Tag: Singaporeans

Malay Single-Mother A Hero To Old Chinese Couple

Single mother Noriza A. Mansor gets only one day off a week from her job as a bedsheet promoter.

Most would use that day to rest, but she spends it looking after an old man she met by chance as he stood in a Toa Payoh supermarket soiled by his faeces.

Ms Noriza, 49, made headlines last October when she stepped forward to help Mr Tan Soy Yong, 76, who had soiled himself while buying groceries with his wife, who was in a wheelchair.

Others had recoiled from the old man and his stench. But Ms Noriza not only bought him new shorts but she even knelt to wipe the dried faeces off his legs – an act which moved a bystander to tears.

Since that day, she has made it a point to visit Mr Tan for at least six hours a week at his Potong Pasir three-room flat.

Mr Tan has lived there alone since the start of the year, when his wife, Madam Lee Bee Yian, also 76, was hospitalised for cancer.

During her visits, Ms Noriza cleans up Mr Tan, who cannot control his bowels, and washes his soiled laundry. She also mops the floor and tidies up the flat, while chatting brightly with him in a mix of Malay and Hokkien. Some days, she will accompany him to visit his wife in hospital. On other days, she will take him out in his wheelchair to the hawker centre to eat his favourite wonton noodles.

Said Ms Noriza: “I only wish I could see him more often. Sometimes if I finish work at 8pm, I will go to see him. But I don’t always have the time.”

She often works 12 hours a day, taking home around $2,000 a month. She has three sons and two daughters aged 11 to 26. Four of them still live with her.

Yet she has no qualms about making time for the old couple. “In my life, I am never tired,” she said.

Mr Tan told her he has a son and a daughter, but Ms Noriza said that, according to social workers, the couple have no children. She thinks they have a niece and a nephew living in Singapore, but has been unable to contact them.

Ms Noriza believes Mr Tan was sent into her life by God, as she lost her parents when she was 21.

Her father succumbed to cancer and her mother wasted away in depression eight months later.

She said she treats the couple as “my own father and mother”.

Mr Tan once asked her if she had a passport. “I said yes. He said when his wife is discharged, we can go on holiday together as a family.”

She smiled wistfully. “I know this kind of thing is very hard, with their conditions. But of course I told him we would. He’s so sweet.”

Source: www.straitstimes.com

July 13, 2015
Meet The Malay Football Coach Who Risked Life To Save Others From Fire

When a Choa Chu Kang Housing Board flat burst into flames and terrified residents fled en masse, one man ran in the opposite direction.

On discovering the February 2014 fire, football coach Faizaltulamri Noorali immediately ran from door to door to warn his neighbours. Racing up and down several flights of stairs, the 34-year-old saved two elderly women, two maids and a little girl. He even rescued a cat.

When The Straits Times caught up with him more than a year later, he downplayed his deeds. “I was just doing something a normal human being would do,” he said.

That morning, he had spotted smoke coming out of an eighth-storey unit. The heat made him hesitate, but the thought of somebody being trapped inside spurred him to break a window pane. Recalling the thick black smoke that billowed out over him, he said: “I had to squat down to avoid the smoke. I almost lost consciousness then.”

Despite inhaling some of the smoke, Mr Faizaltulamri went on to rescue others, including a 63-year-old housewife on the 14th storey. As she refused to leave without her cat, he had to search her flat and catch the feline.

On the 11th storey, he found a 76-year-old woman lying in the corridor, with her maid crying helplessly next to her . He carried the elderly woman down and, despite his fatigue, went back upstairs, returning with a five-year- old asthmatic girl in his arms.

His acts have got him recognised by strangers, not just in Choa Chu Kang but also in the new restaurant he is helping his friend manage, and even on one occasion by Singaporean tourists in Batam.

Mr Faizaltulamri said, however, that he did not always cut such a gallant figure. A rebellious youngster, he was even involved in a secret society at one point.

He said: “In the past, I didn’t think about other people. If this had happened 10 years ago, I would have been one of those bystanders taking a selfie with the fire in the background.”

His outlook changed after he met his girlfriend of 11 years, Ms Faizureen Ashiqkeen. “She’s my real inspiration,” he said.

The 32-year-old educator was not amused by her fiance’s heroics, though. Mr Faizaltulamri said she broke down on learning how he had risked his life.

The couple are getting married next month, and plan to move into a new flat five minutes away from Mr Faizaltulamri’s family.

Their first step on setting up house? “Get fire insurance,” quipped Mr Faizaltulamri.

Source: www.straitstimes.com

July 13, 2015
Racial Harmony Kampung-Style In HDB Corridor

About once a month, residents on the 14th storey of Block 591A, Montreal Link in Sembawang gather for a meal together.

There are five families living on this level and they take turns hosting the monthly gatherings.

During this period of the Muslim fasting month, the neighbours gathered again one Saturday evening earlier this month to break fast together.

One of them, Mr Jasem Rif’at Muhammed Effendi Arriola, 19, posted a photo of the gathering on his Twitter account and it went viral, with more than 2,800 retweets, much to the surprise of the neighbours.

The photo was shared more than 3,000 times on Facebook and was also shared on online sites such as Stomp.

The comments were overwhelmingly positive.

Some said the residents were bringing back the “kampung spirit.”

Others commended the fact that the mainly Muslim neighbours asked their non-Muslim neighbours along.

The neighbours had another meal on Saturday.

For one of the neighbours, Mr Syed Agil Syed Ali, 34, the attention was strange.

“We’ve always been doing this and we’ve always been posting these eating sessions on social media,” he said.

“This is the first time that a photo of one our makan (Malay for food) sessions has attracted so much attention,” said the information technology specialist.

For Mr Ang Cheng Bin, 49, joining his Muslim neighbours to break fast was not an issue.

“Since I moved in, they have always been so friendly to me,” he said.

“Plus, we’ve had these sessions before,” added the pastor of Bartley Christian Church.

Mr Ang moved in with his family in February and is the newest addition to the 14th storey.

Even before he moved in, his future neighbours’ friendliness was evident to him and his family to see.

“Before purchasing the flat, I came down with my wife to survey the area,” he said.

GOOD GUYS

“This is when I met Helmi, who invited me, a total stranger to enter his house to take a look at the view. That was when I knew that these guys were a bunch of good guys.”

That person was Mr Muhammad Helmi Azman, who lives in the unit across from Mr Ang.

Like his neighbours, Mr Muhammad Helmi did not think that his actions were out of the ordinary – he was just being friendly.

“Its good that we have this spirit,” said the 31-year-old nurse.

He and his wife, Madam Noraisah Zolkapli, 26, had moved into the unit beside Mr Syed Aqil’s in January last year.

Said Mr Muhammad Helmi: “My heart is at ease, knowing we have neighbours who are friendly and that our kids can play together.”

He has two daughters, aged one and two.

Mr Helmi’s neighbour, Mr Hafiz Yusoff, 25, told TNP that their children playing together was one of the reason why they have bonded.

He lives with his wife in the unit next to the Angs.

There are six children, aged between one and six, among the five families who live on the 14th storey.

“They play with each other, sometimes in the corridor, most of the time in each other’s houses,” Mr Hafiz said.

As the clock ticked closer to the time to break fast on Saturday, the mat where they would all sit and eat was rolled out.

Each household brought out the food they had prepared to share with their neighbours.

The main dish of the night was laksa cooked by Mr Hafiz’s wife, Mrs Nor Diana Mohamed, and his mother-in-law.

Mr Ang brought out fruits and otah-otah and Mr Helmi brought finger foods. Mr Syed Agil and his wife helped to prepare the drinks and prepare the dining area.

As the radio signalled that it was time to break their fast by playing the azaan, the Muslim call to prayer, all of them tucked in.

When asked if he hoped that this practice would continue, Mr Syed Agil said: “Of course. In fact, I hope that there are more of such scenes all over Singapore.”

Source: www.tnp.sg

July 13, 2015
Singaporeans Escape From Burning Five Stars Express Coach Bound For Singapore

SINGAPORE: A Five Stars Express coach travelling from Ipoh to Singapore caught fire along Malaysia’s North-South Highway early Sunday (Jul 12) morning.

According to a spokesperson from Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, no one was injured, and the passengers managed to continue their journey to Singapore.

“We have not been approached for assistance by any Singaporeans in this case,” the spokesperson added.

Michelle Lim, a passenger on the bus, which was travelling from Ipoh’s Jalan Bendahara to Golden Mile Complex in Singapore, told Channel NewsAsia she smelled burning odour about three-and-a-half hours into the journey at 1.30am. She said there were about 20 passengers travelling on the coach.

The fire happened along the highway after Jasin, Melaka and near Tangkak, Johor, said The One Travel & Tours Bus Service, the agency operating the bus route.

“At around 2am, the bus driver sensed something was wrong and pulled up along the round shoulder,” Ms Lim said. “The driver ordered passengers to disembark from the bus after thin smoke was seen inside the bus. The passengers disembarked in an orderly fashion and the bus driver’s assistant helped retrieve belongings from inside the bus as well as from the luggage hold.”

She added: “After we got out, the bus caught fire and was engulfed in thick smoke – and both the driver and his assistant were pouring buckets of water to put out the blaze.”

Although most passengers retrieved most of their belongings and luggage, some left their passports behind in the coach, according to Ms Lim.

At 2.30am, another coach, operated by TransStar, arrived on the scene to pick up Ms Lim, her husband and two other passengers. The rest of the passengers remained at the site waiting for other buses to pick them up.

A Five Stars Express coach with around 20 passengers caught fire along Malaysia’s North-South Highway during its journey from Ipoh to Singapore early this morning. No one was injured, according to a passenger on the bus. http://bit.ly/1NXqCZBVideo: Michelle Lim

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

July 13, 2015
Goh Meng Seng: Workers’ Party Should Contest Fewer Seats

While I know most of my haters and detractors here are mainly WP supporters, but I would like to put this perspective forward to you.

WP has apparently taken more than what it could chew. Sylvia Lim has admitted that the management of WP’s Town Council is far from good as mistakes have been made. It is only wise for WP to focus on its current turfs of 7 seats, fortify themsevles further instead of going into expansion mode and step into other unfamiliar turfs.

I do not wish to see WP losing its current seats just because of its unwarranted ambition to win more seats. And I do not think WP can convince voters that it could manage ADDITIONAL constituencies well when it is currently struggling with the present 7 constituencies’ municipal management. WP may risk a total collapse of credibility if it won more seats but in the end TC management become a horrible nightmare. This will in return destroy WP totally by the elections after next.Stay focus on the current 7 seats will be its best strategy. I believe LTK will want to fortify his positions in these current seats instead of having the ambition to win even more seats.

Having said that, it would be natural to expect WP not to contest more seats than it has done before. In fact, it should be contesting less seats instead.

So I do not expect to have problems in multi-corner fight,especially with WP as long as they are rational and not that greedy or overly ambitious unless WP has other agendas which are not about winning more seats but disruption of other party’s chances of winning seats and growing the pie of opposition presence in parliament.

I am pretty optimistic that we have people with very rational and responsible heads in WP who would put the overall development of democracy for Singapore as top priority over party’s interests.

Source: Goh Meng Seng

July 12, 2015