The Hungry and the Full

I just survived a dinner session with Daddy and the other half. This is the first time that Daddy (or any of my official and unofficial parents) had met Huong and sat down with her. Huong, to put it crudely isn't the girl respectable Singapore would expect me to have a one night stand with let alone be married to for 4-years.

Anyway, despite the language issues, my father ended up expressing an appreciation for the fact that Huong is from Vietnam and has hunger like people from Vietnam and other less developed countries. My Dad, who had once told me that sayings about the woman being true, seemed to think that I've found a woman who had the ability to kick me the correct proverbial kick up the bum whenever I needed it.

I'm glad that my Dad has seen the positive in my marriage to Huong. Most people who know me worry that the woman is using me for something or other and I'm more likely to get love, tenderness etc etc from someone with a more similar background.

Well, there's true to a certain extent. There was more cuddling with my previous wife and Joyce, the ex-girlfriend. Both were educated in the "respectable" institutions and with Joyce, she had the skills my family considered a sign of good breeding - namely the ability to play the piano and as my sister once said,"At least this one knows who Glenn Gould is."

However, neither of my respectable Singaporean Chinese girls had a sense of perspective or reality. Gina wanted me to rent a condo with her when I had no job and when I had a job, she expected me to call her and speak to her for at least two hours a day and whenever the phrase, "I am in a meeting," the reply was inevitably, "What is that supposed to mean?" Joyce was great when it came to sex but she had as much common sense as an ant stuck in a bag of M&M's. She actually thought being in debt to Citibank's credit card department was God protecting her. For some reason she had to find a way of turning everything good about our relationship we had into something that wasn't.

By contrast, Huong has ambition and like the migrants into Singapore and other developing countries, she has a way of trying to turn adversity into something good. To her credit, she's put some of my parasites to work (instead of complaining that I'm not kind enough to the parasites) and whenever I've been out of work, she's found opportunities to increase my income (although I'm working two jobs at the moment, she still encourages me to work  towards entrepreneurship.) To her mind, everyone needs to work and its also best to be independent from any particular source of income.

The lady has hunger and with hunger comes optimism. This isn't an uncommon trait in people from less developed countries who move elsewhere. Somehow, they're freed from whatever was holding them back and can't stop running. Adversity becomes a challenge.

Intelligent nations recognise this and try to be generous with migrants. America is the prime example. Waves of migrants, whether they were from Europe, Asia or Latin America have come in and revitalised areas that have been run down. It's the migrants who run small shops and make a fortune out of the things we throw away. I lived in the UK and witnessed how the "Paki" immigrants made communities function by setting up and running corner shops. An Indian banker from Citibank, who has his UK permanent residence status makes the point that England will not function without Polish migrants.

Now, I live in Singapore and I notice the same thing that I noticed in the UK. It's PRC Chinese, Malaysian Chinese, Bangladeshis and Pinoys who get things done. I think of the Bistrot, where I've been the one that customers enjoy interacting with the most. Yet, despite all that, it's Rafe, the Fillipino guy who gets things moving. He knows how to work the various systems in the restaurant and he knows where things are kept. He works for longer hours and less money per hour. Simply put, the restaurant would cease to function without him.

Despite what middle class Singaporean Chinese might think, statistics have shown that migrants tend to be more law abiding than the natives. When you operate in the shadows, you tend to want to stay away from authorities. By contrast, the natives can't get enough attention from the authorities.

Migrants make things happen because they're hungry. Their hunger is a powerful revitalising force for any area. One only has to look at how the Filipino's in Singapore revitalised Lucky Plaza.

Unfortunately, the natives usually don't see it that way. Trust you me, being kind to people like injured Bangladeshi workers won't be looked on to kindly, especially if you have the misfortune of housing them in a respectable neighbourhood.

Look at it this way, the natives get more worried about the migrants than they do about the faults among themselves. Think of public drinking laws that were imposed after the December 13 riots in Little India, because the natives got frightened that the migrant darkies were not happy about having one of their own killed. Apparently darky migrants can't hold their liquor and that might upset social order. However, nobody seems bothered when the local Mamak decides that the only way to solve the issue of being unemployed is to drink beer and then drink even more.

We. the natives have forgotten that  life requires a certain sense of dynamism and instead of being frightened by migrants, we should embrace them so that we can see the beauty in the things we take for granted. 

Staying Worthy While Jobless

The question of employability has become something of a hot button issue with Singapore’s formidable army of keyboard warriors, thanks to a member of the ruling party referring to Dr. Chee Soon Juan, one of the more prominent members of the political opposition as being “worthless” because he was “jobless.”

You could say I am either the best or worst person to write something about this because I’ve been jobless and worthless for a long time. I spent the better part of a decade being in and out of formal employment. I remember PN Balji, the founding editor of the Today newspaper, advising me to stop wasting time looking for a formal job as I had reached my early thirties and been able to sit in a job for anything more than a year.

A decade later, I’ve now managed to overcome that big gap in my CV by holding down not one but two jobs for more than two-years. Ironically, while I was unable to hold down a job in PR, the industry that I’m best qualified and even described as a little talented in, my two jobs are in fields where I am either overqualified for (waiter) and not qualified at all (insolvency). 

The steady career that everyone thought I’d have has been (based on the fact that I went to school in “England”) never quite materialized but somehow it has been put me in the unique position of being able to talk about all sorts of topics that everyone wants to talk about but no one actually wants to be.

Let’s go back to the comments about Dr Chee. I’m not a fan of the man but I do acknowledge that he has been unfairly treated and in this day and age of a more restless electorate, he may actually get into power one of these days.

I also look at the comment that “he is worthless because he is jobless.” The surface level, the meaning of the comments are obvious – Dr. Chee is officially a worthless shit because he’s not held a steady job for I don’t know how long. It’s implied that Dr. Chee is has just mooched off everyone else and now wants to mooch of the State aka you and me the tax payer.

I’m going to leave Dr. Chee’s situation to my fellow bloggers, but I will say that being jobless can make someone feel useless. For anyone who has been jobless for more than a year and known to be jobless, you find that people look at you differently and sooner or later you start to think of yourself in the same way that everyone sees you – useless and helpless.

A job, as they say, is more than just a means of making a living. As well as being the thing that brings in your monthly pay cheque, a job reflects you as a person and where you’re supposed to stand in society. This is especially true in status conscious Asia (not that Westerners are immune from status consciousness but the disease is especially strong amongst Asians). Universities and other educational institutions adore Asians because Asians as a rule will throw money at educational institutions and ensure their kids don’t cause problems all in the hope of the kid getting a “respectable” job and therefore becoming respectable people in society.

The social nature of having a job is such that my jobless friends have invented themselves as “life coaches.” In return for buying them dinner or a pack of smokes, they will gladly advise you on how to handle your career but selling stories from the careers that they had or in some cases, thought they had. It’s what they call the great social trade off. If the rest of us are trying to sell time for money, the jobless, especially the long term jobless sell stories for food, drink and top ups for all of life’s other basic necessities.

When they can’t sell you stories about their past, the long term jobless will then hide and disappear from the scene. – Why does anyone want to be seen in places where one is not particularly well thought off?

So how does one get out of this feeling of worthlessness? I guess the key here is to define who exactly are you worthless to? I know a friend who has taken his time out to be with his wife and kids. Another one takes time out to be with his elderly parents. In that sense these two have found people they can be worth something to.

Then, the next step is being able to find an income of sorts. While nobody expects you to be a millionaire, it’s generally expected that you have the ability to pick up a round of drinks once in a while. If you’re jobless and not making money, you avoid situations where you have to pull out your wallet. Having an income, even if it’s a miniscule one, helps you to stay in circulation by putting you in a position where you actually can afford to pick up a round or two.

For me, I kept myself in circulation by inventing myself as a freelancer. I tried to pick up a bit of work here and a bit of work there. Didn’t make much money at first but I could afford to travel around by MRT and I could afford to have a beer or two.

Later on, I was lucky enough to find a way of attracting some high profile clients like the Saudi Embassy and GE Commercial Finance. GE refused to write a cheque to an individual and so I had to set up a business with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) and therefore could claim that I was a consultant (Dad calls it’s the fancy way of saying no one will offer you a job) with my own consultancy.

The only downside with freelancing is that it is next to impossible to save money because when you make money, it tends to go quickly because you got to tide over for the periods when you don’t have any jobs coming in. I only really got to keep money when I started working the night job at the restaurant and had a small income that paid my running expenses while I fished for bigger income from PR projects.

The key here is staying in circulation. Having a job gives one self-worth and an income. However, in this day and age where job security doesn’t really exists, you got to find ways of staying relevant, especially during the periods when you are likely to be out of a job.

Never go into hibernation for example. Hibernation only works if you are a bear and if you have the reputation of a superstar.  Most of us need to stay in circulation. The late Lee Kuan Yew described man as being a social animal that needs to be surrounded by his fellow man. Staying in circulation creates circumstances where we get find our next meal.

Being jobless can make you worthless but it’s not the end of the world unless you want it to be. There are ways of staying alive and one merely has to open ones’ imagination.  I was jobless when I tried to get into the area that everyone thought I could be a star. I stopped being jobless when I crossed industries, taking the skills I learnt from the industry I thought I was meant for and doing elsewhere.

It’s not that I’m special; I merely refused to believe I was worthless because the alternative was worse. Just because you don’t have a steady job, you don’t have to be worthless unless you chose to be. 

How Racist Can We Get?

The topic of race relations has come up again in Singapore's landscape. A few days ago, PrimaDeli had to appologise when one of its top hiring managers openly refused to hire someone to decorate cakes because that the lady in question happened to be Malay and had to good sense to place the reason her not getting hired onto social media. Much later on, Ms. Grace Fu, our Minister for Culture, Community and Youth had to make some comments in parliament about how we need to keep the racial balance secure in order to keep society secure.

The internet is filled with comments on the topic and I guess one has to ask, how racist is Singapore? For me, the question is both an optimistic "not really" and a depressing "Yes." 

Let's start with the optimistic scenario. On a certain level, Singaporeans have shown that they are incredibly open to people of all sorts of colours. I often find myself going down to Waterloo Street to say prayers because I find one of the most Godly places in Singapore over there - the Hindu Temple. While the decor is obviously Indian, you'll find that the devotees for the most part are ethnic Chinese who found something with them to cross the cultural barriers and worship with ethnic Indian Priest. As one friend of mine on Facebook says, "This is as it should be." 

The spirit of intercultural worship has even hit home. When I first started out with Huong, I noticed that she was very clear where she saw the divine - with Kuan Yin (Goddess of Mercy) in the nearby Taoist Temple. She once got upset with me because the string I wear across my neck, which was given by a Tibetan Rimpoche was not quite in line with the Chinese/ Vietnamese divine system. Huong ensures that our home has a shrine to Kuan Yin but these days, she also ensures that she pays the necessary respects at the Hindu temple whenever we go down to see Kuan Yin on Waterloo Street.

Food and language is another example of how Singapore has merged cultures beautifully. Singlish, our local version of English has borrowed shamelessly from Hokkien, Malay and Tamil. You find members of the Tamil minority here, who speak fluent Chinese dialects without thinking anything of it. My course commander when I was on my basic gunner course back in the late 90s, spoke Hokkien as if it was his natural language. This is even true of Chinese dialects. In Cantonese in Singapore, we call the cops "Mata," after the Malay word for eyes - in Hong Kong they are "Jeng Chak" (closer to the Mandarin word for "Jing Cha")

You also find Indians munching always at Hainanese Chicken rice and Bak Kut Teh (Herbal Pork Rib soup) and Chinese guzzling on roti prata as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

When you look at the basics of life in Singapore, you see the beauty of letting people live and let live. Somehow people find ways of cooperating together and various aspects of culture get exchanged and enjoyed. I look at people of my father's generation. Somehow everyone managed to pick up everyone else's mother tongue and somehow everyone got along. On the personal front, my  daughter, Jenny, has made a Malay girl her best friend. 

I believe that if you let people find the opportunity to know each other, you create the opportunity to create diversity and unity at the same time. I am a living example of that - ethnically Chinese and culturally British. On a normal given day, I don't feel particularly close to ether culture. I am merely both. There are aspects of British and Chinese culture that I like and dislike to adapt accordingly.

What depresses me about the race issue, is that in many ways, we have institutionalized it. Let's go back to the case of PrimaDeli. I agree with the company for sacking the employee. You should never NOT hire someone based on their race or your previous dealings with them and if you are stupid enough to tell someone that you are not hiring them based on that, you deserved to be sacked. No business should ever want its customer base to know that it discriminates against a certain portion of the community.

Having said that, I sometimes wonder if the manager in question was fired for stupidly expressing an opinion rather than because this is what the Company believed in. I've tried to recommend people for jobs and was told,"Ai ya, Malay....don't want ah." One of my favourite Englishmen tells me about the time his son applied for a job at the annual FI event. Anyone who happened to be White or Chinese got jobs in catering and guest relations. Anyone who happened to be black or darker than pale became a cleaner. I'd love to hear how anyone with a rational mind would argue that this is merely a coincidence.

You can find plenty of examples of how racism in Singapore is accepted by the general population and you can either love it or leave it. Once again, it was a European customer of mine, who told me that he's noticed how customers who are exceedingly sweet to me, treat Rafe (my Pinoy colleague) and Yvonne (my Malaysian Chinese colleague) like crap. Admittedly, I am more outgoing than Rafe - hence he does the general work, while I front the customers. While he's a permanent staff at the restaurant and I am a part-timer, everyone assumes he works for me.

While there are personality differences, I believe there's something deeper in the way he gets treated and I get treated and I don't think this is right. I may be the more popular showman, but he's the man who does the real work. The main difference here is that I happen to be the right colour and speak the right way. It doesn't speak well of people who treat my colleagues badly and never dream of saying a cross word to me. 

Politicians adore being seen as defenders of multiculturalism. Government had good fun arrest a few bloggers who posted nasty things about the Malay Community. However, I also believe that politicians need to keep racial divisions simmering. How else can anyone be seen as a defender of a race if that race does not feel that I might be persecuted?

Policies like quotas on public housing had a good purpose in that it prevented ethnic ghettos from forming. However, I question the language policies, where the government went on an all out war against Chinese dialects and tried to define race on its own terms - which only became problematic when you had an influx of non-Tamils coming to Singapore - suddenly your average Singaporean needed to understand that Tamil was only part of the term "Indian" rather than the only part.

Rather than trying to keep the "racial" balance to what it was in the 60s, surely we should be making it even more diverse. I don't have an issue if I was ethnically no longer in the ethnic majority as long as I could still make a decent enough living. 

 

How Times Change!

It's been a while since I've accessed my PC at home but since I'm having a bout of insomnia, I thought I would try and bash out a few thoughts.

March, is something of a special month. The 9th of March for the guys from 23 SA 7th Mono Intake is a particularly sensitive month in that this is the day that we commemorate we lost two of our own in Waiaru, New Zealand those 19-years ago. Both Ronnie and Yin Tit were young men who had their whole lives ahead of them and they had so much potential to offer the world until that very day when they were blown away by a faulty fuze in live firing accident that was supposed to the crowning glory of our national service (we were the first batch of artillery gunners to go down under to fire our home made FH2000 155mm caliber howitzer, which as the official press would never stop reminding us - the only one of its kind in the world).

This year, the anniversary was a particularly interesting one in the sense that it coincided with the news of the death of Private Dominique Lee. Private Lee had died from an allergic reaction to a smoke grenade. As things would have it, the officers in charge had screwed up - for some reason they decided to go over the top and instead of releasing the maximum of two smoke grenades, they decided to release six. The parents have sued, the courts have taken the side of the Ministry of Defense and cyberspace is filled with things to say.

As someone who lived through two unnecessary deaths in the SAF, my initial reactions are thus:

1 - What a waste of a young life!

2 - How times change..............

Private Lee like, Ronnie and Yin Tit was a young man who had his life ahead of him. I think of the various experiences that I have gone through since the incident and I look at the usual Facebook updates from friends from my batch. In those days we were boys in our 20s. Today, we're men in our 40s with wives and kids. Most of us have had good careers and done an amazing number of things.

The experiences that we've enjoyed are experiences that Ronnie and Yin Tit never got, through no fault of their own. They were cut down at a time of their lives when they should been ready to launch their lives. While time has healed the pain of their demise, I don't think anybody will not think that the loss of young lives was anything but a tragedy. Now, the SAF and the rest of us have to add another name to the list.

My second reaction is that times have changed. When the accident in New Zealand took place, I remember very clearly that the reaction of the SAF as an organisation was one of damage control. Things just happened and they happened quickly. The chaps in Bravo Battery (the battery that saw the incident there and then), were sent back to camp and the exercise was continued without live ammo.

We in Alpha battery, the battery that was due to go out, had to decide if we were ready to "support the mission" and then accept and say farewell to our lost friends. We had our senior officers trying to urge us to find the enthusiasm to go and there were endless briefings about what happened.

Our Routine Orders ("RO") that very night proceeded to advise (for want of a better word) that the standard line with the media would be "NO COMMENT" (something which I would learn in my later stint in PR was something you NEVER tell the press in a crisis - I wonder why Mindef would not hire me to do their PR ;) )

There was no online dissent in those days. We were just upset and angry that our friend had to die for no good reason.

The worst that happened was that that the then Chief of Army, Major-General Han Eng Juan got scolded on behalf of his superiors by Ronnie's mother at the funeral.

Despite the fact that the Committee of Inquiry chaired by Tan Gee Paw (who interestingly enough was PUB chairman when I was at BANG PR working on their account) found that there was obvious faults in the procurement of ammunition, nobody was charged, nobody said anything about the faults in the system and nobody sued anybody. In my later years in reservist, the Committee's findings were reduced to - "Oh, the fuze was made in China, now we don't buy fuzes from China anymore."

By comparison, the case of Private Lee has been well documented. The parents have had the chance to take the Ministry to court and while lots of things in cyberspace are merely noise, in this case its more than justified. The premise is simple, we the parents entrust our sons to the officers of the armed forces - short of war we expect our sons to come home safely. We do not expect military officers to cause the death of their men through their own arrogance and stupidity.

As a former member of the SAF (like every Singaporean man), I'm disappointed with the organisation for having such a short memory. While most of the officers in the SAF are good and responsible people (or at least the ones I was lucky to work for), I still can't believe you get regular officers who can be irresponsible.

A friend of mine got it right - the said officers need to be thrown into the smoke chamber without the gas mask. They need to feel the pain so to speak.

It's good to see an active citizenry making government organisations account. While, many may not be satisfied with the outcome of the court case, it's good to see people like Dr. Ng Eng Hean, Minister of Defense feeling the need to come out and say something.

The SAF, for all its faults, is not a bad organisation. It serves a useful enough purpose and we need to support the organisation for what it does. We also need to ensure that the organisation is held to account. Military officers are responsible for their men. In their organisation, they are superior and so are their responsibilities - it's not wrong to insist of this.

We also need to ask ourselves how far we bring this new sense of wanting to make the government more accountable. There have been several incidences since Swift Lion. In every case, the fault has ended with the officers in charge.

Swift Lion was unique in that it wasn't the military who was at fault. It was the fault of the defense procurement, both on the larger scale within the Ministry and the defense contractor. These are big organisations with big budgets and in the case of Singapore Technologies, big profits.

Can we hold these organisations to account? I really hope this something we don't find out the hard way.

Too Much Emphasis is Placed on the Letter and Not Enough on the Spirit of the Book

I’ve had the good fortune to stumble across two letters online, which reminded me of one of the wisest things someone ever said to me about religion. The person who spoke these words to me was a Malay Muslim driver who was one of the guys driving us around during the visit of the late Saudi Crown Prince Sultan back in 2006.

We were talking about Islam and how Muslims managed to get on in the modern world with its temptations of drinking, smoking, fornication and so on. The driver talked about how he had to drink in a previous job as he had to entertain clients from other parts of Asia where it’s simply understood that you bond over many bottles of hard liquor before you actually strike a deal. Despite doing that, he didn’t feel any the less true to the faith. The topic then turned to the topic of the Saudi’s and their reputation for being “Bad Boys” outside of Saudi Arabia. He mentioned to me that the Arabs unlike the Malays had the benefit of reading the Quaran in its original but somehow they had got lost. He then looked at me and said, “Ah….too much emphasis is placed on the letter of the book and not enough on the spirit.”

I always remember these words because in the last few years, we’ve had too many people in prominent places getting worked about other people not following religious text accordingly. The Middle East provides the best example of this, where you have Muslims, Christians and Jews at each other’s throats – and that is despite the fact that they all claim to worship the same God. If that wasn’t bad enough, you get them fighting amongst themselves. In the Muslim world you have the showdown between Shia Islam and Sunnie Islam. In Christendom the Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants have been fighting each other as long as the Sunnies and Shias. Even the 13 million Jews in the world are not immune – just think of the way the Israelis have to deal with the tensions between the non-tax and military serving Orthodox Jews and everyone else

.

Talk to anyone obsessed with the “text” for long enough and you’ll end up asking yourself if that person has lost the plot. My favourite example comes from the usual debate on homosexuality in Singapore. This topic will inevitably get the Churches getting organized and mobilized. The Thio Family get particularly worked up about this and write long and glorious legal text about why we should stop consenting adults from doing what they want to do in the bedroom because of what St Paul wrote so many years ago

.

To be fair to the family Thio, they’re not alone in this. Good Muslims are supposed to abhor homosexuality as much as good Christians. However, after a while you start to wonder if the Thios are really doing what God wants them to do.

Why do people like the Professors Thio Li-Ann and Thio Su Mien feel this sudden urge to “save our souls” by bringing us to the Good Book whenever the so called LGBT comes out to play but they are conspicuously absent when it comes to our ever growing inequality problem. Jesus was far more vocal on the plight of the poor than he was in what consenting adults did in the bedroom.

Have people lost the plot. There are things in religious text that aren’t always Godly. The Old Testament, the much revered book of Judaism, Christianity and Islam happily encourages the Children of Israel to kill off every man and enslave the women and children of the lands they take.

Religious text like other text need to be treated as other text – look at them in their context. Look at who wrote them and at the times they were written in.

But if you focus on the spirit of the books, your reward becomes so much clearer. Think of the way Jesus urged us to love one and other. Think of how the Buddha urged us to control our desires in order to free our mind of the suffering.

God in his infinite wisdom gave us brains and the power to look at the spirit. It’s such a pity that we often find ourselves ignoring this gift by hiding behind the text. 

Being An Asian Society Doesn't Make It Right to Justify Paying Someone Based on Nationality.

Read a letter in the Straits Times, our local board sheet, a few weeks ago that argued that it was ridiculous and economically dangerous for Singapore to demand equal pay for people regardless of nationality. I got pissed off because the article was effectively a defense of “race-based” pay, where people are paid according to nationality and ethnicity rather than the job they do and more importantly how well they do their job. You can view the letter at: http://www.straitstimes.com/forum/letters-on-the-web/equal-rights-for-all-workers-not-possible.

I’ve written a reply, which has not been published and so I thought I’d try and publish my thoughts myself.

 “Race-based” pay should be a controversial topic but somehow, everyone in Singapore seems to take it for granted and accepts it as normal. While, I am told that things are changing, I’ve found that Asians tend to accept that White people should get more merely for the fact that they are white and dark people should get less merely for the fact that they are dark.

One of the most prominent examples of this mentality came when I was asked why I had turned down the restaurant manager’s job three times. My reason was very simple – my predecessor, a Belgium was on a salary of $4,500 a month and I was being offered $2,500 a month for exactly the same job. One of my chefs told me, “You can’t think like that – he’s an ‘Ang Moh (local Singapore slang for Caucasian).” I turned down the job and the job was taken by a Malaysian Indian who started out on S$2,300 a month (the said Malaysian Indian having more experience in the restaurant business than the Belgium he was replacing.)

To me, the idea of being paid significantly less than someone for doing the same job does not make sense. Many people would argue that I’ve had the good fortune of being able to reject certain offers. While my income sources are by no means high, I’ve had various sources of income at a single time. So, I can take the stance that I don’t work for significantly less than someone else because of my nationality. My Pilipino colleague in the restaurant bit his teeth and worked alongside an Italian girl young enough to be his daughter and doing exactly the same job as him but being paid significantly more because, well he needed the job and the job probably pays him more than what he might be able to earn back home.

Still, does that fact make it right to pay people based on their nationality? I don’t think so and I don’t think any right thinking person should think so. I think people should be paid more for certain things but nationality shouldn’t be one of them.

Let’s accept the fact that a nation might not have certain skills that the economy requires. In the old days you needed “management” skills, which more often than not came out of the West. Hence, you had the wave of Western expatriates who were sent overseas at great expense of the company to run the business in far flung corners of the world. These days the skills are more often than not, technical – hence, the world has seen an increase in the number of Indian Expatriates.

OK, I am an expat kid (step-dad, Lee was a senior creative man the agency sent all over the world) and so I guess I accept that you have to pay people a certain premium and provide certain perks for people to relocate around the world. Few people would move out of their home/ comfort zones unless there was an immediate benefit to it. We need certain skills and talents and so we pay for it.

There should be benefits for taking risk and quite often one of the biggest risks that people take is leaving their comfort zones.

At the other end of the scale, you have the migrant workers who leave their homes and work in conditions many of us would consider dehumanizing. Yet, they’re willing to do it because jobs are scarce at home and what they get is better than what they’d get if they stayed. I also understand doing the jobs nobody else will do because –well, I’ve been doing it for some time.

Generally speaking, I accept that many of the Westerners in Asia and now an increasing number of Indian nationals are where they are because they provide much needed skills. We shouldn’t begrudge them their pay packages because they’ve taken a certain amount of risk to leave their homes and they do bring benefits to the places where they end up. I remember speaking to Tham Khai Meng, Global Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather, who proudly declared that Singapore kicks ass in the global advertising scene. I credit the fact that we were open to global talents like Neil French working here. Guys like Mr. French recognized top local talents like Mr. Tham and brought them up. Good expats are good for local talents.

What I disagree with is the fact that people accept that skin colour should be a reason to pay someone more or less.

Ironically, in Asia, it’s often the Westerners who look beyond race and nationality as a reason for paying someone. While my Asian co-workers at the restaurant urged me to accept a lesser amount than my Belgium and Italian colleagues, it was a Danish customer who told me that I should ask for $5,500 a month based on what I had delivered in terms of customer experience.

Asia is home to about three fifths of the human race. We as a continent need to look beyond our “cast” system and raise and reward people based on their talents and not their nationality. The Westerners have learnt to look beyond nationality (not that the West is free of its prejudices) surely we can too. If we need Westerners to be our moral compass, then I think the talk of the Asian century will remain just that.  

The Remarkably Unremarkable Year

It’s now close to the end of 2015 and it’s time to bash out the usual musings of the year. The immediate thought that comes to mind is the fact that I’ve got no major highlights to talk about in the way I used to, which in itself is probably the most remarkable thing.

For most of my thirties, I was actually a man without a steady job. I lived mainly on freelance work that I could pick up and I dated a few unusual women. Now that I have hit my early forties, I’ve gone from being a man with no steady job to a man working two steady jobs concurrently. The last two-years of financial stability come at a time when I’ve become a bit more stable in my personal life too.

I’m coming to the end of my second year as an insolvency executive at Wong Mann & Associates PAC. The job isn’t one that I’m naturally qualified to do in as much as I don’t have the training in accountancy and sitting in an office at a desk have never been my strong points.

However, the experience has been enriching and been a good study of human nature at its worst. I’ve met people who were decent enough to do what was needed to do to ensure those who once looked up to them would not suffer when they flattered and I also had the dubious honour of dealing with people who thought nothing of cheating those at the bottom of the ladder. In a funny way, the insolvency game is a good training ground for any potential entrepreneur – life is filled with examples of not what to do in the course of running a business.

I also continue to work at Bruno’s Bistrot in Telok Kurau. We’ve managed to build a decent relationship with a good group of customers and the revenue stream looks reasonably stable. I’m also glad to mention that my old colleague, Andy Ting, the former chef of the Pizzeria & Grill has now moved down to the Bistrot as the main chef there, so our staff meals have become exceedingly good. Andy is a passionate chef who takes great pride in his work. Each meal he prepares is a work of art.

In between working full time on both jobs, I continue to provide publicity and brand building support for Apex-Avalon, the venture between Mr. Girija Pande’s Apex Consultants and Avalon consulting. The year proved to be a good one in as much as Mr. Pande was invited onto Bloomberg and CNBC Asia to discuss Sino-Indian business relations, a topic which will provide businesses around the world with their greatest challenge and opportunities.

It was also good to reconnect with the team from Polaris. Although the project didn’t produce the desired results, reconnecting with Polaris comes at a time when the Company moves into a new phase of its existence. The products business has been hived off into a different Company and the service business looks set to prepare for new management and the development of new working cultures will hopefully lead to better things for a Company and brand that looked after me so well and opened the doors to many of the moments that have blessed my life. A friend of mine says he believes that if my moment comes it will probably be dealing with India, something which Polaris introduced me to.

On the family front, we lost my Auntie Siok Liang, wife of my mother’s cousin, Alan. Auntie Siok Liang had battled cancer for over 14-years and she took great pains to record her battle and yet my last memory of her was as someone who was joyful and happy. Somehow, whenever you were in her presence, she always made it a point to create a happy atmosphere around her. I pray that this woman who created joy despite her suffering is now at peace and her family will have comfort.

On a happier note, my Dad married his long time girlfriend, Judy. It’s nice to have another stepmother and its good to know that my father has a companion in life who loves and accepts him. I believe my stepmother will ensure that my father will enjoy his twilight years.

Just as my father settles down, it looks like the decision I made to get Huong to become my life partner all those years ago has proven to be a wise one.  The woman has a knack for creating opportunities out of nothing and to her credit she’s constantly reminded me that success comes from working with other people.

Our most precious “project” remains a 16-year old girl…our daughter (yes, legally she’s mine) Ngyuen Thu Thuy, who now goes by the name of Jennifer Tang or simply Jenny. Now, I get called “Daddy” whenever she wants something. She’s a smart girl and although she hates to admit it, quite likes having Daddy around.

For me, fatherhood to a teenager has been challenging. She’s going through a phase where she wants her freedom and to set her own rules. In many ways, she’s a grown woman but yet she remains a child. Not sure how I can convince her that school isn’t an invention of parents to screw up their kids. I’ve told her that I don’t intend to be an eighty year old man struggling at McDonalds to feed a grown daughter.

Yet, in her own way, she admits that I’ve been good for her life and in her own way, she does what she can to look out for me. My family, especially my mom has come to accept that there is an instant granddaughter and want to make bring her into the family. I guess there’s nothing more to ask for.

The Problem with Peace

The recent Paris bombings have reminded me of a friend of mine who once made the point that in ones daily work life, it’s often the “client” who is the most dangerous person. His line of thinking was simple – we spend so much time focusing on the opposition that we forget that the people who are supposed to be our backers don’t always have our interest at heart.

I think this friends remarks because nothing has been more true when it comes to the long and elusive search for anything resembling a peace plan. Both the democratically elected Israeli officials and the autocratic Arab leaders on the other side have worked hard to avoid it. Why have they done so when poll after poll has shown that what their people want is peace?

The reason is simple – making peace takes courage and peace makers die. What’s more important is that the peace makers are always killed by their own people. The late Anwar Sadat of Egypt was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood not long after he became the first leader in the Arab World to sign a peace treaty with Israel. The late Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist who didn’t like the fact that Rabin had returned land that Israel had taken by military force in order to secure peace.

We have to remember that war and violence may be horrible and costly but there are beneficiaries. The beneficiaries are more often than not, the people with power and money. In the Middle East, Israel remains a convenient bogyman for leaders in the Arab World as at allows the leaders of the Arab world to blame social issues faced in the Arab World on something else other than the failings of government.

Much as my fundamentalist Christian friends may beg to differ, the same is true on the Israeli end. Peace, as far as most Israeli leaders are concerned, is very bad. If you look at Israeli society, you’ll find that Israel is the best living example of “totemism” at work. People identify themselves by what they are not. The “common enemy” is the nation’s best friend because this gives the nation shared values.

Think of it this way – in 2002 and 2006, the late Saudi King Abdullah provided a brilliant solution to the problems of the region. Israel would have to give up its occupied territories and return to its I966 Borders in return for diplomatic recognition by all 22 members of the Arab League. Both Ariel Sharon and Binyamin Nethanyahu (who has built a career shredding the Oslo Peace Process) described the plan as a “Non-Starter.”

Why did they do that? Well, a part of it is due to who were their backers. Mr. Nethanyahu has built his career on the premises that it is impossible to make peace with the Arab world. This has won him allies on the far right of the Israeli political spectrum and more importantly, it allows him to control the religious right in the USA, which provides American funding for the Israeli establishment.

Then you have to look at the fact that much of the Israeli “myth” has been built on the fact that Israel is a plucky bastion of sanity in an insane region. As far as most Westerners are concerned, Israel is an oasis in a desert filled with nasty Arab Muslims who have an irrational hatred of Israel. Imagine what would happen to that core myth if the said Arabs started behaving like nice peace loving people.

Let’s put it this way, the pain and misery of the Middle Eastern conflict makes people happy. Terrorist groups like IS and Al Qaeda are happy because it gives them a “just cause” to fight for. Right wing anti-migrant parties in the West are happy because it gives them something to talk about and makes them relevant to voters. Security forces love conflict because governments throw money at them. Politicians who never served a day in the military want the conflicts to go on because they can pretend to be men at someone elses expense. Movie makers love conflict because it gives them powerful stories to sell tickets and banks love conflict because they loan money to high browning customers who will pay whatever interest rates you charge them.

If one follows the money trail, it is very clear that peace is very bad and war is very good. Therefore, politicians and the people who count tend to talk peace but do very little about brining it about because peace would screw up a working system.

However, as the late Yitzhak Rabin once said, “We must think differently, look at things in a different way. Peace requires a world of new concepts, new definitions.”

Mr. Rabin, a former military man, was right. He had the courage to understand that Israel would only get peace if it returned land it had taken by military force. He had the courage to ignore the “Zionist” nut jobs in AIPAC. He took decisions for Israel rather than for Zionist lobby groups and he could give the Israeli public what it needed.

Unfortunately, Mr. Rabin’s assassination by the very people he was trying to protect (Jewish migrants to Israel), taught every player in the Middle East conflict a lesson – the fact that trying to change the status quo had a personal cost.

For a brief moment, the Middle East had hope. That was thanks to the likes of Mr. Rabin who had the courage to go down the path regardless of the personal cost. The world is a poor place without the likes of Mr. Rabin. May he rest in peace. 

Farewell to the Big Man

Many of my friends in Asia are often surprised by the fact that although I’ve lived in England for most of my formative years, I’m not much of an “Anglophile.” However, there is one aspect of Anglo-Saxon culture that I’ve adopted and grown to love – that it the game of rugby. For me, rugby union as a game, embodies many of the values of the British and their rougher cousins, the Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans – namely the ability to tack a few knocks, get up again and somehow play a good game. As I get older, I appreciate the game all the more because, it seems to me that the guys playing rugby union have stayed far more true to the values of what sport should be – namely friendly free flowing competition that brings out the best in people. Although rugby union has become a professional sport, you hear allot less of the “gamesmanship,” “money politics” and “steroid abuse” in rugby union than you get in soccer or American football.

So, it was really sad to read about the demise of Jonah Lomu last weekend (November 18, 2015). Jonah Lomu was, as they say ‘rugby’s first superstar.’ Mr. Lomu was what nice people would call a “freak of nature.” He was physically imposing (6.5 feet tall and over kg). Yet, despite being huge, he was quick and agile. The man could run the 100 metre sprint in less than 11 seconds (pretty darn good for a non-Olympian and bloody amazing for a man that size.)

When Mr. Lomu broke onto the scene in the 1995 World Cup in South Africa, he became an overnight sensation. His ability to cut through defences and score tries was sensational. Much as it pains most Englishmen to admit it, nobody can forget the way the English national team got blown away by Mr. Lomu in their semi-final encounter. The images of him leaving Mike Catt and Tony Underwood (English rugby players who are by no means puny characters) sprawling on the ground as they tried to stop the rampaging Mr. Lomu are etched in minds of ever rugby purist.

What made Lomu’s prominence so significant was the fact that he game at a time when Rugby Union was an amateur game. The laws of the game were such that the superstars of the game were simply not allowed to earn a penny from playing rugby. The laws on amateurism were such that the ruby players weren’t even supposed to make money from endorsements through the fame of playing rugby. At best, one could use rugby union was a means of getting into the semi-pro code of Rugby League or even American Football.

Jonah Lomu’s performance of the ruby union world cup in 1995 helped to bring rugby to the world and attracted commercial opportunities. The Dallas Cowboys, one of the NFL’s most famous sides, offered him $10 million. He was also offered an opportunity to commercialise and profit from the try that he scored against England.

Jonah Lomu turned down the money. He wouldn’t change codes even though the money offered by the Cowboys was far more than what he could have earned in a lifetime of playing ruby (even today, rugby salaries don’t even come close). He said quite openly that he was there to be part of the All Blacks.

Most interestingly, he turned down the opportunity to commercialise on the image of him running through the English line during the 1995 World Cup – his reason was simple, he didn’t want to cause pain to Mike Catt, the English player that he ran over on the way to scoring that try.

Many celebrities including sports stars to charity work and support causes. Jonah Lomu was more than that. He was a man who turned down greater commercial opportunities for the love of his game and his respect for his fellow players.

Mr. Lomu was a big man in every sense of the word. Not only was he physically imposing but he had a big heart, which made him a gem of a character. He will be missed by the rug

The Dominance of a Small Obscure Island Nation.

Last Saturday, New Zealand’s legendary All Black team created history by defending their rugby world cup title. The historic win has put the island nation into a “party mode” and there is a sense of vindication for the nation that regarded its national team as the world’s best but had to wait 24-years between their first and second world cup wins.

What makes the All Black win more interesting is the fact that this is a national team from a small country of around 4.71 million people tucked away at the furthest end of the Pacific Ocean. New Zealand does not rank as an emerging superpower let alone a superpower. While prosperous, New Zealand rarely ranks on a top ten of any global listing. By way of a comparison, New Zealand with a population of 4.71 million has as estimated GDP of $170 billion plus whereas Singapore, a nation that developed later than New Zealand, with a comparable population has a estimated GDP of $308 billion (source – Wikipedia).

So, how did New Zealand become so dominant in rugby when it lacks the key attributes (a large population and money) of other sporting powerhouses?  An examination of what makes the New Zealand All Blacks so successful is a worthy study for small organizations hopping to succeed.

The best place to start is probably the obvious – rugby union in New Zealand is a national religion and the country’s entire national pride is invested in the national rugby team. As such, the nation’s economic and emotional resources are thrown into the game. By comparison, if you look at New Zealand’s closest rivals; rugby union is only the third most popular game in Australia (after Australian Rules and Rugby League) and in South Africa rugby union is only the game of the white minority.

This means that every All Black player who steps onto the pitch does so with the understanding that he’s not playing for himself but for the entire nation. A loss, no matter how narrow is regarded as a national disaster. One only has to look to former Prime Minister, Jim Bolger’s remarks after their 16-6 defeat at the hands of Australia in the 1991 World Cup semi-finals; he was willing to talk about war and natural disaster – anything but rugby. There is also the increase in visits to the psychiatrist after defeats in 1999, 2003 and 2007.

The All Blacks start every game with the psychological advantage of knowing that victory and defeat mean more to them than it does to anyone else.

Then there is the superb grassroots organization that has ensured that the New Zealand All Blacks have a source of talent to draw on. Clubs like the Aukland Rugby Union organize school competitions, which allow them to identify and draw on talent at a young stage. Then there are several layers of national teams that provide international experience to players, which prepare the lucky few for entry into the exclusive national team. Teams like the Maori All Blacks (comprises mainly of players of Maori decent), the Heartland XV and Junior All Blacks are training grounds to identify the best in a similar way to the way the Royal Marine Commandos provide a training ground to the Special Boat Squadron.

Not only does the New Zealand Rugby Union’s system allow it to maximise the resources that it has at hand, there is also a system where promising players from outside New Zealand, particularly in the Pacific Island Nations to become All Blacks. Michael Jones, one of the most respected players in All Black history made his international debut for Samoa before becoming an All Black (there was also the converse – Va’aiga Tuigamala had a second international career playing for Samoa after his career as an All Black.) The interchangeability between New Zealand and the Pacific Islands got one of my school friends to state that “Western Samoa is effectively the New Zealand B Team” during the 1991 World Cup.

The only two comparable grassroots organization in sport that are perhaps Germany’s football system, which was developed after a decline of the national team in the early 1990s and the NFL’s draft system. These are two systems that have far more resources at their disposal than the New Zealand Rugby Union.

Developing talent internally has given New Zealand a ready source of talent to tap on and having rugby as a national religion gives the All Blacks an edge when they step onto the pitch.

There is also the issue of the culture within the team. While New Zealand has its share of superstars like Dan Carter and Richie McCaw, every All Black player is reminded that this is a team sport and nobody becomes bigger than the team.

There is the unifying Maori dance – the hakka which every All Black player performs regardless of ethnic religion. I’ve always been amazed by the way obviously ethnic Caucasians like Jeff Wilson used to perform this obviously Maori ritual with intensity.

There is however more than just a war dance to keep the players unified. A list of the cultural building exercises can be found at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/10427619/The-All-Blacks-guide-to-being-successful-off-the-field.html.

One of the most notable interesting factors in this list is the fact that the players have to clean up after themselves. This helps keep them humble in the face of things and when people see the superstars of the team picking up after themselves, they remember that this is a team game.

When you get people to gel together successfully, you create a situation where everyone is successful, despite whatever may happen to a superstar. The All Blacks can still win without Dan Carter.

Other teams have fallen short when their superstars have fallen. The most glaring comparison can be found in the 2014 World Cup when Brazil, the host nation and a nation with an abundance of talent and regards the World Cup as its birthright, were humiliated by Germany in the semi-finals. Brazil is supposed to be to soccer what New Zealand is to rugby union.

What happened was simple – Brazil became dependent on a single superstar called Neymar, who’s brilliance was often enough to cover up the flaws in the Brazilian Football Federation (CBF). Neymar had to be carried off on a stretcher and that was the end of Brazil as a football team.

Generally speaking, the guy with the abundance of talent and money has the advantage. However, the success of the All Blacks has shown that money and size are not everything. Knowing what to do with what you have can be far more important. 

The statistics speak for themselves. The All Blacks have a 75 percent winning streak against all opponents. When you look at their winning rate, it is even more impressive. The only two teams where the winning rate is less than 70 percent are against the Australian Wallabies (68 percent) and the South African Springboks ( 58 percent). The only top Northern Hemisphere teams to have ever beaten the All Blacks are France (76 percent win rate against France), England (80 percent win rate against England) and Wales (90 percent win rate against Wales). The only team to beat the All Blacks in 2015 was Australia.

These are statistics that no other sports teams have come close to achieving. So, surely its worth studying what this team from this small island nation has been doing right. 

More than the Mollah!

Rugby World Cup 2015 has finished with a bang. As expected, New Zealand’s legendary All Blacks have defended their title and they did it in style with a 34-17 win against their greatest rivals, the Australian Wallabies. The All Blacks have played a level where nobody, including their defeated rivals can argue that they did not deserve to win.

One of the stories gong around social media and focusing on the All Black player, Sonny Bill Williams and gesture of sportsmanship. While the All Blacks were on their tour of triumph, a young boy ran across the pitch towards him and was rugby tackled by a security guard. Mr. Williams handled the matter and ended up giving the boy his winners medal (read more at: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/rugby-world-cup/rugby-world-cup-final-2015-sonny-bill-williams-amazing-postgame-gesture-receives-universal-praise-20151101-gknw91.html)

Mr. Williams won universal praise. The story has been going around social media and everyone has talked about what a great sportsman Mr. Williams is. One of my school friends made the comment that this would simply never have happened in football (Soccer to my American and Australian readers). Unfortunately, my friend is right. As Rugby World Cup 2015 was going on, FIFA (Soccer’s world governing body) was being investigated for corruption. Watch any football match and you’ll find that footballs megastar players rolling on the floor at the slightest tap. By comparison, the players in 2015 were happily getting bashed and with very little complaint and the guys who got yellow and red cards did so for events that were seriously life threatening.

If one were to bring down the comparison to national level, things would be even more interesting, especially if you are English. In England, you have what many people call the best football league in the world. English Premier League clubs like Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea are global brand icons.  The fame of English players like David Beckham and Wayne Rooney are universal. Yet, despite all of that, England has yet to produce a National team of any significance on the global stage.

By comparison, England’s Rugby players usually do a decent job on the world stage. England has won the World Cup once and been runner up twice. Despite being knocked out at the early stages of this World Cup (losing to traditional rivals Australia and Wales), England’s record in the Rugby World Cup is nothing to be sniffed at. By comparison, England’s football players have yet to get beyond the quarter finals since their semi-final appearance in 1990.

Why is there such a high level of passion and decency from the rugby boys, which seems to be lacking for the boys playing football?

I suspect the reason for this is due to money. The levels of money flowing into soccer are at levels where everyone is forced to try and win whatever the costs. Sponsors and television producers are only willing to put money into clubs that win consistently and clubs need to make more and more money because the players are demanding higher and higher salaries. The players in turn are demanding higher salaries as the increased physicality o the game means bodies wear out faster and careers are shorter.

By comparison there is less money floating around in rugby for it to be corrupting. There was a stage when rugby union’s rules were simply ridiculous. Players were prevented from being paid by the laws of the game. 

However, things have changed with professionalism. Rugby Players can earn a decent salary to do what they want to do – play rugby. Salaries for the top rugby players are not be sniffed at. A good rugby player can earn a couple of hundred thousand Euros a month at top European club (see list at: http://www.therichest.com/sports/other-sports/top-10-highest-paid-rugby-players-in-the-world/?view=all)

However, while the rugby salaires are good, they are nowhere near what their counterparts in soccer get. If an international superstar can earn a few hundred thousand a year, a good soccer player will earn millions in a year. (Look at: http://sporteology.com/top-10-highest-paid-soccer-players-2015/11/)

There’s nothing wrong with being well paid. Sports stars, as my uncle once said, train on average two hours more per day than the average person works. Why shouldn’t the likes of Christiano Ronaldo earn pots of money for being very good at sports, when you have the likes of the Khardasian sisters earnings pots of money by wasting ink in the tabloids?

However, there comes a point when money obscures other things that make the game worth playing. I go back to the comparison to England’s Rugby Players who can give the best in the world a run for their money and the English football team that consist of highly paid brats? What happened?

You could say that the rugby players actually listened when the country called while the football players did not.

It’s something many of us should remember. Money is important and having lots of it is better than not having it at all. However, money isn’t everything and there is such a thing as having too much to extent that you forget everything else that makes life worthwhile. 

The Mandate to Stay the Same

Singapore has just finished a General Election and as expected the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) has been returned to power. What was nobody expected was the way in which they won it. Despite having smaller crowds at rallies than the opposition and the talk about how many seats they’d concede, the ruling party managed to increase their share of the popular vote by nearly 10 percent and they retook a seat from the Worker’s Party (WP), the main opposition party. Our finance minister even went as far as claiming some 70 plus percent in his constituency.

In a way, this shouldn’t have been unexpected. The truism in politics is that elections are not won by opposition parties but by lost by governments. Despite the opposition putting up a somewhat credible fight with the help of social media, the government simply had not done enough to lose the election.

The facts are as simple as this, in the Westminster System, the government has every advantage. The ruling party can call an election at any time within a 5-year period. The ruling party has every right to redraw electoral boundaries and most importantly, it’s always the ruling party that has the power of patronage. Singapore’s government has shown that it is willing and able to use every advantage it has just to stay in power. The Prime Minister timed it perfectly – we had an election after one month of our biggest birthday bash and several months after the nation had finished lionizing his departed father.

The government was helped by the fact that the opposition has yet to get its act together and some of the more colourful characters decided to remain just that. One of them started by starting that his opponent from the ruling party would be hampered by being a mother thus ensuring that a nation filled with working mothers would be turned against him. Then there was Kenneth Jeyaretnam, the Secretary General of the Reform Party who promptly chided the electorate for not voting him in – not exactly a smart move from a man who is smart enough to get a double first from Cambridge University and has ambitions to sit in parliament.

So where does this leave Singapore? The answer is pretty much where it was prior to the election. The ruling party will continue as it has. The main danger it faces is complacency – hence the electorate has kept the WP where it was before the election (With 6 seats out of 89). The other danger facing the ruling party is that it has learnt the wrong lessons from its resounding victory. Yes, it was right to “listen” to the people but it also needs to push through necessary reforms that will hurt the general population in the short run but are important. One of the key issues remains the questions of labour. Singapore needs labour and given that we have an influx of Ka-Ni-Na’s and Pundeks who would rather beg than work, we need to get our labour from elsewhere. The need for darkies from the rest of Asia is greater than ever – they should be allowed in and be given the chance to better themselves.

For the opposition, in particular the WP, the lesson remains this – prove yourself with what you have and build up slowly. The WP had the right strategy in winning it one seat at a time and proving that they would run something. Low Thia Kiang was MP for Hougang for nearly two-decades before the party took the Group Representative Constituency (GRC) of Aljunied in the 2011 Election. 

Unfortunately, they made the mistake of allowing the ruling party to attack their accounting practices. While no serious charges were brought against them in court, the electorate questioned their basic competence and integrity. Fact remains, the WP held onto Aljunied GRC by the skin of their teeth.

The second lesson for the opposition is that, it needs to consolidate, preferably under the umbrella of the WP, which at the time of writing, seems to be the only opposition party that recognizes that good speeches are pointless unless you have seats in parliament. It’s hard to see the Old Carthusian (I must confess that Charterhouse where my rivals in schools karate championship) and Cambridge Educated Mr. Jeyaretanam subordinating himself to Mr. Low, but this is what he and others like him need to do if they hope to smell a seat in parliament. Mr. Jeyaretnam risk becoming the Singapore version of the Monster Raving Loony Party chaired by the late Screaming Lord Sutch.

Opposition politics in Singapore is a thankless task but someone has to do it and eventually, the ruling party will slip. When it does, the nation will need another party to take up the mantle of government. Patience and consolidation are the two virtues that the opposition parties need to work on. 

I Know Your Boss and I am from a Government Department

August has been party month for Singapore. We have officially made to 50-years as an independent nation. Not only did we survive, we’ve actually thrived. While our neighbours struggle through Third World issues, we’re basking in the admiring eye of nearly every country of the world. Singapore, is pretty much a model for the rest of the world, and its’ not the third world backwaters in Asia and Africa that look to us as a model of development but even the developed nations of the West have started to look to us – think of the way former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair started talked about the “Stakeholder” society after a visit to Singapore prior to winning his historical election in 1997. London’s former mayor, Ken Livingston has even gone as far as to try and implement things like road pricing.

It also helped that as we were busy sprucing up for the big party, our neighbours had the misfortune to suffer from rather visible mishaps. An Indonesian plane crashed, thus highlighting that Indonesia, our biggest neighbor is still a third world country with dubious infrastructure. Malaysia, our closest neighbor went one better, their Prime Minister was caught in an embarrassing position of trying to justify how some 700 million US Dollars ended up in his personal bank account – a position no politician in Singapore would ever be caught in. These incidents made our virtues stand out all the more. We remain a clean, well to do and honest nation in a sea of third world filth, poverty and corruption.

While I’m happy to enjoy all the good things that Singapore and being Singaporean has offered, I’m inclined to think that we shouldn’t get too smug about our success. Yes, we’ve done well but we shouldn’t get too smug about our place in the world.

One of the areas that we need to be particularly careful about is the area of “corruption.” We’ve been lucky thus far in that our political leaders have been men of high integrity. Say what you like about the late Mr. Lee Kuan Yew but he held himself to high standards and demanded the same of his ministers. The late Mr. Lee also held his own children to high standards. If our Prime Minister has benefited from being Mr. Lee’s son, he deserves it – Mr. Lee by every account was a man who expected the best, even from his own flesh and blood.

Singapore also remains a place where you do not bribe public officials. A few bucks to the traffic cop in other parts of the region gets you off a parking ticket – in Singapore, you end up in jail.

While Singapore remains “corruption free” in nearly every aspect of the word, there’s one form of “corruption” that we are not free of – power corruption. While people don’t try and bribe you, they’ll try to intimidate or impress you by how close they are to certain people in certain positions. Furthermore, the system seems to perpetuate itself. Take a close enough look at the companies that make up the stock exchange and you’ll find that sooner or later the same names keep cropping up. I think of SIA, our world-class airline, which has started to be retirement village for former air force chiefs.

Singapore is not the only country where power influence gets you places. In China they have “Guanxi” and children of Communist Apparatchiks do very well as board members of companies hoping to get places.  In the Western World, you have Old School Ties. Where you went to school usually determines who you know and that can often be the factor that decides whether you make or not.

What is unique about the Singapore system is that it blends the best of East and West. Like the Western Democracies, our elite have come from the nation’s best schools. These elite schools are “elite” because by and large they manage to get their students to achieve good academic results. Like the Confucian ideal, we select our top civil servants by a rigorous process of scholarship

The idea behind the Singapore system is that we do our best to make sure the best and brightest rise to the top and since they’re in government, they work for the nation rather than some profit driven private company. There are however, two key problems.

Firstly, there is the issue of “cookie-cutter” perpetuation. The good schools are good because they produce kids who get good grades. To get the kids who get good grades, they have vigerous entrance exams. More often than not, it’s the kids from the families that can afford to provide their kids with extra tuition to get past the exams. Kids from these families do not have to worry about taking part-time jobs to help support the family – they worry about passing exams to get into the right school and into the right government job. So while the idea is to find the best and brightest, what you usually find is that the same people end up rising through to the top and staying there. The chances of fresh blood breaking through is slim.

It goes without saying that the people at the top don’t want to lose the top spot and after a certain period of time, the system tends perpetuate itself for the same people. Instead of making good people better by exposing them to more problems, the system protects them from problems. Like any muscle, the brain tends to rot when it’s not challenged.

Then there’s the problem where the elite tends to think that it is entitled to be the elite. After all they have succeeded so brilliantly in the system for so long. While you can argue that much of the success is deserved, this type of thinking closes one from the many possibilities that life can throw up. One can be successful in one scenario but not in another. 

The second problem concerns the chaps who aren’t quite in the elite but want to get ahead. For them, the easiest way is to trade on their proximity to the elite and by crushing those beneath them. The system states that we, the underlings need to know our place in the scheme of things.

One of the organisations, which was supposed to be the great equalizer is the army. Everyone, regardless of family background is supposed to serve two-years in the army and to be treated the same. Well, that might have been the case in the early years but by the time I joined in the mid 1990s, there was this thing called the “White Horse” system. If you were related to someone or perhaps a selected scholar, you were somehow ….treated differently.

I remember one senior government official trying to justify this as a system of ensuring that the sons of the well to do did not get special privileges. His efforts in trying that explanation launched his career as a stand-up comic.

The worst case was during guard duty, when you were a junior commander trying to enforce the rules. Mid ranking officers (captain and below) would be offended when you insisted on seeing their ID. I remember asking a group of reservist for ID when they tried to book in after mid-night, the RSM of the group stuck his military ID in front of my face so that I could see his rank. I am ashamed to admit that I caved in and let them in – it was the easiest thing to do. It was a way of avoiding trouble. To be fair to my era in the army, I actually had good senior officers who applauded me when I stood firm on insisting on seeing ID, even from senior officers driving in and out of the camp.

This goes beyond the army. I remember working on a trial where one of the sides in the trial actually produced evidence showing a prominent government official who was at the time, CEO of our port telling someone the short cuts to get citizenship. It helped that her father was Comptroller of Immigration.

I think of the restaurant where I work at. I remember taking a reservation for someone who kept insisting that her brother knew the boss very well and would justify giving her special dishes. I remember telling the restaurant owner that he seemed to have lots of friends. He told me that many of those friends didn’t recognize him.

I don’t think the problem is going to go away as long as people are easily impressed with name dropping and don’t question. When they’re easily intimidated, they are easily influenced. Not something we as a society should look forward to. 

Confessions of a Nicotine Addict

http://www.establishmentpost.com/confessions-nicotine-addict/

“Hello, my name is Jude, and I’m a nicotine addict.”

I’ve been addicted to cigarettes ever since it was legal for me to light up, which in Singapore is 18 years old.

“One puff and you’re hooked,” warned an old Singapore anti-smoking campaign. And it was not far from the truth. It’s a pity I was never too good at listening to authorities.

While serving in the army, cigarettes were a prized commodity that even money couldn’t buy. Indeed, “smoking is a privilege”, the instructors often reminded my fellow smokers and I – the preamble to us grovelling for a smoking break, often at the cost of extra duties, which we would gladly sacrifice for a puff.

When it was time for jungle survival training, where we were dropped individually in remote locations to fend for ourselves and live off the land, more than one of my compatriots smuggled Snickers bars to keep from starving. I smuggled in a pack of Marlboro, carefully implanted into my First Aid Dressing kit with near-surgical precision to keep from getting discovered.

“I could probably catch a fish or two, or find some edible plant roots,” I reasoned. “But what are the odds I could find a tobacco plant I could roll up and smoke?”

For years, cigarettes were my closest companions: I never left home without them; no matter if I was sad, or happy, or tired, or high, or just bored, there was always a reason to break one out of the box and light up.

Long-haul flights were my greatest fear. On a 16-hour journey to Barcelona via London, I found myself shivering from nicotine withdrawal. My face went numb, my fingers were tingling, and I could not keep awake even to enjoy the delicious inflight fare.

You could imagine my horror as I stumbled off the plane in transit, desperate to rekindle the fire of my relationship with my best friends, only to discover that London Heathrow Airport was a smoke-free facility.

Let me be clear: I did not smoke because it was cool. And I would never encourage anyone to pick up the habit. If you do not smoke, you should not start. Never mind that I smelled like an ashtray (I could hardly smell anyway, years of smoking a pack or two a day had decimated my olfactory senses), had yellowed teeth and fingers, and alternated between coughing and clearing my throat every 15 seconds.

I smoked for one simple reason: I was dependent on it. I was – and still am – a nicotine addict.

Getting Through the Vape Tape

At the nagging of the G (that’s Girlfriend, not Government), I quit smoking last year. But the nicotine withdrawal proved too much to handle, and I picked up vaping.

(Read also: “The Smoking Truth about Electronic Cigarettes”)

“What’s the damn difference?” you ask, rolling your eyes.

Well, a whole lot.

Electronic cigarettes (or vapourisers, as they are commonly known), typically use a battery-operated mod which fires up an atomiser unit. E-liquid – commonly comprising propylene glycol, glycerin, nicotine, and assorted flavourings – is heated by the atomiser to release a nicotine-laced vapour that is inhaled into the lungs, not unlike with conventional cigarettes.

But without the burning as with conventional cigarettes, there is no carbon monoxide and tar. The absence of burning also means there is no choking smell of smoke, which clings to your clothes and hair. It also reduces the number of cancer-causing carcinogens and toxic chemicals that are released through burning in a cigarette. Because that is just science.

But let me be clear: vaping is certainly neither healthy nor harm-free. Nicotine is still inhaled through e-cigarettes, potentially causing addiction and vascular damage, among other side effects and risks.

And there are insufficient studies to determine the possible adverse effects vaping of chemicals such as propylene glycol has on health, let alone other unknown chemicals that could be added by e-liquid manufacturers because of a lack of government regulation.

Indeed, technological and medical advances have brought the tobacco industry to a crossroad.

Stubbing Out Conventional Cigarettes

According to media reports, the global e-cigarette market is expected to be worth some US$3.5 billion by 2015.

E-cigarette use among American high school students jumped almost tenfold from 2011-2014. Over the same period, the proportion of high schoolers who reported smoking cigarettes dropped from 15.8 per cent to 9.2 per cent, US-based public health institute Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in April.

Already, Big Tobacco has made its entry into the fast-growing e-cigarette market.

Key vendors in the e-cigarette currently include tobacco giants Altria Group, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco Group, and Reynolds American.

At the same time, the tobacco industry is moving towards the creation of alternative products that purport to be less harmful than conventional cigarettes.

Philip Morris International (PMI), for example, recently launched in Milan and Nagoya a new type of cigarette, which heats tobacco rather than burning it. According to PMI’s team of research scientists, such heat-not-burn cigarettes could deliver fewer toxins than conventional sticks and more pleasure than mere vapour found in e-cigarettes.

But regardless of the science and possibility of reduced health risks for smokers, e-cigarettes and other “cancer stick” alternatives will be stubbed out following Singapore’s announced blanket ban on emerging tobacco products from Dec 15, 2015.

(Read also: “Singapore Smoking e-Cigarettes Out With Impending Tobacco Ban“)

In the face of possible reduced risk alternatives, the Republic’s impending emerging tobacco products ban is troubling. What is needed is not an outright ban, but stringent scientific testing and improved regulation put in place to ensure, for instance, that youths will not be allowed to buy these alternative tobacco products.

And yet, the G (that’s Government, not Girlfriend) has decided go for a blanket ban, and eventually move towards a smoke-free Singapore.

Meanwhile, those who choose to smoke but prefer a less harmful alternative are handed the short end of the stick: quit smoking, or continue smoking cancer-causing cigarettes – and die.

Read more: Confessions of a Nicotine Addict http://www.establishmentpost.com/confessions-nicotine-addict/#ixzz3hC3WksMt 

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