Cashless Payment: Smart or Smug?

I just don’t understand.

The issue is easily solved with the simplest solution of tap-n-go like credit card payment and toll-payment. There isn’t any need for signature anymore. Why don’t just make these credit-card terminals smarter to accept e-zlink card, cash cards and nets cards? Better still, just use biometric identity like finger-print or iris to e-pay. No need any cards.

Why must we use mobile devices, apps & scan some codes to pay? Why make this process so complicated? 

When one thinks within the box and limited by one’s imagination, solutions look smart but in fact they are not. 

When all problems look like nails, the only tool they know is the hammer. Sigh! 

If I need to pay to use cashless payment or e-wallet, it’s not smart. If smart devices are needed and process takes more than 2 steps to e-pay, it’s not smart either.

The only reason cashless payment is being pushed strongly to all 12,000 hawkers, canteens and food courts is obvious. Every transaction could be tracked electronically & digitally so our ‘Big Brother’ knows your revenues and incomes. Can businesses under-declare their incomes to evade tax? Very difficult isn’t it? 

Now think again, who is smarter?

The rich, the famous and the powerful

Many caricaturists often draw those rich & famous people as their pictures are easily available. I drew them for fun or to poke fun at them when they are in the news.

Many close friends had warned me to restrain myself (手下留情) from publishing those drawings of rich and very powerful people. They are concerned I might be ‘invited for coffee’ in a dark room. I told them: drawing is like an addiction. I just couldn’t stop my imaginations & urge to put them onto paper. Like what American caricaturist Al Hirschfeld once said: “Artists are like children who refuse to put down their crayons.” I think he’s probably right. 

Now I try to omit/censor some sensitive details in my drawings of powerful people but many told me they could still identify the subjects in my drawings!

Oops……..