The Zen Master of the Asylum

 

Growing up as an ethnic minority in the UK in the 1990s, I developed a great pride in being part of the “Overseas Chinese” community. My pride stemmed from the fact that “MY” people had the great talent of being able to make everything from nothing. From where I stood, the Chinese were what you’d call a necessary people. Singapore and Hong Kong had become bywords for building everything from nothing and Chinatown in any Western city was an oasis on sanity. These were pockets of prosperity built by people who came to the country without a penny to their name and without speaking a word of the native language and yet they built things for themselves. I used to enjoy baiting my friend by telling them that “MY” people could build something in their country from the ground up whereas “THEIR” people could only come to “MY” country if they were part of a big company.

In a way, you could say that I got sold on Singapore’s propaganda even though I hadn’t really grown up in Singapore. It’s become something of religious mantra to talk about how Singapore was a fishing village, with no natural resources or hinterland to speak off and yet prospered within a generation. It’s often repeated that we are an oasis of stability in a chaotic region and our “Great Leader,” Mr. Lee Kuan Yew was a master strategist in navigating troubled waters.

There is no doubt that Mr. Lee was an amazing national leader who was able to do the necessary with the circumstances that he had to face. However, Mr. Lee did do a good job with poor circumstances, he is not actually the master of creating everything from nothing. If you were to look at our history beyond what the PAP government tells you, you’ll find that Singapore did have a few things going for it. For a start, we were not exactly a fishing village. Our colonial masters set us up as a port and we had an administrative infrastructure. Furthermore, whilst we did face real threats of invasion in our early days (Both the Malayan Communist Insurgency and Konfrantasi were real but we were helped by the British), the region, and in particular our immediate neighbours of Malaysia and Indonesia stabilized, thanks to the rise of Mahathir and Suharto. As one Indian expat said “Singapore and Malaysia have creative competition – you build a port, I build a bigger one as opposed to destructive competition of India and Pakistan – you build a bomb, I build a bigger one).

The real master of building everything was from nothing is not from Southeast Asia. He was from the Middle East. That man was the late King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan, who reigned from 1952 until his death in 1999. Unlike Mr. Lee who was 32 and with a successful law career when he first entered politics, King Hussein was thrust onto the throne before his 17^th birthday when his father, King Talal was forced to abdicate due to his health.

I will leave the analysis of the late Jordanian King’s life to the better qualified. One can get an overview of his life and achievements from the following Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_of_Jordan

What I will say is that the biggest miracle of the Jordanian monarchy was the fact that it survived and whilst Jordan may not have the GDP per capita of one of the Asian Tigers or one of the Petro-States in the Arabian Gulf, it has become an oasis of calm in a really rough neighbourhood.

Sure, Malaysia and Indonesia may seem chaotic when compared to Singapore. However, the last armed conflict between states in the ASEAN region was in the 1970s during the conflict in Vietnam and Cambodia. States in the ASEAN region have pretty much kept to themselves and whilst there have been a few skirmishes like during the liberation of East Timor (or Timor-Leste as it is now known) there’s not been a major conflict that has driven masses dispersed.

It’s a different story in the Middle East. Jordan’s immediate neighbours include Israel, the Palestinian West Bank, Iraq and Syria, all of which in seemingly never-ending state of conflict. Yet, despite this, Jordan has managed to keep these conflicts out of its borders. One of King Hussein’s major achievements was to drive the PLO from Jordanian soil so that they would not use Jordan as a base to launch terrorist attacks against Israel, thus making Jordan a target for Israeli aggression.

Then, there’s the issue of population management. Jordan has been in a position where its had to absorb waves of refuges from his its neighbours since the 1948 and as at 2016, Jordan is the largest refugee hosting nation in the world. Nearly a quarter of the accepted refuges have since been given Jordanian citizenship and whilst the influx has caused a strain on the Jordanian economy, Jordan still manages to accommodate them and integrating them into Jordanian society.

With the possible exception of Saudi Arabia, Jordan does not have a “Must be in” trade partner in the same way that Hong Kong has China and Singapore has Indonesia.

In Singapore, we’re lucky in the sense that whatever waring parties are out there, they seem to understand that they have to behave in Singapore. We’ve hosted the most unlikely of pairings. There was the Trump-Kim Summit and we even hosted Taiwan and China.

This hasn’t been the case for Jordan. The influx of refugees brought emotions about conflicts beyond its borders into the country. One of the largest groups of refugees are the Palestinians, who had been kicked off their home land by Israel. The Jordanian government has needed to be sensitive to domestic passions. One of King Hussein’s more harrowing moments came in the aftermath of the Gulf War to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Jordan stayed out of the coalition, which displeased the Western Powers and the Gulf Arabs did not take kindly to it either. However, domestic sentiment in Jordan was “Pro-Iraq” and there was no way the King could have joined the coalition without causing domestic disturbance.

Yet, the late king managed to get his country through both foreign and domestic turmoil’s. He was the second Arab leader to sign a Peace Treaty with Israel. Yet unlike Anwar Sadat who got frozen out of the Arab League after signing the Camp David Accord, King Hussein remained a respected figure.

When King Hussein died in 1999, the world mourned. Old enemies like Yasser Arafat paid tribute. Four US Presidents attended. Enemies like Israel, Syria, Iraq and Iran all turned up at the funeral. A more complete attendance list can be found at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_state_funeral_of_King_Hussein

 

 Copyright ResearchGuide

How did a monarch of a small nation with no natural resources to speak of, managed to become so respected by the rest of the world? He was what you’d call a “Zen Master in an Asylum” and his status as such was clearly seen when leaders of the world powers flocked to his funeral. The world should miss this Zen Master of international diplomacy.

Looking for Things to Give Thanks For

 

My birthday (27 November) falls a day or two before American Thanksgiving (25/26 November) and given that we are living in a world that has been dominated by a nasty virus and the vocal group of science denying idiots, I thought I would try and celebrate my 47^th birthday by trying to link the fact that I was born a few days after thanksgiving.

Well, I guess you could say that I have much to be thankful for. I was born in 1974, the year when the Vietnam War was still going on and Nixon had decided to expand the conflict in Vietnam by bombing Cambodia. So, in a sense I got lucky that whilst I was born in Southeast Asia that was going through a nasty war, I was born in a part of it that was a nice and safe place that was on the verge of achieving major prosperity.

Then, there’s the fact that my father’s business was starting to build up around the time I was born. Little did I know it then but I would become a beneficiary of the long success his business would enjoy. Dad paid for my education in the UK, both at school (Churcher’s) and university (Goldsmith’s, London). Whilst I have never played up the fact that I am a graduate, the success of my dad’s business did give me the title of “graduate” which is the standard entry level requirement of most jobs.

My parents, of course, remain a little guilt ridden over their inability to stay married. Both have admitted that they feel that it had damaged me psychologically. Whilst this is what they feel, I am thankful that I was born to parents who cared enough about me. Mum gave up a career and a home to devote them to time to ensuring that we would all have a home. I am, as they say a beneficiary of my dad’s success and my mum’s nurturing.

Furthermore, whilst my parents did split, my mum saw to it that my stepfathers would be good guys, who took care of me and never saw me as anyone different from their flesh and blood children.  

So, I am thankful that I started life out in a blessed position. I look at my working life as an example of being very lucky. Sure, in many ways, the career path that everyone expected of me was a total disappointment. It took over a decade for me to find a job where I would last more than a year in and as my bankers are prone to reminding me, my “earnings” are pathetic and my savings are virtually nonexistent. I am, as they say, a walking demographic time-bomb.

Yet, I’ve also been exceedingly lucky. I inherited my mother’s media contacts in the early days and so when I was probably the only freelance PR person with virtually no agency experience to speak off whatsoever, who could call the editor of most of the leading local women’s magazines and get put through. Sure, I didn’t have a job for the most the time but I could put food in my own belly.

There is of course the fact that I managed to get my big three highlights after I got sacked from my last agency job in 2005. I left BANG PR in 2005 but instead of floundering and dying, I managed to get the Saudi Embassy job during the visit of the late Crown Prince Sultan to Singapore in 2006. That was the year when I also got my byline in Arab News 16 times in a month because I was there to cover the IMF meeting in Singapore.

Sure, I never had a “career” in a sense of that what it means to have a “career” but I managed to do one or two things that people with solid careers didn’t get to do and I am thankful for that.

By the time I “settled down” into something approaching normalcy in my late thirties, I psychologically accepted that I would not achieve much more in terms of a career and as long as I could pay my basic bills, I could be content (which is admittedly a struggle).

Still, I try to find things to be grateful for. One of them is my health. I’ve managed to go from scaring a military medical officer to having a healthy blood pressure.

I celebrated my 46^th birthday in a hospital. It was a gout attack that came along with a fever. When I strolled into a polyclinic, the medical staff insisted that I was put on oxygen:

 

 My 46^th birthday

It was a combination of having to spend the week before clearing records of a group of people who were repulsive and then ending up in hospital that marked my 46^th birthday.

I emerged from that and continued to function in 2021. Managed to attend an industry function despite Covid and for a whilst I didn’t get a big project this year, I did have a few side gigs.

 

 Emerged from a nasty visit to hospital

I don’t have a link with the divine, so I can’t claim that I know his reason for having me born around thanksgiving. However, when I look at my life and the fact that I manage to wake everyday and get on with doing things, has given me a cause to give thanks for the little I’ve managed to do. I leave that as reason enough be thankful.

Let the Power Return

 

When I was around 10-years old, one of my favourite characters was “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.” This franchise started out as a collection of toys and later developed into a series of cartoons that I and many of my generation followed.

As “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was an integral part of my childhood, I had to follow the cartoon reboot on Netflix and I’ve just finished watching the entire series of “Masters of the Universe: Revelation” which sort of gives the story of the battle between He-Man and his arch nemesis, Skeletor an ending.

What made this series so compelling is the fact that Skeletor finally gets what he’s also wanted, namely the power of Castle Grayskull and for a period, the arch villain becomes “Master of the Universe,” until he’s usurped by his sometime love-interest, the witch known as, “Evil-Lyn”

This leads to one of the most poignant moments in the entire “Masters of the Universe” story when Skeletor tells Prince Adam (He-Man’s alter-ego) that the power was wasted on him because he was only interested in using the power to stop Skeletor. The point is made several times in the series that Prince Adam is hero precisely because he’s willing to use to give up the power to be “Most Powerful Man in the Universe” after he’s beaten the bad guys. By contrast, Skeletor and Evil-Lyn are looking for ways to become even more powerful once they have gained the ultimate power. The heroism of “He-Man” is not in his catch phrase “I HAVE THE POWER,” but the fact that he’s willing to become plain old Prince Adam and the phrase that really makes him a hero is “LET THE POWER RETURN.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7cHW5ji2Xo

 

 He is a hero because he is NOT tempted by power - Copyright – Matel

The theme of not seeking to use power has been repeated in several franchises. In the early Spiderman series of the early 2000s, Peter Parker is reminded “With great power comes great responsibility,” and in the classic Superman movies with Christopher Reve, the Kyptonian villain, General Zod did not understand why the “Son of Jorel” would choose to “live among” the humans instead of ruling over them, despite being vastly superior to the humans in every sense of the word. However, none of these series stressed this theme the way that Masters of the Universe: Revelation does.

This “fictional” theme is very relevant to the “real” world, particularly when it comes to looking at the people who run it. If you were to study politicians and the “rulers,” you’ll notice that many of them came to power with a “vision” for the rest of society – think of Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” or Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream.” The trade-off being the society gets the vision and the person selling it gets the power to make it happen.

However, there’s one catch, which is the fact that “power” has shown itself to be exceedingly addictive and after sometime, the people in power start to get comfortable and try to prolong their stay in power. The game becomes about staying in power rather than serving the people and eventually that becomes a little too obvious and the level of governing competence slips.

Certain political systems are designed to limit powers so as to ensure the people in power don’t get to a stage where they damage the country. Under the American system for example, there is a system of checks and balances and the executive, judiciary and legislature are separate bodies that can only act with the consent of each other. American presidents need the senate to approve their appointments and in the last two decades, the public has tried to keep the parties in check by ensuring different parties control different parts of the government – hence the majority party in the houses of congress are usually different from the inhabitant of the White House. The American system is not designed to be efficient but to curtail power.

The Westminster system by contrast is designed to be efficient. The executive controls the party in the legislature. Unlike an American President, Prime Ministers across the Commonwealth don’t worry about getting their appointments approved. However, there is a visible pattern. Take the UK as an example.

In 1979, the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher came to power on the promise of reviving the UK. To a large extent, they did and made life better for the majority of the British public. However, by 1997 (11-years of Thatcher and six of John Major), the Conservative party was driven by infighting (so much so that the Prime Minister of the day described his colleagues as “bastards” in the national media) and scandal after scandal popped up. Then they were swept away by Tony Blair and his New Labour, which came in promising a range of reforms. There was a sense of dynamism in the UK in the late 90s as things got done. However, by the time Gordon Brown took over in 2007, Labour became a tiered party and the only thing that the Economist could write about the 2010 election was for Labour to “Do No Harm.” Both Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Blair started as visionary leaders who had to be forced out by their respective parties because they simply stayed past their sell by date.

The UK is lucky in the sense that it has a dynamic press that keeps politicians on their toes and whilst the monarchy is more of a figurehead, its kept politically neutral and provided people with a sort of alternate centre from the squabbles of the political system.

However, one has to ask what happens when a political system is so keen on efficiency and effectiveness that it removes any forms of checks on power? Take our system in Singapore as an example.

We are, in theory, following the Westminster system that the rest of the Commonwealth follows. However, the ruling party dominates the legislature (The ruling party’s worst performance is 60 percent of the vote, in most Commonwealth jurisdictions the governing party gets a little over 40 percent of the vote), hence whilst Members of Parliament may question members of the cabinet, they’re not going to act as a check, especially when the whip is applied. From day one, it was made clear that the media was subordinate to the government’s interest and judiciary is likewise unlikely to rule against the government on any major issue.

The system is undoubtedly effective. When the government wants something done, it gets done. A ten-hour debate is considered a marathon in Singapore. However, not everything that gets done is necessarily beneficial or even if they have a beneficial use, they come out in ways that are open for abuse, as in the case of the POFOMA and FICA bills. When the faults of these bills are brought up in public, the line of defense is “Trust us, we have your best interest at heart and we’re honest and nice.”

The assumption that the government makes is that it is “He-Man,” the natural hero of the people. Nobody factors in the fact that sometime down the line, the government may by run by “Skeletor” or “Evil-Lyn” who are only interested in themselves. You can give “He-Man” the power because he won’t abuse it but “Skeletor” and “Evil-Lyn” are quite happy to do so.

There are so many examples of what failing to check power can do. Take Zimbabwe as an example. The damage that Robert Mugabe did to the country is well documented. We all know about his wife “Gucci Grace” and how she shopped whilst the average Zimbabwean starved. What we forget is the fact that when Mugabe first came into power, he was a hero, a liberation figure as iconic as Nelson Mandela. However, whilst Mandela stepped down after a term (Let the Power Return), Mugabe did not. He was “He-Man,” who later on transformed into "Skeletor."

We need to remember that “He-Man” is a fictional character who is happy to “let the power return.” Most people who get power might start out like “He-Man” but end up like “Skeletor.” So, if a society is to progress, it needs to institute a system where the power is returned. I think of Bhutan’s fourth king as an example. He was an absolute monarch (I have the power) who imposed democracy on the people and gave the parliament the right to sack him and his successors (let the power return). This willingness to design a system that allows the power to return is an essential part of good leadership and systems that make sure the power is retuned are the systems that last.

We Need to Tax “Lazy Wealth”

 

One of the highlights of the Bloomberg New Economy Gala, which was held in Singapore on 17 November 2021, was an interview given by our Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Hsien Loong to John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg News. The entire crux of that interview was the fact that Mr. Lee made the point that it would not be easy to implement a wealth tax and that our tax system needed to be progressive and fair. More on the interview can be found at:

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/government-economy/singapore-wealth-tax-not-so-easy-to-implement-pm-lee

 

Taken from the Business Times – Copyright – Ministry of Communications and Information

For a nation that has spent the last two decades being all about “Attracting Wealth,” it was a something of a revolutionary step for our Prime Minister to even mention the topic of a “wealth tax” at a forum aimed at pleasing the international business community.

One has to ask what was going on and most likely answer was the fact that this was an idea brought up by Dr. Jamus Lim, Member of Parliament for Sengkang GRC. Around two weeks before the Prime Minister gave the interview with Bloomberg, Dr. Lim proposed imposing a wealth tax on the richest in Singapore. Whilst Dr. Lim may be a member of the opposition Worker’s Party, he is also a highly respected economist, having worked at both the World Bank and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. So, it was impossible to tar Dr. Lim with the label of being a stary eyed socialist and the idea is now in open discussion. More of Dr. Lim’s proposal can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/parliament-wp-mp-jamus-lim-proposes-wealth-tax-of-05-to-2-per-cent-on-the-richest

I will leave the merits of a “wealth tax” to the more qualified. I will however, touch on the fact that Singapore has been a fairly unequal society and the problem we face is not so much a question of attracting wealth but the type of wealth we are attracting.

Whilst the government has tried its best to present Singapore as having a wonderful forward-looking economy based on innovation, the truth is much of the thinking behind Singapore’s economic structure remains stuck in the 1960s when it was essential to have a manufacturing base and our competitive edge was about being cheaper than the Western world (which Japan is included) and having a work force that would do as it was told. Our economy back then was based on the premise that we attracted rich outsiders who would give us the good things in life.

Whilst the industries have changed, the thought process behind our economic development remains the same. This line of thinking has been programmed into the governing DNA. Whatever you talk about, the official answer will always revert back to this line of thinking. Why must we have casinos? Because rich foreigners will gamble their money here and give us jobs? Why must you have an open-door immigration policy? Because you need the foreigners to create jobs for the locals. Why must you house construction workers in tight, cramped and unsanitary conditions? Because the heavy industry that employs most of us needs cheap labour to be competitive.

Nearly every pertinent question raised in the public sphere has been met with this line of thinking and the same goes for the issue of making the rich pay more tax. – Standard answer is that Singapore needs low taxes to make it attractive to the rich who will create a demand for all sorts of things which will create great things for the locals.

Whilst this line of argument has had its merits, particularly during the boom years of the 80s, one has to ask if its relevant today. If you look at the wealth that we’re attracting, you’ll find it is doing what the local wealth has been doing for years – plonking it into very expensive real estate. Whilst I am not against investing in property per se, but if you look at Singapore (and Hong Kong), most of national wealth is tied up in property rather than in the stuff that creates jobs.

If you look at the companies that make up the Straits Times Industrial Index, you’ll find that around a third of those companies are landlords. If you look at the Forbes list of richest Singaporeans, you’ll find that the “home-grown” are essentially landlords.

Again, there is nothing wrong with being a landlord from a business perspective. However, from the socio-political-macroeconomic perspective, something is very wrong if landlords have a disproportionate hold of things and get to dictate national policy as has been seen with the dormitory owners.

Think about it, Sir James Dyson’s biggest headline grabbing move was to buy an expensive piece of property in Singapore. This was hailed as “investment.” To be fair, Sir. James did move his headquarters to Singapore and there is a technology centre in Singapore, which will hopefully generate some of the “brain” work for the locals. Then, there is the example of Eduardo Saverin, a co-founder of Facebook who is famous for legal action against the main man at Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg). As well as buying property, Mr. Saverin has set up a venture capital fund. He has, however, done little in the way of skills transferring or getting involved in business himself.

So, what have our foreign investors actually done? What have our local billionaires actually done for us?

I’m not advocating a China style forced redistribution. However, what one should look at is making the tax system encourage genuine wealth creation rather than just making it easy for the world’s wealthy to plonk their money into stuff that doesn’t actually do much for the economy. This is where Mr. Lee and his team need to put on their thinking caps. Sure, we need to attract wealth but we need to see to it that wealth does not become lazy and goes into things that actually benefit the economy as a whole. If we need to “wealth tax” we should tax “lazy wealth.”

Stupidity Rewarded

 You could call it a coincidence but I just finished watching “For Life,” on Netflix series that it loosely based on the story of Isaac Wright Jr at the time when the Kyle Rittenhouse trial was coming to an end. The “fictional” courtroom drama, which I was watching the real-life drama in courts was unfolding underscored one of the largest issues at hand – namely the dramatization of justice.

Whist court cases are meant to be independent of the political process, the truth is that they are often an expression of political and ideological differences.

The entire trial of Kyle Rittenhouse was the prime example of how a court case was about everything other than the facts of the event that took place.

OK, I got to admit that when I first started following the cases, my initial reactions were to start laughing at the pictures of Kyle Rittenhouse sobbing on the stand. His body language as shown by his photos read “Bully getting just deserts.” He probably thought he looked cool and had respect because he was given a gun and to “protect” property. Then, once he was minus the gun and fighting for his life, he started sobbing. I live in a part of the world where there is an infestation o Gwai Tzai (White Brats) who think its their god given right to push people around.

However, it one takes an objective look at things, Kyle Rittenhouse is a sad victim of an unhealthy political culture and going on trial was the chance for everybody to use him to further their own agendas.

 

 Carrying a Weapon Feels Good

 

 Until you have to be responsible for what you do with it

You had the crazies from the Tucker Carlson Show (Tucker Carlson has served all of zero days in the military or any other public institution) who were pushing him as a martyr or a hero who was defending the rest of the “politically correct” world.

On the other hand, he was also being used as a punching bag for the “woke” crowd, who wanted to portray him as fascist extremist, gunning down innocent black protestors (never mind the fact that the people he shot happened to be white).

The truth is, Kyle Rittenhouse is probably neither of these things. He is without doubt, a stupid teenager (which teenager isn’t). Somehow, someone gave him the idea that he would be a really cool guy if he crossed over to another state and his position in the world would be greatly enhanced cause he would be allowed to carry a military assault rifle.

To be fair, his probably genuinely thought he was acting in self-defense. Hey, its one thing to be told that you are important to be asked to help “protect” property. It’s a different story when guys are rushing at you. He was probably scared when he discharged his firearm.

So, I don’t disagree with his self-defense claim and I don’t think “prison” would have helped him at all. However, what we do not need is for him to be held up as a champion of anything in particular. Even if you leave out the racial undertones of what’s been happening, encouraging vigilantism is never healthy (its one thing to shoot an intruder breaking into your home – it’s another to cross over to another state fully armed) as the report from the Guardian explains:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2021/nov/19/kyle-rittenhouse-verdict-acquitted-protest

In fairness, his defense lawyers tried to keep out the “crazies,” but it’s also hard to ignore them completely when they’re throwing money at you just when you need it most.

https://edition.cnn.com/us/live-news/kyle-rittenhouse-trial-verdict-watch-11-19-21/index.html

 

Copyright CNN

Prison would have been the wrong verdict. However, allowing him to walk away without anything is also wrong. What young Mr. Rittenhouse needs is court mandated counseling and time away from the crazies on both sides of the political divide. He’s 18 and should do what normal 18-year-olds do, go back to school and focus on his future. Perhaps some mandated time in black communities would help him understand the world beyond his own.

A young boy had a moment of stupidity. He should be given the chance to learn from his mistakes and move on. What we should not do is to encourage situations where the stupidity is rewarded with money and fame.

"Asgard is not a place. Never was. This could be Asgard. Asgard is where our people stand. Even now, right now, those people need your help." – Odin in Thor Ragnarök

 

This weekend, I attend an event at the Asian Civilizations Museum, where there was a discussion on the Arab Diaspora. The highlight of the event involved the launch of a book entitled “Arab World’s Beyond the Middle East and North Africa.” The book, is a collection of chapters written by academics of Arabic decent who studied various Arab communities in different parts of the world like in the USA (largest community being around Dearborn, Michigan), Europe, South America and Singapore.

 

 As can be expected of an event centred around a diaspora, the key theme was that of “identity.” How does one balance between the culture of where you came from and where you are now. Members of any diaspora often find themselves having to make compromises and certain sacrifices. One of the writers of the book mentioned that when his parents fled Syria for the safety of Argentina, they actually gave up their Islamic faith so that they could settle into Argentina more easily.

This brought one of the lines from the Marvel Universe to mind, when Odin, the King of the Asgardians reminds Thor, his likely successor that Asgard is not a place but a people. The scene can be found at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcufoHksv0w

One of the key questions that any diaspora faces is ultimately the question of “identity.” If your born of a particular ethnicity but outside the “homeland” of that people, the question remains, do you identify yourself with a place or a people.

It’s a touchy subject as many Chinese in Southeast Asia and Gujaratis in Africa will confirm. If you are a successful minority, you need to ensure that you are more native than the natives for the simple reason that when things go South, populist politicians will turn on you and blame you for every s*** thing that’s going on. In Indonesia it happened in 1998 during the fall of Suharto. In August 1972, Uganda’s Indian (predominantly Gujrati) community found itself having to flee after generations because Idi Amin thought that stealing from them would make him look better.

So many minorities do take pains that their loyalties are to the country of birth rather than to their “race.” In Indonesia, the Chinese take great pains to make sure they are as Indonesian as can be. Most do not speak Chinese. They speak Bahasa Indonesia as their mother tongue. All of them have changed their names to be more Indonesian. Think of the founder of Salim Group, who was born Liem Sioe Liong but was officially Sudono Salim. In the case of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, assimilation is a question of survival.

Yet, in this day and age of a “globalised” world, we have to ask ourselves if forcing people to choose between a place and people is the right thing to do. Contrary to what today’s populist are telling us, being able to communicate across cultures is actually a vital skill. The only people who get excited about extreme nationalism (the people who talk about one land for one race and so on) are more often than not, impotent layabouts who expect to be fed without doing work.

Let’s start with the obvious point. The world is increasingly interdependent. The countries that you want to be (prosperous and stable) are usually the ones that work to build bridges with other countries. This is true of big countries like the US, where the most successful parts of the US are on the West and East coast which are open to people from all over the world. It is especially true for small nations.

The most prominent example of this, is Israel, which as a population of just under 10 million but a functioning, dynamic, innovation-driven economy. Israel is not only prosperous, but it’s a military power-house. How did they do it. The answer is simple – they nurtured the global Jewish diaspora, which in turn has helped Israel stay safe and prosperous. The American Jewish community is by all intents and purposes but they see to it that Israel has a “friend” in the USA.

China has tried to do something similar with the Chinese diaspora. Early investors in China were the “Overseas Chinese,” in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. However, whilst many of the Overseas Chinese have invested in China, they’ve also kept their ties elsewhere alive, especially when the Chinese government has acted in a heavy-handed manner.

India, prior to its initial reforms in 1990s used to regard Indians who went overseas as traitors to India. The old joke was that NRI used to stand for “Not Required Indians.” However, as India opened up, it prospered and suddenly the Not Required Indians became a very required part of India Inc’s expansion.

Sure, one should always have a degree of loyalty to one’s place of birth and where one grew up. I, for example, am Singaporean in as much as I served national service (combat unit, combat vocation), my family is here and I have a home. However, should this be at the expense of things that might give me a foothold elsewhere? Although I speak Mandarin very badly, why shouldn’t I be able to look for opportunities in the “Chinese” sphere of the world. If I had to operate in China, I would not become any less loyal to Singapore because of it. I believe the same would be true of my ethnic Indian and Malay friends.

I cannot think of a reason for one to be forced to choose between a people and a place. Not in this century of cross-border communications, the digital world and so on. Being able to survive in a cross-cultural world is an increasingly essential skill and being the bridge between nations and cultures can only benefit everyone.  

If You Love Something – Learn to Let Go – Obsessions Will Only Kill You

 

Its often said that most things in life would be straight forward as long as they didn’t involve human being. As much as we like to tell ourselves that we are living in a “rational” age, where we make decisions rationally, based on things like data and logic, the truth is, unpredictable things like emotions and obsessions come into play. In fact, the unpredictable element doesn’t just play a role in decision making, it often plays an exceedingly dominant role in the decision process.

This became very clear to me when I joined the liquidations industry back in 2014. The parties in a liquidation are bound to have an overriding emotion. The most obvious is anger. Creditors who have extended vast sums of money to the enterprise suddenly get the news that they’re not going to get a cent back. If it involves employees, particularly those from the lower end of the spectrum, the overwhelming emotion is sadness and heartbreak. These guys might have spent many hours a day on a construction project, not been paid for months and then told they’re never going to be able to feed their families after months of hard toil.

Whilst these are expected emotions, the most important character that you have to deal with, particularly in the initial stages of the liquidation, is usually the director(s) of the business. This is especially true if the director in question is a “founder” who had built the business in question.

The easiest characters to deal with are the ones who are prepared for it. I had to visit an office of company that had appointed my liquidator. Went to the site and found that the registered office was a corporate secretarial agent. Met the man in charge, who was the local nominee, who promptly gave us the contact details of the main director and asked us to specify which documents we wanted and arranged for me to collect statutory documents within a week.

This ranks as one of the more pleasant experiences that I’ve had in the initial stages. The reason was simple, the directors in question probably knew that saving the business was pointless and so they let go so that they could concentrate on things that actually made them money.

Not every experience is like this. A month ago, I had to deal with an owner of a business who kept insisting everything was fine, when the state of his paper work wasn’t. Accounts hadn’t been done over a year and the place was filed with unopened letters from the tax authorities chasing him for money. Yet he persisted in hanging around to tell us that everything was properly filed and I had to endure endless discussions with him on all sorts of things, including hearing about his erectile issues when he knew he was going under. Thankfully, our main communication was in Mandarin, which was done either at a halting pace (cause my command of Mandarin is limited) or through a reluctant interpreter and the man served excellent Chinese tea. He said many things about cooperating with the liquidators but the level of cooperation was such that we had to limit his access to the premises.

Annoying directors are actually not bad. The worst cases come from founding entrepreneurs who are emotionally invested in their business. About two years ago, I had to deal with a director who had built up a successful business but failed to settle with a creditor. Court Order was given to wind up the company but when we went in, he kept insisting that there was nothing to be wound up as his business was wonderfully profitable. He would go on long tirades about how the court process in both Singapore and Australia was flawed and he was therefore not insolvent. Unfortunately, whatever he was saying was simply not relevant to the matter at hand. This was probably one of the few instances where my youth in England helped. He was a former Welsh Fusilier medic and I went to school with sons of men in the military, so I had a common link of sorts. Had to use that to cool him down to get vaguely cooperative or at least non-interventionalist. He actually had to be told by a lawyer friend of his “You don’t have a business anymore.”

I actually get it. I understand why people become attached to their businesses. A business is never just about the money. For the founder in particular, the business becomes and extension of themselves.

However, having a relationship with a business is like having a relationship of any other sort. When the love is great it is the most wonderful thing in the world. However, a relationship with a business, like other relationships can fail. Getting emotionally attached to a business that is insolvent makes you guilty of insolvent trading and insolvent trading is like being told that the other party does not want to communicate with you, ignores you on every available communication channel for over a year and instead of leaving it alone, you proceed to call the other party’s work place and to harass every common friend you have. It’s not going to make the other party love you more. In fact, quite the opposite. Insolvent trading is like that, you throw money into a hole that you will never recover.

It’s always best to accept when things fail. Clear up the failure and then focus on making good money. When you take things personally, the only people who benefit are lawyers and accountants who charge while you go out of the way to sue parties that will never have the ability to give you back what you lost and in the end your business ends up as a series of boxes in the liquidator’s office.

 

When your business ends up like this – move on – you can always start again as long as you let go of the past.

 

Good Bye to an Unsung Hero

 

He was short, fat and bald. He was spectacularly dull in his English Speeches.  His faults were imminently visible when you consider the fact that his negotiating partner across the table was a presentable definition of charisma.  However, he played a crucial role in shaping a nation and ending a vile system of government. His role in maintaining peace cannot be underestimated.

If my generation (Gen x) as an event that sparked an incredible amount of hope, it would be the 1994 (year I left school) election in South Africa, which saw Nelson Mandela duly elected as the first black president of South Africa.

This was an incredible moment for us. We all grew up knowing South Africa as a nation that had this evil system of government called apartheid, which was legalized racism. Blacks and whites were not allowed to mix (so much so that the comedian Trevor Noah’s biography is called “Born a Crime” because his father is white and mother is black and that was strictly illegal under the system) and the black majority was condemned to be classless citizens in their own land. Because of this, South Africa became a “pariah” nation, which was boycotted by every nation for just about every event of significance. South Africa developed a “siege” mentality and White South Africans in particular became a target of ridicule for living in a system where racism was legal. One only has to go back to Spitting Images song, “I’ve Never Met a Nice South African,” which had a chorus on White South Africans echoing “And that’s not bloody surprising.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pcDUQXU6Mg

 

Then, one day that changed. South Africa ended this “racist” system without the bloodshed anyone imagined would take place. There was charismatic leader who forgave his captors and used their loved game, which the majority of black people hated to unite the nation. Unlike just about everyone else on the continent, Mandela stepped down after a single term as president so that his successors could grow without him (which in many cases has been a disappointing failure):

 

Taken from Time Magazine

Nelson Mandela became to my generation what Gandhi was to my grandparent’s generation. He was a politician who ended up being revered as a saint. We’d call him the definition of what leadership should be. The most telling was at his funeral in 2013 when then US President, Barak Obama told cheering crowds that he would struggle but fail t live up to “Madiba” (Mr. Mandela’s clan name) standards:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SggOsfjsL0c

There is no doubt that Nelson Mandela was a very special figure for South Africa and the world. However, he could not have done without someone else who happened to be his polar opposite. That someone, was the last State President of South Africa, Mr. FW de Klerk who died on 11 November 2021 of cancer. If Mr. Mandela was a charismatic visionary, Mr. de Klerk was a dull. If Mr. Mandela was about integrity and an ideal, Mr. de Klerk was a pragmatist. Mr. Mandela looked good whilst Mr. de Klerk did not.

Yet, if you look at the story of how apartheid ended, you’ll realise that it was Mr. de Klerk who made things happen. What he lacked in “vision,” he more than made up for in daggered determination. Unlike Mr. Mandela, he died a controversial figure. Many blacks felt he didn’t enough to stop the violence and apologize for the wrongs of the apartheid system. Many whites felt that he had betrayed them. The poor man had to apologize from the grave as his foundation released this final message upon news of his death:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwL2NpgvKf8

 

Whilst Mr. Mandela was born for the purpose of leading a people to freedom, Mr. de Klerk spent his adult life believing in the apartheid and prior to becoming State President, he actually played a key role in enforcing it. One of the criticisms about Mr. de Klerk was the fact that he had “no choice” because South Africa was imploding thank to global economic isolation.

Yet if you think about it, Mr. de Klerk was probably a more realistic model for people. Not everyone can be a moral guide in the way Mandela was. However, one can be a daggered fighter like Mr. de Klerk if one puts one’s mind to it. To use a Christian analogy, there would be no Christianity without Jesus. However, the world-wide faith that we know would not have been possible without Paul, who started out as Saul of Tarsus, a man dedicated to persecuting Christians. There can only be one Jesus but many of us can be Paul if we choose to be.

Sure, Mr. de Klerk started life supporting apartheid but he was the one who took the steps to free Mr. Mandela and his gang of freedom fighters. He was the one who made the African National Congress (ANC) and a host of other resistance movements legal. So, what if he did this because he was “forced to” by sanctions and so on? The world is faced with leaders who refuse to change course even when things are collapsing. In South East Asia, there was the example of Suharto in the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Egyptians and the example of Hosni Mubarak who refused to go until he was pushed out. A collapsing economy doesn’t force leaders to change course. It often gets them to dig in.

So, the fact that Mr. de Klerk took the steps to change course and go against everything he was brought up to believe shows the character of the man. He was willing to put nation above his own perceive self-interest.

Then there’s the fact that he sold the abolition of apartheid in a “Whites Only” referendum on 17 March 1992. This cannot be underestimated. The black population had every incentive to be against the system, they were being screwed by it. The White had every reason to keep it because they were benefiting and there was a fear that they would be slaughtered if there was no apartheid. Let’s remember this is not an unfounded hear. Neighbouring Rhodesia which became Zimbabwe had to go through a civil war. That didn’t happen, the White Minority relinquished power at the ballot box and Mr. de Klerk deserves credit for that.

Whilst the two men were partners for in the process, they didn’t actually like each other. You could almost say they were enemies. When violence erupted, Mr. Mandela called on Mr. de Klerk to resign and often accused him of being weak. Their body language was often tense:

 

 Taken from CBS    

This actually makes things more impressive. Its easy to work with friends and loved ones. They’re probably friends and loved ones because they agree on the key points with you. It’s a different story when you talk to someone who stands for everything you were brought up to believe was wrong with the world. Again, Mr. de Klerk deserves credit for being able to negotiate with Mr. Mandela, knowing that the end result was his loss of power in favour of Mr. Mandela (again, easier to negotiate when you know you’re going to win).

No doubt that you can argue he could have done things differently and had better outcomes. However, you cannot question that a man who negotiated the end of his people’s dominance after years of oppressing them had one great quality – courage and one has to ask, isn’t that what makes the difference? Mr. de Klerk had the courage to go against everything he was brought up to believe – to negotiate with an enemy and to relinquish power for his people. Whilst South Africa has disappointed in so many ways from that glorious election on 1994, things could have been worse as is seen in Zimbabwe. Mr. de Klerk’s efforts to relinquish power on the best possible terms should be commended and whilst he is the “unsung” hero of the story, he is still a hero and history should judge him accordingly.   

Problem with Being Clever

 

One of the funniest things about Singapore has been the fact that its biggest defenders are more often than not, people from elsewhere. One of the biggest cheerleaders of the Singapore government is the community of Westerners living in Singapore. Whenever I’m out with a group of Westerners and mention something less than perfect about Singapore’s system, they’ll remind me, “At least your government promotes intelligent people unlike the Australian/American/British government.”

To be fair to my Western friends who have used this argument, they are actually right. Singapore is obsessed with everything clever. We pay our ministers a “competitive” salary so that they’ll be ministers instead of CEOs. We award generous scholarships so that our brightest minds go to the world’s best universities. We provide generous packages so that the best and brightest come to Singapore. Our school system is famously challenging because we are obsessed with producing the best and brightest and our late Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew infamously tried to create a smarter nation by trying to get the “educated” to breed but discouraging the same for the “uneducated.”

Our obsession with being clever isn’t just limited to education and “attracting talent.” We’re also willing to spend on the hardware side. If it involves the latest technologies, we’re more than willing to shell out. By way of an anecdote, when I was going to school in the UK in the 1990s, Singapore looked like “home movie paradise” because we had moved to laser disk while the UK and still using the VHS.

Singapore’s government spends plenty of research and development (R&D). If you look at any random government budget, you’ll notice that the one thing that the government is willing to spend on is R&D as this article from the Business Times states:

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/government-economy/singapore-spending-s25b-in-next-five-year-rd-plan

 

Given the government’s dominance of things in Singapore, it goes without saying that the private sector takes its lead from the government. Enterprises in Singapore are given plenty of encouragement to spend money on making things more efficient and the increase in R&D spending us not just government related as the following report from the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) explains:

https://www.mti.gov.sg/-/media/MTI/Resources/Economic-Survey-of-Singapore/2019/Economic-Survey-of-Singapore-Third-Quarter-2019/FA_3Q19.pdf

 

Whilst all this money being spent on promoting “cleverness” is encouraging in so many aspects, I actually have to question if we are actually becoming clever or are we becoming so clever that we’re actually becoming stupid. What do I mean?

It’s like this, we are a society that is obsessed with being clever. If there’s anything worse than being poor in Singapore, it is to be “stupid.” The concept of “Forest Gump” would never be allowed to exist in Singapore.

The problem with being obsessed is that we ignore certain realities. The truth is, not everyone can be very clever. However, in a society that is obsessed with being clever, everybody is under pressure to show that they’re clever, even when they’re not. As such, when people need to show that they are clever, they’ll end up making things more complicated than they need to be.

I take one of the most basic functions of my day job in the insolvency business – namely the job of delivering letters to banks. In the early stages of any given liquidation, we need to ensure that the company’s bank accounts get frozen to prevent anyone from siphoning off the funds. We have rarely know which bank accounts the liquidated company maintained and so more often than not, we have to write to all the banks. It goes without saying that we also don’t know who the relationship manager for company happens to be and so our letters are often marked to the attention of either the account servicing department or the legal department.

The job of hand delivery is fairly easy in most cases. You go to the branch and present the letter and they distribute it to the relevant department through their internal systems. In the seven-years I’ve done this, banks like ICICI, Bank of China, HSBC, Bank of India, Maybank, BNPParisbas and OCBC have been helpful. If the branch can’t accept the letter, they’ll direct you to the mailroom, which will forward it to the relevant department.

Unfortunately, the two banks that have become so clever that they’ve actually complicated things, are the two banks that should be the most efficient – namely United Overseas Bank (UOB) and DBS Bank. These are the local banks that have been most obsessed with overseas expansion and competing on the world stage and have hired the best possible talent from their global competitors (My ex-boss from Citibank runs UOB’s consumer banking division and the current CEO of DBS is a former Citi banker, as was his immediate predecessor).

Both these banks have forgotten the basic purpose of a mailroom. When delivering a letter to UOB, I was rejected by the mailroom, who sent me up to one of the higher floors of UOB centre, which in itself is complicated as it has a complex system of lifts (different lifts go to different floors). When I reached the floor in question, I found that there was no one there and when I did find someone, their only reaction was “huh – they sent you here.”

The experience with DBS was similar. Around two months ago, I merely had to go to the branch and they would accept whatever letter I needed to send. Then they said that they stopped accepting letters at the branch and directed me to the mailroom. There was only one problem. The mailroom would only accept letters that was marked to the attention of a specific person. They would not accept the fact that whilst I didn’t have a specific person, I had a department.

So, given that this was the mailroom’s policy, our team contacted the business hotline, who advised us that it was perfectly acceptable. I tried also asked someone from the branch who I needed to attention the letter to, and was duly advised that I could attention it to a department. Mailroom refused to accept this and even went as far as to tell me that I needed to tell them which floor of the Marina Bay Financial Centre the department was located in. It took pointing out that my letter involved an order court for them to accept the letter.  

How is it such that the organisations that have the means of having the best possible system are unable to do it. Isn’t the basic function of a mailroom to distribute things? So, why do I need to find out where a certain department is in a building that I don’t work in for the people who are supposed to know. Why is it such that the branch, hotline and mailroom don’t seem to be able to be on the same page when it comes to receiving letters. These are organisations that we entrust our life savings to and yet they can’t accept letters?

These are organisations runs by “the best and brightest” that money can buy. So, how did they make a simple exercise so complicated? Surely, they could save themselves a lot of money and time thus increasing operational efficiency if they remembered that the best solutions are often the most simple.

Sacrificing Human Life for the Religion of Sacrificing Human Life

 

Something very strange just took place within the criminal justice system today. Singapore’s highest court decided to delay the execution of convicted drug trafficker, Mr. Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, after he tested positive. The justices decided that common sense and humanity should prevail and Mr. Dharmalingam, who was due to be hanged at 6am on 10 November 2021, will now have a bit more time until the next court hearing.

This twist has made people in Singapore’s section of cyberspace. Many are asking how a man who spends his time alone in a cell waiting to be executed get covid. The anti-death penalty campaigners are also asking how is it possible for the justices to stay the execution on the grounds of common sense and humanity because a condemned man has a disease, yet so no issue with executing him on the same grounds.

I will leave the discussion on Mr. Dharmalingam’s fate to those who are working hard to save his life and as in my posting “DRUGDEALING 101,” continue to look at the discussion on whether the mandatory death penalty deters drug crimes and if it does, how effective is it. I’ve argued that whilst things may look rosy on the surface, they are not what they seem. Whilst you are unlikely to see drug addicts roaming our streets, Singapore has people who abuse drugs and that figure has stayed pretty consistent over the years. It goes without saying that our regular drug users (anywhere from 3,000 to 3,500 people are arrested for drug abuse every year) must be getting their drugs from somewhere and it is clear that while our “zero tolerance” may make the business too risky for many, there are people willing to engage and profit from the business.

The government has claimed that Singaporeans support the government’s harsh stance on drugs. Hence, it continues to keep those policies. If you were to trawl through the online comments related to drug case, it seems that the government is correct. Take the following story related to Mr. Dharmalingam:

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/court-dismisses-last-ditch-application-case-malaysian-drug-trafficker-death-row?fbclid=IwAR2Wzcw7TuE0HLI72Pa1w3HRpsrZtZkp2LosMDdelqUyMj8kAIlGogEl4sY

 

If you were to look at the comments to this story on the Today Newspaper’s Facebook page, you will notice that there are a number of people who think that granting any form of clemency towards Mr. Dharmalingam would be a mistake. The common thread is that mercy for drug traffickers, even if they are at the bottom of the food chain would send out the wrong message and that any mercy would only encourage drug traffickers.

https://www.facebook.com/search/posts/?q=today

 

Given that Singapore has remained a relatively low-crime society, its easy to see how people can have faith in the system.

However, as stated in “DRUG DEALING 101” the picture isn’t as rosy as one might imagine. Singapore has drug users and that number has held steady from 2011 to 2020. It’s been noted that even when the number of people being arrested for drug use fell in 2020, there were more first-time users. Somebody must be selling to the drug abusers and clearly not everyone is being deterred.

There is also a greater concern than the number of drug users that don’t seem to decline much. That concern is the issue of whether the “mandatory death sentence for drugs” has become a religion rather than a policy, particularly by the people from the top. In a way, its easy to understand when people on the ground take a “religious” view on policies in as much they see how a certain policy affects their immediate surroundings. It’s a different story when a person at the top, who has a holistic overview of the situation and all the data at his fingertips, defends a policy like a religion even when the data is saying otherwise. Take this 2019 Reuters interview with our Home Affairs Minister, Mr. K Shanmugam as an example:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-law-drugs-idUSKCN1UQ197

 

In this article, you have the man with probably the best overview of drug related issues in Singapore defending a policy at a moment when the evidence is showing him that the policy may not be working the way he thinks it should.

Nobody is saying that one shouldn’t be tough of drug trafficking. However, when your drug abuse cases go up at the same time as your execution rate, it should be a sign that the drug dealers aren’t being deterred the way you think they should.

One might conclude that the sensible thing to do would be to relook at how things are being done. Our ASEAN neighbours are experimenting and trying different things. Only time will tell if their experiments will be beneficial. However, they are at the very least trying to do something different in the hopes of getting a different result. We, by contrast, are doubling down on the same thing even when we should know the result. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? Given that we pride ourselves in being the most rational nation in the region and our government prides itself in being practical (we do what works) rather than ideology driven, why do we treat a policy like a religious text at a point when that policy is showing signs of diminishing returns?