https://sammy.guru/showthrea...=669727&page=3
Please do not belittle MDA staff. MDA staff are well paid and expect same salaries as Disney executives even though MDA has zero media innovations past 60 years compare to Disney staff. MDA staff is good in copying and paste media innovations though. Hard work.
https://www.sammyboy.com/threads/mda...-condo.153621/
https://everythingalsocomplain.com/2...-corals-condo/
MDA CEO buying $10 million Corals condo
Posted on June 2, 2013 by gdy2shoez
From ‘2 Corals at Keppel Bay units sold for over $10m each’, 30 May 2013, article by Melissa Tan, ST Money
DESPITE flat demand in the luxury market so far this year, at least two condominium units with a price tag of over $10 million each were sold over the past fortnight. Keppel Land told the Singapore Exchange on Tuesday that family members of Mrs Koh-Lim Wen Gin, a former Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) chief planner, bought the units at its upcoming project Corals at Keppel Bay. Mrs Koh has been an independent director of Keppel Land since January 2010.
One of the buyers is her daughter, Ms Koh Lin-Net, the chief executive of the Media Development Authority. Ms Koh took office last November and prior to that was deputy secretary of trade at the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Ms Koh and her husband Lawrence Low bought a 3,477 sq ft four-bedder at Corals for slightly below $10.1 million, which works out to around $2,901 per sq ft for the second-floor unit.
The option to purchase is dated May 19.
There’s nothing wrong with stat board senior management buying expensive property, of course. What’s interesting about this piece of news is the sheer timing of it and how surprisingly informative it is, in light of MDA’s licensing scheme which requires news sites to fork out $50k performance bonds. That’s $500k in total for 10 websites, just enough for a 4-room HDB flat (but not a condo).
While there are angry bloggers out there complaining about MDA’s rules and how it would impede internet freedom via the #FreeMyInternet movement, it’s ironic how it’s in fact the mainstream media itself which leaked the possibility that the MDA CEO is a multi-millionaire, though the article was tucked quietly in the ‘Money’ section. With such earning power, I’m surprised they didn’t do a better job with the Senior Management rap some years back, like hiring Jay-Z to write and produce it. It could have been called ‘Empire State of MDA’.
According to the Online Citizen, ‘the BLOGGING community – COLLECTIVELY called #FreeMyInternet’, will be organising a protest at Hong Lim Park and an online ‘blackout’ for 24 hours on 8 June where you’re supposed to blanket your website in darkness and make Malaysian protesters wonder if they’re missing out on something. Not ALL bloggers or netizens feel that strongly nor are they pissing their pants about this imminent threat of Internet Panopticon Armageddon, so I’m not sure why TOC decided to drag the whole blogosphere into it.
Unless, of course, I’m not considered part of that ‘community’ but merely a fringe keyboard radical who needs to post tasteful homemade erotica pictures in order to generate enough hits to qualify for MDA licensing.
Mr Brown has become a part of it, naturally. With his musical talent, the #FreeMyInternet cause could at least turn from shouty media activism to funding poor families without Internet and even climb the pop charts like Band Aid’s ‘Do they Know It’s Christmas’ in the event that the outdoor protest or blackout fails. I’m actually hoping for that song to happen nonetheless *fingers crossed*.
I would support #FreetheWorld, #FreetheAnimals, #FreeMyCPF and #FreeBreakfastDay but I’m not sure if our Internet desperately needs ‘freeing’ like how one needs to emancipate a tortured slave. It’s not like I have to key in my Singpass whenever I google ‘How to Create a Homemade Landmine’ (A #FreeMyInternet supporter would whisper in a gloomy tone with slow wagging finger ‘Not yet…’).
It doesn’t seem that urgent for a nobody in the ‘community’ like myself to waste a good weekend protesting when I could be at the World Street Food Festival eating instead, and even if I DID go there and toss some slogans about, I would STILL get lawyers’ letters accusing me of defamation if I blogged drunk, with or without MDA’s crappy rules.
But just to show how ‘free’ the internet already is as we speak, I did some online background checks on CEO Koh Lin-Net for the benefit of anyone thinking of signing the petition because they’re concerned that there will come a day when everytime they open a browser, they’re instantly redirected to a mandatory login homepage with the PAP/MDA logo on it and some ominous marching music in the background which you’re forced to listen to for 20 seconds before you can do anything. Like those Youtube ads.
Koh, an alumni of CHIJ St Nicholas, confessed to ‘skipping classes’ and helping smuggle BEER into school while in Hwa Chong JC. She was also formerly a member of the Computer Club, a head prefect, and Deputy Secretary (Trade) of MTI.
We also know that just before she took over the reins at MDA, Deputy CEO Michael Yap unexpectedly resigned for reasons unknown. An IT guy and adjunct professor of Engineering, Yap was the ‘key driver’ behind the SingaporeONE initiative which made our country the FIRST in the WORLD to have national broadband access.
He also spoke at a TEDxUSC conference in 2010 and strikes me as the progressive, visionary tech-evangelist type. Reminds me of super-pastor Kong Hee too. In the MDA rap video he’s the one in the hip-hop garb and slickest moves. This is one officer who put the ‘Development’ in MDA, unlike what’s happening now, whereby the title ‘Media Restriction and Sanitation Authority’ would be more appropriate. Or MRSA (snigger away med nerds!)
For someone who spent $10 million on an apartment, Koh is well versed of the impermanence of material possessions. In a 2007 review of Herman Hesse’s ‘Siddhartha’, she says:
Now that I’m the midst of the journey, I think it’s a good reminder not to get caught up in material things; that material things at the end of the day will not help fulfill you.
Lee Wei Ling would concur. Such insight really explains buying a humble Corals unit then. She could afford a $300 million house for all you know.