Is Age Just a Number?

 Two days ago, Singapore’s flagship daily, “The Straits Times,” ran an article about a survey conducted by the Centre for Governance and Stability (CGS) and the National University of Singapore (NUS), which found that companies which loaded senior positions with people over a certain age, under-performed. The article can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-markets/singapore-firms-with-many-leaders-over-60-underperform-nus-study

 

 I’m going to leave the nuances of the study to people who are much better qualified. However, I will state that this was probably the best article that the Straits Times could have run amidst every accusation that it’s been nothing more than a government mouthpiece.

Let’s start with the obvious. The one organization that is has people in senior management over the age of 60 is the government itself. The Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Hsien Loong is 70 and there has yet set a date for his departure from the top job. His official deputy, Mr. Heng Swee Kiat is 61 and has stated that he will not be taking the top job because he felt that he’d be too old by the time he was supposed to sit in the hot seat. The two senior ministers (or the actual second in commands) Mr. Teo Chee Hean and Mr. Tharman Shanmugaratnam are 67 and 64 respectively. If you were to look the three expected contenders for Prime Minister, you’ll find that two (Mr. Ong Ye Kung and Mr. Chan Chun Seng) are already over 50, whilst the only under 50 is already 49.

Our Prime Minister has a track record of being generous to people over 60. In his early years, he kept two of his successors in cabinet. Mr. Goh, who was senior minister had a cushy retirement job from the age of 63 all the way to age 70. On a more prominent note, there was the late Mr. Lee Kuan Yew who was 81 in 2004 and 88 when he stepped down as Minister Mentor.

Being over 60 has never been a problem when it comes to holding a cabinet level post or a senior position in the management of the government and given that the government in Singapore plays a very prominent role in managing everything, one has to ask if the study conducted by CGS and NUS included the government or was merely limited to a number of organizations.

There can only be two conclusions here. One, is that if the government was not included in the study, it would be obvious that the findings of the study are not really accurate. The other is that the government doesn’t take the results of this study seriously enough to speed up a hand-over to the younger generation of ministers as our 70-year-old Prime Minister and his 60 plus—year-old assistants have a few good years left in them.

As a 47-year-old struggling who got rejected from a security guard job, I prefer to think that it’s the second option. Despite the ease in which the over 60s have in staying in management jobs when it comes to cabinet post, the reality is rather different for Singapore’s ever-growing number of aged Baby Boomers and aging Gen X-ers. The reality remains – after 45, you are considered a dinosaur and despite your years of experience, getting even the most menial of jobs becomes a challenge – even if the government encourages old-folks to replace migrant labour in the service sector because our pension money is only meant to be used by our next-of-kin to take care of funeral expenses.

When you get told that there’s an age limit for a job, you quickly learn that there’s a reason for it. Nobody thinks your brain works fast enough for the modern world or that you’re too feeble to take the physical demands of life. I believe that my personal work experience disproves this but I and people of my generation need to accept the reality is that the system doesn’t work that way. The CGS and NUS study seems to confirm the ageist perceptions of the market.

Hence, its actually a relief that to see that whilst the think-tanks may not think much of us over 45s in the market, our 70-year-old Prime Minister clearly does not believe this study is worth too much attention as he carries on working past retirement age in the most important managerial role in Singapore.   

The KNN Effect.

One of my Linkedin contacts posted a picture of the fabulous book on management called the “Peter Principle” a moment ago. The Peter Principle was written by Laurence J Peter, who observed that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence.

 

 I’m grateful for this reminder of the Peter Principle because, for as long as I can remember, the Holy Grail of any given career was “rising to the top.” This idea isn’t particularly unique to Singapore. However, as Singapore is small, things that happen elsewhere, are often felt more intensely in Singapore.

We are told that we need to go to school and study hard so that we can climb that ladder. Climbing the academic ladder and getting paper qualifications is supposed to be the sure-fire way of ensuring that you will never have to do a menial job like sweep the streets and you should, at the very worst case, retire a manager of sorts. Back in the 1990s, a reasonably fit a-level student was bound for one of the command schools (Officer or Specialist) during national service. We were told back then that learning to lead in the army was going to stand us in good stead for the day we would lead people in management roles.

So, everyone’s working life is about rising the corporate hierarchy. The higher you are and the bigger the organization, the better. Hence, it becomes the goal of every Singaporean to become the regional director of a multinational or a permanent secretary in a ministry.

In a way, its very understandable why people want to climb the proverbial ladder. The higher up you get, the better paid you get, which means you can afford to live a nicer lifestyle than the next guy and the rest of society looks at you with a bit more awe.

Whilst wanting to climb to the top is understandable, we’ve had a few too many corporate boo-boos happening (think of the losses in former monopoly companies)and we need to ask whether we’ve put so much emphasis on climbing to the top that we’ve neglected glorifying basic competence at the job on hand.

Let’s face it, certain jobs require different skills and whilst a person might be good at the job on hand, it doesn’t necessarily make them good at the next job. Why can’t we reward people for being good at the job they’re doing without the pressure to move onto a “higher” job which they may not necessarily be good at or be happy at doing?

Interestingly enough, the one organization that actually does this is the Ministry of Education (MOE), which recognized that there is a distinct difference in the skills needed to be a good teacher and a good principle. A teacher needs to teach, whilst a principal needs to be a good administrator.

In a normal hierarchy, every teacher should have aimed to become a principal (climbing through the ranks of head of department, vice-principal and so on). However, to it’s credit MOE actually recognized that there were teachers who liked to teach and didn’t want to become school administrators. Hence, they created the “teaching track” where good teachers could advance as teachers. An explanation of MOE’s career pathways can be found at:

https://www.moe.gov.sg/careers/become-teachers/pri-sec-jc-ci/professional-development

Sure, not every organization (particularly commercial ones) can structure themselves in a way to suite as many individuals as possible. However, the recognition that not everybody is suited to be at the top and may simply excel at being where they are is an important step in the right direction.

Everything has been about giving the good things to people at the top, without consideration of whether they had the skills to be at the top. We need to recognize that while its important to have good people at the top, you also need competence at the other levels and those levels need to be rewarded appropriately too.

Covid-19 showed us that many ground level jobs were actually more essential to our daily lives than many executive level jobs. Isn’t it time we acted on the reality and rewarded people appropriately for being competent at the level that they’re at instead of putting so much at the top that everyone would be rushing to get promoted to their level of incompetence? We should not want the Peter Principle to have a KNN effect on the entire system.  

My Father Will…….

 My weekend indulgence was binge watching the Netflix series, “Inventing Anna.” The series tells the story of Ms. Anna Sorokin, who conned the New York elite and top hotels out of nearly US$300,000 worth of hotel stays. She did so by adopting the name of Anna Delvey and told everyone she was a German Heiress with some serious trust fund money behind her.

As you watch the series, you will notice that whenever “Anna” got into trouble, she will inevitably use the line “My father will……” Since everyone was hopping to get the money from “her father,” the line usually worked. Even at the end, when she was yelling at her lawyer to conduct the trial in the manner that she wanted, she yells “My father will replace you,” even though it was clear to everyone that at this stage of the game the lawyer had spoken to her father and realized that he wasn’t the all-powerful person she had made him out to be and more importantly, her father made it clear that he wasn’t going to bail her out of the mess that she had created.

What makes this segment particularly attention grabbing is the fact that it underlined one of the sad truths of modern life – namely the fact that who you are often counts more than what you are. It is, funnily true in societies that are ruled by republics as much as its true in monarchies. Both Qusay and Uday, the sons of Saddam Hussein got away with pretty much what they wanted in Iraq because nobody in their right mind wanted to cross their “Daddy.”

Qusay and Uday are probably the most extreme examples of people who have used “Daddy” to get away with murder (in this case quite literally). There are less-extreme examples of how the term “Daddy” is used by people to get away with things. There is the example of a former US president who got an exemption from military service during the Vietnam War because the pediatrist wanted to gain favour from his landlord. Much more subtle than Saddam Hussein’s boys but it was still a case of “Daddy’s” name being used to get special favour.

Here in Singapore, we have a special twist on this whole obsession with Daddy. We’ve actually institutionalized it. How does this happen in a society that is officially obsessed with being a “meritocracy” where people are officially promoted based on merit and merit alone?

Well, unlike Saddam’s Iraq or even modern-day USA, there is an amount of subtlety and magic that goes on in this Singapore system. Look at the “White Horse” system in the military. A former Minister of State for Defense said that we have a “White Horse” system in the military where sons of prominent people are marked out so that we ensure that nobody gives them special treatment. I suspect the poor man understood the term “equal treatment” in the same way as the pigs in Animal Farm understood it – “All Animals are Equal – Some are more Equal than others.” I remember being told by a former army colleague that he served in a scholar platoon during his basic military training and somehow finished three months of basic military training without having to do a push up as punishment.

As with everything in Singapore, the root out our “Daddy” issues goes back to our “Founding Father,” the late Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, who in many ways, was a great man. If you look at what Mr. Lee did, it’s quite obvious that he was right on so many of the big issues of the day. As the writer Robert Elegant said, “He alone of his contemporaries ruled wisely,” and Singapore has much to thankful for.

So, whatever you think of Mr. Lee, his “brand” image as the father of modern Singapore is not misplaced. However, whilst Mr. Lee was in many ways a good father, there was flaw in his parenting. He a little overprotective of his family and to an extent that rubbed off onto the people who were in power alongside him.

 

 Was he an Overprotective Father? – New York Times

In fairness to Mr. Lee, he was a strict father and his children had to earn their keep so to speak. Both our Prime Minister and his brother, went through national service and had to earn their degree. Lee Hsien Loong had to get elected as a member of parliament and Lee Hsien Yang had to do work in places like SingTel. This was unlike the case of the Suharto children who got the best parts of the Indonesian Economy merely because they were Suharto’s kids.

However, while there is no record of Mr. Lee ordering people to give his kids special privileges, he allowed a culture where certain things merely happened just because the “underlings” knew who the guy’s father was. If you look meet a few “White Horses,” you’ll notice that most of them are actually nice people who have been well brought up. They generally don’t pull the “My father will…..” trick. While part of that may be due to their upbringing, there is actually no need for them to do so because people assume that their “father” will want this and that for their children.

Take the ever-sensitive issue of national service postings. There was the case of our former president. His son was mysteriously given a 12-year deferment to study and when he came back to to serve his time, he was sent to that most prominent of security threats – studying soil. This happened when the father was minister of defense. There is no evidence that the father wanted it so and there is no evidence that the son insisted on making it so. It merely happened that way.

The government needs to understand that being a “meritocracy” means just that and whilst individual ministers and their families may not want their kids to be marked out for special privileges, they also need to ensure that there is a culture in the civil service where people are genuinely willing to do things whether the other chap is related to someone important. It’s only when the culture allows underlings to be objective that we can honestly call ourselves a meritocracy.

 

Can Dinosaurs Evolve?

 

It’s now official – the once mighty media business of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) will now be receiving $180 million of tax payers’ money a year for the next five years. The Minister for Communications and Information, Ms. Josephine Teo, explained to parliament that it was essential to provide this funding because “preserving local news media was critical,” and the funding would provide relief for the media outlets to transform. More on the story can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/sph-media-trust-to-get-up-to-180m-a-year-in-government-funding-for-next-five-years

 

 From Yahoo News

A lot of things are being said about this move and what it says about the Singapore media scene. I will leave that debate to the more qualified. However, I will state that the fact that the government had to step in and provide tax-payer funds to “preserve local news outlets,” should be seen as nothing less than the humiliation of the management of the media outlets. The local news outlets had a duopoly (Singapore Press Holdings controlling the print and MediaCorp controlling the broadcast) and had captive readers and viewers. They also had a license to print money in as much as advertisers didn’t have a choice.

Whilst newspapers around the world bled, ours were in robust financial health. My mother, a former editor with the Straits Times (Section 2) and her contemporaries remembers generous bonuses and annual leave.

So, what happened? How did a company that once had a license to print money end up in a position of needing a hand out from the tax-payer? Well, the answer is simple, the media houses were essentially dinosaurs that failed to evolve. The focus of business was not on providing the consumer with what the consumer wanted but on maintaining their monopoly. One only has to look at how the management of both media companies spent time snipping about whether readership or viewership was better when they could have used that time to focus on how to reach their consumers.

You can argue that the media houses were behaving like dinosaurs because there was no need for them to behave otherwise. They were the biggest creatures in the jungle and nobody else could take them on. What they failed to see was the smaller creatures were nimbler and found ways to beat the big dinosaurs.

However, size and power should not be an excuse for people and organizations not too evolve. There are companies that are using their size and cash power to prepare for a future where their mainstay is likely to be no more.

Interestingly enough one of the best examples of a big company trying prepare for a future is the largest oil company in the world – “Saudi Aramco.”

The Saudi National Oil company has been actively trying to brand itself as a responsible steward of the world’s energy supply. Part of that stewardship involves the role of how the oil affects climate change and Aramco is actively trying to show that it is trying to minimize the affects of fossil fuels on the environment:

https://www.aramco.com/en/sustainability/climate-change#:~:text=Reducing%20emissions%20to%20address%20climate%20change.&text=Reducing%20emissions%20to%20address%20climate%20change%2C%20while%20meeting%20the%20world's,and%20operated%20assets%20by%202050.

 

 https://www.aramco.com/?utm_source=googleads&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=GO_SG_Brand_PH&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrY-MkvGE9gIV2YNLBR28ZAFbEAAYASAAEgKB4PD_BwE

 

 One might argue that Saudi Aramco is unique in the sense that it is owned by the Saudi Government and has a social function as well as a commercial one.

However, there are other oil companies that are purely commercial and also working to prepare for a future without their main business. Just take a look at this Shell Station in Singapore.

 

Ironically, one of the industries that has been particularly successful at reinventing itself is also one of the most reviled – the tobacco industry. One of the biggest players in that industry is Philip Morris, which now talks about how it is preparing for a “Smoke-Free Future.” The global debate on alternative products is ranging. Singapore famously bans alternative smoke products but allows cigarettes to be sold freely. However, there are markets that have recognized that the alternative products could help reduce tobacco usage. Say what you like about the tobacco industry but it has proven to be resilient despite every legal effort to cripple it and it has shown itself to be forward thinking and not used its cash to get complacent.

https://www.pmi.com/

 

 Nobody imagines Shell not selling petrol or Philip Morris to exit the tobacco business anytime soon. However, these companies are not waiting for that inevitable day when their main product becomes irrelevant. Again, say what you like about the oil and tobacco companies but they are not getting complacent and imagining that their product will continue to print money for generations to come.

Evolution and revolution are word usually associated with the technology industry. However, they apply to all industries. Any government that wants to claim that it manages a good economy, should ensure that there is a certain amount of pressure on any given industry for all the players to compete and think of the future. If a government allows a market situation where the main players spend their days talking about their market dominance and how its beneficial for consumers to donate to the industry, that government is likely to go the way of the dinosaur along with the industries that it protects from competition.

The Price of Love

 Whilst we Celebrate the People we Love on Valentine’s Day, we should Also Remember the Most Important Person to Love is the One We See in the Mirror

Now that I don’t have restaurant work, I thought I would try and bash out some thoughts on this day that celebrates love and lovers. Ironically, the best inspiration for my Valentine’s Day came over the weekend when I watched “Tinder Swindler” with the Evil Young Woman.

As has been publicized, Tinder Swindler is a documentary centred around three women who were conned by Mr. Shimon Hayut, or Mr. Simon Leviev as he called himself when he was running his scam.

The story of his scam is simple. He presented himself as a “glamorous” and romantic person. His social media was “exciting,” showing that he lived the type of “fairytale” life that most of us can only dream of. In the initial stages, he was charming and sensitive. Then, when the women in question had “feelings” for him, he would find a story to explain why he couldn’t use his money and needed theirs.

Whilst the back story of Mr. Shimon Hayut or Mr. Simon Leviev, has a fascinating story (or the type where most of us are asking – how the heck did he pull it off), the more interesting story actually belongs to his victims. The first thing that one notices about all these women is that they are fairly attractive. When you look at them, your instant question is “Babe – with your looks, you shouldn’t have a problem getting guys.” Then, as they recount their story, you’ll notice that they are inevitably intelligent professionals. They have everything that most heterosexual men would want in a woman.

https://www.salon.com/2022/02/09/tinder-swindler-gofundme-page/

 

 Copyright Salon.com

Then, there’s the fact that they are women. It’s generally accepted that women are smarter than men for certain things. Reproduction strategies for the sexes are different. For men, its about fertilizing as many eggs as possible. Women are generally programmed to be more selective in their mates since they have to carry the child and raise the child once its out of the womb. A woman is far less likely to do stupid things for a bit d*** than a man is to get a bit of p***. The standard joke is that men tick far less boxes when choosing a companion as can be seen below:

 

 So, how did three attractive women, blessed with the best that nature and nurture could provide, end up being conned by him?

On one hand you could say that the con-man was good. Mr. Hayut (to use his birth name) is good looking and somehow appeared to have lots of money. By all accounts he’s charming and had a way of making women feel good about themselves.

 

 Copyright – The Mirror

However, there were signs. He talked a lot about his various enemies who might do harm to him. You could argue that this provided him with an element of excitement and danger, which made him more attractive. On the other hand, it should have been a sign that besides the private jets, there was baggage.

The Evil Young Woman made the point that all the women were “Ang Moh.” She said that an Asian girl would probably not go for a man who had an insatiable appetite for using her money to live a high life for himself (sure, you might give once but would you take high interest bank loans because he needs money on a weekly basis?)

All three women were from “nice” places (two Scandinavians and a Dutch girl). The swindler grew up in a rougher place (Israel). There is an argument that when you grow up in a place where people are generally honest, you’re bound to trust people more because all you’ve ever been exposed to is people who have no reason to screw you. People who grow up in rough places tend to be more guarded because they’ve had to be so.

Just take a look at attitudes towards Covid as an example. The people on my social media who are against vaccines, mask mandates and social distancing are inevitably white and from the USA, UK and Australia. These are countries where nasty diseases are confined to movies or labs and even people around them are dying, they argue that they have the freedom to clog hospital beds. By contrast, the Vietnamese that I live with are insistent on sanitizing everything when they get home and they insist on getting whatever vaccinations they can. They grew up in a place where nasty diseases happen to the people they know and doctors are few and far between. In that context ignoring the doctor in favour for a slobby actor isn’t about personal freedom but life or death.

However, culture alone only explains a generalization. What made three individual women with everything so trusting? I’m not a psychiatrist but I wouldn’t be afraid to make a guess and argue that there was something about these women that needed to be loved by this man and culture is fault here because plenty of women are conditioned to think that true love involves sacrificing themselves. Both Scandinavian women for example, kept talking about how they were worried that the swindler would be harmed by his proverbial enemies and only realized that he was their enemy once they had been bled dry.

Its not a bad thing to encourage things like sacrifice and helping people. However, as my mother once said to me during my first marriage – “Love yourself.”

Sounds unromantic to talk about loving yourself but if you think about it carefully, its actually the basis of a healthy relationship. A relationship cannot be about one party taking everything and the other party sacrificing everything. That’s not a relationship – that’s an abuse. We tell our kids too many fairytales about how you need to love people until you will die for them. What we never explain to our kids is that real love should be when one party will not allow the other party to die for them.  

Interesting Math - The Supremacy of Singapore Math

 I shouldn’t say it too loudly but whilst Lee Kuan Yew did do many good things for Singapore, he committed a crime against the world of the world of mathematics by ensuring that what could have been one of the most notable mathematicians in history, never practiced math.

That mathematician is his son, our current Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Hsien Loong. He was the Senior Wrangler (ranked 1st in the Math Tripos, the famously difficult Cambridge undergraduate Mathematics course) at Cambridge. He scored 31 alphas, 12 more alphas than the runner up. An army that would never fight a war would get a general and the world would lose what could have been a great mathematician.

 

 Whilst our current Prime Minister never had the chance to be the mathematician he should have been, there was one positive side of having a math wiz in politics. Singapore became a world-leader in the teaching of math, so much so that “Singapore Math” or the teaching method that were developed to teach math in our public schools have been adapted by school districts around the world.

If there is a stereotype for us, it’s a good one. We are considered “good at math.” What is less well known is the type of mathematics that we are good at. Whilst everyone knows that Singapore’s kids are good at math and ace through most global exams, its actually our adults or specifically our politicians who are creating ground break achievements in a particular field of mathematics, which can be called “interesting math.” There is an annual display of “interesting math,” which takes place in February – this is called “Budget” Day.

I guess, you could say that “Interesting Math” is what the Marvel version of Thor would call the point where science meets magic. It is so because the point of interesting math is the ability to take more in such a way where you can legitimately claim that you are benefiting the people you are taking from. Think of 2+2 being whatever you want it to be.

The usual displays of “interesting math” come about when you talk about low wages. You will get adult Singaporeans who have not worked and have no income talking about how they cannot do menial jobs because they cannot afford to earn a low wage when they have no wage at all. It is better to be “0x0” (and its usually in the minus figures when they have bills to pay) and not “1+1.”

However, this is what you’d call the low level of “interesting math.” The masters of this art have inevitably been our politicians, or more specifically our ministers of finance. You only need to look at budget day when the minister will find a way of increasing certain taxes and proudly claim that he is doing so to benefit the people they are taking the money from. Hence 2+2 was good but 2-8 is better.

Our latest minister of finance, Mr. Lawrence Wong has proven that he is as good at “interesting math” as his predecessors when he argued that the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST) would in fact be used to benefit the tax payer, in particular the low-income:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/budget-gst-increase-help-singapore-generate-revenue-invest-people-infrastructure-2487706

 

 

As with all aspects of “interesting math” there’s a certain amount of giving, especially to the lower income group. However, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, the sums inevitably work out in favour of the party taking the money.

How does it work? Well, I’ve never been good at any form of mathematics, let alone in the “interesting variety.” However, there is rough pattern. Announce a slight increase in percentage terms. Hence, GST is always raised by two (2) percent. Nothing really dramatic. Then, announce that you are going to give everyone a couple of hundred dollars for the year so that they will have something to make the price increase less painful. Then you sit back and count the money.

As with anything highly academic, the best explanation of how this works came from a taxi driver. He said “First they give me $300. Then they increase the rent for the taxi by $1 a day. In one year, I pay back the $300 they gave and then everything else is pure profit from the increased taxes.”

Interesting Math is intriguing because unlike traditional mathematics, there are always variations and it creates emotional feelings. However, the results are inevitably the same. Observe budget day. Do your sums and you might be surprised by what you actually end up giving at the end of the year. This is the art of putting someone in the minus column but making them feel like they are in the plus column. This is the real genius of Singapore math and perhaps there’s a reason why we have yet to export this mastery.    

The View from Under the Bus

 

It’s no secret that I detest coming into the office and being part of the “working-professional” crowd. Although I do make more money from “white-collar” activities than blue-collar ones, there’s a lot of baggage that comes along with it and if I really was part of the ruling party’s internet brigade and making the billions that people assume I am making, I would never set foot into the office unless seduced by one of the sexy things that I see on the streets of Shenton Way. However, I’ve reached the age where I know which fantasies are just that and I do my best to stay away from things that will cause me unnecessary stress without criminal compensation.

An office is a cesspit for the worst type of human interaction. Very little actual work gets done inside an office and you end up breathing plenty of hot air on things like loyalty, values and culture by the people who have placed you under a bus:

 

 Copyright – South Park

However, I live in a city obsessed with corporate success. I seem to be in the minority. Given that the largest landlord in Singapore is the government, you cannot escape being bombarded with messages about how essential the office Is to your daily life. One of the most interesting message has come from an article in the Today Newspaper, which was taken from Emma Jacobs who writes for the Financial Times:

https://www.todayonline.com/commentary/employers-beware-hybrid-work-weakens-workers-loyalty-1812426?fbclid=IwAR0d_jYD3pDIANKrWIFYDY289iZWNY-3XNvajUyv6FMKk5T-sNEBUEKnXP0

 

 While I believe Ms. Jacobs made an interesting point, I’ve reached a stage in life where I tend to wince when people talk about “loyalty.” The reason for this is simple – the word “loyalty” has been misused to the point of becoming meaningless. A few days before the Today Newspaper published Ms. Jacobs’s article, we had Mike Pence, former US Vice-President, saying that his ex-boss was “wrong,” when it came to his constitutional role in the 2020 election. This was a stunning act of “disloyalty” from a man who had previously been regarded as someone who was “loyal to a fault.”

What happened? How did such a “loyal” man turn “disloyal? Well, it turned out that the man he spent four years of his life being exceedingly loyal to, threw him under the bus at a crucial moment when he had to be loyal to something more important than his boss – the laws. Result of trying to be law abiding was to have his former boss send a mob after him, proudly declaring their intention to hang him.

His former boss believes that it was common sense to send a mob after him and one has to question why Mr. Pence took so long to openly disagree with his boss after being on the receiving end of a murder attempt:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-hang-mike-pence/2021/11/12/64a17142-43b0-11ec-a88e-2aa4632af69b_story.html

 

Sadly Mr. Pence’s experience is merely the most visible and dramatic example of how an “underling’s” loyalty is often abused. Underlings are constantly reminded to be loyal to the people above them. Think of how many times one is told that you have to be loyal to your employer because your livelihood depends on it. In small corporatist societies like Singapore, we are told that we need to be “loyal” citizens to the government that brought us all the good things we apparently enjoy.

The narrative on loyalty is a one-way streak and while Ms. Jacobs clearly has a loyalty to her social life around the office, one has to ask if she’s enforcing the message that we, the plebs at the bottom of the heap, should be grateful for the scraps that get thrown at us.

Let’s face it, corporations will happily trade a worker for a cheaper version or a machine that does not require lunch breaks, overtime pay or talk about work-life balance. However much a corporation talks about caring for employees, the ultimate duty of the leadership of a corporation is towards the bottom line and the amounts they can pay shareholders. Everybody in a job needs to understand that the job is a business transaction. You are being paid to do a certain set of tasks. The message of “Be loyal to me and I will look after you and your loved ones,” never actually existed. A job is an employment contract not a marriage.

What is true of corporations is also true of governments. The only difference is the currency. Businesses are primarily about making money. Governments are interested in power. In a totalitarian system, the government will expect you to support it with your sweat and labour. In a democracy, they want your vote. Take Chinese history for example. Confucius who lived in ancient China talked about an ancient era where loyal citizens were looked after by benevolent kings. Think about it, the era where this took place was an ancient man’s ancient times.    

We have been so conditioned to think of loyalty as a bottom-up affair. However, has anyone ever questioned this? Shouldn’t it be a top-down affair to, when people at the top had loyalty to the people at the bottom. Contrary to what the late John F Kennedy said, you should be asking what your country has ever done for you. Instead of worrying about hybrid work models weakening corporate loyalty, Ms. Jacobs should actually be encouraging governments and corporations to remember that loyalty is a two-way street.

When the Educators are Uneducated?

 One of the most cringeworthy things going around my social media feed concerns a headline run in the Straits Times (Singapore’s leading daily) about the Beijing Winter Olympics, which are going on at the moment:

 

As two of the people circulating this have pointed out, the headline is not true. There are a number of countries who have hosted both the Summer and Winter versions of the Olympics. Beijing is the “first” city to have hosted both the Summer (Back in 2008) and Winter versions of the Olympics. There is, as they say, a difference between China the country and Beijing, the city.

The editors have been rightly lambasted for this oversight. This is, as they say, the type of factual error you expect from a primary school kid and not a national newspaper. The layers of editors and subeditors that bring a newspaper to print should have seen this. Then, there’s the fact that the newspaper in question has now become part of a non-profit that is funded by the government. Why is the tax payer being forced to fund an editorial team that can’t get its facts right?

For me, the major issue with this simple error is the fact that it reflects a troubling ignorance about the world outside Singapore. Although I’ve been living in Singapore for the last 22-years, I still get stunned by the level of ignorance of basic geography. I think someone from Saudi Aramco telling me that people had asked him “Which part of Dubai are you from” when he told them he was Saudi Arabia (Saudi Arabia being significantly larger than Dubai). Many Singaporeans still think that Punjabis (specifically the Sikhs) are from Bengal (there’s a huge distance between Punjab and Bengal) and I’m brought back to the dinner where one of the guests proudly asked, “Where is Bahrain?” There are people who talk about “Hindis” and “Indians” as if they were two different things. Contrary to what most Singaporeans might think, the national language of India is actually Hindi and you cannot gain national pride in being ignorant.

In a way, the only other place where I’ve been to where this type of ignorance about the world exists, is in America. As a Singaporean, one might find oneself explaining to people that Singapore is not part of China.

However, our ignorance about the world is worse than the ignorance found elsewhere. Let’s face it, America is a huge place where most people spend their lives in their home town. When my stepdad lived in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky, he found that the locals had no concept of where New York was. In a way, you can’t blame them because they live in a world where everything they need is right at home. Why does a Hill Billy in the Appalachian Mountains need to know about New York when everything he needs is right at home?

That’s not the case for us. We are a small island with no resources of our own. Our very existence is based on trading with the outside world. Unlike my stepdad’s former neighbours, you cannot grow your food and live in your own bubble in Singapore. At any given point in your life, you will need to deal with someone from somewhere else in order to exists.

Singapore, as we’ve reminded ourselves on so many occasions, is a “Red Dot.” The outside world doesn’t need to know about us but we need to know about the word outside. If anything, we need to be smarter about the world than the world is about itself.

Like with many things in Singapore, the government actually has responsibility for this state of affairs. We are, if you listen to propaganda, an exceedingly well-educated place. We reached the 100 literacy rate mark ages ago. Apparently, we build “world class” educational institutions and we are constantly building “world-class” research facilities and getting “world-class” researchers to set up shop in Singapore. Our often-repeated mantra is that “We have no resources other than our human resources,” and so we need to invest in our people.

The obsession with “education” reaches out to the press. Whilst the government reminds the press that Singapore does not need a “Fourth Estate,” that it has a social responsibility to “educate” people.

However, as the confusion between China the country and Beijing the city shows, we need to ask if our “educators” are themselves educated. If you go through any of our top institutions (mostly government ones), you’ll find that there are lots of people who have graduated with good degrees from “world-class” universities. Yet they remain ignorant of the world outside their own and you have to ask if they are really educated at all. 

One of the most worrying examples came from my stints of working with the Saudi Government, where I learnt to drop certain Arabic phrases when speaking with Arabs because it helped break the ice. However, at one Saudi function, I realized that the three phrases of Arabic I knew where three phrases more than the average person working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) knew. I remember a girl from MFA gushing about my command of Arabic after witnessing me drop my three phrases with the Saudis, a community that she was paid to build a relationship with.

I’m a guy who was told by a senior civil servant at MFA that I would never get hired because MFA did not consider my “honours” from a British University to be honours at all. However, when dealing with people from elsewhere, I do try to talk to them in their context so that they can understand mine. I’ve found out that I am a weird person for doing this.

Sure, I understand that you can’t know everything about everywhere but at least the curious enough to find out about the places you have to deal with. Like it or not, China, India, the Middle East and Africa are markets that we need in order to grow. We have to be interested enough to do a Google search about certain places when meeting people from different parts of the world. Ignorance about the rest of the world is not bliss when you are a small trading nation. The government needs to be put “curious” people in charge to “educate” the masses rather than robots to train more robots.

You Are What You Speak.

 

As someone who comments on the situation on the ground, I avoid identifying with any particular party for the simple reason that I will p*** everyone off equally (someone in the office called me an “opposition man” and every time I get picked up by TRemeritus, there will be plenty of people accusing me of being part of the ruling party’s internet brigade and making millions – which wouldn’t be such a bad accusation if I was actually making millions).

Having said what I’ve just said, I am going to post a lovely greeting from the Worker’s Party (our main opposition party or the only other party with seats in parliament), which I received from one of the chat groups that I am part of. This is a Chinese New Year greeting that comes in all the variations of Chinese spoken in Singapore – specifically Mandarin, Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese.

 

 This simple greeting is perhaps the most revolutionary stroke that any political party has come up with. It goes against one of the main unspoken rules of “Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore,” which was that the Chinese would be in the majority but the definition of Chinese would be defined by him.

The most visible sign of his efforts to mold the Chinese into his image was a war against dialects and the insistence that the only language that the Chinese could speak was Mandarin. I’m old enough to remember “Speak Mandarin Campaigns,” which had a slogan that roughly translates as “Speak Dialect Less and Speak More Mandarin.”

His paranoia against Chinese dialects was most visible in a series of interviews he gave in 2006 when the government was trying to open up the Arabic Market. Mr. Lee was going on about getting Singaporeans to learn Arabic as a third language. Suddenly he was asked about learning dialects and he began to ramble on about how the human brain didn’t have the capacity to learn dialects.

His obsession against Chinese dialects was based on a simple fact – he had come to power on the backs of Chinese workers who were primarily dialect speaking. The English educated Mr. Lee understood that English educated Chinese were not going to start revolutions and so he forced himself to speak Hokkien and Mandarin. Once in power, he became weary of the Chinese educated and so did his best to cut out their cultural affiliations with the streets.

In fairness to Mr. Lee, getting us to “Speak Mandarin” was a good move in as much as China did open up. China is a huge market and even America’s favorite “China-Bashing” president saw to it that his granddaughter could charm China’s president with her fluent Mandarin.

However, whilst getting us to know Mandarin was good from a business standpoint, there were two issues that came about from Mr. Lee’s policies on language.

Firstly, people became less capable with languages. My generation (gen-x) grew up not speaking either English or Mandarin terribly well. Instead of having “pure” English of the Englishman (something the late Mr. Lee took pride in), we brought Singlish to the next level and started merging both languages by using words both languages interchangeably. So, in addition to having a “Speak Mandarin” campaign, we also needed a “Speak Good English” campaign.

By comparison, the boomer generation and the generation before, were more capable with language. It’s not uncommon for people above 60 to speak a variety of dialects (and let’s not forget the number of our local Tamils who have proven adapt at learning Chinese dialects fluently). The rules were simple everyone mingled together and picked up each other’s language in edition to English.

You could argue that whilst Mr. Lee talked a lot about creating a “Singaporean Singapore” may have inadvertently created a more segregated society with his policies on language.

The second issue is perhaps more obvious – people remain attached to their dialects and the majority dialect remains Hokkien. Anyone who has served National Service will notice that Singapore’s national language is Malay (drill commands all in Malay), the overall language of instruction is English but the language of the people remains Hokkien (I remember struggling when I needed to get something from the MT line and the driver told, “Don’t mind Sargent – can you speak Hokkien.”). Our dialects are what connects us to things like family. Sure, I speak Cantonese very badly but at Chinese New Year, the greeting is inevitably “Gong Hei Fat Choy,” because that’s how I paid respects to parents and grandparents. When I married a Teochew Girl, it was “Gong Hei Fat Choy,” to my side and “Xing Jai Ju Yee” to hers.

This isn’t particular to the Chinese community. I remember talking to an Indian colleague from Bengal who explained that everyone in India speaks Hindi and English because they are the national and working languages respectively. However, for her speaking Bengali is from the heart.

So, the Worker’s Party has done something that the ruling party is has never dared to do. It reaches out to people in the setting they are most comfortable in rather than what they imagine people are most comfortable in. It’s shown up the fact that Mr. Lee’s attempts to eradicate Chinese dialects are a waste of time and money.

The ruling party should take note that the “other player” in the game is working harder to reach the voters. If it intends to keep its position of dominance, the ruling party will need to show that it is working hard for the voters and getting to know them on their home ground rather than what the party imagines that said home ground to be.