A Reason Why You Shouldn't Send Your Kids to School

Race has raised its ugly head again in Singapore. In the last week, the assistant director of the only trade union in town decided to make awful remarks about the Malay community on her Facebook page. The remarks she made went viral and within minutes she was sacked from her job and her story continue to fill the newspapers.

This incident has sparked a national debate on the issue of race. The talking heads are asking if race relations in Singapore are as perfect as we’ve always thought it to be. There have also been discussions about the limits of free speech.

What strikes me most about this incident is the fact that they came from her. The woman in question is not an illiterate bumpkin who has been asked to deal with a culture from another part of the world. She is a graduate from a respectable university (University of Western Australia) and a working professional (prior to working for the union, it is believed that she once worked at the Marina Mandarin Hotel). She’s also at the age where being naïve is a defense.

So, the question is, why the hell did she write things that displayed her ignorance about a community that has been in Singapore that’s been there for as long as anyone can remember?

You could say that she had a stupid moment and wrote what she did at the spur of the moment. Well, yes, she could have been stupid. Most of us have done things on the spur of the moment and regretted. However, this wasn’t a case of having a bit too much to drink or going to bed with the wrong person. This was a case of writing something down. Having been a writer, I can tell you that it is impossible for the fingers to type things without instructions from the brain.

So, I ask the question – how does a well-educated person think thoughts that one often associates with uneducated clowns? To be fair to Ms Cheng, the lady in question, she’s realized that she’s in hot soup and has apologized for the offending remarks.

However, that should not detract from the fact that Ms Cheng is not the only highly educated person to reflect a general ignorance about the world. The most famous educated ignoramuses belong to the family Thio, where the mother and daughter, who are professors of law, have made it a lifelong mission to eradicate homosexuality in Singapore.

 However, there are plenty of others. Most of the time, this level of ignorance is amusing.  It’s a bit of a joke when high school graduates think that Sikh’s come from Bengal (erm, there’s quite a bit of distance between Punjab and Bengal). However, it’s a little worrying when an assistant director of the trade union thinks the Malay community would have a lower divorce rates if they spent more on weddings. It’s downright scary when law professors provide pseudo-intellectual arguments on why consenting adults cannot have sex with who they want to have sex with.

I agree with Ms Cheng’s dismissal. However, I don’t believe that hanging her out to be fed to the wolves is the answer. I don’t think she’s a single case – but part of a worrying group of uneducated-professionals who make it so necessary to import “foreign talent” to get things done.

The Problem with Comebacks

Everyone loves a “comeback.”  If life is a play, the “comeback” is the dramatic moment that decides the greatness of the play. We simply love people who have the ability to make a “comeback.” Somehow, the “comeback” moment is always the one that’s talked about. It’s the moment where we’re supposed to see things like grit and determination. It’s where that “extra special” in a person is supposed to shine through.

One only has to think of the 1990s tennis rivalry between Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. Let’s face it, Sampras dominated that rivalry. He was the more consistent performer, winning most of their matches, particularly in the big tournaments. Sampras stood head and shoulders above his peers. When he played tennis, it was like watching a Mozart give music lessons to a deaf mute. You could marvel at Sampras’s genius with a racket.

However, while Sampras was all about being a beautiful player, the one that inspired people was Andre Agassi. While Sampras won tournaments and broke records, Agassi would often come back from injury or defeat.  We cheered his 1999 French Open win, not because he was the superior player on the day but because he found something special in himself to make the difference when it counted. We could marvel at Sampras’s superior skills but in our hearts we identified with Agassi. With Sampras winning was key….with Agassi it didn’t matter.

The love of the “comeback” isn’t limited to tennis or sports. Business is filled with “comeback” stories. One of the most famous business icons of the 1980s is Lee Iacocca, the former CEO of Chrysler. Mr Iacocca became a hero when he rescued Chrysler from the brink of bankruptcy in 1979.

You could say Mr Iacocca started the trend of “celebrity CEOs,” business leaders who would became brands in their own right. How did he do it? He made himself the hero in a dramatic story called “The Comeback from the Brink of Bankruptcy.” This was the key in the creation of his legend. Had he not taken over Chrysler the chances are, Mr Iacocca would probably have retired as yet another executive, unheard of beyond his industry.

I suspect that we all love the “comeback” moment because it creates an emotional connection between us and that moment. Real life is filled with ups and downs and we fight to survive. Since we fight to survive, we get a kick watching other people struggle and win.

I live a country that has been all about coming back from misfortune. If you were to look at the “key” moment in modern Singapore’s history, it would have to be the 1965 ejection from the Malaysian Federation. Had we not been ejected, chances are, we might have just become another Malaysian city. However, our founding Prime Minister had his dream snatched away from him and he was forced to change course – the rest as they say is history.

There is, however, one major flaw with our love of the “comeback” – namely the fact that great moments tend to centre around individuals, who have the potential to become so much part of the narrative that the institutions they lead and live with end up suffering from their passing. Like or not, human beings are frail and end up falling to bits.

Let’s return to sports – boxing. Who is the greatest boxing heavy weight? The answer most would give is Mohammed Ali. The man dazzled us with his wit and good looks. He had artistry in the ring, allowing him to take on and beat bigger and stronger men. His fights were not ninety second demolitions. They were hard fought slug fest, won by the man with the bigger heart on the day – think of the “Thrilla in Manila” against Joe Frazier or the “Rumble in the Jungle” against a very young, fit and hard hitting George Foreman.  Ali won the world heavy weight title a record breaking three times.

Much as we loved watching Mohammad Ali displays his pride and courage in the ring, his body reached its limits and he failed to recognize this. This became prominently evident in his 1980 attempt to win the heavy weight title from his former employee Larry Holmes. The contest was so one sided that it became a farce.  He only managed to throw ten effective punches in ten rounds and the anguish on Holmes’s face was clearly evident as he inflicted a savage beating on a man he admired.  

Two decades latter people are asking why the fight was ever allowed to take place. Ali by that time was showing signs of Parkinsons Disease. As things would have it, Don King summed it up best, “How do you tell God he can’t create thunder and lightning anymore?”

 Mohammed Ali had created a legend where he was God. Unfortunately his body didn't function like that. His humiliation at Holmes’s hands damaged him physically, damaged Holmes's reign as heavy weight champion and boxing at large.

The man is only a visible sad example of a man who failed to realize that he was not God the hard way. I think of politics in Singapore where Lee Kuan Yew continues to grab a few moments of the spotlight. If you look at his appearance at the 2012 National Day Parade, you’ll see that he’s barely able to walk. Why does he need to drag his failing body out for one last political battle?

I’m not against old people working. However, there is a need for great people to understand when it’s time for them to step back and leave the stage and recognize the fact that they need to let the new generations grow into their jobs. It took the humiliating loss of a GRC in the 2011 election for him to step down from cabinet. Why did it take an electoral defeat (well, not quite but in Singapore the ruling party is expected to win everything so a loss of more than two seats is considered a major disaster) to get him out of an official position?

This is the very same question that people asked about the 1980 Holmes-vs-Ali fight. A great champion had become a sick old man and was humiliated and damaged.

I am for celebrating the “comeback.” I am for people struggling to achieve something. I’m a big believer in the necessity of struggle in order to achieve greatness. However, I also believe that its vital for the great characters of the world to be reminded of their limits.

In Ancient Rome, a slave would always be present at the side of a triumphant general to whisper, “Remember General, you are mortal.” This was a reality check for the hero in the moment of triumph. There has to be a way for the modern world to offer this to its heroes.  

Nothing Wrong With Importing Talent: Now, Export the Duds!

Cyberspace is becoming wonderfully predictable these days. If you go onto any web site that claims to talk about Singapore politics, the inevitable topic of “foreigners” will glare at you like a boil on some one’s nose?

As far as Singapore’s keyboard warriors are concerned, every social issue in Singapore boils down to one fact – the fact that we’ve let in too many foreigners. The keyboard warriors are particularly upset that we’ve let in lots of people from Asia. Apparently, this group is stealing jobs from Singaporeans and if they’re not stealing jobs from Singaporeans, they’re driving wages so low that it’s impossible for decent Singaporeans to make a living.

It’s easy to blame foreigners for everything. I also agree that Singapore has issues. However, our solutions or rather the solution is the wrong one. Instead of trying to halt the inflow of foreigners into Singapore, we should be looking at exporting our duds to savory places like North Korea and Sudan.

Let’s face it; the foreigners in Singapore are not the worst of the worst. Much as we may not like to admit it, they do bring in capital and skills. My “Singaporean” Indian friends might object violently but I believe that one of the best examples of “necessary” talents is the Indian Nationals who have come to Singapore. I think of the chaps at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Alumni Association. It’s not just big shots from Indian Companies like Supriyo Sircar, CEO of Polaris Asia-Pacific. You have chaps like Dhruv Jain, a young engineer from Energizer and you have entrepreneurs like Balwant Jain who set up Optimum Solutions and Harish Nim who set up Emerio – successful companies in the high value industry that Singapore so desperately needs.

Even the chaps at the low end of the market are fairly decent. Look, they’re all “working” in the rough jobs that Singaporeans won’t do. They are NOT stealing from Singaporeans nor are they screwing the Singapore tax payer out of welfare benefits – I have yet to meet a “foreign worker” beggar. They work hard to provide Singaporeans with many of the amenities they enjoy. This lot is also fairly law abiding. I’ve yet to hear of a Singaporean being beaten up by a “Bangla” worker – by contrast, you do hear of Westerners beating up people after a few too many.

So, let’s be honest here – how can you argue that people who come here to contribute their labour are social problem? It’s downright ingenious for people to assume that Singaporeans will rush to join construction sites or food and beverage outlets once you kick out the “foreign labourers.” The proposals to replace foreign labour with the local variety are laughable. The premise works on “kick out the able bodied foreign worker and replace them with the elderly and crippled.” I say, as long as foreigners are willing to work, we should let them.

What we really need to do is to export duds and believe you me, Singapore is filled with them. You’re talking about people who believe that they are “entitled” to this and that and won’t lift a finger to do anything productive. Everything it seems is way beneath them.

In the Chinese community, this group can be found in the Ka Ni Na (Hokkien Chinese for mother f***) Family. Jie-Jie (Older Sister) Ka Ni Na is a typical Singapore Chinese graduate. She claims to have found herself a highly paid job and she’s proud of the fact that she’s too educated to know what to do around the house, unlike her half educated mother.

Jie-Jie Ka Ni Na’s actual job was to find herself a nice “Ang Moh” (Caucasian) husband. This husband happens to own a highly successful restaurant that has a monthly turn-over that is the equivalent of buying a small car. Once in a while she pretends to be a cashier at his restaurant. After half an hour, the work usually gets too strenuous for her and so she sits in a corner trying to get the staff to pay attention to her, just as the staff is trying their best to deal with twelve different things at once.

To be fair to Jie-Jie Ka Ni Na, she’s a very filial daughter. She’s tried to get Di-Di (Younger Brother) Ka Ni Na a job in her husband’s restaurant as a ….cashier. Unfortunately Di-Di didn’t want to do the job. In his words, “I cannot slack….ah.”  So Jie-Jie went and got her Mummy a job and every so often she drops by the restaurant to make sure Mummy helps her sow buttons on her blouse because her “idiot” maid couldn’t do it the way she wanted it done.

The Indian Community has the “Pundek (Tamil for c****) Family.”  While the Ka Ni Na Family is manipulative, whinny and materialistic, the Pundeks are lazy and prone to trying to sponge off everything that walks.

Pundek’s are highly allergic to work, that is if you don’t consider trying to get freebies off your relatives and your friends to be work. Apparently, the Pundek Family, particularly the men are particularly prone to this thing called “dignity.” It is apparently shameful to wash dishes, drive taxis and so on. It is perfectly ok to get your family and friends to pay for every small need that you have.

One of the biggest frustrations that the Pundek’s have is the fact that the “welfare” system in Singapore is called “Workfare.” To get money out of the Singapore government, you need to be in a job of sorts for two out of every three month period.

It’s not actually complicated to get “workfare.” All you need to do is to find someone willing to contribute a bit of money to your CPF (Singapore’s version of social security – it’s like a compulsory savings). Unfortunately, employers have a nasty habit of expecting you to do something for them in return, even if it’s just to wipe a few tables one day a week. Wiping tables is apparently “undignified” and therefore too much work for a few lousy bucks.

I suppose the Pundek’s allergy to work wouldn’t be so noticeable, if they were not so status conscious. If you were kind enough to offer to buy a Pundek a coffee in a coffee shop, they’ll kick a fuss and suggest that you take them out to somewhere a bit more upmarket or at least has air-conditioning. The Younger Generation of this family always likes to put on a show of generosity. They’ll offer to buy you a meal at somewhere fairly pricy, then order everything under the sun and then, when it comes to time to pick up the tab…..ooopppppsss, they’ll suggest that you pay first and they’ll pay you back sometime in the not too distant future …what they don’t tell you is that key word here is distant.

Now, I put it this way to you – who is a bigger social problem – the foreign worker cleaning the streets and working on the construction site or members of the Ka Ni Na and Pundek families?

I’m off the view that what we need to do to solve our social problems is to “export” Ka Ni Na’s and Pundeks rather than block the importing of foreigners. This would have plenty of practical benefits. Once you export members of these respective families, you would increase productivity and allow the people who supported members of this family to keep more of the money they work for. This in turn will ensure that money will go to where it’s needed most.

Think about it, exporting duds is a far more effective solution than blocking the importation of foreigners to do work.

  

It’s Just a Job

You have to hand it to cab drivers throughout the world for providing some of the most interesting bits of wisdom at the least expected of moments. Yesterday (19 September, 2012), I met a cab driver with a story to tell.

Cab drivers in Singapore are usually older men who ended up driving taxis as a last resort. Speak to enough of them and you’ll find that they’ve been retrenched from elsewhere and had no other way of making a living. This is probably the only job in Singapore that is restricted for the natives.

My driver was different. He was four years younger than me. He was educated (diploma in mechanical engineering from Singapore Polytechnic), and  he chose to go into taxi driving – this was a chap who had a job in a German engineering company and then quit once they offered him a supervisors role.

Unlike the majority of cab drivers, this chap liked his job except for the fact that it killed he chances with the chicks. He pointed out that he would meet girls, get chatting and the moment he revealed he was a cab driver they’d refuse to speak to him. His point was, “I don’t see what’s wrong with being a taxi driver. It’s an honest living.”

This point struck home. In the last decade that I’ve lived in Singapore, I’ve often found that you are what you do for a living. It’s not enough to make an honest living. You’re supposed to do something that is ‘worthy’ of what everyone else expects you to do.

I remember returning to Singapore after university and selling antiques at five bucks an hour. It wasn’t great but it was cash in hand every day and money that I earned and didn’t take from Dad.

After a while Dad had to say, “Much as I respect you wanting to work, I’d rather you focus on building your career.”  It didn’t take long for me to realize what he meant. The market place is brutal. Within six-months of graduation, one should have ones foot in an industry – which means either working for the government or a respectable company.

I had to learn some harsh truths about job hunting. To be it was a numbers game until Gerard Lim; former General Manager of Leo Burnett’s Singapore explained things. He pointed out that I would “Never” be considered for jobs in things like “tele-marketing” (though I did have a stint in a call centre). I thought it was because I had “no experience.” He told me it was because I was “too good.” As a graduate, particularly one from a prestigious college, nobody would stay in such a job for long and so there was no point hiring me.

As far as the world was concerned, I was something because I had a degree and I was therefore expected to do only a certain type of job. This in turn meant that I would only mix with a certain social circle and builds my life from there.

My peers in the agency game or even from the army and university have lived the lives that their jobs and education expected them to live. Every PR agency professional I’ve worked with moved from a smaller agency to a bigger one and a few have gone into the client side. They have lots of friends from the profession and even married within the profession.

In many ways, the Western world is more relaxed about what you do for a living and social mobility is more fluid. This is especially true of the “artistic” world. Every waiter in Los Angeles is an aspiring screen writer or actor who is merely doing a job to pay bills until the big break arrives. Harrison Ford (he of Han Solo and Indiana Jones fame) was a carpenter before he got his big break (Han Solo).

When I was going through long spells of unemployment, my mother would lament that I lived in Singapore and not in the West, where I could do a simple job while looking for a “career.” My sister, who lives in London, was perhaps luckier than me in this respect. She’s worked in a shop as a shop assistant for several years to help pay her bills while she did her art work.

However, even the Western world isn’t exempt from imposing expectations. My sister tells me that “Middle Class” mothers loath her. The reason is simple – she speaks with a “posh” accent which gives away the fact that she’s got a ‘public’ (to non Brits, that’s private and exclusive) school and a decent university background. To the Middle Class, someone who speaks like her should not be working in a shop.

So, where does this leave us? Well, the only thing one can do is to accept that certain things will always be a certain way. It will take time for people to change their views on certain issues. In Singapore it’s particularly tough; thanks to a culture that demands everyone’s devotion to material success.

 However, things will have to change – the population is getting greyer and jobs (particularly the nice cushy ones) are getting scarcer.  So just as people can expect to change careers within a lifetime, they also have to be prepared to take ‘ordinary’ jobs from time-to-time, just to pay the bills.  

Both employers and employees need to see this and adjust their thinking and actions towards this fact. People like me with ‘unusual’ job histories might have a future. I remember telling Frank Young co-founder of the Weekender that I didn’t think I was employable. He argued that I was VERY employable; I merely had to focus on the things I did (G2G, litigation, GE, UL, 3M and Alcon) and not where I had been (one-man-show and SME).

People like me should be encouraged by the advertising industry, where you had legends like David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy & Mather, who worked as a chef and farmer before he entered the profession at the ‘old’ age of 38. Unfortunately, the industry has become ‘standardised’ and people with job histories like Ogilvy usually lose out to fresh ‘communications graduates.’ This needs to change. Employers need to become creative at milking the value of people with ‘unusual’ job histories instead of chucking them aside in favour of people they think they can mold.

Employees or perspective job seekers need to accept that ‘any’ job has value provided one takes it positively and understands that one can pick up skills in menial jobs that will prove useful in later life.

I remember Gucharandan Das arguing that too employers expected new employees to have skills. His argument was, “You hire based on attitude and train for skills.” A person who has done menial work can be a person with the right attitude.

There’s also a case for developing and accepting that people will need to be independent. I think of my Uncle Nick (Mum’s cousin-in-law) who once had a high flying job in the City. He believes that having worked in all sorts of jobs gave him confidence that he’ll always be able to make a living and so was not beholden to employers and was therefore able to be more professional for his employers.

It’s such a shame that many of us have this mental block when it comes to appreciating the value of work. A person is not defined by his job. A job can make a person and it can say a lot about a person. Some people are more ambitious than others. However, the worth of a person and job shouldn’t be defined by a monetary value. I think of the cab driver who can’t get a date.

To me, he’s found the secret to happiness. I suspect he’s under divine protection – someone out there is weeding away the type of girls that are too shallow for him.  

The Price of Washing Dishes

The debate about wages took a very interesting turn this week when Sakae Sushi, a chain of conveyer belt sushi restaurants announced to the press that they were offering “dishwashers” the grand total of $3,000 a month. They started by announcing that nobody was applying for the job and the very next day they announced that they had some 300 applications for ten positions.

The issue of wages for blue collar workers is closely intertwined with that “hot topic” of the number of foreigners in Singapore – namely the ‘darkies’ from the poor parts of Asia. In a paper titled “SingaporePerspectives 2012 Singapore Inclusive: Bridging Divides” it was found that Singapore’s “excessively liberal” immigration policies had a role to play in growing wage inequality. There is the drive to attract ‘high income’ global talent, which raises incomes at the top existing concurrently to with the drive to attract ‘cheap’ labour, which brings down wages at the lower end of the market. In terms of wages, we’re a first and third world country squeezed onto 600 plus square kilometres. Working professionals compare their salaries with their counterparts in New York and London while the labourers compare their wages with Manila and Dhaka.

Labour for many menial tasks in Singapore is cheap – so much so that working professionals often live a more comfortable lifestyle than their counterparts in New York or London. Working professionals in London or New York do their own laundry or send it to the laundromat. In Singapore, most working professionals (especially working married couples) have a maid to take care of every unimaginable household chore. When I lived in London, the idea of calling an electrician was scary – electricians charged 26 pounds an hour in the late 1990s. In Singapore, it’s a given that I’d call an electrician for every small shit.

This situation has been pretty much accepted for years. However, ever since the Middle Class found its wages being squeezed, the issue of wage inequality has become a pressing one.  The internet is filled with stories about how working professionals (lawyers, bankers etc) and graduates have been forced to do all sorts of menial jobs to stay alive.

The arguments on this topic are skirting around the issue of what to do with “foreigners.” After the slap in the last election, the government has “tightened up” up rules about entry visas for the darkies (pink blotchies are still being imported on mass). The idea is simple, with fewer darkies willing to do low wage jobs at cheaper rates than the existing ones, there will be more jobs for Singaporeans, particularly those at the lower end of the social spectrum (ie the old, crippled, with prison records etc).

Unfortunately for the government, businesses, particularly the small and medium ones, are feeling that they’re being kicked in the wrong parts. They face a “labour crunch.” The business community argues that it provides lots of jobs but Singaporeans won’t do them mainly because they feel the jobs on offer are either badly paid or an invitation to be screwed royally.

The powers-that-be are in a jam. A member of the community of great minds thinks we need to “raise the wages” of the “blue collar” sector. The argument is that blue collar workers in the West are respected because they’re well paid and so we merely need up the wages of blue collar workers and before you know it, you’ll get a host of Singaporeans rushing to fill those positions.

The business community has a counter argument. If their wage bill is raised, they’ll have to find the money from elsewhere and that means prices will be raised by the time things reach the consumer. As Dr Janil Puthucheary, a Member of Parliament argues, “Are we willing to pay more just to ensure the workers get paid more?”

There are flaws in both positions. Blue collar workers in the West are expensive not because Westerners believe blue collar workers should get a lot of money. They are expensive because they are rare – despite the seemingly vast wages they earn; you don’t get a lot of people rushing to join plumbing school or electrician school.

Exploitation of the underclass is also rife in the West. Companies that offer basic plumbing services for example do charge the consumer a good deal of money. However, these are the same companies that are quite shameless about using “illegal” labour. The American agricultural sector for example, depends on illegal labour – Mexicans with no papers will do the jobs while Americans with the papers won’t (so much so that the CEO of HCL once commented that American graduates are unemployable).

On the other side, repeated calls that raising the wages of the masses in Singapore will scare away foreign investors and Singaporeans will shy away from spending more for goods and services and thus damage the economy are overblown.

Singapore is in a neighbourhood of places where labour cost will always be cheaper than in Singapore. As a result, Singapore can no longer afford to compete on price. Despite the opening up of countries with larger and cheap workforces, foreign investors still come to Singapore – our workers can compete on quality (Both 3M and Alcon used this argument about setting up a plant in Singapore).

Secondly, prices in Singapore have continued to rise and Singaporeans have not shied away from spending on certain things.

So, where does Sakae Sushi’s job offer fit into this picture? The answer is probably not a lot. While they are paying three times the wage for the dishwasher’s position, they’ve kept the hours long (9-12 hours daily for six days a week). They’ve also added additional task to the position. In short, Sakae Sushi has done exactly what the government always does – throw money at a problem without addressing the fundamental roots of the problem.

Yes, money is important. It’s better to have more of it than less. However, as many Western countries have discovered, people, after a certain point want more than just a high pay cheque or at least they’re more interested at looking at the things they have to do to earn that cheque. I believe that the people who take up the job may enjoy receiving what seems like big money for the first year or so. Later on, they’ll question whether the hours they have to give to the job are worth it.

Singapore needs to shift focus from a “kicking out foreigners to give Singaporeans jobs” to generating genuine high value jobs for the people. This will be a messy process as it will require allowing entrepreneurship to take root – a process that will be tough given Singapore’s culture of not tolerating failure.

We have to accept the fact that certain jobs are dull and mundane by their very nature. The job of washing dishes is one of them. Rather than trying to “glamorize” the job and throwing money into the job or trying to make dishwashers more productive, businesses should be allowed to either hire cheap labour or find technological solutions.

Seriously, if a job can be mechanized, why shouldn’t it be? If we go back to the example of dishwashers –the question is not whether we should encourage more Singaporeans to be dishwashers but whether we can find a Singaporean entrepreneur to find dishwashing solution suitable for Singapore – ie is there a dishwasher that will fit into Singaporean buildings and can we design one. Doing things like this requires brains and creates high paying jobs. Surely this is more valuable than creating a mass of badly paid jobs.

Then employers need to shift their mind sets for certain jobs. Jobs in the service sector like being a waiter need not be lifelong permanent positions.  In the West this is an accepted norm. I was once served by a bar girl in London who latter on got a job at Ernest & Young. Los Angeles is filled with waiters who are aspiring actors. The same jobs in those cities don’t pay better than they do in Singapore. The employers accept that the people who may be interested in filling these jobs are merely filling a temporary need. Employment for certain jobs need not be forever.

Yes, there is a need to address the growing wage gap. However, businesses and the public need to work together and a greater amount of creative thinking needs to be applied. 

The Wisdom of the Rich

Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person and the world’s richest woman has just caused something of a storm Down Under. The storm she created centred around a speech she gave on poverty – she is quoted as telling people to stop complaining about millionaires and billionaires and “Drink Less, Work More.”

Her remarks have irked politicians from across the political divide and she’s even offended no less than the treasurer himself, Mr Wayne Swan. Her remarks are as they say, “Politically incorrect.”

Let’s face it; Ms Rinehart is not a Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, who made her own money by revolutionizing an industry that has benefited millions. Her Aus $ 29.2 billion fortune is based on mining (a case of nature’s generosity) and was inherited (someone else worked for the fortune). As with the case people who inherited their fortunes rather than built them, there is always a temptation to ask what she did to earn the right to lecture others on how to live their lives.

However, let’s look beyond Ms Rinehart and look at her message. Has she said anything that is intrinsically wrong? I don’t believe she has. If one examines how fortunes are made and lost, you’ll realize that they’ve usually been made by the people who have worked more and drunk less. They’re made by the people who have focused on their work instead of complaining about how unfair life is.

Let’s face it, life is generally unfair. People, who are rich, usually have advantages in life that ordinary people don’t have. The rich can send their kids to good schools and having a family brand name can open doors that would otherwise remain unreachable. I think of myself as an example. Dad had the means to finance me through university and between my parents; I had enough contacts to open doors which were unobtainable to most. I could function as a free-lance PR consultant with less than a year’s experience because I was a rookie who could get the editor of the leading woman’s magazine to take my calls.

Yet, despite these advantages, I’ve not established the financial status I should have. Look at my Central Provident Fund (CPF – the national savings plan that all Singaporeans have) and you’ll suspect I’ve spent the last few years as a street urchin instead of being the PR consultant to the likes of GE Commercial Finance, Underwriters Laboratory, Alcon and 3M. It’s not that I haven’t made money but I’ve been foolish with it and I’ve not acted on things that I’ve known – namely the importance of preservation.

Somehow, whenever I had money, it always seemed easier to have fun with it rather than to use it wisely. My biggest weaknesses as they say involved the chicks and the booze. I think of the times it felt so easy to stay out and try and hit the pub with friends rather than to preserve that extra bit of cash. I wasn’t socializing with the people who wanted me to succeed but the people who hopped I could buy them another round of drinks.

So, I look at what Ms Rinehart says and appreciate that she’s right. I, for one, should have drunk a bit less and focused a bit more on work – and I am by no means lazy. However, had I followed Ms Rinehart’s advice, I might have preserved more of what I had and be in a better position to build more.

I think of Bill Gates who once made the point that life is unfair and we should get used to it. I also think of Vinod Shekhar, who once made the point that he ‘focuses on himself rather than what other people get.’

When you realize that life is unfair but you haven’t been dealt with the worst possible hand, then you focus on how to play the hand you have rather than on complaining about what someone else has.

For some reason, I decided to change a part of my outlook for this year. Instead of focusing on my indulgences, I decided to follow what my Dad suggested I do – try and look after a person or two. Haven’t won the lottery nor have I hit the jack pot with a huge job. However, I’ve found that after I decided to shift that focus, I found that whenever I’ve been about to run out of funds, someone or something has come up and given me something to keep me afloat.

So, I put it this way – Is Ms Rinehart wrong when she suggests that we stop complaining about the well to do and work more and drink less? I don’t think she is.

    

Behave

The Prime Minister has just finished his National Day Rally speech for the year and everyone is busy chatting about his speech. The mainstream media published the uplifting bits of his speech, while the online chaps did their song and dance about being more 'liberal' in his approach to government.

One of the things that caught my eye was the fact that he spent a good portion of his speech telling Singaporeans how to behave better. This portion of the speech was devoted to dealing with ugly online behaviour towards our new arrivals from elsewhere and the thrust of his comments was that such bad behaviour ruined Singapore's international reputation.

For the record, I agree with what he said. Perhaps it's just me but the attitudes towards foreigners, particularly those who happen to be dark skinned and from other parts of Asia disgusts me. I feel like vomiting whenever I hear highly educated professional people in Singapore talk about the unfortunate darkies doing the 'dirty' jobs.

I don't know what it is about our society? For some reason, those who have been blessed cannot help but start treating the less fortunate as something worse than dirt. The disease isn't just restricted to native born folk. Perfectly nice people from elsewhere end up getting infected too. Read a comment in the Today paper from some White Australian expat about how clearing up our trays in a fast food joints would be a denial of jobs for old people. Not sure how he worked that one out – he must have been thinking, “Granny, I'm doing you a favour by letting you clean up my shit.”

The nation is unfortunately filled with scum and nobody seems terribly interested in dealing with this type of behaviour. So, it's a relief that somebody as prominent as the Prime Minister has called attention to rotten behaviour that seems to be accepted as normal by the general public.

However, if one has to think of things in their proper context, one has to ask whether it's a failure of leadership that we have to tell a 47-year old nation how to behave and to have some decent manners.

Singapore has been an independent state for 47-years. In those years of independence we've become a serious model for the rest of the world to follow in terms of development. As I've said on so many occasions, our little Red Dot has become so advanced that it's not just people from the less developed world who are trying to prolong their stay here – even Americans, Brits and other Europeans are trying to hang onto the life that Singapore offers them. We are what every city should be – clean, green and rich.

Unfortunately our behaviour or at least our growth as people seems to have stayed in the dark ages, while our GDP has shot into the stratosphere. It's a sad reflection on our nation when the Prime Minister has to tell us how to behave after 47-years of independence.

What's happened? Well, unfortunately, while I agree with what the Prime Minister said, I believe that the government has to bear a good deal of the responsibility for the current situation. Much of what happens in Singapore starts with government policy.

Lets start with the obvious. Government's generally don't deal with personal behaviour issues unless they turn into issues that affect public peace. In the early days of Singapore's development, the key was economic development. It was right to do this in the sense that the Singapore Government actually found the money to finance many of the things that have made Singapore a very livable city.

However, the government has to be responsible for creating a culture where certain people are treated as elite Demi-Gods while certain others are treated as something worse than the shit you scrape off the bottom of your shoes.

Let's start with the fact that Singaporeans children are streamed off into different academic streams at an early age. While I don't disagree with streaming, the way it's executed in Singapore meant that those who didn't make it into the more academic streams ended up being labeled as “stupid” and destined for jobs that would not pay terribly well.

Then, let's look at wages for the white and blue collar. Those in white collar professions pay more than their blue collar counterparts. The difference is so much more that the Middle Class end up telling their children that not being academically gifted means you'll end up in a badly paid blue collar job.

So, right from the very beginning, a child is told that unless you're from a certain academic background, you are somehow less than human. You are, in effect, sub-human if you are anything less than an “A-level” student, for example. I remember being in the army and being told, “But you're MUCH smarter than the men.” I was an “A-Level” student while the men were not. I was supposed to be part of a 'smart' elite telling the mules what to do. Thankfully, I never saw myself as being smarter than the men and unfortunately that thinking still persist in the corridors of power.

It doesn't help that this thinking applies to foreign policy and immigration. Those from the 'desired' countries are encouraged to migrate with large salaries and encouraged to wall themselves in swanky homes paid for by big companies. It's drummed into the heads of school children that people from the less fortunate countries are a cause of social problems.

So, yes, I agree - Singaporeans need to learn how to behave. It's sad that we have to be told to behave after 47-years but we got to start somewhere. However, the government should also look at the cause of why we are the way we are and start tackling the problem with some urgency.

The Joys of Faith!

I have to hand it to the Young Muslim Politician who Feast in the Middle of Ramadan from Pasir Ris GRC aka Thambi Pundek for having the ability to rescue me whenever I get hit by a bout of writers block or some other distraction. He has knack of raising topics that bring out the aggressive side in me and after a session of talking rot with him, I feel inspired to blog.

It was a magnificent day today. He decided that he needed to meet up with the Naan maker and me this afternoon and being the good self-respecting Muslim that he is, he proceeded to assist us in polishing off two bottles of wine and a little roast chicken in the middle of the Ramadan Day. To show his appreciation, he happily posed for a photo with a glass of wine in front of him and then proceeded to take few snap shots of the chicken.

Anyway, we were all happily enjoying this little much-munch session in the middle of the Ramadan day when he decided to try and influence the Naan Maker into becoming a “Mit Romney Supporter.” He proceeded to talk about how we needed to strong Republican President who would support Bibi Nethanyahu’s bid to get peace in the Middle East and that the Palestinians needed to learn to use the tongue and not the gun. He proceeded to then take the tone of moral superiority and claim, “What George Bush II did in Iraq was a noble act.”

That set me off. I told him to stop being a “Pundek” (Tamil for cunt) and actually look at facts on the ground. Let’s face, I have Jewish relatives whom I love dearly but that does not distract me from the obvious fact – the Jaudi’s have no intention of making peace and they are actively engaging in terrorist activities by stealing land, which nobody recognizes as theirs. While the Jaudi’s engage in daylight theft, the Western World under American Leadership endorses it. While the West bleats on about the possibility of Iran having the bomb, it continues to allow Israel to “neither admit nor deny” having a range of nasty little toys.

Anyway, the Naan maker must have gotten a little worried and did what he could to make peace. I think was still pretty belligerent. I will not accept that the Western view of the Middle East is the one that I need to follow and I don’t see why I should accept a lie just because the people sprouting it happen to be a shade of pink.

The kid has a way of bringing up what irks me the most – the mentality of a slave. He’s got this idea in his head that the only way to live is to ape the mighty powers of the world, which is what his masters in the little village do.

To be fair, you can’t blame him in the sense that the powers-that-be in Singapore have done a relatively good job at creating prosperity and stability. However, it doesn’t mean that they’re right all the time and it doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t strike against conventional views especially when convention is wrong.

Furthermore, he suffers from a symptom common to many colonized folks. He desires to be like the colonizer. This symptom is particularly acute in Indians. The moment they get their US or British passports, there is a tendency to become obnoxiously so. I have a friend who happens to be Tanzanian born and can’t stop reminding people that he has a US passport. This symptom becomes even more acute when it comes to the UK. As Russell Peters so elegantly says, “Every Indian has an ancestral homeland – it’s called ‘The United Kingdom.’”  

In fairness to the Indians, they’re not alone in this. The US Department for Home Land Security has become an expert at using neutralized citizens against their former kinsmen. Two of the least pleasant experiences I’ve had with US immigration have come from Chinese (the first time it happened, I was in my late teens and they were giving us hassle for not having a‘re-entry’ permit. He had to end with a threat – we’ll take away your green card. My gut reaction was – shove it, take it back. I was, however, with my mum and discretion was the better part of valor.)

While I do admit that life in the West is generally more comfortable than in most places, I have NEVER understood the desire to be like the “colonizer.” I NEVER felt that I was being “liberated” by the West or Westerners. It was ingrained inside me from day one that colonial masters were only good for one thing – target practice.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate systems that the colonial powers had in place. I put it this way; I’m educated in the British system, which for the most part remains a pretty darn good one at preparing you for life. I also enjoy the finer things about Western culture. American movies, English literature and since I’ve been involved in a French restaurant – French food.

I have been blessed by Westerners in the family and friends. I enjoy the company of a good many Westerners, who may not be close friends and family.

However, I’ve never felt an emotional need to be like them nor did I ever want to identify myself as being a Westerner. I identified and in many ways, I still identify with the people who defy and kick out larger colonial powers.

It’s not very patriotic for me to say it but what Lee Kuan Yew did seems shallow and meaningless (though it has proven beneficial) when compared to the blood, sweat, brains and heart that guys like Mao, Ho Chi Minh and Gandhi put in. When kids my age were fantasizing about being Rambo and the guys with the cool tanks, I wanted to be the men in little black pajamas, shooting at the chaps in the tanks.

Yes, Singapore has prospered by following the conventional path of building up a sound infrastructure and letting the multinationals come in. We’ve prospered. I am a direct product of that prosperity. My father made money from advertising, an industry which is as Western and Capitalistic as it gets. At one stage, I wanted to be a banker.

I should be grateful that I was born in Singapore and in many ways I am. However, when you look at how much we avoid a struggle and compare it to the struggle that our Asian neighbours have had, you start to see why our youth are like the Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC who feasts and drinks in the middle of the Ramadan Day aka Thambi Pundek and they have young people like my little Thuy who throw a tantrum when they’re late to school.

When you make these comparisons, it’s easy to see why the government was so open about letting in people from elsewhere come in to do what needs to get done.

Is Any Publicity Good Publicity?

You have to hand it to M.Ravi for having the genius of attracting publicity. The man has managed to dominate headlines in July and the internet is ablaze with chatter about his activities.

It hasn’t helped his detractors that in their efforts to pull him down have ended up handing him something of a moral victory (whichever way you look at it, Wong Siew Hong barging into a court room to hand a confidential report to a judge declaring Ravi medically unfit to practice law is a violation of ethics, starting with doctor-patient confidentiality.)

However, much of the credit for generating so much publicity is due to Mr Ravi himself. One only has to glance of his tree-hugging dance in Speakers Corner to understand his talent for self-generating publicity. The tabloid editors couldn’t have planned it better themselves.

So, the question remains, how much of Mr Ravi’s publicity actually helps the cause of opposition politics in Singapore? Unfortunately, the answer is not very much. If anything, Mr Ravi has ended up damaging the cause. When you think of Mr Ravi and the cause of opposition politics in Singapore, it’s clear that any publicity is not necessarily good publicity.

This is something of a shame. In fairness to Mr Ravi he has taken on important causes, which deserve debate. Whatever is said of the man, he was right to take on the cause of the recently amended “mandatory” death sentence for drug smuggling. Mr Ravi has also been ingenious in bringing the question of the constitutional validity of 377A (the act that forbids consensual anal sex between adult males) in the courts and he also be given credit for questioning the powers of the Prime Minister in calling by-elections.

However, when one looks at Mr Ravi, one can’t help but feel that he’s in it for something more than himself and more importantly, he’s a fool – the clown that you might agree with but you’d never trust your pets with.

Let’s face it, as “undemocratic” as Singapore is, it remains for the large part, a fairly comfortable place. Singapore still provides its citizens with a relatively comfortable lifestyle, and it’s no longer just in comparison with our Asian neighbours – Americans and Europeans also try to remain in Singapore as long as they can. As my favourite litigator once said, “Say what you like, but this isn’t some tin-pot African state where the authorities can drag out on the streets to beat you up whenever you feel like it.”

Yes, the ruling party does not always fight fair. The PAP shamelessly uses the levers of power to its advantage. Let’s face it; the PAP isn’t doing what other ruling parties do. The truism remains, “Elections are not won by oppositions but lost by governments.”

So, when you look at all these things, the point remains that Singaporeans are by and large content with the way things are. Yes, we grumble and we curse at officials in the coffee shops. However, we aren’t about to accept a radical overhaul to the system nor are we about to endorse a revolution.

Then there’s an important fact – while the powers-that-be have tight grip in the system, it’s not impossible to take on the PAP and win. The Worker’s Party comes to mind. This party held onto a single seat for two-decades and then, when the moment struck, and took a GRC. Were the odds against the Workers Party? The answer is yes.

How did the Worker’s Party win votes, while other opposition figures have failed miserably? The answer is simple – the Worker’s Party has built a track record at running something and developed a coherent strategy. As a result, they have attracted intelligent and decent people to their ranks – the type of people that the masses might consider voting for.

This is vastly different from Mr Ravi and his supporters like Reform Party, Chairman, and Kenneth Jeyeratnam. We might clap and cheer whenever Mr Ravi gets up on the stage at Speakers Corner and does his tree-hugging dance. However, while this makes good theater, it’s theater of the wrong kind. As far as the masses are concerned, they would never vote for the likes of Mr Jeyeratnam nor would they trust their kids to Mr Ravi.

Neither of these gentlemen has shown an interest in winning over the average Singaporean. Mr Jeyaratnam is persistent in taking in causes that the average man has no interest in. I’ve seen him focus his energies on things like electoral boundaries and loans to the IMF. He’s arrogantly dismissed local issues like worker’s dormitories in middle class neighbourhoods and foreign workers as being beneath him. Mr Ravi has similarly dismissed selling his ideas to the masses.

Unfortunately, the voice of the masses counts when it comes to gaining power and doing things. People voted for the Worker’s Party because they could prove to the masses that they could run something. What record does Kenneth Jeyeratnam have? What record does M. Ravi have?

Both would argue that they’re acting out of principle. They may be. However, both are challenging the established order in the hope of getting things done. Unfortunately, they are going about it the right way.

The publicity that Mr Ravi attracts for himself is unfortunately the wrong kind. Sometimes the government is made to look a bully, which many Singaporeans have taken as a fact of life. The rest of the time, Mr Ravi’s antics present him as an attention seeking fool, which takes away from the seriousness of the causes he claims to fight for. As much as we might like fools dancing around, we wouldn’t trust them to do something as valuable as take out the trash……

It’s better to follow the example of the Worker’s Party and fight meaningful battles in a meaningful manner. Publicity only comes for the things you want them to come for. In the meanwhile, energies are focused on the things that allow you to achieve your objective.

Not all publicity is good publicity nor is publicity in itself a good thing. One should always remember that publicity is best used as tool to enhance ones objectives in life.

We’ve been consistent (Consistently Unfair)

Three days ago, I attended a lecture by the American Ambassador to Singapore, HE Mr David Adelman at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS). His lecture was about the American Strategic position in South and Southeast Asia. As happens at ISAS lectures, I felt obliged to ask him questions. So, I questioned on how he though America’s policy towards Israel was playing out in South and Southeast Asia.

He argued that he didn’t think American Middle Eastern Policy was playing out in South and Southeast Asia (despite the fact most of the world’s Muslims live in these two regions). He made the point that “We have been consistent in our policy in the Middle East,” and when I pointed out to him that many people around the world, particularly in the Islamic World think American policy in the Middle East is “Unfair” his reply was, “We’ve always been fair that suggestions that we need to be more fair are ‘unfair.’”

Although his responses were more open than his French counterpart, I’ve been struck by how easily Americans sometimes fail to see the obvious even when it’s painted itself purple and is dancing naked in front of them. The American Ambassador is correct in the sense that American policy in the Middle East has been consistent. However, it has been consistently unfair.

Let’s face it, when was the last time anyone remembered an American President telling an Israeli Prime Minister to stop building illegal settlements on Palestinian territory? If memory serves me correctly, that was two-years ago and Mr Obama was considered radical for actually suggesting that Israel was not an innocent party. What should also be noted is the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Nethanyahu promptly ignored the suggestion that he stop violating international law and continued to build settlements on the West Bank.

By contrast, American Presidents have made it a point to lecture Palestinian and Arab leaders on a consistent basis about the need to stop using terrorist methods. Palestinians and Arabs, it seems are consistently at fault for not making the Middle East a more peaceful place. That is despite the fact that the last known push for a comprehensive peace plan was initiated by Saudi King Abdullah in 2002 and 2006. The proposal was very simple, Israel would withdraw to its 1967 borders and in return it would receive diplomatic recognition by all 22-members of the Arab League. This simple proposal was flatly rejected by the Israeli end without a squeak from the American Administrations. In fact, when President Obama went as far as to suggest that negotiations should start based on the 1967 Borders, the Israeli Prime Minister gave him the proverbial middle finger.

The difference in the way it treats both sides becomes even more glaring when you look at the actual conflict itself. In 2006, we had Condolezza Rice openly declaring that the bombardment of Lebanon was called, “Birth pangs of a New Middle East” and the US couldn’t help but to rush cluster bombs over to Tel Aviv. When it came to the Israeli Bombardment of the Gaza Strip in 2008, the Americans proceeded to admonish the Palestinians for voting Hamas, an organization that does not recognize Israel.
Then there’s the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Much is made of the necessity of stopping Iran from acquiring Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The media gladly misquotes Iranian President Ahmadinejad as wanting Israel to be “wiped off the face of the earth” (He was quoting Khomani who said that the Zionist Regime would eventually disappear into the sands of time) as an example of why Iran must not have nuclear weapons. That is despite the fact that Iran actually has signed up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. By contrast, Israel has never signed a nuclear treaty and simply works on “neither admitting nor denying” that it has nuclear weapons.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that American policy in the Middle East has been consistent – it has been consistently stacked against the Palestinians and other Arabs in the region. George Bush made a point that, “They hate us because we are free,” however, as an opinion piece in the Financial Times pointed out, “They hate us because we have supported the people who have suppressed their freedoms.”

The Ambassador did make the point that, “Our intentions have always been noble,” and in the case of the Middle East, there’s always been the “noble” intention of protecting Israel. However, in the act of trying to protect Israel and stopped terrorism (mainly the Islamic variety), US policy has ended up creating a reason for Israel’s destruction and creating reasons for terrorism.

Let’s look at who the Americans have supported in the Middle East. The name that comes to mind is Egypt’s previous President, Hosni Mubarak. As far as most Egyptians were concerned, Mr Mubarak was a strong man who kept them down and enriched his cronies. As leader of the most populous Arab state, Mr Mubarak made his presence known throughout the Arab World. Former Editor-in-Chief of Arab News, Khaleed Almaeena once noted that he was fired by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia because Mr Mubarak complained about him.

Yet, despite all of that, Mr Mubarak continued in power for over three decades. How did he do it? Answer was simple, he controlled the military, which in turn was supported by America (Egypt receives more US aid than any other country except Israel). The regime Mr Mubarak ran had a peace treaty with Israel and the “cold peace” with Israel was bolstered by the fact that Israel and Mr Mubarak had enemies in common (the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas). When Israel decided to blockade the Gaza strip, Mr Mubarak supported it by keeping the Egyptian side of the border sealed.

America had no problem with Mr Mubarak ‘stealing’ from the Egyptian people as long as he supported their policy towards Israel. Unfortunately for Mr Mubarak, the average Egyptian did not see things this way and people like the Muslim Brotherhood knew it. While he may have feared and the given the Americans the same idea, that he would be deposed by a group of radical Islamist, he was in fact disposed of by Egyptians from all walks of life and all religious persuasions.

The Ambassador had talked about being a “true friend” of Israel and having a “true friend” in Israel. While this sounds nice, America and Israel are not friends. America simply bankrolls whatever Israel does, regardless of the legality of Israel’s actions. This is not the action of friends. America needs to stop funding activities which are illegal. It has to stop making peace treaties with Israel an excuse for Arab regimes to behave badly. It’s only when America reverses this consistent policy, will it really gain the hearts and minds of the world’s billion odd Muslims and secure a sustainable peace for Israel.

The West is Superior!

Just posted a response to a friend’s picture showing a Caucasian Man holding an Asian girl's bag. The caption read, “White Slave.” For some reason, I commented that it was, “The Natural Order for Asians to rule.” Someone called me a “Sad racist, who would wake up and realize that the West still rules.”

Let me say that I could not agree more with this statement. The West and Westerners, particularly the pink and blotchy remain superior to yellow, brown and black people no matter what. Let’s just look at the areas where they dominate and bow down in awe at their awesome superiority.

One of the key areas where the West remains the world power can be seen in the financial system. Despite the economic turmoil, the rest of still look to places like London and New York as wonderful wealth creating havens of capitalism.

How did the financial wizards of New York and London make such magic? Well, the answer is very simple. They came up with a magic formula where nothing was always superior to something and debt was always superior to having cash in the bank. As a senior figure of a Western financial company once said, “You got have debt. There’s no way you can do business without debt.”

This magic formula is wonderful. Banks could create money out of thin air and then lend it to people who obviously could not pay it back. The creditworthiness of the customer was irrelevant because the debt could then be sold in this place called the market. In the meantime this person called the customer merely paid far more than he or she would ever had to if he or she had delayed the purchase and saved the cash. Savings as they say is for losers and inferior people who don’t get.

Yellow people like the Japanese and Chinese are particular dumb. Apparently the faults in the global economy come from the fact that Yellow People do things like save the money they make. The Western people are superior and better for the world economy because they spend money that the banks create for them and then they invest in businesses that don’t do stupid things like worry about profitability or having assets. Such businesses do not worry about old fashioned things like this – they just focus on a promise that the founder dreams about.

When you look at things this way, it’s easy to see that the West is clearly superior to the rest of us. When Asians go overboard they MUST go into this thing called bankruptcy. It is supposed stop “corrupt” people from being a drag on the national economy. Westerners have a superior concept. It is called “Too Big to Fail.” When a Western company has debts that it cannot pay, there is this person called the “tax payer” who has a moral obligation to defend such companies from going bankrupt because this is good for the national economy.

 You cannot call the people who put the companies into such a situation ‘corrupt.’ These people are highly qualified and they must be given a severance package that is only a 100 times greater than the annual wages of the average worker (Apparently there is no such thing as an average worker in the West because average work is given to Yellow, Brown and Black people and that’s called stealing jobs.)

The West kicks ass in fighting wars too. The West, particularly the USA spends more on producing the things that could kill us than the rest of us combined. I’ve read somewhere that the West being better at killing people is actually good for the world. It somehow benefits the world when brown, yellow and black people are bombed from the sky but a human rights violation when a brown man kills another brown man on the ground.

Westerners are particularly good at saving the world from people who tell them that they may have weapons. The West is saving us with tanks and planes that bomb when they fight against people who throw stones at the said tanks. The West is particularly good when it comes to fighting against people who have weapons of mass destruction and the declared intention of using them. The Western method of dealing with such people is called “negotiation” and “food aid.”

I don’t know why the rest of us cannot see the benevolence of the West. Unlike the brown, black and yellow parts of the world, the West NEVER tortures. It as this thing called “extensive interrogation.” This involves stripping people and placing them in a cold room and laughing at them. Sometimes it involves holding a guy under a dripping tap. It is how the West protects our human rights.

How can you not admire the West and Westerners? When they let yellow and brown people into their countries to do things like set up small shops, restaurants and cleaning services, it is a sign of Western benevolence to the “little people.” When yellow and brown people pay Westerners a premium to sell yellow and brown people services and goods made by yellow and brown people it is called benefiting the yellow and brown people.

I salute the West and Westerners. I now understand why it is important to shit on yellow, brown and black people when they clean my estate and wipe the shit of my arse for the price of a candy bar. I will no longer have a “Chip on my shoulder” when anything I’ve mentioned happens to me. Long Live the West and Westerner for they are obviously better than the rest of us!

A Case for Getting Out

This weekend I found myself at a very interesting forum conducted by MP for Pasir Ris Pungoll GRC, Dr Janil Puthucheary. The forum was focused on the issue of low-wage workers and the key question of the event was, “How much are you willing to pay?”

The general thrust of the discussion was thus – people agreed that there are groups in Singapore that work for what can only be called subsistence wages. Toilet cleaners for example, are paid on average, the princely sum of S$600 a month for a 6-day week. People agreed that they’d be willing to pay more to use a public toilet if it doubled the wages of the toilet cleaners. Then the question moved onto bus drivers. Dr Puthucheary then asked the ingenious question – “Would you pay more if it was guaranteed that the increase would go to the bus driver?” The two most prominent answers from the audience were ‘Depends if it’s a Singaporean or PRC bus driver”and“If the fair goes up to S $1.75 a journey, I’ll join the Worker’s Party (Singapore’s main opposition party).”

While it was heartening to be part in a lively discussion on the issue, I felt that everyone was skirting around the brontosaurus in the room – the role of the government. To be fair to the organizers of this event, they belonged to the Youth Wing of the ruling People’s Action Party. As such, it would have been hard for them to tackle the issue openly. However, if one seriously intends to get serious about tackling the issue of glaring inequality in Singapore, one must question the role of the government in the equation.

Generally speaking, setting wages is usually a question of how much an employer is willing to pay to get things done and how much an employee is willing to do for a certain amount of money. This is usually a case of a thesis meeting its antithesis to form a synthesis (In simple terms, two opposite’s crash into each other to create something new). Employers will generally want to pay as little as possible to get the most amount of work while employees will want the most wages while doing the least amount of work.

Somehow these opposing needs create a balance. It’s not a perfect balance. Market forces usually play the key role in deciding the value of wages. When there is a recession, employers don’t hire so those with jobs will sacrifice pay and perks just to keep their jobs. When there’s a boom and there is a lack of people to do the jobs created, then wages shoot up.

While everyone talks about market forces, most people forget that government plays a crucial role too. Firstly, the government sets the tone for the market through things like regulations. More importantly, the government has to play the crucial role in ensuring that the balance does not tip too far either way. Governments have to see that people get wages they can survive on (Think of Arab Spring where ordinary people took three jobs to survive) but at the same time, the government has to ensure that businesses can afford to hire people (Think of the UK in the 1970s when taxes were close to 100 percent of income – businesses could not make a profit). If you like, the government is the referee in the game.

Singapore’s government has a slight problem as a referee – namely the fact that the government is in fact the biggest owner of business in Singapore. The government owns the Government Investment Corporation of Singapore (GIC) and Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd. These entities were set up to manage the compulsory savings of the population and at a later stage budget surplus. The value of assets controlled by both these companies runs into the billions. The largest shareholder in the biggest companies listed on the stock exchange is Temasek Holdings.

In fairness to the Singapore Government, it’s kept a relatively hands off approach in the management of the large companies. The CEO’s of companies like DBS and SIA have gotten there on their merits as business people rather than government bureaucrats. State ownership has not handicapped SIA from becoming a world-class airline. DBS today hires senior people from international banks like Citibank to ensure they play as serious international players.

One can also argue that in the initial days of independence, this situation was necessary. Singapore did not have the people to run big corporations and the symbiosis between civil servants and people running large corporations was a way of sharing talent. You can argue that making civil servants spend a stint in corporations has helped to create a business friendly civil service. This in turn has been a powerful selling point in keeping the much needed foreign investment coming into the country.

A first rate bureaucracy has been one of Singapore’s strengths. The Singapore government machinery sounds like a private sector corporate machinery talking about things like efficiency and customer focus. This has been good for Singaporeans.

While all these arguments are compelling, they are losing their potency and starting to look like tiered and increasingly irrelevant arguments.

From the business perspective, it’s possible to argue that government ownership has actually held Singaporean businesses back. Of the large corporations, only SIA has a made a mark in its global industry. The reason is simple – this is an industry where the Singapore government’s protection is useless and the airline has had to face competition from global players. The other corporate giant to hold its own has been SingTel, which used its cash pile from its days of a monopoly to acquire overseas assets. Today, SingTel’s main source of revenue is from Optus, its Australian subsidiary.

The untold tale here is that prior to acquiring Optus, SingTel tried to acquire assets in Hong Kong and Malaysia. The fact that SingTel’s main shareholder was the Singapore Government was the very reason why regulatory authorities stopped SingTel from taking over companies. Let’s face, telecommunications is a sensitive business and as friendly as Singapore’s government may be to other governments, there are few governments in the world that would allow their telecom companies to be bought over by what they view to be another government.

More worryingly is the fact that many of Singapore’s big corporations are only big at home. They have been protected from the laws of competition and have been allowed to grow flabby. Think of Singapore’s media industry. An element of competition was introduced. Both media houses lost a ton of money and the government allowed them to remonopolise. Everyone slapped their backs, happy that they had shown that the market was “Too Small for Competition.” Unfortunately they were too busy defending their turfs that they forgot about product innovation. While the media houses spent their energies sniping at each other’s product (think of the endless arguments on whether viewership or readership was more important,) the public found alternative news sources on the internet. Sure, the bloggers didn’t make money but they gained credibility at the expense of both print and media – enough for the Executive Vice-President of Marketing at Singapore Press Holdings (a former editor) to write an op-ed piece lamenting the fact that government ministers were choosing to use their Facebook accounts to make announcements instead of calling for an old fashioned press conference.

As the need to expand beyond Singapore’s shores grows, business and government need to relook their relationship. Business should have the freedom to act as businesses rather than as part of a government.

If the business case for the government to get out of business is compelling, the argument from a social policy perspective is becoming crucial.

Let’s go back to the fact that the government now has a problem with growing inequality. Let’s take the example of bus and train drivers, the group that Dr Puthucheary brought up.

Public transport is a potent issue. It’s used by most of population and so most of the population has an opinion about it. As far as the public is concerned, public transport has become worse and more expensive at the same time.

As far as most people are concerned, this situation has come about because the government allowed an influx of foreigners to enter the country but didn’t ensure that the nation’s infrastructure was prepared for this. Talk to any random person on the streets and they’ll tell you that busses and trains have become overcrowded (expect to wait for three trains to pass by during the early morning commute) as fares have increased. Both public transport operators SMRT and Comfort DelGro have been declaring record profits for shareholders for the last eight-years. Then, when the system started to experience breakdowns, the government stepped in and announced that it would finance more buses from the taxpayer’s fund. Erm, as most of us are concerned, we, the tax paying public are providing a subsidy to companies that are printing money from us.

It’s hard for the government to be seen to play the crucial role in situations like this. The public expects public transport to be affordable and of a high standard. The public transport operators are under pressure to deliver a service and profit to their shareholders. To deliver a profit for their shareholders, the operators, minimize spending on basic infrastructure like more buses and hiring less experienced drivers from elsewhere, thus adding to the downward push for blue collar labour.

A neutral government would be able to see that the situation is unsustainable and would be able to bring all parties together. It would be able to insist on certain delivery standards by the operators – yes, you can make a profit but you got to have no breakdowns within the year etc etc.

Unfortunately, the Singapore government isn’t a neutral referee. On one hand it has pressure from the public. On the other it has its own interest as a shareholder in the system. The CEO of a public transport operator deals with the government as both a regulator and a shareholder. The dual nature of the government’s role here produces an inborn conflict of interest. On one hand it needs to keep the public happy. On the other hand it wants to collect profits. Is anybody surprised that the government was quite content to allow the public transport operators to up fares and skimp on basic maintenance as long as not too many people complained and things ran. Let’s face it, nobody talked about buying more buses until things broke down.

Government must get back to basics and become a neutral referee rather than a shareholder with a vested interest in one side of the game. It’s only then that people will start believing that the government has its interest at heart and interested in looking after all parties.

Only when the government divest itself of its business interest will topics like “inclusive society” be more than just a hot talking point.

A Story of Wages

You have to thank the world’s socialist for bringing us a public holiday devoted to the idea that we should celebrate labour, more popularly known as the sweat we need to put into get our daily keep. This year’s Labour Day in Singapore has been particularly interesting because after years of trumpeting the importance of economic growth, we’ve now decided to focus on the issue of equality or to be more accurate inequality.

Singapore is a well-known economic success story. However, in recent years, it’s become a noticeably unequal society. One Nominated Member of Parliament went as far as to describe the situation in Singapore as having a small group who earn some of the highest wages in the world and pay some of the lowest cost for basic labour. A report by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the nation’s central bank, pointed out that two-thirds of the population earns less than the national wage.

Working professionals in Singapore compare their salaries with peers in London and New York. Unskilled labourers compare wages with their peers in Dhaka and Manila. Actually, we’ve moved people from London and New York by giving them a premium on-top of what they were getting at home. At the other end of the social scale, we pay wages slightly higher than in Dhaka and Manila and then proceed to make cost so high that they were actually no better off than if they stayed at home. It doesn’t take an economics degree to realize that when it comes to wages, Singapore is both a first world and a third world country rolled into one.

Thanks to a prominent economics professor, this situation has come into the spotlight. The said professor has suggested that there needs to be a major wage and job restructuring where we jack up the pay of the low wage earners (S$1,500 a month and less) and freeze the pay of those earning high wages (above S$15,000 a month and more).

The government (filled by the world’s best paid politicians despite a recent pay cut) has gone on the war path. Minister after minister has come out to denounce the proposal. As far as the powers-that-be are concerned, you cannot have a raise in wages until there is a rise in productivity.

Having been a small businessman (glorified free-lancer) for the last decade, I’m in an interesting position to look at this issue.

On one hand it’s frustrating dealing when the people who pay you live under the impression that you don’t need to eat, sleep, bath or use the toilet and therefore have the superhuman ability to work for them for the sheer love of it. I’m sorry but what I do happens to be called work and I need money to survive. I do well enough for the people who pay me and I get frustrated when I’m told that I’m worth so many dollars less than what I’ve done. Now, if I can feel that way about bashing things out on a computer and making phone calls, I can imagine how many times people who do heavy lifting or running 12-hours a day must feel about the pay they get for the work they do. I hate it whenever people think they’re doing me a favour when I do work for them.

There is a flip side to this too. Just as I get frustrated with people who think they’re doing me a favour when they give me work, it’s equally frustrating to deal with people who think they’re doing me a favour when I give them work. I’m still traumatised by a bad hire I made for a two-day project a month ago. The so called hire decided that it was acceptable to throw a tantrum just as I needed to deal with a minister’s press secretary. This particular hire decided that it was acceptable to sms a mentor of mine and her brother to complain that she bored and being victimized.

What this particular hire forgot was the fact that I was paying her money and providing her with exposure to the highest profile group she had ever been exposed to. She blamed her behavior on constipation and I guess to be fair, her behavior improved with the clearing of her bowls.

So, where does this leave the wage debate? Well, I believe that people, who hire, need to be fair about the wages they pay. Just as the business needs task to be done well, people need to have enough money for them not to worry about how to pay their bills. A job is essentially a trade-off between the employer’s money and the employee’s time. Fairness in this trade isn’t an airy-fairy concept. It’s common sense. If you want to get an employee to give their all to you, you have to ensure that he or she has a wage that covers basic living expenses and to build a future.

Having said that, I don’t think government legislating things like a government mandated minimum wage won’t necessarily make things better. If I’m expected to pay high wages to people like my bad hire, I’d rather do things myself.

I also find the idea of keeping jobs for certain people of certain races or nationalities to be downright offensive. As a business, I take the risk and I need to manage my cost and talent to reap the necessary rewards. It is not the job of businesses to hire based on a government’s political needs nor is it the job of business to create social policy. Businesses should hire the people who are most hungry for the job because they’ll be best at it.

Funnily enough, the two examples that come to mind are from the military. In the US Army, it’s been found that Blacks tend to perform better than Whites. The American Army is the one place where you’re likely to see more blacks bossing whites around than in any other organization in the nation. The reason is simple, the average black soldier looks to the army as way up in life while the average White Soldier looks at the army as a dead end job.

The same is true in the British Army, where they found that you’re average Gurkha makes a better solider than your average British Squaddie. The average squaddie’s came from families where the army was a better than nothing job while the Gurkha’s saw service in the British Army as way up in life.

Neither the US or the UK is about to go through a reduction in recruiting less Blacks in favour of Whites or less Gurkha’s in favour of local Brits (though admittedly this may slow and stop thanks to the Maoist politicians in Nepal.) Part of the reason is culture. In the US there is a need to provide black people with good jobs and since the army does a good job of it, nobody will think of stopping the army from hiring blacks. In the UK the link with the Gurkha’s is historical and part and parcel of Britain’s place in the world.

However, there’s a more important underlying reason. Both armies believe in hiring the best people to fight wars. As such, the Blacks in the US Army have earned their place by merit as have the Gurkha’s in the UK.

What is true of the military should be true of business. Hire based purely on merit. Yes, Singaporeans are more expensive than say Filipinos and many other Asians. However, cost isn’t the only factor in deciding who to hire. Deal with any service industry in Singapore and you’ll find that if you get decent service, it’s from Filipinos. I remember the head of a prominent shoe shop chain telling me, “If I could, I’d sack all the Singaporeans and replace them with Filipinos. The Singaporeans are so grouchy they kill any incentive my customers have to buy. The Filipinos on the other hand manage to smile at work even when there’s a personal tragedy – they produce the work environment that I want.”

I remember my previous CO, Colonel Toh Boh Kwee’s line,” Nobody owes you a living.” It’s something people like my bad hire need to understand. Contrary to what many of Singapore’s alternative thinkers might think, foreigners are not there to screw Singaporeans. They cannot be blamed if they’re hungry and manage to work the “EQ” required in today’s market.

Let’s face it; we also live in a world of “outsourcing.” Technology has made it such that even you kicked out all the foreigners, many of the jobs would simply move to cheaper locations. Think of the call centres around the world. You can kick out the Indian entrepreneur who owns a call centre in your country. However, that particular Indian entrepreneur can simply relocate back to India and instead of having a situation where you had one or two jobs for the locals; you have a situation where there are NO jobs for the locals.

A compromise of sorts needs to be achieved. While I may not believe an enforced minimum wage would make things better, I think there should be guidelines of sorts as to what constitutes a reasonable salary and reasonable perks. Unfortunately in the Asian context, too many employers think of employees as cost and thus try to push wages to subsistence levels.

Employers need to understand that human assets are simply that – human and assets. People work to provide for their basic needs. People ‘go-all-out’ for things that will not only provide their basic needs but also help achieves aspirations. Blacks and Gurkha’s in the US and British Armies see their jobs as fulfilling aspirations and hence they work harder than their respective White and British counterparts.

It’s not just about money. If employers want to maximize the potential of their employees, they have to find ways to make people feel like they can achieve their aspirations by working for them. Both Google and 3M practice allow employees to devote 15 percent of their allotted work hours to personal projects. It’s no coincidence that these two companies are regarded as amongst the most innovative in the world.

Then there’s the fact that employees are customers too, especially if you work in the FMCG sector. Henry Ford paid his workers an unthinkably high US5 an hour back in the 1890s because he wanted his workers to buy his cars. If you look at things this way, the most reasonable wage to pay someone enough for them to be your customers. I remember having this argument with one of my early clients who sold top grade pillows – they were not paying me enough to be a customer (The GM of this company came up with a unique solution – he paid me in pillows, which I had to give up as part of my divorce settlement – I did get the Harry Potter book).

Having said that, I think employees need to be responsible for their own development. A job is not an entitlement and in this day and age of outsourcing and free people movement, you cannot expect your passport to give you a job. Organisations are focusing on being lean and looking to hire the best.

Personally, I think we need to look at the concept of a job as being an ‘exclusive’ to a particular company. You look at the average eight-hour day and you need to question how many of those hours are actually productive.

I think there is a situation where the employees are becoming more like ‘journeymen’ in the old ‘apprentice’ system. Once you have a skill of sorts, you should have the freedom to sell your hours accordingly and to the highest bidder. Businesses will only pay for hours where real work is done and people do not need to be dependent on a single entity for a living.

There are, of course, many issues at stake but it’s worth looking at what really needs to be done and what can be outsourced. The traditional job structure has many benefits and in many cases will remain as it is. However, as the nature of businesses changes, so does the nature of jobs. Outsourcing may kill traditional jobs but it provides a way of living to many and in balance that outweighs the cost. Rather than try and legislate it away, let’s see how we can maximize it.