Budget Buses

 There was a time when there was an issue about transporting workers from South Asia or the proverbial “Darkies” who are exploiting Singapore by doing the jobs Singaporeans won’t do. A few “aged lefties” (In Singapore, they’re inevitably aged – the kids are too busy trying to be successful in cubicle land to care about the rest of the world), got upset that the construction companies were jamming the workers in backs of lorries that had no seat belts or any form of safety during accidents:

 

 

If I remember correctly, there were one or two traffic accidents and I believe one or two “Darkies” were killed. Singapore’s aged lefties were up in arms that human beings could be transported in such a fashion and wrote many social media post about this.

However, whilst there was a hue and cry about this and the government did make one or two noises about promising to look into things, nothing actually happened. Around two-years after the din of needing to treat dark skinned South Asians who do actual work, nothing was actually done. The reason was simple. The construction lobby made the point that it would be prohibitively expensive for them to actually provide things like buses to get their workers from point A to point B.

To be fair, to the government, only the aged lefties seemed upset by the issue and sine aged lefties aren’t inclined to vote for the government anyway, the government decided to do what it does best – pay attention to those who can be reminded to vote “properly.” As far as that segment of the population is concerned, the Darkies should just be grateful for whatever they’re getting and one shouldn’t force “prohibitively” expensive things onto the employers like wages, accommodation and let’s not forget the levy for foreign workers.

Then, as was once pointed out to me, Singaporeans used to ride around in a similar fashion and were perfectly happy with it. So, why should one impose “unfair” expenses on the construction industry (which is inevitably government funded) when everyone was perfectly happy with such methods of transportation.

I’ve come round to accepting that there may be a point here. Instead of calling for the ban on putting workers in lorries, we should expand this and create a new form of mass market transport.

Look, many us complain about how the bus and MRT services have become more expensive in recent years. I am guilty of this. I notice that a decade ago, it was possible to travel around for a week on $10. These days, $10 last you a day or so. What I can do about it? The answer is utterly jack all because mass market transport in Singapore is a duopoly run by the same people. They can charge whatever they want and the masses like myself can either learn to walk longer or die if we don’t want to pay the fares.

So, what’s to be done. Well, the answer is lies in the taxi market. At one stage, driving a metered cab was to exclusive purview of a few big companies. Then Uber came along made it such that anyone with a car could be a taxi driver. Uber was eventually booted out and replaced by Grab in Southeast Asia but the point remained – everyone with a car was suddenly giving rides. Metered taxis were forced to get creative because the ride hailing platforms were actually competing with them.

The same thing happened in the telco market. Along came Starhub and M1 and before you knew it, SingTel, the elephant of the market was forced to cut prices (especially on long distance calls) and look beyond Singapore for growth.

I am very sure that there are plenty of people yearning for an alternative to the bus and MRT. You just need to let entrepreneurs fill this niche. A guy with a lorry can become a bus operator of sorts. Just figure out a route and I’m sure enough people will be willing to cram onto a lorry to get from the housing estates and head to say the centre of town for half the cost of a standard bus ride.

I’ve sat in the back of lorries. Happens when I used to hitch a ride with the guys helping me move things. When I was married to Gina, we’d ride in the back of my then father-in-law’s lorry, which he would use for egg delivery. It was one of my few happy memories of that period.

So, let’s remember that we once used to move around the way foreign workers move around. Let’s see if we can return to that era and think of how happy our local population would be.

“You Do Believe in God; But Never Listen to Him”

I had to do a day trip to Dubai on Wednesday, which meant that I had to sit on a plane for several hours. Since I left on the morning flight, I thought I would make the most of the inflight entertainment system and went on a movie binge all the way up to Dubai.

One of the gems in this movie binge was a Bollywood flick called “Thank God,” which tells the story of Ayan Kapoor, an arrogant debt-fueled businessman who finds himself in limbo after a car accident. He meets the characters of the spiritual realm who involve him in a game show where the “sins” of life are played with him.

One of the best scenes comes when the CG the game show host gets a call from Lord Hanuman (the Hindu Monkey God and the good the main character is a devotee of.) The main character assumes that “his God” is getting him off the hook because he’s been making plenty of offerings, only to find that he gets drenched and sweets get stuffed into his mouth and he finds out that “His God” is “p****ed off with him.” CG explains to him that “You do believe in God: But Never Listen to him,” and then explains that God is not interested in your offerings and rituals but in your humanity. It turns out that in his effort to prove his devotion to Lord Hanuman by buying offerings, he p****es on a beggar and her grandson, which leads to her death and the abandonment of the child.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-sgnhYJGOA

 

 

 

 

That line stuck with me because we live in an age where there are many distractions from the things that are important to us. In human relationships this usually comes into the form of the people we spend time with. Many of us chase those with “power” and “money” or both because we believe it helps us get ahead. However, we end up becoming so busy trying to be around money and power that we neglect the people who really matter and forget our real friends in our quest for wealthy friends.

In the spiritual realm, it often comes in the form of an obsession with rituals. Regardless of religion, you find people get focused on the rituals and motions of the faith they practice. Payer becomes like a transaction where you ask the almighty for some magic pill to make your problems go away in return for your good behavior.

However, as just about every religious text known to man points out – the almighty is interested in what’s inside you rather than what you try and show on the outside. In the Christian Gospels for example, Jesus talks about the “Parable of the Widow’s Mite” and teaches us that God values the poor widow’s mite more than he does the vastly superior number of coins donated by rich merchants.

Even if you discount the “illogical” nature of faith, there is a logic there. Why would a higher power be interested in our earthly things like money and offerings when they could get whatever they wanted with a simple thought? If anything, a higher would probably prefer us to be “nicer” people to each other.

What is the point of going to a church, temple or mosque on a daily basis and proclaiming your faith and devotion to the almighty when the moment you leave, you promptly kick the poor tissue paper seller in the face and try and get her arrested for disturbing your day?

While I can’t claim to speak for the Almighty, I suspect the Almighty would prefer it if people spent more time raising up their communities instead of trying to out pray each other. I think of the Catholic Priest who told his congregation that “It is not in the beauty of our liturgy or the buildings but in our compassion.” I think of the Muslim driver who said “Islam is not the first religion of man – the first religion is Salaam – shake hands and make friends that is the first religion.”

I am not disputing the importance of faith and the rituals. Prayer is a wonderful source of solace and there are times when “talking to” the Almighty helps provide one with the fortitude to get through tough times.  However, rituals without action are pointless and prayers need to be backed by sincerity. As said in the movie, we’re so used to trying to show we believe, we forget to listen to the message.

Doing the Right Thing doesn’t Really Pay?

 

At the end of last month, I had the honour of being invited to a seminar conducted by Rajah & Tann, one of the larger local law firms. The seminar was around the topic of knowing your customer and the perils of money laundering and terrorism financing. It was clear from the presentation that Singapore has a very comprehensive set of laws to deal with “doggy money.”

 

 If you were to look at the set of laws dealing with things like money laundering and terrorism financing, you will be undauntedly impressed by the legal tools in which the government has given itself to catch the bad guys. You will also admire the fact that the various sets of laws place responsibility on getting things right where it should be – on senior management.

There is, however, one slight flaw to our legal system when it comes to financial nasties. It assumes that people on the top are automatically responsible and decent people who will always be responsible. Hence, the trick to making everything work like clockwork is make senior management responsible for everything.

There is one slight fallacy with this. This situation only existed in the wettest dreams of Confucius. While it does take a lot of positive qualities for someone to get to a high level, being “always moral,” simply isn’t one of them and we need to remember that the law in practice and the law as it is written are not necessarily the same thing. You can have all the laws in the world but if there’s no ability to detect and enforce those laws, then the laws are pointless.

In theory, Singapore law states that if an employee knows his or her employer is guilty of something or other, they have a legal obligation to report it. However, let’s be honest, how many of us would be willing to report the source of our livelihood to the authorities when there is a risk of losing your job and never being hired and the potential for vengeance from an employer who may get acquitted whereas you only have the reward of knowing you did the “right thing”?

Let’s look at one of the most famous “whistleblowers” in recent years – Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Alexander Vindman, who famously reported his “Commander-in-Chief,” then President Trump for trying to shake down Ukrainian President Zelensky into conducting an investigation into Hunter Biden.

What was LTC Vindman’s reward? The President Trump was acquitted in the Senate Trial and took no time in disposing of everyone who got him impeached. LTC Vindman, a decorated war hero was labeled “insubordinate” by his “Commander-in-Chief,” not something which any military officer wants to be known for. The man fought for his country and has been rewarded with the hatred of a good percentage of it:

https://news.am/eng/news/559243.html

 

 Sure, LTC Vindman has now gotten himself a new career as a celebrity of sorts. However, let’s remember that this happened in America which has laws and rewards for whistleblowers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5azzC0ZS9yM

 

 At the time of writing, America is the only major economy that rewards whistleblowing. A good portion of the EU economies do not have strong laws protecting whistleblowers let alone having a reward program, specifically in the financial sector.

When I attended an International Fraud Group (IFG) conference in November of last year, the question of whether more countries should implement a whistleblower reward program along the American model. The general consensus was no. The Eastern Europeans had scars of the Soviet era and argued that nobody wanted to be know as the “informant” and a lot of the attendees from the developed world argued that it would incentivize frivolous information. Only the boss of an NGO that deals with human trafficking argued that whistleblowing was necessary to reduce human suffering.

This sentiment wasn’t particular to the group. The Bank of England’s Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority, henceforth (FiCA & PRA’s), writes in a note for a UK Parliament Committee that “There is as yet no empirical evidence of incentives leading to an increase in the number or quality of disclosures received by regulators” (PRA and FiCA 2014, p.2, italics in original).

Now, if this is the sentiment of regulators in the “democratic Western,” world, what can be said of Asian countries where the culture remains focused on the importance of the “patriarch.”

Going against “your boss” or the person who has power over you and in cultures where authority figures are venerated, its even more difficult. However, the fact remains that you’re not going to get fraud punished if you don’t get it reported and you’re not going to get it reported if people are fearful of doing so. Going against someone who has the power of an organisation involves serious risk. Let’s face it, one can say “it’s only money,” but its different story when it means you can’t feed yourself or look out for your family.

One might event ague that whistleblowing is not necessary or that it encourages “frivolous” complaints. However, if you look at the UK where there is a system of rewarding whistleblowing in the health care sector, it was found that 41 percent of fraud causes were detected by employees.

Whistleblowing or getting people who are under the power of others to report crimes is good for the system. While government’s might be hesitant to get involved, there are at least private sector companies willing to step in. One example is Omni Bridgeway, a litigation funder, which has argued that whistleblowing takes “courage”

 

It also understands that being a whistleblower means putting yourself in financial harm’s way.

 

While Omni Bridgeway does have a system that funds whistleblowing suites, it only offers the service in the US market, where whistleblowing has financial rewards. Would Omni Bridgeway or companies like Omni Bridgeway be allowed to work in other markets? Just because governments may be hesitant to take on rewarding whistleblowers, there’s no reason why they can’t encourage the private sector to step in.

Whistle blowing takes courage but it’s shown that it is an essential part in combating things like corruption, money laundering and terrorist financing. These are things that societies need to deal with if they are to grow in every sense of the word. Isn’t it time we stop talking about combating financial crimes and lauding people’s courage and actually protect and reward people for doing the right thing and being serious about combating crime?

Giving Under Siege

 

Went to a talk by the Ukrainian Ambassador to Singapore, Her Excellency (HE) Ms. Kateryna Zelenko at Duane Morris & Selvam LLP. The talk centered two years into the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 was what you could call a pivotal moment in world history. This was what you could call the first invasion of a sovereign state by another on European soil since the Second World War. For the first time since 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, we actually had world powers looking at a conflict and helping “by proxy” rather than getting involved.

However, thanks to the Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip, the global focus and the questions about international law have inevitably moved from Ukraine to the Middle East. However, whilst the focus of global attention may have shifted from Ukraine to the Middle East since October 2023, the key issues that the world faces today haven’t gone away and they’re particularly visible in the war in Ukraine.

The key issue that the war in Ukraine and the war in the Middle East has thrown up, is the question of food security. The need to eat is an equalizer between social classes and ethnicities. While everyone is busy talking about the latest development in this and that when it comes to growing the economy, the reality is that the most basic industry and the backbone of any society is ultimately food production. Simply put – no point having a lot of money if there’s no food.

So, it goes without saying that in war situation where one party is trying to annihilate the other, the first thing they will do is to try and remove the ability of the other party to feed itself. One of the key issues of the Israeli invasion of Gaza is the fact that people in Gaza no longer have the ability to feed themselves. The same is true in Ukraine, where the Russians have attacked Ukraine’s ability to feed itself.

 There is a background to Ukraine and agriculture. The country is famously fertile and it was known as the “breadbasket” of both the Czarist Empire and the Soviet Union. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Ukraine was the in the top five global for exporting sunflower oil, corn and wheat in 2021:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/ukraine-s-food-exports-by-the-numbers/

Again, agriculture tends to get overlooked when we talk about the industries of the future. However, the importance of agriculture to a society and an economy becomes apparent when the industry is no longer there. Hence, if you look at history of conquest, you will notice that one of the first things an invader does is to burn the farms in order to make them unusable. Once the farms are out, there are no crops and there’s no food.

So, what have the Ukrainians done. It was a surprise to find out that the Ukraine had a program called “Grain from Ukraine,” which was started in November 2022, or over ten months after the Russians invaded. The idea behind “Grain from Ukraine” is for the countries donating to the Ukraine to bring Ukrainian grain and send it to the parts of the world that need it. Details on the “Grain from Ukraine” program can be found in the following URL:

https://mfa.gov.ua/en/grain-ukraine

 

 In a way, you could say the idea of a country that is under invasion by a larger power giving away its grain to be insane. One might argue that the Ukrainians should be doing everything to keep their grain to themselves.

However, you could also argue that this is strategically brilliant. Work on the understanding that countries only help out when they have an interest to do so. By getting donor countries to export Ukrainian grain to the “needy” parts of the world, Ukraine is reminding the world why it should have an interest in helping the Ukrainians keep Ukraine, Ukrainian. This is a country that plays an important part in global food security. Ukraine is telling the world that it tries to use its agriculture power to keep the food flowing and that we want a reliable partner in the global food supply chain rather than one who could happily blackmail the rest of us if he had control over so much of the world’s grain production.

Let’s face it, Ukraine has held out for so long because its had help. Russia is the vastly larger power and Ukraine does need all the help it can get. In the initial stages of the war, there were a lot of emotional reasons to support Ukraine. However, when the war in Gaza started, the emotions turned to the Middle East. However, when the “Grain from Ukraine” program, there is a very rational reason for outsiders to ensure that the Ukraine is able to hold its own and keep control of its vast agricultural production.

Being a “good guy” particularly when you’re not in the best position to do anything for yourself let alone the rest of the world is tough. However, the Ukrainians might have just proven that doing good whilst they are under siege is not just morally correct but smart. The rest of us can learn from that.  

The World is Big Enough

 One of the things that I remember most about starting out was being asked if I was interested in trying to write for the Today Newspaper. The person who asked me, was a senior writer in the Straits Times and she made the suggestion when I went to visit her in her office. She had to make this offer in hushed tones.

There was a reason for this. Back in the days when there was “media competition,” the top management of both media houses (SPH and MediaCorp) took the competition personally. The team that went to the Today Newspaper were from The New Paper and considered “traitors” to the management of SPH. The same was true for those who went from MediaCorp TV to help set up SPH MediaWorks.

I found this attitude strange. I had grown up in the UK where business and political competition were a fact of life. Sure, companies would “compete” and try and come up with things to win consumers over and to keep good staff. However, I never heard the phrase “too small for competition” until I moved back to Singapore nor had I heard of top management taking it personally when staff left to join a competitor.

However, as life required me to come up against the political system more frequently, it became clear where this attitude amongst out top business people came from. In the 2006 election, we got the hear the argument that Singapore was too small to support a two-party system. To anyone outside Singapore, this is a strange idea to put forth, especially when it seems like the governing party in question has done a decent enough job. Why would an institution in a position of strength be so keen to try to convince people that natural laws did not apply to it.

In fairness, this isn’t something that is particularly unique to the PAP or Singapore. If you listen to American politicians talk about China, you’ll notice that the superpower has developed something of a weird fascination with the aspiring one. Take the following from two diplomats:

 

 Sure, the People’s Republic of China does not have a good record of accepting competition to its power. The Chinese Communist Party, particularly under Xi Jinping has become even more monopolistic in its attitude to power. However, in this case, the Chinese have a point. The world is large enough for America and China and while China’s economic rise has been impressive, the fact remains, the average American remains richer than the average Chinese and whilst China’s military has been “modernizing,” it’s been modernizing from the 1950s whilst the American military is preparing for the space age.

So, here’s the reality of life – no one is above the laws of competition. If you study nature, you’ll notice that animal and plant species are designed to compete and everyone in the eco-system has a purpose. The same is true for business and politics. The dominant species only remains dominant as long as it remains strong and has enough food.

In the case business and political economic systems, its clear that the dominant beast are dominant as long as they give the market what it wants or they create markets for their products and services. The problem only steps in when the dominant beast starts to believe that its position of dominance is “God-given.” Again, the story of Singapore’s media giants is instructive.

SPH and MediaCorp went to the government and got the government to restore their monopolies. Everyone seemed happy and secure and the top management spent their time gripping on each other’s platforms about whether readership or viewership was better. What nobody noticed was the fact that the general public got bored with both of them and turned to the internet and a host of “alternative” sites run by people who were motivated by things other than money. The advertisers who were paying the media monopolies noticed it to and moved their money accordingly. Revenue figures dropped and eventually, SPH, a company that that effectively had a license to print money ended up becoming a “non-profit” dependent on government handouts.

Competition exists to keep everyone on their toes. If you look at nature, you’ll notice that even the biggest animals have to stay on their toes or they become a meal for predators. No animal gets the idea that its survival, particularly at the top is a given. So, human institutions need to understand the same is true for them. A dominant player is there because it serves the market rather than being served by the market. Top nations, top companies, top political parties and so on need to remember that they are servants to ordinary folk rather than the other way round.  

Let’s Share the Load

 Had the honour of attending a breakfast meeting hosted by the Irish Chamber of Commerce this morning, which was in celebration of International Woman’s Day. The speakers on the panel, were a group of high-powered women, led by the Irish Ambassador to Singapore, Ms. Sarah McGrath. The panelist shared their thoughts on gender equality and the value that it provided organisations. Personal stories were shared and it was on the whole and enjoyable event.

 

However, there was one topic that got missed out – namely the fact that one of the worst proponents against gender equality are women themselves. Token women in positions of power tend to be like all other tokens – keen to preserve their status as the lone one in power and thus work against “their own kind.” The second group of culprits, particularly on the Asian continent, who work actively against gender equality are mothers, who give everything to make life for their sons easy whilst expecting their daughters to slave like dogs.

This point was brought home during my first marriage when my ex-wife was stunned that I knew how to turn on the stove and wash dishes. Her younger brother, who while brilliant academically was totally incapable of turning around and putting the wrapper of his McDonald’s take away in the bin. The reason was simple, my former mother-in-law had made sure that as long as her son was in the house, he’d never need to lift a finger to do anything resembling housework.

This was not a “one-off” freak. As life progressed, I’ve found that this isn’t limited to Singapore. I once met a Vietnamese lady who had a small massage parlour. She was earning money and sending it back home. However, the money she was sending back home was used to support the tobacco and alcohol habits of her brothers. So, in an effort to see her hard-earned money put to good use, she stopped giving money to her brothers and would give money to her mother. However, she ended up cutting off the money to her mother for one simple reason. Her mother would donate every penny she was sending to her brothers who would then keep the booze and tobacco shops in business.

As expected, this “cultural” preference for boys over girls that is enforced by well meaning-mothers has had predictable results. You get capable women and boys who remain boys for the rest of their lives and remain gloriously unable to tie their shoe laces without their mothers. I think of my Padawan whose CV was barely legible. His sister, by contrast, is the wet dream of every Singaporean parent. She’s top of her class in NUS and the big company that she interned in offered her a job at twice the national average salary. I asked him how the hell did things turn out that way. His told me that he is a “pampered” child. As the first and only grandson, his grandparents forbade his father from getting him to do anything. As he admitted “I am very weak,” and it reached the point that I could only advise him to stay healthy and handsome because that was the main thing going for him.

I don’t believe I am the only clown who has met a generation of hopeless mummy’s boys who make foreigners vital to the economy. Gender inequality has a cost to it in that it clearly weakens one sex over another. The importance of solving gender inequality has never been more pressing and it needs to start at the root cause – the way in which parents, specifically mothers pamper their sons at the expense of their daughters. You can have the most beautiful policies in the world but unless you get things settled at the root of the problem, you will only have a group of incapable boy-children that need to be supported by their mothers.

Thankfully there have been efforts made to solve this at the root cause. One of the best advertising campaigns that I can think of was from Ariel which ran a campaign in India. The campaign was called “Share the load together. “One of the ads involved a marriage that was dissolving because after years of having to earn a living and look after the household, the wife had reached the point of “enough.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=youeaZyavg0

 

 There was an even more significant ad, which involved a mother realising the error of her ways when she realised her daughter had to give up her job because she had been married off to a husband who did not know how to do housework and promptly gets her son to do his own laundry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QDlv8kfwIM

 

The message in this campaign was clear. It made the point that gender bias is bad and that parents who propagate this end up doing more harm than good. You will only succeed in tackling gender inequality when you start focusing on homes.

Is Letting People Think for Themselves a Bad Thing?

 

The late Lee Kuan Yew was without doubt an extraordinary person. Say what you like about the late Mr. Lee but on the whole, he did good for Singapore. Sure, I have my grouses about Singapore and how life has become expensive. However, as one Dutchman said to me “Where else is there.” If you think about it objectively, Lee Kuan Yew got most things right and I will never tire of saying this but Singapore is pretty much what any city or country should be – clean, green and rich.

However, while Mr. Lee was undoubtedly an extraordinary leader, he developed what one could call a glaring flaw. In his later years as a consultant to nations, he developed a philosophical aversion to natural law – namely an aversion to the laws of natural selection. He seemed to genuinely believe that the system he created, which was all about the perpetual rule of an “intelligentsia” concentrated around his family (both his actual family and political party) was the best possible system for Singapore and would last in perpetuity.

The man who forged a nation where citizens pledged to “build a democratic society, based on justice and equality” ended up arguing that Singapore would be undone by a “two-party” system and while Mr. Lee had the wisdom to know when to curb himself (let’s remember he voluntarily stepped aside and made his successors remember to let him come to them), this wasn’t necessarily the case with the people after him. Whilst Singapore’s political system seems to continue to deliver the proverbial goodies, one cannot help but feel that there is a genuine belief in the elites that they have received the “mandate of heaven” to be where they are. I mean, which other “free-market” capitalist society actually has business leaders saying “the market is too small for competition.”

 

 Singapore’s success made Mr. Lee the choice consultant of developing nations. He was particularly liked by the People’s Republic of China. Thanks to Mr. Lee, autocrats of the world found an example that proved that you could keep an iron grip on power and still grow the economy. It’s particularly noticeable when you talk about the Asian giants. While you get a number of Indians complaining about China being nasty, you will undoubtedly get another group (mostly business people) talking about how India should learn from China’s ability to get things in order. India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi is known to be an admirer of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and attended his funeral.

So, was Mr. Lee, right? Is an iron grip on power better for the economy than letting people do what they want? Sitting in Singapore, which seems relatively stable (no Trump and no Brexit) compared to pretty much most of the world, the answer might be yes.

However, around November of last year, I attended a talk by His Excellency, Mr. Ignacio Concha, the Chilean Ambassador. This was a talk about investment opportunities in Chile, which is the most advanced economy in South America.

 

Chile's “success story” once made it comparable to an Asian Tiger economy rather than a Latin one. More importantly, Chile was once run by a strong man, called Augusto Pinochet, who along with murdering millions, actually stabilized the economy and set Chile onto the path of growth and development.

One might argue that Chile under Pinochet was a classic example of the benefits of strong man rule. However, the Ambassador made the point that the real explosion the Chile's growth came in the decade after the return to democracy (1990). If you were to look at World Bank statistics, you would realise that the Ambassador is right:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=CL

 

 

 

If you look at the statistics closely, Chile’s real explosion didn’t happen in 1990 with when Pinochet stepped aside but in 2000 when he was arrested in the UK on the orders of the Spanish Magistrate Baltasar Garcon. This marked the beginning of the end of his influence on the country.

So, while there is a case to say that Pinochet, for all his faults, did stabilize the Chilean Economy, there is a case to say that his influence held the country back and the country only started exploding into wealth and advancement when his influence over the country ended.

There’s a similar example closer to home. In South East Asia, there is Indonesia, which is by far and away the economy that counts on the global stage. For 30-years, Indonesia was run by a strong man. Like Pinochet in Chile, Suharto had millions killed. However, he was a stable force in Indonesia and the ASAEAN region. Coming from Singapore, where there are memories of “Konfrontasi” under his predecessor, Sukarno, Suharto was a vast improvement. He kept Indonesia stable and focused on itself rather than on us, which allowed us to grow.

When Suharto fell, it seemed that things were a little bit messier. However, if you look at growth figures, Indonesia has done exceedingly well and being the world’s third largest democracy has been good for Indonesia’s entrepreneurs. The years under Jokowi, Indonesia’s first entrepreneur president, have been particularly good for growth:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=ID

 

 

On the African continent, there’s Nigeria. Like Indonesia in South East Asia, Nigeria is the giant in its neighborhood. For the better part of its Independence, Nigeria was run by its generals. There were periods of vast growth, which were then followed by economic collapse. Nigeria was effectively driven by oil exports. Then, in 1999, the last and worst of its military dictators died. Nigeria returned to civilian rule and growth has been steady. While Nigeria has by no means escaped poverty, its been remarkably steady since 2000.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=N

So, if you look at the examples of Chile, Indonesia and Nigeria, there is a case to be made for democracy being good for growth. Yes, rule by strong men can be necessary to bring a sense of stability. However, that’s only good up to a certain point. A lot of the benevolent effects of strong man rule depends on the strong man himself. In Singapore, we’re lucky that the “strong man” was Mr. Lee who got things right and saw to it that his immediate successors remained honest. However, there’s no guarantee that the next few leaders will remain honest or get too used to the perks of power.

Nigeria’s plethora of military strong men turned what should be an exceedingly wealthy place into a basket case. Suharto was a force for stability but when things collapsed in 1997, he was exposed as being more interested in hanging onto power to protect family wealth than running the country.

Democracy and competition for power are actually good. When you let people get on with it within a certain framework, you actually create prosperity. It may look messy and ride may be rough, but in the end, letting people get on with it and making them have a stake in the country is actually good for everyone

The Definition of Insanity

 I’ve been a little taken back that my piece on “Should You Exercise for Life,” has been getting a bit of traction on Linkedin. The story was essentially about two friends who found that exercising for life had benefits other than the physical.

However, I realise that these two gentlemen might be an exception. If I look closely at enough at the people around me, I realise that there’s one major problem with aging – namely the fact that you become rather resistant to change no matter how beneficial or necessary that change might be to your survival.

One of the reasons why “older” people are so resistant to change is because they tend to be better off. A guy who has worked ten years is more likely to have cash in the bank than a kid who started out. If you’ve been around somewhere for a decade or so, chances are you’ve found a formula of sorts to move on with life. When you think you have a formula, there’s no need to look for another one. By contrast a kid who just started out needs to experiment to find his or her formula to life.

However, if one looks at the pace of technological change, one will realise that established formulas are no longer reliable. What worked yesterday may not work today and quite often it takes “crisis” to force a change.

If you look at the two gentlemen in the previous posting, you’ll notice that both went through a personal crisis. This gave them the impetus to change the way they were doing things. Change in their lifestyle brought them back their health. Their improved health helped improve all other aspects of their lives.

However, I’ve realized that these gentlemen are a rare breed. Human beings can be so hard wired that even the threat of a decline in the quality of life and impending death can’t them to change. The most amusing example of this was found in a reality TV show called the “1000lbs Sisters,” which follows the story of two sisters whose combined weight is 1,000lbs (453kg). They can barely walk and the root cause of their health problems is painfully obvious their lifestyle is screwed up. The heavier sister (600 lbs or 272 kg) is particularly interesting. Despite being told that she’s likely to die unless she makes drastic changes, she persists in carrying on. Take a look at the following clip on how they don’t drink water – they drink “soda” to counteract sugar. The expression on dietician’s face is priceless:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIAFe7zaCRU

 

 The 1,000 Lbs sisters are merely the most public example of people who double down and refuse to change in the face of crisis. Recently met someone whose diabetes was so bad that he’s lost his hearing and had his toes amputated. Yet, he insists on drinking Coke and proudly declares that he does not take vegetables. Why do people let their health reach that stage and why can’t they see the problem even when its pounding upon them?

I’m not saying that I’m saintly. I’ve persisted in many sticking with many rough decisions when I should have cut earlier. I stayed married to the first wife longer than I should have. I should have started exercising in my 30s instead of waiting to be hospitalized in my late forties. I should have worked a blue-collar job alongside my freelance work earlier and thus had a better financial savings. I did make the adjustments but it took a while. Yes, not all the changes have been to my liking but it was better than the alternative, which was to be a poorer, sicker person.

Change in inevitable and if we’ve learnt anything from the last two-decades it should be that change is so constant that paradigms and formulas are constantly changing. What worked yesterday may not work today. I personally argue that the best form of crisis is called anticipation – the best way to manage a crisis is not to let it get to crisis stage in the first place. I’d also add that the worst form of crisis management is called – digging deeper – where you double down on the thing that brought you down in the first place. I recently met someone who wrote an email calling the judge an unflattering name. This fellow then proceeded to tell the police that he would do it again. I told him that he was begging to be slapped very hard and he’d lose what he wanted most (custody of his son). He insisted that his was a principled stance.

Many of us, myself included, tend to avoid problems instead of dealing with them head on. It’s a natural thing to not want to deal with the unpleasant. Then we hit “crisis” point. At that point we should be forced to deal with the crisis so that we survive and even bloom as a result of the crisis. Whilst we should anticipate crisis, we should, when they come around, use them to learn. Doing the same thing that brought the crisis in the first place is the very definition of insanity.

Should You Exercise for Life?

 

One of the things I realized when I hit my forties was the fact that the only way, I’d be able to survive in Singapore was to do all the rough work that young, local graduates would not do. Such work inevitably involves being in relatively uncomfortable places and involves the use of muscle. Hence, I’ve made it clear to the boss that I have no desire to look at files and stay in a cubicle but I have plenty of energy to run around.

There’s only one problem with this. You need to be relatively healthy and as I push 50, looking after my health has become important. While I do go out for the odd drink or so (since I am obliged to entertain), I avoid the wild parties of my 20s and 30s. I make it a point to walk as much as I can and take the stairs. Then, when the doctors told me that my blood sugars and bad cholesterol were shooting north, I had to add some of resistance training to my life. Whilst I am by no means body beautiful (the tummy and folds on the neck are clearly visible), I am feeling a lot better at the end of my forties than I was at the beginning.

Let’s face it, much of modern life is bad for you because it’s simply too convenient. As a doctor I once had to arrange interviews for said “Life is NOT meant to be convenient – you would not have been born a baby and been forced to grow up if were.” He has a point. Convenience culture has removed a reason for people to leave their homes, let alone their desk. People can get their necessities from the comfort of beds and chairs. Even at my worst, I had to walk out to the kopi shop to get food. For Kiddo and her generation, they just press a few buttons and food is delivered to them. So, why move when you don’t have to.

Yet, at the same time, life is seemingly more stressful. There is no such thing as “work-life” balance. You are your job and being trapped a cubicle is a badge of pride. One is expected to be on call 24-7 if one wants to keep the job let alone get ahead and build a career. So, you have people who don’t move around, get stressed out and end up eating the type of food that whilst tasty has the nutritional value of a sponge.

The life that we lead isn’t doing us any good and suddenly, after spending our youth screwing up our bodies, we suddenly get hit with something nasty and a portion of what we sacrificed our youth building, ends up going to feed the medical industry.

One of the first friends I made via Linkedin and who since become a “real” friend came into my life because of this. It was a post about ending up in hospital which got us connected because it was something I could relate to. By the time we met in person, he’d already set out on a personal fitness journey and today, he posted about his fitness journey and how it had affected his life:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7164536341156859904/

 

 Taken from Mr. Lewis Grimm’s Linkedin Page

Exercise isn’t just about the physical. It’s about the personal and mental. For my lawyer friend, the discovery of exercise not only helps keep his body in check but he’s found a way of controlling stress and having better mental clarity – two things which are vital for him in performing as top-level lawyer for a huge firm.

I found, though Linkedin that former colleague had an even more interesting story. When this man joined the firm around five years ago, he was grossly overweight. He struggled on the escalator and was notoriously bad tempered. His news on Linkedin was about a dramatic physical transformation, which became a personal transformation:

https://exerciseforlife.sg/about-us/

 

 The man would go onto become The First Singaporean Recipient of the Global Hero Award from the Medtronic Corporation and he’s gone onto set up a movement called “Exercise for Life,” to encourage ordinary folk, especially those who are overweight or obese to get into the habit of regular exercise.

When I was pushed into having to exercise regularly, I also become interested in knowledge about the things that I needed to do. One of the things that everyone, and the two fellows mentioned have been living proof of, the benefits of lifelong exercise go beyond the physical. Both men mentioned have improved their lives mentally and physically as well.

I mean, you could say that I’m past the age where I can expect to be “Body-Beautiful” – so why exercise? However, the choice is this – get the muscle tone to use and store the excess blood glucose or spend whatever is left of my life as a lab rat for a medical system that is primarily focused on selling pills?

https://www.tiktok.com/@tang.li0/video/7336607861306297608?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7274292816955999746

 

Exercise for Life I’ve tried to be an example to a young man I was responsible for. I wanted to show him that if he maintained good health and fitness, he would enjoy things better when he reached my age. I had to step up and exercise more and while I’m nowhere near beach model standards, I’m enjoying decent enough health and not being a burden on those around me. Isn’t this something we need to be mindful of as we grow older?

                                                                                                                    

Trying to be a Little Less Obese and Ugly

 I got to admit that my freelance life was a lot of fun. I didn’t work normal hours. Stayed up late at night and whenever I had spare cash, I spent it on food and drink. You could say that I lived very well. For man whom people wondered how I survived, I lived pretty well. I was, for example, regular enough in the Bar & Billiard Room for two successive managers to invite me and an eating buddy to their Sunday brunch on more than one occasion. On the output side, well, my exercise was rather limited.

The natural result of a life of eating and drinking the stuff I shouldn’t have been drinking and limiting my physical activity was the fact that I ended up becoming an obese little thing. First it was the rolls around the neck, which I tried to hide by not wearing ties and then the trouser size grew. I actually had to buy cloths instead of inheriting them from Dad. When people, or specifically my own mother told me I was actually “gross-looking,” I continued to eat more because, I took the attitude that if people wanted to be around me for my looks, they could jolly well sod off because I was having a decent enough life doing things that I liked – basically eating, getting enough booze in the system and flirting with Pinoy Bar Girls.

I guess must have looked OK in my 20s, reasonably normal in my early thirties but by the time I reached my late thirties and headed into my forties, I was actually getting a little round. Didn’t bother me as I figured I could get away with wardrobe tricks.

The Covid happened. The wife insisted I walk more and I realized that walking was a wonderful way of getting away from the house. The kilos dropped and I started to like not needing to doze off in the day. Then, there was the stick. I got such a bad gout attack on my 46^th birthday that I spent in hospital. I also ended up back there in hospital several months later. Yes, weight had gone down but my uric acid levels were abnormally high. I was literally camping out in the polyclinic on a weekly basis because I was getting gout attacks on a regular enough basis.

Then, to get the right pills, I needed to take a blood test and there they found that my blood sugars and triglycerides (bad cholesterol) were heading the wrong way. I ended up being given a series of pills.

I don’t really like pills and so I’m trying to not need them. I’ve started taking exercise seriously. As anyone who follows my key social media pages can testify, I try to move constantly.

I’ve indulged in two gym sessions recently. However, whatever work outs I do, usually tend to be the home-based variety. Much as I see the value of gyms, I don’t think you should only be able to work out in a single place, just I don’t believe you need to be confined to a single place to do work.

If I stay with my aunt in Marine Parade, I use East Coast Park. I’ve I’m with the family in the Whampoa area, I use Blastier as my walking route and in both places, I make the most of the HDB facilities. So, what have I gained out of all of this.

Talking to the One Person that Will Never Lie or Butter You Up

I like to work out topless. Usually work out at night or in the afternoon on weekends. Given that I am an obese man, I don’t exactly have the type of body I can show off. However, when you’re topless, the sweat cools faster and if you lack enough water, you might find salt crystals in places you never imagined them to be.

More importantly, being aware of your body makes you live on planet earth. As I’ve gained a title in professional life, I’m aware that people might be inclined to stroke my ego. The Padawan actually called me “handsome in rugged way.” It didn’t stop there. I’ve had the phrase “muscular frame” used to describe me and someone whom I’ve grown to care for and whose opinions on my looks matters to me, went as far as to use the phrase “really good looking.”

As nice as these phrases are to hear, the truth remains, I’m still a middle-aged obese man. The one thing that never lies is your own body and I notice that I still have too much belly fat and the neck rolls are well…… So, no matter how many people might tell me the things I want to hear, looking at my own body tells me what I really am and while it encourages me, its also made clear that I am far from what those praising me tell me.

At Our Age

A few people have used this phrase when talk to them about what exercises I do. It’s especially true when I tell people I started sprinting on a weekly basis. Apparently, bodies over 40 are not supposed to take the punishment and I should restrict my activities to the gentler ones.

Well, I happen to like the sensation of bringing my heart rate up. Have brought it up to as high as 160 plus beats per minute. The bottom line is I probably have a deficiency in human growth hormone and testosterone and so, rather than injecting the stuff or accept that I’m supposed to let things fall apart, I’m going to try and shock the body on a regular enough basis to get things moving. The reality is that I need to be of a certain strength level because I’m probably going to need to work for a very long time and the work available to people like me will inevitably be physical.

Getting Used to Collapsing.

If you look at enough YouTube videos on fitness, you’ll notice that they all make a single point. You are supposed to train a muscle to failure. Rest it for about two days and train it again. The mechanics are simple. Exercise tears the muscle and during the rest day, the body builds it back bigger and stronger.

Had a go at pushing myself to that extent on Monday night, doing several sets of bench dips and Tyson pushups as well as inverted rows. Found it challenge to raise a cup of water with my arms but it will be interesting to see how things go from there.

 

 Muscle building is like life. You got to get torn up a bit and then you heal and come back stronger.

Can’t say if I’ll be less obese and ugly but as I approach the half century mark, I like to think I’m going to age as a fit old dude or at least someone who won’t be a burden on the kids, who will undoubtedly have enough of their own problems to worry about.