Life after Harry

The Chinese Year of the Goat is starting on a rather auspicious note for Singapore. The Goat Year, which is supposed to be a fairly gentle year, started out with the news that Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew had been taken to hospital and is now on “life support.” While we should wish Mr. Lee a recovery, we are witnessing an end of an era. Mr. Lee has been visibly frail since the death of his wife in 2010 and at the age of 91, he’s lived beyond the two score and ten recommended by the Bible. His passing should be something that we expect.

While Mr. Lee has remained out of the public eye since he resigned from the Cabinet after the 2011 Election, he’s been the driving force of modern Singapore. I remember a prominent journalist describing as the “Era of Lee Kuan Yew,” and he went on stress that this was despite the fact that, “Lee Hsien Loong [Mr. Lee Kuan Yew’s son] is now the Prime Minister and Goh Chok Tong was the Prime Minister for 14-years.”

Mr. Lee was our first Prime Minister. He and his initial governments played a role in creating the policies and institutions that have made Singapore what it is. Mr. Lee was a great visionary. He insisted on things like integrity in the public service and promotion by merit.

Not only was Mr. Lee a visionary, but he also had the rare gift of being a visionary with a pragmatic streak. He had the good sense to surround himself with competent deputies like Goh Keng Swee and Rajaratnam. Mr Lee fought the political battles and allowed his deputies (especially Dr. Goh) to get on with the work.

The results of his vision and pragmatism are visible. Singapore is now a thriving, prosperous, green and safe metropolis. Despite its limited geography, Singapore is held up as a model of what a city should be. The emerging Asian giants, China and India have sent government officials to Singapore to study how Mr. Lee did. India’s recently elected Prime Minister, Narendra Modhi is a fan of Mr. Lee.

While Mr. Lee did some nasty things like ruin his political opponents (there are political prisoners who have been incarcerated longer than either Nelson Mandela or Ang Sung Su Kyi), he has been on the whole a good force for Singapore. Let’s face it, Singapore measures up pretty well in just about everything and these days that comparison is not with third world backwaters like Angola but with the developed nations of the West like the USA and members of the European Union.

So, why aren’t Singaporeans, especially the younger generation showing much emotion over the possible demise of the man who was probably the root cause of the good life that they enjoy.

My personal feeling is that Mr. Lee forgot one of the most important lessons of business – never fall in love with your own business. The man who made “succession planning” and obsession couldn’t help but to create consultancy positions in the cabinet of his successors. He was Mr. Goh Chok Tong’s “Senior Minister,” and then, when his own son took over, he became the “Minister Mentor,” or the man they still needed around to “mentor” the people he chose to run the country.

While nobody can doubt Mr. Lee’s wisdom and the fact that he’s been right about so many of the crucial issues, there comes a point when one forgets that times change and the methods that worked yesterday may not work today. You could say that Mr. Lee was the father of the nation and he was the father that forgot that the children had grown up.

One of the most common failings was to stick onto the myth that he and his party created – they were the party that brought the nation from swamp to thriving metropolis in a generation.

While the PAP and Mr. Lee deserve credit for bringing Singapore up in the world, the message had become lost on a generation that never lived through things like the Japanese Occupation or the riots of the 60s. There’s no point telling a retrenched manager with a mortgage and family to feed that he has it easy when compared to the generation that survived the Japanese occupation. What he wants is to find a way of making a living so he can feed the family.

There were also times when the obsession with the past record was more than just out of touch – it was self-serving. One of the worst moments came when Mr. Lee proceeded to sold Singaporeans for being complacent about national security when there were calls for the Minister in charge of national security to resign after that Minister allowed a terrorist to waltz out of a secured facility. Mr. Lee was known for being ruthless with his own ministers in extracting the highest standards and competence and integrity. Suddenly he was proudly defending the incompetence of his son’s ministers. To a generation of Singaporeans who had grown up thinking of Mr. Lee as a great man who did things for the nation, this was a rude shock. Had he grown to love his power more than his people?

As a young Singaporean, I find Mr. Lee’s demise sad but hopeful. The man had faults and his frailties. These weaknesses have damaged certain aspects of Singapore. However, when you compare him to his contemporaries in Southeast Asia, he did place some safeguards against himself. Singapore’s elections are really run in a “free and fair manner” (the ballot is secret, even if the ruling party may like you to think otherwise.) Mr. Lee did step aside in 1991, unlike Suharto who had to be pushed and confined to house arrest or Marcos who had to flee the nation.

 If one looks at Mr. Lee’s family, you have to hand it to him for ensuring they stayed in line and played by the rules. Our current Prime Minister was required to take the same exams that everyone else took. As a reservist colonel pointed out, “Lee Hsien Loong and Lee Hsien Yang went to OCS (Officer Cadet School) and trained – they did not get 12-year deferments of National Service and then got posted to study soil.” The Elder Mr. Lee has kept certain things in line, which many of his contemporaries did not – one only has to go back to how the Suharto family seemed to own as well as run Indonesia.

You could say Mr. Lee’s problem was to set high standards for public officials and the angst that many Singaporeans feel towards the once almighty government is the fact that they feel its moved away from the standards that Mr. Lee set.

It would take courage to admit this but should any government recognize and act of these mistakes, they would have secured Mr. Lee’s decent legacy for the betterment of Singapore.

When You Invade Us it’s a Crime. When We Invade You – It’s called Liberation.

I’m not American but I have family from the States, so you could say that I have something of a special relationship with America. American and Americans have been a “blessing” to my personal life. By some twist of fate, my mother remarried, Lee, my first stepfather and that provided me with the experience of growing up in the West. My Dad remarried Nora and that gave me a special relationship with Chicago. As I’ve grown older, I’ve found myself getting closer to my American siblings Tara (Mum’s daughter with Lee) and Max (Dad’s son with Nora). My American families (yes, I can claim more than one) rock!

Without descending into mindless patriotism for my American family and friends, I do believe America deserves the title of “Greatest Nation” in history. The USA is the only nation that I can think of that was founded on the right of the individual to pursue happiness – it even says so in the Constitution. That little idea spread around the world and has helped unleash more prosperity and scientific innovation that has raised the human standard of living beyond anything before it. American power is not just about corporations or the military but also in its universities, which are centres of excellence. While America may have an inequality issue, it remains the one place that rewards excellence and so continues to rule.

While I have fond feelings for America and Americans in general, I’ve noticed that a worrying trend of late. American politicians and corporate types seem to be developing a rather entitled world view. One only has to think of the way in which American bankers (encouraged by the American media) were happy to lecture South East Asia about the need to let bad banks go bankrupt back in the Asian financial crisis of 1997. A decade later, what were the Americans doing but bailing out banks that had criminally taken money from hard working Americans and lending it to their cronies who then proceeded to invest the proceeds in bonuses for – themselves.

I don’t dispute that it was important to let Asia’s bad banks go under. Many had made bad investment decisions, often shoveling money to the dubious scams of the well connected. Life is that simple, when you do something wrong, you face the music and that was the case for many of the businesses in the region.

But why didn’t the same medicine apply to America? Well, there was this phrase called “Too Big to Fail.” Translation – there would be too many finance types looking for jobs and that would be somehow bad for the world?

I guess there’s some justification to protecting the greed and stupidity of an elite few in the same way that American politicians justify invading other people. Think of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, which was sold as “Liberation” of Iraq. Yes, they got rid of Saddam but the Iraqi’s didn’t quite see it that way and started shooting back at American troops. Net result – ISIS.

By some strange logic, the American politicians who invaded Iraq to “Liberate” (we’re doing you a favour by bombing you) were quick to denounce the evils of Vladimir Putin who managed to annex the Crimea (majority population ethnic Russian) without firing a shot. Not sure how that worked but apparently Putin is wrong for doing what America did….

In the latest round of American corporate humbug, you have the American airlines – specifically Delta, United, Continental and American Airlines whining about how Emirates, the plucky little airline from Dubai is stealing customers through unfair government subsidies.

Thankfully, the Chairman of Emirates, HRH Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, has a simple message for his detractors – “offer the best to passengers and people will fly with you.”

Emirates is an affordable airline. I prefer to fly Emirates when I go back to Europe. Service is good and the planes are well kept. By contrast, Delta, United, Continental and American Airlines offer miserable service. Is anyone surprised that they’re losing customers to Emirates?

America, as I’ve said on so many times is great and as a nation it’s been a force of good. However, American corporate honchos and politicians need to understand that there are no entitlements in the real world. Asians, Africans and Europeans have a religious duty to ensure that Americans (particularly the White variety) don’t get their way automatically. It’s the only way you make the world a better place. 

The Cautious Captain Who Got the Ship Between the Rock and Hard Place

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud died last Friday (23 January 2015) of old age. The desert monarch had ruled the desert kingdom for a better of a decade and had found himself playing a very unique role in what is one of the most turbulent regions of the world. World leaders like US President Barak Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor, Angela Merkel paid tribute to him as leader with vision, courage of conviction and a reformer who supported women’s rights. At the other end of the spectrum human rights groups lambasted the man for keeping women’s rights down and there were those who called him an “A Zionist Agent who kept his fellow Muslims poor.” (Didn’t help that one of the tributes came from Israel’s president).

The demise of King Abdullah comes at an “interesting” time for Saudi Arabia. At the time of writing, the price of oil has dropped tremendously and after years of budgetary surplus, the Kingdom now faces a few years of deficit. The world media has made much of the fact that the Kingdome faces the fanatics of ISIS on its northern border with Iraq and a resurgent Al Qaeda in the southern border with Yemen. Youth employment remains stubbornly high. King Abdullah’s legacy will perhaps be judged by the way Saudi Arabia deals with these issues.

I personally hope that Saudi Arabia makes it through and that the new King Salman finds the wisdom and ability to do what needs to be done. For all that it said of Saudi Arabia, it remains the country that gave me my proudest moment as a PR professional when I assisted Dr. Amin Kurdi, the former Saudi Ambassador to Singapore in the smooth running of the visit of the late Prince Sultan to Singapore in 2006.

I remember that job as being one of the most of the most challenging for the very fact that I stood in between a host of conflicting interest. There was a cultural clash between the Saudi and Singapore side. Add to that, there were a host of other conflicts that needed to be managed. The two ministries I had to deal with on the Singapore side had a private turf war. On the Saudi side, you had something similar. The 40 odd journalist who had come along the ride didn’t exactly enjoy the presence of the chaps from the Ministry of Information (“Ministry of Misinformation” – as one of the more prominent Saudi editors called them). Yet, somehow, I managed to get things done and at the end of the day, when I spoke to the words “Insha Allah – we will meet again,” to the departing Saudi Party, I meant it.

You could say that what I faced on that job was merely a microcosm of Saudi society at large. For the most part, Saudi society is conservative and traditional. However, the majority of young people are young. The royal family draws legitimacy from its alliance with the Wahabi Sect, one of the strictest versions of Sunni Islam (the Saudi King’s most important title is “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosque”) and yet, the same royal family understands not only the need to be part of the modern world but enjoys aspects of the modern world. You are talking about a society where women are required to dress from head to toe in black robes to “reduce the lust of men” but at the same time, Saudi women are one of the biggest buyers of lacy underwear.

It takes skill to manage a society with that many contradictions and while Abdullah may not have lived up to the billing he initially received in the Western Media (“reformer”), the man did get things done without disrupting the system.

I guess you could say Abdullah ranks somewhere between Gorbachev and Deng Xiao Peng. I’m old enough to have lived through the Gorbachev era when we hailed him as the reforming visionary who would end the Cold War. The man suddenly opened up the once closed Soviet System and we hailed him as a great hero, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

However, events proved otherwise. Mr. Gorbachev underestimated a genie that had been bottled up for long. Political openness unleased pent up emotions that Mr. Gorbachev didn’t know how to handle.

By contrast, Mr. Deng knew how to tinker with the system. First a zone here and zone there was given a bit of freedom and slowly but surely parts of China prospered. While China remains a Communist Dictatorship, it’s a very prosperous one. What freedoms that people have come from the fact that the masses have tasted the good life and won’t allow the turning of the clock back to the old days of Maoist absolutes and the Cultural Revolution.

King Abdullah, may well be a milder version of Mr. Deng. Like Mr. Deng, King Abdullah has maneuvered a minefield of special interest.  Like Mr. Deng, the King has shown his ability to be ruthless. Who can forget that it was the “Great Reformer” in Mr. Deng who authorized the killing of Tiananmen Square in 1989? It’s the “reformer” Saudi King Abdullah who sent troops into neighbouring Bahrain to crush an uprising and sent money to back rebel forces against Syrian President Bashar Al-Asad, many of the groups of which formed part of the notorious Islamic State.

However, like Mr. Deng, King Abdullah did take risk that have touched parts of Saudi society. I remember filming women in Al-Faisaliyah Mall in Riyadh in 2006. The assigned tour guide commented on how much things had changed under Abdullah – young Saudi’s worked at Starbucks like coffee joints and women were fairly happy to be filmed.

Doesn’t sound like much to anyone outside Saudi Arabia but if you look at my guide’s comments, the Abdullah reforms had brought about some release for the people. There was some form of progress.

On the economic front, King Abdullah should also be given credit for recognizing that the Saudi economy needs to run on something other than oil. While the economy remains heavily dependent on oil, the Saudi’s have started to court foreign investment in the ‘non-oil’ sector via it’s agency “TheSaudi Arabian General Investment Authority’ or SAGIA, which is staffed by young, bright and Western Educated people like its Asia Pacific Director General, Meshari Al Khaled.

Furthermore, King Abdullah’s reforms have to be seen in the context of his contemporaries. While the Saudi System may not be perfect, many of the comparisons in the region aren’t much better – one only has to think of IS. Saudi Arabia may not be a bastion of women’s rights but Saudi women do go to school. Doesn't happen in the IS run parts of Syria and Iraq.  

Perhaps the most significant initiative that King Abdullah came up with was his 2002 and 2007 plan for peace in the Middle East. The offer was simple – Israel would withdraw to its legally recognized borders of 1967 in return for diplomatic recognition from all 22 members of the Arab league. This was an “Arab” idea made public. The man called for the US or Europeans to support him. Unfortunately, he was effectively screwed by his American ally who proceeded to encourage Israel not to even consider this. I will always remember Dr. Amin Kurdi’s reaction when he was asked by Clement Mesenas who interviewed him for the Today Newspaper what the Arabs felt about Israel’s need for security. He said, “We gave them a way out of their security problem and they rejected it.”

History has a way of judging rulers. Abdullah promised reform but many of his reforms were only delivered at a glacial pace. It should be no surprise that the youth are impatient for change and the more conservative fractions of Saudi Society have not forgiven him for the mild reforms of appointing a woman as deputy minister of education. Some Western papers have called him a “failed reformer.”

I believe that you need to look at the man in the context of his society and what he faced. The fact that he managed to get the few things he got done without a major revolution that is common elsewhere around him should speak volumes of his skills as a leader. Let’s pray that the King Salman, his successor finds the same skill to bring the Kingdom into the new world in the same manner that his predecessor started to do. 

The Man Who Gave Made the Law Just.

Singapore lost one of its most prominent criminal lawyers on 7 January 2015. Mr. Subhas Anandan, Senior Partner of RHTLaw Taylor Wessing died of heart failure at the age of 67. In more than three decades, “Subhas” as he was known, defended some of Singapore’s most notorious criminals like Antony Ler, the man who paid teenagers to kill his wife and Took Leng How, a retarded man who was accused of killing the China-born toddler Hwang Na back in 2004. Subhas was known as a man who would happily defend some of the “worst” criminals free of charge (back when it wasn’t common practice for lawyers to do pro-bono work).

The tributes are pouring in and one of the most common points about the man was that he was someone who stood up for people. The act of taking on scum bags and defending them in a court of law was a reminder that justice is only done when even the scum bags have the chance to present a case in court and they get convicted on evidence rather than political convenience or popular opinion.

All these things about Subhas are true. However, to me, Subhas was more than just an advocate for scum bags. He was an important figure in my childhood, who would remain in the shadows of the life is lived like some mysterious guardian spirit.

Subhas was my mother’s university mate and they remained good friends for over four decades. Her friendship was such that when I first moved back to Singapore for National Service, her first words to be were, “If you’re in any trouble – give Uncle Subhas a call – he’ll defend you. He won’t do it for the money – he’ll do it because you’re my son.”

Well, thankfully, I never had to call on “Uncle Subhas” to get me out of a sticky situation. The closest I ever got was needing legal advice when I was planning to get out of a very troubled marriage to Gina. Uncle Subhas wasn’t a divorce lawyer but he got me over an hour with two of his colleagues from Harry Elias Partnership free of charge (An hour with a junior associate with a big law firm is usually enough to bankrupt most people). That very crucial meeting set me on the path of getting out of a relationship that would have been disastrous.

Many years later, I’d run into Uncle Subhas at MediaCorp studio. He was the legal advisor on a show that was talking about domestic violence, while I was one of the interview subjects. Half way through, he actually said,”A man who hits a woman is a coward.”

This was him at his vintage best. While Uncle Subhas was a great lawyer, he was also a man of the people and he stuck to his principles, even when it was worse for him (he served a prison term). The law for him was about seeing that some form of justice was done and yet at the end of the day he never became blinded by his beliefs. I guess you could say that he was an idealist and a realist at the same time.

With the exception of a few encounters of the street, I never saw Uncle Subhas again. Mum would take pains to visit him and his family whenever she was in town but somehow, I never visited. As such, I can’t claim to really to have known the man in his final years.

However, he was an important character in my life. He was Mum’s divorce lawyer, even though he didn’t really believe in divorce. Yet, the way my parent’s ended their marriage was perhaps a blessing for me in that they did it with minimal harm to me and I think he had an influence in that respect.

I also think of the role he played in mine. I think the two instances I’ve had with him, was his way of showing me that there is a right way of doing things. By some fluke, Gina and I ended it legally and cleanly and I think he had a role to play in that.

I can’t say I’ll mourn him the way my Mum will. However, I can say that I’ll miss him. Although, I never really saw much of him other than what I got to see on TV or through reading his book or hearing my Mum talk about him, he was a presence that made a difference to me.

I wish I had made a more prominent effort to keep in touch when I first moved back to Singapore. The little I got of him, helped me at crucial junctures in my life. I wish I had the chance to know him better. He was the man who believed in justice in the law. His life touched so many and it was my privilege that my Mum insisted I call “Uncle.”

You May Not Like the Presence of Darkies from Other Parts of Asia ...But .....

The New Year is barely five-days-old and Singapore’s patch of cyberspace is once again ablaze with self-righteous indignation.

Apparently, a Filipino radiographer at Tan Tock Seng Hospital “tweeted” something unfortunate about how the Filipino’s were taking jobs away from Singaporeans and were going to take away our promised land from the wimps that we are.

Singapore’s so called guardians of national pride are up in arms. The general refrain is that “how dare this Pinoy whom we gave his cushy job to insult us – fuck off back to Pinoy land if you don’t respect us.” The usual complaints about how the Filipino’s and other dark skinned Asians don’t know how lucky we Singaporeans are has allowed them to come in and work at wages that they could only dream off.

The comments that were made, were indeed rude. They were insulting to Singaporeans and let’s face it, no host likes being insulted.

Having said that, they were stupid remarks and should probably be left there. You could say the guy is an arsehole and leave it at that.

What we should not do is to try and get ourselves worked up over the presence of the Filipino community in Singapore, which is the community responsible for helping us enjoy the cushy things that we do. Whatever one may think of the Singapore government, one has to admit that our physical infrastructure is pretty darn good – it’s actually comparable to anything you get in the developed nations of Western Europe or the USA. What we should remember is that someone has to maintain it and keep things going and that task falls heavily on the Filipino Community.

I’ve worked in a restaurant for the past two years. The restaurant business is great place to see how things function in Singapore. We, as a well to do nation enjoy the fine things in life. Singapore’s national pastime as they say is having a good meal. As we become more affluent, we start to appreciate finer dining establishments, serving things like good steak and a nice bottle of wine. If I take a look at who the big spenders at the restaurant are, I’d say that there is an increasing number of local Singaporeans. Yes, the Expats spend more on average but local Singaporeans can no longer be counted as bread and butter customers.

Unfortunately, you need people to keep things moving. The restaurant business is a people business and despite the technological advances we’ve made, you still need people to serve you, cook the food and wash the plates. This is a business that is notorious for long hours and low pay (As stated a few times before, I’ve made more from writing a single press release than I have in a month of working in the restaurant).

Herein lies the rub – there’s work to be done but it is physically demanding and the pay is nothing to shout about. You live with the fact that your busiest hours are everyone else’s rest periods. This combination makes the job terribly unappealing to Singaporeans with more than two brain cells.

So, who steps in to do the work? In the case of Singapore’s restaurants it’s usually the Filipinos. The community has become essential to the backbone of Singapore’s food and beverage industry. Go into any dinning establishment and chances are you will be severed by a Filipino.

What you won’t see is the fact that the Filipino chap will often be the most overworked and underpaid person in the establishment. If you think of small establishments, you’ll find that the Filipino is often the chap who has worked in both the kitchen and the service line. As well as working as the waiter and kitchen helper, he will also have to double up as electrician, plumber and general repair man. This is the chap who works 12 hours a day, six days a week and does so without much complaint.

By contrast, you have the Singaporeans who won’t take on fifty percent of the jobs that are available. I’m not talking about people with pots of money who shun these jobs. The people who shun the jobs on offer, are the very people who could do with the money. In Singapore’s rather strange definition of “pride,” these are the people who are too proud to be seen to scrub dishes in the kitchen but are proud enough to ask you to top up their bus cards and buy them a few beers.

The most common excuse that these chaps give for not wanting to do jobs that are done by the Pinoys and other Asians is the fact that they can’t afford to work them. Wages are too low for them and apparently you can’t support a family on the wages that are on offer. However, the guys who make these statements are the guys who haven’t supported their families in years and somehow they’ve got the idea that no pay is better than low pay

.

That’s at the most extreme. If you get Singaporeans entering the industry, you’ll find that they’re the least inclined to work properly. I think of my Christmas in 2014. I wasn’t scheduled to work the lunch shift. However, I got a call begging me to come down to help out. The reason was simple, the Italian and Pinoy that I work with were overwhelmed with customers. Their assistant was Jie-Jie-Ka-Ni-Na (Hokkien for Older Sister Motherfucker). Jie-Jie’s idea of help was sit by the cash register and avoid trying to push buttons in the cash register. After two attempts at pushing buttons, the young lady in question was about to go into cardiac arrest from overwork. My presence in the restaurant helped boost morale or rather it was the fact that I showed up, carried three dishes and reminded Jie-Jie-Ka-Ni-Na that there is no such job title as “Bosses Wife.”

Sad to say, what I’ve seen doesn’t stay in the restaurant business. It applies to many crucial industries. Take nursing as an example. Everyone wants to be a hot shot doctor. Nobody wants to be a nurse and so, where do we get the nurses from? We got to get them from elsewhere.

Like it or not, we’re an island filled with “Proud” people who won’t lower themselves to do “menial” work, no matter how bad their personal situation. As such, the reality is that we do need to get people from elsewhere to do basic jobs.

You might not like the presence of Pinoy’s, Bangla’s, PRC Chinese at al in Singapore but unless you’re willing to do the jobs, they’re here to stay. 

A Steady Ride

It’s been something of an interesting year. On the global scale the year was marked by disasters in the aviation industry. Malaysian Airlines lost not one but two flights in the space of a few months. As the year comes to an end, it was the turn of Malaysia’s star airline from the private sector to suffer a crash.

In terms of the global economy, we saw a comeback of the world’s largest economy, the USA. On a more positive note, the Obama Administration did something unusually courageous; it talked to Cuba and finally took positive steps to end a 50-year old embargo that had only served to keep the wet dreams of the Miami Cuban Diaspora happy. Hopefully this tropical island will boom in the way that it deserves to.

There were no big family events this year. My cousin Lucas got married to Cheryl, his long term girlfriend. She is a delightful addition to the family and we all look forward to the day when they start a family. Mum, Auntie Frieda and Uncle Adrian made an appearance.

For me, the Family Court decided to be kind and granted the adoption order to allow me to adopt Thuy, my favourite evil teen. She has since changed her name to Jennifer Tang and we are currently trying to get her settled on a long term basis in school. She’s settling into school slowly. Not sure if it’s a good thing but she’s got an aptitude for visual arts, rather like my sister who is born twenty years and one day before her.

The career front was ordinary. Unlike the preceding years there was not grand project with either the IIT or IIM Alumni, though I admittedly continue to be friends with members of both associations. I still keep in touch with Supriyo Sircar, of Polaris who continues to encourage me to write. I also remain on good terms with Suresh Shankar of Crayon Data and V. Harihairan of Third Wave Power.

The most prominent PR work was for Girija Pande, the current Chairman of Apex-Avalon and former Chairman of Tata Consultancy in Asia Pacific. I guess I had a stroke of luck, the Chinese President (China’s strongest leader in a generation), decided to visit India, which had elected Narendra Modi with one of the largest majorities ever enjoyed by an Indian Prime Minister. Suddenly everyone wanted to talk to a man who knew Sino-Indian Business Relations like the back of his hand and I had that person.

I remain at Bruno’s Bistrot. Have become part of the furniture and the owner and I have become after work buddies of sorts. I bring in the revenue and he allows me to snack and buys after work beer.

I’ve also become closer to my neighbours like Eintein David the bar manager of the Japanese restaurant next door and one of the nicest additions to life is the friendship of the Deveraux Family.

This year’s big change comes from an unusual source and my hero for the year was the most unexpected. I met Farooq Mann over three years ago. Not sure what happened between us but he decided not to speak to me for three years and then out of the blue he decided to return to my life.

And return he did. He’s brought me into the world of liquidations and insolvency work. I deal with an area of business that I never dealt with before and I’m grateful to him for helping me discover a new side of business.

Steady employment from two jobs hasn’t made me rich. I am ending the year without cash but I’ve built up my CPF reserves more quickly that I have been for a while. I’m not out of loser ville yet but I’m walking away from it. I’ve nearly doubled the account within the space of a year.

Not sure what happens in 2015. While I haven’t ended this year in the position I would have lived to end it in, I think the foundations for something better appear to have been laid. I look forward to the challenges of 2015.

The God of Revolutions.

I’ve decided that it’s time I need a bit of intellectual stimulation and so I returned to my academic roots and decided to pick up a copy of Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. The book is written by Reza Azlan, scholar of religious studies and professor of creative writing at University of California, Riverside.

The promotion of book was a master piece in public relations. Professor Aslan got himself interviewed on Fox News and ended up making Lauren Green, his interviewer look like an ignorant child. Ms. Green played into Professor Aslan’s hands by constantly harping on why a Muslim would write about the life and times of the Founder of Christianity. The more she harped on about the fact he was a Muslim, the more he talked about his academic credentials. The result was an instant success for the good professor and the book became an instant best seller. The interview can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt1cOnNrY5s&spfreload=10.

I’ve enjoyed reading the book. It’s brought back memories of what I used to do at A-Level and was expected to do at university. He’s delved into things like “Source Q” and talked about the link between the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Mathew and Luke). At times, the book does sound simplistic in that its premise is started as the one and only. However, on the whole, the book lays out a thought provoking idea. 

The professor’s argument is simple – when we look at the life and times of Jesus or at least the Jesus of history (the man who lived) in the context of his times. When you look at him in the context of his time rather as a spokesman of a “religious” message, the picture of who Jesus was becomes rather interesting. The professor argues that Jesus was not the “pacifist” who came to unite the world in a peaceful, loving embrace. He was, if you look at him in the context of his time, a radical and revolutionary who hopped to overthrow the established order of the day.

Jesus, as Professor Aslan notes, lived in a time of great social inequality. Jesus was a rough and barely literate peasant who lived in a society where people like him existed to serve the powers that be – which in this case was the Jewish Priesthood and the Roman Empire, which supported them. There was, in his day, extreme poverty for the masses and the “chosen” few lived a life of luxury at the expense of the masses.

When you look at Jesus in this context, everything Jesus said was a dangerous and political message to the established order of the day. Professor Aslan argues that Christian messages like “the meek shall inherit the earth,” were powerful political messages to those who held power – it was a warning that God would make the poor and weak into the strong and blessed, whereas those in power (the strong and rich) were about to get their comeuppance by God. If you were to bring this argument into the modern context, Jesus was a revolutionary figure akin to the great Communist leaders like Mao or Lenin.

When you look at this argument, you got to start thinking – would Jesus, the revolutionary described by Reza Aslan, exist in the modern world.

I think of the little City State where I’ve lived for the past decade – Singapore. This little city state has become a beacon of modern success. We are consistently nominated as the best place on the planet to do business. Everyone who moves to Singapore praises the country as the ideal place to make vast amounts of money.

While that’s true, I can’t help but notice that our society is developing many of the things that Professor Aslan described in Jesus’s day. We are, for a start, becoming an exceedingly unequal society. If one looks at the Gini co-efficient, it leads to the view that wealth in Singapore is concentrated in very few hands. We have the world’s highest paid ministers and we are increasingly becoming the preferred home for the world’s billionaires. However, if one walks the streets of Singapore, one cannot escape the fact that there are people who are sleeping on the streets and people who barely have enough to eat.

In Jesus’s day, the centre of life revolved around a rather opulent temple, which was run by a select and wealthy group of priest. Back then, there was only one religion. In Singapore we have a growing number of opulent religious buildings. Ironically, many of them are run by churches, headed by charismatic leaders who claim to have a special relationship with God.

Religion is business. Interestingly enough, this was also the case when Jesus walked the earth. 

Professor Aslan points out that it wasn’t uncommon for people to make a career as exorcist, healers and men of God. He argues that what made Jesus different from the rest was the fact that he provided services (healing etc) free of charge. Interestingly enough, if one looks at the way “religious enterprises” work, you’ll find that they charge for certain services – one only has to look at the fund raising powers of the likes of the New Creation Church (S$21 million in 24 hours).

Our modern society is seeing the conditions that existed in Jesus’s day. So, the question is, would Jesus gain the traction that he did, had he been around today?

I worry that the answer, especially in Asian societies is no. Somehow, the concept of gathering as much for yourself as possible has become psychologically ingrained in us as being part of “success through merit.”

Furthermore, if one looks at Singapore as an example, the powers that be have given the general population such a stake in society that few would entertain the idea of overthrowing the established order.

Ironically, the churches like New Creation and City Harvest thrive on this. Jesus’s message has been repackaged as a means to find salvation in the current social order rather than a means of bringing about a new social order. I remember the Pretend Girlfriend with No Benefits bringing me to one of New Creation’s sermons. The Pastor spent a good amount of time talking about how prayer would lead to prosperity rather than a redistribution of it.

To be fair, to the Churches, Eastern Religions can’t escape the idea of prayer for prosperity. Huong, my better half, tells me in moments of affection that she’ll pray for my business prosperity.

Religion and God have become part of the established order and people who preach a message otherwise, are cast out as dangerous radicals. I worry that if Jesus were to step into a society like Singapore’s, he’d be arrested under the Internal Security Act (ISA) for being a dangerous radical. If anything, we’d crucify him before he got the chance to give the Sermon on the Mount.

I’m older now and I guess I’m less inclined to think that the only purpose of the established order is to be fought. However, I worry that we are becoming increasingly focused on preserving the status quo and our role in it that we have lost focus on the fact that God might have wanted us to disrupt it and make it better for us. 

Where does Good Customer Service End and Where Does Abuse Begin?

The restaurant owner and I had drinks with one of our higher spending customers. The young lady in question happens to a member of a family that owns a small shipyard and the young lady in question and has the ability to spend a good amount in the restaurant. Unfortunately, while she’s been blessed with financial resources, she’s been blessed with a rather low emotional quotient (a quality not uncommon in well to do Singapore Chinese girls).

After she left, I mention to the restaurant owner that the young lady has a habit of treating our chef like her personal valet (her idea of being nice is to invite him out to her table for a glass of wine. Then, in front of him, she will proceed to pour out every half-drunk glass into a single glass and offer it to him). The restaurant owner just shrugged, said he knew but it made her happy and she spends money and brings her friends who spend money at the restaurant. His sound bite was simple – “it’s business.”

That got me thinking about one of the biggest challenges that business, particularly those in the service industry face – when does customer service end and where does abuse begin.

The restaurant owner has a point. Business depends on paying customers and life is such that very often, the key differentiator is service – or should I say the ability to make the customer happy. Products have become such that they’re virtually indistinguishable and so the business has to find another reason to get the customer to spend money.

Let’s look at the restaurant. In Asia, the key ingredient to success is good food. One of the signs a good hawker meal is on how rude the said hawker is to his or her customers – it’s a sign that the guys food is so good that there will be a million customers outside his stall waiting to eat what he makes. Things are, however, different at the higher end of the market (a place where Bruno’s is). Your food has to be good but you need something else too (At that level – every restaurant cooks good food). The distinguishing factor is usually in the service and building up the relationship between customer and the establishment.

So, in our case, it makes good business sense for us to allow the young lady direct access to the chef. It makes sense for the chef to provide her with special off beat items that are not on the menu. She, as the customer is willing to pay and who are we to reject her money.

However, there is a point where this “special” relationship between the customer and the establishment goes beyond the requirements of good customer service and becomes abuse. In the case of the restaurant, the point is quite clear – the chef is clearly being abused when the customer believes he should come out of the kitchen whenever she summons him so that he has the privilege of drinking the dregs left behind by her dinner companions.

While this is an extreme example (as most of them in Singapore’s restaurant industry are), it is not the only one. I think of my days back in the agency business when it was common for the client to call you just as you when you were about to knock of work – and it was always because the client had a hair-brained idea that he or she thought was necessary to execute at the last minute.  

Service providers work on the principle that success is whatever makes the client happy without getting ourselves into legal entanglements. Hence, in every agency, the key operating procedure is to get “client approval.” Every action you perform as a member of a service provider has to be blessed by the client. Law firms are particularly good at showing the world that everything they do is blessed by the client –“Instructed.” As far as lawyers are concerned, they are merely acting under “instructions” from the one paying them.

The word “instruct” has helped the legal profession find that balance between demonstrating their competence with the client’s blessings. Other professional service providers are less good at this. Advertising and PR professionals (particularly the independent ones) are one of the worst at balancing the need to keep the client happy and demonstrating their expertise. I’ve been in too many situations where we, as the service provider have been so keen to make the client happy, we’re practically taking dictation from them.

The problem here is that when things go wrong, the client will blame – you. Yes, the client signed off on everything but at the end of the day he or she will turn around and say, “You never advised me.” This will inevitably be followed up by the phrase, “You’re the expert – not me.” It doesn’t help that the client may have an entire department of “experts” telling them what to do too. In such cases, it’s clear that the in house experts have got you, the external expert hired because – well, you’re there to take the blame.

What does one do? I remember telling someone that at the end of the day, you got to respect the client’s decision because it’s their money and their business that your business services. However, you need to place on record that you “advised” them. You as the service provider are there to ensure that they follow advice and get it half way right.

I’ve tried to take this mindset from PR into the restaurant business. Too often waiters see themselves as here messengers between the customer and the kitchen. The easy part of the job is that it doesn’t require any brains. The difficult part of doing this is that people tend to shoot the messenger first whenever things go wrong.

So, I make it a point to try and “advise” customers as what they should try. I do qualify that I am not a wine sommelier and I do make it a point to stress that what I recommend is based on what “I like.” However, I still give an opinion and if one were to judge by the results – that approach seems to work. I’ve managed to become the most successful sales person.

I want people to respect my professional opinion and I have to ensure that I have professional knowledge. In the case of the PR work, I write for the press so that I know what the press will buy. In the restaurant work, I eat at the restaurant so that I know what’s good. Somehow, I get it right for the customer more often than not.

The other flip side to getting people to respect you is having the ability to say “no.” Saying “no” can upset the proverbial paymaster, but sooner or later, people find a way of respecting your opinions. My chef, makes it a point of not serving dishes if he knows the ingredients are fresh. As long as people see you are trying to look out for them.

I think of PN Balji who used to tell me, “We are NOT prostitutes.” A prostitute has do whatever the client wants. All prostitutes will tell you that you are the world’s best lover because this is what you want to hear. How many of us will provide a prostitute with repeat business if she tells you you’re hung like an ant?

That’s prostitution and the business of prostitution. Other professions depend on the “respect” that people give it. Respect, is often in doing the right thing or at least not doing everything .....  

The Delight in Unreachable Pennies

Singapore’s main pension system, the Central Provident Fund (CPF) has been going through a bit of bashing recently. The finance industry has been capitalizing on the fact that CPF savings are insufficient for people to actually retire on and the newly found group of activist have had a field day accusing the government of misusing the “people’s money.”

Some of the bashing is deserved. The biggest source of frustration lies in the simple fact that CPF money is the money of the individual. Unlike “Social Security” in the USA, where the funding comes from the current generation of workers, CPF functions pretty much like a giant savings account. The individual stashes away 20 percent of his or her gross wages, while the employer matches another 13 to 16 percent. The funds pile up on a monthly basis and every year there is an interest payment of two to four percent (compared to commercial banks paying 0.025 percent on a fixed deposit). In theory one is not allowed to touch these funds until one reaches 65. The main exceptions to this rule are when one wants to buy a house (hence Singapore’s high percentage of home ownership) and when one needs emergency medical treatment.

However, this simple scenario has been tweaked so much that things are no longer simple. The retirement age has been raised from 55 to 62 and now to 65. With increasing life expectancy, there’s no reason to imagine that the age may be raised yet again. This is on top of the limitations on the things that one is supposed to be able to use the money for. The biggest example is the case of medical care. My dad found out the hard way. When he needed to go for a hernia operation last year, he found that he could only use S$5,000 of his MediSave (the portion of the CPF system devoted for medical needs) to pay for an S$30,000 operation. As such, having it done in Thailand proved to be a more economical option.

The reason for everyone’s frustration is obvious. This has become a game where the goal post have shifted constantly. Imagine working hard for 40-years, expecting to get your savings at the end, only to find that you can’t.

Having said all of this, there is another side of the story – namely life without CPF savings, which was pretty much my position until 2012, when I took the job in the restaurant. I escaped self-employed contributions to my MediSave account and cruised below the radar of the Central Provident Fund Board.

I call what I did youthful arrogance. I thought I could plunge straight away into doing my own thing. I left my first job with a local printer/designer because I thought the Old Rogue was offering me a chance to build up his magazine. There was no steady CPF but it looked more fun and so, much to the annoyance of my father, I jumped ship. I did get a small salary and I did earn a bit of commission. Then in my second job, they decided to cut the CPF portion to save the company money. I went along with it because it felt like what a good employee should do and I had the boss telling me, “Ehh – better for you – you get more money.”

What I didn’t learn until much later on in life was that its virtually impossible to save money unless you have cash flow and that life’s unexpected expenses have a way of popping up and thumping you on the head on a rather frequent basis. It didn’t help that I had a few hanger on’s who seemed more content to add to my bills rather than my wallet. So, whatever little savings I had, found a way of drying up pretty quickly.

With the exception of the stint with Asher Communications and BANG PR, I actually made through life without a CPF contribution. I had retainers from Alcon and Mark Goh & Co and a few pennies in savings thanks to the Indian IT industry.

However, the retainer clients did not continue and the projects dried up. I also didn’t realize that the poor are sometimes the way they are because they deserve it. Thought God might actually benefit me if I put an unemployed friend of mine to work trading hi-fi (he’s a hi-fi enthusiast) equipment. My savings went into buying hi-fi equipment, which never got sold but buying him decent meals didn’t exactly stop.

So, at the end of 2010, I was stuck with no income, no savings including the ever elusive CPF. In short, I looked like I’d end up old and broke.

I am not going to say that I won’t die old and broke but I’ve reduced those chances. Ah Huong tells me that marrying her was the best decision I made. I leave time to be the judge of that but I will credit her with doing things like finding odd jobs for me whenever I’ve been down. There’s also plenty to be said about having a somewhat emotionally stable partner in life. I had a more intense relationship with Joyce, but I ended up being less productive.

Downgrading on the social scale to work as a regular waiter proved to be a good decision. The income was low and remains low, especially for the hours I work. However, I had an income to pay my daily expenses. What money I made from projects like SIPF and IIMPact 2013, went into the cash savings that are now locked away with RHB across the Causeway in a fixed deposit. Passive income from that is not great but there’s enough to buy myself a cup of tea.

The part of having a regular job so to speak is the fact that I got CPF contributions. The contributions were small but grew bigger as I worked longer hours in the restaurant. 

Since IIMPact 2013, I’ve not had a big project. However, I’m now working two jobs. By day, I work in liquidations and I continue at the restaurant. Both jobs pay me CPF and while I’ve not saved cash in the conventional sense of the word, I’ve managed to grow my CPF.

In my last CPF statement, I’ve managed to double the total amount in my CPF in the last 15 months. The job in liquidations has helped with larger and more regular contributions.

This is money I can’t touch. So I can’t say that my lifestyle has improved dramatically. However, there’s a hope of sorts.  I can entertain the idea of buying a house from the government. CPF savings are partially paid by someone else and they are steady enough to keep the banks happy. I can even afford to get sick, though I wouldn’t rush out to expose myself to every germ known to man.

CPF is not a perfect system and I don’t think it has been managed as well as it should be. However, I think of my Dad who, upon hearing I left a CPF job said, “You’re not going to make any money without CPF.” It’s my personal shame that I took so long to understand that he was right. 

The Poor Should Drink Less and Work More – Gina Rinehart

Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest woman doesn’t make for a sympathetic character. Unlike other “folk hero” billionaires, like Bill Gates or Richard Branson, Ms. Rinehart inherited the bulk of her fortune. Unlike China’s Jack Ma, Ms Reinhart’s fortune is built on an old fashioned, dirty and exploitative industry – coal. Unlike Mr. Warren Buffet, Ms. Reinhart does not make public declarations against the official perks of being rich.

If anything, Ms. Reinhart’s public statements about the less fortunate in life can come across as downright crude and crass – think of her statements about the poor dragging down the country into debt thanks to “welfare.”

While Ms. Rinehart’s remarks may offend, I have to ask myself if what she’s saying has a grain of truth to it. One of her most poignant remarks was that, “The poor should work more and drink less.” If I look at the examples around me, Ms. Rinehart is right.

If I look at my own family, the most glaring example is between my Dad and his older brother, my Uncle Richard. Both men had talent in abundance and the confidence to get it used, noticed and both made pots of money. Uncle Richard died in what was effectively a pauper’s grave. Towards the end, his body had aged 20-years and the only pennies he had were what my aunt could spare him. By comparison, my Dad has paid of his house and lives a healthy and happy lifestyle.

What was the difference between the two brothers? Uncle Richard was a drunk. What he made ended up being spent on booze. When he made money, he got drunk. Eventually, the drink affected his reputation and his work. Nobody wanted to hire a drunk. Dad, by contrast, knew how to control the booze intake. Instead of hitting the bottle when things went down, he got working and before you know it, he pulled himself back up.

The same is true of my circle of friends. I have exceedingly successful friends and friends who are..well, you could say they’ve seen better days. What makes the difference between them?

Well, one of the clearest signs is the fact that the successful group have managed to keep their vices in check. It’s not to say that the members of this group don’t go out and have a drink or two. Nor does this group avoid going for a smoke.

However, they manage to live for something more than the next drink or the next smoke. We go out for a drink and we laugh. Everyone talks and has a laugh. Conversations are based on mutual respect. Then, we go home because …..well there’s work the next day. Work comes before having a drink.

By contrast, the less successful put their vices before everything else. During their broke stages, instead of saving the pennies they have in their pocket, they spend it on booze or cigarettes or whatever their vice happens to be. Somehow, the need to have the next fix overrides everything else.

Getting the drunks to work can be a challenge. Many, particularly the ones who were once successful find it difficult to accept that they are no longer successful. Instead of working their way up, it becomes easier to scrounge for the next drink and relive old war stories than to try and build a new present and future.

Being a piss head in your twenties is fun. Being a piss head in your forties is kind of sad……  

The Thing That Every Business School Fails to Teach

The last two weeks of September 2014 were exceptionally good for what’s left of my PR business. I managed to get the Executive Chairman of my remaining client,Apex-Avalon onto Channel NewsAsia, the BBC, Bloomberg TV and CNBC Asia in the space of two days and for good measure, the Edge Review ran an article in which he was quoted several times.

During the course of our interactions, I was asked if I had been lucky. My reply to him was that, I was lucky and I knew how to be lucky.

I state that I was lucky because news events favoured me. Chinese President, Xi Jiping was visiting New Delhi and India’s newly elected Prime Minister, Nahrendra Modi. As such, everyone wanted to talk about China-India relations. As it so happed, I happened to have a client is an expert on the topic – Girija Pande is an Indian(now a Singaporean) who was appointed by the Mayor of Guangzhou to be a specialeconomic adviser. The time was right. I had pitched the client earlier on in the year and was constantly told that I had to wait for a better time.

So, I was lucky but I also maintain that I was knew how to be lucky. In this instance, I knew that the elements for success were there and all I had to do was to bring them together.

I think of this conversation I had with Mr. Pande, because I’m reminded of a conversation I had with Hans Hoefer, the founder of Appa Guide books, as I was getting ready to leave university and wondering what I’d do with my life. Hans, had showed up in London out of the blue and invited me for lunch. During the course of our conversations, he told me that in his life’s experience, he found that, “The one key thing that all business schools fail to teach is – CHANCE.”

A lot of success in business and in life, comes from being at the right place at the right time. Luck plays a largely misunderstood part in success. Most of us think of luck as the element that helps us win big in the lottery or at the Casino. Then there are those of us who write off luck and attribute everything that they achieve to their own skills.

Both these extreme views misunderstand the real meaning of luck. Let’s face it, we get certain things in life because we are lucky. Being born into the family that you’re born into at the place where you’re born is a matter of luck. If I take myself as an example, I am exceedingly an exceedingly lucky person. I was born in Singapore, a little red dot that had peace and stability in the 70s. My fortunes could have been very different – I could have been born in another part of Southeast Asia, like Vietnam or Cambodia, which at the time, were going through a series of nasty wars. I am also lucky that I was born into a family that believed in education and so I went to a series of good schools.

However, luck can only bring one so far. Things like skill and hard work often play a key role in success. You need preparation to succeed in life. I remember making some remark about how boxers like Mike Tyson earned several millions for a few seconds work. My uncle pointed out to me that the average boxer trains two hours more a day than what most of us work in a day. Mike Tyson admits that the reason for his historic loss of Buster Douglas was because he partied beforehand while Douglas was training for all he was worth (Buster Douglas would lose his title eight months later because for pretty much the same reason why he won it – only this time he was the guy having fun instead of training).

If you listen to enough successful people talk about their success, you’ll find that they often try to down play their luck. I mean seriously, who wants to attribute success to something as random, unpredictable and indiscriminate as luck.

Being clever and hardworking are important. However, just as the world is filled with people who rely on dumb luck, it’s also filled with clever, ambitious and hardworking people who never get anywhere.

Real success comes from being able to understand and are prepared for luck. In golf and snooker, we have the examples of Gary Player and Steve David who are both reported to have said, “The more I practice, the luckier I become.”

Real luck needs to go with preparation and you have to be able recognize the lucky moments and to be prepared for them. Both Mr. Player and Mr. David can make “lucky” shots because they’ve been preparing to make them. Then when they need to, they are able to do so.

Luck constantly flows and the key element is being able to get hold of the right moments when it flows in your favour. If one plays poker enough times, you’ll realize that throughout an evening of Poker, the various players will go through various lucky streaks where his or her cards will always be coming out tops. The one who survives and tops the evening, is the one who knows how to maximize his or her lucky streaks and minimize losses during the moments when luck is down.

How does one recognize when the flow of luck is against him or her. It’s the moment when you recognize that all the elements are there and all you have to do is to be able to bring all the elements together to make things happen. I had one of those moments two weeks ago. More successful people are the ones who work hard and prepare themselves for the right moments.

I think back to what Mr. Hoefer said. How does one recognize chance and how does one capitalize on it? I get lucky in PR and creating stories because I’ve had ten-years to prepare for it. I’ve been less lucky in other things because I’ve probably been less prepared and less able to recognize those moments.

Luck is probably the key ingredient between failure and success. However, understanding it and recognizing it is the skill that most of fail to master and as such miss the opportunities that are presented to us.  

Praise of a “Bad Ass” Nigga’s ……

I’ve just finished reading the biography of Mike Tyson, the former undisputed heavy weight champion of the world. It was a surprisingly good read. With the exception of the infamous night in an Indianapolis, Hotel, he did not spare a single detail in dealing with every aspect of his tumultuous life. The book is written in exactly the same fashion as he speaks. Everyone who is close to him is called a “Nigga” and kicking the crap out of people seems like a natural thing to do. He proudly admits to being a “horrible drunk” who enjoyed cocaine and alcohol at the same time.

What makes Tyson’s story so compelling is that it is full of ups and downs. His relationships, particularly with women are totally dysfunctional. He makes the point that for him “base-line normal” is something close to total destruction. The man climbed his way out of Brownsville in the Bronx. Made an outrageous amount of money from his boxing career. Spent even more of it and got himself bankrupted but is finally living an easy. In a nut shell – Tyson is everything that most sensible parents spend their lives trying to make sure their kids do not become.

Tyson is the man who proudly admits that he wanted to be the “villain” from a very young age. His image as a “beast” was something that he psyched himself into becoming. Eventually the image took over and became the reality of who he was and we get the Tyson that we all know about.

I remember watching Tyson at his best. I was living in the UK at the time and one of the great highlights was his fight with Frank Bruno. Somehow Tyson managed to go through a divorce, a car accident and then he returned to beat the crap out of Bruno. You got to love the guy.

Tyson is special. Here is a character who has done awful things and been a total shit. Yet, somehow he brought us. People who would never watch boxing, would somehow do it when it was him. I suppose we managed to identify with the man because he did all the crappy things that most of us would love to do but always held back on because we had responsibilities and so on.

Say what you like about the man but he made boxing interesting. Seriously, how many of us can name the heavy weight champion of the world today? The only boxer who seems to elicit much interest these days is Manny Paquiao. With all due respect to Mr. Paquiao, one has to ask if he’d get adoration that he does had been born in one of boxings more traditional power houses like the USA or Europe? Paquia has become a hero in a society where there are so few of them. 

Tyson gave life to the boxing game. I think what made him so special was the fact that boxing was probably the only thing he knew he was good at and so he put everything into it. While Tyson made money – serious amounts of it, his ultimate purpose in life was to kill anybody he met in the ring. In short – he had the one ingredient for his job that too many of us lack – passion.

I’m probably not one to talk but too many of us these days become obsessed with being sensible. We avoid doing certain things because we are afraid that they may not work out and that we will be thought of in bad way. While there are merits in doing this (a fact my father often reminds me I should have done earlier on in life), there are times when playing it safe is …..dull and the antithesis to success.

I am not advocating that one should start drinking and doing cocaine. However, I do believe that instead of trying to suppress characters, we should be encouraging them. In a world where we focus so much on safety and regulation and sticking to acceptable norms, we sometimes forget that life isn’t exactly safe and sometimes we need to leap of faith and follow our passions regardless of anything else.

I think of Clark Kent, the mild mannered reporter who becomes Superman. Most of us are Clark Kent. We do our jobs and go about life quietly. We try to stay safe and on the right track because we think we need to.

However, in doing only what is expected of us, we lose the opportunity to follow our passions and to unleash the Superman within us. Perhaps that Bad Ass Nigga wasn’t such a bad ass when it came to giving his all fighting in the ring and his life.  

The Problem with Superstars.

The routes that both teams took to the final were quite different. The Germans had been exceptionally successful and made history by crushing the host nation, Brazil (A nation that considers the World Cup its birthright) by seven goals to one. The Argentinians by contrast scrapped through all their games and were to all intents and purposes, saved by Mr. Messi’s talents.

World Cup 2014 has been a success by most counts. Despite protest against the World Cup, the football on display has been spectacular with a record number of goals being scored.

What’s been especially wonderfully pleasing about World Cup 2014 has been the fact that this has been the year for teams from obscure nations without great superstars. The biggest of giant killer was Costa Rica, which defeated both Uruguay and Italy in the first round and were only knocked out in a penalty shootout against eventual third-place finishers – the Netherlands. You could say that it has been an occasion for the triumph of the team over the superstar.

This is not to say that superstars aren't important. A single brilliant individual can make the difference between success and failure. One only has to think of Diego Maradona, who inspired Argentina to World Cup glory in 1986 (My English friends will no doubt remind us that he did cheat a little via the “hand of God” incident) and despite the lackluster performance of the Argentine team, he managed to get them into the final of the 1990 World Cup.

However, while we all admire brilliance in an individual, depending on a single individual player is downright stupid. The biggest example was found in the host nation, Brazil. The Brazilian team of 2014 was built around of the brilliance of their striker, Neymar. While Brazil did reach the semi-finals, it often looked as if they needed Neymar to either score or create the scoring opportunity. Then Mr. Neymar had to be carried off in a stretcher after the quarter final against Columbia. This proved to be the beginning of the end. In the semi-final, Brazil was humiliated with the 7-1 drubbing by Germany and couldn’t salvage any pride in the third-place play-off when they lost 3-0 to the Netherlands.

By all accounts, the Brazilian team, which had brilliantly conquered all in the Confederation Cup a year earlier, was lost without Mr. Neymar.

By contrast, the Germans knew what they were doing. There times when they struggled but by and large, the German team had found a way to play tactically sound and yet exciting football week. The Germans, as an article by Businessweek stated, had planned this moment over forty years. After a low moment in the late 1990s, the Germans invested in things like talent development and management. The results proved to be spectacular, with Germany coming third in both 2006 and 2010, losing only to eventual Champions, Italy and Spain.

Germany has been played as a team. Traditionally, the Germans were considered a team that played defensive football. However, the latest German team has found a way of becoming more exciting in attack and yet remained tactically careful in defense. The results speak for themselves.

Somehow, Germany has avoided the trap of building its strategy around a single individual. The focus has been on the team.

We may yet see Mr. Messi provide that stroke of genious that inspires Argentina to World Cup Glory. Many will be hopping to see the World’s Best player make some magic.

However, it may healthy for Germany to win. It will remind us that football, like much else in life, is often a team effort, where success is a combination of many efforts. 

When Decency Was Not Enough ......

The world’s largest democratic election has just come to an end. The result went as expected, Mr Narendra Modhi of the opposition BJP party won. What stunned the world was the extent of his victory. This was a landslide of the highest margins. Mr Modhi needed 272 seats to form a majority – by time polls closed on Friday, 17 May, 2014, Mr Modhi was well ahead in 336 seats. Mr Modhi, who is currently doing his post-election rounds, will be the first Prime Minister of Indian in 30-years to hold such a commanding majority.

The reason for Mr Modhi’s victory is obvious. The ruling UDA alliance with the Congress party at its core had misruled the country for a decade. Economic growth was low. Inflation was high. The currency was trading at all-time lows against major trading partners and throughout the course of the 10-year government, corruption scandals blossomed – one only has to remember how the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games turned into a PR disaster.

To make matters worse, the Congress Party decided to field Rahul Gandhi, the son and grandson of former Prime Ministers. Unfortunately for him, Mr Gandhi represented everything the voters were fed up with (rich, entitled, princeling), while Mr Modhi was everything the voters wanted (rags to riches through hard work and competence).

It really should be no surprise that the UDA alliance lost miserably in this election. India and Indians around are delighted with the result. The stock market and the rupee shot up upon hearing of Mr Modhi’s landslide. Mr Modhi’s task is simple – he has to deliver.

Much is being said about Mr Modhi and the government he will form. There is also plenty of news ink devoted the rise and fall of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has ruled India for most of its Independence. Nobody seems to have noticed one of most crucial figures of the last decade – the outgoing Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.

Mr Singh has been a rather pathetic figure. To put it crudely the only people who seem to like Mr Singh are in the BJP – he’s the reason for their landslide win. To the electorate, Mr Singh is the face of an ineffectual government that’s made life harder for ordinary folk. To members of his own party, Mr Singh is the very reason why they’ve been crushed at the polls. Everyone seems to have a bone to pick with him.

While Mr Singh does need to shoulder responsibility for things, one needs to look at how Mr Singh arrived at the state that he did. I remember when Mr Singh became Prime Minister. I had started working for Polaris and everyone in the office was exceedingly happy that he had taken over. One of comments was that this was a brilliant move. The reason was simple – Mrs Gandhi would take care of politics and Mr Singh would take care of the country.

Everyone liked Mr Singh in those days. Unlike the average Indian politician, Mr Singh had a reputation for competence and honesty. Mr Singh is an Oxford trained economist and in 1991, it was Mr Singh, as finance minister 1991, who opened up the Indian Economy and started India onto the road of becoming a serious economy.

So, how did a man who was an effective and highly regarded finance minister become ridiculed as a weak and ineffectual Prime Minister?

I guess the answer lies in the fact that being good at one thing doesn’t make you good at everything. Mr Singh understood finance and economics. When he ran the finance ministry he dealt with what he knew. By contrast, the Prime Minister is expected to know a little about every ministry and above all the Prime Minister needs to take care of the politics.

Mr Singh didn’t have the skills to manage his minister and the politics were simply beyond him. It was the President of the Congress Party, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, who ran the politics and it ended up appearing as if he reported to her. For most of his premiership, Mr Singh cut a rather pathetic figure, who seemed to know what needed to be done but didn’t have the arms and the legs to do it. Between his own party, coalition allies and the opposition, Mr Singh was often caught in between a rock and a hard place.

Nobody doubts Mr Singh’s personal integrity. Nobody doubted that Mr Singh had the right qualifications. What he lacked was the hunger to get power and in a politician that is a fatal flaw.

I think of Singapore’s good fortune of having Lee Kuan Yew. In his early days, Mr Lee had the strength of character to surround himself with capable men and he allowed them to get on with it. The biggest blessing for Mr Lee was the fact that he had Dr Goh Keng Swee. The paid complemented each other. Mr Lee took care of politics and Dr Goh built up the institutions. This was a symbiotic relationship. Dr Goh needed Mr Lee to give him the resources of government and to keep vested interest of his back. Mr Lee needed Dr Goh to do the job in such a way that Mr Lee would have the “moral” power in his political battles.

It was also very clear who was boss in this relationship. While Dr Goh Keng Swee did get his views to prevail on many occasions, it was always clear that Mr Lee was the boss. Dr Goh was allowed a free reign to do things because he was a subordinate who didn’t have his eye on the bosses job.

Mr Manmohan Singh had a similar situation when he was the finance minister in 1991. There was a Prime Minster called Narasimha Rao above him. Mr Rao was able to take care of politics while Mr Singh was able to take care of the economy.

It also helped that in 1991, Mr Singh faced a major crisis. India’s balance of payments and she needed to get funding from the IMF. Messers Rao and Singh were able to use this crisis to get the necessary measures passed. This helped to get the Indian economy moving.

Things were very different for him in 2004. Officially he was supposed to run the country. However, he couldn’t do much because the politics was controlled by Sonia Gandhi as the President of Congress. The voters looked to him for leadership but the real levers of power belonged to the leader of the largest party – which was someone else.

Then there was the fact that Mr Singh as Prime Minister, actually presided over one of India’s highest growth rates – seven to eight percent and it even hit an all-time high of nine percent in 2007. As such there was no immediate economic crisis for him to utilize in the same way he had in 1991 and he was never able to use his success to push things further.

Furthermore his early success could be used against him. Think about it – if he could push through nine percent growth in 2007, why couldn’t he do the same in 2014? As far as the average voter was concerned, a large part of the reason was because he never seemed able to reign in the corruption.

As such, Mr Singh ended up limping towards the end of his term. Like John Major in the UK, Mr Singh will probably remembered as a decent man who didn’t understand or love power and was hobbled by a horrible political party.

In a way, Mr Sigh’s premiership also represented one of the best things about India – it was a democratic and tolerant Asian society. He was a Sikh who became Prime Minister in a country where 80 percent of the electorate is Hindu.

However, much as we appreciate honesty and integrity and we admire clever and educated people, it wasn’t enough. While you could admire Mr Singh for never being personally corrupted by the power of his office, you could only despair that such a decent and clever man never knew how to use the power he had to get things done. Decency alone is unfortunately not enough to get things done.