The Forum editor was thinking, "ya! this is obviously an issue of great interests to the nation! Or I can make someone's life at ICA just a little bit more miserable!" :-)
Sep 20, 2008
Baby's birth cert reverses parental joy
THE arrival of my newborn daughter was a source of joy for my wife and myself - until I went to obtain her birth certificate from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA). To my horror, she was given the number T08-XX444X. As Chinese Singaporeans are aware, the number four suggests death, and implies misfortune.
[So ICA has turned their daughter from a source of joy to a source of horror? Wow. That's one powerful agency. I wanna work there!]
I appealed to the ICA officer, also a Chinese Singaporean who understood my discomfiture. But she firmly rejected my plea because rules were rules, I was told. Subsequently, I appealed to a superior officer and waited an agonising week, making several calls in between, only to be given the same answer. I grant that sticking to a system of rules is important. But so too is crafting exceptions which humanise the system.
[Yes we should humanise the system. But I draw the line at idiocising the system. Just because you are an idiot who thinks the numbers on a birth cert will make a difference in your daughters life instead of your contribution as a parent doesn't mean the system is inhuman. It just means you're an idiot.]
My wife and I took great pains to craft our daughter's name, consulting time-honoured cultural principles, because we wanted an auspicious life for her. Imagine having a birth certificate number like 444 which counters all that.
[You obviously didn't spend enough time or took enough pains. If you did, you would have found an auspicious time to register her birth so that the system generated number would not have been 444X. Did you go to register the birth at 4.44 pm? On Thursday, 4th Sept? ]
A birth certificate is a personal and important life-long document.
[A birth certificate is just a birth certificate. It doesn't make you a better or worse person.]
A system which forces officers to stick rigidly to the rulebook without due regard for cultural sensitivities is not a good one. Rules are made to serve citizens and not the other way round.
[It's good to be culturally sensitive. It's bad to let superstitions run the world. In any case, quatro-phobia is not a cultural thing. It's a homophonic (homonymic?) idiosyncracy at best. Apologies to the homos.]
I'm not giving up. I hope that my daughter can be given a more appropriate birth certificate number and I'm not asking for very auspicious figures.
[Don't want very auspicious figures, so just what is auspicious enough?]
Joseph Tan
[Joe, your daughter will be a great person or a waste of time because of you and your wife's efforts to raise her as a person with strong values and good habits and attitudes. If you truly believe some numbers on a paper will make a great difference in her life, she is already handicapped by having an idiot of a father, and possibly by his self-fulfilling prophecy. She deserves better than that.]
Sep 20, 2008
Baby's birth cert reverses parental joy
THE arrival of my newborn daughter was a source of joy for my wife and myself - until I went to obtain her birth certificate from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA). To my horror, she was given the number T08-XX444X. As Chinese Singaporeans are aware, the number four suggests death, and implies misfortune.
[So ICA has turned their daughter from a source of joy to a source of horror? Wow. That's one powerful agency. I wanna work there!]
I appealed to the ICA officer, also a Chinese Singaporean who understood my discomfiture. But she firmly rejected my plea because rules were rules, I was told. Subsequently, I appealed to a superior officer and waited an agonising week, making several calls in between, only to be given the same answer. I grant that sticking to a system of rules is important. But so too is crafting exceptions which humanise the system.
[Yes we should humanise the system. But I draw the line at idiocising the system. Just because you are an idiot who thinks the numbers on a birth cert will make a difference in your daughters life instead of your contribution as a parent doesn't mean the system is inhuman. It just means you're an idiot.]
My wife and I took great pains to craft our daughter's name, consulting time-honoured cultural principles, because we wanted an auspicious life for her. Imagine having a birth certificate number like 444 which counters all that.
[You obviously didn't spend enough time or took enough pains. If you did, you would have found an auspicious time to register her birth so that the system generated number would not have been 444X. Did you go to register the birth at 4.44 pm? On Thursday, 4th Sept? ]
A birth certificate is a personal and important life-long document.
[A birth certificate is just a birth certificate. It doesn't make you a better or worse person.]
A system which forces officers to stick rigidly to the rulebook without due regard for cultural sensitivities is not a good one. Rules are made to serve citizens and not the other way round.
[It's good to be culturally sensitive. It's bad to let superstitions run the world. In any case, quatro-phobia is not a cultural thing. It's a homophonic (homonymic?) idiosyncracy at best. Apologies to the homos.]
I'm not giving up. I hope that my daughter can be given a more appropriate birth certificate number and I'm not asking for very auspicious figures.
[Don't want very auspicious figures, so just what is auspicious enough?]
Joseph Tan
[Joe, your daughter will be a great person or a waste of time because of you and your wife's efforts to raise her as a person with strong values and good habits and attitudes. If you truly believe some numbers on a paper will make a great difference in her life, she is already handicapped by having an idiot of a father, and possibly by his self-fulfilling prophecy. She deserves better than that.]
