Good Bye Mrs Thatcher – You Put the GREAT back into Britain

One of the most prominent figures of my childhood has died. Mrs Margaret Thatcher, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 died of a stroke at the age of 87 on the 8^th of April, 2013.

By the time of her death, Baroness Thatcher (as she was officially known) had become something of a recluse in her final years. You might say calling her senile was an act of kindness.

The Margaret Thatcher that died was far removed from the Margaret Thatcher I grew up with in the early years that I lived in the UK. Mrs Thatcher, as she was then known, was THE dominant figure in British politics and she made her presence felt in European Union (then known as the EEC) and global meetings.

As a leader, she became known for holding onto positions that were vastly unpopular at the time. She was loathed in liberal establishments for appearing ‘unsympathetic’ to the plight of the poor, though she was revered in business circles for cutting taxes and deregulating things. She was unafraid to speak her mind – something which a few attributed to the downfall of her successor.

You could say the extreme feelings that she generated, made her one of the last politicians to be driven by ideology. The Economist Newspaper described her as the “Last Victorian,” a politician from an era that had long gone by.

As the tributes pour in for the departed, “Iron Lady,” there will undoubtedly be a flurry of editorials about her legacy. I would say that Baroness Thatcher was responsible for putting the “Great” back into “Great Britain.”

Let’s start with the obvious. When Mrs Thatcher took over the UK in 1979, the country was going through a period of social disruption. The unions, particularly the miners’ union (NUM) lead by Arthur Scargill were particularly militant (enough to bring down governments). The state controlled vast chunks that mattered and public services were a mess. The situation was such that it was impossible to run a small business let alone get rich (one of the reasons why the second most infamous member of the OCC made a dash to Africa).

Within a decade of her premiership, Mrs Thatcher had faced down the unions, slashed taxes and regulations. Entrepreneurs like Lord’s Hanson and White of Hanson PLC and Sir James Goldsmith became household names both in the UK and the USA. The disruption that such men caused to the established order helped unleash a bout of entrepreneurial activity on both sides of the Atlantic.

The best part about Mrs Thatcher’s creation of prosperity was the fact that it came from creating greater social mobility. In the words of Uncle Nick (A Brit who married my mother’s cousin, Auntie Terresa), “Thatcherism has made people in England work harder.” If you study the Sunday Times rich list of people in Britain, the number of ‘self-made’ men is growing and crowding out the Old Money of the aristocracy.

The Thatcher era for the UK was not just about economics or social change. It was about the victory of a set of ideas. The idea that individuals were responsible for their own lives rather than the state triumphed over the idea that the State knew best. This is most visible in the fact that the Labour Party under Tony Blair only became electable after they moved towards the Thatcherite point of view. The idea of privitisation has become nearly universal.

Mrs Thatcher did have her faults. Towards the end she seemed a bit too comfortable in her position of power and cut off from reality. She used the royal “We” in public – “WE are a grandmother.” She lied in public about the resignation of her chancellor, Nigel Lawson. Like her American contemporary, Ronald Regan, Mrs Thatcher had a way of being cozy with dictators (Suharto comes to mind).

You could even say that the current mess that the UK is in, is Mrs Thatcher’s belief that free markets are the answer to everything. The “Big Bang” in the 1980s made the City of London a global financial centre. This created jobs and wealth. However, you could argue that things were brought to an extreme. The UK became so dependent on finance that everything else was lost and there was very little to the UK other than the dreams of financiers to make more money out of nothing.

While there is a case for all of these arguments, Mrs Thatcher’s legacy should, on the whole, be considered a decent one. Under her leadership, Britain went from being a poor country run by a group of blind bureaucrats to a country that encourages innovation and rewards entrepreneurship from wherever you may come from. Surely that has to be considered progress. 

The Wonderful Wizard of Blah-Blopi-Boo

It was a very good, Good Friday today. Spent most of the day with Thuy at the movies. Between chasing the press coverage for IIMPact 2013: New Frontiers, which is taking place April 5 – 6, 2013 and the night job, I’ve not really had the time to spend with her and to do my bit to ensure that her English is up to scratch.

Anyway, we decided to treat ourselves to two-movies. Morning movie was a good old fashioned Chinese slap stick. Then we decided to see “Oz, the Great and Powerful.” I enjoyed this movie because it was the “prequel” to the well-loved story I had grown-up with – “The Wizard of Oz.” This was the story of how the “Wizard” got to “Oz” in the first place.  

It turns out that the “Wizard” is an unpleasant character. He is a small-time circus magician who is a con-artist. He cheats and abuses his ‘business-partner’ and seduces women with nothing more than a few cheap gimmicks. When it looks like he’s going to get his just deserts, he does a runner – which is precisely how he ends up in Oz. Once in Oz, he continues as he did in Kansas and has some pretty close encounters, until he decides to use his skills as a ‘con-man’ for the greater good of the people of Oz.

I think one of the reasons why this movie spoke to me was the fact that it showed that despite being a shit of the highest order, you ended up cheering for the “wizard.” The reason was simple – after a while, you realized that it ended up saying more about the people who got taken in by him than it did about him.

Upon arrival he meets the first witch (who will end up becoming the wicked witch that Dorothy had to melt), he actually convinces her that he’s got genuine magic powers. What does he do? His hot air balloon falls out of the sky and he pulls out gimmick flowers for her (she is at this stage a very hot chick – character played by Mila Kunis). Did he ever suggest to her that he was a wizard? No, she’s the one who tells him that he’s a wizard and he merely does what every con-artist does – takes advantage of the situation.

I know this is a fairy tale of sorts but the beauty here is that a charlatan with no magic powers to speak of manages to convince someone with real magic power (and she does have potent powers) that he has powers that exceed hers.

If you look at the movie closely, you’ll realize that the “Wizard” has several things going for him. They are:

His Looks

The very first thing that one should note about the “Wizard” (played by James Franco) is that he’s a good looking guy. Despite the situations that he gets involved in, he is immaculately groomed and is always with his hat. When you look at him, you can believe that young women – even ones with magical powers, would be attracted to him.

Let’s face it, we love looking at attractive people. We will give them the time of the day. I am guilty of this. I’ve lost count of the times that I’ve allowed myself to remain engaged in a conversation with women who bored me into shitting my pants or parting with money I could have used more wisely. If I look back at those moments, I realize that I only myself to do things against my better judgment was because I found the chick in question “hot.”

It works the other way too. Women are as guilty as men of being easily lead astray by good looking men. One of my best friends in the UK had the luxury of being very pretty – women would offer him their number out of the blue. He also had plenty of admirers from the homosexual community too.

I think back to what my Uncle Jeffery said to me when I went to work for him at Asher Communications – “Cosmetics Count.”

If you look at the world’s con-artist, you’ll realize that they’re all exceedingly well groomed…….

Charm and the Ability to Make Others Feel Special

One of the “wizard’s” most popular tools is a series of “musical boxes,” (movie is set in the 1900s, musical boxes were today’s iPhones) which he gives away to women he plans to seduce. His line is always the same – it was his grandmother’s musical box and she left it to him and now he wants to give it to the lady in question.

The line is corny. It is obvious. It works. The ladies fall for him because he makes them feel special. He makes them feel as if they are the only one for him.

We all like to feel special. Relationships always seem better when they are exclusive. I think of journalist who have asked me for “exclusives” and I think of how I’ve valued certain relationships over others because some just seemed more “special” than others.

When you make someone feel special and good – you are more likely to get them to do things for you.

The Willingness to be Lucky or Understanding the Situation

Say what you like about the “Wizard” but he understands situations and is able to tailor his actions according to the situation. When people at the circus claim that they see a wire in his levitation act, ‘cuts’ the wires. Then in Oz, he knows when to rescue and heal people and when to run……In short, he is a survivor.

These are simple facets to his character and if we applied them to our daily lives, we may be surprised with the results.  

The Importance of Self-Belief

You could call a series of happy coincidences that lead to the creation of this blog post. First, my favourite litigator got himself interviewed in the mainstream media and was presented as a champion of underdogs. Then for some reason I decided to get onto youtube to watch “Tyson vs Lewis.” Both these events got me thinking about the concept of “underdogs.”

The concept of the “underdog” is a most curious one. On one hand, we all have an emotional pull towards supporting “underdogs.” However, when it comes to life, we often try our best to avoid being underdogs and move into situations where our success becomes a forgone conclusion.

I think of Singapore, the place I’ve called home for the last decade. On one hand, Singapore goes on and on about how it’s the perpetual “underdog” on the global scale. We are always the small island that wasn’t supposed to survive as an independent nation. Yet, if you look at the way Singapore is run, it’s all about BIG things – BIG GOVERNMENT AND BIG CORPORATIONS are, in practice, the only entities of significance in Singapore.

Anyway, I’ve spent the better part of a decade being an insignificant fly in this pool of people obsessed by “BIG” things. So, I figured that if there is topic that I am qualified to talk about, it is the topic of being successful despite being insignificant.

I think the key to success as an underdog is ‘self-belief.’ In order to succeed as underdog, you need to believe in yourself and you need to develop a healthy disregard for conventional perceptions of reality.

Let me clarify that there is a difference between having ‘self-belief’ and being “delusional.” I took karate at school (I was in fact the school captain). However, despite having some training in a martial art and being confident enough that when push comes to shove, I can handle myself in a fight, I’m not about to rush off and challenge Mike Tyson. That would be delusional and feeling Mike’s fist against my jaw would cure me of that pretty quickly.

Having ‘self-belief’ means that you recognize what you are and what you have. You recognize that you can’t win every battle but you can win others. A person with ‘self-belief’ creates situations where he or she can win.

One can see this when it comes to boxing. This is particularly true when you look at the career of Mike Tyson. In his heyday, Mike Tyson was considered an indestructible force of nature. Getting into the ring with Mike was as good as going into the ring against a tornado.

The beauty of Mike Tyson was a fighter was that his destruction of his opponents created a situation where people became terrified of him. I think of his 91 second demolition of Michael Spinks, who was in his own right, a decent fighter. How did Tyson win so easily? The answer was simple – Spinks was shitting in his pants the moment he stepped into the ring.

Tyson wasn’t the biggest fighter but he did have the biggest reputation. Many of Tyson’s opponents were superior physical specimens. Yet their physical strength was nothing when compared to Tyson’s reputation. Take Frank Bruno as an example. It was considered a major achievement for him to last five rounds the first time and nobody was terribly surprised that he got a three round hiding the second time they met. Frank Bruno was bigger and probably stronger than Mike Tyson. However, on the two occasions he got into the ring, he was shit scared of what Tyson would do to him.

His reign as heavy weight champion of the world ended when he ran into James Buster Douglas. The fight should have been a foregone conclusion. However, Douglas decided not to be intimidated and fought instead of rolling over. Hey presto – Mike Tyson got knocked out.

Latter on Tyson ran into Holyfield and much to everyone’s surprise, landed on his rear end. Then, came the fight with Lennox Lewis.

This was supposed to be the fight of all fights. Everyone expected Tyson to be at his ferocious best and would give Lennox the fight of his life. “Iron Mike” didn’t even come close to hurting Lennox. As one boxing commentator said, ‘The bad boy of boxing got a spanking from Lennox Lewis.”

How did Douglas, Holyfield and Lewis do it? I think all three men found the amazing ability to look beyond the reputation of Mike Tyson, understood what they had over him and used it to their advantage. They boxed in a way that suited them rather than Tyson. The Lewis fight was particularly instructional. Lennox was the bigger man so he used his jab. He never allowed Tyson to really get close to him. Then, when Tyson got tiered, Lewis demolished him.

Most of us tend to look at the obvious. It often becomes easy to become focused on what the other fellow has rather than on what you have. Let’s face it, gossip magazines that pry into the lives of the rich and famous would be thriving if human beings were not obsessed with other people.

While following gossip is good fun – it is a distraction. Checking out other people becomes a means in itself rather than an act to achieve an objective. Let’s face it, there would be a lot more fortunes in this world if ten percent of the people following gossip magazines about the rich and famous decided to focus on being rich and famous themselves.

We all have our talents as much as we have our weaknesses. Yet, despite this, many of us fail because we become so obsessed with everything else other than using what we have, that we end up going nowhere.

I stress again, self-belief is not fantasy. In order to be useful, it has to be based on reality. Let’s look at American military campaigns as an example. America has undoubtedly the most powerful military machine in the world. The American government spend more on developing its military than the rest of the G20 combined.

As such, the American military lives on Napoleon’s truism that “God is on the side of big battalions.” Simply put, no army in the world will ever be able to stand up to the force of the US military.

Yet, despite this, the Americans have got stuck in places like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The image of the “world’s strongest military” running away on top of its embassy in Saigon has become iconic.

What happened? The insurgents understood that they would NEVER beat the American military in a pitched battle. However, instead of being intimidated, they realized that they had certain advantages and played to them. The American military planners failed to realize that there were other battles other than the pitched ones that would become more important to the scheme of things.

American military planners in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have been focused on things like troop numbers and guns. The insurgents in these places were focused on ensuring their people had their support and that the American people would not support the military campaign. The insurgent movements have fought their battles in such a way where their own people would die for them, while the American people would be against whatever their own military did.

Take the “Tet Offensive” as an example. In strict military terms, the Americans won on the basis that they killed more of them enemy. However, this became the turning point against American military action in Vietnam because, it was the point where the American public lost its heart for the fight – Say what you like but it was a damn good move to get American soldiers appearing to gun down “innocent civilians” on American TV. For a nation that takes pride in its role as a guarantor of peace and stability (a beacon of all that’s good), this was a little bit too much to bear.

Underdogs are not delusional. They merely understand themselves and the situation beyond the “hype” and “expectation” of convention. They then play according to what they know they can do best at.

     

Memories

Today is the 9^th of March, 2013. It is officially 16-years since the tragic accident of Exercise Swift Lion in New Zealand. It has been 16-years since Ronnie, the Gun Commander and Yin Tit, his gunner were killed in a freak accident in what should have been the crowning glory of their National Service Careers.

Although 16-years have passed, the memory of what I did on that day remains very fresh. You could say that I was fortunate not to be there first hand. I was in the battery that was waiting to go out to New Zealand. National Service was winding down and I guess you could say we were supposed to just mark time. Then, this incident took place and many things in our lives changed.

Suddenly National Service became serious. As they always say, it’s easy to be a hero in a simulation – it’s a different story when you have to attend a funeral of a friend you knew to be only a good guy. I’ve often described this as the last days of innocence that we had. The funerals that we had to attend suddenly woke us up to the reality that life was unfair. I knew Ronnie well enough. He was one of those chaps who would follow instructions to the letter. He was one of those who would go out of his way to help the most inconsiderate of us. He was dedicated to his job. Despite all of that, it was he who had to die.  

That incident simply didn’t make sense. Although the Committee of Inquiry has released its findings and officialdom has done its best to give us a sensible explanation of what happened, I still don’t understand why this good natured soul of all people had to have his life cut short.

I remember being unable to cry for a friend who deserved more than my tears. If anything, I was angry at a system that didn’t seem to give a shit for the life that was lost. From where I stood in Khatib Camp on that day, officialdom was more concerned with getting me to endorse a weapon system than it was about two young lives that had been cut short. It happened so suddenly that I’m not sure how many of us had time to be sad. It took me a good six-months and an unhealthy dose of vodka to be able to properly mourn a friend.

Sixteen years have passed. Most of us have built careers and families. Time has dulled the shock and pain from that incident. We have moved on with our lives. I believe that this is something that this is something that would have made Ronnie and Yin Tit happy.

Yet, there’s a part of me that won’t let go of these memories. For me this was the last days of my innocence. It was the time when I saw the worst in a system obsessed with perpetuating itself. It was the moment when I saw the best in people who found a way of reaching out to you.

Now, as I write this, I remember the moments that I was fortunate enough to share with Ronnie. I’m grateful that I’m blessed with good friends. I’ve loved intensely and been loved intensely. Yes, things could be better but they could also be worse. I wish I could tell my friend that I miss him and that he was here to share the highs and lows of growing older. It’s been sixteen-years since that terrible day. Now the anger and the pain have gone. I just miss a friend who deserved so many of the blessings life has.   

Will they join?

You could say that I’m living my life backwards. As I approach the big four-zero mark, I seem to be doing all the things that I should have done in my twenties. One of those activities is working at a restaurant. Most of my nights are spent waiting tables in an Italian restaurant near my home. The work isn’t going to win me Nobel Prize anytime soon but it keeps me busy and provides me with some form of exercise. The pay is disproportionately low for the hours worked but it funds my day-to-day living expenses and more importantly it helps fund my CPF (compulsory savings scheme that employed Singaporeans contribute to – a few have bitched about it being a hidden tax but as my Dad pointed out, it’s the only way most of us have the means to buy a home.)

I mention this aspect of my personal life because the experience of working in a job that is officially below my qualifications touches on one of the hot topics in today’s Singapore – jobs or the lack of them. The issue of jobs ties in heavily with everyone’s favourite hot topic – foreigners. As far as most Singaporeans are concerned, the influx of foreigners into the country is the key to all our social problems. One of the key social ills is jobs or the lack of them. If you talk to enough Singaporeans, many of them will complain that there aren’t enough jobs to go around and for those of us with jobs we’ll complain that they are so badly paid, it’s not worth doing them.

The issue is especially sensitive at the bottom of the social ladder. On one hand there is the argument that hiring forigners from the rest of Asia has helped depress wages at the bottom of the ladder thus pricing out the less educated Singaporean from the job market. The businesses have countered that Singaporeans won’t do the jobs so they have to get them from elsewhere.

Singapore’s normally pro-business government has decided to weigh in on the side of labour. In the recent budget announcement, the finance minister made it a point that businesses in certain sectors have become too dependent on “cheap” labour and have therefore ignored upgrading and becoming more productive. To change the situation, the government has increased the foreign worker levy to make foreigners less cheap than the locals and also introduced a slew of measures to encourage employers to become more “productive.” The sectors that have been targeted are retail, construction and F&B (food and beverage) as the sectors that need to up their game and become more productive.

In a way, this budget helps my blue collar persona. Well, the main point is things are going to look much better for that side of me. The employers in the industry are going to have a bigger problem finding people to do the work. The traditional source of labour will dry up and let’s face it, Singaporeans are not about to rush into the industry. Logic would have it that the owners of F&B establishments will have to be nicer to the Singaporeans who are already in the industry.

Let’s face it, the reality of the f&b industry is that it is a people intensive one. There are certain things that can be improved with IT. I think you’d have an instant hit amongst the various small restaurants if you had a bit of technology that would send the information straight to the cashier and the kitchen the moment the waiter takes an order.

Then there’s the issue of dishwashers. The big hotels wash their dishes by machine. The smaller outlets don’t. They have someone to do it. One of the key arguments is that they don’t have the space and human labour makes up for things.

Leaving aside these two areas, there’s arguably little that you can reduce. Perhaps some outlets can become ‘self-service’ restaurants. However, if you are planning on running a reasonably mid-priced restaurant, you still need the people to cook and serve the food.

So like it or not, the restaurant business needs people to keep things moving along. Unfortunately getting labour is going to be as tough as it has always been.

Let’s start with the obvious. Being in the service line is tough. It can be downright unpleasant especially if you have a ‘I won’t take shit’ mentality. I’ve had customers come up to me and challenge me to a fight. Apparently I didn’t see him wave at me and so after he got someone to take his order, he came up to me and asked, “Do you have a problem with me?” This is the type of thing that usually leads to someone having their face smacked in. However, I didn’t smack his face in – I had to get him to sit down and have his meal.

The job requires you to have a high level of tolerance for nonsense. You have to stay pleasant when the situation is such that you don’t particularly feel like being nice.

In a funny way, my years in PR have helped me to cope with the demands of the job. I’m older or at least I’ve reached the age where I’m more inclined to let certain things pass. I’m also at the stage where I’d rather laugh at things rather than getting angry or sad. Hence, I laugh at situations and for the most part, I end up laughing with customers and have a decent rapport with most of them.

I’m lucky. If you look at the demands of the job, you’ll see that one requires a decent amount of EQ rather than IQ to do the job. Unfortunately this is not the way the education system in Singapore has geared people up for. A good portion of the middle class, for example, have been raised by maids. How do you encourage people who have been brought up believing that it’s their birthright to be served to actually serve?

By contrast the Filipinos are used to providing service. A part of it is economics. Another part of it is probably cultural, where they’ve been more inclined to let things go.

This then brings in the question of pay or the lack of it. The F&B industry has always been known for being a tough paymaster. With the exception of executive chefs or restaurant owners, most people in the industry don’t earn pots of money. I have a friend who has worked in the industry for 25-year. He’s currently on a salary of $1,900 and considers it high. I know of a former restaurant manager who rose from $2,000 a month to $6,000 in 25-years. By comparison, I got $1,800 a month when I started out in my first agency job.

Long hours for relatively little money isn’t exactly the most attractive thing to bandy about when you are trying to get people to join the industry.

So what can be done? There are people who would rather be jobless than work in the industry. Pay could increase but then again, the question of how much pay do wages need to go up before people consider it attractive for the hours worked? That will be question for the industry to answer in the coming years.  

The Bridging Budget

Budget Day is probably one of the most significant days in the political calendar for most countries in the Commonwealth. It’s a time when even the most politically apathetic citizen becomes glued to the media watching events in parliament. Why? This is the one day in the political calendar when you get to find out how your personal finances might be affected by the government. The Finance Minister (Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK) gives a report on national finances and you get find out who ends up paying more or less taxes and who gets what subsidy.

Singapore’s Budget has just been announced. The Finance Minister, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam , a highly regarded economist (high enough for the IMF to make him chairman of the   International Monetary and Financial Committee), delivered a two-hour speech outlining the state of government finances and how he was going to manage the finances for everyone’s benefit.

What was particularly striking about this year’s budget was the fact that it seemed so obviously aimed at political issues. Generally speaking, politics in Singapore is a very technocratic affair. Election results are obvious and politicians, to use a PAP phrase, have been focused on doing “What’s right instead of what’s popular?” It’s argued that Ministers can afford to take the “long-term” view and things like immediate voter emotions are of very little concern.

Well, if this budget was anything to go by, things have changed. Mr Tharman’s budget was directly aimed at addressing “hot-button” political issues. Issues like the supply of foreign workers and growing income inequality were addressed in the budget.

Most strikingly was the announcement that he was going to raise property taxes on “investment” property – that is the property that only the mega-rich can afford. While the tax itself is not high or at least high enough to make the mega-rich squeal, the very announcement that he was going to tax “wealth” rather than “income” and that it was “fair” was earth shattering.

 The Singapore Government has taken great pains to send out the “right” message to the super-rich. We've spent the last decade selling ourselves as a place that welcomes the super-rich and a place that’s immune from populist measures of wanting to tax the rich out of existence. Singapore takes pride in welcoming billionaires from around the world. The Singapore Government is very tax friendly (I've never had a tax bill of more than $800 a year on an income of a shade over $40 grand and I have the whole year to settle my tax bill). Not only does it sell itself to the rich, the government also makes it a point to tell the population that being a playground for the rich is exceedingly beneficial.

So, its earth shattering for a Singapore Finance Minister to talk passionately and firmly about raising a tax on wealth and arguing that it’s the fair thing to do. He even went as far as to say that this was not something that could be avoided with efficient tax planning.

So, why is Mr Tharman going down this road? Well, the answer is politics. Talk to enough Singaporeans (I’m included) and most of us will inevitably tell you that we find that the cost of living is becoming ridiculously expensive. The public sentiment is such it believes that the government is rolling out the red carpet for the superrich and the expense of the ordinary wage earner.

It’s clear that Mr Tharman has read the ground well and he’s doing the politically astute thing by making a visible effort to do something about the ‘concerns of the people.’ He’s even defied various pressure groups – namely businesses or employers. The “foreign worker levy” is being raised significantly. This is something businesses are against. However, instead of caving into the demands of employers, the finance minister of the world’s most employer friendly country has proceeded to carry on his course.

All this sounds very good to me as an ordinary pleb. I don’t think I’m going to be able to afford a house in Singapore anytime soon. However, I am assured of the fact that my restaurant worker persona is going to stay employed for quite some time. Suddenly, a job that has traditionally been shunned by people with any sense (low wages and long hours) is going to look a bit more attractive.

While I am happy with Mr Tharman’s efforts and gestures, I wonder who is going to ultimately benefit. Will things actually turn out for the better?

I take the newly announced “Wage Credit Scheme.” This is a scheme that is meant to encourage employers to raise wages, particularly of the lower income group. The idea behind it is deceptively simple. If an employer raises a monthly wage, the government will pick up 40 percent of the tab. So if an employer raises a wage by S$200 a month, the government will give that employer S$80 a month for the next three-years. (http://www.singaporebudget.gov.sg/budget_2013/pc.html)

While this should provide an incentive for employers and employee’s to become more ‘productive’ on paper, the question remains, is it enough to work on the ground.

Let’s take the issue of the “jobs credit” scheme, which was announced in the 2009 budget. The idea behind this scheme was to encourage companies to keep jobs instead of outsourcing them or sacking workers. The scheme involved providing a 12% cash grant on the first $2,500 of each month’s wages for each employee on the CPF payroll (http://www.mof.gov.sg/budget_2009/key_initiatives/jobs.html)

Well, I don’t doubt that some jobs were saved. However, there were companies that simply didn’t know how to work the scheme. Take the SMRT Corporation as an example. Back in November, 2012, the SMRT Corporation got a nasty slap in the face when 100 of its bus drivers from China went on strike to protest against low pay.

The drivers were duly arrested and the system went into over drive about how the drivers had disrupted our social harmony and so on.

However, the online media decided to talk about the low wages that the SMRT Corporation was paying the bus drivers. The question of why can’t give equal pay for equal work was raised (An issue which the trade union leader promptly described as being “more complicated than that). Then the more crucial question of why we needed to hire bus drivers from China and elsewhere instead of hiring Singaporeans was raised.

The SMRT Corporation proceeded to talk about the high cost of hiring Singaporeans or the fact that Singaporeans were not interested in the wages that were being offered. The corporation also went onto talk about how it was losing money on its bus services, thanks to high wages and diesel prices.

This was an interesting claim to make. The SMRT Corporation has a virtual monopoly on a service that everyone has to use.  The company controls valuable real estate and has vast sources of income. How can it have insufficient funds to pay Singaporeans half way decent wages?

More interestingly, the SMRT Corporation has been a happy recipient of “jobs credit” vouchers.  If you look through the summary reports of their financial performance from 2009 – 2011, you’ll see that the company received this grant from the government. In the 2011 report, it even goes as far as to state that it’s wage cost went up because of “lower jobs credit.”  (http://smrt.com.sg/Portals/0/PDFs/About%20SMRT/Investor%20Relations/Annual%20Report/2011_SR.pdf)

So, here’s an interesting question. What happened to all that “jobs credit” grant? Not only does the corporation make monopoly providers profits, it also receives a subsidy from the tax payer.  That subsidy is given on the understanding that the company will not sack people and keep Singaporeans in a job.

So, how is it that the company has no money to hire more Singaporeans, particularly those at the lower end of the social ladder?

The government has come up with another scheme to help businesses improve productivity and get working. One has to question whether some of our biggest government owned companies will keep in line with the government’s objectives.  

Some Thing About Names

One of the first things that Westerners have to adjust to when moving to a Chinese-dominated society is dealing with names. There are cultural differences when dealing with names.

For a start, the Chinese start with the family name while in the West, the family name follows the given (Christian) name. For example, Tang and not Li is my surname. However, many Chinese, particularly the Western educated ones are fairly flexible with their names when dealing with Westerners. Many take on Western names. Lee Kuan Yew (Family name is Lee), Singapore’s founding Prime Minister goes by “Harry Lee” when he’s with friends and family.

Many Chinese also reverse their names so as to not confuse Westerners. One of Asia’s most prominent film directors went from being “Lee Ang” to “Ang Lee.” When I lived in the West, I was “Li Tang” (It took several years to accept that I had to reverse my name – mum said I had to be flexible so the Westerners wouldn’t get confused – I didn’t see why I had to reverse my name in the West when Westerners don’t do the same in Asia. However, I’ve adjusted and I accept my Western friends and family calling me “Li Tang” because that’s who I’ve been to them for so many years.). When I moved back to Singapore I became “Tang Li” (I’ve had to bite my lip from screaming abusive terms at business partners who have called me “Li Tang” at client meetings. – They’re Asian and we live in Asia.)

The other thing that stumps Westerners when dealing with Asian names is their pronunciation.  Chinese names are tough as many of the names break the rules of English. The example that comes to mind is “NG” (how do you pronounce something with no vowels.) If Chinese names are tough for Westerners, Indian and Southeast Asian ones are worse.

What I’ve just described is what you’d call the material that provides you with enough material for a slapstick comedy based on cultural misunderstandings. There easy ways to get round these issues.

There is, however, a more serious issue when dealing with names – namely the issue of trying to figure out relationships between various parties. While the Western world has a seeming number of surnames, the Asian one seems fairly limited. I suspect that many Westerners suspect that we’re highly inbred because you find that there are lots of people walking around any given Asian city with the same surname.

I think of how it’s considered quite a rare event for Grandma Millie (Step Dad Lee’s mother) to marry a man with the same surname. By contrast, in my father’s family we’ve had two generations of Tang’s marrying Wong’s (Grandpa and Grandma and one of my uncle’s married a Wong). If there seems to be lack of Chinese surnames, there seem to be even less of them in Vietnam – the place was filled with “Nguyen’s” and “Vu’s.”

Well, we aren’t that inbred. With Chinese names, a lot of it tends to be found in the way a name is “romanised.” Had to explain to step granny Joan (step mother Nora’s mother) that my family “Tang” was not related to the “Tang Emperors,” even though the names are spelt the same in English. The Chinese character for my family name is different from the ancient emperors. If you use the ‘pinyin’ of spelling my family name it would be closer to “Deng” I have an Aunt who lives in the USA. She has ‘pinyinized’ her family name to “Deng.” By contrast the rest of us are still on the Wade Giles form of Romanizing our name – hence we remain ‘Tang.’

So, I guess when you understand things this way, you’ll find that Asians are not as inbred as one might initially imagine.

Time to Go

The Chinese Year of the Snake has started out with a bang. The Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI would be resigning on February, 2013. His Holiness will be the first Pope in 600 years to voluntarily resign and the world’s 450 million Catholics will have to look for a new Pope.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who became Benedict XVI was a theological conservative. You can say that his conservative views coloured his Papacy. He was hit hard by events. The scandal involving the abuse of children by priest will undoubtedly mar his time as head of the Catholic Church. Then there were controversial moments – quoting a Byzantine Emperor’s remarks about Islam and pardoning a Bishop who openly denied the existence of the Holocaust come to mind.

Much will be said about his time as head of the world’s largest Christian Denomination in the years to come. For me, I would rather focus on one of the most crucial acts of his Papacy – his resignation and the reasons for it.

In his statement, the Pope said, “I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.” In other words – he was too old to carry on. You have to applaud him for this single sentence for several important reasons.

Let’s start with the fact that he’s admitting that he’s human and suffering from the consequences of age. You might argue that there’s no big deal here. However, he’s doing so from a position of power (As well as being revered by 450 million Catholics around the world, the Pope is considered a Head of State by International Law). History is littered with examples of old men in positions of power who forgot that they were human and prone to declining with age. Such men have done great things in their younger days and then undone their good work by hanging onto power when their time was up. Mao comes to mind as one of these figures. Thankfully for the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI is not going to be one of these men.

Giving up “office” isn’t exactly easy, especially when “office” grants you lots of power and very nice trappings. As mentioned earlier, people who have these offices often try to hang onto them until they need to be forcibly removed. The obsession of holding onto office ends up becoming so powerful that the person trying to hold on ends up damaging the “office” and the people that the “office” was supposed to serve.

Say what you like about this Pope but his act of resignation allows the Catholic Church the chance to choose a new leader, who may or may not be the right person to lead the Church in the next era. This Pope has admitted that he doesn't have the strength to do it and keeping him would only prolong the status quo. A new leader provides the Church with a chance to have a breath of ‘proverbial’ fresh air.

There is no guarantee that the next Pope will be drastically different from the current one. The Conclave of Cardinals selects one of their own and most of them have been brought up in the same traditions. However, who’s to say that the next Pope won’t have the energy required for the task ahead.  

Resigning has also helped ensure that the Church and the office of the Papacy will be separated from the man of Joseph Ratzinger. While the Papacy has survived its incumbents for nearly two thousand years, things are different in the age of the internet. The “office” like many others has come under constant scrutiny and people see and view “offices” by the people who fill them. Our expectations of the office are tied to the people.

Let’s just look back at Benedict XVI’s predecessor, John-Paul II. He was Pope for so long that he ended up personifying the office. It was so much so that everyone ended up associating the office of the Papacy with an old man who was practically drooling during every liturgy.

Benedict XVI by contrast will be leaving the Papacy while he’s still relatively healthy. It’s rare for Pope’s to do so. The last Pope who resigned did so 600 years ago. Pope’s tend to die in office. Perhaps this was fine when people didn’t live for a long time and didn’t have to perform in front of the TV or internet channels.

You might argue that the Papacy is a different institution from say the US Presidency. As such, it’s OK to keep a man in the same position for eternity. However, Papacy is a position of leadership. The Pope is a Head of State and there is a case that you should have Pope’s who are healthy and strong.

Benedict XVI may have made mistakes as Pope. However, the decision to admit his frailty and give up office is not one of them. This act of voluntary resignation may be the act that brings the Papacy into the modern age.

It’s Unpopular Speech that Needs Defending – Jessie Ventura, former Governor of Minnesota and Wrestler

There’s not been much happening on the career development front so in between my nights at Bruno’s (I still have bills to pay and Chinese New Year is round the corner), I’ve been trawling Youtube. In between getting my music fix, I’ve become a fan of speeches and interviews like people Congressman Dr Ron Paul and Jessie Ventura, the former Governor of Minnesota and wrestler. Both these men are often written off as part of the lunatic fringe by the mainstream Western Media. However, if you listen to them being interviewed by the likes of Fox News, you’ll find that both men make sense and more often than not end up running rings around their interviewers.

I’ve been particularly intrigued by Mr Ventura. I suppose the man appeals to me because he’s had quite an unconventional career. He’s been a Navy SEAL, bodyguard, wrestler, actor and the Governor of Minnesota.  Mr Ventura is a big man with a gruff voice. He looks more at home in a log cabin than he does in front of the books he’s authored.

Yet, despite all that, Mr Ventura is an intelligent man who makes a valid point. If you look at the interviews he was involved in that discuss the September 11, 2001 tragedy, you’ll find that Mr Ventura makes valuable points. He argues that the Bush II Administration lied to get America into a war and suggests that the attacks on the ‘Twin Towers’ was an ‘inside’ job.

These views aren’t exactly popular. If you watch the interviews that he gives, you’ll find the interviewers getting as emotional as they accuse him of being. When Mr Ventura suggests that the Twin Towers were blown up from within rather than crashed by the planes, you’ll find that the interviewers always yell, “How can you say that?”

Mr Ventura’s reply is inevitably, “I can because the constitution allows me to – popular speech does not need defending, it’s unpopular speech that needs to be protected.”

If you leave Mr Ventura’s thoughts about the September 11, 2001 attacks, you’ll realize that Mr Ventura has a point. If a society claims to value freedom of speech, it has to protect ‘unpopular’ speech as much as it allows ‘popular’ speech. If we claim that “Freedom of Speech” is ‘sacrosanct’ we have to put up with the fact that what is often said is …..well, garbage that you might not agree with. You work on the principle of “I hate what you say but I’ll defend your right to say it.”

When you look at things in this light, you’ll realize that Mr Ventura is performing a very important service for countries like America, which claim that it defends the right to “free speech” as sacrosanct.

Let’s face it, there is truth in the saying, “birds of a feather flock together.” Human beings will form groups with people they tend to agree with the most. I take myself as an example. The friends that I have made share many similarities to me. While we do have individual differences, we tend to share a common dislike for conventional wisdom. Like me, many of my friends have developed off-beat career paths, away from the accepted wisdom that it’s best to be under a big brand name company. Somehow or other, this strong similarity between us helps overcome whatever differences that we may have.

This desire to group together with ‘like-minded’ people tends to be the seed of culture formation. Mythologies about certain historical events develop because groups of people agree on certain things about the event and sooner or later everyone accepts things as conventional wisdom.

On the surface there’s nothing wrong with the development of conventional wisdom. However, there is a point when things become worrying – that is the point when the mythology of an event becomes sacred and it becomes a sacrilege to challenge conventional wisdom.

The first area where this is worrying is that this goes against the very concept of ‘freedom of speech.’ If you argue that ‘Freedom of Speech’ is sacrosanct, it does not mean that you only tolerate ‘Acceptable’ speech because you have to draw the line of “who” makes the decision of what is acceptable and what is not. Belief in “freedom of speech” means that you have to be prepared to be offended. You can then either ignore the speech that offended you or you can accept the points the other side made or you can refute the other side’s views with your own.

Then you have to look at the fact that when you make something sacred to the point of not being able to be challenged, you run the risk of closing all possibility to the fact that you may have been wrong and you also run the risk of killing ALL forms of innovation.

Let’s start with the killing of innovation. What is innovation other than the challenging of ‘conventional’ wisdom? Four centuries ago, it was conventional wisdom that the world was flat and the Sun evolved around the earth. Challenging those concepts was punishable by some horrible torture. Now, if you look at the history innovation, you’ll find that humankind only started making lots of progress in a hurry once the likes of Galileo and Copernicus challenged that conventional wisdom, paid the price for it and were proved right. 

The good creature comforts that most of us enjoy today have its foundation in the fact that people dared to challenge ‘conventional’ wisdom.

The other worry is that when you make something so sacred that it cannot be challenged, you hide the fact that the creators of the ‘mythology’ might have less than benign motives for creating the mythology in the first place.

Say what you like about Mr Ventura’s arguments about September, 11, 2001, but he has a point when he says that “Governments do lie.” He cites the “Gulf of Tonkin” incident which brought the US into conflict with Vietnam. Mr Ventura points out that this was a lie and 58,000 Americans of his generation died. His logic is not faulty when he points out that if the government lied over the “Gulf of Tonkin,” it is capable of lying over September 11, 2001.

In many ways historical events have proved Mr Ventura right. The Bush II Administration rushed into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the case of Iraq, the Administration sold the mythology that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and was a financier of the terrorist who attacked the ‘Twin Towers.’ Needless to say these two assertions have since been proved false.

Now, this comes from the American government, which is considered a relatively benign government. Can you imagine what less benign governments would do, especially if they had a public which was less questioning about the mythologies they created?

I think of Europe where it is illegal to question the “Holocaust.” If you want to go to jail, all you need to do is to make a public suggestion that the gas chambers at “Auschwitz” never existed.

Now, we can accept that this is an ugly incident in human, especially European history. However, has it made things any better for the parties involved?

Unfortunately, the answer seems to be no. As one Israeli media personality points out – “It’s a trick we always use and it always works – when someone in Europe is critical of us, we bring up the Holocaust.” We have asituation where the Europeans allow themselves to be blackmailed by Israel andEurope loses any credibility as being a force of good in the Middle East.  

So, what can we do? Well, we start by accepting that freedom of speech involves allowing the airing of views that might offend us. Then we have to accept that censorship is not the solution. The solution is to counter it with more free speech – you make a point and we’ll make ours with evidence. When you act like that and trust the majority of people to behave rationally, you become more credible. People can be converted if you listen and engage rather than try bully boy gangster techniques, which will only backfire.

  

Motivations

You have to credit the Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC who drinks in the Middle of Ramadan aka Thambi Pundek to provide the inspiration for the first blog post of 2013. A few nights ago he called me out to discuss an upcoming by-election.

If you can believe the Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC who drinks in the Middle of Ramadan aka Thambi Pundek, it seems that the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) is actually worried about losing a seat. The root of the Party’s worries can be summed up in three letters – AIM. Since the my fellow bloggers, particularly Andrew Loh of Public House and Alex Au of Yawning Bread, have covered the story, I’m going to avoid going into details. I will however, repeat the point that the ruling party’s reputation for honesty and transparency has taken something of a battering.

The Young Muslim Politician who fornicates with Prostitutes in Penang from Pasir Ris GRC aka Thambi Pundek was particularly keen to push me for ‘dirt’ on Andrew. In his words, Andrew is officially the ‘most powerful blogger’ in Singapore. He’s been trying to find out more about Andrew for several months. In one of those sessions of trying to find out more about Andrew, he asked, “Where does Andrew get his funds from? He’s officially unemployed. Why does he do it? There must be something there?”

I've always remembered that saying because it sums up one prominent fact about the powers-that-be. They simply don’t understand people who are motivated by something other than money and power.

If you look at the way Singapore operates, you’ll realize that the powers-that-be have been exceptionally good at using power and money to keep people in order. The scholarship system is a good example. Bright young things who might otherwise become trouble makers are given the chance to live an exceedingly cushy life. After a few years of living the good life, the best and brightest have no interest in over throwing the status quo – in fact they have every reason to preserve it.

On the surface of things, this is a brilliant way to get things done. As much as Singaporeans might bitch and moan about life, we’re not about to start a revolution in the manner of what happened in Tunisia and Egypt. Life is sufficiently comfortable either for ourselves or our loved ones to stop us from going onto the streets.

This is something that the powers-that-be have counted on for the last four decades. 

However, things are starting to change. The internet has given a voice to people who care about issues for the issues sake.

I think of guys like Andrew Loh and Alex Au, who have become part of an alternative voice to the mainstream in Singapore. Neither of them is making a lot of money nor are they about to win political office anytime soon. Yet, they continue to do what they do and have gained a sizeable following and reputation as a voice in Singapore. Why do they do what they do?

While I won’t call myself a close friend of either man, I know them well enough to say that both are motivated to things other than the material.

I think of my one meeting with Alex. I asked him how one could monetize one’s blog. He told me “don’t.” His reason was simple, if the blog became a commercial vehicle, I’d be beholden to commercial interest. If you think about it – he’s not wrong. Just ask yourself when you last read an article in a newspaper that was critical of one of the major advertisers.

Yawning Bread has no advertising. It’s free and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The content is exceedingly sharp and the analysis is authentic and honest. The blog continues to be widely read.

Let’s face it; there are people who believe in something other than the almighty dollar. These people are hard to manage because they are motivated by something other than the obvious. Yet, in a funny way, these are the very people that can make things happen. People may disagree with Alex and Andrew but they respect them for their authenticity. These are the people who can change minds.

Instead of trying to bully or buy these people, surely the powers-that-be should be thinking of ways to work with them. 

The Energy in New Ends

It’s been a relatively funny year and I've managed to end it feeling rather pleased with myself. Didn’t win the lottery and my financial prospects are not startling. However, I found a plan of sorts and stuck to it reasonably well enough to see results at the end of the year.

Events on the global front gave the blogger in me lots of talk about. The USA had an election and American voters, thankfully made the right choice. The world economy is in a mess and they voters decided not to hand it to someone from the group that was responsible for the mess in the first place.

Here, at home, in Singapore, the ‘gossip writer’ in me had lots of fun. This was the year of sex-scandals. It started off with the head of the Singapore Civil Defense and Central Narcotics Bureau stepping down because of a sex scandal. At the end of the year, the Speaker of Parliament has resigned over an extra-marital affair. In between you had a host of senior civil servants and prominent members of society being arrested for soliciting sex with underage prostitutes.  You could say that the proverbial worms are coming out of the can. For me, I’d like to think that these scandals are a sign of the powerful being held to account and Singapore deciding to be the country it pledges to be rather than the one with unspoken caveats – i.e. “regardless of race, language or religion (provided you have lots of money in your bank account)”

On the family front I had to say goodbye to my Dad’s oldest brother. Uncle Richard was in many ways the original maverick – the uneducated Chinatown Boy who made good. Unfortunately he forgot that it wasn’t just about making money – you had to keep the stuff and more worryingly he abused his body. His passing was a relief in as much as it was the end of his physical suffering. As much as I regard the passing of a sick old man as a blessing, I will also miss a much loved uncle.

However, there were some good beginnings too. Max, my younger brother has started his career in real-estate. He’s become more studious and both he and Caitlan look like they’re settling down into a very stable life together. My other siblings are also managing well. Tara has started her own photography studio in London and Christopher fully integrated into university life.

There was a big birthday party for me this year. Lee, my stepfather turned 80 and I made it to Washington State to spend time with him. He is thankfully healthy and his mind is still buzzing. However, it sometimes hard to be the decent stepson I’d like to be in as much as, I think it was hard for him to accept that it was now my turn to buy the good lunches.

It was also good to catch up with my stepsister, Carol and her family. I’m particularly happy that I got to attend the wedding of my step nephew, Brennon and his lovely wife, Chava, who is now pregnant. I think they’re going to make a very beautiful baby……

As for me, there was something of a transition of sorts. Joyce, the girl who had been such a central part of my life two-years ago left for China. In a way it was a relief. Although my relationship with her was exceedingly passionate, it was, as they say, a little too hot for most people to handle. She couldn't handle “us” and life in Singapore. I hope she’s finding some sense of balance in China. We still trade the odd email and thankfully she’s gracious enough to send me photos of Yooga once in a while. This little boy is a gem and I pray, that somehow, despite the adversities he faces, he’ll grow into a man that the world will admire, though I have to remember what he once told his mother at the age of four, “I’m NOT GOD, I DON’T know everything.”

Just as Joyce and Yooga left my life, Thuy, the little girl who showed me what it was like to live for something greater than myself, reentered it. The seven-year old girl I knew six-years ago is now a teenager of 13.

It’s taken a bit of getting used to each other again. I got to remember that she’s almost a grown woman and I have to respect that but at the same time she’s not quite a grown woman yet and the worries that one has for a small child remain. She’s also adjusting to me too and in between the usual teasing, she is acknowledging that I might be a force of good in her life.

You could say that this is God’s way of making me pay for all my past nonsense with the opposite sex. However, it’s a task that I take on with some amount of pride and someone remarked that having Thuy in my life has brought out the unknown “Responsible” Tang Li.

In terms of work, the highlight will undoubtedly be the PANIIT Conference, which took place in April, 2012. The conference brought together a host of some of the most prominent people in Indian industry and it allowed me to better understand the transformation of a giant country that was once known as backwater of contentious people.  While the vast majority of Indians live below the poverty line, there is a vast number who are educated and well to do. The group at IIT is on their way up and doing so in a hurry. This group is rich with ideas and some of them are now shifting their attention to giving back to where they came from, something which can only be good for India. For me, working with them was exhilarating and I’m grateful to continued friendship of Supriyo Sircar, CEO of Polaris Asia-Pacific and the new friendships with people like Amrit Barman from SAP, Dhruv Jain from Energizer and Mr KV Rao from Tata Power. I’m grateful for having had the chance to meet the likes of Mr R.Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director of Tata Sons and Arjun Mahlotra, one of the founders of Hindustan Computers (HCL) and Headstrong.

The other high point came from an industry that my family seems to be drawn to – the Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF). I am grateful to Mr Glenn Lim, Director 20twenty PR for inviting me to work with him for the three months of launching a festival that brought renown photographers like Stuart Franklin (he who shot the famous photo of the man defying the tank at Tiananmen Square) to not just display their works but to mentor aspiring photographers. There is talent in Singapore and it’s good that we’re looking to and learning from the world.

I also seem to have found a knack with picking up litigation support jobs. This year, I found myself supporting Mr PN Balji in a job that involved a trade mark dispute between the founding members of Ku Te Da. As the trial is still ongoing (lawyers are currently working on submissions) I won’t say much other than the fact that Singapore’s court rooms are a source of stories that are worth telling.

While I remain a media relations consultant, I’m also putting a foot in what could be a career change or a pension plan. I've been spending my weekends helping at a restaurant called Bruno’s. It’s an Italian Restaurant that serves exceedingly good food. I’m currently working as service staff and while the pay is not great, I am enjoying meeting people. Being part of the blue collar work force also helps me to better understand issues that I care about.

On the flip side it’s also good for my health. I've never been one for the gym so a job that keeps me on my feet has been good form of exercise. My blood pressure has lowered and I've managed to shed a few kilos.

While I've called Singapore home for the last decade, this is a year that I've also started to look at the region as an alternative for me. After many day-trips to Johor, I have now set up a fixed-deposit and savings account there. Malaysia has issues but it’s the most obvious place for Singaporeans to expand to. Both Singapore and Malaysia complement each other.  I don’t know how things will be but Malaysia has a certain amount of space that Singapore doesn't have and JB is close enough to provide one with extra space.

Vietnam is also interesting. Although it is still a third world country, it is dynamic and filled with a certain type of energy. After one trip I’d like to go back again and with a plan of sorts.

I don’t know what 2013 will bring. I just hope that I can grow what little I've managed to gain in 2012. There will undoubtedly be challenges but as always, I've come to accept that these are things to be relished and I hope that I remain healthy and able to grab the chances that I get in 2013. 

The World’s Grubbiest Baby and the Joys of Grubbiness

The week I spent in rural Vietnam has given me a new best friend. He is the smart half’s grand-nephew. He is also the world’s grubbiest baby.

In the day I got to hang out with him, he managed to turn his white shirt black. He refused my help to blow his snotty nose (though my t-shirt turned out to be quite attractive for that purpose when he decided to do it himself) and he was quite happy to feast on something or other that was on the floor. He also enjoyed rolling in mud. What I’ve described takes a little getting used to. My friends who have become parents would be stunned and might be trying to call some authority or other.

I would urge everyone to stop and appreciate the Grubby Baby. He is a well-adjusted two-year old. He was not intimidated by dogs even though many of them were bigger than him and he had no problem meeting people, including strangers. He was also exceedingly robust. He slept throughout the night and went to day care without any hassle. In short he wasn't any worse off than kids who had a nanny to follow them all over the place preventing them from stepping a toe on sanitized floor.

Grubby Baby reminds me of a conversation I had with one of the prominent ophthalmologist who had been to India. He listed all the things that the Indian hospital had done which would get the doctors barred had they been in anywhere else but India. However, at the end of the conversation he made a valuable point, namely, “The infection rates are not higher than they are here.”

 I have to ask – “Have we become so sanitized that we’re unable to handle the world as it really is?” Yes, I believe modern science and knowledge about hygiene have worked wonders. Things like rates of infant mortality have gone down and people are living longer and healthier lives thanks to modern science. Today there is no reason to die of diseases that were once considered fatal. We should be thankful for all these things and we should push our quest for knowledge even further.

However, the conversation with the good doctor and befriending Grubby Baby has given me the belief that there’s a need to expose our young to some of the rougher things that nature provides. There is enough science out there to show that the human body has a way of adjusting to its natural environment. There is evidence to show that people from the developing world develop antibodies that people in the developed world simply don’t have.

I guess the point is that the body develops resilience because it needs to. Someone from the third world develops antibodies that someone from the developed world doesn’t have because the person from the third world needs to. The saying that “necessity is the mother of innovation” also applies to nature and medical science.

As a society we pursue comfort and convenience. However, I think of the nutritionist, Dr Udo Erasmus who said, “Whenever someone tells you something is convenient you better run away from it – life isn’t meant to be convenient.”

His point was simple; you need to struggle for the best things in life. The human condition becomes stronger whenever it has to go through struggle. I look at the Grubby Baby and his happy robust smile. He’s gotten that way because he’s had to survive through the things nature throws at him. He’s happy to deal with dogs and people because they are part of his natural environment. The standard joke with a friend of mine is that if we placed the Grubby Baby (age two) in a boxing ring with the Young Pork Eating Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC aka Thambi Pundek (age 22), Grubby Baby would end up humiliating him. Grubby Baby can deal with nature and has struggled while the Young Pork Eating Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC aka Thambi Pundek has spent his life avoiding every possible struggle that life might throw at him.

Now I take the value of struggle even further. I look at Vietnam and the energy of the people. These are the people who threw of the yoke of French Colonial rule and then proceeded to see the back of the Americans despite having several tons of bombs dropped on them. If that was not enough, they then gave the Mainland Chinese a very bloody nose when their giant neighbor decided to invade. Now that the focus has moved from fighting wars to economic development, you find that the Vietnamese are doing good things. In the few days I didn’t see a single beggar on the streets of Hanoi. Instead of begging, people were finding all sorts of ways to make a living – for example, every corner of Hanoi is a food stall.

Like the Grubby Baby, these are people who have been exposed to nature, which is exceedingly beautiful and exceedingly brutal at the same time. These are people who understand that you have to survive on your own and somehow you have to get creative.

I think back to the strike by the SMRT’s Mainland Chinese and the government reaction of “Why Take Things into Your Own Hands when there are Proper Channels.” The Singapore Government and Singapore people have become too used to dealing with political and legal machinery that has made both parties conveniently oblivious to the realities of nature. The Mainland Chinese and other Asians are used to dealing with the realities of nature.

When I read comments by Singaporeans on how the PRC Chinese should have known better and accepted the conditions they were given, I shudder. We have become a people who have lost our human instincts to defend ourselves and become reliant on the system to get it right. Ask your average Singaporean about the struggle that people like Tibetans and Palestinians go through and you’ll find them grossly unsympathetic. There is no empathy for people who believe in struggle and they’re dismissed as people who are too stupid to understand they’re place in the system. This is unnatural.

Well, now we’re dealing with people who expect life to be a struggle. Yes they can take punishment that most of us can’t. However, they've reached the point where they cannot accept being abused and so they’re acting to stop it. This is unfortunately for Middle Class Singapore a reality and part of human nature.

The tough half is determined to move away from her roots. I’m conflicted because as much as I see her appreciation for safety and cleanliness, I also believe that she outclasses most people because she’s had to struggle. I think that if we get round to children, I’d like them to spend their early childhood as grubby babies rather than artificially sanitized ones.   

Who Gives a Shit, they’re Just Human

It’s been a week since I've come back from Vietnam and as things would have it, I've been given plenty to write about. If you were superstitious, you could say that the dragon (it’s the Chinese Year of the Dragon) has decided to swipe its tail to reveal the ugly side of the place I've called home.

I’m generally quite happy in Singapore. Anyone who’s lived here can tell you that the place has gotten plenty of the important things right. I will never tire telling people that Singapore is what a city should be – clean, green and rich. In terms of our basic facilities and amenities, we’re as good; if not better off than most places on earth (I’m comparing Singapore with developed cities in the USA and Europe). I do value things like the safety.

What gets to me about living in Singapore is the attitude of my fellow countrymen towards the less fortunate, particularly if the less fortunate happen to be dark and come from other parts of Asia. I've been living here for over a decade now and I should be immune to these things by now, but I’m not. You might argue that it’s a character flaw of mine but I get very upset whenever I come across the attitudes of Singaporeans towards “other Asians.”

Like with most things in Singapore, the ‘omnipotent’ government needs to bear a chunk of the responsibility for the development of this attitude. The government calls it being pragmatic. I would call it being a racist bully. We are currently killing ourselves to welcome ‘Western Bankers’ into the island. I've got nothing against Westerners per se, some of my best friends and family are. I've also got nothing against financiers per se.

What I do object to is how the group that brought us the “sub-prime” crisis is being billed as ‘heroic’ and ‘necessary’ for ordinary people. When three of them assaulted ordinary people, the police decided it was best to let them go and a few decided to defend them on the internet. The actions of the powers-that-be have sent a clear message – certain people need to be venerated.

Just as official policy venerates one group, it denigrates another. Try being Indian, Bangladeshi, Vietnamese, Pilipino or Mainland Chinese.  These groups work in the so called ‘dirty’ jobs that the locals won’t do and instead of making it easier for this lot to either make a living, official policy does the opposite. Just as we kill ourselves to welcome Western Bankers, we proudly sent gun boats to turn away Vietnamese boat people fleeing a war in the 70s and nearly 40 years later, we’re doing exactly the same thing. The government proudly denied entry to Vietnamese vessel that had the misfortune to rescue 40 Rohingaya’s fleeing genocide in their native Burma.

Perhaps the politicians are seeing something that I don’t see here but who we show compassion to seem grossly wrong. When Westerners who have been screwed out of their homes decide to turn on the bankers who screwed them, we rush to show compassion to the bankers. When people flee being imminent slaughter, we decide that they’re not worthy of our compassion. Not sure where the logic in that comes from.

Anyway, we've always known that politicians are an interesting lot. What gets to me is the attitude that people show towards the less fortunate.

Thankfully someone else has expressed outrage in another blog (http://limpehft.blogspot.sg/2012/12/heartless-government-heartless-people.html) and I’m not going to list out the attitudes that people have.

What I will say is that it necessary to make voices like the mentioned blogger more available and to turn youthful outrage into something more sustainable. It gets to me when you have a picture of people struggling to survive and the response, which is best summed up as, “Oh, they’re so dirty, they’ll affect my nice comfortable life.”  I think of Andrew Loh, publisher of Publichouse.sg,  who wrote a piece about the appalling living conditions on yahoo (http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/leave-tough-talk-aside-110105229.html) and had responses that were as immature as “Wah, you want to hire a maid for them ah”

What gets to me is that many of the commentators are not stupid or uneducated. Most are middle-class working professionals. So, I have to ask myself if being educated is really all that it’s cracked up to be. It’s like we've become so sanitized that we've forgotten what it is like to be human.

I think of my week in rural Vietnam with the other half’s family. People didn't have the facilities that we have. Yet they all had enough to eat and people helped each other. There was a sense of humanity there.

I’ll be honest here. I had internet withdrawal symptoms and I needed to get back to trying to work. I did miss modern amenities.

Yet, a day after settling back into modern amenities, I started missing rural Vietnam. The place energized me. I couldn’t place my finger on what it was that made me feel so energized after the place.  I've now figured it out. People over there have retained some sense of humanity. It’s something that we need to regain. 

Aren't You Luck that We Shit on You?

Singapore has just seen its first major industrial action in 26-years. On Monday, 26 November, 2012, 100 bus drivers from the Singapore Mass Rapid Transport Corporation (SMRT) decided to stop work in protest over their pay and working conditions. As expected, bus services were affected and the SMRT was left scrambling to find a way of dealing with the situation.

The great and the good have weighed in on the issue. The Powers-That-Be have been stunned. Singapore has prided itself in being “strike-free.” The official stand is, “This is illegal criminal activity and we cannot condone it – there are proper channels to air your grievances and you cannot take things into your own hands.” There is of course the other shock in that this ‘strike’ is led by Mainland Chinese – a group the government has led into the country in the belief that they’d be so grateful to be let into Singapore that they’d be even more docile than the local population.

What’s particularly interesting is the fact that a great number of comments in the online and mainstream media have been echoing this sentiment. One lady has gone as far as to call them “thugs” and accusing them of trying to hold the nation hostage. It seems that the government has managed to find itself on the right side of the backlash against its very own policy to open the flood gates to foreign labour.

Unfortunately, everyone seems to be missing the point here. The question that should be asked is – “What is it that made 100 Mainland Chinese strike?” Let’s face it, the Chinese are known as sturdy migrants who are able to take an enormous amount of rubbish that most other groups won’t take. Today’s migrants from Mainland China don’t come from the thriving metropolises of Beijing and Shanghai. A very large portion of them come from rural areas are untouched by the economic growth driving China. What you give them should be better than what they’re used to.

It turns out that the group was protesting against the fact that they were getting a vastly inferior deal to their Malaysian counterparts. According to the statistics released by SMRT an average Chinese driver was getting a good $400 a month less than his Malaysian counterpart. When the SMRT Corporation increased the pay of Malaysian drivers, it didn’t for the ones from China. A few have argued that the pay differential is not as great as it seems since the company subsidized the accommodation of the Chinamen by $270 a month per person. Unfortunately what it didn’t factor into the equation was the fact that the Chinamen worked vastly longer hours in return for their miniscule pay rise. Furthermore, the Malaysian drivers were hired as permanent staff, thus enjoying job security and regular pay increments, which the guys from China did not get (the guys from China are hired on a two-year contract).

Let’s face it, there is no rational way of looking at the comparison and realizing that the Chinese guys were getting a raw deal – raw enough for them to do something about it. Who is at fault? Whatever way you look at it, the SMRT Corporation has failed in basic communications and labour relations. Let’s just look at some issues here.

Are Chinese Bus Drivers Inferior to Malaysian Ones?

Some Singapore Chinese Graduate lady wrote on the Today News paper’s online portal that Chinese should have asked why they were getting paid less instead of complaining about it. The lady in question went as far as to suggest that the lower pay was due to inferior language skills of the Chinese bus drivers

Let’s start with the obvious; this isn’t the only time that people have complained about the lack of English language skills by people from China. Most of the complaints have come from the service sector. So given that complaints about the language skills of PRC nationals is not exactly new, why did the SMRT hire PRC drivers whose language skills may not have been up to par? As a business, it is surely in the interest of the company to ensure that the people it hires can communicate with their customers.

The Second Point is that the key element of driving a bus is driving skills rather than language skills. Yes, you do need to communicate basic messages to passengers – ie you got to be able to advise people on certain routs but other than that your job as a bus driver is to drive well and safely. Nobody has shown any evidence what so ever that  PRC drivers were inferior in this crucial aspect of the job to their Malaysian and dare I say, Singaporean counterparts.

So, how exactly were the PRC chaps inferior to the other nationalities to the extent that it justified being paid less money than their counterparts for doing the same job?

China is a developing country; its citizens can afford to live on less – The Pittance they Earn here is a Fortune Where they Come From 

Yes, China is developing and its people have lived on less than most. However, this argument doesn’t exactly hold water. Contrary to what many Singaporeans might like to think, migrants do bring their families over and often have to support them.

Furthermore, while what one earns in one country might seem like a fortune in another, the fact remains that most of us have to live in the country that they work in. I remember that when I lived in England, it felt like earning a salary in England would make me a rich man – everything penny earned in England would be three times what it was in Singapore.  Unfortunately that changed when I had to pay bills in pounds.

So while one might comment about how people from China, India, and Bangladesh etc are earning a fortune when converted into their native currencies, they forget that our foreign labourers have to live in Singapore and pay their respective bills in Singapore dollars. What they do send back home has to be at a cost of denying themselves.

The closest anyone has to earning a strong currency and spending in a weaker one are the Malaysians who live in Johor Bahru. The distance between Singapore and Johor is reachable by train and bus. It is possible to live in Johor and work in Singapore – earning Singapore dollars and spending Ringitt is possible. It’s a different story for the chaps from Mainland China. They can’t take a bus back to China every night and spend their hard earned Singapore dollars in Chinese Yuan.

There are Official Channels they should not have taken things into their own hands.

Yes, there are official channels. Workers in Singapore can always go to their HR departments and if the HR departments don’t listen there is always the regulatory authority, which in this case is the Ministry of Manpower. If you are really desperate you can bring it to the courts.

While the system is wonderfully transparent on paper, there is a major flow – going through it requires time and money. Lawyers for one have never been known to be cheap and going through any government ministry requires time. 

While the Ministry of Manpower is considered effective in what it does, it still takes 11-weeks to investigate claims made by workers against employers. While it might not seem like much time to the bureaucratic machinery, this is a lot of time for a worker, particularly the ones at the bottom of the rung who have to feed themselves and are often forced to stay in accommodation provided by the very employer they are making a complaint against.

Do you expect the economically disadvantaged to rush through the system? Rightly or wrongly, the poor, particularly those from one-party systems, don’t expect to get a fair deal.

Unfortunately, the Singapore system hasn’t exactly made itself known to be particularly ‘labour-friendly.’ Let’s face it; abusing your foreign domestic worker is less of a crime than libel against politicians. Our system has allowed a contractor to keep his workers in conditions so harsh that one of them died from chicken pox. Despite repeated calls to the police, nobody did anything until someone died and when that happened, the courts slapped the contractor in question with a mere $10,000 fine.

Contrary to what Singaporeans might believe, such stories do get around the migrant communities. The system brags about how our courts work for settling commercial disputes. While other system’s might show that the small man can win in the courts once in a while, Singapore doesn’t bother to announce those victories.

So, while the powers –that-be might talk about going through official channels, we need to look at how ordinary people perceive the system. If desperate people do not believe they have a fair chance of dealing with the system, isn’t logical that they will look to get what they perceive to be justice outside the system?

The Law Says You Have to Give Two Weeks’ Notice to Strike

Yes, this is technically and legally true. However, anyone who expects people to follow this rule when they perceive the system to be against them is living in lalala land. Sun Tzu argued that surprise was one of the key elements of victory.

The Times Have Changed

Let’s face it, the bus drivers broke the letter of the law and they will have to face the music. However, sweeping this incident under the proverbial carpet would be a gross mistake. Whatever one might think of this "strike" the point is, the Chinese Bus Drivers have made people notice them and pay attention to their complaint. While one might bleat on about how they should have gone through the "proper channels," we have to ask ourselves if we'd even know about the pay discrepancy between Chinese and Malaysian Bus Drivers. Would we even know about dormitories? 

Strikes can harm an economy. Let's look at the militant unions who crippled the UK economy in the 70s as an example of what not to accept. 

However, no strikes are not necessarily an example of healthy industrial relations. Workers keep quiet because they need their jobs. Businesses do benefit with lower cost, including labour cost. However, there's a point when people will not except being treated unfairly or when you pay them at such levels where they are barely surviving. Just as people don't choose to be suicide bombers as a career choice, people don't go to work to strike for the sake of it. 

So, SMRT and Singapore Inc needs to treat this as a wake up call to do something about bringing the management of industrial relations into the current era. The days when workers are willing to accept minimal wages as being good for society are long gone.