The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are; it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. - Rocky Balboa

 

Around two days ago, I put up a post on the criteria I used when trying to figure out if I would like a person or not. These criteria I used are not hard and fast rules. I’ve gotten along well enough with people who don’t fit into the my “box” (yes, I know I often complain we try to put people into boxes), but by and large, most of the people that I get along with and want to deal with on a personal and professional basis tend to have at least one of the following:

Firstly, there should be an appreciation of a contact sport and one should preferably have played a contact sport at some stage in life. The sport can be a combat sport like boxing, MMA or kickboxing or it can be a team sport like ruby union and league as well as the American and Australian version of football;

Secondly, if one comes from a country where there is compulsory military service, one should preferably have served in a combat vocation. If one comes from a country where there are professional standing armies, I tend give instant respect to the guys who did a spell in the military. I think of one of my American friends who was touted as being “Mr. Cisco” but what made a difference to me was the fact that he once served in the US Navy.

Finally, I want to know if a guy has spent time doing any form of menial work like waiting tables, farm work or worked in a construction site or shipyard.

As a matter of disclosure, I played rugby at house level during my first four years at Churcher’s College. I also served as a 155mm Gun Howitzer Commander during national service and as is well known, I waited tables in a Bistrot in my late thirties and carried on even though I was working a corporate job by day until Covid put an end to this side gig.

So, you could say that what I’m doing is looking for people who are similar to me. I guess it is human nature to want to be with people similar to you. While there’s probably an element of truth in there, I’m looking to be around people of a certain character. I will be the first to admit that I’m not always the best judge of character. My abilities to judge people accurately have come with time. I’ve found that while I may not necessarily have an instinctive flair for reading people, I can figure something out about a person from their experiences.

I, for example, click with people who like contact sports because I know they’ve taken a few knocks before and they’ve managed to get up and continue. I take the difference between soccer and rugby as the example. In soccer, you’ll see the guy rolling on the floor and screaming in pain when someone taps him. In rugby the foul usually involves an attempt to incapacitate the guy. There’s a lot more money in soccer than in rugby (both league and union) and so I guess its all about trying to gain every advantage you have, even if you need to blow things up a bit. In rugby its about getting the ball across to score that try. To make it in a contact sport, you need to take a few knocks in life and then get up and play again.

One of the best explanations of how this relates to life is seen in the movie Rocky Balboa, where the aged Rocky ticks his son off for being a complaining wimp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgU_aepGd0

 

 Likewise, the same is pretty much true of people who have served in combat roles. It’s about understanding that your life does depend on working with the guy next to you. Its about understanding that no individual is above the “purpose.” A 155 howitzer for example, will simply not function if it was down to a single operator.

Now, this is not to say that individuality is not important. I take myself as an example. I have an ego and my greatest pride has always been the things I did as a one-man-operator. I take pride in the fact that the job was done by Tang Li from Singapore with no multi-national backing as opposed to be Tang Li part of the Webber Shandwick team.

However, as much as I believe in the power of individuality, I also understand that you need to be both dependable and to depend on people to get the mission through. Yes, I was a lone PR operator for many years but I was also working alongside people doing design, social media marketing advertising and so on. We had to work together to achieve the common objective. There is a reason why, nearly two and a half decades after leaving national service, my proverbial “BFFs” are my military buddies.

I value people who have done manual work because it actually gives you an understanding of the value of work. I think it was best explained by an American who had volunteered his son for national service and found, to his horror, that the SAF hired Bangladeshi workers to do area cleaning for recruits. He said, “If those boys had to clean up after themselves, they would look at the Bangladeshi worker in a different way.”

The converse of this, is that I get turned off when people treat service staff badly or start turning their noses at construction workers. I was brought up to treat everyone with respect and when I see someone talking down to someone like the service staff, maids and construction worker, that automatically triggers alarm bells about that person. No matter how rich that person is or how powerful, only those from the gutter “talk down” to people and that applies whether you have a million cash in the bank.

At the end the day, all we have is our character. Money, position and power and even good looks fade. So, I try to surround myself with people with some shred of character. I think of my kids first serious boyfriend. He was the manager in a bar she worked at. Had served as an army regular for six-years in Provost unit. Looked like he could handle himself in fight. He was the only “mummy’s boy” worth considering human – he looked after his mother and didn’t expect her to protect him from life’s realities. I respected that he looked like he could handle himself in a fight and we worked together in the same restaurant, the entire crew kept telling me how fortunate I was to have him as my “son-in-law.” I just wish my kid knew how to treasure the guy.  

We Need Young Men – Not Mummy’s Boys.

 

A few years ago, one of my aunts made a point that Singapore is a weird place. She explained to me that aging is different in Singapore. In the rest of the world, young people are usually idealistic and are brimming with ideas as to how they can make the world a better place. However, once they start work, the reality of paying bills sets in and they get more conservative as they get older. In Singapore, the youth tend to be career focused and money minded and then, as they get older, they realise that money isn’t everything and they’re either more idealistic or perhaps resentful of the rat-race.

In a way, I’m a classic example of this. As a student in the UK, I took pride in the fact that I worked as an intern for that most capitalistic of institutions – Citibank, whilst contemporaries were busy railing against the evils of capitalism and arguing that whilst may not have liked Mao’s methods, you had to admire the man’s ideals. That was me in my 20s.

Today, as I approach the half century mark, I tend to look at intangible costs of my actions. Yes, money is important but I do ask if my actions will cost me in other areas like my ability to sleep. Age has taught me that what is legal is not necessarily moral.

So, I am the living example of Singapore’s aging in reverse. However, I do ask myself if I’m just a freak of nature. Are our younger people as depressingly conservative and mainstream as I once was?

As a matter of disclosure, I am a father of a young lady (age 24). I also become something of a “father-figure” to an intern (age 27). One could argue that my views on our youth are clouded by the two “kids” I have in my immediate vicinity.

With the girl, let’s just say that I thought I would worry about boys. Instead, I had much of the reverse when she discovered her phone and a host of apps that allowed her to stay indoors. I actually breathed a sigh of relief when she had a boyfriend (former regular who served in Provost Unit and now works as a bar manager).

I guess you could say a father of a daughter just gets protective of his little girl. Being a “dad” figure to a boy is a little more challenging in that you feel that you have to shape him into something resembling a man. My young man proceeded to announce that I had my work cut out for me, when he declared me the “real man.” I’m sure he meant that as a compliment but its, unnatural when a guy whose t-levels are still high calls a man whose t-levels should be in decline a “real man.”

To be fair to him, he’s not the only one. I’ve met young men who are proud to call themselves “mummy’s boys.” Ya, I’m close to my mum too but is calling yourself a “mummy’s boy” something to be proud of, especially when it means Mummy has literally cleaned up after you all your life. I think of an American guy who got his son into the SAF and observed that Pulau Tekong, was filled with Bangladeshi workers hired to clean up after the boys being trained to “protect” us.

National service is supposed to turn boys into men. However, if you have a situation where the boys don’t need to clean up ourselves, you got to ask what type of men are we producing? I’m close to my mother but I don’t call myself a “mummy’s boy,” because my mother would vomit and go into cardiac arrest if she had to do the heavy lifting in life for me. However, that’s exactly what we’re producing, a generation of “Mummy’s Boys,” instead of “Young Men.” Young men have dynamism and drive. They want to change the world and some even do. Mummy’s boys are basically useless they only function as Mummy requires.

This point hit home to me around two weeks back when I had to go on a day trip with an 84-year-old lady, who needed wheelchair assistance. While the lady pushing her on the Singapore end did a commendable job, she herself looked frail and should have been doing something else.

 

 Guess what, on the Vietnamese side, the guy pushing the wheelchair, was a relatively young man who, whilst not shredded looked like he had strength for the job.

 

 Funnily enough, this wasn’t a one off. One the flight out of Ho Chi Minh City, it was a young guy who did the pushing of the wheel chair. In fact, he ended up pushing several wheelchairs.

 

 Who met us on the Singapore side? One of Singapore’s proverbial “auntie's.” In fairness to the aunty pushing the wheelchair, she did a good job of it. However, it was noticeable that she was not young and sprightly. The only young and sprightly young man in the wheelchair pushing team at our world class airport was clearly from India.

 

 

 

This isn’t limited to wheelchair pushing. Go to any random hawker centre and you’ll see all the young and sprightly people sitting down or doing the light work. It’s inevitably the oldest and physically the frailest person around doing the heavy lifting.

Perhaps I’m just strange but there has to be something fundamentally wrong when those of declining strength do the heavy lifting whilst those who should be at the peak of their physical strength can’t lift a piece of paper without going into cardiac arrest. I think of the times my boss has sent me down hills to check on abandoned assets but refused to let the 20-year-olds near the same place.

Mummy’s mean well. Who wants their kid to be hurt? Who doesn’t want their kid to have a comfortable job in an office? However, when you prevent young men from doing any form of lifting, you stunt their growth. You have boys who cannot handle anything, whether is mental, psychological or even physical (You're talking to the 49-year old who does the heavy lifting because the kids in the office would go into cardiac arrest if you asked them to lift anything heavier than a paper clip.) 

You need to hire Barrow Boys to do the basics in life. Are you surprised that Mummy’s boys don’t reproduce, because every girl they look at needs to be Mummy? We need to have young men to drive society and young women to hold it together. We don’t need a group of Mummy’s boys who go into cardiac arrest when they are required to push buttons on a washing machine.  

 

Problems with the Inner Bitch

 

I’ve spent a good portion of my working life in the media, both as a creator and seller of stories on the PR end or writing them from the publication side. In those years, I’ve realized that as far as media is concerned, there’s one uncomfortable truth – personalities sell. This truth is regardless of the topic and thanks to social media, we’re becoming even more personality obsessed. There was a time when “celebrity” was restricted to the world of entertainment. These days everyone is a celebrity.

Let’s face the basic fact – it’s far easier and therefore fun to talk about personalities. The Trump era in American and by extension World politics was the prime example. Everything was focused on the personality in the White House. Say what you like about the man but he had a way of getting people to talk about him, whether it was good or bad. Everyone in the media by extension everywhere else talked about him. Political discourse inevitably went around his orange tan or whether you thought his bluster was actually based on anything. Nobody actually seemed to care to discuss the policies he was proposing.

We, as a species, are bitchy. As mentioned, I spent half my working life in and around media. So, yes, I’m guilty of gossiping and even writing about people (I’m not important enough for Ng Yat Chung to care about what I’ve written about him). Funnily enough, being a bitch isn’t limited to the media. In Singapore, professional circles are so small that personalities end up getting discussed at all sorts of “professional” gatherings. This bitchiness is so prevalent that I’d actually worry if people were not saying things about me behind my back – it would be a sign that I was totally irrelevant.

Whilst its second nature to “civilized people” to “bitch” about each other, there’s a slight problem with this. The easy topic is actually the most distracting. It’s so easy to talk about people that the people you are “bitching” about become the main thing that you think about. Then, when all you think about is the people you are bitching about, you lose interest in doing anything else in between the hum drum of ordinary life.

There has, as far as I know, never been a study on the correlation between bitchiness and the collapse of civilizations. However, there would be case for it. The Millenia of Chinese Imperial Courts filled with eunuchs, for example was probably so bitchy with everyone in court bitching about each other than nobody realized that society had stagnated or that the “White Devils” asking to trade actually had far more advanced technologies that could damage everyone else.

So, if we can’t talk about each other, what else can we talk about? Well, I did something vaguely intelligent last week and made an appointment to catch up with my former battalion Rece officer this week.

Ours was a very unusual friendship. We meet in the armskote room at 23SA. I was the Orderly Sargent (COS) on duty trying to get the arms cleared. He was the battalion Duty Officer (DO). He had gone through the US Military Academy at West Point and graduated seventh in his class. I, by contrast, should have failed my specialist course, had they been allowed to fail me. The caliber of personalities was very clear and I got a dressing down. Never raised his voice but the battery (Company equivalent in an Artillery Unit) duty officer, who had cleared the arms previously, was summoned and everyone in battery line was exceedingly sympathetic the next day.

We didn’t really keep in touch. He had his career in the army and I went onto ORD, go to university and start my freelancing journey. However, he left the army and got in touch with me. Our friendship started to develop in the post-phase of his career because, while we didn’t meet often, our meetings were and remain sessions for discussing issues that matter to us and bouncing ideas as what we can do. Our coffee session at the Tower Club was no exception:

 

 With Mr. Christopher Lo at the Tower Club

In the years since the military, I’ve understood that it wasn’t just the rank that made him my superior. It was the level of conversation that he brought to me that made him my superior. People and personalities were never the main focus of our discussions. What makes the discussions I have with him different to the people I deal with in the course of my professional life is that personalities are never the main topic. Our main topic is ideas.

So, yes, talking about personalities can be a lot of fun. If anything, it becomes the focus on life when you work in an organization that becomes the centre of your life. Offices, be they bureaucratic or corporate are hives of discussions on personality. Hence, they are grossly unproductive.

However, once you get people away from their little holes, you get them to think of things beyond the personalities. You get them to think and talk about ideas that excite them. As my favourite data analytics entrepreneur states – Innovation doesn’t happen in big companies. The big companies have to buy small ones to get innovation. Silicon Valley works because people get together to talk about and get excited by ideas. In a bureaucracy, people get turned on by talking about other people whom they can either build up or trash according to their convenience – hence such organizations do not grow. Clearly it is best to look for the people who want to talk about ideas that excite them rather than the personalities.

We Can Help Each Other

 I’ll be the first to admit that I am often quite critical of “my people.” As a rule of thumb, I don’t have much sympathy for the local, middle-class graduate Chinese, whom often comes across as self-entitled. You’re talking about a group that constantly complains about how “Indian” nationals are “stealing” jobs in the professional sector that they believe a degree entitles them to, yet they would have no hesitation in spitting on the maids who clean their homes or the construction workers who build them.

We’re the group of people who complain that the “foreigners,” are “helping each other,” because to us that’s not normal – screwing our own is. The worst offenders are the young professional class. I think of the time that I was upset that Singapore takes violence seriously because I really wanted to go up to a young PMET in Asia-Square and headbutt him in the nose until he went blind. This excuse of a human being thought it was fun to squish some sweets that the cleaning lady wanted to take home for her grandkids. The only thing that happened to him was his equally pathetic girlfriend told him off and he looked a little sheepish. She should have broken a bottle across his skull thus freeing herself from the possible crime of producing excuses of humans as children.

Because I take this stance, I don’t make myself popular in some parts of cyberspace. I get accused of being “pro-Indian” and “anti-Chinese” and if there’s nothing to have a go at me for, they go at me for marrying Vietnamese. Apparently, I am moving Singapore manhood downwards. Not sure how they figured that one out – at least the Vietnamese take care of their elderly and vulnerable whilst we screw over our old folks so that we can give whatever we have to people from “advanced” countries earning double what we do.

Having said what I just said, I recently experienced something that proves what I’ve said to be wrong. I discovered Singaporeans who are willing to go out of their way to help their own. I am speaking as someone who is beneficiary of such kindness.

It started with the return of gout. Had an attack in my left knee, which started on a Saturday night and got worse on a Sunday. By early morning, the pain was so bad that I have problems putting on my trousers. It was clear that I needed medical attention and so I thought I would make my way to the polyclinic.

The first person who showed me kindness was the Grab (Southeast Asia’s answer to Uber). The man went out of his way to create space in the car so that I could get in and out with minimal pain. When he reached the polyclinic, he tried to get me as close as possible to the door so I would minimize the need to move the leg that was in pain.

 

 The pain was bad and I had to just deal with it. To say that sitting in a wheelchair was uncomfortable was an understatement.

 

The second act of kindness came when I took another Grab ride back my aunt’s home, where I could rest. This Grab driver saw that I was having trouble walking and when I got to my aunt’s, he parked his car and helped me hobble up the unit (my aunty lives on the 22^nd floor). This was something he didn’t need to do but he took it upon himself to help me past the moment when I had ceased to be his customer.

 

So, it’s a relief for me to experience kindness from “my people” when I needed it. It made me feel a bit more optimistic about being Singaporean and Chinese. I mean, these guys were earning less than $20 from me and yet they still went out of their way to help me after their contractual obligation to me ran out. When you experience this type of thing, you get the sense that not all of us are “a***holes” and you start to think that if you have enough guys like this, it is possible to make a more decent society.

Consigned to Fire of Wall

 

I have, as any of my friends who follow me on social media can testify to, a new hobby. I’ve discovered TikTok videos and I’ve been trying my hand at making little videos out of my phone camera pictures. It’s fun in that you can play around with sound effects and as they say, a picture often speaks a thousand words.

Most of my videos are short, silly and meant to be ego boosting. Main topics have centered around food and drink (You got to do something with all the food photos that have become part and parcel of any meal), family and since the Legal-Half entered her contest, I’ve put up lots of shots of her moments of glory.

One area that middle-aged obese men shouldn’t put up are exercise videos. However, I started putting up my sprinting clips along with pictures of my spiking heart-rate. I usually use “action-movie” sound tracks to give it a bit of a “ra-ra” feel. However, last night’s video was different. Decided to use one of my favourite tracks from classical music – the Confutatis section from Mozart’s Requiem. Always loved this piece since I saw Amadeus as a kid and you could sense that the guy was trying to sum up his life in that final piece of music.

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

 

 Given that I live in Asia, one might also say that I’ve been tempting fate by publishing my photo with a piece meant for the dead. However, I guess if one were to look at things from a philosophical point of view, one could argue that life and death are part of the same coin and while you can’t control how you were born, you do have a certain amount of control over how you leave. Then there’s the key difference in that when you’re not likely to remember being born but you’re likely to be able to sum up your life before you die. Which in a way, is what the confutatis section is about, where the composer (Mozart) sees the damned being consigned to burn in hell and begs for salvation:

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/confutatis-maledictis-requiem-mass-d-minor-confutatis-maledictis-requiem-mass-d-minor.html

 

 Which then begs the question as to how a requiem for the dead has relevance to the activity of sprinting. My argument in the TikTok video that I posted is that its about feeling alive. I’m a middle-aged obese man just getting buy. Sure, I’m functioning well enough to type this out but if you think about well enough, how much of modern living is really about being alive. How many of us genuinely have a passion for what we do? We survive but are we really alive? I mean for me, the sensation of having my heart accelerate in those 20 seconds of actual sprinting is probably livelier than my entire day:

https://www.tiktok.com/@tang.li0/video/7275384786665950471?lang=en

Then there’s the nature of the run itself. Most of us who went through national service tend to run to keep the weight down. After all the 2.4km run is the one stable of the Individual Physical Proficiency Test (IPPT) that all of us have to go through. However, I got fat along the way and was advised to avoid running or I would bust my knees. So, I walk often and I like to walk far in nature – anything to get me away from a desk and being a bureaucrat.

However, I started sprinting because I needed to get someone out of my system and found that I enjoyed those 20-seconds spurts of full-blown activity. Its lead me to question the nature life, where everyone talks about how life is marathon and you’ve got to have the endurance. However, after staying in the same place for nearly a decade, I wonder if life necessarily needs to be a marathon. Could it be a series of sprints instead? My best moments in terms of my work were “sprints” – short projects like visit of Crown Prince Sultan (MBS’s uncle) to Singapore in 2006, the IIT Alumni event in 2012 and the IIM event in 2013.

All of us are effectively running from things like bills. Particularly the prospect of medical bills. If you live like you’re in a marathon, you think ahead and move at a consistent pace. If you sprint you need to look for different things. How do you pace yourself as you recover for that next bout of power. Its about knowing when the moment arrives and then giving it your all.

I go back to myself. I’m a middle-aged obese man cruising along. However, in those short bouts of giving it my all, I suddenly understand that I can be alive. The question is ultimately, do I have the courage to live the way I should live.

They’re Taking Care of Us Too

 I’ve just become the husband of a beauty queen. On Thursday, 31 August, 2023, my wife was crowned “World Madam 2023, Singapore Division.” It was a contest that she had entered a few months ago and she’s hopping that the contest will bring her to greater things.

I bring up the topic of my wife because Vietnamese girls, like girls from elsewhere don’t have the best of reputations and whenever you mention that you’re with a girl from Vietnam or China, people assume the worst. Think of the Covid Scandal when everyone got keen on banning people from Vietnam when there was an outbreak in the karaoke lounges. This was despite the fact that Vietnam had one of the better records at managing covid. By contrast, nobody  called for the banning of white Americans, despite the fact that the USA had by far and away the worst outbreaks of Covid and White Americans were the single worst demographic anywhere in the world when it came to spreading false information about the disease.

We have, as I’ve often argued, a terrible habit of underestimating people from less developed parts of the world and overestimating our and the people from developed countries. People from less developed parts of the world have one crucial advantage – they’re hungry to get things done and they’re willing to support each other out. They have the ability to build systems of support which we have clearly lost.

This was most visible in the online voting of the contest. The contest had an online poll where people could pay to vote for their favourite contestants. The winner of the poll was my wife with some 19,000 votes. The girl who came in second had 17,000 and also came from Vietnam. The next closest had 8,000 over.

How was it such that the Vietnamese girls could gather the votes, whereas the Singaporeans could not? The answer is that the Vietnamese had built communities who would support them when asked. I lived through a wife who was calling everyone she knew to pay to vote. They got the results. By contrast, the girl who came in third ended up feeling frustrated with people whom she done favours for promising to spend a dollar or two to get her the votes.

So, how do they build communities? Well, I guess you call it a system of give and take. When someone is down, there are always people to help them up and when a person is up, the community expects them to give back in someway or another. It’s a very basic principle of give and take. This is clearly not the case of the “Kiasu-Kiasi” land that we call Singapore. Helping each other seems to be anathema.

This should be an area of concern in that Singapore is an aging society. The baby-boomers are now in their 70s and can expect to live at least another decade or so. While a good portion of the boomers have the means to enjoy retirement, we still have too many cases in Singapore of true-blue Singaporeans demonstrating good old fashioned Asian-Values of pushing your aged parents to work in minimal wage jobs at McDonald’s while the kids screw their folks out of a flat.

So, who cares for this growing number of old folks? Well, its clearly not their native-born children. Rather, its maids from the Philippines and Indonesia and you can see volunteers from places like Vietnam:

 

 To my wife, looking after my 84-year-old mother-in-law is an honour. The old lady comes here every so often and we see to it that she’s well fed and gets to go around the island in a taxi. So, given that she sees to it that her own mother is looked after, she also extends it to other old folks. Go with her to any hawker centre and she’ll happily try and give to the old folk doing menial work.

Like it or not, this Vietnamese girl is helping our community whenever she does something for our old folks. She and girls like her from elsewhere are constantly building their network among themselves and with us too by looking after our elderly and vulnerable.

We should stop dismissing people from Third World countries as being useless as we sit in our ivory towers. They’re surviving conditions most of us wouldn’t wish upon our enemies. Say what you like about the “tough” school system here. That’s nothing compared to the school of hard-knocks they go through.

I’m Getting Older – Not Dying

 

Around two months back, I got into an argument with someone whom unknown to me at that time, ended up being someone who would mean something to me. Our argument reached a point where I got so worked up that I felt I needed to physically remove her from the system and so, I ended up trying to pull my body weight until my arms were ready to come off and then I discovered sprinting. Basic premise of sprint training is that you pelt it down as fast as you can for around 20 to 30 seconds, rest for about four minutes and then you repeat for another four to six times (I usually stop at about three).

This was a miraculous discovery. There was something about being able to shut out the world and focusing on that singular goal of getting to the end as quickly as you can push yourself. Your heart-rates goes through the roof as one can see from mine after one session:

 

There’s one downside to the exercise, especially if you’re over 40 – namely the fact that your risk of injury increases. So, the second quarrel with the same person resulted in my hamstring getting inflamed over the weekend.

When I talked about starting sprinting, I suddenly got inundated with advice. A director in the company told me that at “our age, we shouldn’t sprint and just stick with brisk walking.” Several months later, one of my cuddly toys told me “Eh – nearly 50-years old so old, cannot do intense exercise.” Then three nights ago, I met a young man who suggested that I should just do low impact exercises.

All these guys mean well and I know they have my interest at heart. However, when I am told “at your age,” it’s a sign that I better do more of whatever I was doing. Sure, there’s no denying that I am getting older. I’m turning 50 next year and there’s no denying that at 50, the body isn’t what it was at 22. Let’s face it, back in national service, doing chin-ups was standard. These days, I stick with doing sets of “girl-chin and pull ups” (also known as Australian pull ups) and hopefully one day I’ll be able to drag my 90 plus kg up the bar.

However, whilst I am getting older, I’m not dying and if today’s statistics are anything to go by, I’m not likely to die for another 30 odd years. Which means, I need to be in decent enough shape to get through that marathon called life and I don’t want to be a burden on Kiddo. So given that I am an overweight middle-aged man, what can I do but to do the things that will give me that wonderful sensation of looking for someone better hiding inside me. It’s admittedly tough and I usually do this at night when the body is warmed up rather than first thing in the morning where, well, things don’t seem to function quite so well.

Now, what I’m saying about doing an intense exercise can be applied in the job market, where we have a class of people in their late forties and fifties who need to be in the job market to pay off things like mortgages and to get kids through school. The job search is inevitably screwed by the fact that age trumps everything else.

I think of my account manager who is over 60. The man is highly qualified, having once been the financial controller of a huge company. For him, accounting is like drinking water. However, the fact that he knows what he’s doing and doesn’t need to be trained is of secondary concern. The fact is, he’s over 60 and that’s a turn off.

However, the point that many employers forget is that the guy is just over a certain age. He’s not dead and there’s no reason why he can’t be used, especially when he has a record of being very useful.

This should be something that gets looked at. We have an aging population but our costs are rising. These people are still useful and can be utilized. We need to let them pay off their expenses and get by and not treat them like they are dead.

So, what do we need to do? Well, employers need to understand that people are just getting older and not dying. As long as the guy is useful and willing to be useful, the employer should use him or her.

As for those of us over 45, we need to understand that we are just older and not dying. There are ways of surviving beyond the standard nine-to-six gig. We need to understand that we have skills that can be sold and we live in a world where the internet allows to do work across borders. We’re not dead, just older.

I am by no measure of imagination fit. However, I’m still going to push myself ever now and then so that I can be something better. I need a generation of 20-somethings who have grown up sitting behind a desk and never leaving the house to look at me and say “if that geezer can still push himself – why can’t I?” Living like your dying is not an option for yourself or the people who look to you for guidance.   

And You Were Expecting……?

 

Singapore has suddenly become a very interesting place. Singapore’s reporters finally have something that their counterparts in other parts of the world take for granted – things to talk about. Our little island state, which took pride in being squeaky clean to the point of boring now has a host of scandals popping out every so often. So, one has to ask – what on earth is going on?

One of those big scandals evolves around a story on a couple of Chinese nationals getting busted to the tune of a billion dollars. Then men had allegedly used their dubious monies to go on a shopping spree of lots of high-priced real estate and other wonderfully luxurious items. Lots has been said about the case and so I shall leave the details of the case to intelligent people:

https://mothership.sg/2023/08/legal-fees-money-laundering-case/

 

 So, what can I, a mere mortal who doesn’t want to be associated with the intelligent on the island say that hasn’t been said before? Well, I guess the answer is – what else were we expecting? Our entire economic system, which was built on the movement of goods in-and-out of the place has now evolved into becoming about the movement of vast sums of money. If you listen to just about every government proposal around, you’ll notice a common theme – a need for the rich from elsewhere to park their money here. Hence, it’s a badge of pride whenever some billionaire or other moves here. Think of Eduardo Severin, the co-founder of Facebook. Who can honestly say they heard of him? Mark Zukerberg had long since become the face of Facebook, in the way that Lee Kuan Yew had become the face of Singapore until his death. His co-founders were in Silicon Valley speak rather like Singapore’s old guard ministers – sent to retirement to be forgotten.

However, for Eduardo Severin, this all changed when he moved to Singapore. Our media literally could not stop talking about him. The fact that he is in Singapore is newsworthy enough.

He’s only one of the best known to make it to Singapore. He is the living example of how well government policies work. The government argues that we need people like Mr. Severin to come here to spend their billions in order to create good jobs for the locals and any local who dares to have fantasies about making life for the world elite a little more interesting will be dealt with accordingly.

Let’s leave the billionaires aside and look at tourism. Why did we push through the building of two casinos and insist on having the “Only Night Race” here? Answer is simple, we want people with elsewhere with lots of money spending it here.

There’s no doubt that having people spend money there has economic benefits. Even Bhutan, which prides itself in being isolated, invites tourist in because tourist do provide foreign currency to a country to settle its bills. However, there comes a point when the chase for money becomes, well, a little in savoury.

Here’s where Singapore becomes interesting. If you look at the places that a “dubious” when it comes to money (think – most of the Caribbean or the Channel Islands), you can actually have sympathy for these places. Places like the Cayman Islands are literally too small to do much and, in a sense, they can argue that they don’t actually have choice?

Singapore is different. We have a world class port that is at the centre of a dynamic growth region. We have a history of making things, particularly in the electronics industry. Our population is educated. So, do we really need our entire system to be based on the world’s wealthy buying overpriced real estate?

Then there’s the fact that Singapore claims to be ruled by law and “compliance” is supposed to be stringent enough for the Western and Japanese multinationals to feel at home. So, how do we match things like strict adherence to compliance and the need to get as much money in as quickly as possible?

As with anything legal, there is ultimately the question of looking at the letter of the law. As a prominent enough expat banker explained – Singapore likes big sums entering quickly and getting out just before the international bodies start questioning. The banks just take their fees and money is in the economy fine and dandy. So, if you want to look at technicalities, I guess you could say that we play it safe.

However, while we may be clean on the technicalities, it doesn’t mean that we’ve stayed clear of the funny characters (Funny characters can afford lawyers to help them get round the system) and more importantly, has this love of collecting money from the world’s wealthy actually harmed our ability to generate wealth by other means?

After nearly a decade in corporate insolvency, I would argue that we have. If I look at a range of cases that I’ve handled, the landlord is inevitably one of the largest creditors or even the one that wound up the business. Rent is a killer and as one family butchery said “we’re effectively employees of the landlord.” Take our “cultural icon” hawkers, who make a living selling things like kway teow (fried noodles) at $5 a plate and pay rents of $5,000 a month. Ask yourself how many plates do they need to sell just to cover the rent?

That worry only applies to a guy who doesn’t have hot money backing him or her up. Someone who has hot money back merely needs to ensure the money flows through the books. Rents are, well, part of the professional fees. People with hot don’t need to innovate because, well, why should they when they know that the bills will be paid?

We need to relook at our system. Nothing wrong with getting money from elsewhere. However, we cannot be dependent on it. Its like drinking too much. The first bit of booze is fun but when you start to depend on it…..well, lets just say that visiting a hospital are filled with people who got too used to the high brought about by a dependence on booze.

 

Who Can Fall for This?

 One of the biggest issues facing Singapore these days is a proliferation of scams. Although we’re not having babies, we are clearly getting screwed left, right, centre and sideways. Some of the scams are really sophisticated. With today’s technology, its easy for you to fake official documents.

 

 However, while large sophisticate scams make sexy headlines, the truth is that a good number of scams actually involve the telling of impossible tales. I think of a group which asked my small firm if they could liquidate a company. When I interviewed the guy, he said he was told that if he lent the company money, they would lend it to the banks who would then pay a higher interest rate than what they were paying on deposits. The company would then split the difference. I then probed and asked if the company was regulated by the central bank or any other regulatory authority. The answer was no. Made the guy repeat the story several times, where upon he said “that sounds really bad.”

The story on its own would not have been so bad had it been left to the group of professionals who invested. The tragedy was that scam artist managed to get their initial investors to get their elderly relatives to sell their assets to invest. Hence, not only did a group of educated professionals get scammed, a group of pensioners ended up getting screwed too.

Scam artist operate on the same rationale that most businesses run on – which is, why stop it when it’s generating money. So, when you get a call from a US number claiming to be from this or that government agency and wonder “who the hell would fall for this. “– the answer is obviously enough people.

Another example of a scam was best summed up by the Old Rogue (bless his soul). It was called “Buy a job.” The Old Rogue’s idea was simple – pay me a sum of money and then you go out and make us much money as you can. Again, you might ask – who falls for this? The answer as is shown, is obviously plenty of people:

 

 

 

Why do otherwise intelligent people fall for tall tales? I guess the answer is greed and an inability to look beyond the glitz. I’ve had to stress to my mentee on more than one occasion that he needs to look less at the glamorous condos or the flashy cars and how they so and so managed to afford the glamorous condo and/ or the flashy car. As a rule of thumb, scammers know that they have to look good and make it a point to make you think that they are credible. Let’s face it, a man who has the appearance of doing well, always sounds that bit more credible.

So, they key is to never get caught up with the outward appearances of success. So, when you look at a flashy car, ask yourself how it was paid for. Is the person in that flashy car asking you to pay for it?

Maybe some moments weren't so perfect; Maybe some memories not so sweet; But we have to know some bad times; Or our lives are incomplete – Taken from How Does a Moment Last Forever, Sung by Celine Dion

 

A few weeks ago, I had to dress down a young man whom I’ve been trying to mentor. The background was simple. I had received feedback about his inability to file documents. He complained that he was being given “Shit” work and when I asked him what he expected interns to do, his reply was “Go to events and meet big shots.” When I tried to tell him, that interns are not brought to events, he then tried to argue that he was a “special intern” but backed down when it was clear that I was going to do him physical damage for giving me a wimps reply.

I recounted this story to one of my directors, he told me that I was wrong to be upset by this attitude. My director’s point is that interns these days have “expectations” about the work place and I cannot expect them to have the mentality that I had.

Well, here’s the thing, while I did take a knock or two, I don’t think I went through anything particularly harsh. As an intern at Citi, I was didn’t want people to know that I got the job because Daddy played golf with the department VP. Work was not glamorous – spent a lot of time filling out excel spreadsheets and photocopying cheques (this was back in 1999). Yet, I did because, well, I was told this was what I could expect and I was terrified that people would see me as a “rich kid” who got the job because Daddy had a string to pull.

I don’t take the mentality I brought into Citi as an intern to be anything special. When I started work in a small agency, I needed to prove that I got the job and could do the job, even though it was known that my dad had a brand of sorts in the industry.

So, I am aware of expectations. I am aware that coming from a well to do background has advantages. I’m aware that we live in a world where you got to use every advantage that you have, including the ones that you were born into. However, you have to know the limits of those advantages. I find myself telling this young man the same thing I tell my daughter, “Being young and handsome/ pretty can only get you so far.” Sure, good looks make it easier to get your foot into the door – but its not going to keep you there if you don’t do the work.

Yet, my director has a point. I belong to a different era and the kids (my own included) think differently. I can’t expect kids to memorise a phone book because there’s no need to. We all carry handheld computers which make such skills irrelevant.

However, I do believe that there are certain harsh realities that don’t change. One of them is best summed up in the Celine Dion song “How does a moment last forever,” when there is a line about how we need bad times or our lives are incomplete.

I think of that line because there’s a truth there. We’re all happy and friendly to each other in good times but suddenly things change when things get a little rough.

 

 Taken from the movie “Renaissance Man”

Its this simple, my BFFs remain my army mates till this day for a very good reason. These were the guys who were there through some awful times. We got wacked together and we helped each other out. Our memories of the things we went through were far from perfect, which in a way made the bond we formed all that much sweeter.

There is a reason why I am so proud of my days as a freelancer. Sure, I went through the awful experience of working and not getting paid and being in a business and getting jobs done but not getting recognised because I didn’t have “experience.” All these experiences made me a wiser person and although a decade of a steady job has made me financially more secure, I like the person I was much better. That guy had guts and passion. The guy I am today, undoubtedly makes much better decisions.

The memories that are inevitably sweetest came from the most uncomfortable moments. If you ask me where my future lies, its inevitably with the people who are outside my immediate professional sphere. These are the guys who challenge me to grow and even as I approach the half century mark, I know I can’t stop being challenged.

A lot of the young guys don’t see it that way. I had to tell the young man that he’s entering a world where he’s competing against people who are hungry and willing to do what it takes. Nobody is going to care about his family background and that cruising in the comfort zone is a sure-fire recipe to be eaten alive. Before he joined, his Godmother told me not to worry about him. The truth is I am terrified for him and his generation of kids who haven’t quite understood how challenging the world can be and how they need to be prepared to be constantly on their toes.  

Majulah Old Folks

 Its Singapore’s National Day and I usually try to write something about life in Singapore and what it feels like to be a Singaporean. I usually try to avoid going into political grips because its easy and I try not to sound too sentimental. It’s a challenge but I usually get it done.

This year, has been a bit of a challenge. I didn’t want to delve into the recent political scandals because everyone is doing that. Yet, at the same time I don’t want to get into the usual “ra-ra” that comes from the one event where our military actually gets put to use – the parade.

Then by some stroke of luck, I decided to visit a business partner who was working in Chinatown area, selling lifestyle products. Then, on my way back, I got my inspiration. The bus I was going to jump had to let an old Indian man, who was on a scooter, off. The poor guy had a problem stirring his scooter off the bus. What was an interesting about this incident was the fact that there was an old Cantonese man standing next to me, who started making a few uncalled-for remarks about the man’s ethnicity.

However, when it was clear that the old guy was not getting off the bus on his own, the Old Cantonese guy jumped onto the bus and proceeded to help the guy on the scooter off the bus. Managed to get the guy off the bus.

 

This was a reminder of a truism about Singapore, which is the fact that the various communities that make up Singapore, actually got along pretty well. Sure, it was not saintly. People from various communities had nicknames and stereotypes for each other. However, people who lived in the same village always found a way to work together and live in harmony.

However, somewhere along the lines, you had politicians who managed to convince the various communities that they were being screwed over by each other. You then had race riots and tensions, which was then solved by politicians. These politicians would then spend the next five decades reminding us that they had stopped racial tensions and made us happy to live together.

In all fairness to the system, racial relations are generally pretty good. We’ve not had a “Black Lives Matter” type of riot. The politicians make a point that its their policies that made our racial relations so good.

However, as the incident on the bus seemed to say – our old folks were not actually at each other’s throats. They actually knew how to cooperate and work together without the instruction of the government. So, it raises the question – were racial relations actually solved by the politicians or did the politicians create the racial tensions so that they would have a problem to solve? Could the way our old people across the various communities have the answer to how we can improve inter-communal relations and find a way forward for Singapore?

Let’s Get Naked for National Day

 It’s been a funny two months, as funnily enough, very good for the ego. The day I landed back in the UK, I ended up at a function where I was deemed “Good Looking,” by someone whose opinion on the subject matters to me. Weeks later, I found myself in a yoga class where a few people came up to me and asked if I was a fitness instructor because they found I had a “muscular physique.” That phrase would be repeated later on at a client meeting when the client noticed.

I guess you could say that it’s an ego trip. I am now pushing 50 and words like “muscular physique” and “Good Looking” are not phrases associated with men pushing 50 and so I guess one might say that I should just accept the compliments where I can get them.

However, the truth is I don’t feel particularly good looking or muscular, even if at least one of the compliments came from someone I wanted to notice. While I am fitter than I used to, I am well aware that I am far from muscular or good looking. The reason for that comes down to one peculiar quirk of my exercise routine – I’m usually topless when I exercise.

 

 Your own body, as they say, is the one thing that won’t lie to you. So, when people tell me I am good looking or that I have a muscular frame, the belly makes its presence quite clear when I go to work out. So, I am well aware that I am far away from being muscular

I bring up this analogy because tomorrow is Singapore’s National Day and our 58^th birthday comes at a very particular time. Singapore’s formerly “perfect” government has found itself in a rather “imperfect” position. We’ve had a corruption scandal involving a minister and our Speaker of Parliament who was once a prominent star in government had to resign over an affair. Our Prime Minister, who is over 70 and searching for a retirement option has had the unenviable task of explaining how the system is holding strong when a good portion of the public suspect it is falling apart. Our Prime Minister’s Speech on the issue can be seen at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5LwmjZSWJI

How did this all happen? Why is Singapore’s once famously invulnerable and omnipotent government looking like it has feet of clay?

Well, I would argue that the problem is that the government never got naked and looked at the one thing that would not lie – the body that is the nation of Singapore. Sure, Singapore does compare very well to most parts of the world and everyone who visits inevitably praises Singapore as wonderful place. We have, as our mainstream media has reminded us, have the best airline in the world, the best airport and we’re generally the best of everything, according to the number of international polls.

I think of the people who have praised my physique and I’ve been really thrilled to get that praise. So, I can imagine what our cabinet must be feeling whenever one of the international polls rates something about Singapore amongst the world’s best. However, does the external praise do one any good?

Well, I’m lucky in the sense that the faults of my own body are petty glaring. The tummy (the place where fat is often the most difficult to remove) makes its presence felt. Try as I might, the belly fat remains visible for all, including myself. So, whenever someone tells me I look good, I go back to my basic work out routine and my body has a way of reminding me that I still have plenty of work to do in order to get to where I would like to get before my 50^th birthday.

So, the question is, do our ministers have a “get naked” moment where the one thing that can lie, speaks to them. If you look at Singapore’s institutions, you’ll notice that our ministers have effectively become like a radio station commercial – “Hear only the good stuff.” Let’s face it, our President is supposed to be “independent” but two of the last four have been effectively selected. Our judges have made some good decisions but nobody seriously expects the judiciary to rule against any senior politician. As for our mainstream media editors, well, let’s put it this way, most know who not to offend.

Nobody wants to get naked and look at the body that cannot lie. So, they only hear the good stuff and take it as the gospel truth of how things are. Talk to enough HDB residents and there is inevitably one complaint – the MP only appears during election. So, its this clear that the good stuff that our government has been hearing is not the whole truth. Shouldn’t we use this National Day to get naked to see the real state of our nation?    

Singapore’s First Unsuccessful President.

 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Tang Li and I am here to launch my bid to become President of the Republic of Singapore. I believe that my candidacy for the highest office in the land comes at an important time in our history. I have a purpose and I believe that as President my purpose will help serve Singapore’s interest at this critical juncture.

I am aware that I am going up against the best and the brightest that the nation has to offer. We have two esteemed businessmen and let’s not forget the former Deputy Prime Minister who is recognized in international circles as being a whizz when it comes to economics. So, how can I compare? My opponents have fortunes to speak of, while I struggle to pay my bills. They made policies that affect our lives. I haven’t come close. I’m sure my opponents will point to their vast experience running huge organisations and thus bolster the image that they are better qualified to be the guardian of our reserves.

Believe it or not, I get where they are coming from. How can you trust an unsuccessful man to look after the reserves when he struggles to top his transport card? That’s missing the point. The fact that I have failed in both my personal and professional life is the very reason that you need to vote for me as a president.

When we talk about the Presidency being a symbol, we need to understand that that symbol means. Sure, we want a president who can look dignified when facing the outside world. This is the easy part. The state will see to it that the president will look presentable. I’ve had people tell me I look that much better when I dress up properly.

 

 However, what does the Presidency symbolize to the people of the nation? Is the President like the British monarch, a symbol steeped in fantasy or do we want a president that the average Singaporean can say “Hey, he’s an ordinary dude like me but he made it.”

I like to think that as a national symbol, the President will be someone that can relate to the ordinary Singaporean. Sure, I never ran a S$100 million organization. However, I’ve had to struggle against “foreign competition,” and somehow found a way to make “foreign competition” work for me. I was once homeless, had to stay in a seedy hotel in the seedy part of town.

Sure, everyone notices that my friends include high flying people. However, I also have befriended the likes of construction workers and other blue-collar workers. In culinary terms, I can enjoy wagyu steak but I am also at ease eating with my hands in the company of construction workers who were thrown out of work.

I love my country and my love for the country is not a transaction. My country has not always been good to me and yet, I stay struggling on the continuous efforts to build a life. My country has its faults, yet I love my country warts an all. You need a president who represents the nation as it is and not what an elite living in a bubble would like you to think it is. Vote for a president who understands your struggles.