CPF myth busting: The Chee Koh Pek who can't manage his money

Hello everyone. A story on social media today has caught my eye, it is about how the Malaysian widow of the killed Changi Airport worker is now broke despite having received nearly S$1 million in insurance money and donations. It is a sad story - this widow clearly has never seen that much money in her life before and squandered it despite being clearly adviced that she should save most of it for her children's education. Some Singaporeans have used this story as a justification for the CPF minimum sum - that some people simply cannot be trusted to manage their own money and without the CPF minimum sum, many more Singaporeans could end up like this Malaysian widow. This also brings to mind another comment left by XxToweringxX on a recent post about the CPF minimum sum, s/he said:

XxtoweringxX6 June 2014 06:35

I also understand that some Singaporeans are pissed the MSS but put yourself in the govt shoes. When they allowed Singaporeans to withdraw full amount back then, guess what happen. Old Singaporean men spend their money on prostitution at Geylang or have a second wife from Batam or PRC. I remember back then that a lot of PRC xiao mei mei like to go to Chinatown and prey on old men knowing they just withdraw their CPF money. 

Time for a quick a Hokkien lesson: allow me to introduce the term 'Chee Koh Pek' (sometimes spelt Cheeko Pek or Ceeko Peh). It translates as "dirty old man" or "pervert" in Hokkien and Teochew. The Cantonese equivalent would be "Hum Sub Low". Here's an example of how it is used, "That taxi driver was such a Chee Koh Pek, he was staring at my girlfriend's boobs throughout the journey." It is a derogatory term of insult in Singapore and is often used in Singlish as well. Now whilst horny, lecherous older men are found in every country in the world, the Singaporean Chee Koh Pek is going to be focus on a CPF myth I am going to confront today.

Whilst it is true that some old Singaporean men did spend their CPF money on whores and mistresses, is it reasonable to draw a correlation between that and the CPF minimum sum? Of course not. Let me explain why. Firstly, there have been prostitutes in Singapore for a long time and there will always be prostitutes in Singapore - guess what? This is not illegal in Singapore and it is something that will never go away. Whilst it is not socially acceptable to most Singaporeans, the government has adopted a "close one eye and shut the other" approach when it comes to prostitution in Singapore. Heck, you have all kinds of prostitutes in Singapore from gay PRC "money boys" (ie. a male prostitute from China who services male clients) to white female prostitutes (from Europe, North America, Australia etc). There is a great variety available for all budgets and tastes in a cosmopolitan city like Singapore.

How much would a visit to a prostitute I hear you ask? Well you get what you pay for. On the lower end, prices start from about S$40 and for the higher end, it can go up to S$250 or even more. Obviously, for S$40, you're likely to get an older, unattractive  prostitute and if you want a young, white, attractive prostitute, expect to pay S$500 or more. For further reading on the whore scene in Singapore, I suggest this article on Sammyboy. It would open your eyes to a scene that you never knew existed. Perhaps most of you may be rather oblivious to the amount of prostitution in Singapore, but it is there. It is not in-your-face like like Pattaya or Bangkok, but there are plenty of whores in Singapore for those looking for that kind of fun.

Given that you can get engage the services of a prostitute for as little as S$40, it is clearly not necessary for a Singaporean man to wait till he withdraws his CPF money before he can finally afford to visit that whore in Geylang. Hardly. He doesn't even need to wait for payday as this is a very modest amount of money we are talking about here. Heck, a decent meal for two in a Singaporean restaurant would easily cost more than S$40. So any suggestion that older Singaporean 'Chee Koh Peks' would run to Geylang and spend all their money there on whores is simply not true on so many levels. Let's examine this issue closely and dispel some myths about the notorious Chee Koh Pek.

Let's start with some biology: one's sex drive falls with age, it's a medical fact. Your libido will go along with your physical fitness as you get older. When you're 60, you certainly won't experience the same level of sexual desire as an 18 year old. This is just mother nature at work - thus the men frequenting the whores in Geylang tend to be those with so much sexual desire that they are willing to pay to get laid, they are driven to Geylang literally by their libido, not the fact that they have money to spend. Conversely, older men are often reliant on medicines like Viagra - a drug to treat erectile dysfunction - to even perform sex.

The fact is older men are far less likely to cheat on their wives at the age of 60+ because their sexual desire would have fallen at that age. It is far more likely for a husband in his 30s and 40s to cheat on his spouse - after all, at that age, he can still experience rather high levels of libido and if marriage is not going well, then that's probably going to lead him to want to stray. If an older man's marriage falls apart, he's far more likely to go hang out somewhere doing anything from sports to gambling to music - something which he can enjoy without needing Viagra! How can I put this to you without being blunt... Older men in their 60s struggle to get it up. They may have the money but not the libido.

Do older straight men not feel attracted to beautiful young ladies? Yes and no. An older man can objectively say, "she is a beautiful woman" when he sees Miley Cyrus in her famous Wrecking Ball music video, but does he experience the same amount of desire? No he doesn't. Let me conduct an experiment with you. If I were to show you the picture below of a delicious looking cheesecake, what will your reaction be (presuming that you do generally like cakes like that)?

I say it would depend. If you were hungry, if your body is already naturally craving food, then that cheesecake would look delicious to you and you would want to have a slice or two. But if you had just had a very full dinner, if you simply were not in a position to even contemplate eating a mouthful of that sweet, rich, creamy cheesecake, then you would probably say, "no thank you, not for me" even if I offered you a slice of that cheesecake. Thus if the older man has no physical desire for sex, then his reaction is going to be the same even if it is offered to him, "no thank you, not for me." Of course, I am not saying that all men lose all sexual desire after they turn 60 - most will, some lucky ones may still be able to function in that department.

Besides, if a Chee Koh Pek really wants to visit the prostitutes in Geylang, he doesn't have to wait till he withdraws his CPF money. He can go anytime he wants. Let's put some figures on it. A dinner a very nice restaurant for a family of four in Singapore could easily cost $250. None of you would bat an eyelid at a Singaporean man spending $250 on treating his friends and family to dinner at a nice restaurant - but the moment he spends the same amount of money on a prostitute, there's this whole ridiculous moral panic about how that would leave him penniless after he squanders away his life savings on vices like that. Why do you raise a moral panic over one and not the other? Surely a greedy Singaporean man who squander his CPF savings on expensive restaurants leaving him penniless by the same token, the process is different but the result is the same. So why aren't you Singaporeans concerned about such expensive restaurants then?  After all, a visit to such a restaurant can easily cost more than a visit to a Geylang brothel!

Singaporeans are so squeamish about sex - you are an extremely prudish nation when it comes to anything to do with sex and sexuality. Thus you are easily manipulated by sex. How do you whip a Singaporean auntie up into a moral panic? Just mention sex and watch her judgement and rationality fly out of the window as she goes into this blind moral panic. This is ironic as Singaporean men are far less likely than their Asian counterparts to want to have sex - as found in this AsiaOne survey, Singaporeans have far less sex than their regional counterparts. And whilst this list is hardly scientific, Singapore comes in 7th in the list of 10 countries in the world having the least sex. The result of this is evident by the low-fertility rates which have plummeted to just 0.8 (way below replacement levels) - if you Singaporeans are not busy making babies, where do you think babies come from?

I'm afraid I am not painting a very complimentary picture of Singaporean men (and indeed women) here: you're a nation of adults who work extremely long hours, are extremely stressed out and cannot tear yourselves away from your iPhones and iPads to have sex. You're not worried about spending $250 on shopping or good food but the moment someone suggests that some old man is spending some of his own hard earned money on a prostitute, you get whipped up into a huge moral panic. For a nation who pride themselves at being good at maths, you're simply not doing the sums correctly here. #mathsfail I fear the mere mention of sex has rendered you irrational.

How is this possible - why is a country that is not having enough sex so paranoid about the temptations of lust? That's like a drought-stricken country in the Sahara desert being worried about having too much rain! Well, patients who suffer from anorexia nervosa have an irrational fear of weight gain and would starve themselves - despite being painfully, even dangerously thin, they would convince themselves that they are very overweight and need to lose more weight.  Singaporeans suffer from the same mindset: they have an irrational fear of lust despite being sexually inactive or even virgins.  In fact I have analyzed this mindset in detail in a previous post here - here is a story about a ridiculous  Singaporean mother is obsessed with her son's sex life despite the fact that he is clearly not sexually active.

As for the worry that 55 (or 65, this is a moving goal post) year old Singaporean men will suddenly have mistresses and seek affairs outside their marriages just because they are given a lump-sum CPF payout, good grief. I say, how ridiculous is that? I have been through the same arguments before when there was this whole moral panic over the Ashley Madison website. Listen, if a Singaporean man was determined to cheat on his wife and have an affair, he doesn't need to wait for a CPF payout or some website like Ashley Madison to come along to facilitate it - he would just go ahead and do it, much like the way the disgraced former PAP speaker of parliament Michael Palmer did.

If a man is happily married, he will gladly spend his CPF payout on his wife and family and he will ignore temptations to stray from his marriage in all shapes and form. Even if some PRC whore tried to seduce this happily married man, he would refuse all her advances. It is absolutely ridiculous to imply that giving men money would somehow cause them to seek extramarital affairs, as if that is something men would automatically do if given the financial resources to do so. And by the same token, suggesting that denying Singaporean men their savings would make them faithful to their wives is nothing short of an insult to Singaporean men! Check out this interview I did with a high end prostitute who gives her clients just that: all the thrills of great sex and none of the hassle and bullshit of a relationship.

Likewise, there are plenty of Singaporean men who are wealthy - this is one of the richest countries in the world and it should come as no surprise that there are plenty of rich, older Singaporean men who can live in luxurious condos, drive expensive cars and they are not reliant on their CPF savings at all. So are all these richer Singaporean men all having second wives or mistresses just because they can afford to do so? No, of course not. There is simply no correlation between having money and the desire to stray from one's marriage. Heck, even if a man was broke, there's no stopping him from trying to find sex with a willing party who doesn't demand any payment in exchange for a wild romp in bed.

Listen, if you are genuinely concerned about Singaporeans having affairs, then there is a simple solution: reduce the number of working hours. Allow Singaporeans to leave the office at a decent time to go home, have dinner with their spouses and enjoy quality time with their families. Singaporeans work an insane number of hours every week and even when they are at home, they are often still working on their laptops or phones. This work culture is causing far more damage to the quality of marriages, causing them to break down over the years when both spouses work so hard they barely talk to each other and have very little sex. That is what is causing Singaporean marriages to break down - it is not rocket science. In fact, it is pretty darn obvious.

This whole moral panic about sex, prostitutes and mistresses is distracting Singaporeans from having a proper discussion about financial management. In the case of the Malaysian widow who squandered her S$1 million in about a year, sex and lust had nothing to do with her situation! Yet in the absence of sex and lust, she still managed to somehow squander all that money. Yes this is a problem that we need to talk about, yes Singaporeans who do not have the appropriate financial management skills need to be given the necessary assistance to manage their funds, but at the end of the day - where do you draw the line? There has got to be a sensible compromise to be reached.

Can you imagine a nanny state where you go into a restaurant to celebrate your mother's birthday, you're choosing dishes off the menu and the waitress tells you, "Sir, you cannot order the bird's nest soup because that would make your bill exceed $100 and there is a law that prohibits citizens from spending more than $50 per head on a meal." That's when you turn around and say, "hang on, that's my money, I earned it honestly by working hard. Are you telling me that I cannot even spend my own money?" Do you really want to live in a country where you hand over all control to the government to dictate how much access you should have to even your own money? I would hate to be treated like a child who has no control over how he gets to spend his pocket money.

If it is your money, it should be your right to spend it as you wish - whether you wish to squander it on expensive meals in fancy restaurants, sports cars and loose women in Geylang or give it to a worthy charity - that should be your choice because that is your money at the end of the day. There simply isn't a way to legislate against people making bad decisions and save them from their own poor judgement, Some people will make silly mistakes like the Malaysian widow and they will have to face the consequences of their bad decisions - that should be enough of a deterrent for them to avoid those bad choices. The state cannot ultimately save stupid people from their own stupidity and trying to do so would be simply giving the government way too much control over what is ultimately your own hard earned money.

This sounds like common sense - but put sex into the equation and Singaporeans panic and lose any ability to think rationally about the issue. I won't be surprised if this whole Chee Koh Pek theory was one cooked up by someone who knew that any mention of sex, prostitutes and affairs would make Singaporeans go crazy in blind panic. Oh if only Singaporeans could learn from the French: when it was revealed the president Francois Hollande was having an affair, it actually boosted his popularity. Whoopee. Now that's a country where people don't bat an eyelid about sex but simply accept it as part of life. Ooh la la indeed.

On that note, I shall end this blog post. You Singaporeans need to stop going into a blind panic over the issue of sex. Do let me know what your opinions by leaving your thoughts in the comments section below. Many thanks for reading!

Limpeh FT

*The author blogs at http://limpehft.blogspot.sg