Friday, July 11, 2025

“You think… you’re going to live a nice life in Singapore, but what we need is someone who’s going to actually do the work.” – US Senator Tammy Duckworth


 

Around two years ago, we took an intern who I took on as my “godson.” One of the reasons for why I took him on as a “godson” was the fact that I had sympathy for him. He’s a son from a well to do family trying to prove himself on his own merits.

Whilst I remain very fond of him, there was an area that irked me – namely the fact that he was unable to perform simple office task and the complaints were ending up on my door. I tried to counsel him and then I asked him “What do you think interns do?” His reply was “Go to events and meet big shots.”

His response irked me and when I mentioned my irritation to one of my colleagues, he actually told me was wrong to get irked. His point was “interns these days have expectations.”

I was given a reminder of this event years ago when I watched snippets of the senate confirmation of the potential US Ambassador to Singapore, Dr. Ajani Sinha. The news media made mincemeat of the fact that Dr. Sinha was vastly out of his depth and didn’t know the intricacies of the job. The finale of this humiliation of Dr. Sinha came when senator Tammy Duckworth told him, “You think… you’re going to live a nice life in Singapore, but what we need is someone who’s going to actually do the work.” More on the exchange can be found at;

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrxd7d78r0o

 


 In fairness to Dr. Sinha, he’s not the only person getting ready for a high-profile job who forgot the basics – namely the fact that work has to be done.

Let’s look at the basic definition of a job. At its most basic, a job is a task or a series of task which are performed for a certain period in return for an exchange of money. This is true regardless of whether you are a ditch digger or the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company. So, if you look at this basic definition of a job, the most basic task of the “hiring” process is to find out if you can do the work required.

Now, this is generally clear at the most basic end of the market. If you’re going to work as a ditch digger, your employer will simply want to ensure that you are a physically strong enough to dig for certain number of hours every day for say a month. The screening process becomes more complicated along with the job requirements. For example, if you need a machine operator, you need someone who can operate the machine. Then, if you need someone to lead a team of machine operators, you need to check that the said candidates are not only able to operate the machine but also lead other machine operators. I take my national service training for the artillery. First, I had to go through a “basic gunner” course. This was relatively simple, we had to learn how to operate a 155 Gun Howitzer. Then, we had to go through “specialist” course, which involved not just learning how the Gun Howitzer worked but how it operated on the larger scale of things.

Whilst that’s relatively simple on a basic level because you’re essentially trying to fill a cog in a machine. It becomes a bit more complicated when you’re hiring for the top positions. The complication comes down to this – the higher up you go, you’ll tend to find that only one skill is required – leadership.

However, the problem with “leadership” is that it’s a very subjective term. What defines a “competent” leader can mean many things depending on who’s asking. In the military it usually means someone who can plan military campaigns. In a
“non-profit” it could mean the person who raises and in a commercial enterprise it usually means bringing in the most profit and raising share prices in the name of shareholder value.

Then, there’s the fact that leadership, unlike most jobs where you’re required to do one or two task, leadership inevitably means overseeing many people doing many tasks. Hence, the old army joke about why the person at the top is called a “general.” The answer being because he (they usually are) has wide general knowledge about many things but they’re not experts on any particular subject matter.

Thanks to this complexity, leadership is often very well rewarded. This includes things like houses, cars, high salaries and in corporate America – stock options. In the private sector this usually comes in the shape of a lot of money and in the public sector, this usually comes with a lot of perks.

The rewards that leaders receive are inevitably very attractive. I think of the usual topic of “minister’s salaries” in Singapore, where the average minister gets paid around $100,000 a month. Who wouldn’t be attracted to this type of salary? Or let’s look at the compensation of many American CEOs, which consist of “stock options” which can be the region of millions a year. The argument made is that you need to “attract” talent.

There is, however, one slight problem. When rewards become so attractive, they become a separate focus. In some ways, the rewards become focus and the job becomes an inconvenience – a point raised about Singapore Armed Forces Scholars in the book “Defending the Lion City,” which argued that there was a danger of the SAF’s scholars passing time in the military on way to very lucrative civilian careers rather than treating the work of being in the military as the main focus.

While it’s understandable why people would be attracted to task with great rewards, the rewards come with a price – namely the job and doing the work. Too many of us forget that work needs to be done and it needs to be done at a certain standard. Unfortunately, this is an area where board rooms and HR departments struggle with. How do you ensure that the person’s main focus is on the work?

One of the most obvious answers is to make payment commensurate with competence. However, there’s a problem. How do you demonstrate and measure competence. As often said, the reality is that the job doesn’t go to the best person but the person who sell his or herself best.

The challenge for HR professionals is inevitably how does one reward those who genuinely does the work rather than the people who only expect a cushy life from the job.  

 

 



Thursday, July 03, 2025

“We Have Standards in the West” – Charlie Kirk


 

If you wanted an area to kick the Singapore government, it would be its common refrain of “The Public is not ready for a Non-Chinese Prime Minister,” during every election. The point is simple. Successive Singapore governments have made the point that Singapore is a “meritocracy.” Our national pledge talks about “regardless of race, language or religion.” We’ve been the proud poster boy of “multiracialism” and “multiculturalism.” Yet, whenever the topic of leadership succession comes about, the same government which talks about “multiracialism” and “meritocracy” will tell you that Singapore is simply not ready for a “non-Chinese” (the majority community) to take charge of things.

One only needs to look at the previous change of power. The star was the then Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Tharman Shanmugaratnam. He remains a great policy wonk with a precious commodity – international recognition (Mr. Tharman used to serve with the IMF). He’s also got a good common touch that resonates with the ground. Yet, despite what everyone said, Mr. Tharman ruled himself out of the succession race and got himself kicked upstairs to the presidency (In theory the one all of us need to call Sir – but in reality, does what a nice silver tea spoon does.) Instead, the job went to Mr. Lawrence Wong, whom while competent enough in his own right, remains many years Mr. Tharman’s junior in the political sphere (probably the only first time in history where the President was the Prime Minister’s senior in their previous career.)

So, when you look at the claim made by the government that the public is “not ready” for a “non-Chinese” Prime Minister, it does seem to make the government’s claims of Singapore being a “non-racial” “meritocracy” ring a little hollow.

However, does the government have a point when it makes this rather obvious claim on the limits of “diversity.” Given obsession of “looking for best practices around the world,” you could argue that the government has seen something that the rest of us don’t. In this case, it’s the fact that the record of someone not fitting into the mainstream coming into power has been a little sad.

One might argue that this isn’t totally accurate. America elected its “Black” president in Barak Obama and the UK had its first “Asian” Prime Minister in the shape of Rishi Sunak. However, I’ve argued that both Mr. Obama and Mr. Sunak are the exception that proves the rule. Whilst both men have a different complexion from the majority in the countries they led, they are from “elite” backgrounds (Mr. Obama is from Harvard Law School, Mr. Sunak went to Winchester and Oxford) and thus “acceptable.” Then, you have to add in the fact that Mr. Sunak was never elected to the job and whilst Mr. Obama did win two elections, he was replaced by Mr. Donald Trump who basically won on being everything Mr. Obama is not.

Here's the nasty truth – being different scares the living crap out of the majority. People are easily scared and when they’re scared, they find comfort in believing all sorts of silly things that may be said about you.

Prime example – the recent elevation of Mr. Zohran Mamdani to be the candidate of the Democratic Party for Mayor of New York City. Let’s make the point that he’s only become a “candidate” of a political party and not the holder of a political office.

Yet, despite this, Mr. Mamdani has become an instant target of “hatred” from the Republican party and incidentally, his own “Democratic” party. He has been accused on being an “antisemitic” enemy of the state of Israel and the common refrain is that if elected, Mr. Mamdani will enact Sharia law in New York city:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X6jQJmsDCU

 


 

There is no evidence to suggests that Mr. Mamdani has said he would implement Sharia law and the main charges against him for being “antisemitic” come from the fact that he’s mentioned that he would arrest Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,” should he step foot in New York City, which would be in accordance with International Law (Mr. Netanyahu has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for War Crimes) and interestingly enough, from stating that he would stay in New York city instead of running off to Israel if elected mayor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnlQW8Rh80A

 


 

There is no evidence to suggests that Mr. Mamdani is going to implement anything terribly radical in the area of social demography if elected as Mayor. Yet, and yet, there’s a rush to paint Mr. Mamdani as Osama bin Ladin’s successor for the mere fact of being who is (South Asian Immigrant Muslim):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtfxnaLVig

 


 


It’s not that Mr. Mamdani is a saint. There are things that potential opponents can attack him for. One of the most obvious areas is in policy details. How, for example, exactly does he plan to pay for what he’s promising. These would be more “solid” ways of attacking him than say making him the cultural enemy of the main stream.

Then, there’s the point that when you focus on attacking him personally, you miss addressing the point as to why he’s “winning.”

Ironically, Mr. Mamdani’s strategy has been to take a leaf from Mr. Trump – focus on key issues affecting people and harping on them. Mr. Trump talked about the price of eggs. Mr. Mamdani is talking about rents in New York.

Again, look at his answer about “foreign trips.” His point is straight – he’s running for “Mayor of New York” and not “secretary of state.” His job is to look after “New York,” and he’ll stay next to the people who voted for him rather than travel to the Middle East. Watch his answers in public forums and he’s very focused on his message.

Mr. Mamdani has scared both sides of the political isle. Yet, he’s understood that there is a segment of the electorate that believes the entire establishment is no longer interested in real issues and he’s tapped into that. Whilst he may not be perfect, he’s shown that whilst many people may not be comfortable with someone who doesn’t look, eat or pray like them, they’re willing to overcome such differences if that person is willing to listen to their needs.

 



Wednesday, June 04, 2025

Where Does the Magic Happen?


 Decided that I needed to go back to working out properly after a two-week break. Call it a combination of Kiddo visiting and then having to go through a case of entertaining (Once you take booze, an intense work out isn’t going to help) which stopped me from doing my usual.

Anyway, decided to push through my “Mini-Mike” routine (Aim for 10 percent of what Mike Tyson did in his prime – hence 50 push-ups, 75 bench dips, 90 Australian rows and 200 body-weight squats) and when I woke up, I wondered why I wasn’t particularly horny. Decided to check with Deepseek, which advised that there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with me, except that the body was telling me it needed more time to recover. True enough, the body only recovered after a lunch of mutton biryani (protein and carbs to refuel muscle glycogen).

I delve into this because there is a very basic part of exercise science that most people overlook. This is the fact that there are three pillars that create muscle growth and strengthening and exercise is only one of the pillars. The other two are diet and rest. The way it works is simple – exercise creates damage to the muscle, and the body then repairs the damage making each muscle fiber thicker and stronger than before the exercise (diet provides the fuel for the repair and rest is when the repair actually happens).

https://denpedia.com/muscle-growth-and-repair-building-strength-and-recovery/

 


 So, essentially, the science behind creating a better body and by extension a better mind is a process of damage and repair. You need to damage the body to make it build back better. If you talk to enough fitness coaches or top-level athletes are very particular about their diets and getting sleep.

This is something most of ordinary Joes don’t always understand. For those of us who get health conscious in “old age,” the process looks something like this – we move a bit more than we used to and we adjust our diets. The one great pillar that we tend to over look is rest or more specifically sleep. I am guilty of this. I move more in my late forties and early fifties than I did in my twenties and thirties. I probably eat better now too (less visits to Fast Food joints, less booze and even less soft drinks). However, the temptation to sleep late remains strong and I end up sleeping less than the full eight hours.

If anything, modern culture tends to demean sleep. I think of all the “energized” old-dudes who keep tell you that you’ve only lived 40-years when you reach 60 because you spent 20-years fast asleep. When you’re young (twenties and thirties), you want to have fun so, you sneak party hours into sleep hours. I think of the wild parties I had with my neighbours when I was back in university. The neighbours were Swedes and one of my best friends was a Finn. We’d drinks ourselves silly on good old-fashioned vodka (the battle being between Absolut and Finlandia). We’d crash and some unearthly hour and yet, the one guy who had a job managed to get up and go to work looking absolutely fresh. It helped that we were all in our twenties back then.

There are certain things which are good fun when you’re in your twenties that should not be done when you’re in your fifties. The reason is simple; the body starts to show signs of wear and tear. The process of healing which worked so well in a twenty-year old body works less well in a fifty-year-old one. Hence, a fifty-year old needs to pace him or herself properly if they tend to last in their jobs. Yet, we continue to support a toxic culture of machismo, where you get 50 something year old's who still brag about working late nights and the expense of their sleep.

This shouldn’t be the case. Rest and sleep regenerate the human body and mind, thus allowing the human being to be productive. If you want people to be productive, you need to see to it that they are rested and tearing themselves down. Creating a culture where employees feel it’s “uncool” to rest leads to low productivity and non-productive, who in turn lead to a slugging economy that grows old.



Wednesday, May 28, 2025

When the Fish Bowl is the Centre of the World


 

“You got to be Kidding Me” – An Australian Businessman to a Young Singapore Girl who asked “Where is Calcutta? Where is Bahrain?

Last Friday, I nearly lost it with someone, who was apparently a regular in the media scene. My Chubby Tiger partner had mentioned that she works with someone who promotes Georgian wine and he had proceeded to insist that there is “No such” country known as Georgia. I actually had to show him a map to prove that Georgia, the country actually existed:

https://www.infoplease.com/atlas/asia/country-of-georgia-map

 


 To be fair to this chap, he’s not the only person I’ve meet with a dreadful knowledge of basic geography and I guess if you look at the big picture, there are plenty of people who don’t know basic geography. My stepfather, who once lived in the Appalachian hills of Kentucky, where people had no concept of anywhere outside their Appalachia. He was introduced as someone from “beyond there, yonder.”

However, this isn’t Appalachia or Hill Billys we’re talking about here. The people who are demonstrating their lack of knowledge beyond the Goldfish Bowl of Singapore, are “intelligent” and “educated” people (defined as having a basic degree) and in many cases working with international companies and therefore used to working with people from elsewhere.

The best part about this “lack of knowledge” of basic human geography isn’t even specialized knowledge that you need to be trained to know. Its basic information that you can get from a simple Google search on your smart phone. All you need to do is to just Google a world map:

https://www.mapsofworld.com/

 


Somewhere, somehow, we seem to have developed a mindset that tells us that we’re the centre of the universe and the only truth comes from what we hear from news sources.

Unfortunately, Singapore, despite its strategic location, is a very small place that is barely locatable on the world map. While we’ve been the poster boy of “small is smashing,” our lack of size means that our very survival is dependent on our ability to read the world beyond our shores. If you read Lee Kuan Yew’s books, you’ll see that he developed an ability to read elections better than the local politicians in the USA and UK because our survival depended on it.

Yet, how is it that our local people don’t have the basic knowledge about the world outside. Why can’t we be bothered to do a simple Google search when it comes to anywhere outside? This is a worry question especially at a time when many of us feel crowded out by arrivals from elsewhere and in the job market and we’re told that looking outside Singapore is going to be a must.

Let’s take one my favourites, which was having someone from Saudi Aramco tell me that people had asked him which part of Dubai he was from. Yes, I am well aware that Dubai’s PR machine is exceptionally good at what it does but the reality is that Dubai is only an Emirate within the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and even within the UAE, it’s the “second” main component (the main one being Abu Dhabi). Then, even when you look at a map of the region, you’ll understand that the biggest place in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is actually Saudi Arabia:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-the-GCC-member-countries_fig4_364155709

 

 


Another favourite is mistaking Sikhs as coming from Bengal. Yes, the Sikhs from Punjab come from India and so do the Bengalis. A quick glance of the map will show you that it’s around 1,500 kilometres between Punjab and Bengal and it would take you nearly two hours by plane.

https://www.distancefromto.net/distance-from-west-bengal-to-punjab-in

 


I think of one of my favourite Australian businessmen who got exasperated with a young graduate who didn’t know where Calcutta and Bahrain where. I remember remaking that she was blessed with a huge chest because that was the only thing worth mentioning about her after this display of general knowledge.

Jokes aside, it seems that we’re not curious about anywhere outside our own little parameters and this becomes even more so when you talk about anywhere that they may consider an “s***hole” country – i.e. filled with dark people instead of pale ones. I think of the time I tried to share something funny with someone and the reply was “I have no time to waste on a dark skinned one.”

Unfortunately, our little Goldfish Bowl is not the centre of the world. Unfortunately, many of the opportunities are coming from places that Donald Trump so eloquently called “s***holes.” Instead of burying our heads in the sand about these places and being callous towards them and their culture, isn’t it time we got curious enough to find out about such places and people in order to maximise the opportunities for ourselves?  

 

 

 



Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Living in a Goldfish Bowl


 

A few months before Christmas, I had a drink with an Italian and an Asian girl. The Italian started on the topic of how he been misled to believe that Jesus was White when in reality he was from the Middle East. I remember saying, “Yes, Jesus was a Palestinian.” At that point, the Asian girl in the discussion got very upset with me and said “No, he was not a Muslim – he was Jewish.”

It goes without saying, that the girl in question is highly educated and worked in some pretty prominent places. I state this because, I’ve noticed that as much Singaporeans are as a group highly educated, many of them tend to confine how they see people from different parts of the world, through a very strange prism of colonial hangovers.  

You could say that part of this is due to Lee Kuan Yew’s attempt to reorganize race and religion. Mr. Lee, who was a very brilliant man by all accounts had a few quirks. He was, for example, determined to turn the Chinese community a “homogeneous” one, where Chinese dialects ceased to exist and all Indians were “Southern.”

In a way, this was a blessing. Singapore has been relatively peaceful where topics of racial and religious tensions only exist in the history books (or National Education in official speak) or what happens elsewhere in the region.

However, as more migrants from India and China have arrived, much of our perceptions of race and religion are being challenged. This is, in many ways, a healthy sign in that such concepts should be fluid but if handled wrongly, it could move things out of the history books and onto the streets.

Let’s start with the basic facts. Religion and race are separate issues. If you look at the Palestinian community, there is the fact that whilst a majority are Muslim, there are Christians and it’s been argued that the Palestinians today have better claim of being more closely related to the ancient Hebrews of Jesus’s day than many Israelis.

Then, there’s the fact that many “races” in the world are more diverse than we credit them for being and it has become more so. In Singapore, the local Indian population is mainly of Tamil (South Indian) descent. So, we’re told that Indians are Tamil and if you ask the average Singaporean, they’ll tell you that the language of Indians is Tamil. It shocked an aspiring politician I know, when I told him that the national language of India is in fact Hindi rather than Tamil. The same is true, though to a lesser extent, of the Chinese. As a few Main land Chinese girls have explained “They’re better looking than the local Singaporeans because they’re from different parts of China.”

As much as the government likes to bleat about its success in making Singapore “multi-cultural,” “multi-racial,” and “multi-religious,” the truth of the fact was the job was relatively easy. The Chinese were predominantly Southern Chinese and the Indians are predominantly Southern, specifically Tamils. Hence, it was relatively to define “Chinese” and “Indian.” If you were to add the expatriate population, it was for a time, mainly people from English speaking countries, namely Brits, Americans and Australians. So, it was easy to categorize “White” people as being the same.

Talk to enough Singaporeans, and you’ll find that they see the world and its people in the following categories:  

1.    Land of Natural Leaders and Wonderful Looking People where we’re so blessed because they give us our prosperity all that’s good in life – (The USA, The UK and Australia):

2.    Land of People who give us nice cars and brands we want but unfortunately speak funny languages (everywhere in the EU);

3.    Land of People who look similar to us, who give us interesting cuisine and TV shows (Japan and South Korea);

4.    Land where people look like us, could give us some business but they’re just uncouth and slutty (China);

5.    Our cousins the country bumpkins (Malaysia);

6.    The lands where we can sin with abandon because they’re filled with lazy and slutty people (everywhere else in the ASEAN region);

7.    The Land where people have lots of money but we wish they wouldn’t follow the religion that people in the first category don’t like; (the Middle East)

8.    The Land of Smelly People who should be thankful that we allow to clean our s*** (Every country on the Indian Subcontinent); and

9.    The Land where that provides us with sad stories but we don’t really care because they’re a bit dark.

As comforting as it may be to see the world in neat categories and subscribing ethnicities and religions to geographies, the world is not so neat. I’ve noticed that many people in Singapore struggle when people don’t fit into a category. Unfortunately, this does creep into officialdom.

One of the most blatant was from an Afrikaner friend, who went to see the immigration officials and they were stunned. He looks like he’s from category or two but his passport says he’s from a country in category nine. He was asked “What do they call you?” They couldn’t understand when he said “South African” (the place that issued his passport).

Then, there’s the issue of Indian professionals migrating here and the various complaints against them. I do get that there must be a good number from the community that aren’t stand up people. I do get the complaints about people with “fake certs” and so on.

However, one has to get over the idea that people born in category eight are capable of doing the jobs that we’ve been so conditioned to think of as the prerogative of people from category one. I remember someone sending me list of the top tier management of Standard Chartered Singapore, which was predominantly Indian-national and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t emotionally triggered. Here’s the fact, all of them had qualifications from top universities and work experience from large corporations. (As a matter of disclosure, the Indian National Community, where the only community willing to support me during my years of freelancing.)

I remember during the race to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. I was in favour Rishi Sunak getting the job (admittedly based on a bias towards the contributions of the South Asian community.) There were many people in Singapore who were upset with me for the apparent inability to understand than anyone from category eight was not supposed to lead anything (for the record, Rishi Sunak lasted longer than Liz Truss and had to stabilize her mistakes).

Then, there’s the fact that the nations in category one and two, are not exactly the preserve of any particular race or religion. People of different ethnicities and religions have made the USA, the UK and Australia home and contributed accordingly. I think of a customer who was ethnically Vietnamese but as German as someone who was blonde haired and blue-eyed. I remember asking her friend blonde and blue-eyed friend if she was German, in German and it was the girl of Vietnamese decent who replied me, in German.

In a way, it’s quite funny to see how people who “ethnically” look like they’re from category four and beyond but born and bred in categories one and two, discover their attachment to their “homeland.” I think of a British banker called “Singh” who had to put “UK” in his email address. Then, there was an ex-lover who happened to be black but American (Georgia) who used to stress that she had a “US PASSPORT” and had to relationship with the Nigerians who had a restaurant in Sam Leong Road, Little India.

The world has moved on from the colonial era and flows of migration have made the world, on the whole, a better place. Our concepts of race, religion and nationality should no longer be rigid. We should celebrate that you can no longer assume a person’s nationality by his or her religion or race and its time we ditch concepts that should have gone the way of the dinosaur.  

   



Thursday, May 22, 2025

“Aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.” – Gary Brecka


 

I decided to take the Neurotic Angel out on my 48th birthday and when we sat down, I told her that dinner was in honour of me turning 48. She said, “You’re not bad looking for 48.”

This compliment of sorts was the first compliment I had received on my looks for a while. Prior to that, the main comment about my “good looks,” came from my mother who said that I was “gross looking.”

While I am past the age where the need to pose is part of life, it felt pleasant to receive a compliment and how I did go from “gross looking,” as defined by my loving me mother at 38 to “not bad looking” by someone I had just gotten to know?

I am sure nobody will define me as “athletic” or “handsome” but I appreciate the fact that my body remains functional, and nobody seems worried that I may go into cardiac arrest if I walk more than a few metres carrying a piece of paper. If you take the available literature at face value, it looks like I may enjoy my 50s and beyond. This wasn’t necessarily the case when I was in my late thirties and early forties. The army medical officer booted me off reservist duty when he took my blood pressure.

What happened? The answer is simple -Covid lock downs made it such that I adapted regular exercise (mainly walking but latter added body weight) because it was the only loophole to get out of the house.

Whilst exercise isn’t the cure-all (weight loss remains primarily focused on diet), it does make a difference in one’s wellbeing. However, the reason why most of us avoid it and become “time-poor” the moment someone suggests doing some form of physical activity as part of the daily routine.

Here’s the truth, exercise in all forms involves getting inconvenient and uncomfortable. Let’s face it, the truth is, exercise involves getting sweaty (which is especially uncomfortable if you live in the tropics) and sore, with not very much to show for it in the immediate time frame.

Sure, everyone wants to look good (for guys its that six-pack and for girls it’s that toned behind) but when we’re told that we need to get uncomfortable, the desire to “look good,” dims and we start putting our minds to all sorts of easier solutions like taking pills. Much as we complain about getting “stressed” at our desk jobs, we’ll stay in them even if alternatives paid as well because, well sitting at a desk is way more comfortable than say walking around carrying stuff in a restaurant. When the body starts to show signs of failure, we just put it down to aging.

However, when I think of my own physical imperfections, I’m drawn to a quote by human biologist, Gary Brecka, who describes aging as “the aggressive pursuit of comfort.”

https://www.tiktok.com/@garybreckaunscripted/video/7426089193551465734

 

 


Most of us avoid rigorous exercise, particularly from our mid-thirties on wards because we avoid the things that make us uncomfortable. Talk to enough of the professional middle class who have reached a certain level of “success” and they’ll tell you “The days when I had to lift things and run around are long over.” Its as if success is correlated with how much comfort you have or at least how much discomfort you avoid.

We condition ourselves to pursue comfort and convenience. Modern life is for the most part great. We are living far longer than our ancestors could ever dream of and the peasants of today have more comfortable lives than the kings of the past.

Yet, despite this, I’m reminded of a doctor who stated that “life is not meant to be convenient.” He’s got a point. The human body, which inevitably means the human mind is not designed for comfort and plenty but for survival. Let’s go back to the concept of weight loss. It takes me two hours to walk 10km and to burn around 500 calories. It takes me five minutes to put on a thousand over calories by eating ice cream. Why? The body was designed to store calories for periods when food was not available. Hence, it easily stores calories and uses very few calories even in intense physical moments.

Survival is about adaptation and the body adapts when challenged. However, when no challenges are around and things are comfortable, the body will then start disposing of the things it does not need. Think of muscle loss in older adults – it’s a case of “use it or lose it.” Let’s look at every story of a morbidly obese person. The inevitable link between every morbidly person is that they started becoming that way when they refused to leave their bed, even for the most basic functions and then they reached a stage when they were no longer able to move:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4313754/Super-morbidly-obese-790lb-man-leave-bed.html

 


 

 

What is true of human survivability is also true in the corporate world. Businesses that survive are the ones that don’t get comfortable where they are. Monopolies that dominate their market go extinct when technology makes their monopoly irrelevant.

I love luxury and I like being comfortable. However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve understood that I can only enjoy what I have now if I am willing to stay mobile and to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

I think of a recent holiday I had with the Pillow. We had plenty to eat. We spent hours in a nice, air-conditioned room, lying in bed for hours. It was great fun except when we had to go back to reality, we both ended up getting sick. My nose behaved like a leaky faucet and after a week of not doing intense exercise, I decided to start sprinting again. The four bouts of sprinting I went through must have shocked the body because the sniffles seem to have done.

 


 

Comfort in any situation is very nice. However, we need to revive our thinking. Comfort is not the purpose of life. Our purpose is challenge. Yes, there are certain inevitabilities like death and old age. However, if you look at the quality of aging, you’ll notice the people who age the best are inevitably the ones who continue to adapt and challenge body and mind until they are no longer able.

 



Wednesday, May 14, 2025

My Money Built Your Country


 

One of the great news stories in this part of cyberspace is the story of an Israeli tourist telling an establishment “My Money Built Your Country,” after the establishment refused to let her in when she refused to take off her shoes.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5w5KrPCG0TM

 

 


The young lady in question has been hammered for having a “imperialist” mindset and given that she’s Israeli, her case has not been helped. Having said that, her actions are merely an expression that most of us in well to do countries have when it comes to the “less developed” world.

I first noticed it in school in the UK. I’ve often said that many of my friends from that area found me a bit of a disappointment in the sense that I speak English comfortably and my dad didn’t own a take away or a laundromat, the two businesses everyone associated the Chinese with. I was unusual in that the source of my family’s ability to send me to school had no relation to the UK and located in a part of the world the geography text books had labeled “poor.”

I ended up with some great friends and great memories from that period. However, it was a struggle for people to get used to the idea that someone from a part of the world they had been conditioned to think of as “less developed” could be in the UK and not be overwhelmed by gratitude of being in the UK (if anything, coming back to the UK from holiday in Singapore felt like stepping back in time – the UK and continental Europe was still happy with the VHS when Singapore had already moved onto laser disc – this being the pre-Netflix era).

The currency advantage helped this perception. The British had a three to one currency advantage with Singapore and one can only imagine the advantage they had in the region. It was assumed that I had to be part of the very wealthy because my family which earned the bulk of the money in this part of the world could afford to send me to the UK. Once upset a British Airways hostess who got very upset when I took the view that much of the UK was in the stone age. She kept screaming “we put allot of money in your country,” and when her companion told me that our national football team couldn’t beat a third division Venezuelan team, my only reply was that I was aware that British history consisted of 1914 (World War I), 1945 (World War II) and 1966 (England Won the World Cup).

Then, I moved back to Singapore to settle and found that the attitude wasn’t limited to how Westerners view the rest of the world. Singaporeans are conditioned in a very similar way when it comes to how we view the rest of Asia, or more specifically our neighbors, of Malaysia and Indonesia. As far as most of us in Singapore are concerned, Malaysia (specifically Johor) and Indonesia (specifically Batam), exist to as “cheap” shopping destinations” (the joke being Johor is filled with Singaporean birds going “cheap-cheap). As much as Singapore is wonderfully clean, green and safe, going to visit our neighbours is wonderful because not only is everything is much cheaper, we think of them as places where money solves problems. Bribing cops and customs officials has become something of thrill for people who have been bred to understand that the mere thought of bribing people will get you a ticket to a sticky place.

The downside of these places is that there is a risk of being robbed and even rapped but other than that we tend to see these places as “s***holes” where we can have fun by throwing our money at the natives. As much as I like to say I am an “enlightened” person, I also had a bit of a “coloured” perspective. In my most recent trip to Batam, I was actually worried that I didn’t have cash on me in case I got shaken down for a bribe. I’d been conditioned by my dad who would tell me that every Singaporean and Malaysian gets shaken down for a bribe on their first trip to Indonesia. Mum enforced this by telling me that what she liked about Dad was that he was “innocent,” in that when asked by an Indonesian customs official for a cigarette, his reply was “sorry, I don’t smoke.”

Then, I ended up at the immigration at Batam. The signs were clear “No tipping.” The official stance was clear. Anyone thinking of paying off immigration officials was not going to get away free.

Several things became clear about being in a place that is officially “less developed.” The first is obvious. Poverty is more obvious than it is in the home country. The difference in infrastructure between Singapore and Indonesia is obvious. It became clear when we went from the central part of Batam to the outskirts for lunch and it rained. Heavy rain meant heavy floods.

 





Yet, at the same time the nice parts are wonderfully nice and luxuries are significantly more affordable. Went to a spa and got a facial, bathtub time and a massage for a bit more than a single massage in Singapore. Then, it was off for a drink at the Marriot.

 





Having said that, what becomes clear is that people in the “less developed” world are aware of their situation and aware that things need to change. On the government level, its clear that governments know that they have to do certain things if they want the foreign investment. The most obvious step has been to invest in decent infrastructure. I think of visiting my former in-laws in Vietnam in 2012 and 2020 and the memory of a dirt road turning into a super highway as an obvious example. Then, there are the “financial centres” in places like Dubai and Astana, Kazakhstan, which operate under British Common Law.

Whilst physical infrastructure is just a question of investing money, there’s an even more crucial step in which governments compete in – that is the area of cracking down on corruption. Hence, the “no tipping” signs at Batam’s ferry terminal and new laws that limit presidential terms and keep relatives of the president out of public services in places like Kazakhstan. Many “less developed” nations will inevitably have issues with corruption but the ones that move up in the world will inevitably the ones that do something about it.

The other area to note is that whilst many developing nations will benefit from the presence of people from developed nations visiting and spending, the countries that “make it” will inevitably have to build the local market. In the case of Batam, its clear that Singaporeans and Malaysians are “big spenders” and there are “luxury” developments near the ferry centre awaiting the arrivals from elsewhere. However, what was comforting was seeing the fact that a lot of the local businesses like the hotel I stayed in, the Ibis Styles and the beach clubs were filled with the locals. Ultimately, it’s the locals who provide the bread and butter for the economy and one can earn the “cream” from the foreigners.

Local people from less developed countries are working to come up. In Batam, the service staff spoke in English, even if the standard was not perfect. English lessons are the way to get ready for the international market. People are also willing to go overseas to look for their own opportunities.

Sure, when you’re visiting a country with a less developed economy, your money will be welcome. Nobody is going to turn down a big spender. However, never underestimate people from less developed countries. They may give you good treatment for spending but always keep in mind that they’re waiting for the day when they have the money and also except that whilst you are a “nice to have,” they are capable of living without you.



© 2025 BeautifullyIncoherent
Maira Gall