Praise of a “Bad Ass” Nigga’s ……

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Problem with Superstars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Decency Was Not Enough ......

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Staying in the Job

The hottest news at the moment is from the world of sport. After less than one full calendar year on the job, Mr David Moyes was sacked as manager of Manchester United.

The reason for Mr Moyes’s sacking was simple – under his leadership, Manchester United hit all-time lows. The facts were simply against the man. Manchester United which had been used to being either number one or two in the Premier League, suddenly fell to number seven. They faced back-to-back defeats at home within a period of four days and they were knocked out of the 2014 FA cup by a lesser club (Swansea). In short – the team screwed up and Mr Moyes was held responsible.

There are arguments that his sacking after ten-months was harsh. It was, as they say, just a season and history has shown that leaders can make come backs from disasters. One only has to think of former New Zealand All Black Coach, Graham Hendry who led the All Blacks to their worst ever World Cup Performance in 2007 (knocked out by fourth place finishers before the semi-finals) and then retained his job long enough to lead them to World Cup glory in 2011. There’s no reason to suspect that Mr Moyes’s could not have done something similar if given enough time.

However, Mr Moyes’s sacking reflects one major reality of the modern world – a low tolerance for failure. In the corporate world, CEO’s live and die by their share price. In the world of sports teams, managers and captains are assessed by the team’s performance. Mr Monyes’s was sacked after 10-months on the job because the team slumped. By contrast, his predecessor stayed on the job for 20-years because he was exceedingly successful.

The reason for this fact lies in a certain logic – this is the era of high salaries. Top performers from business to sport are paid more money than ever before. The ranks of the super wealthy has swelled to proportions that have been seen before.

However, there is a slight snag to this. People who pay a lot of money also expect a lot in return. People are no longer people but assets that organisations and stakeholders invest in. Shareholders will only tolerate a CEO earning millions if the said CEO makes them many more times their investment. In sport, people expect a winner on a regular basis.

There are exceptions. Jeff Imellt, the CEO of General Electric presided over several periods of low stock prices and the loss of GE’s AAA credit rating. How did he do it? The answer was clear communication and the setting of expectations.  Like Mr Moyes’, Mr Immelt had a legendary predecessor. However, Mr Immelt was able to communicate the things that were in his control – September 11, 2001 was not one of them and the shareholders allowed him to deal with the crisis.

More importantly, Mr Immelt was quick to make it be seen that he was doing something about problems. One only has to recall the way Mr Immelt went to Mr Buffet and got to him to invest in the company. The new was good for GE stock price and that in turn helped Mr Immelt stay in his job.

In the modern world, past glories are quickly forgotten. What counts are results in the present and if you can’t get results then one needs to be seen to be doing something about it. It’s a fact that anyone demanding high pay needs to be consider. 

The Dignity of Unemployment

One of the most prominent moments in my short career as a waiter was when a customer (who was trying flirt) asked me if I was from the “Yellow Ribbon” program (Yellow Ribbon being the organization that deals with reformed criminals). She said that something was out of place – someone who speaks like me shouldn’t be working in as a waiter. This wasn’t the only occasion when that point was made.

I remember this incident because it lies at the heart of a common dilemma faced by Singaporeans – the seemingly unavailable number of well-paying jobs available for graduates today. It seems that graduates are not finding jobs and those who do find jobs that are way beneath their pay scale. I am, as they say, not the only graduate who’s had to do a job beneath his or her qualifications.

To a certain extent, waiting tables is a dead end job. The hours are long. In theory you should start work half an hour before opening and you should leave half an hour after the last order. In practice, things can drag on. In truth, you only really leave after the last customer leaves. This can go long after midnight.

Pay isn’t very good either. One of my favourite ex-colleagues loves to send me job offers in other restaurants. Tells me in an excited manner that I can earn about S$2,000 a month (this is what I started out with in my first agency job). McDonald’s used to pay workers the princely sum of $4 an hour – though I’m told they’ve raised it to S$8 an hour. At that rate, you will need to work 125 hours a month to make S$1,000. Not exactly, a living wage in what has been dubbed the world’s most expensive city in the world for expatriates.

These factors on their own don’t make this an attractive job. In the West, this is a job for students or aspiring artiste waiting for their big break. In Singapore this has become the job for migrants looking to build up some savings for the folks back home.

The refrain for many Singaporeans is that these are wages that are way too low for Singaporeans to do but somehow acceptable for foreigners from developing Asia.  How do you support a family on less than S$1,500 so the argument goes? As such, Singaporeans with more than two functioning brain cells shun jobs in the service sector.

I find this logic rather strange. How is the same dollar low for a Singaporean but a fortune for someone else when both are living in same city. Then there’s the inevitable fact that many of the people who tell me that 

I’ve lowered myself by working in a “low paying” job are the very people who need me to top up their bus card.

Sure, I am officially a “pleb.” I am earning less than I did when I first started out in the PR and advertising world. As I approach my 40^th birthday, I am slowly but surely becoming a statistic that the government worries about.

However, instead of feeling resentment, I’ve found that it’s better to make the most of the situation. I make more from a single free-lance job than I do in a single month of waiting tables. However, this job is steady and what I make from the job ties me over when the PR work is nonexistent.  More importantly, I’m able to use my freelance earnings to build up savings and the job has also helped me to start up building my nonexistent CPF funds (the Provident Fund is Singapore’s main pension system).

I have very low pay, yet I’ve manage to survive. I’ve found that having a badly paid job makes you a little more interesting to people.

There are, however, people who disagree with my experiences. They, as I’ve said earlier, the people who need me and my low wages to top up their bus cards. Apparently this group have reached a stage in life where they know it all and the concept of labour is insulting to them.

They argue that there is no way one can survive on low pay. Doing things like washing dishes, sweeping the streets and dare I say, waiting tables. Apparently, being seen to do these jobs is somehow shameful and one should not do or be seen to do these things.

However, it seems to be perfectly acceptable to their social standing to do things like search through ashtrays for unsmoked cigarettes so that they can have a smoke and bumming drinks of people like foreign workers. Apparently there is a lot of pride in having holes in your shoes but owning a $100,000 hi-fi set.

I don’t know, but having shit and lousy pay beats having no pay at all. Life in the F&B industry has made me more sympathetic to our foreign arrivals from developing Asia. These are the guys who come here and take shit. Somehow, they make their lives better.

By contrast, you have the crowd that thinks there is shame in dirty labour. Somehow, it’s always someone elses fault that they’re not getting the jobs they think they are entitled to and while we are continuing this discussion – could you please buy them a meal. 

Le't's Give it Up the Bum

You got to hand it to Singapore's fundimentalist relgious community but they really have a knack for finding the most trivial things to get upset about. If that was not enough – they have the ability to make an “all-powerful” governmen take note of their objections and to give them the time of the day.

I for one, have never understood how a rational government that has been a by-word for common sense on most things could actually cave in to the concept of “anti-gay” laws. As things stand, it is illegal for two consenting adult men to have sex in the privacy of their bedrooms. This law has existed on the stauate books since colonial times and it continues to stay there despite every concieveable argument for keeping the law being demolished by events. The only protection a consenting gay man has is the fact that the government has promised not to enforce a law (and that's in a country that prides itself in having “rule of law”). How has this happened? The “Relgious Establishment” (or those claiming to speak for it) has kept the government under pressure from ever considering abolishing a law that makes no sense to any rational person.

The latest storm comes from the fact that the Health Promotion Board (HPB) had the audacity to publish a list of FAQ's on sexuality. These FAQ's had the audacity to suggests that homosexuals were capable of having “normal” comitted relationships. That little comment has got the religoius establishment up in arms. One Member of Parliament (Lim Biow Chuan – Mountbatten Single Member Constituency) has gone public in denouncing HPB for going against the government's policy of promoting heterosexual relationships as the only acceptable ones.

Seriously, are we really so devoid of things to do that we need to cause such a storm over things like this?

OK, I admit, not everyone is comfortable with homosexuality. I don't want to poke another guy up the bum nor do I wish to be poked up the bum. That fact will remain true whether it was legal or not. I also wouldn't like any son of mine to come up and declare he was gay and bringing home a bloke.

Having said that, this is a personal view and just because I feel a certain way doesn't mean something should be illegal. While I may not like any son of mine being gay (a fact I used to think of when Yooga was hanging around), I'd rather he be happy with his chosen partner and enjoy the necessary legal protections. His happiness and well being must be my concern rather than what I like.

I also look on the fact that homosexuals exists in every society and amongst every ethnicity. London was filled with gays from “Macho” societies like Spain and Italy. The guys from societies that did not allow them to be gay left and moved to more accomodating places. Gays will always be with us, whether we like them or not. In the case of Singapore, where every human is assessed on their ability to contribute economically, you'd imagine that efforts would be made to ensure the gay community contributed as much as they could instead making laws against them based on spuroius facts?

We need common sense when it comes to policies regarding sexuality. We've done it for nearly everything else.

Then one has to ask the question – why does the relgious establishment get so worked up over who people poke when there are more pressing issues at stake.

Let's take the issue of inequality as an example. Singapore has one of the worst rates of inequality in the world today. We have billionaires rushing here so that they can enjoy goods and services at third world backwater rates.

Yes, the Bible and other Holy text are not kind to the homosexual community. However, Christ had far more to say about poverty and inequality than he did about homosexuality. Christ stood for aliviating human suffering not increasing it.

So, if this is the case, why don't you hear any of our religious figures speak about real issues connected to poverty and inequality? Pastor Lawrence Kong and the Family Thio have been so busy talking to God about the sex lives of homosexuals that they forgot about the poor and the needy. I mean I don't speak for God but surely humanity depends more on relieving the suffering of the poor and needy than it is about stopping people who are inclined a certain way to behave in the way that nature has intended them to behave. 

Of Things to Come

How does one sum up a year? For me, this practice of summing up the year has usually been taken in the form of recounting the highlights of what went on and what I think will happen in the years to come. So I guess I’ll have to stick with a tried and tested formula.

On the Professional Front

It was a surprisingly decent year for me on the professional front for both my jobs. The PR front proved to be surprisingly good.

The most prominent of feature on the PR consultancy front was IIMPact 2013: New Frontiers, the bi-annual gathering of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Alumni in Singapore. The event was exceedingly high-profile – as with the previous year’s IIT event, the patron was Singapore’s former President, Mr SR Nathan.

Press coverage was glorious. As well as hitting the local press, I managed to get coverage in the main Indian Dailies as well as in places like the Huffington Post. What success I did achieve was through the good work of journalists like Gautam Srinivasan of Reuters TV, Gurdip Singh of Press Trust India (PTI), Anand Menon of Bloomberg and Sharanjit Leyl of the BBC.

 As with all PR events, IIMPact was very much about the newsmakers, of which the most important was Dr Raghuram Rajan, who was then Chief Economic Advisor to the Indian Government and before the year was out he would become Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. It was my privilege to serve Dr Rajan and for that day I had the honour of witnessing his sharp intellect and wisdom

One of the best things about work is its social aspects. I got the IIMPact job in the same way I got PAN IIT before it – on the recommendation of Supriyo Sircar the SBU Head of Polaris Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa Business for Polaris Financial Technologies. Supriyo has been a good friend and his advocacy of my behalf has been one of the few assets that I’ve had.

I also had the privilege of working with Anu Stamtani. Anu is a dream to work with. Her energy and charm have a way of working magic when it comes to events. She is a good friend who always finds ways of making life easy for other people. It was she who made my job at IIMPact easy in terms of logistics support.

As well as renewing old friendships, I managed to make new friends. I am currently working with Suresh Shankar and Hari Haran, two entrepreneurs who are looking at ways to create a different and better world. Suresh has is set on simplifying the world of big data with her new firm, Crayon Data and Hari is set to help the poorer parts of world deal with one of their key problems – lack of energy.

The most important friendship that I gained from IIMPact 2013 is probably that of its Organising Committee Chairman, Girija Pande, the Chairman of Apex-Avalon and the former Chairman of Tata Consultancy Services Asia-Pacific. At IIMPact 2013, Girija provided encouragement and reminded me of a lesson that few of us seem to understand – bosses and clients are an asset to be utlised. Girija was generous in his time and effort to throw contacts behind me. I will also never forget his main encouragement to me – “Don’t wait for things – you are as good as anyone of us.”

In a funny way, the other main professional highlight was for a job that I didn’t get to work on – the South Asian Diaspora Conference (SADC 2013), which was organized by the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS).

I didn’t get the job – it went to an international agency – Webber Shandwick. But funnily enough, I was actually in the running for it. ISAS, is a part of the National University of Singapore, a government body, which normally doesn’t entertain one-man operations. Yet, the Chairman of ISAS, Ambassador Gopinath Pillai took the time out to listen to me.

A source tells me that I owe this honour of being a one-man show being allowed to present a case to the government body to Girija Pande, who sits on the board of ISAS.

My blue collar persona at Bruno’s had a good year too. I was made the acting manager of the Pizzeria and Grill for a week in early February when the manager of the day went on leave. The success (or the lack of a disaster) was thanks to the team, particularly my service team who provided me with the support that I needed – including watching my back and reminding me that I needed to do things like ensure wines were ordered and we would well supplied for the Chinese New Year season.

I’ve now moved to the quieter Bistrot on Telok Kurau Road, where I’ve had the chance to help boost the turn over. In this year, the team has managed to double revenue from the year before and we are looking forward to doing better next year.

On the Personal Front.

No big trips this year, other than a short family holiday in August. My mother, the perpetual mastermind of family affairs managed to get all of us from various parts of the world galvanized into traveling between Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.

Cambodia was perhaps the most interesting of the three countries. It was the glory of the Angkor Wat followed by the horror of Tul Salang Genocide Museum – a visit that made the vast human energy of Vietnam all the more welcoming.

It’s good to touch base with family and the people who love you no matter what stupid things you do.

My Dad went through his hernia operation at the end of August and has since recovered. Took me out for lunch for my birthday.

The other key moment on the personal front has been the chance to get to know Thuy as a growing woman much better. I often joke with friends that Thuy is God’s way of making me pay for my previous misdeeds with the opposite sex. Thuy retorts that she’s too sensible to get into trouble – I do worry.

She starts a new chapter of her life on the second when she enrolls into Outram Secondary School. I’ve told her that she needs to get her academics right – it will make life easier. Mother is always in the background ready to enforce regular tuition.

It’s challenging managing a growing teen, who is still a child but an adult with ideas of what she wants. However, the challenges of having a child (I use that term loosely – she tells me that she protects me) in your life has a way of giving it purpose. Whenever I find work annoying I’m reminded that while I can live with the consequences of my follies, there’s someone out there who needs me to stay sane. So sane (Once again, that word has to be used lightly) I remain.

Hopes for 2014

More and better work coming in. More importantly, I need to make moves to have another country to provide me with things. Singapore has been home for a decade but life is such that it is becoming a place where all but the very rich seem to enjoy. It’s a particularly demanding place for someone who has survived as a one-man operation. So it looks like 2014 should be a year for me to branch into other places within a region that is growing and has much to offer the world. 

Would Jesus Have Gone to Jail in Modern Singapore?

Yesterday was Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the founder and inspiration of the Christian faith. As usual the world his birthday was celebrated by the conspicuous amounts of shopping and consuming lots of food and alcohol. The great and good who “plan” and “comment” on our economy got their moment to discuss the possibility of whether the “Christmas” factor would help to spur the economy to greater heights and create prosperity for everyone.

Since I live in Singapore and spent my second Christmas in a row over here, I had to ask what Christ would have thought of the consumption in his name. Why is it such that we become obsessed with consumption for the birthday of a man who became God in the eyes of over a billion people by preaching the value of poverty and suffering?

The Christmas of 2013 should also prove significant in as much as it comes after the riots of December 8, 2013 in Little India – an event that involved 400 foreign workers from the Subcontinent. This was Singapore’s first riot in 40-years. It involved what society calls the “lowest-of-the-low.” The great and the good who run the show were quick to denounce the “barbarous” behavior of the rioters. The official stance was that there was “no excuse” to become “violent” and cause “damage to poverty.”

While I like to think that Jesus would never have approved of violent behavior, I do believe that Jesus would have decried and condemned the basic treatment of the conditions that foreign workers live in. My knowledge of Christian theology is 20-years rusty but the Christ that I read about would have deplored the way in which the society I live in for ignoring the fact that our prosperity was built on the back of exploiting the poor and desperate.

In a way I have the Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC Who Drinks in the Middle of Ramadan aka Thambi Pundek to thank. He tries to toss out ideas like, “Oi, we’re giving the Indian labourers a better life,” and “Wah – the Bangla go onto the MRT – so smelly.” Apparently there is also something called “inbuilt migrant resentment to the host society.” He tells me that this is what people tell him about life in Singapore with so many foreign workers.

Well, our local residents might not realize it but these smelly and poor people doing the lowest of the low jobs were precisely the people that Christ stood for. The reality for a labourer from the Subcontinent is that he not only works long hours for low wages (S$1 an hour for a 12-hour day), he lives in conditions that a damp and dirty and expensive. It’s not just the pay and the living conditions but the way in which people look at him – like a bad smell personified (I had to make the point the Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC who Eats Pork during Ramadan aka Thambi Pundek that if he spent 12-hours in the tropical sun he wouldn’t smell too good either). Whenever labourers get screwed by their employers, the laws are such that they remain under the mercy of the very employers who have cheated them.

These are the people without a voice in society. These are the people who Christ stood up for. Whatever you may believe about his divinity, Jesus of Nazareth was a man who told the world that God lived in the pits.

Unfortunately this is a message that governments regard as highly provocative. I can imagine Jesus in today’s Singapore. The Christ that I got to read about in his scriptures all those years ago would have been hanging around places like Geylang or Little India. He would have done things like publically admonish the powers-that-be for allowing people to go hungry. He would have told the labourers and the prostitutes that they had rights to be treated as people and not as mere digits for the greater good of the well to do.

This would be the type of character our society would have jailed and denounced in the media. How dare he tell the voiceless that God spoke for them?

Unfortunately our perceptions of the world have shown us that we have grown to love money and things more than God. Isn’t that just too bad for us that we, for the most part, would fail to see God if he appeared before us and lived amongst us…..  

Of Class and Race

I’ve just written an article for the Independent Singapore, the latest hot news website, launched by my former boss, Mr PN Balji, the former editor-in-chief of the Today Newspaper. The Independent Singapore’s premise is that it is, “Responsible, Intelligent and Robust.” Hence, unlike the usual websites, the Independent Singapore is not “anti-establishment” for the sake of it but it won’t be afraid to take on the government’s point of view.

Thanks to a survey conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) which found that while Singaporeans were quite willing to accept a colleague of another race, they were less so when it came to having a spouse of a different race; I was asked to write an article on “race relations.”

Given my family background, I guess I was the natural person to write this article. Both my parents remarried Caucasians and had children with them. A cousin on my Dad’s side is married to an African-American and I had a relationship with one too. My sister dated someone of Bengali decent and my aunt on my mother’s side married a Jew.

One of the most prominent parts of my family is that we’ve lived very comfortably in Western Societies. I spent my formative years in England and the article that got published outlined my unusual experience of having to adjust to being part of the “ethnic majority” when I came back to serve National Service. More details can be found at - http://theindependent.sg/race-relations-2/

Reactions to the article were positive. I had a few mates from my school days remind me that I was “one” of the good guys. My mother’s best friend has been off promoting the article. I even got a comment from someone on Facebook to tell me he agreed with me.

While it’s exceedingly gratifying to know that people liked what I wrote, I feel that one of most crucial elements in the debate interracial relationships is sorely lacking – namely the issue of class and economic status. As ‘heart-warming’ as my personal story of being a ‘liked’ member of the ‘ethnic minority’ may be, I don’t think my situation can be used as a reference point.

Let’s start with the obvious – I am from an ‘educated’ family. In my mother’s words – “We are professional middle class.” As such, English was the language that was spoken at home. I grew up in a household where it was understood that one would eventually head off to university and take on a “career.”

Although I went to school in a different country and in a place where everyone else was racially differently from me, we all similar backgrounds and aspirations. I spoke the same language as everyone else. Hence it was not issue for me to be able to join in. If anything, I was probably a bit of a “let-down” to my school mates who were probably expecting to meet someone a bit less like them.

By comparison, entering a Singapore Army camp was like landing on Mars. I had spent the first two-decades with people who were expected to have some form of higher education. Suddenly I got thrown into an environment where people considered it a privilege to finish school. I didn’t speak “Hokkien” (the dialect of Fujian Province in China and the majority dialect of Singapore and Taiwan), which was what everyone else spoke and even when we did speak English – people found my English a “bit-funny.” Although my Dad tried to tell me not to think of it – I was “The Rich Kid” in the camp – my address was in a private condominium and not an HDB block.

So, while I was an “ethnic” minority at school, I was part of the cultural and social majority. By comparison, I was only part of the majority in looks – I was in a very strange cultural and social minority when I joined the army.

So, if you look at things in this way, it was only ‘natural’ for me to fit into “English Middle Class” Society and to struggle when dealing with the “average” Singaporean.

The question that should be asked is whether my experiences in both the UK and Singapore had been different if I were a different person. In the UK, I was a “rich” foreigner – Daddy earned his money elsewhere. Would things have been different if my Dad and I had been “fresh of the boat” and he had struggled to make ends meet by setting up a “Chinese take-away.” More importantly, my command of English is good – would I have had the same experiences if I had to struggle with English because the language we spoke at home was something else?

Likewise, the same question should be asked about settling into the army. Would it have been any different for me if I started life out in Singapore and spoke the expected array of dialects?

Issues of race and inevitably tied up with issues of class and economics. I take the social status of Singapore Tamils as an example. The stereotype of South Indian in Singapore and Malaysia is that of a drunk or as a former senior reporter said, “Show me an Indian who does not like to drink.” By contrast, the stereotype of a South Indian in India is that of a “Nerd.” What accounts for this difference? Simple – the South Indians who came settle in Singapore and Malaysia were from lowest rung of the social order.

Something similar can be said of “Negros” in the USA. Bill Cosby is funnily enough disliked in many “African-American” communities because his portrayal of a “Black Professional” family is considered pandering to “White” society.

When an ethnic community improves its fortunes, it also improves its social standing. Suddenly people no longer notice the colour of your skin when you start to sound like them and can afford the things that they do. Once again, let’s look at the way the South Indian are viewed in Singapore and Malaysia. For many South Indian men, one of the greatest social achievements is to marry a Chinese girl – or in the case of our Finance Minister, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, a girl of Chinese-Japanese ancestry. One of the key reasons for this can be seen in one of the common points raised by Singapore Chinese on this topic – “Those who marry Chinese girls – they’re thinking is very different – mor

Beyond the Sleaze and the Wealth

I’ve finished a family holiday through IndoChina and made an interesting discovery. I’ve gone out of my way to get a rub in Siem Reap (Cambodia), Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon as it was known and Bangkok. Of the three cities, the only city where I was required to take off my cloths was in Bangkok, the most “developed” of all the cities.

OK, it was a family holiday and I wasn’t going out of my way to look for “special” massages. However, when you live in Asia for long enough, you become sensitive to the availability of certain things.

I mean, I’ve lived in Singapore for the better part of the last decade and I have in many ways become immune to the obvious signs of ‘sleaze.’ While Singapore’s public image is one of “sterility,” the place has obvious “sleaze” spots that have become tourist attractions. When you live in a city with such contradictions, you tend to become very matter of fact about certain things.

One of the ways in which “moral” Singapore deals with “sleazy” Singapore is by telling itself that the workers from the “sleaze” industry are from “other parts” of Asia. This happens to be a true fact. The majority of sex workers in Singapore are from elsewhere.

While this is true, it often gives us a rather misguided view of “other” Asians, particularly the women. Mention that you know a girl from China or Vietnam or Thailand and your average Singaporean has a wonderful orgasmic moment of moral outrage – “Oh women from China/Vietnam/Thailand, they’re just prostitutes,” being the usual remark.

So, you could say that when you are surrounded by this attitude, you’re going to be inclined to expect every massage joint outside of Singapore to be a front for a ‘fuck shop.’ Yet, I didn’t find this to be the case in either Siem Reap (tourist hot spot) or Ho Chi Minh (we’ve heard more than enough of what the GI’s used to get up to.) This was true, even in a place called “Virginy Massage” in Siem Reap. The girls in the ‘beauty’ parlours of Ho Chi Minh City were scantily clad but that was always a case of a uniform rather than an indication of what was to come – it was, dare I say it, pretty much like the SIA uniform.

If anything, after a few days in Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok, I’m inclined to believe that the sleaziest city in Southeast Asia is …….Singapore. My mum tried to point out at that we were staying in “nice” parts of these cities. Well, guess what – you have pretty sleazy bits of Singapore right smack bang in the middle of prime property. Then there’s the argument that there are no street walkers in the less developed parts of Asia because they’re all in Singapore.

While this argument might make sense from a logistical point of view – it’s kind of sad. If I take my few days in IndoChina as an example, I don’t believe that “other” Asian women are any more inclined towards prostitution than women from anywhere else. I was in enough situations where it was easy to be tempted. Yet, in both Siem Reap and Saigon, nobody tried to tempt me to do ‘extra’ for a bit ‘extra.’ By contrast it’s almost expected in certain parts of Singapore.

Could it be something to do with what we’re about? I mean, is Singapore just a place where people come here because there is “free” and “easy” money available. I mean, I often look at the crap that the Manpower Ministry and Immigration Department throw at people who happen to be a bit on the dark side of pale and wonder why they do it. Then I think of the bits of rural Asia that I’ve seen and I realize that it’s usually a no brainer for them - $350 a month as a maid versus $25 a month on the farms.

Then you look at what the “vice” trade pays versus what salaries for manual labour pay and once again, it is a no brainer as to why people do what they do. Think about it, an Orchard Towers hooker can make S$4,000 in a bad month while a maid earns $350 a month.

Let’s face it – there is money to be made in Singapore and you can’t blame people for wanting to claim it. However, it’s kind of sad to think that this is literally all that we have to offer both the foreigners and ourselves.

I mean at least the girls from China/Vietnam and Thailand end up doing things like supporting families back home. They do put younger siblings through to school. In short, they’re doing what dutiful people do for their families on limited resources.

By contrast, what do we have in Singapore beyond all the trappings? No wonder why we get so upset with people who dare do things that better their lives. 

Year Zero

I’m currently with the mother, stepfather, aunt and siblings in Ho Chi Minh City. We’re on a family holiday in IndoChina. Mum decided that after many years and with all of us “growing-up” it was time for us to have a family reunion of sorts.

The trip started in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The place is something of a tourist haven thanks to its biggest asset – the Angkor Wat. We spent three days visiting temples and trying to discover the Khemer culture and for me, it was a few moments of being able to offer some prayers.

Then it was off to Phnom Penh, the capital city. I don’t know why but it seemed necessary to visit Tuol Sleng Genocide museum. The experience was depressing. As my sister says, “There’s some seriously bad ju-ju in here.”

Unlike the more sophisticated tourist industries of Greece or Italy or even Thailand, Cambodia’s industry is fairly raw. Yes, there is some restoration work going on at the Angkor site but by and large things are left pretty much as they’ve been for the last few centuries. If you look at the Acropolis in Athens you can’t tell the restored stuff from the originals. You’ll get to see lots of reenactments of people in ancient costume. You don’t get any of that in Cambodia. Things are as they are.

I guess that made Tuol Sleng all the more harrowing. There were no sophisticated audio visuals or wax works depicting things. There was just an old building, filled with empty iron beds. There were a few signs telling you what went on and boards of a few faces, telling a few stories.

Somehow, this lack of sophistication created a realistic connection with the ghost of people who had been murdered because some mad man they never met decided that they were people he didn’t like.

I’m not going to retell the story of the Cambodian civil war. Plenty has been said about it. What I will say is that history only hits home and becomes relevant to you, when you feel the ghost of the lives that history has claimed. Tuol Sleng is inhabited by spirits who cannot rest.

The events that took place in Cambodia were not that far away. They’re a little under 40-years ago. They’re about my age. For all the complaints I have about Singapore, I bless the fact that I was born there. Say what you like but I grew up in a place that there is a peace of sorts. I could have been born a few hundred kilometers north – in a place that gave us the Killing Fields. That little accident of history gives me the opportunity to bitch about the things I haven’t done as I approach my 40^th birthday. Had I been born in Cambodia instead, I might be blessing the fact that I’m going to see my 40^th birthday.

However, I’ve not gotten over the fact that Singapore was opposed to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, the invasion that removed Pol Pot and his goons from committing possibly the worst genocide in human history. For years, we cheered on the US and China in the UN for recognizing Pol Pot’s regime and the legal government of Cambodia.

I guess our political leaders at the time felt that it was the lesser of two evils. Perhaps it was the right decision in some sense of keeping the two big powers of the day (USA and China) on our side.

However, on a personal level, there’s something very wrong about this. Pol Pot wasn’t exactly secretive about his activities. Unlike today’s politicians who are all competing to create “economic growth” and “investment opportunity,” Pol Pot was very clear that all he was interested in was turning the clock back to the “Year Zero.” Whatever progress Cambodia had made from the moment he came to power was reversed.

Let’s leave the economics aside and think of the human cost. Sure, he killed less in absolute numbers than Hitler, Stalin and let’s not forget his patron in China – Mao. However, if you look at the total population of Cambodia (13 million according to the 2008 census), he killed a far higher percentage of his own people than any of the previous gentlemen.

I’ll give Western civilization this much – they’ve made it a point to try and remember their sins. The Germans have been exceedingly cautious not to let history repeat itself and the Western world won’t let them.

By contrast, we in Asia tend to ignore those sins. The Japanese, for example, don’t bother to appologise for their crimes and the rest of Asia never did much about it (with the exception of a few protests whenever some official visits the Yausukuni War Shrine). The reason was simple – Japan had the cash and we wanted her investment to “bring us into the modern age.”

Well we’re not going to shed any tears over Cambodia too. I guess you could say its all part of this thing called ASEAN unity. I’m glad we have it and I do think its better to move forward than back. However, I worry that in our mad rush to become rich and successful, we forget the human horrors that were inflicted on a people.

The Germans became prosperous and peaceful despite Auschwitz. Europe has not allowed them to forget that moment but it’s also allowed them to prosper.

What can be said for Cambodia? I entered Vietnam relieved. The Vietnamese are a more aggressive group of people. They are more pushy and in a way less given to the spiritual. Like the Chinese, they tend to pray for luck rather preparation for the afterlife. However, they are a people who have hope and a pride in the ability that future is theirs for the taking.

By contrast, I fear that the Cambodians are going to be in for a rough ride. The rest of Asia (lead by China) will prosper out of Cambodia’s official corruption. Western “do-gooders” in NGO’s will revel in their ability to help poor “brown people” and Western Business interest will compete with the Asian counterparts to screw the people. In the mean time, Cambodia is left with nothing much other than hope that the world will continue to have an interest in an ancient culture that once stood on their soil.

I think of the faces on the Bayon Temple and remember someone telling me that it reflected the spirit of the Cambodian People – smiling despite the horrors that ravaged their land. I only wish that the smile won’t have to hide the tinge of tragedy one day.

The Language of Hunger

I am currently in Siem Reap, Cambodia with my mother and her side of the family. It’s what you’d call a long awaited family reunion. We usually gather at Christmas but during the past few years, Christmas meetings have become a little elusive.

Anyway, the purpose of meeting in Siem Reap is simple – we’re here to view the world heritage site known as the Angkor Wat. The building is amazing and as you walk through the place, you can’t help but be struck with the intricacies of the artwork that decorate the place. In the two days that I have been climbing up the temples, I’ve come to see the Angkor Wat as a symbol of the Cambodian or more precisely the Cambodian people. – This was the center of a great civilization that was allowed to decay. It has seen the best and the worst in human nature.  Ironically, it is probably the thing that will revive Cambodia or at least this part of the nation – Siem Reap is poor but you get the sense of an up and coming place.

The economy is being driven by tourist heading to the Angkor – the place is filled with all sorts of things a good tourist could want. This place is ideal for anyone on a budget – food and booze is incredibly cheap (drinking beer at $2.5 a mug)

One of the things that I’ve been impressed with about this visit is the linguistic talents of the tour guides in the Angkor Wat. As well as English, I’ve heard guides speak fluent Spanish, French, Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Polish and Russian. You could say that they seem to have found a guide for every nationality that may visit the Angkor.

OK, speaking English isn’t special. English has become the ‘universal’language for the world (so much so that a Finnish friend of mine made the point that speaking English and your mother tongue doesn’t count as being bilingual). I guess French shouldn’t be such a surprise either, since Cambodia was a former French colony. Given the Chinese presence in Cambodia, you could say that some of them should speak the language. However, as my brother, Christopher points out – “How many Polish speakers do you expect in Cambodia?”

This ability to communicate is even more impressive when you consider Cambodia’s state of development – this is a developing country that has spent the last 40-years struggling to recover from a brutal civil war and a dictatorship that saw its government literally go to war against its own people. Pol Pot,the Khemer Rouge dictator killed a greater percentage of the total Cambodian population than Hitler or Stalin in their hey day. While Germany at the end World War II had Marshal Aid – Cambodia had nothing....

In a way, it puts Singapore’s inability to master languages into perspective. We are by far and away the most developed nation in Southeast Asia and yet we still need a endless of “Speak Good ....English, Mandarin and Malay”Campaigns.

Seriously – if people who are poor and struggling can learn different languages – why can’t we? 

Can Singapore Produce a Home Grown Leader?

Although my fellow bloggers would stone me for saying it, there are journalist from the main stream media who have been writing some pretty good stuff. One of those journalist who has been writing “explosive” commentaries is Han Fook Kwang, the current managing editor of the Straits Times. Mr Han has developed a habit of spelling out home truths. Despite his senior position in the Straits Times, Mr Han has gone as far to describe the relationship between transport regulators and operators as being “cozy” and suggested that Singapore’s public transport system needed a good dose of competition. By the more cautious standards of Singapore journalism – this is explosive stuff.

Mr Han’s latest article that has caused a bit of a stir was published on July 1, 2013. The article had a simple headline – “Do S'porean workers deserve their wages?” The answer to this headline was a tragic no. His argument was simple – Singaporean workers are not as analytical, articulate, creative, innovative and productive as their Asian counterparts, let alone the workers from Switzerland or Germany.

Unfortunately, during the last decade, I’ve seen plenty examples that prove Mr Han to be correct. Just look at Singapore’s economic landscape. The top jobs are more often than not filled by someone from elsewhere. In the old days it meant Caucasian expatriates from the West. People accepted this as part of the natural order of things. After all, the multinationals were inevitably based out of places like New York or London.

However, the top jobs are also going to people from India and other parts of the world. Not only do you have Indian expatriates running Indian companies but they are playing senior roles in Western ones and even in Singapore government owned companies.

Unfortunately, the Indians are not hired because they are significantly cheaper than the local Singaporeans. Piyush Gupta, the CEO of DBS made a good nine million dollars last year. While not every Indian expatriate makes what Mr Gupta makes, a good portion of them make enough to live quite comfortably.

It’s quite hard for your average Singaporean to get his head and heart around the situation. It was one thing when the boss was a white man. It’s quite different when the bosses come from the parts of Asia that we were conditioned to think of as third-world backwaters that our ancestors were fortunate to run away from.

So what’s going on? How is that Singapore, for all its advances in education and development, been so bad at producing the people that we need to run today’s companies? Think about it, not only are the guys running are economy from elsewhere, the guys running the government are trained elsewhere?

The question has to be asked – can we produce a “home grown” leader? The answer to this question is going to be increasingly important in that Singapore needs leaders who understand local situations and are able to develop solutions rather than those import someone else’s model.

Singapore’s education system usually comes under attack whenever this question is debated. The most prominent point here is that while the system produces people who can read and write, it’s failed to produce people who can think. Despite out small population, we have an increasing number of universities. Yet despite the high ratio of universities per person, we have produced no Nobel Prize contenders let alone Nobel Prize winners and I can’t think of a local business school graduate who has gone onto run a Western Multinational. By contrast, India has very few institutions per person and yet we have Indra Nooyi running Pepsico and Ajay Banga running Master Card.

To be fair to the Singapore’s authorities, they seem to recognize that there is an issue here. Moves are being made to make the education system less “exam” focused. The world knows that we “kick Arse” when it comes to taking exams but beyond that we don’t seem able to do much. In his article, Mr Han gave examples of graduates who couldn’t string a sentence together and yet expected to become marketing managers in multinationals. In any other country, people would question how an articulate chap could become a graduate. In Singapore we know – the guy couldn’t speak but he was an ace at exams. This has got to change and thankfully there’s some recognition of the issue from the powers-that-be.

While I applaud the education authorities for recognizing that something needs to be done, I think the main issue facing Singapore is deeper. The system has become such that the best and the brightest do not face competition.

Let’s face it, leaders and leadership material is developed when it is placed under challenging situations. For example, military commanders develop their skills from combat experience and leading men under combat situations. Military academies like West Point or Sandhurst can only teach one so much. The real learning is out in the field. The American and British armies are highly regarded because their senior leaders have seen some form of action sometime during their careers.

By contrast, the Singapore military favours book learning over actual combat experience. Yes, unlike the American and British armies we don’t go to war but we are also a nation that is obsessed with defense. We spend the largest percentage of our GDP in this region on defense. We do send people to UN Peace Keeping missions to give them a bit of exposure (technically peace keeping and war are two different things). You would imagine that we’d want our Generals to be a bit more seasoned rather than text-book soldiers. Unfortunately we don’t. When we had a general who acquired the closest thing to combat experience and was praised by the international community for his leadership, we demoted him and pushed him into retirement as fast we could. We promoted younger, less experienced but more book smart people over him.

There seems to be a cultural aversion to exposing bright people to challenges. Instead of testing out people under stress, the system seems to allow the chosen to avoid it and it gives them power over those who don’t have the luxury of avoiding hardship. Should it surprise anyone that Singapore fails to produce people with leadership qualities?

Just American soldiers are expected to face war before reaching the general ranks, American workers are judged on their current performance rather than on what their careers are meant to be as decided by some bureaucrat. The former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welsh had a policy of firing the bottom ten percent of performers – regardless of their qualifications. What mattered is the here and now rather than the glorious past of the university fields. GE has remained one of the biggest companies in the world for over a century.

Something needs to be done. 

Singapore should probably start by removing government support from businesses and deregulate more aggressively. Our workers will develop the necessary skills more quickly if they face greater competition. 

The Regret of Having Nelson

South Africa’s former President, Mr Nelson Mandela is in critical condition. Mr Mandela had been hospitalized with a lung infection on the 8^th of June, 2013. By the 23^rd of this month, Mr Mandela had slipped into a coma and his condition was described as being “critical.” While there are reports of Mr Mandela taking a turn for the better since then, it looks quite likely that Mr Mandela’s time is up.

Mr Mandela’s passing is be an event that unites the world in mourning for one of its few political heroes. Mr Mandela spent 27-years in prison for his struggle against the “apartheid” regime that ruled South Africa. Despite suffering at the hands of his oppressors, Mr Mandela emerged from prison to negotiate a ‘peaceful’ end of apartheid and preached forgiveness and reconciliation between the various peoples who inhabit South Africa.

There’s no doubting Mr Mandela’s greatness and his passing should be mourned. This man stood for everything that humanity considers to be good. He was, as they say, a moral compass for the world.

However, as saintly as Mr Mandela has been, it’s probably a good idea to look at his failures as well as his success when we examine his legacy. What was Mr Mandela’s greatest failure? I’m going to argue that his greatest failure was that he failed to prepare his political party, the ANC and the South African Nation to live beyond him.

Let’s put it very bluntly, Mr Mandela has reached an age where dying any moment should be expected. The man is 94 and despite the good health he’s enjoyed since being released from prison nearly 20-years ago, Mr Mandela has gone way beyond his three score-year and ten. The world, South Africa and the ANC should have been preparing for his passing during the last twenty-years.

Let’s start with the African National Congress or the ANC, the party that Mr Mandela ran for so long. When Mr Mandela was in prison, the ANC was a by word for a wonderful independence movement that embraced all sections of South Africa’s diverse society. It was a movement that had blacks (Zulu, Xhosa and so on) and whites (English and Afrikaners). When the ANC won South Africa’s first ever multiracial election in 1994, there was a sense that the good guys had finally won.

To be fair to the ANC, it’s not the only party that has had a difficult transition from being an independence movement to a normal political party. If you look at election results, the ANC is an exceedingly successful political party – it has overwhelmed everyone else in elections since 1994.

While the current President of South Africa, Mr Jacob Zuma has apparently made remarks that the ANC’s continuous rule is ordained by God, political parties that don’t face opposition usually suffer from the very human malaise of stagnation. After a while, the people who run the party forget that there is a line that separates government and party.

One of the closest examples can be found next door in neighboring Zimbabwe, run by the ANC’s fellow freedom movement – the ZANUPF. Today we think of ZANUPF and its leader, Mr Robert Mugabe as by words for tyranny and abuse. Think of Zimbabwe and you have the instant picture of a country going from bad to worse. However, there was a time when ZANUPF was a party of hope and Mr Mugabe was once regarded as a saint, pretty much like Mr Mandela.

To be fair to Mr Mandela, he has recognized his own frailty while Mr Mugabe has not. Mr Mandela saw to it that he served only one term as President (1994-1999). Even during his presidency, Mr Mandela made it a point to leave the day-to-day running to his duty, Mr Thabo Meki. The way he played out his role as President has been described as being more like a constitutional monarch than a politician – one only has to remember the image of Mr Mandela in a Springbok Jersey (South Africa’s National Rugby Team – a symbol of “White Afrikaner” Pride) handing the Rugby World Cup to Francois Piennar, the captain of the world cup winning Springbok team in 1997.  

You could say that Mr Mandela saw to it that he would never get the chance to indulge and become addicted to institutionalized power of political office. To his credit, Mr Mandela preferred to use his “moral authority” rather than the powers of political office.

While Mr Mandela was exemplary in his ability to give up political office (something few politicians are good at and African ones being particularly bad at it), his two successors proved to be quite different. If anything Messers Mbeki and Zuma have proved to be more like “anti-Mandela’s” in their behavior. Both men have been accused of being intolerant of dissent and of using the powers of office to silence critics. While both men have been relatively benign when compared to many of their counterparts on the continent, their behavior has been contradictory to the “hope” given out during the Mandela era.

One of the worst examples of how Mr Mandela’s successors have behaved can be seen on the stance both men have taken against HIV/AIDS, which afflicts a good portion of South Africa. Mr Mbeki was quite public in his quest to prove that there was no link between HIV and AIDS. He went as far as to delay the distribution of anti-retroviral drugs to public hospitals. While Mr Zuma has yet to officially harm AIDS patients, his public example hasn’t been much better. We’re talking about a man who takes precautions like having a shower after he has sex with a woman he knows to be HIV Positive (he allegedly rapped her).  

       

What went wrong here? It seems quite obvious that the politicians that succeeded Mr Mandela didn’t have his passion for working for the people. There is a sense that Mr Mandela could have done more to sell his vision to his followers in the ANC and gone as far as to institutionalize non-corruption and power abuse in both the ANC and South Africa. Mr Mandela, as they say, had both the institutional and moral power to do so.

There’s no doubt about the good things that Mr Mandela has done. It’s just such a pity that he didn’t get his party or nation ready to go beyond the “founding father” 

The Inspiration is in the Compassion

Ever since I graduated from Mount House (Churcher’s College’s junior boarding house in the days when Churcher’s had a small boarding community), I’ve not been much of a church goer. I’m afraid to say that despite my record as a decent student of Christian theology, my reasons for entering a church have been limited (usually to listen to a good choir – though I did attend for a while when I had other-halves who were trying to be Christian).

Unfortunately, life in Singapore doesn’t make it easier to be inspired by the church. It could be me but the few church visits that I’ve made in the last few decades have been closer to being at a combination of a rock concert mixed with a real life case study in marketing. I was getting used to the idea that Church was becoming the last place where you’d hear Godly words being spoken.

Thanks to the tough-half’s mother (this 70 plus year-old lady is a devout Catholic and the highlight of her visits to Singapore are my bringing her to Sunday mass) being in town, I actually found a service where Godly words were spoken. The priest at the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd announced to his flock that the inspiration to worship God did not come from, “The Glamour of our Church buildings or the beauty of the liturgy but from the compassion that we show.”

This struck me as being the most amazing thing that I’ve heard in a long time. You could say that I’ve become a little jaded by a decade of being a PR man in Singapore. Life in the past decade has been about the constant search for more and in my case, I’ve been a very active participant in the process of telling people to buy more than what they may actually need or want. When you operate in a business that’s all about creating needs, you tend to get the idea that everything is all about packaging – God, is unfortunately not immune from this.

Singapore is littered with religious institutions that cater to various segments of the market. The Churches have been one of the most aggressive and slickest marketers. They have become so successful in the marketing department that Christianity has become personified by the likes of Joseph Prince, a young man who was destined to live life as an IT consultant until Jesus told (since I don’t speak to Jesus, I can’t verify this) that it was his mission to be a TV personality, wealth coach and author.

If you follow “Give me Your Money” school of Christianity, you’d be inclined to believe that Jesus died on the cross so that you would be entitled to live a wonderful life that would be free of sickness, worry and poverty. As my ex-girlfriend’s pastor said so eloquently, “Pagans chase good things – but good things just come to us naturally.”

Now, it goes without saying that faith is always easier to inspire when you look like the message. Think of how we’re all enamored by the wealth of Donald Trump, always seems to be living in the swankiest homes in the swankiest places on earth. Mr Trump personifies wealth and success despite the fact that the banks are consistently after him.

What is true of Donald Trump has been true of some of our church leaders. I think of the Rev Kong Hee and his wife Sun Ho, who currently facing charges of embezzling money. Despite the obvious evidence that is mounting against them, their followers continue to believe in the good pastor and his wife – I mean how can anyone who finances his wife’s singing career in Beverly Hills to the tune of $28,000 a week be anything but God’s one true representative on earth?

The problem with all these wonderful ideas about God being the source of prosperity, is the fact that Jesus (the Son persona of God) had a habit of blessing and bestowing kindness on social outcast like the poor, prostitutes, tax collectors and so on. Scripture clearly quotes him as saying, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” Every available record of Jesus’s life show that this was a man who encouraged us to “love your enemies,” and to “bless those who curse you.”

The records show that Jesus was born into poverty. There are no records to show him owning anything more than the cloths on his back (a topic that even some dispute). Here was a man who told us that God was to be found in the dregs of society. It could be the fact that my theology is nearly two-decades rusty but I don’t recall scripture talking about an entitlement to prosperity and health by being a follower.

If anything, Jesus wasn’t into mass followings. I think he made it quite clear that being a follower could be a nasty and brutish experience. He told people to sell ALL their possessions to become his followers. All four Gospels quote him as saying that a follower had to carry their cross.

So, if you were to follow the evidence that’s laid out by Christian scripture, you’d realize that Jesus was, materially speaking, a pauper and his message was all about things like alleviating suffering of the down trodden.  

This fact goes onto beg the question of what Christ would have thought of the effort of Churches to out-do each other in the effort to build bigger and more glamorous buildings? What he have thought of Pastors who pay themselves salaries that are comparable to those paid to corporate CEO’s?

Ironically the one Church that is starting to answer these questions is the Catholic Church itself. While the Catholic Church has been noticeably quiet in its efforts to raise funds when compared to its more “charismatic” counterparts, it has several centuries before to raise funds. Popes have traditionally lived like monarchs. The Pope is regarded by international law as a “Head of State,” and has to be given the privileges of one.

The current Pope, has now began to challenge these by example. His Holiness dines with ordinary people and instead of conducting services in the beauty of the Vatican, goes and brings the word of God to such charming and acceptable people like prisoners.

Now, wouldn’t be nice if more of today’s self-appointed agents of God, thought of devoting more of their time to bringing compassion to the down and out?