaints for nothing. Maybe it’s because we’ve mostly led a relatively privileged life, or maybe our sought-after education has inadvertently raised a bunch of nitpickers, but whatever it is, we’re rolling in first-world problems and can’t stop talking about them. These 13 were so incredibly inflated that some of them made international news, shuttered businesses and even got people jailed.

(arranged in no particular order)

 

1. Anton Casey

This guy sure know how to kick off a new year. Way back in January, the British wealth manager suffered severe backlash from the online community for posting photos with demeaning captions, calling those who took public transport “poor people” and talking about having to wash the stench of middle-income off his body. So incensed were the complaints against him that he was fired from his job and had to take off to Perth to protect his pageant-winning wife and son.

2. Jover Chew

We can’t any of us remember when the complaints against Sim Lim Square started, but it’s safe to say there will be significantly less now that one of its unscrupulous businessmen is being investigated by the police. Owner of Mobile Air Jover Chew, was dragged to the spotlight when he was found to have made several foreigners beg for refunds, after tricking them into signing unfair sales contracts. His personal deets were leaked online, after which he received threats and even a ton of pizza he never ordered. His shop has been closed since, and his products, equipment and paperwork are currently being studied by the authorities. Read all the articles here.

3. CPF: Lee Hsien Loong VS. Roy Ng

Another day, another defamation suit by the Singapore government. This one however involves a displeased Prime Minister fighting with one subversive political blogger, Roy Ngerng of The Heart Truths blog. In another era, the whole shebang would have been over in a month, usually ending with the defendant paying a extortionate amount of money to the People’s Action Party over damages — but it turned out pretty differently in the age of social media. Roy Ngerng shot to nationwide prominence and used every internet-based arsenal he could utilize to get the public on his side to substantial success. Crowdfunding, Facebook, Wordpress, YouTube — you name it, he’s used it. These days however he’s on the pretty quiet side after the whole Hong Lim Park clash that drew a lot of flak and ultimately sullied his reputation and the #ReturnOurCPF cause he tried to rally.

4. Ban on Tan Pin Pin’s ‘To Singapore, With Love’

This year’s biggest display of governmental censorship was also an ironic one: Tan Pin Pin’s film To Singapore, With Love — documenting the lives of Singaporean political exiles — received the same fate as its subjects when the MDA banned it from screening here (twice) on grounds that it distorted the rationale behind the actions meant to protect the nation’s security and stability. Nevertheless, the ban and the ensuing drama only served to irk the curiosity of people here, driving them to a short exodus to Johore just to catch the screening in the Freedom Film Festival — and a sort of “fuck you” to the Singapore government’s paranoia-fueled tactics to maintain their ‘squeaky-clean’ reputation.

5. Cats

Felines seem to appear in the headlines a lot in the latter half of the year, and not all of them were good news. There was of course the uproar about the satirical art exhibition at Singapore Night Festival calling out for the killing of stray cats which cat lovers took extreme issue with. Then there’s the case about the dead cat found severed in half at Marine Crescent which was at first thought to be the the work of human abuse — but autopsies revealed that it was just the work of stray dogs. All the bad news about our furry friends seemed to be compensated due to 2014’s upsurge in cat cafes popping up all around town (and we even have a cat museum now!), but then another tragic story struck when it was revealed that seven felines under Cuddles Cat Cafe’s wardship died from various circumstances. Overall, a pretty cat-astrophic year (sorry). Also, be sure to check out our hunt for Singapore’s serial cat killer.

6. Rats

Residents of Bukit Batok have long been worried about the expanding rat colony on a small hill near the MRT station, but it was only this year, when someone sent photos and a video of the creatures feeding and scurrying about in broad daylight to the authorities, that anything was ever done about it. As far as we know, Star Pest Control is still hard at work trying to elevate the situation, but a new complaint complicates things: food left by residents for the stray dogs is what’s making the rats come.

7. Gushcloud, and the legitimacy of blog advertising in general

XiaXue dropped a nuclear warhead on social media marketing company Gushcloud (rivals to her own backing blog advertising community Nuffnang) just in time for Christmas in a tell-all exposé about their alleged unethical business practices, and boy has this low-tier celebrity spat gone viral. Threats were thrown, hashtags were generated, even more blogs were set up and so on and so forth. The best part was when the snarky trolls of SMRT Ltd (Feedback) published their own monthly social media reach which exponentially dwarfed any other star bloggers, illustrating the insignificance of it all.

8. Haze

 

 

We’ve already come to accept the annual period of awful haze in our lives here, especially since we survived its worst ever bout last year. Though it didn’t hit us really hard in 2014, it was still a gloomy presence in Singapore, affecting even this year’s F1 Singapore Grand Prix for a bit before the rains came. In case you were wondering why Indonesia just can’t stop burning down their forests, wonder no more — we travelled to Sumatra for a big exposé about the troubles there.

9. Storm

If we’re not complaining about the haze or the heat, we’re complaining about the rain. As the monsoon season hit Singapore hard this year with flooded malls, infuriating traffic jams and this very spine-chilling footage of a freak storm battering Woodlands, at least we can be happy about finally being able to use #sweaterweather on our Instagram pictures.

10. National Library removed children’s books ‘promoting homosexuality’

 

Ah, another big censorship turmoil again from this year. The National Library Board, in all their infinite wisdom chose to remove And Tango Makes Three from their shelves after a bigoted member of the ‘We are against Pinkdot in Singapore’ Facebook group raised a ruckus that the children’s title — based on the true story of two male penguins at Central Park Zoo who raised a young chick together — didn’t promote family values. As a bastion of knowledge and open-mindedness, it sure was pretty fucking vapid of them to relent to the homophobic babel of one person, but hey that’s life in astoundingly conservative Singapore. At least there were some voices of reason during the whole saga.

11. Rude Koi staff telling drag queen customer to “fuck off”

Local actress Ava Gia Salamat was so upset a member of staff at Koi called her an “ugly bitch” and told her to “fuck off” she made a video about it, which led to the worker’s termination from the company. The ex Koi girl even wrote her a letter to apologise.

12. Students hoarding cafe tables

In October, a female student wrote on Starbucks Singapore’s Facebook page to complain about one of their managers, who’d seized her possessions when she left two of their tables unoccupied for over 30 minutes and given her a lecture about it. Her complaint backfired — netizens rallied around the Starbucks manager and she was accused of being inconsiderate and a spoilt brat, and even received threats.

 

13. Shitty million-dollar National Stadium pitch

After four years of construction work, the highly anticipated National Stadium finally opened to large fanfare earlier in June; and honestly it’s a pretty impressive piece of architecture, complete with configurable spectator seating sections, retractable roofs, huge-ass projector screens and… the Desso GrassMaster hybrid pitch which turned out to be pretty shit. Sandy, bumpy and generally inferior to the world-class standards the National Stadium was hyped to possess, the semi-artificial turf just needed some time to take root but bookings just kept coming in. The subpar pitch lead to the cancellation of an international rugby match, criticism by the Malaysian football coach, and many other complaints. Singapore Sports Hub only recently caved in to the concerns and decided to replace the hybrid turf with one that’s fully grass.

 



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