Fighting is Fun – When You are Not Doing It

 I recently took a personality test, which effectively said that I like peace in my life and often try to be a peace maker. I accept that this is probably accurate. I don’t like getting into fights and generally think that most things are simply not worth getting into a scrap for.

It’s not that I haven’t been in fights before. Had my share of school yard scraps and there have been so many times that I’ve actually played out how I could inflict maximum damage in my daily dealings should I ever be driven to it. Still, I resist the urge to escalate things because, well it’s not worth it.

Anyone who has ever been into a fight, understands that both sides get hurt and when you enter a fight, you need to have an end goal in mind as well as a clear understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. Ironically, my last “real” physical confrontation was with my ex-wife. Although I’m physically stronger, I was reminded on more than one occasion that I would lose if I returned violence with violence. So, I took legal advice, allowed her to hit me and got the protection order. My end goal in that confrontation was simple, I wanted the violence to stop and when it was clear that the protection order would mean the end of the marriage, I allowed her to initiate the divorce proceedings, not so much for her but for my in-laws who had lost face because I took her to court.

Entering a confrontation requires a certain mindset and you need to know what you want out of that confrontation. Once you know what you want, you then work out how you beat the other guy. Say what you like about Iron Mike Tyson who ended most of his fights in seconds. Actual fights should be counted in seconds. Fights that go on for hours with the protagonist beating the life out of each other is best left for movies. Its this simple, the result of a fight should be to ensure the other fellow can do you no harm while you minimise damage to yourself.

 

 The object of the fight should be the elimination of the other guy’s ability to do you harm

However, sizing up the opposition is not an easy game and its usually best to avoid confrontations, particularly of the physical variety, and to work round things. Why do you need to hurt or risk getting hurt if you can get the same thing in a different manner. As much as I am trying to exercise, I get that I’m pushing 50 and the body isn’t designed to do what it used to do, so I got to think of ways to get things done with minimal damage to myself.

Realising that getting into fights is a painful and damaging experience also gives me an allergy to people who talk about fighting and getting into fights as if it were a sport. One of the reasons why I try to avoid such people is that they forget that fights are easy to start but finishing them is a different story.

Why should one have an allergy to such people? The answer is simple, the fight was started as an ego boost with no end goal in sight and the only thing standing between these people and the fist of the person they’ve provoked is a bystander – notably you if you happen to be around.

As I’ve said earlier, there are very few things worth getting into a scrap over. Someone else’s need to prove themselves is definitely not one of them. School yard bullies trying to prove they have the stones have a hidden talent, they have wings, which didn’t grow with Red Bull but with the realisation that the other guy can hit back. Suddenly the guys who never went into the field during national service will discover the ability to camouflage themselves better than a chameleon.

Its always best to live humbly. You never know who you may face. Be prepared to fight for the things that you need to fight for but don’t get into fights for the sake of it. Life’s too short to waste energy on dealing with unnecessary pain and should be saved for the things that actually bring joy to you.

The Problem with Rule by Fear

 

I’ve just finished a six-part Nollywood series called “Shanty Town” on Netflix. It’s been a wonderful experience. The series is a portrayal of human nature at its worst and it is wonderfully instructive on the topic of ruling by fear.

Talking about the rule of fear is an especially interesting topic in Singapore because our first Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, once made the point that he would prefer to be feared that to be loved. The late Mr. Lee did a spectacular job in ensuring that the rest of us feared him and we did as we were told. Thanks to Mr. Lee, Singapore is everything a country should be – green, clean and rich.

Mr. Lee made no apologies for his use of the heavy hand and when you look at the state of Singapore, its hard to argue against what Mr. Lee did. As a Singaporean, you’re bound to get “what are you complaining about,” looks whenever you say something that’s less than perfect and these days, the people who will tell you off are not from third world countries.

Mr. Lee was so effective at being feared, his successors decided to copy his play book. Hence, Singapore, despite all the glitz, remains a place where one treads of the side of caution, particularly if you’re in the business of promoting opinions. Let’s remember that POFOMA and FICCA are very real things that can be used against people who step out of line.

In a way, I get the government’s point of view. The argument is that the heavy hand of the law has kept us green, clean, rich and safe. However, there are issues when the “rule of fear” is the only thing that you have to keep people under control and these issues are all on display in Shanty Town.

The series focuses on a group of prostitutes who are controlled by a Pimp called “Scar,” who is pretty much the central character. He is, to put it mildly, a disgusting specimen of humanity. He rules the girls through fear and deceit. He has no qualms slapping them around and groping them at his whims and fancies. He is wonderfully unpredictable. He can turn on people as and when he feels like it and everyone around him is understandably terrified of him. In one scene, we actually see him chopping of the head of a girl he has “set free.”

However, the truth is that despite his fearsome appearance, the guy is a snivelling coward. While he terrorises people around him, he himself gets terrified whenever his boss, who happens to be a politician shows up. The politician or “Chief” doesn’t need to say or do much. He never raises his voice at Scar. However, whenever he enters the room, Scar gets up and prostrates before him, kissing the proverbial ring:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvObfRmx5cg

 

 In another scene, he gets kidnapped and starts making all sorts of threats when he hears that it’s a woman who has kidnapped him (Scar being the guy who terrifies women). However, when he sees that it’s a woman of great power (another politician), he grovels and begs forgiveness.

So, the point here is that people who try to use fear into intimidating “subordinates” are themselves terrified of their superiors. Scar may have no qualms about terrifying the girls under him but when it comes to the politicians, he’s a snivelling little thing.

Then, there’s the fact that when the girls finally get the courage to deal with him, they end up taking turns to stab him to death. You can feel each stab he receives is personal and he’s left to bleed to death.

Scar is not only prone to using violence against the girls. He’s happy screw them in more ways than one. His usual take is 60 percent and then charges them for protection and rent, which means that they end up with nothing. On top of that, he expects to be serviced. So, not only does he beat them for fun, he robs them.

So, once they find the courage to break free, they do so in a violent manner. Freedom from him is freedom from fear, poverty and exploitation and once they cross the line, its legal niceties be damned.

It’s ok to have people scared enough to do as they’re told. However, there’s got to be a trade-off, in as much as the people need to see that you deliver the goods and make life better for them. If you only use fear and intimidation to screw people over, you got to be prepared that one day, people will lose their fear and their vengeance will be terrible.

Whilst I can understand using fear and heavy handed techniques initially, I believe that you got to move on to other things to sustain what you are trying to create. Heavy fines stop people from littering in Singapore. However, whilst the fines may make Singapore a clean place, it doesn’t make us a clean people. Just take a trip to Johor and trust you me, you will find Singaporeans littering like there’s no tomorrow because – well, suddenly they can. I’ve known educated people telling me that they like littering in other people’s country because they can’t in their own.

Having people fear you can be useful in the initial stages. However, if you don’t use that to make things better, you have to be prepared for the day you will fear them.

Are They Being Brought Up in a Better World?

 

Singapore’s government has been in something of a jam in the last few decades. Singapore is getting older and people are not having babies. On Friday 24 February 2023, it was announced that our fertility rate had hit an all time low, a low so low that it even became the topic of international news:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-24/singapore-fertility-rate-falls-to-lowest-on-record-at-1-05#xj4y7vzkg

The decline in the fertility rate has been something the government has been desperately trying to address for the longest of times. We had budget day before the announcement of the record low fertility rate. In that budget, our Prime Minister-In- Waiting, Mr. Lawrence Wong announced that he was throwing even more money at couples if they had more children. The logic behind Mr. Wong’s announcement was simple – since the we, the people, say that having kids is expensive, the government will make it less expensive and so we should jolly well start reproducing.

Unfortunately, Mr. Wong’s solution to the problem isn’t new. If anything, it’s the definition of insanity being trying the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. The government has been throwing subsidies at couples to have babies and yet our fertility rates keep declining.

The good news is the decline in fertility rates isn’t unique to Singapore. It’s something that is happening in just about every advanced economy on the planet. Fertility rates in the US, Western Europe and Japan have been on the decline for the longest of times and now places like South Korea, Singapore and most worryingly China are following suite.

It’s this simple. As economies grow, they need more workers. Hence, women who were once expected to stay at home are given opportunities to join the workforce and in cases like Singapore, they’re expected to be fully participating in the work force (my grandfather would not tolerate the idea of my grandmother working – I will stay away from a girl who won’t work). The reality is that as women discover greater opportunities in the work force, the less likely they’ll want to stay home and become baby making machines. Look at the fact that a woman is most fertile (twenties to mid-thirties) at best time that one has when it comes to building a career and having a life.

So, if one is serious about wanting to make babies, particularly the right type of babies (in Singapore it specifically refers to babies from graduate Chinese mothers), one has to start by asking the people equipped to have babies why they’re not making babies in the first place.

Women have been fairly clear. Things like flexible hours at work and more child care facilities have been examples of what has been asked for. However, Singapore’s government remains obsessed with the work culture that lead to the problem in the first place. Instead of using Covid to restructure the economy, we rushed back to an industrial age form on work, doing our best to get people back to the office or factory for eight hours a day. The interest of the landlords has thus far proven greater than the need of the productive population.

Then, there’s the reality of children. I’m speaking as a guy who loves babies. I’ve always been fascinated by small people and after a point, I ended up getting involved with single mothers. Also ended up liking their kids more than I liked the mothers. Looking at chubby-baby like things gives me a shoot of joy – its like have an overdose of Prozac:

 

 My Prozac Dose – Copyright The Daily Mirror

Given that I have a soft spot for chubby cute things, one has to question why someone like me has not started a family filled with babies.

The answer lies in a question my mother asked, which is “Are you brining them up in a world that will be better than the one you were brought up in?” I adopted the Evil Teen back in 2014, so I am a parent and her existence in my life look at my mother’s question. Is she growing up in a world that is better than the one I grew up in?

Unfortunately, I don’t think the answer is yes. Sure, new generations have opportunities that older ones didn’t have. I, for example, have more access to information at a click of a button than my parents and grandparents had from access to physical libraries. If the Evil Teen has kids, my grandkids will probably have tools that make Google old fashioned.

However, it seems that opportunities are becoming harder to get by. Dad’s older brother once said that all you needed to know is how to read an write and paper qualifications didn’t matter. However, he was speaking in a day when having O-Levels was a big deal. These days, you a bachelor degree is the basic entry level requirement to get a job and who is to say that one may need a masters degree to clean toilets in future?

In Singapore, we take a perverse pride in having a demanding education system, where kids need to spend further hours in tuition on top of basic school, just so that they can pass exams. I used to hate parent-teachers’ meetings because the only solution the teachers ever seemed to propose was “more tuition.” Surely, there must be something wrong with the system if a child needs more teaching on top of the teaching that’s already being provided.

You could argue that the regime we put our kids though is worth it, if it prepared them for life. Unfortunately, despite all the rigorous training we put them through at school, that doesn’t seem to be the case. We are told that “foreign talent” is essential to do the jobs of the future that are being created by the economy. Here’s the question that nobody seems to ask – if our education system is so good, why can’t the locals do the jobs that the economy is creating.

Then, there’s the fact that wages don’t seem to be rising along with cost and we’re told that we need to be “more productive” if we want more money.

When look at all these factors, its easy to see why nobody wants to have babies. The lack of babies is far greater than a question of the cost of the maternity ward. Subsidising the maternity ward is like subsidizing the cost of a car. There’s the cost of bringing the child into adulthood and just as there’s cost in running a car. Then, there’s the question of the end goal. Is that child going to have a better life than the one you had or is he or she going to have a life filled with stresses that go beyond reasonable?

Let’s Celebrate the Rise of the Turban

 The White House has announced that Mr. Ajay Banga, former CEO of Mastercard is to appointed as the next President of the World Bank. The news can be found at:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/02/23/president-biden-announces-u-s-nomination-of-ajay-banga-to-lead-world-bank/

Assuming he gets the job, Mr. Banga is going to be making history on several fronts. The most obvious point is that Mr. Banga will be the first Sikh and first person born and raised outside Europe or America to head an international development organisation. Mr. Banga is an American citizen, thus he fits the traditional understanding that President of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is always a European while the President of the World Bank is always an American. However, Mr. Banga was born in India and educated in India (he is an alumni of IIM Ahmedabad and St Stephen’s College in Delhi), thus he brings the experiences of the “recipient” experiences of development aid to the table.

These are the superficial reasons to celebrate the nomination of Mr. Banga to the World Bank Presidency. The first reason to celebrate his rise have to do with the objections to Mr. Banga’s nomination. The main complaint against Mr. Banga’s appointment is the fact that he’s a Wall Street Insider. Any complaints about his skin tone have been absent.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/activists-slam-bidens-pick-ajay-banga-wall-street-insider-for-world-bank-3811259

The second point about Mr. Banga’s appointment is the fact that his story is the story international talent. Mr. Banga was born and educated in India. However, he chose to make his remarkable career in the USA. Mr. Banga, like Ms. Indra Nooyi, former CEO of Pepsico, is part of a trend of Indian educated people who have found greater opportunities elsewhere and moved and settled in the places where the opportunities are.

 

Copyright – Brunswick

If you look at the story of the likes and Mr. Banga and Ms. Nooyi, you’ll understand that the debate about “stayers” and “quitters” is, to put it mildly, a silly one. As noble as patriotic sentiments of building your nation may sound, nobody is going to hang around if they believe that they are not getting anywhere nor can you expect them to stay if someone or somewhere else offers them greater prospects in life. We may complain about our expat population being filled with people who couldn’t make it in their native lands. However, we forget that whilst they may not have made it in their home lands, they found places where they could make it.

The lesson here is that you need to create opportunities for people to grow if you want them to stay. There’s no point is telling them that you gave them education and therefore they need to stay if they believe that they’re not going to advance where you are.

It’s not that Mr. Banga and Ms. Nooyi have abandoned India. At the 2013 IIMPact symposium (As a matter of disclosure, I worked on the publicity for the event – my last great working achievement) that was hosted in Singapore, Mr. Banga, made a point to tell his fellow IIM Alumni that they needed to do something for India. Mr. Banga is an active member of the America India Foundation (AIF), which works to better the lives of India’s multitude of underprivileged.

Countries that want to grow need to produce people like Mr. Banga. They need to allow people like him to have opportunities to grow if they want them to stay and they also need to provide emotional connections so that if they leave but succeed elsewhere, they will be willing to contribute to you.

In the modern world, you need to accept that people will move around. Gone are the days when people were expected to stay forever out of gratitude. The skill that countries and corporations need to master is relationship building with their people – give them reasons and opportunities to grow and when they leave, give them a reason to find ways to continue contributing to your wellbeing.  

Keeping it Within the Circle

 

The official news today is that Read-Admiral (two-star) Aaron Beng, age 41 will be taking over as Chief of Defense Force from Lieutenant-General Melvyn Ong, age 47. Admiral Beng will be making history as the first-ever navel officer to become Singapore’s top military officer. More of the story can be found at:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/navy-chief-aaron-beng-takes-over-chief-defence-melvyn-ong-mindef-3296136

 

 There will undoubtedly be the usual mutterings from the online crowd about another “untested” scholar taking over a top government job and one might argue that running the head of an armed force that has never seen a day in combat shouldn’t bother anyone in particular.

However, Singapore is a nation with conscription (Yes, I did my two and a half years in a combat vocation in a combat role) and the armed forces are a reflection of the society at large and if you look at the people who have become Chief of Defense Force (CDF), you’ll notice that its become something of an old boys club. Of the ten of Admiral Beng’s predecessors, eight were from the army (3 Guardsmen, two from the artillery and infantry, armor and signals getting a single representative in the group). Of the two air force men who got the job, only Bey Soo Khiang (as a matter of full disclosure, I did present to him twice during my national service days) stayed in the job for more than two-years. The other, Lt-General Ng Chee Meng was catapulted into a ministerial position.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_of_Defence_Force_(Singapore)

 

 The job of the Chief of Defense in any country is a challenging one. The job is primarily a diplomatic one, where Chiefs of Defense meet with each other as part of international war games and he (they inevitably are) is the bridge between the armed forces and the political leadership of the nation. To do this, he needs to be trusted by the political leadership but at the same time needs to command the respect of the men on the ground. Take the example of General Mark Miley, who was careful never to criticize President Donald Trump but at the same time made great pains to tell the troops that their oath is the constitution rather than to the individual in the office.

In way, Singapore’s top brass has it easy. Our generals are all young (all of them took the job before 50) and all of them have lucrative post-military careers. In a region famous for military coups, our generals have stayed in the barracks. In cynic might argue that there’s no need to have a coup when you just need to wait your turn.

However, just because our armed forces have thus far remained subservient to the political leadership, there’s no guarantee that this will be forever so. What if, for example, there’s enough of a public outcry about generals taking lucrative jobs in the public sector and the Prime Minister of the day decides to put an end to the current system. If that were to happen, who is to say that his or her generals would remain loyal?

Whilst this scenario looks unlikely in Singapore, you will notice that the defense chiefs in countries that often under military rule are inevitably from the same force – the army. Take Pakistan for example. Of the 18 men who have served as Chief of Defense Staff (CDS), only three have been from other forces. The last non army man to be CDS in Pakistan was Air-Chief Marshal Feroz Khan, who was appointed by the late Benazir Bhutto

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

 

 In Thailand, which, to all intents and purposes is controlled by the military, you also have the same thing. The last CDF in Thailand from outside the navy was Admiral Narong Yuthavong, who served back in 2001.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_of_Defence_Forces_(Thailand)

 

 The key issue here is that when one armed force becomes much powerful that the others, it creates a situation where cliques are formed around the levers of power and loyalty goes to the person who put you in that position rather than to the system itself.

Hence, there is a rotation of who becomes Chief of Defense in mature democracies. It isn’t always an exact balance, some services to get more time at the top but its not to the extent where everything becomes controlled by people from a particular force. The USA even goes the extra mile of ensuring that special exemption needs to be granted by Congress in order for a former general who has retired from service less than seven-years to be even considered for Secretary of Defense (as was the case with both Jim Mathis and Lloyd Austin).

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

 

 

Both Australia and the United Kingdom also make it a point of rotating the top job between the services:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_of_the_Defence_Force_(Australia)

 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_of_the_Defence_Staff_(United_Kingdom)

 

 Rotating the top job amongst the three services, isn’t unique to the Western world. In order to asset greater civilian control over the armed forces, countries that used to suffer from military coups start promoting officers from other branches.

Take Indonesia as an example. In the  days of Suharto, the commander of the armed forces was inevitably from the army (which was Suharto’s power base.).

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

 

However, when Indonesia had its first democratic election and saw the ascent of Gus Dur into the presidency, navy and air force officers started getting to the top.

 

 This is also the case in Nigeria, which was until the 1990s, infamous for being run by various military dictators. However, once General Abdulsalami Abubakar started returning the country back to civilian control in 1998, you started seeing officers from other forces taking the top job:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_of_the_Defence_Staff_(Nigeria)#:~:text=The%20current%20chief%20of%20the,Abayomi%20Olonisakin%20in%20January%202021.

 

 

 One of the ironies of military coups is that the institution that gets damaged worst by the military coup is the military itself. Generals at the top start to be more interested in power than being good at fighting. Everything becomes about looking after your clique instead of building an effective fighting force (much as I may not like to admit it – the army is not the be all and end all of a war). Look at the record of Pakistan’s military, which has a history of taking over the country. Sure, its powerful within Pakistan but its been squashed in every conflict with India, where the armed forces are under the “jackboots of civilian control.” Burma’s military doesn’t exactly have a great record of keep insurgents in check, even if its been pretty good at butchering civilians.

Stable societies don’t have coups. There’s a clear parallel between stable societies and diversity at the top of the military and its not just limited to the military. Diversity at the top with change every so often keeps things moving.

Singapore’s military planners should take note of this and hopefully Admiral Beng will not be the last officer to take the CDF job.

Grandpa Gets IT

 

The Future of Being Old – copyright – feros care.

One of my colleagues was very excited today because over the weekend, he found an app that allowed him to borrow books from the library without actually having to go into the library building and to get the physical copy of the book. He gave a small demonstration of how the “libby app” worked.

What makes this conversation particularly noteworthy is the fact that my colleague is over 60. Although he is the oldest person in the office, he is by far and away the most “tech-curious.” This man is more than a skilled number cruncher. He knows the developments in the field and proudly does his best to use the latest tools available to him.

As I hang around this particular colleague, I’m left wondering where today’s employers get the idea that people over 45 don’t get it? Sure, I see plenty of stories about how certain things have to be done a certain way because the old folks will suffer. However, is this necessarily true?

Like it or not, old people are going to be a major demographic. Singapore, like the rest of the developed world is aging. If you look at the age pyramid, you’ll notice that there’s been a significant rise in the number of people over 60 between 2012 and 2022:

https://www.singstat.gov.sg/-/media/files/publications/population/population2022.ashx#:~:text=Population%20Size%20and%20Growth,-Singapore's%20total%20population&text=The%20resident%20population%20grew%20by,per%20cent%20to%200.52%20million.

 

 The rise in the number of old people and the lack of babies scares the government. It’s seen as a problem and somehow its bad for economic growth. The common belief is that you need bright young things who get technology if you are to get ahead in this “innovation-driven” world.

However, I know enough “old folk” who do it and I’m left wondering if it’s really a case of the old not getting technology or the rest of us not getting the old. If you look at demographic terms, you could say that people in the silent and greatest generation (or in Singaporean terms – the Pioneer Generation), may not have been able to grasp certain technologies. However, this generation is dying out and if you talk about technology in relation to them, its probably in the context of how to provide care for them.

The bulk of today’s old are the “Baby Boomers” or the “Merdeka Generation” if you want to use the Singapore label. This group was born between 1946 and 1964. At the earliest, they turning 60. Many of them are comfortably moving into their 70s. A lot of them are not highly educated (in Singapore, this would be the age where having O-levels was considered relatively good). However, many of them are and they do use technology. One of the funniest moments in life came from a conversation with my seventy-something year old father who started telling me to use “Apps” because that’s the future.

Whilst my dad is an unusual character in many ways, I’ve known people of his generation who do WhatsApp and use social media, for example. My stepdad is turning 91 and he has a very active Instagram account.

So, the stereotype that people of a certain age being “tech-phobic” is not necessarily accurate. They may be slow to adapt to technology because a lot of tech is not designed for old people in mind. Touch screens are not fun when you have leathery fingers and reading of a small screen is tough when you have eye problems. However, as the following article suggests, just because seniors don’t adapt to technology the way the kids do, it doesn’t mean they don’t use technology:

https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/contributed-seniors-arent-tech-averse-were-just-not-designing-their-needs

My Gen Z kid is growing up in a world where there is an app for everything. Why do you need to go out for food when there are apps to bring food to you? She sees the world differently from the way I see it let alone the way my parents see it. Tech companies have Gen Z in mind when they design products.

However, what if tech companies started thinking of products that old people would relish. The old folks are becoming increasingly tech-savvy and there has been growth in the use of technology by the over 60s:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/01/13/share-of-those-65-and-older-who-are-tech-users-has-grown-in-the-past-decade/

From a business stand point, it’s a logical place to head. The number of old people is increasing. Unlike the millennials and Gen Z, most of us in the Boomer and Gen X generations have worked for a while and a few bucks to spare. As we age and discover limitations to our physical and even intellectual output, our need for technology increases. So, instead of hiding behind the mantra that “Grandpa doesn’t get IT,” technology providers should look and understand that Grandpa needs IT more than you.

Busily Unproductive

 I make no secret that I detest working in the office and regard white collar work as a form of masturbation where people get a high on being in a cubicle because they happened to have had the good fortune of spending three years in a cocoon so that someone who has done nothing useful would be able to issue them a certificate as a validation of their cleverness.

Sure, I’ve worked in a professional organization for the last nine-years of my life. I do so because it provided me with the steady income, which allowed me to contribute to the family that I was building and now, I have a chance to feather a small nest for the day I am too crippled to be of any use to anyone. It pays relatively better than blue-collar work too. However,  I make it a point of doing all the physical work in the office because it gets me away from the office and needing to look at files and spreadsheets, thus making things tolerable. 

I do appreciate the fact that work professionals do. A good lawyer saves you a lot of trouble. A good accountant is must have when it comes to managing money. As a former US president pointed out – you would want the surgeon operating on you to know everything that there was to know everything to know about surgery. So, I am not against professionals or academic study per se and I whilst I detest entering offices, I appreciate that it works for some.

What I am against is office culture and the need for paper qualifications being imposed on me. I admittedly took a “serious” job late in life and now that I achieved what everyone expected, I'm left wondering if my life was better for it. Sure, I have an nice, respectable title and the income helped pay down the house for a while. However, when I had a lot less anger towards the world and respected the clients I worked with when I was a freelancer. 

Being an employee has its benefits but there are things about it that grate on me. One of them is an obsession with visibility rather than with actual production. I remember when I first started at the Bistrot and my colleagues would urge me to look for things to do because the boss wanted to see his staff being busy.

Now, I get why you need to do things on a job but I don’t see why I should look for things to do for the sake of doing it. My time in the Bistrot was best spent focusing on important things like making sure premium wines moved rather than inventing things to do so that the boss would feel that he was getting hour’s-worth out of me (I made the point to him that as long as I managed to sell a certain number of glasses of wine, I was actually paying myself).

What is true in the blue collar world, is even more so in the office where people have come to take great pride in the fact that they burn their spare time in the office and how they are so consumed by work that they don’t eat, sleep or drink.

Now, I get that working long hours from time-to-time is necessary and as an uncle who once pointed out to me, the days when you knocked off exactly at six-o’clock have long gone. Here in East Asia, we take particular pride in being among the most hard-working people on the planet. The Japanese and Koreans in particular, make no bones about the fact that they devote their lives to the company they work for.

However, whilst there are times when putting in the hours are necessary, one has to ask whether the hours worked are necessarily beneficial. Why do we equate long hours spent in a cubicle as being the same as hard work? I could, if pushed to, sit in the office and send emails out at obscene hours but would that mean that I was hard working or productive?

Let’s take a look at the countries that work the longest hours:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-work-week-by-country

 

 Now, let’s look at the countries that are deemed as the most productive:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-productive-countries

 

 The most obvious point here is that there is no correlation between the places that work long hours and the countries that produce the most per worker. If you argue that the average Irish worker is lazy for working 39.7 hours per week when compared the average Mauritanian who works 54 hours a week, the automatic counter is that the Irish workers gives significantly more back in terms of what is produced.

Go to any given office in a developing country and you are bound to find people running around like there was a lot to do. Posting letters is a full time job for some people in the office and they become very busy at it. In the developed world, offices are different. One has to avoid sitting near the exit because at the end of the day, there will be a stamped.

Are we saying that people in developing countries are more hard working and dedicated to their jobs than those in developed ones? Well, maybe they are but why aren’t companies leaving developed countries to hire more devoted and hardworking employees? Well, it could be because the guys in the developed countries are more productive?

In a way, the problem in developing countries is the fact that bosses like the appearance of busy and hence you get workers who become busy but nobody knows what they are busy doing. I’d call this being busily unproductive.

The solution is simple. Instead of paying people to look like they are doing work, why don’t we actually pay people to produce work. Hence, instead of spending time in an office until the wee hours of the day, people will focus on getting things done and busily unproductive might finally be an oxymoron.

It’s Not a Crime as Long as We Make Money

 

Around five years ago, I had the honour of being taken out to lunch by a very prominent Emirati Businesswoman who proudly described herself as a “super saleswoman for Singapore” She described Singapore as “washing the face of the Oriental,” because we were the only Asian nation that stood in the top five nations of the world’s least corrupt nations.

I think this incident because its actually one of things the main things that people from elsewhere like about us. You could say that our reputation for non-corruption is our greatest strength. It’s like the one thing that we have that our neighbours don’t have. The multinationals will rush to enter the large emerging markets of Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam but they will make sure contracts are signed under Singapore law. As my favourite Malaysian Datuk says, “As long as I stay away from politically sensitive topics in Singapore, the courts will treat me fairly.”

Unfortunately, it seems that our economic managers can’t grasp this concept and have sought to redefine corruption as something that only the people at the lower rung of the ladder get involved in. This was made clear by the announcement that our extremely vigilant and active “Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau” (CPIB) decided to let off six executives at Keppel Offshore & Marine (Keppel) with a stern warning (“You’re naught – don’t do it) for their role in a corruption scandal in Brazil. The outcry from the public was harsh and our second minister for national development, Ms. Indranee Rajah had to get up and defend the once stalwart CPIB. Her main point was that there was not enough evidence to prosecute the six:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/keppel-corruption-case-bribery-insufficient-evidence-former-employees-indranee-rajah-3256456

 

Prior to joining politics, Ms. Rajah was a senior lawyer, holding the title SC (Senior Counsel – the Singapore version of King’s Counsel). You could say that this makes Ms. Rajah a very credible person to make such a statement. However, this comes after Keppel had to make a resolution of S$88 million to Brazilian authorities back in 2017 for “corrupt” practices and the Brazilian litigation wasn’t the only one.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/keppel-offshore-marine-pay-s88-million-resolution-brazilian-authorities-corruption-case-3156681

 

 The American justice department also got involved.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-keppel-corp-settlement-lawyer-idUSKBN1EL1C1

Keppel’s legal strategy has been to blame its agents in Brazil. However, given the sums involved, its hard to believe that somebody or some parties involved had to have authorised the release of the sums to the agents. Then, there’s also the standard point that Singapore’s authorities like to use – “If the Company has nothing to hide, why settle with Brazilian and US authorities?”

To be fair to Keppel, it was doing business in Brazil, which ranks as the 96^th most corrupt country in the world according to Transparency International. As a Brazilian friend of my family once stated, “If you work in the civil service and haven’t made your fortune after four years, you must stupid.”

The fact remains that growth markets are now in places like Brazil and Brazil is a very big, must-be-in market for just about any company with international aspirations. There is also the fact that the squeaky cogs in the machinery of business need to be oiled. Singapore’s karaoke bars do a very brisk trade because wheels of commerce do need to greasing.

Singapore’s unofficial minister of promoting the inexcusable, or the Critical Spectator has even gone as far as to promote the six for their role in the whole affair:

 

His argument is simple, the six did what they needed to do and made money for the Company, which in turn is good for Singapore.

As he so often does, our unofficial minister of promoting the inexcusable misses the point. Sure, the line between the legitimate and illegal can be thin and at times blurry when it comes to “greasing the wheels of commerce,” but the line exists – even in countries that rank lowly on Transparency International’s rankings. These countries struggle with corruption because the culture is often ingrained and the enforcers are often compromised. As such, the countries that rank higher on the index also have laws meant to ensure that companies domiciled on their soil don’t engage in corrupt practices elsewhere.

Nobody accepts that corruption is a good thing. What is accepted is that there are countries which are more corrupt than others and these countries need to be helped combat corruption.

In the case of Keppel, that line, as the litigation in the US has shown, has clearly been crossed. Its not like there was an exoneration in the US and Brazil and Singapore only following suite.

Things get even more complicated when you consider the fact that Keppel’s largest shareholder in Temasek and its chairman is a former minister. It does without saying that the dirt on Keppel is ultimately going to be slashed at the government’s door.

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first Prime Minister, had a very simple policy. He clamped down on the people at the top. Mr. Lee was very sensitive to any taint of corruption and ensured that even the smallest whisper of it was dealt with swiftly and publicly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncYO9YYqbv4

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case here and the public has been allowed to wonder if the “stern warning” issued to the six men is an effort to protect people rather than a genuine case of proven innocent.

Singapore’s greatest strength is that of non-corruption. It’s something we cannot afford to squander by redefining the meaning of corruption when senior people at the top of the food chain are involved in scandals.   

“I don't believe in the word 'master.' I consider the master as such when they close the casket." – Bruce Lee

 

There was a discussion in one of the chat groups that I’ve been part of, on the intrinsic selfishness of the Chinese race (just about everyone in the group being ethnic Chinese). One of the most famous examples of “Chinese Selfishness” is that of the Kung Fu Master who only teaches 80 percent of what he knows because he (most of them are men) do not want their students surpassing them.

As with many stereotypes, there is an element of truth. In Singapore, we describe ourselves as being “kiasu” or scared to lose. You could say that being kiasu means we work harder so that we don’t lose out but at the same time, the kiasu mindset makes us comically petty. One only has to think of the number of school kids who hide reference books to ensure that no one else gets a chance to score higher marks in a test. In fairness to Singapore, I’m told that it also happens in Hong Kong.

This strange mentality is not something that people grow out of. If anything, the kiasu mentality is encouraged and carries on into the work place. It’s been said that in the professional industry, firms try to keep young employees limited in silos so that they never really learn the full extent of what their particular industry has to offer.  As with the urban legend, we are a nation filled with Kung Fu masters who are terrified of being surpassed by their students and so they hoard knowledge in order to stay superior.

Ironically, one of the people who lived a life that goes against this strange stereotypical Asian mentality, was a hero to Asian boy living in the Western World. Bruce Lee was the small Oriental guy who spent an entire lifetime showing smaller built Asian guys that they could more than hold their own as long as they trained hard.

However, whilst people like me grew up thinking of Bruce Lee as an “Asian Hero,” he was, in fact, only able to do what he did because he had certain Un-Asian qualities to his mindset. One of the most prominent things about him was the fact that he was open to learning from other people and other styles and using techniques that worked regardless of style.

One of the most visible signs of this was in his relationship with Chuck Norris. If you talk to enough people (especially Americans), you’ll always end up in a discussion on who was would have won a fight. Its as if the two men needed to exist in a rivalry in the way that tennis in the 1990s could only be seen through the prism of the Sampras-Agassi rivalry.

The truth of their relationship was rather different. Both men were friends and had great respect for each other. The worked out together and swapped techniques. Chuck Norris once described Bruce Lee as being “too good” to be his teacher. However, as Black Belt magazine reports, the teacher student relationship wasn’t a one way thing. Chuck Norris influenced Bruce Lee to use high kicks:

https://blackbeltmag.com/chuck-norris-influenced-bruce-lee

 

 The World wants a rivalry – the truth being – they were collaborators who brought out the best in each other.

Bruce Lee famously said argued that he was a “student-master,” or someone with the expertise of a master but was constantly learning and seeking to improve.

Their students become machines which imitate martial art forms." He was true to his word. The man was famous for Chinese Wing-Chun, but also practiced Western boxing and Eskrima (which he studied from his student Dan Inasanto).

If you think about this man, you’ll see that his secret was openness to knowledge and an understanding that the more knowledge he gave, the more he could absorb. The man did not think of his special skill as making him part of a magic circle. He said, “The other weakness is, when clans are formed, the people of a clan will hold their kind of martial art as the only truth and do not dare to reform or improve it. Thus, they are confined in their own tiny little world.”

One of his greatest services to Kung-Fu was to teach Non-Chinese. Got into hot soup with other kung-fu masters but the fact that he became identified with the art says it all.

Let’s be honest here – what Bruce Lee said about martial art cliques is true of professional cliques. We study a profession. Then, we work in a profession in the same manner as our “masters.” We only mix with fellow professionals and marry fellow professionals so that we can produce kids who follow our profession. Mixing outside the profession becomes sacrileges and it becomes a holy mission to spend your life bitching about everyone in the profession to everyone in the profession because no one else exists outside the profession.

Nobody sees the idea of being like water where the professional is meant to serve the persona and not the other way round. Remember someone said something to me about not forgetting my profession of PR when I became a part-time waiter. My view was different. I am not “PR” guy or a “F&B” guy or an “Insolvency” guy. I am merely a guy who picked up a set of skills in one industry (PR) and used them to be a little functional in two non-related industries (F&B and Corporate Insolvency). I’ve reached the stage where I don’t want to be labelled as belonging to an industry or a profession.

My refusal to belong to a profession does make me a failure in Singapore. However, the world is changing and reality doesn’t care about your magic circle just as the reality of a punch in the face does not care if you are “Wing-Chun,” or “Boxing” or “MMA,” or Taekwondo” guy.

Cash is King

 

May be its because I am merely a jealous, bitter old things but every time Mr. Calvin Cheng, former nominated Member of Parliament opens his mouth, my eyes tend to role. I state that I could be jealous of him because he is everything that I am not – clever (went to Oxford), successful and has his hair. However, despite all his advantages in life, he seems strangely proud of being out of touch with reality.

Let’s look at his latest tirade, which has been against hawkers who only accept cash. Mr. Cheng has decided that we need to boycott people who are “backwards,’ and has continued to double down on his crusade against people who only accept cash as form of payment.

https://mothership.sg/2023/02/calvin-cheng-boycott-cash-only/

 

 OK, as a matte of disclosure, I do like using fintech payments like PayNow and PayLah. It’s convenient when you can just scan and pay or send money to people via their mobile number instead of having to wait in line at the ATM machine. Given that DBS and its subsidiary POSB won’t let you draw anything less than $20 out at any given time, it helps to have a means of paying for things when you only have $19 in your bank account.

Cash can be cumbersome to carry around and do you really want to have people constantly handling something that carries germs in this day and age of diseases like Covid? On the retailer’s end, it’s also been shown that having alternative methods of payment can up your top line.

Having said that, there is no reason to go to war against cash or against people who want to be paid in good old fashioned hard cash. There is an old adage that goes “Cash is King.”

 

 

Cash is the physical manifestation of money and physical manifestations have a way of being, well, far more real than numbers on a screen. Then, if you look at the two largest economies on the planet, which also happen to be the two societies that have been most successful at eliminating cash, you’ll find the real value in holding cash and insisting on having cash.

Let’s start with the USA where everyone uses a credit card. When I was last in the US a decade ago, I found that I was the weird Asian guy paying in cash. Everyone had a credit card. Go to a stall in the middle of nowhere and you’ll find that the little old lady living on her pension will pull out her credit card to pay for a cup of coffee. While this seems like a wonderfully convenient situation, there’s a flip side to it. Everyone is in debt. Borrowing money is a way of life. Every institution and individual is indebted in one way or another. The official statistics state that every American is US$90 plus odd thousand in debt doesn’t look like a creation of statisticians when you see everyone pulling a credit card to pay for the most minute of things (as a matter of full disclosure, I have only paid off my personal credit card debts around two years ago).

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

Having debts is fine if you have constant cash flow. Banks will happily allow you to keep things moving along as long as you have a job of sorts. However, what happens when the job stops? Given that this is a day and age where job security does not exist, it is clearly not wise to pay for everything with your credit card. People who use cash have a way of knowing what goes in and out when compared to people who put everything on credit (saying from personal experience).

At the other end, you have China. The Chinese take pride in how advanced they have become with mobile payments. I remember a PRC customer at the Bistrot proudly telling me that cash is not used in China because everyone has a QR code. Even the beggars on the street use Alipay of WeChat Pay. Sure, China’s payment systems are wonderful from a convenience point of view.

However, let’s not forget that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has shown that it has been happy to clamp down on people and there’s no better way of clamping down by monitoring ones money trail. Since everything is online in China, it’s extremely easy for one to be tracked. While one might argue that one shouldn’t fear being monitored if one is clean, there is a point to say that “clean” can be twisted by the man in power to suit his or her needs.

Mr. Cheng should stop going after small businesses that insist on being paid in cash and cash alone. These businesses are being prudent by having a means of watching their cash flow and avoiding unnecessary debts. They may not declare everything in tax but these businesses are the backbone of the national economy, buying from local suppliers and hiring family members, thus keeping things moving along.

Instead of focusing on small businesses who actually ad value to the national economy, Mr. Cheng should instead focus on companies that are effectively predatory such money lenders or labour suppliers. Focus on the companies that have many means of getting paid but refuse to pay what is due to their suppliers. The world would be much better off if Mr. Cheng knew where to focus his energy.  

The Waiter Test

 

I got an unsolicited response in my Linkedin box today about my Dad from a former creative director of a large multinational agency who once worked with him. He said that he liked my old man because he treated his film crew well. He made the point that my dad trained his crew and ate with them instead just hobnobbing with the clients and creative directors from the agency.

This former creative director’s comments brought me two months back when I met with two of his old crew. Called them “Uncle,” and realized that I wasn’t being polite to older people but stating a fact. My father’s crew had been with him for nearly thirty years. They had seen me grow up and he saw to it that they were there at family events and he was at theirs. The only thing that didn’t make them family was biology. My dad took care of his team and I he took it personally when the government preferred to let a White Australian director of photography leading a Hong Kong based crew into shoot military ads over him because he had a predominantly Malay crew.

I bring up these instances because they are fundamental to the heart of social dynamics, particularly in a place Singapore, which places so much emphasis on things like economic growth and attracting the world’s rich. I’ve argued that we are the Wet Dream of Confucianism – a place where bureaucrats who did well at school, run the show.

In fairness, there is plenty going right with Singapore and as every foreign friend I have says “What are you complaining about?” I agree that much of Singapore does work and the there are parts of Singapore that are really nice and I get that even the not so nice parts of Singapore compare very well – or as an American navy boy I took to Geyland says, “If this is your worst neighbourhood, come to America and I’ll show you a bad neighbourhood.”

However, whilst much may seem right, a place run on elitist principles, has one dangerous flaw, which is the fact that the myth that everything good about society is due to the top. Hence, anyone with a brain cell or two starts sucking up to the top in order to get to the resources there and anyone who isn’t in the race is left to die. At the same time, the top develops a belief that it’s the top because of some divine right.

Let’s remember that we are the place where a daughter of an elected member of parliament took to social media to tell someone talking about job insecurity to “get out of my elite uncaring face.” The father actually tried to defend his daughter by telling people they didn’t want to hear harsh truths and only apologized after a public backlash.

Whilst these things are not criminal per se, they do reflect a rather sad mentality or a confusion between elitism and meritocracy. The elite believes it is the elite based on merit because that’s what it has been conditioned to think. Being “uncaring” is associated with being “elite.”

As a matter of disclosure, I am not from “humble” beginnings. I have never known a day of hunger in my life. I’ve always had shelter. I belong to a very privileged minority and having a PMET job has always been understood. Yet, I have always been weary as seeing myself as being “better” because I can use the letter “BA II” behind my name. Whenever I hear people talk about “Oh but you are a graduate,” or “You know so and so,” I am inclined to question why these things matter.

I’ve grown up understanding that to get to the top, you need to know how to work. Part of it does require ego stroking but I’ve also grown up with the idea that people at the top know that you will inevitably suck up to them because they have the power and money over you and so you have no choice but to be nice to them.

If anything, people at the top of reputable organizations should inevitably be more interested in your character, which is revealed by how you treat people with nothing to offer you and so, at a certain level, the job interview is being taken out to dinner. You get what they call the “waiter test,” because how you treat the waiters says everything about you. One of the most famous quotes on this comes from Mohammed Ali:

 

 The boxing champion wasn’t the only person to work on the principle that people who were rude to waiters couldn’t be trusted. As the following link suggests – CEO’s of big corporations do make judgments as to how you treat the “little people.”

https://nickkarean.com/ceos-say-a-person-who-is-nice-to-you-but-rude-to-the-waiter-or-to-others-is-not-a-nice-person/

Which if I look at the things that have been said to me about my father into perspective. My father remains a very talented photographer and advertising film director. He studied techniques of the great photographers of the day intensely and he did well. He treated his people well (I mean who in the private sector works for a single employer for nearly 30-years) and they worked well for him.

What has struck me is the fact that one of the creative directors mentioned this aspect of my father as a key point for liking him. Given that the ad agency creative directors have a say in who becomes director of photography, it struck me that the people who are giving you work are taking note of your character.

Functional organizations will value character in the people and contractors they work with. They will look out for it and no matter how clever or talented you are, they will test your character and if you fail character test you will not be hired. Dysfunctional organisations on the other hand forget that character counts. They tolerate your talents to suck up to the top rather than your character because that’s all that really matters. If an organization doesn’t test your character, you should ask yourself whether that’s an organization you really want to work for.