Feeding the Brain

 

If I have achieved anything in the last year, it was to lose weight. As my child often says, “I’m fat but I used to be super fat.” One of my great vanities these days is being able to pose without my top and I do it because I no longer look like I’m spilling out of whatever I happened to be wearing.

Losing weight has been miraculous for my wellbeing. My blood pressure has gone from scaring an SAF medical officer to being healthy and as the kilos have come off, I’ve found myself having energy to that bit more during the day.

There was and is no great secret to doing this. I started moving more (which meant more calories being used and not stored) and I started eating better and more regularly (no more night snacks). Alcohol was greatly reduced too.

One of the lessons from this weight loss journey is the fact diet and exercise have to work together. Unfortunately, diet is probably a more important factor. The human body was designed to survive depravations rather than excess – thus making it very good at storing stuff and very efficient using very little energy to do a lot. My dad summed it up – “A can of coke is three hours of tennis – easier to cut out the coke or playing more tennis?”

 

My nightly walks burn out my daily Kopi

I bring up the topic of my weight loss journey because it relates to a point of recent events in the government’s management of what it feeds the minds of the population with things like the efforts to reign in the online media with thins like the law suit against Online Citizen editor, Mr. Terry Xu and the introduction of the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Bill (FICB).

Think of this as the government’s efforts to keep the national brain in working order. Contrary to what the nerds might tell you, the brain is like the rest of the body. It needs plenty of exercise and it needs to be nurtured with a good diet. Unfortunately, the powers that be in Singapore don’t seem to like doing either when it comes to dealing with the brains of the local population, which is a shame, especially when we make a song and dance about how our only resource is the human variety.

In my previous postings, I’ve held up the government mollycoddling of scholars as an example of how brains are wasted. We send our best brains to be trained by the best institutions in the world and then waste those brains by putting them in positions where they will never have to face an actual challenge. In “physical training” terms, this is like building up the strongest bodies we have in the best gyms available and then getting those strong bodies to lie in on feather bed to feast on ice cream for the next decade or so. This what you could call the “exercise” part of our brain management.

Unfortunately, we don’t just fail in the “exercise” department of brain management. We also fail in the “diet” part. Think of what we try to feed the brains of our general population and it can be very frustrating.

Singapore’s mainstream media is famously shackled through laws requiring editors to be “responsible” in what they publish. One only has to think of the number of former editors who have made their name publishing books talking about the minefield that is editing in Singapore.

Then, the “alternative” media came into being and suddenly people stopped getting their news from the “responsible” press. Think of the former monopoly that used to print money and then needed to be spun off to the government when it lost the said license.

So, how has the government reacted? The old-fashioned way with law suits against editors (who, unlike the publishers of large daily papers, lack financial resources) and laws like “The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation” (POFOMA) and more recently FICBA.

Whilst no one denies that there needs to be some regulation against, say online manipulation, there’s always a clause. In the case of POFOMA, it’s a question of who decides what constitutes a falsehood, which in the case of Singapore, it’s a minister (we tend to work on the assumption that ministers are always impartial judges of the facts) and in the case of FICBA, there is a question of what constitutes “interference.” Would, I, as an independent blogger be guilty of violating FICBA if I received a few dollars from a Singaporean living in Australian, for example.

Why is there a need to cripple independent voices? Sure, we don’t want a scenario like the USA where certain media houses had a license to politicise public health (think of the media hosts who railed against common sense like vaccinations and mask). However, the other extreme isn’t healthy either.

Perhaps the UK might be a better model, where the press is for the most part free but subject to rules set by a regulator (in the case of the UK OFCOM). Hence, you have a situation where genuine opinions based, particularly the ones based on facts get expressed without fear of political consequences but at the same time you have someone who stops the media from indulging in potential falsehoods. Whilst not perfect, this is healthier scenario than either extreme.   

 

Sodies

 

Right up the point when Singapore went into its circuit breaker in April 2020, I used to be a fat bastard. I used to hover at the 97KG mark and for the most part, I used to spill out of my shirts. There was, as they say, a damn good reason why I didn’t wear ties, even when I was working in a full-time corporate job.

 

Me – Age 42 – taken from my personal Facebook page

It goes without saying that I didn’t look very good. My own mother described me as “gross looking.” For the longest of times, I didn’t occur to me that I was in an awful place and that’s made even worse by the fact that I worked in an image building business. I was just the way I was.

As I’ve said before, the circuit breaker was good for my health. There was no great secret to dropping the kilos. Regular exercise (walking more) and eating less did the trick. I never realized it but I actually like looking at myself in the mirror and I talk about shifting from losing weight to getting more tone because, I like the fact that if I stand straight, I can see lines on my body rather than a round mound (though I do have love handles and my chin is still a little bit too flabby). My new found interest in my personal fitness comes from things like enjoying the fact that I can wear tight t-shirts and I’m not going to offers to star in a porn movie for Telly Tubbies.

 

Me – Age 46 – Taken from my personal Instagram page

Whilst I am not about to enter any body beautiful contest anytime soon, I bring up the topic of my personal fitness journey because I realized that the transformation is as much psychological as it is physical. I still enjoy my food but after a big meal I make it a point to walk that bit more so that the body uses the food rather than stores it. Prior to losing weight, I was prone to sleeping in the day (sneak a bit of nodding off in the office). Now, I don’t feel like sleeping during the day even if I’ve slept less than the prescribed eight hours the night before.

Thanks to Facebook’s video feed, I’ve been made to realise that I’m very lucky to have had the mindset that I’ve had in the weight loss department. I’ve been watching “1,000 lbs. Sisters,” a reality TV series based on two morbidly obese sisters from Kentucky, USA.

In a way, the attraction to this show is the same attraction to a “freak” show. The two sisters in question are physically freaky. The “skinny” sister weighs 400 lbs. (181.44kg). However, you can actually recognize a human body. The “fat” sister tops the scales at 600 lbs (272.15kb). Both of them are so heavy that they need to go to a junk yard to weigh themselves. The name of the show is derived from the fact that their combined weight is 1,000 lbs. By way of a reference, 400 lbs is the weight of an adult male lion and 600 lbs. is the weight of a grizzly bear. However, whilst the lion and grizzly at that weight are pure muscle, the sisters are pure fat. For the fat sister, it goes without saying that she has issues with her mobility among a host of health issues.

I’m not sure if its funny or sad but the sisters in question thrive on being “freaks.” They have “fans” on YouTube and apparently their rise to fame came from the result of a “Chubby Bunny” challenge (which involved stuffing their mouths with marshmallows and trying to say “chubby bunny.” The fat sister in particular has developed something of a childish persona that gives her a sense of vulnerability. On one hand its very funny but on the other hand its really sad (do you really need to get morbidly obese people to stuff themselves with the wrong things?)

One of the questions you end up asking is, at what point is it OK to accept that someone is comfortable in their skin and what point to need to get the message that they are a walking time bomb? In the case of the fat sister, she is told by doctors that she has an 80 percent chance of dying in the next five-years if she doesn’t do something about her weight. Yet, she does things like go for men with a peculiar fat fetish, which means they sneak the food that she doesn’t need to her. In a way being “objectified” is her happiness.

One of the most pressing points is that despite their fame, the nicest thing you can say the sisters is that they are the definition of “trailer-park” trash. They grew poor and had to feed themselves that they shouldn’t have had. They live on a diet that is bound to clog the arteries amongst other things.

When of the points that the “freak” show that is the “1,000 lbs Sisters” should drive home as that there is an incredible health divide. Forget Asian images of the “Prosperous” look or that poor people eat simply and therefore eat healthily whilst the rich indulge in all sorts of exotic things that give them problems.

The truth is that modern life has made it such that “rich = healthy” and “poor = unhealthy.” In the USA it’s the “trailer-park” trash or the residents of inner-city ghettos that become obese. The residents of Wall Street and Hollywood are inevitably fit and beautiful. It’s not just the USA where this happens. I work on Shenton Way, which is Singapore’s main financial district. In the last seven-years, the bankers, hedge fund managers and so on, are inevitably very presentable. If I want to meet an obese person, I merely need to take a stroll to any of our poorer housing estates. Unfortunately, in “racial” terms, there is a correlation between ethnic groups (Malay and local Tamil), income levels and rates of diabetes.

It is the rich who can afford to be healthy. Gym memberships tend to be pricy. Only the rich can afford to hire personal trainers or keep a tread mill in the office.  Whilst the rich can afford the medical care, they do things that keep out of hospital.

This is not the case with the poor. They eat the cheapest food, which is often the most processed and therefor the least healthy. They can’t afford gyms. Net result, it’s the poor that end up in hospital (healthcare cost being a universal issue – in my recent week in hospital, my only thought was how much is this going to cost me).

Take the example of Cristiano Ronaldo, who is considered one of the best soccer players in the world. Mr. Ronaldo is young, good looking and very fit (which given his profession, should not be a surprise). So, when he was asked about what he drank at a press conference, this young, rich, fit and good-looking guy famously put away bottles of Coke (the sponsor) and said that he drank water. Coke stocks took a battering but how can you sue him for saying what everyone knows to be true – plain water is the best and soft drinks are infamously bad for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sco9n_JTrEM

 

The “1,000 lbs Sisters” on the other hand quench their thirst very differently. They do not drink water. Instead, they drink “diet soda” because they were told that it cancels out the sugar in sweets (obviously not true). The best part is that they drink on average of eight to twelve cans of soda a day Just look at the dietician’s expression:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIAFe7zaCRU

 

Sodies – Copyright TLC

So, why is it such that good health is starting to look like something for the rich? This shouldn’t be the case. One of the best ways that governments can contain healthcare costs is by preventing the masses from needing healthcare. How can it right that industries depend on screwing up the life of the poor? Food processing companies depend on selling junk food to the poor. The healthcare industry on the masses needing hospitals. How do we accept a system that encourages those who can least afford it to binge on the things they shouldn’t? The odd sugary drink may be harmless but the system does not depend on people like me who have the odd drink – they need the “1,000lbs Sisters” and their intake of eight to twelve cans a day. This cannot be right.

Every Angel Should spend time here……..walking among Humans to Get to Really Understand Humanity – Amenadiel – Lucifer Season 6

 

One of the great joys I got from the pandemic was to make my friends with Netflix and a series called “Lucifer.” The premise of the series is simple. Lucifer, as in the devil of Christian Theology gets bored and moves to Los Angeles, where he becomes part of a crime fighting duo. The series portrays heaven and the entire cosmos as one large dysfunctional family. The devil is not so the incarnate of all things evil but a very troubled child or the first being to have major “daddy issues.” God the father is literally a distant father who has problems relating to his children.

Whilst the more devout would find the premise of the show offensive, there is a certain amount of charm to it. In a certain way, we end up feeling for the main character, who is trying to solve several millennia’s worth of personal issues. As with many shows, there are gems of wisdom that should be applied to everyday life.

One of the greatest scenes comes from the final season, when Amenadiel, Lucifer’s older brother talks about how he would “reform” the cosmos as the new God. He inadvertently admits that the previous God was a little distant from humanity and proposes that every angel should spend time on earth walking among humans to understand them. Part of the reason comes from a few scenes prior where Amenadiel finds out that the world has been going to the dogs because the various angels have been messing up prayers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcGnd14CZco

 

What made this scene so particularly interesting is the fact that it reflects the state of much of the world where there is a disconnect between people in the same society. In places like India, the disconnect is inevitably about wealth. There is Mukesh Ambani who spends on wedding what most people can’t earn in a lifetime and there’s the average Indian who doesn’t know when his or her next meal is coming from. In America, it is increasingly about whether you want a reality TV star as president or whether you would rather chop of your arm than to watch the same reality TV star on TV. Here in Singapore, the disconnect is usually between those who live in spreadsheet land and those who don’t. The good news in this situation is that none of the groups mentioned can claim to be celestial beings (however much they might like to think they are) and so, the disconnect can easily be solved. How can that happen? The answer is as what Amenadiel suggested – the “Angels need to walk among humans.”

In this case, one should always understand that the “angels” are inevitably the people with power and money (or both), in as much as these are the proverbial voices that count in society. Then, there is the question of why should the said angels bother to walk among human beings. How does it affect Mukesh Ambani, for example, if most of his fellow countrymen earn in a lifetime what he earns in a matter of minutes?

The answer is simple Whilst it may not seem like it, the proverbial angels need the mortals as much as the mortals need the angels. India’s billionaire businessmen for example, do need India’s teaming masses to buy their products and services. Singapore’s politicians need the votes of ordinary Singaporeans to get into power and the taxes paid by ordinary Singaporeans in order to claim their salaries.

Take Singapore as an example. On the surface, everything works beautifully. Singapore looks prosperous and is environmentally friendly. Crime remains relatively low and if you look at Covid statistics, our death rate is one of the lowest in the world – or at least low enough for every death to make the news.

Yet, if you troll through cyberspace, you’ll notice that there is obviously a disconnect. Take the issue of “foreign labour” as an example. The locals complain that their being screwed out of the job market. The government inevitably comes up with a load of statistics to show how the “open-door” policies have helped Singaporeans. Both sides are saying something. Both sides are not understanding.

So, what can be done? One might suggest that the answer is for the proverbial celestial beings to walk the ground and listen to their residents. This would require some work but then again, on the amount given to the celestial beings, one should expect this to happen.  In the five-years that I’ve lived in my estate, I’ve seen more posters of my member of parliament (MP) than I’ve seen him in person. Covid has reduced the opportunity to meet with the MP. While I don’t expect my MP to be on Christmas card terms with every resident, I don’t believe its unreasonable of me to expect him to be visible in the estate more than once a week. Why wait should the MP (who is in Singapore speak something of a celestial being) be absent for most of the time, especially when he gets an allowance seven times more than my salary.  

Too Smart to Use to the Off Button

 One of my kid’s biggest gripes with me is that I don’t make much use of the off button on my iPhone. She constantly reminds me that I need to turn off my phone when I’m not using it. She tells me that turning off my phone when not using it allows me to avoid unpleasant accidents.

I’m bringing this topic up because it seems that I’m part of an elite group of people who are too smart to use the off button on their devices. Our foreign minister, Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan was recently forced to apologies to non-constituency member of parliament (NCMP), Mr. Leong Mun Wai during a parliamentary debate. Dr. Balakrishnan was caught on camera making remarks about Mr. Leong being “illiterate,” and how he was surprise that Mr. Leong made it to “RI” (Raffles Institution – one of Singapore’s elite schools) to his colleagues during the debate on CECA (the free trade agreement with India).

The result of this has been an online storm. It’s been pointed out that Dr. Balakrishnan had exposed himself and the party of being what everyone else has been accusing it of being for the last two decades – elitist and out of touch. Dr. Balakrishnan had to issue an apology to Mr. Leong.

 

Take from the Facebook pages of Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan and Mr. Leong Mun Wai

Unfortunately for Dr. Balakrishnan, his apology to Mr. Leong will not end things. His “private” remarks about “lousy schools,” runs contrary to the government’s recent efforts to down play the need for great academics.

 

 

I will leave the discussion on what Dr. Balakrishnan said, as this is something that everyone else is discussing. His remarks were troubling. This was a prominent minister proving the opposition party’s point that the government is out of touch. However, the fact that this mistake was made was also troubling because it showed something even worse – government complacency.

Sure, there’s an argument that Dr. Balakrishnan is only human and bound to make mistakes. However, this isn’t a mistake you’d expect of a politician of Dr. Balakrishnan’s standing. As far as non-politicians are concerned, we believe that politicians generally play things up for an audience. As such, we expect politicians to be very aware of their situation.

Politics, as much as most communication ministries might like to deny, is a game played in the public eye. Politicians who intend to hang onto power are painfully aware that they are always under the spotlight and they actually need to become the public image. People who are aware that they are being scrutinized do not make mistakes like ensuring that the microphones are off.

Politicians who make this basic mistake lose elections. In the UK, two former Prime Ministers were killed by this. There was John Major who described his cabinet colleagues as “bastards” for live radio when he thought the radio was off. He was crushed in a landslide in the 1997 election. Then there was Gordon Brown who talked about a “bigoted old woman” while his microphone was still on. Mr. Brown promptly lost the 2010 election. Both Mr. Major and Mr. Brown had taken over charismatic predecessors and their respective political parties had reached the end of their respective lifespans. Getting caught making uncalled for remarks on air only confirmed what voters suspected – it was time for someone else.

Dr. Balakrishnan and his colleagues are lucky in as much as this incident happened a year after the election. Unlike the UK, Singapore’s government is an unenviable position in as much as the opposition parties have yet to form any credible challenge. Singapore’s opposition parties’ campaign on the need for more opposition rather than on being an alternative government. So, on this level, it’s unlikely that the ruling party is in any danger of being turfed out in the immediate future.

However, a mistake that is usually made by politicians at the end of their political life was made. This also happened a year after the ruling party had lost more seats. You would imagine that the ruling party that is known for planning decades in advance, would have become even more sensitive to things that would offend voters.  This mistake by a senior politician would indicate that the ruling party has taken its position as its position as the champion of a one-horse race is a divine right. This is usually an indication to voters that change is necessary. If the ruling party insist that these signs are to be covered up by laws restricting information, it will be a sign to voters that there is a need to give the vote to a party that is hungry for votes.   

Champion of the One-Horse Race

 You have to hand it to Singapore’s top national marathon runner, Mr. Soh Rui Yong for being able to do something that Asians are generally not known for – generating self-publicity. Mr. Soh, who holds the local running record for running the 2.4km (a mile and a half), issued a public challenge to any Singaporean who could run the 2.4km run in under seven minutes at the Pocari Sweat Singapore 2.4km Run on 9 to 10 October 2021. Mr. Soh has offered $700 of his own money and sponsors have also included several other prizes such 700 bottles of Pocari.

To put things into perspective, the 2.4km run is the standard distance for Singapore’s national individual physical proficiency test (IPPT). It’s one of the more difficult elements of IPPT, which is something every man has to take during full time national service and thereafter it becomes a yearly requirement until we are discharged of all reservist liabilities. Most of us clear this between nine and eleven minutes when we’re in our 20s, during full time national service (my best, if memory serves correctly was around 10.15, which was during my specialist course some 20 odd years – these days I walk instead of run). Hence, anyone who finishes this distance in less than nine minutes is way above average and Mr. Soh’s sub-seven-minute time is exceedingly good.

Part of the reason for Mr. Soh’s challenge is attributed to “negative” comments online.  In the course of dealing with online detractors, Mr. Soh inadvertently offended a few commandos (elite of the Singapore Armed Forces). The end result has been a great boon for Pocari, because at the time of writing, it appears that nearly 2,000 people have signed up for the run.

Now, there’s a twist. It appears that there is someone who has achieved what Mr. Soh has challenged Singaporeans to do. That person is Mr. Subhas Gurong, who serves in the Gurkha Contingent in Singapore (For Non-Singaporean readers, Singapore hires Gurkhas. If I’m not wrong, we take the top ten percent who don’t make it into the British Army).

https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/fastest-gurkha-24km-runner-race-soh-rui-yong-wont-be-eligible-prizes

 

Copyright Straits Times

To be fair to Mr. Soh, he’s been exceptionally gracious about Mr. Gurong and announced that he hopes that they’ll challenge each other to better things. Mr. Gurong’s sub-seven-minute time is a few seconds slower than Mr. Soh’s record but Mr. Gurong ran this time after doing 60-push-ups (I can barely do one) and 60 sit-ups. This race, as they say, will actually be interesting because there’s competition.

As interesting as this entire incident is, it is actually something more than a spat over a race. It actually reflects the state of things in Singapore. We are a nation filled with champions of one-horse races and it starts at the very top.

Our elections are the best example of one-horse races. We are officially a democratic country where our politicians make a song and dance about the fact that they have a mandate from the people Lee Kuan Yew used the fact that he was “elected” as a reason for crushing everyone and anything that disagreed with him. His standard line when it came to the media was “Who elected you?”

Whilst he and the gang have been genuinely elected by the people, what they forget to tell you is the fact that they are one-horse race champions. We are a “democratic” country where the opposition fights to be opposition rather than government. A good part of that is the fact that Mr. Lee and his successors made it such that opposition politics would be a very painful career path.

Then there’s the media itself. The press system is designed in such a way where the media has no choice to be anything other than a distributor of government press releases. Let’s not forget that it took less than two years for the media to “remonopolise” because they lost the license to print money. Suddenly Singapore was “too small for competition” and somehow the normal rules of business no longer applied to the media. I’ll always remember 2005 Ad Asia where then CEO of Singapore Press Holdings, Alan Chan talked about the Straits Times as being Singapore’s “favourite” paper and the two senior creative directors from Y&R muttering “favorite implies there’s competition.”

The second point is that when competition to the single horse in the race appears, it is made such that the second horse is effectively being punished for being a second horse in the race. Mr. Gurong is probably the only person in Singapore who can beat Mr. Soh’s timing. However, someone has just found a loophole to prevent him from claiming prizes on offer because, well he's not Singaporean. It’s as if Mr. Gurong’s ability to compete with Mr. Soh exists on a different plane.

Mr. Soh is shown to an extent that he’s an unusual creature. He’s a champion of a one-horse race that had the audacity to invite other horses to the race. He’s rightly said that competition from Mr. Gurong will push him to be a better runner. One can only hope that Mr. Soh rises to his occasion and gives out the $700 of his personal money to anyone who runs 2.4km below the seven-minute mark as promised, regardless of their nationality.

The other champion of one-horse races should learn from Mr. Soh. Instead of treating competition as a threat to their position, they should welcome competition as something to make them reach new heights of excellence. Being a champion of a one-horse race only makes one stagnate in a fantasy world of delusion. Real champions beat other champions.  

The Problem with Formulas – When Does Courage End and Stupidity Begin

 

I have to admit that one of the main movie characters of my childhood was none other than Rocky Balboa, the boxer played by Sylvester Stallone. Rocky was what you’d call the ultimate loveable underdog, who would somehow, through sheer guts and the ability to endure major beatings, would end up triumphant against a bigger, stronger and meaner opponent.  The Rocky movies were what you’d call the living embodiment of every motivational speech – i.e life will beat you up but as long as you get up and continue fighting, you will emerge victorious and successful.

It helped that the movie boxer had a few real-life counterparts. There was Mohammad Ali, who became greater than the sport of boxing. Ali’s life story was about struggle and overcoming struggle. He fought against racial prejudice (black kid who grew up in deep South in the 60s), for his convictions (refused to fight in the Vietnam War) and was engaged in some of the most legendary slug fest against heavy hitters like Joe Frazier and George Forman. The fight against the later, was particularly memorable. Forman was younger, fitter and a lot stronger. In the famous “Rumble in the Jungle,” Ali spent the better part of the early rounds having the stuffing knocked out of him, and yet he somehow emerged the victor, knocking out Forman.

In my living memory (as in actively boxing whilst I was watching), there was Evander Holyfield, who most people regarded as a “blown-up” cruiserweight that had been plonked into the heavyweight division by clever promotion. Like Ali before him, Holyfield had a “heart” that made him a hero. The “blown-up cruiserweight,” defeated the most fearsome fighter of his generation (Mike Tyson), not once but twice and held his own against the most physically powerful fighters of his generation (Lennox Lewis and Riddick Bowe).

The most famous movie boxer and his real-life contemporaries are the living examples of how the human psyche seems to thrive on stories of struggle. Rocky movies became very watchable because we could identify with the struggles of an ordinary guy facing extraordinary circumstances. Ali became a legend because the guys he fought were as good, if not better and somehow, he had to overcome them.

The story of “human struggle,” is something politicians around the world are particularly good at exploiting. It gives them something to “unite” their followers. Politicians in small countries are particularly good reminding the population of how “vulnerable” they are and hence need good leadership (read – voting for the right politician”) to help them overcome their vulnerabilities. The entire Israeli state is the prime example of this. Binyamin Netanyahu built an entire career out of destroying the Oslo Accords, thus ensuring the reality of hatred against the Israeli state in every street of the Arab world.

Our local politicians are also very good at exploiting struggle. Singapore likes to compare herself as an “Israel in Southeast Asia” (read – small non-Muslim nation in a neighbourhod of larger hostile Muslim nations).

To an extent, this has helped build Singapore into what it is today. Singapore has played a deft game and staying on the right side of world powers. We’ve been open to investment and particularly open to the world’s policemen having a base on our tinny island.

Our politicians have often harked back about the “bad” old days. Singapore has struggled against “racist,” “communal” and all sorts of tensions in its past and if you believe our politicians, we’ve overcome them and are as a result a wonderful place to live.

Whilst there is some credence to this myth, there is a problem. Myths can become irrelevant and no longer believable. Let’s look at the Rocky series. The story and heroic in Rocky I and Rocky II. Rocky III could have been a good conclusion. Rocky IV was an obvious sop to American nationalism in the Cold War and by the time we reached Rocky Balboa, it was clear that the franchise was desperately clinging onto former glories – the idea of an Old Man trying to relive his youth. The character of Rocky only returned to credibility when the aging Rocky was retired to the role of coach in the Creed series.

If the story of an aging boxer was sad in the movies, it was downright heartbreaking in reality. Take Mohammad Ali’s fight against Larry Holmes in 1980. By then, Ali was more than past his prime and it was clear to everyone as the fight wore on. You could see that Larry Holmes didn’t want to hurt the man whom he had once worked for and cried as he was forced to inflict damage on an aging Ali.

 

More recently, there was Evander Holyfield who, at the age of 58, thought he could make a comeback. The former “Real Deal” wasn’t a shadow of his former self and the fight had to be stopped in the first found with Mr. Holyfield failing to land a single punch on this younger and fitter opponent.

 

Boxing is infamous for producing champions who have died poor and in bad health. Champions simply didn’t know when to quit. The few boxers who have retired with their money and brains in tack were those who knew when to walk away. Floyd Mayweather, for example, quit while he was ahead and hasn’t blown his money. The same was true for Lennox Lewis in the heavyweight division. Of the “baby boomer” generation, we had George Forman who reinvented himself as a grill salesman and built a second career and fortune. His contemporary, Larry Holmes also walked away and kept his fortune and brain intact.

Herein lies a lesson that politician should take note of. It is good to have “courage” when facing adversity. However, you need to be able to reinvent and become relevant. One of the biggest issues I have with Singapore’s politicians as that they’re too dependent on the struggles on the 1960s. One only has to listen to them talk about the struggle to achieve racial harmony.

Yes, there were communal riots and Singapore has seemingly overcome them. There is unfortunately an element of racism that still exist. However, the “racism” issue of today is not a carbon copy of the racism of the 1960s. Yet, the approach appears to be the same.

If we apply the 1960s solutions, we start to look like the latter part of the Rocky series. Old men desperately trying to relive past glories and thus inflicting damage to themselves. Our approach needs to be like Rocky in the Creed series. We have to reinvent and become relevant to the problems we face today or else face the risk of brain damage and irrelevance.

“I have Been “Oba” of this Table for So Long Because I’ve Always Known What my Enemies Would Do – Even Before they Thought of It.” – Eniola Salami in King of Boys: The Return of the king

 

I’ve always had a fascination for different places and cultures. So, whilst I never really “made it” to a level where I got sent to all sorts of obscure places, I’ve been able to live my fantasies of being outside of the confines of small-town England or Singapore through watching movies shot in different parts of the world. I loved watching Kung-Fu movies because I got an idealized image of China and Hong Kong. You could say that I was most comfortable in “Chinatowns” because I always saw myself as the rickshaw puller in Chinatown who would somehow become a hero (my folks would shoot me for saying it, but I preferred to be seen as a “Collie” than an English gentleman inhabiting a Chinese body).

As I grew older and the community that I interacted with more was increasingly Indian national, my interest in Bollywood grew. I found certain meanings from Bollywood movies, tried to pick up Hindi (which is easier for me than picking up Hokkien) and every Indian girl on screen was a goddess. I also had a fantasy of ending up with an Indian girl, after lengthy battles with my parents (which would never have happened. Firstly, I was never in a place where I could meet a Bollywood lookalike and secondly my parents are exceedingly open-minded, thus ruining any teenage needs I might have had of trying to rebel).

I haven’t lost my fascination of with how people from all over the world might live. My greatest discovery during the various Covid imposed lock downs in the last year was “Nollywood” or Nigerian cinema. Whist Bollywood has become exceedingly “slick,” Nollywood is refreshingly crude. Many of the scenes look like they’ve been shot with a handheld video camera. The actors and actresses are not wonderfully attractive (they look like the rest of us) and that provides a wonderful sense of realism that you don’t get in either Hollywood or Bollywood.

One of the things that Nollywood does well is to cover the corruption that Nigeria has become so famous for. If you watch Nollywood, you get to see how people expect palms to be greased for the smallest of things and you get a glimpse of how the chase for power becomes particularly addictive.

I just finished a series called “King of Boys: The Return of the King,” which tells a story of a businesswoman who is also a gangster. She comes back from exile and proceeds to go into politics. The main character is violent (there’s a line which says that “peace of mind” is not for people like her), bribes and blackmails her way to power. In the end, she ends up as “Governor” of Lagos State (one of Nigeria’s wealthier ones), and rules from the top and she instills a successor for her underworld activities – hence he rules from below.

There is a crucial point in the series when her enemies think they finally have her and she then explains that she remained “Oba” (Yoruba for ruler) of the table for so long because she always knew what her enemies were going to do before they even planned it.”

This fictional character is providing the rest of us with much valuable advice – which is to know how the people we’re going to deal with, are going to react even before they know what they’re going to do. I believe the correct term is “empathy.”

Modern management theory works on the maxim that “Information of power.” As such, everyone is focused on how to “acquire” information. People in leadership positions have become particularly obsessed with “gathering intelligence.” The idea is simple – the more I know about a given situation, the more I can act correctly. The follow up idea is that if I can limit your sources of information, the more I can limit your ability to act.

Take CECA debates. Whatever one thinks of CECA, the government inevitably has the upper hand when it comes to quoting statistics. The reason is simple, they control the information flow.

However, what people forget is that while controlling the flow of information is important in dealing with situations, there’s got to be an element of knowing what people will do with the information. It’s like this – if you know exactly what the other guy is going to do, you’ve won most of the battle.

This, however, requires a certain characteristic. One needs empathy or at least some imagination. This is the ability to step into someone else’s shoes. Let’s go back to the recent events in Afghanistan as an example. We had a group of bearded men who managed to send the world’s most powerful military and information gathering machine packing. How did they do that?

Part of the explanation was provided by former General HR McMaster, who served as National Security Advisor to the Trump administration. He argued that “we also assume that people are like us.” General McMaster then went onto argue that US policy makers made mistakes because they assumed the Taliban would act in the way that Americans would act.

I will leave US military policy to better informed people. However, I do believe that the General has hit the nail on the head in as much as part of our failures in life come from the assumption that people are “exactly like us,” which in turn makes us unable to understand why people don’t do or react in the same way as us.

Look at the current PAP government and how it handles issues like CECA. They came out with great statistics to get their points across. Take a look at the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s website on CECA, which says that 97,000 locals were employed by Singapore-based companies that invested in India in 2019:

https://www.mti.gov.sg/Improving-Trade/Free-Trade-Agreements/CECA

I can’t dispute that statistic. However, what does that mean to a 40-year-old mid-career professional who has just been retrenched, can’t find a job and every time he steps in for an interview, the interviewer is inevitably from India? Has anyone in a policy making position ever thought of how you’d explain the benefits of CECA to someone in that position.

If the Prime Minister seriously wants to secure his legacy, he should watch this Nollywood flick. He and his team need to understand that having statistics to support their policies is only part of the battle. The other part is, as former President Bill Clinton said is getting people to “feel it.” The ruling party needs to know and understand the people that it is ruling – otherwise it could end up being the most successful ruling party in history to lose an election.   

Forbezy Thoughts from the Hospital Bed

 

Taken from Oxfam India

I’ve just come back from nearly three days stay in hospital. I had a pain in my left knee on a Friday. It got bad enough to keep me in bed over the weekend (struggled to make toilet trips). Then on Sunday night, it reached a stage where the pain was so bad and it looked like it would never end without medical guidance that I called the ambulance on Monday morning and got myself carted to the nearest hospital.

I will leave my experiences in hospital for another story. However, I will say that lying in a hospital bed is one of the ways of focusing your mind on one of the pressing but often ignored or dismissed issue of inequality. This is especially true if you’re on self-employed terms like I am. A sick day is not just a day of no work, it’s a day of no income.

It’s been known for over a decade that Singapore is an unequal society and didn't seem to care about that fact. As far back in 2018, Singapore ranked amongst the bottom ten countries in its efforts to reduce inequality, ranking just above Bangladesh and Laos). The report can be found at:

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/singapore-ranked-among-bottom-10-countries-efforts-reduce-inequality-oxfam-report

For the longest of times, the government would always stumble and try to focus on the reasons as to why the gini-coefficient wasn’t really a good measurement of social inequality. However, with the onset of Covid last year, there were a rash of measures and Singapore was able to lower its gini coefficient score to a two decade low, which the local press were quick to report on:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/income-inequality-in-singapore-falls-to-lowest-levels-in-almost-two-decades

It was clear that Covid-19 was more than just a disease. It was something that exposed social fault lines. In Singapore, the extent of our "unequal society became crystal clear. The gap between "haves" and "have nots" became clear. Those with the luxury of a "skilled" profession could continue to earn whilst being "liberated" from the office. 

However, those who depended on jobs that required you to be "physically" there, risked either getting the bug or a loss of income.  It took Covid and the various restrictions for people to understand that the cleaning aunty was actually doing work and needed to be paid a salary rather than pocket money. To be fair, the government has made some noises about raising the wages of the underpaid and has proudly announced that they’ll double their wages in two years.

This inequality isn't unique to Singapore. Thanks to Covid, the poor have gotten poorer and the rich have become astronomically richer. The Forbes rich saw several changes at the top and in the latest list, the top three fortunes in the world are all over USD$150 billion.

https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/

To put things into perspective, a single member of the top three richest in the world, has a net worth larger than the combined GDP of the smallest economies in Southeast Asia (Myanmar at 76.2 billion, Cambodia at 27.24 billion, Laos at 20.44 and Brunei at 15.28 billion). The statistics can be found at:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/796245/gdp-of-the-asean-countries/

This perspective might explain why the government excited by the prospect of billionaires settling in Singapore. A member of the top three, it seems, has the potential to give us more than say trading with the number of Cambodians or Laotians. Singapore made a big deal about the benefits of people with lots of money spending our economy into the next level when it talked about how Sir James Dyson bought an expensive apartment. I also remember being at the press conference where Doctor BK Modi of Spice Group announced he was setting up shop in Singapore. He talked about all the properties he was buying and then quipped about when his Permanent Residence status would be ready. The chap from EDB got visibly nervous. 

However, is billionaire spending a good thing. Does it drive the economy in any meaningful way? Let’s take a look at India, our tenth largest trading partner as an example.

India has Asia’s richest man in Mukesh Ambani, head of Reliance Industries. Mr. Ambani has a fortune of around US$85 billion dollars and is the owner of what is probably the world’s largest and most expensive residence in the world (estimated at around US$2 billion). Not far behind  Mr. Ambani on the Forbes List is Mr. Gautam Adani, who is estimated to have a shade under $70 billion. Despite Covid devastating India in every sense of the word, both men have done exceedingly well:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Ambani-and-Adani-soar-as-Indian-billionaires-outpace-Chinese-peers

Mr. Ambani and Mr. Adani are the type of billionaires who would fit the criteria of billionaires who spend enough to drive a small economy. The cost of building Mr. Ambani's house is well known. The cost of running it is also by no means small (its been said that the Ambani household hires 600 servants to look after its six residents). Then there are the famously lavish weddings of the very wealthy. It was reported that Mr. Ambani spent some US$100 million on his daughter's wedding. 

Despite the lavish spending of Mr. Ambani, Mr. Adani and their fellow billionaires, life for India's masses remains wretchedly poor as stated in the following Oxfam report. 

https://www.oxfam.org/en/india-extreme-inequality-numbers

 

 

In fairness to India's very wealthy, there is a system of private philanthropy. India's largest conglomerate, The Tata Group, is active in trying to  incorporate community betterment as part of its everyday business activities. The Indian tycoons, particularly in the software space are known to be genuinely serious in their efforts to give back. Azim Premji of Wipro, Shiv Nader of HCL and Arun Jain of Intellect Design Arena come to mind. A list of India’s more generous tycoons can be found at:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/company/corporate-trends/azim-premji-is-the-most-generous-indian-as-he-donated-about-rs-22-crore-a-day-in-fy20/donating-about-rs-22-crore-a-day/slideshow/79167652.cms

However, despite the efforts of the Tata Group and the likes of Mr. Azim Premji to try and address issues like making health care more accessible to the masses, India remains a place where basic healthcare is considered a luxury for the majority. Things have gotten particularly nasty for India's masses during Covid-19. Despite efforts by the Tata Group to buy oxygen for India's hospitals from around the world, India still lacks oxygen in hospitals. Inequality has not caused "society-burning" social unrest in India. What it has done is to provide any Indian who can recite half the Western alphabet a reason to leave and stay out. Leaving aside questions on how India hopes to recover from the devastation of Covid-19, one also needs to question if the "demographics boom" that economist have predicted for India will be enjoyed by every other country except India. 

Another model of billionaire management can be found further north in China, which has a far larger economy than India and far more billionaires than India. 

 

Where the Billionaire’s Come from – Wikipedia

Whilst having significantly more billionaires than India, the billionaires in China have recently found themselves trying to understate their wealth. Many of China's richest have found themselves housing officials from the tax department and it's not just billionaires. Movie stars have found themselves disappearing from China's cyberspace for things as minor as "tax avoidance." China's Communist Government has been on a mission to remind the world that despite China's very large economy - it is still a "Communist" government that enforces a policy called Common Prosperity. 

 

 

Taken from Global Times

Why is President Xi talking about “Common Prosperity” now? Part of the reason could be because China’s inequality problem was getting bad. In February 2021, Communist China had greater inequality than capitalist America and as Foreign Affairs argues, the choices were not good:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-02-11/chinas-inequality-will-lead-it-stark-choice

 

A Communist Nation has more inequality than a Capitalist One

On a personal level, I disagree with using the heavy hand of government to move against the rich. China’s top tycoons like Jack Ma of Alibaba and Ma Huateng of Tencent Holdings are guys that China needs – genuine wealth creators who found a way to gather various technological innovations and applied them, and created something that made life easier for the average Chinese consumer. These guys moved China away from the "cheap manufacturing" that drove early prosperity to the "high value and ground breaking" stuff that China needs to secure its future. If you think about it, Alibaba became a competitor of Amazon instead of a supplier, which was the old business model. 

These guys are “self-made” rather than “crony-made,” which makes them aspirational characters for the millions of poor Chinese looking to better themselves. It sends a bad message to the world when you crush the “mavericks” like Jack Ma in China or Prince Alwaleed in Saudi Arabia because you need to show the world whose boss.

Having said what I’ve just said, China has an inequality was a problem. The Cultural Revolution is still part of living memory. People have not forgotten that China, unlike India, did not have a "struggle for independence." They had a civil war and communism came about because of the vast inequalities of the time. Mao may have been a disaster of a ruler but he was a brilliant revolutionary who lit the fuse at the bottom of an unequal society. Both China's Communist Government and Rich do not wish for history to repeat itself and so, the rich have rushed to donate to President Xi's "Common Prosperity" drive.  

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3146919/chinas-common-prosperity-push-long-overdue-rich-dont-need

In Singapore, we need to understand that inequality is expensive. Bloomberg reported that inequality in the USA had a cost of US$23 trillion since 1990.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-09/inequality-cost-u-s-nearly-23-trillion-since-1990-may-worsen?srnd=premium-asia 

To put this into perspective, the current economy of the USA is US$21 trillion. In 20-years it spent US$2 trillion or ten percent of current GDP in the war in Afghanistan. However, inequality costs it, in 31-years, the USA lost itself. Is this something that we need.

The two Asian giants have potential models for us. We need to find a balance. We should not "target" the wealth creators in the same way that China has. Yet, at the same time can we really afford the obscene wealth imbalance that we see in India.

Our situation looks relatively healthy, which means there's never been a better time to make the necessary changes. We need more competition at the top and the power of the usual landowners that dominate the Straits Times Industrial Index (STI) needs to be disrupted. At the same time, we also need to find ways for people at the bottom to earn living wages. Covid has exposed holes - it would be a waste to leave them uncovered. 

Allow Your Kids to Have Fun – It Could be a good Career Move or Even the Start of a Fortune

 

One of the things that I often joked about when I started my parental journey was the fact that I would probably have to build an arsenal of guns to keep boys away from my little girl. I was once a horny little boy and becoming a father made me realise that the last thing, I’d want was for my daughter to deal with boys like me.

However, my assumption of basic parenting was from the pre-smartphone age. The Evil Teen who is now the Evil Young Lady lived her entire social life in cyberspace and instead of waiting up nights worrying that she was up to no good, I ended up praying for her to get out and meet people.

I wasn’t alone in this experience. My friends had the same battle with the kid and the smartphone. Whenever I got together with one of my best friends, the conversation would always centre around how our kids were glued to their phones and how they didn’t quite understand the costs of paying data.

Well, it seems that my friends and I can relax a little. On 31 August 2021, Singapore had a new richest man, which is Mr. Forrest Li, the Chairman and CEO of Sea Limited. The full report on Mr. Li’s accension to become Singapore’s richest can be found at:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/singapore-got-richest-person-19-160000548.html

Sea Limited is Southeast Asia’s most valuable company and it is described as a “consumer internet company,” with businesses ranging from game development, publishing, ecommerce and fintech. For Singapore’s readers, the most visible part of Sea’s business is probably Shopee.

Mr. Li, unlike most of our local tycoons actually has a pretty compelling story. He was born in China, educated in the USA. Worked as an HR consultant and found that he loved playing games on the internet and so built his business around it.

As a parent with a kid tied to the phone, Mr. Li’s story gives me some hope. In my generation (Gen x), video games were what you did for fun and then grew out of. Mr. Li’s story gives Asia’s “career obsessed” parents some hope. Mr. Li has shown that the kid’s hobby might actually be a viable career path and God forbid, the foundation of a fortune.

However, the story of Mr. Li’s rise to the top is not just a story of giving parents hope that the kid locked up in the room playing games all day might actually have a career path. His story is precisely the success story that Singapore needs. He was a kid with a passion, who somehow found a way of making this passion pay. He’s created a business that is part of the “future” and capitalizing on changing trends (think of how ordering online and paying for things online is becoming a “normal” part of life.)

If you look at the list of richest Singaporeans, you’ll notice that Singapore approaches wealth creation or entrepreneurship creation in the same way that it approaches attempts to create sporting success. There will be a load of schemes throwing money at all sorts of programs to develop a grass roots movement for sporting success or entrepreneurship. Then someone who was parachuted into a prominent position will lose patience with the slow pace of things (people who are parachuted into cushy jobs are usually blind to the reality that the reality of sporting success or entrepreneurial success is usually dim and involves a long hard slog) and will go for the easy solution – buying people from elsewhere or in the case of billionaires, giving tax breaks. Just take a look at the latest Forbes List of Billionaires:

https://www.forbes.com/singapore-billionaires/#44830146757d

 

Of the top ten, Mr. Li stands out for one very obvious reason. He is the only one who built a game changing business in Singapore. Li Xiting of Mindray, Zhang Yong of Haidilao and most famously Eduardo Severin of Facebook, built their businesses elsewhere and then settled in Singapore thanks for generous conditions offered by the government. The only other person in the top five you can be described as “self-made” is Goh Cheng Liang of Nippon Paint, who built business years ago. If you look at the top ten richest in Singapore, you’ll find that if they’re not imported from elsewhere, inherited their wealth. Of the native-born fortunes, only Goh Cheng Liang and Wee Cho Yaw of UOB belong to the generation that actually built the wealth.

The nature of the top ten fortunes would suggests that although Singapore is a wealthy nation, there’s actually very little genuine wealth creation. In simple terms, if you didn’t make elsewhere or didn’t get lucky in the genetic lottery, you’re not going to make it and the best you’ll ever be is a servant to those who already have it.

Mr. Li, and his gang of Ge Yang and David Chen at Sea, Dr Shi Xu of Nanofilm Technologies International (Dr. Shi has just replaced Professor Inderjit Singh as Chairman of NTUitive) and Tan Min-Liang of Razer are the odd balls on Singapore’s wealth list because they are actually creating wealth rather than investing it in one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world. In a list of 50, we only have five genuine creators of wealth.

When you consider how the economic landscape has changed, this is not a good sign. Singapore cannot repeat the old model of doing things cheaper than the West (China and India have more people willing to work cheap than we have people). Sure, we can rely on being the stable regional headquarters but once countries in the region get their act together (reduce corruption etc), that may no longer be so viable. We need bright sparks who can create wealth.

The government always gets orgasmic whenever we get billionaire decides to become Singaporean. Think of how excited we got when Sir James Dyson paid millions for a home. However, what does that actually do for the rest of us, other than to remind us that real estate is very expensive?

We need people who can think. They don’t have to be native born, but they have to be able to work with Singapore. I go back to my previous posting about Mr. Calvin Cheng’s intellectual laziness in his dismissal of a liberal arts education in Singapore. Liberal arts, don’t train you directly but they prepare you to think. Let’s take note that societies that create music and art also happen to be the societies that produce scientific innovation and entrepreneurship.

Mr. Li and the team at Sea Limited have done more than just give parents hope that their video games obsessed children might have a viable career. He’s also shown us that Singapore needs people who can think and create wealth from game changing activities rather than just sitting there and inheriting it.