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Saturday, Dec 31, 2022 - 23:03 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Gone Home, Still Waiting

I realize that it's been a lean month for blog updates, but with other commitments on my mind, that's how it turned out. Likewise for the new apartment, there just so happens to be a hundred and one minor happenstances - a dab here missed when painting, a fibre cable there unpulled (which in turn engenders its own complications), a pull-out cabinet needing to be redone because the oven door handle got in the way; but yeah, this is the last round of rectifications. Really.

With that said, time to catch up on some recent affairs. The World Cup's ended with Messi cementing his claim to be all-time GOAT (somewhat poignant with Pelé's passing), if after penalties and an Mbappe hat-trick (admittedly two of them from penalties too). This continues the trend from last year's Euros, by the way, which had England flop after three relatively poor takes, and it would be Kane to sky it this time against France, to mark another premature exit. They were hardly the only victims; Japan, so indomitable in other respects, had their kickers look like they would rather be anywhere else too, before falling 1-3 to Croatia. Well, as analyzed last year, simply whacking it at the top half of the goal might not be as easy as it would seem (re: Spain crumbling after much practice), since I doubt the national coaches are unaware of the research.

There's also been a bit of feedback on whether it was unfair to label Maguire as "not having much pace" in the previous post, and in defence of this assertion, here's his FIFA 23 card - together with some other contemporaries:


Okay, that's not flattering
(Sources: futhead.com for VVD, Maguire and Varane)
[N.B. Not a new assessment, his normal cards never rated him above 55.]


According to the experts at EA Sports, Maguire has a Pace of 48, which is decidedly below-average for top-class defenders, and an Agility of 39 and a Balance of 33 - which I suppose backs up the "turns like a battleship" (majestic, awe-inspiring, oh so ponderous) part. In contrast, Van Dijk, who has probably been considered the EPL's top centre-back for the past few seasons, is at 81 Pace. The same for Maguire's new teammate Varane, with newly-crowned World Cup winner Lisandro Martínez at 72 Pace, and Victor Lindelöf at 59 Pace (which could explain a lot of United's defensive embarassments against breaks previously). Heading's at 85, though, which is about where one would expect it. Low-resource football scouts never had it so easy!

Moving on to housing-related news, I was chuffed when our outspoken and straight-talking CS prof touched on the precarious state of local (public) housing (with prime resale flats approaching the S$1.5 million level), a couple of months back. This included an acknowledgement that "asset enhancement defies the Laws of Mathematics", following the logic that the apartment has a finite (usually 99-year) lease, and since it has a zero value at the end of the lease (with Ministers repeatedly cautioning that not all [i.e. very few] flats will be eligible for SERS), it must then necessarily stop being an appreciating asset sometime before that. This official shift in attitude towards recognizing HDB flats as leaseholds instead of "ownerships" has been further hammered home by our Second Lady, who has urged locals to think of it as paying rental fees upfront. Quite the turnaround from LKY's time, we might observe.

On this, it might be noted that these general observations had been made back in 2011 by Alex Au (referenced here in August 2012) - with the HDB/CPF trap thereafter amplified by Roy Ngerng - but I guess the very same facts get more respect when they're uttered by establishment figures. On the latter, the "true cost" of HDB flats remains as ever a teasing dance between our incumbent and opposition parties, because it ain't gonna look nice if exactly how much land costs (which would notably chase each other up, and isn't government land supposed to be for the public good anyway?) factor into the "subsidized" prices, were to be revealed.

The broad consensus amongst cannier netizens appears to concur with Alex Au in figuring that there's not many tricks left to play, especially once the first large tranche of flats hits about sixty years of remaining lease. However, for all the tame blandishments about "Returning HDB to its roots of building homes, not short-term assets" in The State's Times, and implorations against using said HDB flats to amass wealth in the newspaper's forum pages, one quite expects perhaps the bulk of citizens to continue regarding flats as such, with BTOs bought and left vacant for years as guaranteed appreciating assets. Few are going to say no to a not-so-quick but very easy flip for a profit of a couple hundred thousand bucks, and hey, HDB now has a toll-free hotline to baotoh such cases!



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