How Do You Age Well?

 I’m turning 50 in November. It’s an interesting mile stone in as much as I will officially be “middle-aged,” though if you take the average rate of mortality as 80, then I will officially past the half way point.

So, like or not, I’ve officially aged and I’ve screwed it up big time. I am officially a financially unsecure single dad (officially at the end of March), with no much to show for it. I’m officially out of the radar of corporate and government employers and should my current employer dispose of me, I can look forward to a career cleaning up at McDonald’s or go on the path of entrepreneurship crushing tin cans and selling tissue paper in hawker centres or the MRT.

All of this should be terrifying. The only thing that should occupy my mind is how I’d survive if the current hamster wheel I’m on comes spinning apart. However, where I should find terror, I’m actually finding turning 50 with not much to show to be a liberating experience.

Let’s start with the obvious. I am a failure in the traditional sense. I don’t have a corporate career, despite early dreams of being an AVP at Citibank by my 30^th birthday and much to the annoyance of my family, I chucked in the security of a steady teaching career (There’s nothing more painful than sitting in committee meetings watching people jerk off over their self-importance). I have, in the words of New Zealand’s youngest MP, Ms. Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, “Never fit in”

 

 Not fitting in is a challenge in a society that prizes conformity. Gina, my first wife, used to complain whenever I did things because, in her words, I needed to understand that I was in Singapore and not in an “Ang Moh” country. Now, that I look back at things, I’m actually happy I never “fit in” and became part of anyone’s clique. I do attend industry functions and enjoy them for what they are. I’ve enjoyed industry functions both in PR/Marketing and law and accountancy for they are. I do meet people. However, I want to avoid cliques, which are essentially gatherings of little bitches gathering to jerk off.

So, as I get older, I want to stay with people I genuinely like rather than with people I’m looking to get something from. I try like everyone I meet but then again, I’ve come to understand that there are many types of “like.” There are likeable people you can work with. There are likeable people that you should keep liking from a distance. Aging helps me have a better idea who I can and cannot work with.

Then, as Ms. Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, states, I try to take things personally. Yes, you’re supposed to learn to take things less personally as you get older. It’s a case of you realise that nobody gives a flying f***k about you and so you no longer feel the need to try to impress. However, I like to think that there are things in this world that I want to get personal about. I want to care even no one else wants me to. It’s a case of you know you’re still alive when you have things that you can care about and want to do something with. I envy the way someone like Ms. Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke can break out into an intense Hakka on her maiden speech because defending her Maori heritage is something that is important to her:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf2qCAyBVhc   

 

 Then, I look at things that I’m not supposed to do. My favorite discovery was sprinting. I’m past the age of thinking about the Olympics but intense exercise is something a quite enjoy. Started sprinting because I wanted to get the neurotic angel out of my system but then found that I felt alive feeling my heart rate go insane. I get encouraged to continue with sprints when people use the phrase “Old already” or “at our age.”

https://www.tiktok.com/@tang.li0/video/7322508801901366546?lang=en

 

 I’ve also decided that I want to try and build up the body I neglected in my youth. You might call it old age vanity but I realise that the one thing that will kill me off is getting sick and the only way to keep out of the hospital is to exercise regularly an intensely enough. So, the indulgence thus far has been to discover gym time. It’s challenging to lift heavy when you’re an obsess, bald, weak middle age man but then again isn’t that the point. The weaker and more screwed up you are, the more you have to challenge yourself.

https://www.tiktok.com/@tang.li0/video/7329668788494814472?lang=en

 

 Not sure if I am aging as I should. I mean, sometimes I wish I could go back and correct a few mistakes like letting myself get obese in the first place. Could have had a better life without so much booze. Aging is tough but then again, the alternative is always worse and whilst you can’t stop aging, you can do it on your own terms.

I am NOT a supporter of Hamas

 Hamas should be Supporting Me Instead

American Presidents have a way with coming up with soundbites. One of the most memorable belonged to George W Bush who declared that “you are either with us or against us,” in the wake of the September 9, 2001 attacks in the USA.

Whilst this phrase was meant to rally the world against global terrorist movements, the reality was that it ended up summing up what many people in less developed countries have felt about what the Western world really thinks about the world – namely the fact that it can tell the rest of the world “Do as we tell you or else.”

This is particularly true whenever military conflicts occur between Israel and one of its neighbours. Rationality and objectivity get thrown out of the window and the conflict inevitably becomes framed as an “us versus them” issue.

This most recent Israeli bombardment of the Gaza trip is no exception. I’ve taken the view that whilst the October 7 attacks on Israel were horrific, the reprisals have been murderous. This point was made very clearly in IT’S NOT GENOCIDE AS LONG AS WE’RE DOING IT?, and GOD’S TRIAL. Here’s the response I got:

 

 The person who made these comments is quite funny. I like the fact that he or she decided to remain anonymous rather than put his or her name down online.

Then, I like the fact that I’ve been dubbed a supporter of Hamas, even though I never said that Hamas were good guys and I did make the point that the attacks on October 7, 2003 went beyond what most people would call “resistance”

What makes it particularly amusing is the fact that I’ve been told that I continue writing, I would actually achieve the destruction of the State of Israel. I believe that the writer of this comment believes that I am an exceedingly powerful person.

Let’s put it this way. I am an ugly obese middle-aged about to be divorced man sitting in a hovel of an office in a small island in the South China Sea. The State of Israel by contrast is a rich technologically advanced society with one of the most powerful militaries in the world, equipped with some o f the best military and surveillance and has the total support of the richest and most powerful countries in the world.

Yet, despite this obvious contrast of power and relevance, the commentator believes that it is the State of Israel who should fear me. Thanks to writer, I am now aware of my power and instead of calling me a supporter of Hamas, they should persuade Hamas to support me – that way I’ll be able to afford my next cup of coffee.  

It’s Not Genocide as Long as We’re Doing It?

 

One of the most noticeable things about South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the fact that it has highlighted the divisions in global politics. If you were to look at who is supporting the South African case, you’ll notice that they are primarily what the Once and Future President of the USA called “S***hole” countries. The countries supporting Israel are inevitably the developed ones lead by the world’s hyperpower – the USA.

Every time you look at the news, you’ll have a Western leader talking about how the case against Israel is “meritless” or as the German’s recently promised, they would “intervene” on behalf of Israel. British Foreign secretary, David Cameroon even went as far as to call the entire case “Nonsense,” despite having no legal training to comment on the merits of the case:

https://news.sky.com/story/nonsense-for-south-africa-to-accuse-israel-of-genocide-says-foreign-secretary-13048098

 

 Now, I do get where a lot of nations are coming from. Israel was attacked on October 7 and the desire to hit back is understandable. Let’s never forget that part of the thing that got the Western World so involved in the creation of the State of Israel was in part due to the guilt of committing genocide against Jewish people. Having spent a part of my formative years in Germany, I can confidently say that the one thing that will NEVER happen is a German Chancellor talking about “Fine People” whenever Nazis involved. The world will never allow the Germans to forget that part of their history and the Germans have been diligently trying to redeem themselves ever since 1945.

However, as one Chinese diplomat points out – yes, the attack against Israel was morally repugnant and condemned but that doesn’t mean that the subsequent reprisals are justified either.

 

 

Then, there is the inevitable comparison between the two legal teams. The internet is filled with videos providing critiques of how both sides performed and it becomes clear that were this case left to pure merit, it would be a case of the Springboks steamrolling the Israeli rugby team. South African lawyers were calm, composed and on point. They anticipated every counter argument and answered it. The Israeli team by contrast were in a shambles. One of the best memes on TikTok involved Israel’s lead lawyer, Malcom Shaw talking about how someone had “shuffled his papers.”

So, one has to ask, why Western leaders have been so keen to defend Israel despite the evidence? The Western World, which has a beacon global civilization in the last two centuries finds itself on trial.

On one hand, everyone is quick to condemn Valdimir Putin for invading Ukraine. Everyone agrees that invading another country and killing innocent people is morally and legally wrong. Everyone is quick to warn China about invading Taiwan. I am Mahayana Buddhist and I’m from a family that supports an independent Tibet and decries the atrocities in Tibet.

However, while the most powerful nations are rightfully busy defending these oppressions, why do they turn a blind eye and even encourage it when it comes to Israel? The self-defense argument is so ridiculous that a comedian I know made the point in live roast that he could “Get a wife from Gaza and live the Indian stereotype of beating the shit out of her on a daily basis and he’d be defending himself.”

The Western World’s leaders need to change this. Blindly covering and trying impose a narrative that no one else believes in erodes the moral authority of the Western World (which for the record, I do believe remains a benevolent force). It’s not even good for Israel. Prior to these reprisals, Israel was making friends and allies amongst the Arab nations. Now, no Arab Ruller can be seen to be vaguely friendly to Israel. Take a recent conversation between UAE President, Mohammad bin Zayed, which made peace with Israel only four years ago and Israel Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, which involved the UAE President telling him to get stuffed:

 https://www.wionews.com/world/ask-zelensky-uae-president-gives-vexed-response-to-netanyahu-asking-for-aid-money-678506

God’s Trial

 

Something Godly is actually happening in the world of international geopolitics. Around two days ago, South Africa brought a case of Genocide against the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

This is a historic first. Israel has traditionally been regarded as one of the good guys of international diplomacy in the Western World. Criticism of any of Israel’s actions particularly in the Western World, inevitably get shut down as “antisemitic” and in the case of Europe or more specifically Germany, Israeli politicians have a field day of talking about what happened in the 1940s. Try to suggests that Israel is less than perfect in the United Nations, (UN) and the world’s most powerful nation will inevitably shut it down with their veto.

My personal position is and always has been this – yes, the attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 went beyond resistance but the subsequent reprisals against the Palestinians have gone beyond self-defense. Sure, if you want to wipe out Hamas, put your famed intelligence service and army of spies and assassins to good use. Show the people of Gaza that its worth working in peace with Israel and they’re not going let the destructive arm of Hamas rule them. Bombing the Gaza strip on a daily basis and turning off all essential supplies is only going to make Hamas stronger and more radical.

The argument that Hamas have killed 1,000 Israelis does not justify Israel killing in the tens of thousands. People who use this argument are inevitably saying that the life of someone of European decent is worth significantly more than someone of Semitic decent.

In the 1990s, these common facts were appreciated and recognized by leaders like Yitzhak Rabin, who actually served his national service. However, when Mr. Rabin was assassinated by an illegal settler, Israel under the insane arm of the Likud has been on a mission to take as a much land by force, thus trashing any hope of a secure and stable Middle East. As the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy points out – this current bombing campaign has no strategic point and the same could be said of every other campaign that Israel has waged against Palestinian people:

https://www.pbs.org/video/haaretz-columnist-gideon-levy-on-israels-conduct-in-gaza-fgu/

 

 That’s my personal view, which I believe is pretty much based on the evidence that I get from news reports. However, it’s never been the acceptable view in Western societies (which includes Singapore) where I’ve spent most of my life. If you talk to enough of “My” people (graduate middle class – lighter skinned people), you’ll be unable to avoid getting the sense of relief that the Israelis are putting dark skinned people in their place. I’ve actually heard people complain that the Palestinians brought it on themselves by not trying to help the Israelis overthrow Hamas – erm, why should they side with a power that has made it clear that it sees them as disposable darkies. I’ve actually been told by local Singaporeans that they are proud of being a colony of the UK and my tax director actually tried to tell me that people missed colonial rule (my reply was that the only thing better than a colonial master six foot under was the act of putting him there and I had to be reminded that the steak knife was for steak).

South Africa’s case changes that. Sure, whatever the ruling, its probably going to be ignored. Israel and the USA do not recognize that jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). However, the fact that this case was brought before the Court, is a sign that many of the smaller nations of the world, are not going to accept a narrative on a situation dictated to them by global Western Powers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genocide_Convention)

 

Sure, the majority of nations supporting South Africa are Muslim-Majority. However, there are prominent non-Muslim majority states like Brazil, Colombia and Nicaragua that are supporting the South African case. What’s even more interesting is that smaller European nations like Ireland and Belgium seem to support this motion. Think of the arguments made by this Irish Lawyer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS6IYp0BErg

 

 It’s encouraging to see the proverbial “third world” wanting to make its voice heard. Sure, the economic and by extension military power in the world remains in the West. If migration patterns are anything to go by most of us would rather live in a Western country than in a third world one – the joke being will only be a world power when the American Born Chinese tell you that they’re Chinese with American passports rather than Americans of Chinese descent.

However, as the so-called “developing” world develops, its no longer going to accept the dictation of the “advanced” world. The opportunities of the future are inevitably going to be in “developing” places and one will need to respect their point of view rather than impose yours onto them. The argument that a fair skinned life is worth more than a dark and semitic one was never acceptable and its good that the world is making that point.

So, You Want to Date My Daughter?

 

One of the most prominent things you end up doing as you get older is you tend to develop a rather strange relationship with those who came after you. As you grow, you often see life as being about you and the generations above. Life up to a point is about being provided for by parents and then taking control of your life from your parents.

Then, there comes a point when you become the “old” generation and there are a group of grown-up kids looking to you as the “old” generation. How you relate to them becomes your new challenge. For a Singaporean guy, the act of getting older inevitably means grumbling about how National Service isn’t quite as brutal as what it was in your day.

For me, the biggest aspect about getting older was called parenthood, specifically parenthood to a girl. I was, as they say, the type of guy who enjoyed any glimpse he could get of a woman’s anatomy and have all sorts of fantasies. I took the position that it’s only natural for men to like the sight of T&A.

Well, I made the choice of adopting a young girl who has grown into a very good-looking young woman (let’s not forget that her mother is an actual beauty queen). That experience has formed how I relate to people significantly younger (defined by 20-years and more).

Don’t get me wrong, I still like looking at good looking and well-shaped women. However, the moment I get the inkling that the girl could be Kiddo’s age, I back off – it’s “ew – no, not going to get involved with someone who could be my kid.” Never mind Kiddo, I still can’t get over the fact that Christopher, my youngest brother, and I once had a conversation about pregnancy scares and abortions. Although he was well past 30 when we had that conversation, it felt weird because I remember him as a tiny fellow and our conversations centred around whether small things were cuter than big things.

So, as I soon to be divorced man pushing the half century mark, I find that while I would like to have someone in my life, it’s not going to be someone close to Kiddo’s age because …..well it would like Kiddo and that would feel like pedophilia.

As for my relationship with young men, I have my former intern to thank for it. In the initial stages, he actually asked me “Can I marry your daughter, then I can really call you Dad?” That remark made me realise that I actually relate to a lot of younger guys as potential “sons-in-law.” It’s a case of – would I want you near my daughter?

In fairness to Kiddo, the two times, I’ve been introduced to a potential son-in-law, I’ve actually liked the guy. Both my potential sons-in-law were decent and well mannered. The first candidate actually bowed before me and presented a cake. The second took my around Hai-Phong and was the perfect host.

I am not the stereotypical Asian parent who expects the kid’s significant other to be a multimillionaire. I’m simple, I’m happy as long as the guy has a job. What he works as not important as long as he’s got the determination to work. Let’s be realistic, not everyone can be a lawyer or a doctor but everyone can make an honest living. First candidate worked as a bar manager and the second worked in the port at Hai Phong. Both were hard working guys who also gave attention to her.

The second criteria of a potential son-in-law is his relationship with his family. Does he treat his parents with respect. Is he willing to care for his parents? It’s this simple, if he treats his own parents with respect, he’ll treat me with a certain amount of respect. First candidate was a child of a single mother (dad died in his youth) and took care of her. Second candidate was also respectful to his parents. Both guys respected me and displayed impeccable manners when around me. No, I will not tolerate a Mummy’s boy as a son-in-law no matter rich the family. I expect my son-in-law, whoever he may be, to have an independent mind and not have an entitlement mentality. He has to be respected for who he is rather than his family, wealth, material possessions and so on.

My third criteria for a son-in-law must be he looks like he can handle himself in a fight. I was told that I had a bit of a thug’s mindset but I do have a rationale to it. Firstly, I do expect anyone who is serious about my kid to be willing to protect her physically, as I would.

More importantly, I’ve realized that the people who can handle themselves in a fight are the ones who have been in fights before. As such, they know that everyone gets hurt in a fight and as such, they’re less likely to get in situations that are nasty. Knowing how to handle people in difficult situations is an often-underappreciated skill.

The problem in Singapore is that the system tends to encourage coach potatoes to pretend to be tough. Hence, you get hair-brained bureaucrats who only experienced combat by masturbating over graphs on a computer in a cubicle challenging people to fights, knowing that they’ll be protected by our strong anti-violence laws. These are the people who find a problem for every solution and make life unnecessarily difficult.

Hence, I expect any potential son-in-law to be a real human being rather than a bureaucrat in cubicle who thinks he’s got an invincibility complex. You can only snap the necks of such people for sport.

https://www.dynastyclothingstore.com/blogs/editorial/why-do-men-who-have-no-fighting-experience-keep-proclaiming-they-can

 

 We don’t need more automatons being related to us. We need to ensure that the people who get related to are actually humans with values.

Creating Memories

 

Since I worked at the Bistrot on New Year’s Eve, I’m reminded of the fact that one of the things that people find curious about me is the fact that I continued to wait tables even when I was officially employed in a respectable job. I only really stopped working in restaurants when Covid hit and the restaurant business got shut down.

There are several answers that I give. The first one is simple – I’m not going to turn down extra money. They few dollars an hour I earn waiting tables happens to be a few dollars an hour I would not have had otherwise. Then, there are the perks. Instead of spending money on food and drink, I work and get fed and if I am lucky, I get a beer on the side.

Then, I also make the point that I can’t be too proud about being a director of this and that but being “embarrassed” to do certain work. The reality is that the fancy title that I currently enjoy can easily go tomorrow and if there’s anything a decade in the insolvency business has shown me, it’s the fact that its not that difficult to be kicked out of your livelihood. So, its always good to be willing to take on manual work should you ever need to do it.

I’ve also tried my best to cross-pollinate my activities. I’ve met certain lawyers in the Bistrot and worked with them in my corporate job and I’ve also made a point of entertaining people from my corporate existence at the Bistrot. Given that I’ve spent my earliest years hustling and am likely to spend the rest of my life hustling, I need to be in constant circulation.

These are my personal reasons for working in a restaurant, even at the age when one expects me not to. However, there is something greater for me. Working in a restaurant taught me the importance of “creating memories.” I think of the day where one table was a man proposing to his lady and on another table, you had a girl celebrating her hen night. Now, I appreciate the fact that we were only going to know the tables we served for the duration of the service. However, it dawned upon me that even in that brief moment when we were dealing with the two tables, we were playing a role in creating special memories for people.

Memories are what you’d call an important part of what makes us who we are. For me, that message was brought home during my last trip. Ended up in Covent Garden and it became important for me to have a cider in the Punch & Judy.

The reason was this simple. I was brought to this pub 31 years ago, when I was 18. The girl who brought me there was the first girl I was in-love with. Relationship never got off the ground but that particular pub signified something important in my life. Would often drink there when I was studying in London. I developed more memories of the place from every subsequent visit but the memory of the place as being where I first fell in love with someone.

It made a good story for the pub when I last visited – a 31-year absence from the place where I fist fell in love. Helped that my junior colleague and I ended up sitting with a couple who had just gotten together and wanted to travel (he was a PwCpartner in London who just left to set up his own thing, she was a creative director at Diageo).

https://www.tiktok.com/@tang.li0/video/7308456155808845063?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7274292816955999746

 

 

I think my relationship with the Punch & Judy and I become conscious of the role I have in creating memories. It affects the way I do things. A lot of times, I do get walked over for being too nice and I am getting a little sharper as I get older. However, I am always conscious of role I have in creating memories for other people. I always ask myself; how do I want the people who come into my life to remember me and I act accordingly.

At the end of the day, what you make or don’t make in terms of monetary gain will be history. The only thing that remains are the memories.

Can You?

 Sometime back in June of 2023, my mother mentioned that she wanted to meet with her sister and cousin during my sister’s wedding in the UK. Mum, “It’s probably the last time we’ll get together as cousins.”

I told my mother to stop being pessimistic. However, I realised that my mother’s cousin had just finished a book on our family history, which described by grandmother and siblings as “the children” and it dawned upon that my mother, like the rest of the “Boomers” is now in her 70s. We are, like it or not, aging even if we don’t like to think about it. I mean, I’m turning 50 this year and I am a dad of 24-year-old. I have people my age telling me “Oh don’t worry, your turn to be a grandparent will come soon,” and I think “WTF, grandparenthood – I still can’t get used to the fact that I took on parenthood.”

Although it shouldn’t be, my 50^th which will b in November is going to be a strange milestone. In many ways, I’m still as unsettled as I was in my 30s but although that fact should be scary, I’m actually feeling excited and you might say its down to the new year, but I am more energised by the fact that a certain part of my life has crumbled. Why would I feel that way about getting old?

Getting old isn’t easy. The body for one, has a way of giving out signs that it’s not going to take certain things that it used to do. Then, there’s are certain fashions that are simply not going to work.

However, the alternative to aging is inevitably worse. I think of the fact that I am freaking about turning 50 but then again, I could be like my army buddy, Ronnie, who was killed in that fatal accident – he is forever 21. So, I’ve had the privilege of living past 30 and I need to figure getting older.

So, how does one deal with getting older? Well, I guess you realise that getting older and dying are two different things. I look at some of the idols of my youth and look how they’ve turned out. Take former Heavyweight champion of the World – Mike Tyson. Back in the 80s and 90s, he was a terror in the ring. Lasting more than a round with him was considered an achievement. It’s been nearly two decades since he ruled the ring but he’s managed to stay in good shape and at the age of 57, he remains the type of guy that most people won’t want to mess with:

https://www.marca.com/en/boxing/2023/10/24/6537fd89268e3e2c7f8b4582.html

 

 Then, if you look at the ladies, there’s Cindy Crawford, who epitomised the age of “Super Models.” Ms. Crawford is 57 and is the mother of two kids. While she’s not as “fresh” as she used to be, she remains stunning:

https://www.prevention.com/fitness/a46187993/cindy-crawford-toned-legs-skating-rink-throwback-instagram-photos/

 

 So, how do Mr. Tyson and Ms. Crawford maintain their shape. Well, you could say that they understand that they are past a certain age but they’ve looked after their bodies. Like it or not, getting older means that the body does have wear and tear. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t be in shape.

In my 20’s the only time I looked after my body was during national service and the only time I had to look after it in my 30s was whenever I got called up for reservist and remedial training. Everything else in between was given into drinking and buffets. Then, when I went to work, I ended up with screwed up sleep patterns. Going without sleep was considered a sign of “cool.”

Then, when I hit my forties, health complications came about. Regular gout attacks were the most painful. However, that wasn’t the only thing. My blood sugars and bad cholesterol levels are high. So, after two decades where my main exercise consisted of lifting a beer glass, I’ve suddenly found myself doing things like regular squats and push ups. Developing muscle is not about impressing people but ensuing I don’t end up in hospital for all sorts of ailments.

I’m obviously not going to become a professional athlete in my late forties and early fifties but I can be healthy and fit. Just because I’ve reached a certain age, it doesn’t mean that I still can’t move about (if anything, staying fit becomes more important as you age and need to continue working).

You could say that there’s a trade-off, in as much as your mind should become stronger and you get to focus more. Focus allows you to get through difficult task.

Aging isn’t a walk in the park but we all have to go through it. As such, you have to accept that you are becoming older but instead of being 50 but hopping everyone thinks you’re 20, you become the best type of 50-year-old around. Staying fit and looking after your body will make ageing easier.

Ending and Rebirth

 

The last few years of 2023 are ticking away and I’m due to work in the Bistrot on Telok Kurau, so I thought I would try and bash out a few thoughts of summarize the year that is going by and to express my hopes for the year to come.

In a way, 2023 was a brutal year. Thanks to the brutal attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the subsequently even more brutal Israeli reprisals on the Gaza strip, much of the world’s attention is focused on the brutality of that particular conflict and other conflicts that may arise. The chaos in the Middle East and Russia-Ukraine looks set to get worse by the fact that that 2024 is an election year in the USA and the world’s most powerful office is set to be a rematch of 2020, a contest between an elderly establishment candidate perpetuating the worst sins of the establishment onto the world and an unstable lunatic whose sole focus is to use the power of the office to cover his own personal weaknesses.

Since I joined the insolvency business, the turmoil on the global stage looks like a good Christmas present. Businesses around the globe are likely to be affected by the turmoil and many are likely to go under, which is good for insolvency practitioners around the world. Even the firm I’ve worked at for the last decade, which is a small player in the local Singapore market, has found its wings. In the past year, we’ve managed to set up our shop in Dubai and by the end of 2024, we are expecting to have a base in London.

So, whilst I have no great love for the industry that I am in, I’ve been able to enjoy certain benefits of the way the industry has moved. After many years of not traveling, I got to enjoy a trip to Jakarta and London for business purposes. I met people outside of Singapore and that can only help to keep my horizons normal.

On the personal front, Kiddo brought me to Hai Phong for a week and I believe this could be somewhere I may want to move to as I age. It’s not just the cheaper cost that make Vietnam attractive but the fact that there’s a sense of dynamism that is so sorely lacking in more developed places. Its one of those places where the poor don’t sit and beg or ask the government for handouts. They turn their little street holes into thriving enterprises.

The second personal trip was to head to back to the UK after 23-years for my sister’s wedding. I’m so happy I actually got to see the UK after so many years away and having my sister’s friends tell me “You were an important part of our childhood – what happened to you?” I am delighted that Tara has met someone she wants to spend the rest of her life with and I’m glad I had the chance to not only meet the new family but connect to relatives I haven’t seen for ages, specifically my stepdad, Lee who is 91, my stepsister Carol and her husband Sean as well as my Aunty Frieda and Uncle Adrian.

While my sister got married, I will officially be divorced next year. After 12-years together, Huong, the amazingly gorgeous Vietnamese woman I had the privilege of calling my wife, and I will go our separate ways. Her ambitions have taken her to the USA and I can no longer support her as her husband. As such, we dissolve our “life partnership” and move on. She will always have a special place in my heart and I like to think the same is true for her too and given that we’ve come back to each other so often, who knows where fate will take us.

Kiddo asked the simple question – “Will you still be my dad?” I’ve told her that the answer is always yes, but she’s now an adult and she has to find her own way and build her own life and I will be there when she needs me.

During the course of our separation, I’ve been asked if I would change anything. The answer remains no. Even if you were to take me back to the moment, I decided to marry her with everything I know now, I will always agree to get married. Our life together, good and bad made me a stronger person and my life would be poorer without those moments we had.

Another person who deserves mention is my intern, Mr. Jeff Yeoh, who came to work for us in July. At the age of 27, he told me he saw me as a “father-figure,” and I’ve found myself taking the trust he placed in me seriously. Its like this, when you have a little girl, the instincts are to try and protect. When you have someone of the same gender looking up to you, you actually need to show him or her what the future can be like. So, as I push 50 this year, I got to get it through his head that the future can be great if he steps out of his comfort zone and takes on the world on his terms.

The other person who had made life so much richer this year, is Ms. Genia Wee, my collaborator in the Chubby Tigers project. Genia is a tough and lovable cookie, who has a way of turning every meal you have with her into a joyful experience. She’s what Singapore needs – someone who is willing to discover the nooks and crannies of this little Island I have called home for the last two decades.

As always, I can only hope that 2024 will provide more adventures and opportunities to discover the world. I’m going to be 50 and its time I start discovering the unknown or the things that I never knew about the known world.  

“I Used that to My Advantage – Them Being Big and Me Being Who I am” – Mike Tyson

 

One of my favourite characters in my life is a girl called Zen, or Fleshball. Zen was, for a long time, Singapore’s proudest prostitute. She survived on the streets on Geylang and wasn’t shy about out it. This was particularly true when it came to former cops. Most girls who work in the business are weary of being spotted by ex-cops. Zen, would approach them and exclaim, “you look familiar – I know you.”

One of the best things about Zen is that God looks aren’t her strong point. At one stage, she was so fat that she waddled instead of walked. There’s something almost baby like about her. Yet, despite that, she remains super confident than better educated, better looking professional middle class women have been intimidated by her. My ex-girlfriend, who happened to be from Raffles Girls School (RGS), NUS School of Architecture and was the former head of marketing for Haymarket Publications in Beijing and Shanghai, actually got visibly jealous of her or as Zen said “Slimmer than me – but still jealous of me – never mind, I’ll teach her how to use make up.”  

I bring up the topic of Zen because of all the people I know, she’s the one person who remains a middle finger to the established order and established thinking, which is precisely what Singapore needs. I’ve argued that whilst Singapore is on paper, ticking along nicely, cracks are starting to appear in the system. Our government, which ranks as one of the least corrupt in the world, has seen a corruption scandal at ministerial level, something which no one would ever have imagined. You got to ask yourself – “what’s going on?”

The answer is simple – we grew so addicted to the playbook of the 1960s that we forgot that the world was actually changing and old paradigms are becoming less relevant. In a twist to “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” story, nobody is allowed to point out that the magnificent gowns are less so and that the emperor is going to be stark raving nude.

Take our great “tiger” economy. We are officially one of four nations that went from swamp to wealth in a generation. In the case of Singapore, the government argued that this was only possible because the government controlled everything. Instead of a public and private sector, Singapore has a government owned and government-controlled sector.

Anyone else in between the government owned and government controlled got crushed as being a nuisance. I think of our media scene, where SPH, the government-controlled owner of the print and MediaCorp, the government-owned, owner of the broadcast could actually get the government to remonopolise the media based on the argument that Singapore was “Too small for competition.” They got so cozy that they’d spend their time arguing over whether readership was better than viewership without realizing that the paying audiences were losing interest in both and advertisers noticed.

So, instead of making the monopoly players wake up to reality and face competition from smaller online players giving the market what it wanted, our pro-business government decided to bailout the big players and cripple the smaller players with laws like POFMA.

The business scene has followed the maxim of “God on the side of Big Battalions.” Instead of ensuring underdogs don’t get crushed, the system actively goes out of its way to make life difficult for anyone with the audacity to challenge the established players. Hence, super scale scholars get more. People like Zen are not expected to survive until election time. The fact that someone like Zen has the audacity to survive is an act of giving the middle finger to a system that sees underdogs as an inconvenience.

So, what can people who are not part of the established order do to survive? The standard answer is that you lie down and be grateful for the crumbs. But what happens to when you the establishment does not want to give you crumbs?

Again, I don’t have any real answers. However, I got interested in a YouTube video when someone made the point to Mike Tyson, former world heavyweight champion, who he beat bigger men. His point was that he used the fact that he wasn’t the bigger guy to his advantage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmJJK7Ac4Fk

 

 Think about it, Mr. Tyson wasn’t the biggest guy in the ring but he was the most devastating. He terrified larger men and the fights were often over before they started. How did he do it?

There’s something that our entrepreneurs need to take note of in the domestic market. Big players can be beaten and quite often, their biggest strength is their biggest weakness (the fact that they are the big player). Look at the media industry as an example. Both SPH and MediaCorp had the backing of the government and resources. Yet, this became a handicap as viewers and readers wanted something that didn’t seem like a government mouth rag. Like Mr. Tyson, the online media in Singapore has used the fact that its not big to its advantage. Entrepreneurs and small business owners should take note.

God the Hobo

 

I’ve just come back from the UK on a business trip. Unlike the trip in June for my sister’s wedding, this trip happened to take place Autumn when temperatures were dropping. The boss, the junior who came along and the chairman who is Australian, ended up shuddering for a good portion of the trip because, well we’re all from places where winter is 16 degrees centigrade and anything below is considered Arctic.

I got lucky in the sense that I discovered “heattech”from Uniqlo, which helped deal with the cold. However, whilst I managed to deal with the cold better than my colleagues, I wasn’t so warm and comfortable that I couldn’t see a group inhabits London – the homeless.

Go to anywhere in London, and you will inevitably find someone asking you for spare change. You will inevitably see a section of any given tube station, which has become a makeshift shelter by someone homeless, who has subsequently put up a sign asking for donations. Take this fellow who had camped outside Tower Hill Tube Station as an example:

 

 I’ve lived in Singapore for nearly two decades now and whilst the prospect of growing old in Singapore are not exactly fun, I’ve somehow managed to take comfort in the fact that the weather remains relatively warm in Singapore and the prospect of freezing on the streets of Singapore don’t exist. However, even in this age of global warming, it still hit the minus levels and I simply cannot imagine how anyone could consider sleeping out in the open.

In a way, living with the homeless was what put me off London and made Singapore so much more appealing. I lived in Soho back then. I was where the “fun” happens to be. The amount of wealth in the area is staggering and as my mother often reminds me, I probably would have been more successful had a I settled in London instead of making my way back to Singapore. I think of people on leftist campuses who would go on the human rights bandwagon the moment they knew I was from Singapore and I’d be thinking, “ya, sure, we can be a***holes for locking up a few middle-class people for minor things but as a society, we’d never allow our young to make homelessness a lifestyle choice.”

As a matter of disclosure, that was the position I took back then, when I lived off Daddy. I’ve been through a few rough patches (Hotel 81 in Geylang was once home) and years in corporate insolvency have shown me the callous way in which Singapore thrives on what can only be politely called slave labour.  What’s more, we’re starting to show very visible signs of the same problem that London has – homeless people or people sleeping out in the rough (which, for the record is not happening because they think its fun).

The man that I am now has a lot more sympathy for the downtrodden than the student that I was once. Back then, I had the luxury of being take care of by Daddy’s money. Today, I look back as someone who has never “taken-off” and emotionally, its easier to accept that people simply don’t make it in life.

However, I still find it hard to accept that anyone would allow themselves to be in a situation where they had to sleep rough in minus temperatures. I can accept that for whatever corporate opportunities I didn’t get or take, I’ve had the good fortune to feel inspired enough to have the mindset to the see the potential in the things that I’ve done. I take the example of being a waiter and managing to find my IIM (Indian Institutes of Management) gig and opened several doors to law firms for the liquidator who employed me for nearly a decade. I don’t take particular pride of being in corporate insolvency but I see it as a means to getting through to places.

Being able to be optimistic even in the direst of circumstances has kept me going. Even as I push 50, I still function with that intrinsic belief that somehow, somewhere something will click.

For the guys living in the tube stations, that’s clearly not the case. Life is merely about making it to the next fix. What hope is there for them?

This is probably the main question that we need to ask as Christmas approaches. If you read the Gospels, you will see that Jesus was effectively the world’s first God of Hobos. There is no record of the man having a job beyond a stint in the family carpentry business, let alone any record of the man owning the cloths on his back.

Whilst Jesus was probably the first God who joined the ranks of the Hobos, his message was inevitably one of joy and optimism, as I was reminded by the Priest conducting third advent mass last Sunday.

 

 Jesus spoke to the downtrodden and told them there was hope for them. He urged his followers to serve them and to find joy in serving the down trodden.

Now, I am of limited intelligence, so I shall not pretend I know how to solve problems. However, I do believe that churches, temples, mosque and all forms of religious organisations have a role to play in helping the homeless get onto their feet. They should do as Jesus told them to do (Jesus’s message is applicable to everyone – Buddhist should take note that the Dalai Lama has said he is a Boddhisatva and Muslims revere Jesus as a Prophet of Islam). Go out – serve the downtrodden, give them a reason to live and take joy in doing so. Its only when these things happen will we start to resemble a society which can itself vaguely Godly.

A Tale of Two Pageants

 

This has been a funny year. I’ve known two women who got involved in Beauty Pageants. Like all good heterosexual men, I do like looking at good looking women and as a matter of disclosure, one of the women mentioned is my wife of 12-years and the other is a friend whom I’ve grown to care for.

The point of the pageants is, however, larger than the contestants themselves. There are sociological issues that become quite clear. Firstly, one of the best things about the two pageants is the fact that they were aimed at contestants over 35. Like it not, we are living in an aging society, where people are simply not rushing out to reproduce.

The main reason is simple – women have become educated to the point where they realise they have more value than just making babies. Hence, you have a growing number of women who prefer to be single and couples who choose not to have kids (or as my mother says “why have kids if you can’t bring them up in a world better than the one you were brought up in). End result – societies are becoming older and its good that we celebrate female beauty that goes beyond the obvious physical signs of fertility (big boobs, wide hips etc) and look at things like poise and elegance. Celebrating the beauty of older women is good for society. Teaching men to look for long term beauty for example, makes them understand that the “hot bods” they see on the beaches may not necessarily be the women they want to wake up next to in their later years.

 https://www.oprahdaily.com/beauty/a30980789/beauty-brands-women-over-50/

The second point is centred around the difference in approaches to the competition. The Vietnamese girl entered the competition with the determination to not only win but to use the competition to do things on a global stage. The Vietnamese girl not only went onto win the Singapore leg of the competition but got herself crowned as the global champion for that particular competition. To her, this competition was “important” not just for her but everyone around her.

 

 Determination and doing what it takes gets you places

The local girl, by contrast, didn’t treat the competition as a priority. When you arranged hairdressers for her, she was too busy. When you tried to get her input on things, she asked you to do for her, she threw a tantrum for disturbing her busy schedule. She did get placed in a talent segment but didn’t make it close to championship stage.

It’s not that the local girl is unattractive. She looked elegant and poised in the relevant promotional materials and there’s no reason why she could not have given the others a run for their money. However, that was not her goal and it showed. It was a distraction from her daily life.

If you look at it from a “lifestyle” choice perspective, there is no right or wrong. However, if you look at it from a “get things done” perspective, there’s a powerful point to be made. We are underestimating people from other parts of Asia because we think we are educated whereas they are hungry and willing to turn our trash in to their gold.

This is not to say that our people lack drive. Many of us work insane hours and are proud of pat ourselves on the back on the number of things we do in the office. I think of my intern who proudly talks about being a “Por Lampa” (Hokkien slang that roughly translates into ball carrier) person. Everyone I know who works with Singaporeans, says they we’re a hardworking bunch.

However, whilst we may be hardworking in functional in our own environment, we tend not to look at possibilities outside what we know and if anything, we psychologically collapse when things go off tangent. Even our ministers cannot function without a script. I’ll always remember watching Dr. Lee Boon Yang and Carl Bildt give speeches. Even the Ministry people had to admit that the Swedish minister outclassed ours in his delivery.

Look at the pageant as an example. Our local girls avoid pageants because they don’t want to get dissed online. The older ladies are usually in it for the fun than for anything else (I counted three familiar faces between pageants) and don’t really think of what they can milk from it.

The girls from elsewhere see things differently. The pageant is a stepping stone into something bigger. It’s their chance to make it big and so they go all out. In the first pageant won by the Vietnamese girl, it was very noticeable that the only other person offering competition was also Vietnamese. In the popularity segment, the two Vietnamese girls ran away with it.

So, yes, Singaporeans are smart and educated. However, we need to adapt our mindsets to the modern world. Opportunities that may not be in the conventional career path can opportunities for us. Staying with the familiar is not necessarily the way to go in a world where the familiar is closing in on us. Our foreign competition understands notions of “stayer” and “quitter” are outdated and the only thing that matters is what works best for you and the your family.

We Met as Strangers and Parted as Friends.

 

I come from a patchwork family. My mother has been married three times and has had a kid from each husband. My dad is also on his third marriage and a kid from two of his three marriages. Thus, whilst I have three siblings, we only have one parent in common. In the ever-tricky situations on race, I am officially the only “pure breed,” since both my parents are Chinese (mum and dad’s subsequent spouses are Caucasian).

If you were to look at my family, through the eyes of “traditional” values, you could say that we were the text-book case for social welfare and mental abuse. However, as my sister once put it, “We wouldn’t have our patchwork family any other way.” Whilst the family is made up of people of different ethnicities, religions, and cultures, we are actually similar in the things that matter. We have love for each other. I’m significantly older than my siblings. Since I moved back to Singapore rather than stay in the UK or USA, my experiences are totally different from theirs. Yet, we love each other deeply and the highlight of my most recent trip to the UK was having dinner with my brother and sister from my mum’s side:

 

 With Tara, Christopher and Urte (my brother’s girlfriend) at the German Gymnasium Café in Kings Cross London.

I bring up the experiences of my own family because I believe we live in a world where people are encouraged to be scared of people who are not like them. The power of race and religion to divide humanity and go against God are at strong points. Impotent charlatans who couldn’t get laid in a whorehouse are successfully rebranding themselves as “strong-studs” by attacking weak and vulnerable people who happen to be a shade darker than most.

It isn’t just about race and religion. Social class has also played a divisive part. Let’s not forget that Donald Trump successfully reminded white coal miners in Louisiana that they were being screwed by white financiers in New York.

So, you now have a situation where societies are now breaking themselves down into micro-groups based on ever possible division you could think of. People only want to huddle with people exactly like them.

Now, this is perfectly understandable if you’re a migrant in a new country where you don’t speak the language or know anyone. Human nature is such that we’ll drift to the people who are most like us to help us settle in a place. If you take me as an example, I grew up in England and in boarding school. Most of my friends were native Anglo-Saxons. However, if you ask me where I like hanging out best in the UK, the answer is going to be Chinatown in London. I am or was (the main language has moved from Cantonese to Mandarin) most familiar with the sights and sounds of the place.

However, whilst hanging out with your own kind is very natural when you are starting out, there comes a time when you need to break away from your own in order to grow. It is as simple as this – you are not going to get any form of change unless you face the need for it and the most painless form of change comes when you meet people who have different experiences from you.

Let’s look at the Singapore economy as an example. Sure, Singapore has been one of the great economic stories of the past 50-years. There’s plenty of money floating around Singapore. However, the uncomfortable fact remains this, the number of Singaporean businesses that have made great things beyond the local market and the number of Singaporeans in any given field who have achieved anything beyond the shores of Singapore can be counted on with one hand.

Lee Kuan Yew would have argued that this is because we are small. However, small is not an excuse, especially in this day and age of instant communications. The one common factor is this – our companies are increasingly run by the same people – ie people who went to the same school, junior college, army unit and university. Their career paths look ever so similar and so nothing changes. The men (they usually are) will then marry girls who are exactly like them and instead of making children the biological way, they will tailor make them to be exactly like them.

However, as European royal families discovered, the problem with inbreeding is that it eventually leads to deformities both mental and physical. The gene pool gets weaker and the species becomes prone to all sorts of nasty things.

I used to hang out with my own kind, namely PR professionals. Then, when I changed fields, I started hanging out with insolvency lawyers (which is where most of the work for liquidators comes from). Now, nothing wrong with that in that you want to know what’s going on in an industry and you do want to stay up to date with the movements in your field.

However, there’s one slight problem with that. If you only hang out with your own kind, you start getting this delusion that your own industry is the centre of the world and you fail to realise that your value is not being at the centre of the industry but how the industry benefits everyone else.

I discovered this last night when I went for a wine tasting event, that I’ve been attending for some time. I used to have a large group but that got smaller as people found other things to do. Then, last night an expected number showed up. The group was professionally diverse. I had my accountant and a professional nude model. We were joined by a businessman, a surgeon and a Bollywood Scriptwriter. We were later joined by an aspiring liquidator (a former junior colleague), a multilingual American arbitrator and an Italian data architect as well as an aspiring beauty queen and an ecommerce entrepreneur (my Chubbytiger partner).

 

 The businessman and the script writer admire the wine – Taken at Providore OUE

What made the event successful was that people had things to talk about other than their usual mundane business life. We were united by an appreciation of good wine (the surgeon recommended a great bottle) but we approached things from different angles.

This was a moment where people could help each other solidify ideas and somehow ideas could flow easily.

So, yes, by all means, we should be with our own kind. However, its important to move away from our own kind if we want to achieve any form of growth. Group think and inbreeding only make you weaker and seeking out differences and challenge are actually good for you.   

Should We Reward the Right Thing

 

I was at an all-day seminar oragnised by the International Fraud Group (IFG), yesterday. There were various discussions related to the issue of combating fraud and the one discussion that caught my attention was a discussion on whether countries should change their legislation to reward whistleblowers.

 

 As with most things, the biggest and most interesting cases of rewarding whistleblowers comes from the USA, where the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) paid a whistleblower a sum of US$279 million in May 2023.

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-89

The main thrust of the SEC’s argument was that it made the payout because it wants to encourage whistleblowing. Whilst this was an amazing story, an American lawyer on the panel rightly pointed out that the system was not perfect.

Let’s face it, the topic of paying people for doing anything other than a nine-to-six job is something that many people struggle with. Call it the mentality of “I work so many hours a day for x number of dollars and so and so just makes one report and gets so much more.”

Whistleblowing is a particularly tricky topic in that it is more often than not an act that requires you to go against an organization or individual who has power over you. In school boy terms, you’re literally being a “grass” or a “snake,” to the hand that feeds and more often than not, to the “team” that you’ve grown up with. There is, in a lot of human societies thrive on concepts of “loyalty” to authority. That, as an Estonian member of the audience, pointed out, can be tricky, when you come from a society where people are terrified of “telling-on” people or oragnisations to the government. Post-Soviet societies are particularly terrified of this because they are trying to get out of a culture where people were terrified into “telling-on” their neighbours. A German speaking member of the panel made the point that the term “whistleblowing” in German is “informant” which has negative connotations.

Let’s face it, whistleblowing is not something that comes naturally and there are justified concerns that people may become “whistleblowers’ to get “revenge” on employers and that evidence provided by “whistleblowers” may be tainted if there’s a “reward” motive.

I get these points. Well intentioned systems can be abused. The welfare system in many Western countries is an example. The intention to ensure people don’t starve when they’re out of a job is a noble intention. However, the system has in plenty of cases “disincentivized” work. Rewarding whistleblowing can lead to abuse. So, the question is, why should you encourage people to be “disloyal.”

However, the case of not wanting to “reward” people for being “disloyal” has one fatal flaw, which is, it works on the assumption that people in authority are by default the good guys. One of the panelists in yesterday’s discussion is Ms. Ruth Dearnley, who is the CEO of STOP THE TRAFFIK Group, a charity dedicated to combating human trafficking. Her argument was simple – without whistleblowing she wouldn’t be able to do what she does. In Ms. Dearnly’s is in the business of helping victims of crime and relieving a menace.

To put it simply, those of us who happen to be working professionals living in a place where there is a “rule of law,” sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that everyone is like us. We go to work, which we may not necessarily like, does provide us with a reasonable livelihood. If you’re in a profession like law, accountancy or medicine, there is no need to “tell-on” your boss unless its an extreme “life-threatening” case. Members of any given profession have to comply with rules governing the profession as well as the laws of the land. So, whistleblowing only comes into our daily lives in extreme circumstances. – “Why rock the boat unless its life threatening?”

However, the sad truth is that the majority of the world’s population is not working professional and living in a country where there is rule of law. The fact remains, that in the majority of world, being an “honest” and “law abiding” person is the fastest way to die and easy to be tempted and tricked by anyone offering you better prospects. Go into any given red-light district, and you’ll find a young girl who thought she was going to work in a factory but was forced to get “f***ed” to keep other people rich. Ms. Dearnly had examples of boys who could use a computer and dreamed of working for a big IT company only to find themselves crammed into a cell, forced to run “love-scams.”

Let’s face it, these are stories that most of us know exists but they are usually things that don’t even enter our conscience. Yet, these cases exist. The world actually has people who are forced into situations where they are effectively prisoners of the “bad” people who profit from harming other people.

I believe that right thinking people will want the “bad guys” brought down and every right-thinking person will want “victims” to be rescued so that they can get on with life. However, you are not going to get that scenario unless people who are victims come forward.

Now, if it is challenging to get someone like me to come forward to do the “right-thing,” let us imagine what it is like to get someone who gets beaten up or tortured at the whims of their proverbial bosses. Sure, I may have my disagreements with my boss but I am NEVER in danger of losing my life or having harm done to my family as a result of those disagreements. At the most, I quit or get fired and work in a different industry but I don’t have a reason to move from where I am.

That’s not the case for people who are victims of trafficking, whether they are in sex work or forced labour. How do you get these people to help you out.

Yes, the SEC case is sensational. However, when you discuss the issue of whistleblowing, you are not asking people to try out for the lottery. You are asking them to stop the bad guys. Unfortunately, bad guys have a way of doing bad things to people whom they perceive may be a problem.

You need to tell people that you will stop bad things from happening to them if they do the right thing. They need to be able to “feel secure” if they do the right thing, whether that is to ensure basic protection both financially and physically.

No system is perfect. Abuses can happen. However, if you were to weigh up the cost and reward of incentivizing whistleblowing, its clear that society would be far better off if people felt secure enough to do the right thing.