a letter.

Dear Minister for Defence,

You may remember me - we met at a "dialogue with the minister" session 7 months ago at 3.20pm in the afternoon; during the question and answer session, i asked why national service was important to our nation and you commended me that it was a "good question". you explained with great detail, and i think you are a very good person, even though you got stopped halfway due to the emcee offering you a drink of water. i thank you again for your effort in answering my pressing question then, and also for commending that it was a challenging question.

I am writing to you today as it has come to my humble attention that there is a single flaw in our highly efficient organisation. i understand that this is unacceptable in our society of perfection. i believe your very busy schedule of highly important meetings with the top officials of our country has allowed this mistake to go unnoticed. (i suspect it must be the idea of your subordinates, which explains why you ARE the respected minister, and not they)

You see, under your compassionate charge, all the soldiers are given an advanced pay every month, starting from when they join the organisation. throughout a two year period of very dedicated service, many soldiers believe that this brilliant idea of advanced allowance, which you thought up of, are being adopted island-wide. they start planning their finances -including their phone bills, transport costs, and installments for their iPod ver. 6 (60GB)- according to this monthly cycle, and they were all happy and good diligent soldiers.

When they end their term of service, they start looking for a job in society and realise not everyone shows as much compassion as your kind organisation does, and they only get their salary at the end of the month. this is causing a major problem as they end up getting their phone lines cut, their RX-Z motorcycle having no petrol to run on, and the most traumatic of all is having their iPod ver. 6 (60GB) being confiscated by the bank! (its really disastrous when all your iPod playlists are gone, and all the song ratings get reset to the default 3 stars!)

Understanding your compassion and credibility due to your high official appointment, i was hoping sir that you could draft out a letter of explanation for every such servicemen, that they can show to the phone companies, the SMRT/SBS, and also the banks, to get a waiver of payment for the month that they finish doing their great service to the nation. as they integrate back into the society, this measure would allow them a smooth transition, maintaining their communication and transport need - and of course their iPod ver. 6 (60GB) should never be taken away.

Or you could simply give us another month's allowance to solve all the above setbacks.

I look forward to your favourable reply, most compassionate, amiable and devoted minister Sir. (i can ill-afford to let them delete my iPod ver. 6 (60GB) playlists.) i strongly believe you agree with my good observation, as was my question 7 months ago.

i remain, sir,
I### F##

ps. anyway, Mr Teo C H, keep up the good work.