The Joy of Spare Parts and the Extended Story on Innovation

 A few days ago, I ran into a German fellow whom I had recently befriended. He described one of his worst meals in Africa as “Chicken Feet.” He couldn’t understand why anyone would want to eat chicken feet and the Bistrot owner, who is born and bred in France felt inclined to agree. Both his girlfriend, who is Nigerian, and I, defended the culinary delight of chicken feet.

We all need to eat but food is not just a necessity. It’s an emotional experience that ties us to our roots. At the same time, it’s the one part of any particular culture that gets easily adapted by another. It is also one of the places where we see some of the greatest forms of innovation.

The innovation you see in recipes comes from necessity and if I look at the discussion over chicken feet, there’s a clear cultural difference. The German and Frenchman come from places where meat has always been plentiful. If you look at Western cuisine, you’ll find plenty of meat dishes and its usually for the bits of the animal that is most meaty. Hence, if you walk into a Western restaurant, you will find that the specialties are things like chicken breast and rump steak. Fish dishes are inevitable for the meaty parts of a fish.

However, Asian and Africans, who are from places where meat is not plentiful had to find ways of making each bit of an animal count. Hence, we developed a liking for the parts of any given animal that would make your average Westerner balk. We learnt to make things like feet, wings and heads tasty. Shopping for meat in any given Western country is a heavenly experience because the bits that we treasure are bits that the Westerners can’t get rid off fast enough. In my first week at Goldsmith’s, I ran into a girl from Hong Kong who was thrilled at the prices of fish heads in the UK.

 

Pig Ear Salad – one of life’s hidden gems

 

 Beef Spare-Parts Noodles – a Luxury Item in East Asia. Not to in the Western World

Necessity has made it such that those of us who came from places where meat was not plentiful had to make the most of the animal. Waste is an unforgivable sin.

So, given that East Asians, Africans and people from other “developing” parts of the world have shown a talent for innovation in cuisine using the parts that people who come from the world with plenty tend to discard, shouldn’t we be applying our genius for not wasting to other things.

I mean is world is filled with rubbish, which goes into landfills or gets exported to third world countries in Africa and Asia for people to extract value from rubbish in a way that is dangerous (both physically and environmentally) as well as dirty. Here is an example of what happens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTio_0rwR1s

Surely, there has to be a way of making the recycling industry better in every sense of the word. This is particularly so in East Asia, where universities across the region churn out engineering graduates in addition to engineering graduates of East Asian origin who come out of Western universities.

We have plenty of intelligent people and they need to be inspired to put their brains behind reusing things in a way that is safe to people and the environment as well as lucrative. One good example in Green Rubber, a Malaysian Company that has found a way to recycle used rubber or specifically tires, something which the UN had called the “Number One environmental hazard.”

We need more companies like that. Think about it. If we have the genius of developing culinary wonders from the neglected parts of an animal, we surely must have the genius to developing wonderful products from the things other people throw away.  

There Are Worse Places Than The Friend-Zone

 I actually stumbled upon the profile of the first woman that I was actually “in-love” with on Linkedin. I have stupidly sent a friend’s request and I’m curious where things will lead. A part of me thinks it will be good to have a “blast from the past” but the more cautious part tells me that I must be a masochist.

I met this girl back in my second year of university. We seemed to click. She’s Malaysian and I’m Singaporean and since we were the only people from our part of the world, I guess you could say that this gave us a common bond. We hung out and things seemed to flow so naturally that when she mentioned that she needed a place to stay – I invited her in. I was as they say, a helpless romantic. Once she moved into the flat, I got “friend-Zoned.” However, I kept telling myself that if I helped her through her troubles, she would see that I was the one for her. I had this vision of living that scene in Pretty Woman when Julia Roberts kisses Richard Gere on the lips after saying that this is one thing she never does with clients.

You could say that I was young and helplessly in-love. The time that we had spent had become such an invaluable part of my existence that whenever she left my flat, I felt an unbearable loneliness. I was in my early twenties and I had a flat in party central of the most prominent cities on the planet and I dreaded being away from her. We partied regularly and once in a while there were wonderful scenes of domestic bliss. The girl was a magician in the kitchen, especially when it came to French food.

However, she was troubled and while she did honour her two promises to me (This was back in the Asian Financial crisis and I lent her 2,000 GBP for her school fees and got her to promise that she would do well in her career. In fairness, she paid back what she owed and if the profile I saw was really her – she seems to have done well), she had some funny ideas of what friendship meant.

It took me a while to get over her. Friends and family urged me to resist calling her and to make her call me. Had a confrontation with her in her school library and luckily I met a nicer, more mature Malaysian girl when I served an internship in Citibank Singapore (also didn’t work out but at least this girl is a pleasant human being and we still speak over WhatsApp on occasion).

I’ve not seen this particular girl for 24-years. As a reference, I adopted my Evil Young Adult, who was born around the same time I was in London with this girl. My love life hasn’t been wildly successful since then. However, the experience of being with this young lady, has gotten me thinking.

I guess first thing to talk about is the dreaded “friend-zone” that many “nice” guys find themselves in when it comes to the girl of their dreams. There is entire industry devoted to telling guys how not to get placed in the “friend-zone.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9C-So5S5hk 

 

 While the truth is, there are worse places to be than in the friend-zone. While it may not be the relationship that you want to be in, a good friendship can add value to your life. I remember telling when I my other interesting relationships that “friendship implies that there’s two way traffic.”

Having a friendship with a girl, especially a good looking one, can help you. She can introduce you to her other friends and you may meet the girl of your dreams. Your guy friends will value you more for being friends with a hot, likeable chick.

The key to surviving the friend zone is to ensure that there is “two-way-traffic.” Friends can become lovers. One of my best friends is now married to girl he was friends with for the longest of times. Even if it never goes beyond friendship, one can never have too little people caring about you. A good girl friend can even assist you in being a better lover to women (in my case, there’s Flesh-Ball).

However, if there’s no two-way-traffic, then you are not in the friend-zone. You’re somewhere worse. You are in the feeding parasite zone. Whilst parasites are initially fun to hang around, they end up draining you and the sooner you remove them, the better it will be for your sanity.

The second point about my experiences in the “friend-zone” with this girl, was the fact that I discovered family, or specifically my sister, who got very protective of me, and did her best to keep me away from unhealthy influences.

My sister was supported by friends and I’m glad to report that I developed a healthy relationship with some of my best friends to this very day.

So, while my personal history would probably disqualify me from giving advice on “love,” I would say to guys who are being placed in the “friend-zone,” that its not the end of the world. Friendships have value but you got to ensure that these are friendships and an excuse to tolerate parasites. There is hope of happiness in the friend-zone.

Indulging Self Importance

 

My petitioning creditor has messaged me asking if I can meet today to provide them with an update on the status of a liquidation and that’s just reminded me as to why I detest just about everything associated with corporate bs. I understand where these guys are coming from and I am saved by the fact that the boss is exceedingly busy on another matter to worry about too much other things.

This incident has gotten me to talk about one of the things that I’ve often mentioned – the fact that I detest the office and many of the things that I associate with that institution. Many would say that spending more than half my working life as a freelancer had the unhealthy affect of making me adverse to what everyone else called normal.

However, my aversion to desk work and the trappings of corporate bs came from national service. My first battery commander (who has, like all good military scholars gone onto become very senior in a statutory board) had an addiction to endurance meeting. He believed that team bonding among his officers and nco’s was best done over a work meeting and he was a little fond of holding them on Saturday afternoons (back when the working week ended at 12 noon on a Saturday). He would drone on and on and then look at us fidgeting and offer to get us pizza, which we would politely refuse because pizza meant a reason to keep the meeting going and the end of our precious weekend. His love for endurance meetings reached such as stage that we celebrated the fact that his successor as our battery commander was married and had every motivation to want to go home. We thus made it a point to be very nice to his wife whenever she showed up at the unit.

In this respect, national service actually proved to be valuable. My first battery commander showed me that meetings were actually a legitimate form on mental masturbation, regardless of whether this was in the military (part of the bureaucracy) or in the private sector (in the Singapore context, that includes the sector too small for Temasek Holdings). One of my worst experiences with meetings was when I was with an agency that served the Public Utilities Board (PUB), where I had to sit in a meeting that never seemed to end and I wanted to yell “What are you trying to achieve?” Thanks to the army, every time I am forced to sit down and listen to someone, I start to fidget after an hour.

https://medium.com/@RiterApp/5-tips-to-stop-wasting-time-at-work-eb148539394a

 

Copyright-Riter.

Like with most things, I do see the necessity of certain things. There are times when a face-to-face meeting helps break the ice and you can learn a lot by studying a person in the flesh. I actually liked creditors’ meetings that were done in person because it gave me a chance to meet the business people funding the professionals.

However, if we ae really honest with ourselves, we will find that the time we spend in an office is actually non-productive. If anything, offices and meetings are often counter productive institutions designed to make the impotent feel big. If you are in a white collar job, there’s no reason why “work” needs to be confined to a space for set hours a day. As long as you have a laptop or even a smart phone, you can work from anywhere.

Covid showed us how unnecessary the office was. We could do work elsewhere. Technology had shown us that you can access documents through a common server and you could have face-to-face meetings through zoom.

So, why has there been a rush to go back to things like the office or to Zoom. In Singapore, the answer is obvious. Landlords and property developers suffered in Zoom. If work could be done remotely, why pay so much for prime office space? Hence, you had the flurry off ads and articles about the wonders of the office, which in my feeble mind only seemed to enforce the point that offices are actually places of toxic socialising masquerading as work places.

Technology has freed us from tyranny of the definition that work can only be done within a certain time frame and confine to a certain location. We need to liberate ourselves from this need to pleasure ourselves in our own self-importance if we are to take full advantage of what advancements that have been made in order to be a productive society.  

How Do You Deal with Getting Screwed?

 

Now that the first few days of Chinese New Year have ended, its time to address the taboo topic of getting screwed. Like it or not, the reality on the ground in just about every corner of the globe is gloomy and there’s a good chance that one is going to get screwed. Unless you’re at the level of being paid in stock options or you work in the insolvency business, be prepared for pay stagnation, pay cuts or being retrenched. Let’s face it, even big tech companies with large reserves of cash are laying off people. So, what can one do in such an environment?

Well, one needs to start with the mindset. As is often said, you need to hope for the best but expect the worst to happen. That way, if you don’t get screwed you can count your blessings. However, if you do, you are prepared for it.

Preparing for the worst, means understanding that concepts like the “Iron Rice Bowl” are things of the past. Employers have the ability to find someone younger, cheaper and more compliant than you and the loyalty that is demanded of you is not something that is necessarily going to be reciprocated.

So, if you start with that, you will understand that having a single income from a single source is not wise. Not having cash in the bank is downright foolish. So, if you have a salary, no matter how small, make it a point of setting ten percent of your take home pay at the very least. The reality of life is that bills will need to be paid even if you don’t have a job. Cash in the bank will allow you to tide things over if you were to lose your income.

I will confess that I have not been good at saving cash in the bank. Last year, I had several occasions where I thought I was on the way to saving but things happened along the way and I had to draw out the cash. Hopefully the rabbit year will allow me to keep things on the side.

I also set aside some funds in CPF. The system in Singapore isn’t perfect but its better to have more inside than less. So, I try to contribute to my special and medisave accounts, which happen to be the only places that pay four percent a year in annual interest.

In addition to feathering the nest, one also needs to develop a second income stream in the event that you lose the first one. Most employers make you sign a contract that forbids you from taking on another job. There’s also the fact that most jobs are designed to drain you of energy and for most people, the idea of working a second job is a non-starter.

However, developing a second income stream is essential if you are to find any form of security in an environment where getting screwed is a given. I was lucky in the sense that my employer allowed me to continue working at the Bistrot and I took great pride in working two jobs. However, Covid put an end to my side gigs in restaurants and so, I focus on blogging when I am not at my day job. The blog has not replaced my gig I had at the Bistrot. Advertising revenue takes several years to pay off ($150 to pay out) but it still helps go towards savings. I do get a small royalty once in a while for sites that pick up my pieces. It’s not much but every little extra counts.

I know of people who have taken to driving grab and I believe that people should be allowed to do things like rent out rooms on AirBnB. Simply put, developing side hustles allows people to be less beholden to a single employer, which is admittedly something the Singapore government does not want (given that it sells the fact that it can provide a compliant workforce to multinational investors). No matter how small ones’ side hustle is, it is still vital to have one. Even if you never need to replace your main income, the few extra pennies that come from the side hustle can help feather your nest.

Given that I work in liquidations, my strongest advice to anyone who works for a company going into liquidation is never depend on the liquidators to pay out. Whilst employee salaries are considered “preferential” payments in a liquidation scenario, the fact remains that the company went into liquidation because it didn’t have the means to pay bills, including yours. Liquidators are under no legal obligation to pay your salary and they spend most of their time trying to salvage what little that’s left of the company. Liquidation dividends are often paid in cents on the dollar owed and you never know when you can get the money. Whatever you get out of a liquidator is a bonus.

So, if your employer is struggling to pay your salary, start looking for alternatives and move on. If there is a problem paying a month’s salary, its very likely they won’t be able to pay two. Watch out for stories about how well the company is doing or a creation of reasons as to why you cannot get what is due to you.

The world economy is going through a rough patch and it is unlikely to get better anytime soon. The wisest thing to do is to prepare for the worst.

What Figures does She want to See?

 

The recent scandal involving the “inflation” of circulation figures at SPH Media Trust reminds me one of my first working experiences when I joined the Old Rogue, who was then in the process of starting his magazine. We had clicked and he asked if I could help out in driving circulation. As it turned out, the printed figure of 10,000 that was being placed in his media kit didn’t match with the actual print run.

We had arguments over this. I tried to explain that I needed to know where magazines were going because potential advertisers would want to know. He would always reply, “I’m hiring you to get sales not to be a back office magician playing with circulation figures.” It then reached a stage when I had a potential advertiser who was asking for accurate circulation figures and he replied “You should ask her what figures she wants to see.”

I remember these instances because it highlights one of the aspects of media business. Everyone knows editorial because people use media for the content. Everyone knows the advertising side because that is the revenue that pays the bills. Everyone forgets the third pillar, which is distribution or circulation. While circulation may be less well known than the other two, its an essential pillar because there’s no point of having the other two if the medium is being distributed to people. Advertisers want to know that who is reading their ad and editorial want to know that what they write is going to the people who will read.

My Dad freaked at the idea of me working as an ad salesman for a small and unknown publication. His point was that an ad salesperson was the type of person that everyone would run away from. He made the point that “it wouldn’t be so bad if you were selling for the Straits Times, everyone knows the Straits Times.”

Well, he had a point. Back on in those days, the Straits Times was sent to just about every English speaking household in the country. Circulation was around two million and the argument was that a copy would be sent to one place (mainly a house or office) and everyone would read it. An outline of what things like circulation and readership can be found at:

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/explainer-sph-media-circulation-readership-saga-2087996

One can also learn a bit more about what the saga at SPH means:

https://mothership.sg/2023/01/sph-media-circulation-scandal/

 

 A lot of things are being said about this incident and for me, two things are clear. The most obvious point is that the normally “forward” looking Singapore government consistently gets exposed as “backward” whenever it comes to the media and nothing underlines this as much as this incident.

Our government loves technology and has created program after program to try and make sure that Singapore is a shinning and glowing red dot in the world of technological progress. However, when it comes to the media, where good old fashioned print and broadcast are shielded from competition – including from each other.

I think of Mr. Leslie Fong, who was editor in chief of the Straits Times and Vice-President of Marketing (as a disclaimer, Mr. Fong has worked with my mother and knows my father). Mr. Fong has been a champion of SPH’s business model. At the Ad Asia Symposium in 2005, Mr. Fong declared “The Effort to Go Tabloid is a Futile Effort to Dumb Down for Younger Eyeballs at the Expense of Older Ones.” At that point, the representative of Bennet & Coleman told him “You are a prisoner of your own business model,” and proceeded to tell him where the future was.

It was unfortunate for Mr. Fong that in this instance, he had to address people from elsewhere. In Singapore, Mr. Fong is celebrated as an elder statesman who can take ministers to task for having the audacity to make announcements on social media instead of calling the mainstream media to a press conference.

Part of this model that Mr. Fong defends so passionately involves being very critical of online media. We are constantly reminded that we need to look at the source of information and not to trust everything online. Unfortunately, this has started to sound like the time taxi drivers made noise about Uber Drivers cheating on their taxes only to find that the billing information was all on the Uber Platform and Uber Drivers were declaring honestly, whilst the taxi drivers on the other hand started getting uncomfortable questions from the tax authorities.

As a blog publisher, I would love to claim that I had as many readers as any of the SPH publications. I would also love to get advertising revenue like the SPH papers. Unfortunately, Google has a nasty way of tracking exactly how many people click on my blog and the advertisers only pay when people click on the ads.

Far from making things murkier, technology makes it more difficult to hide. Let’s face it, just as governments try and usually fail to control internet content, they’re active in the sphere of “cashless technology.” Simply put, its harder to hide when all payments are electronic and easy to trace.

The second point that becomes clear is – “Why now?” Surely, this issue with circulation isn’t exactly new and can be a coincidence that the “inflation” of circulation figures is only being discovered now that you have someone from a business background running the show.

The fact is SPH Media Trust used to be known as Singapore Press Holdings Limited. This was a company that had to answer to shareholders. Its survival depended on the fact that it had advertisers who were willing to advertise in its publication. As Singapore Press Holdings Limited, the accountability was to shareholders and advertisers on whom revenue came from.

However, as SPH Media Trust, the story is different. There are no longer any shareholders demanding a financial return. They have “trustees,” who happen to be government linked and the need to prove that you are worthy of the advertising dollar no longer becomes a pressing issue when there’s a sugar daddy in the shape of the government.

https://www.sph.com.sg/about-us/

 

There’s no pressure on management to “deliver” a financial return when you are a non-profit and one has to ask why such potentially revenue damaging information only comes out when the entity no longer has to shareholders to answer to.

What Happens to Citizens in Blue Collar Jobs when Things Go South?

 

I had the unpleasant experience of telling a young man that he was royally screwed. It’s the second time in my dealings that I’ve told him that life has f** him good and hard. Goes without saying that he wasn’t happy. I did tell him that he was f**ed in our initial conversation because his employer has just gone into liquidation and at the moment there’s no money to pay anyone. I did however, tell him to keep in contact because things might change. Unfortunately for me, he took it that I was telling him that there would be instant cash in the bank in a month’s time. I guess, I guess the fault here is that I assumed he’d take what I said literally but I guess he heard what he wanted to hear.

I get it that he’s p** off right now and from where he’s coming from. If I look at his situation objectively, its clear that he has been screwed by life’s ironies. He is officially doing everything right – working in a sector that the government claims to want Singaporeans to work in. He’s obviously competent enough at his job. He’s raising a family and having children (which is officially what the government wants) and yet, when he’s been screwed through no fault of his own, the system can’t help him. His biggest fault in this case is the fact that he is a Singaporean citizen. So, whilst his Bangladeshi, Indian and Malaysian colleagues have the option of trying their luck with MigrantWorker’s Council (“MWC”), this guy doesn’t have anyone else to turn to except hope that there may be a distribution in the liquidation (which is at best a slim chance – the Company wouldn’t be in liquidation if it could afford to pay wages).

This incident comes at a time when Singapore is trying to show its citizens that you don’t need to have a first from Oxbridge followed by an MBA from one of the American Ivy League schools. Towards the end of last year, our President went as far as to say that we should reward people for their competence rather than qualifications:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapore-should-reward-competence-not-paper-qualifications-president-halimah

 

 Our President’s message was supposed to assure Singaporeans who were not Oxbridge-Civil Service material that they too had a stake in the country. Thanks to Covid spreading like wild fire in the dormitories for migrant workers, the government decided that it needed to recognise that migrant workers were actually human beings but at the same time needed to lesson the dependency of certain labour-intensive industries on workers from “darker” parts of Asia.

How am I seeing this in daily life? Well, this time I found out through discussions with Ministryof Manpower that there was the possibility that some of the workers might get help from the MWC. Then, earlier this month, there was a call for the construction industry to develop a “Singapore-Core.”

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/construction-sector-must-attract-more-singaporeans-build-strong-local-core

 

 So, if you go back to this young man’s dilemma, its very easy to see why he’s upset. He is doing what the government wants him to do and he is what the government says it wants.

However, in his situation, there’s no alternative except to write off a lot of overtime. Let’s forget the dollar figure of what he’s lost. He has lost 60 hours for the month of August of last year. To put that into perspective, the standard work week is 60-hours. So, for that particular month, he worked an extra week. Had someone told him he wasn’t going to get paid extra for that, he would have been better off spending it with his kids.

While migrant workers do not by any means have it easy. There are still too many instances of abuse and too many people who think that the guys doing the tough jobs should be grateful to be housed in places where we would enter in a hazmat suite. However, there is a belated recognition that migrant workers are actually human too.

Treating migrant workers better also needs to be accompanied by an improvement in working conditions for certain industries so that the local population would be less inclined to shun them. The government’s answer has been that it does so through the foreign worker levy, which makes hiring a worker from elsewhere as expensive as hiring a local. In practice, this is a superb money spinner for the government because there are things other than salary that make the job undesirable.

Today’s encounter would suggest that a Singaporean worker on a construction site doesn’t get the sense that he’ll be protected it things go wrong. This young man is screwed for being a good guy. I can’t refer him to any agency for help. We shoot down things like employment insurance because it’s deemed as too costly for business. Yet, when people do work in the jobs that you want to work in, shouldn’t we at least have a system that provides them with something to help tide over until they get the next job? Nobody is saying that people should get a hand-out instead of work. We, should, however, ensure that people who are willing to work, particularly in the tougher industries have a lesser burden if things go south.  

"In truth, you can't hurt people if you see them as people. They were chess pieces taken off the board”– Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

 

The never-ending soap-opera that is the House of Windsor has had a new series written for it. The memoir, of Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex is due to be officially launched on 10 January 2023 and as with all great book launches, this one has been filled with “teasers” as to the private revelations about life in the most famous family on the planet.

As expected, the Duke has lambasted just about everyone in his family, especially his elder brother, the heir to the throne. Newspaper headlines around the world are writing themselves with every utterance of the duke. It’s clear that the duke has a few personal issues to settle with his family and I shall leave this aspect of the royal soap opera to others.

I will, however, look at one of the more interesting confessions, which was the fact that the duke claimed to have killed 25 Taliban insurgents when he served with the British Army in his second tour of duty in Afghanistan from 2012 to 2013. The duke is quoted to have likened the experience to taking chess pieces from the board. The duke credits the army for training him to “other” the enemy and training him well.

As expected, many senior military officers have spoken up and described the duke’s comments as being misleading. They have argued that the army trains its soldiers to recognise and respect humanity in the places where the troops are deployed. More on the story can be found at:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-64185176

 

On a personal note, I get where the top brass is coming from and although I’ve argued that while the duke is wasting his privilege whinging about his family, I do get where he’s coming from.

Whatever you might feel about the duke’s personal vendetta against his family, you got to respect him for waiving his birth right and pushing the government to allow him to serve on the front line. I come from a country that has compulsory military service and we had a political situation where a presidential candidate, had a son who mysteriously got special deferments and then got posted to study soil as a matter of national security when his father was minister of defence.

So, the idea of someone born with the highest privileges available in life, insisting on serving on the front line and fighting the government to let him do so, is inconceivable to me. From personal experience in military service, most people would pull every available connection to get away from the front line.

If you look at the facts, we should not be surprised that the duke killed people. He was on the front line in war zone. That is the job of soldiers in war zones. We also have to acknowledge that his public admission of the deed and likening it to a chess game was politically naïve (the duke forgetting that he, unlike private citizens does not have the right of free speech, especially in areas concerning government and politics) and he’s handed a propaganda victory to the “enemy.” The Taliban have milked the duke’s admission for everything it’s worth, accusing him of being a callous, racist, psychopath who does not see Afghans (with the undertone of any other brown-skinned Muslim) as human beings. – How much more of a PR screw up can you create when a group known for brutality of the worst sort accuses you of having no humanity?

However, whilst all these things are true, the duke did make an important point – which is the fact that “you can't hurt people if you see them as people.” His point is simple – there’s no issue killing people if you don’t see them as people. However, when you see another human being as some like you – ie with a family, hopes and dreams – it becomes a different story.

If I take my personal experience as an example, I’ve argued that being forced to work as a waiter made me realise that “anti-immigrant xenophobia” is a con-job that only weak minded people fall for. Getting to know the Pinoy and Indian guys in the Bistrot and on various construction sites I encountered, made me understand that they were not my enemy. They were simply people trying to make a living in harsh world – just like me. Had I never had the opportunity to see them as people and saw them as “foreigners,” I might have been more susceptible to the message that these guys were out to steal my entitlement in my country.

Which then leads to be point to my contention that the duke is wasting his birth right, privilege and experiences airing his family issues to the rest of us. He has the moral authority as a combat veteran who has killed people to champion bringing humanity together. In a world where you only get elected if you screw over the poor and unfortunate or people who don’t look like you, he could have been the voice of light. He had the financial firepower, the public profile and moral authority to do good.

His father as king, has been trying to do that by talking about the value of faith rather than “the faith.” Think of it, he is head of a Christian Church who visits people in mosque and gurdwaras thus sending out the message of common humanity – seeing people as people despite the difference in religion.

The duke should follow this example. He was born with a platinum spoon and he should use that spoon to make the world a better place for everyone. If he did that, he may find that the world might actually have some sympathy for him.

Don’t Be NUTS

 

Thursday, 5 January 2023 marked the end of an era for Singapore. We, on this red dot, woke up to the news that Mr. Sim Wong Hoo, the founder and CEO of Creative Technologies (“Creative”) had died at the age of 67. The news report is as follows:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/sim-wong-hoo-dies-creative-technology-founder-ceo-3184226

Mr. Sim was remarkable man and he was that most precious of commodities and something that is much needed in the Singapore system – a visionary. The great and good of Singapore are paying tributes to Mr. Sim and he’s been described as a “legend.”

There’s no doubt that Mr. Sim deserves the praise. His story is more typical of Silicon Valley than Singapore, a society that prides itself in creating conformist and while Mr. Sim himself was never politically controversial, he’s the living example of why one should ignore traditional expectations (or in the case of Singapore government mandated expectations).

I think back to an interview that Lee Kuan Yew once gave. He argued that whilst Singapore and other small countries could do well in the world, they could never build anything significant because they lacked economies of scale. Well, Mr. Sim proved him wrong – the Sound Blaster card became a global standard for sound in computers.

Then, Mr. Sim defied stereotypes of Asian prosperity being about copying from the West and having no innovation. He tried to conquer the market for portable music through “Zen.” Unfortunately, he lost that battle. Only this time he lost the battle to Steve Jobs and Apple. He wasn’t afraid to compete with the best in the world outside his comfort zone.

While Creative is a smaller company than it was during its glory days, Mr. Sim was, until the end still brimming with ideas as the following interview with Channel NewAsia suggests:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5by58vI8VxE

 

 The icing on the cake of Mr. Sim’s story is that he disproves the idea that Singaporeans can only come up if they were from an elite school or worked in the civil service. Mr. Sim graduated from a polytechnic and spent his early years running a computer repair shop. Mr. Sim was the classic “tech-nerd” who happened to have a curious mind and was willing to explore.

What should be noted is that when he had a product, he went to the government and got turned down. Let’s not mince words here, its most likely that our civil servants could not accept the idea of a non-scholar from a polytechnic would have the audacity to come up with anything ground breaking. Thankfully for Mr. Sim, the Americans were willing to back him and he was only recognised in Singapore by the powers that be when Creative got listed on the NASDAQ.

Mr. Sim, himself, summed things up in his book “Creative Thoughts from the Old Millennium, where he described the subservient mindset of our local population through the term “NUTS,” or “No U-Turn Syndrome.” More on NUTS can be found below:

https://yeokhengmeng.com/2015/02/book-review-chaotic-thoughts-from-the-old-millennium-by-sim-wong-hoo/

 

 In a way, you could say that Mr. Sim got lucky. He’s a creature from the Old Millennium – he is a baby boomer rather than Gen X, Y or Z. Whatever Mr. Sim might have lacked in his early years in terms of finance, papers and connections, he’s from an era where he was allowed to be a curious fellow even if he wasn’t a government scholar.

Let’s think about it, Mr. Sim grew up in an era where geography mattered. When Singapore rejected him, he uprooted and went to the USA to seek funding before there was an internet or a developed VC industry.

It’s not to say that Singapore hasn’t produced innovators. We have Tan Min-Liang of Razer inc and Henn Tan, the CEO of Trek200 International, the company that invented the USB. A list of some prominent innovations to come out of Singapore can be found at:

https://thebrilliant.com.au/case-studies/10-inventions-from-singapore-that-solve-global-challenges/

There is a notable trend in this list. Government plays a role in innovation in a very direct way. On the positive side, you can argue that government can play a role in fostering a decent eco-system for innovative entrepreneurship.

However, this tends to work only if the government is interested in a certain sector. In Singapore’s case, government led innovation works for companies like Shiok Meats or the entire vertical farming sector where the government has an interest in say developing “food security.”

What happens when innovation is not in the government’s interest? In his blog, Emanuel Daniel, publisher of the Asian Banker, has argued that the government has hobbled innovation in finance, forcing Fintech companies to be contractors to banks rather than competitors. Here’s the question, would the government allow innovation in the construction sector if it meant less need for foreign workers and therefore less levy?

Let’s not kid ourselves – government does play an important role in fostering innovation. On paper, Singapore’s government does well in terms of providing a legal and financial infrastructure.

However, can the government except the fact that innovation does from people who don’t fit a particular mold like Mr. Sim? Mr. Sim remains someone who was willing to go up against the biggest and best, which was the thing that made him pioneer on the world stage. Can the government accept both these parts of future Mr. Sim’s? For Singapore’s sake, let’s hope so.  

“When copywriters argue with me about some esoteric word they want to use, I say to them, ‘Get on a bus. Go to Iowa. Stay on a farm for a week and talk to the farmer. Come back to New York by train and talk to your fellow passengers in the day-coach. If you still want to use the word, go ahead.”— David Ogilvy, Founder of Ogilvy & Mather

 

My happiest moment of the first working day of the year came when the boss asked me to run errands, delivering documents to various places. Whilst everyone else was celebrating being back in the office, I was celebrating my precious minutes away.

Yes, I make no secret of the fact that I detest the office and I detest sitting at a desk looking at documents. There is nothing so dehumanising as being stuck in front of a desk looking at a screen or a file for one third of your life. Let’s be totally honest here, what value to desk jockeys actually produce other than whatever comes out of their private parts as they spend their days jerking off to the amount of paper generated? Covid made it very clear that the guys who actually contributed to the well being of society were not in offices. The world carried on without stockbrokers, bankers and other “respectable” professions that are office bound. By contrast, we could not do without the guys who swept the streets and cleared the trash.

 

 They are successful – but what good to they actually do for anyone beyond their magic circle? – Copyright The Straits Times

I admit that I work for someone who is office bound because it pays better for the hours, I put in than blue collar work. I try to make it clear to my employer that asking me to do office work like writing reports and reading documents is a sure way to create a disaster and I am only good for dispatch work. I think of PN Balji, my former boss, who described me a good “guerrilla PR man,” but God help anyone who wants me to write a strategy paper.

My mentality has made me a failure in the Singapore context. However, I can live with that because, well, the alternative would be worse – being a prisoner to a profession. This would mean only mixing with people like yourself and more worryingly, you develop the mindset that what you do, or your profession is the be all and end all of everything. I’ve noticed this in the professions that I’ve either been in or worked with closely (advertising, PR, law and accountancy). Spending a third of your life only with people like yourself is bad for the brain.

If you want to be an effective working professional, you need to avoid in-breeding and to ensure that you see the world rather than your corner of it because, well your corner actually depends on the rest of the world. The industry that’s most guilty of forgetting this is advertising, where the common criticism of advertising people is that they’re more interested in winning awards (judged by other advertising people) than in selling products.

I think an ad that was run by “Tiger Beer” many years ago, which ran around the lines of “What Time is It – It’s Tiger Time.” The people I spoke to in the industry thought the ad was awful. My friends outside the industry couldn’t stop raving. The CEO of the ad agency that produced the ad made the point that they were interested in working for their client rather than to impress their fellow professionals.

https://advertisingarchive.asia/ads/tiger-beer-time/

 

 Didn’t Impress fellow professionals – but it got the customer thinking

In a way, the title “working professional” has been abused in as much as it makes people in the said profession think that they’re magicians of sort because they went to certain schools and more importantly went through the rigors of licensing. Again, I think of the number of communications professionals who are hung up about the fact that they are “communications professionals” but thought of who they were communicating to as an inconvenience.

Ultimately, working professionals need to remember that they are a small cog to their client’s overall business. Yes, they need to know their craft, which requires a good amount of studying. However, there is only magic in that craft if it adds something to the final product. Hence, PR works if it enhances the brand. Advertising is only magical if it gets products sold. Accounting is only valuable if it allows businessmen to manage money better. Lawyers are only valuable if they can serve their clients.

So, to achieve that, you need to live beyond the magic circle of your profession and the only way to do that is to move beyond people in the same field, which means not a third of your life trapped in a cubicle only talking to people who are exactly like you. Genetic science has shown that incest is bad. The same can be said for only in-breeding with people in exactly the same profession.