Honda Airwave

Finally, I had a chance to do what I had wanted to do. The reason why I got the Honda Airwave is because of the large space behind. It is big enough to fit in a bicycle. And today, I managed to put in my new bicycle, drive off to fish at Bedok Jetty, and ride my new bicycle to the jetty! Having a bicycle makes it easy to get around East Coast Park, and having the Honda Airwave allowed me to bring my new bicycle to East Coast Park. So from now on, fishing at Bedok Jetty will be much easier for me.

Dying goldfish

We recently bought some new goldfish and introduced into our fish tank. And guess what? Apparently, the new fishes brought along with them diseases, either in the water or the fishes themselves. And when we introduced the fishes into the fish tank (water and all), all the original goldfish got infected!!! Argh!!!

All the new fishes have died less one. Of the original, one of them has died too. We tried all means (using general tonic, adding salt) to no avail. The symptoms are those of finrot, so in the end, we went and got a bottle of finrot medicine, and added it to the tank. Hopefully, it helps and the remaining four fishes (three original plus one new one) make it through this ordeal.

New mall at Clarke Quay "Central"

There is a new mall at Clarke Quay, we went there for dinner last night. It was actually a Japanese ramen (noodles) restaurant. My wife has written something about this too. But the real issue here is not the restaurant. Basically, the mall is not ready yet. Most of the stores are still undergoing renovation, so it looks like more than half the building was still undergoing construction. There is smell of fresh paint, people are hammering away, and the nearest ATM, which was supposed to be on level 1, happens to belong to a bank that has yet to open there... so you have to walk to either Liang Court or MOM building if you need cash.

The design of the mall is also very confusing. Linkways link diagonally, corridors are quite confusing if you are coming up from the MRT station. You really need a map to get around, yet these maps are quite lacking.

All in all, the experience at the new mall was a negative one. Basically, malls should not open for business until most of the tenants are more or less ready. No one likes to shop or eat in a place smelling of fresh paint or listening to people hammering away.

My thoughts on the Iraqi War

Well, the Iraqi War is coming to its 4th anniversary, and there is still no sight of American troops pulling out anytime soon.

My feel on this? When this whole thing is over, Vietnam War would seem like a success to the Americans. After all, they managed to extract themselves from the mess in Vietnam after 10 years. I wonder how long they will be stuck in Iraq.

The Gulf War in 1991 was a success for the Coalition partly because of the limited objectives (just drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait) and also because Saddam probably knew the risk he was taking in his gamble (of taking Kuwait), and he was ready to lose too. He knew what he can afford to lose, and that was his stake in the gamble. He lost his stake, but it wasn't anything that he couldn't afford to lose. In the end, it was a win-win situation for everyone. The Coalition achieved its aim of driving out the Iraqis from Kuwait, and Saddam was able to build up political bullets by showing his courage in standing up to American superpower.

The difference with the Gulf War and the Iraqi War is that the Iraqi War's objective is a regime change. Now, that is something way really hard. The Cambodians were in a much better position in 1992 when they asked the UN for help in setting up a regime, after years of civil war. The Coalition of the willing has no such mandate from the UN, and I don't think the Iraqis agreed to invite them to help. So trying to force change upon a people whom you may not really understand very well (different culture, different religion, different traditions) may not be an easy task, and I think the Americans are finding out the hard way now.

My fat goldfish

In 2005, I started to rear goldfish at home. What we did was get a small aquarium set, which comes with an air pump and the plastic aquarium itself, and bought a lot of small goldfish. Most of them did not survive, actually. When we bought them, they were like 1-2cm long each, still very small. Out of 20, less than 10 survived past the first 2 weeks.

Now, some of the goldfish have been transferred to a larger place, and only four remain in the same tank. And of those which survived past the first 2 weeks, the smallest goldfish back then is now the FATTEST of the four in the tank. See the picture (also found at my wife's blog) below.

Japanese drums performance

I went to see a Japanese drums performance today with my wife. For my thoughts on Japanese drums and taiji, you can read my post in my taiji blog. The performance was held at Yio Chu Kang Community Club. The performers from the CC put up a good show, showcasing the results of their practice (usually once or twice a week). I was amazed that they could put up such a show, given the limited practice time they have.

And of course, the climax was the performance by drummers from the Japanese Association. These people are Japanese living in Singapore. Some of them probably have been learning Japanese drums since young, which probably means they are years ahead of our local performers. Their standard was of course superb. If you ever have a chance to go to their performance, don't miss it! Besides being an audio enjoyment, they also make Japanese drums a visual enjoyment.

Coffee and kids

I am sure there are coffee lovers out there. Coffee comes in all kinds: espresso, cappucino, latte, mocha, and so on. Just visit Starbucks for an idea of how many ways coffee can now be brewed.

But today, I am not here to talk about coffee. After all, although I do visit Starbucks every onces in a while, and I have my 3-in-1 coffee every morning, I am not a connoiseur of coffee. I don't really have a strong preference for any particular type of coffee, or how it is brewed.

What I want to talk about is coffee and kids. My wife's ex-colleague is now living in Italy. Whenever they come back to visit, we would try to meet up. It is a great chance for me to meet their kids too. The elder one is a 5-year old girl, the younger one is a 2-year old boy.

My first surprise came when the girl wanted a coffee when we stopped over for a drink at The Coffee Bean. Not many 5-year old kids ask for coffee in Singapore. But that is not all. After talking to their father, I found out that the reason why the 2-year old boy doesn't ask for coffee is because the little guy only drinks Italian coffee. Imagine! A 2-year old coffee connoiseur.

The story goes that they went to tour in France. On the way back, the little boy never asked for coffee. The moment they crossed the border into Italy, at the very next stop they made to have a short rest, the little guy wanted coffee.

Last night, we were having dinner together, and ordered espresso after dinner. Well, Singapore's espresso is nothing like Italy's, of course. Apparently, the little guy could smell it too. When his father tried to feed him some espresso, he rejected it. His elder sister, however, had no problems with Singaporean coffee.

Now, if they were brought up in France, instead of coffee, it could be wine...

School ranking

Why must we rank our schools?

Each year, our schools are ranked based on the results of their students, also taking into consideration other factors (of which I don't really know much about... but that is because of my ignorance). It is actually hoped that parents and students will use this ranking to help them find a school that suits them. Of course, in my opinion, this just creates competition between schools, and let's just hope that such competition is for the good of the students. I mean, when teachers are focusing more on how to get the school ranked better, rather than focusing on how to better educate their students, we will have a problem. After all, the reason we have schools is to have places to educate our future generations.

One suggestion is to do away with the ranking. Publish data on the schools as usual, but without giving them a rank. Publish the data in alphabetical order. Put in data regarding the performance of the school in terms of academic performance of the students, the club activities offered (and those that the school are good at), plus any other relevant information. The duty given to out teachers is to educate, not come up with ideas to improve the working environment in schools.

The Future of Singapore Part 2

I like to think about Singapore, and my wife enjoys talking about Singapore with me too.

Today, I had the chance to attend some lectures about the region, as well as the current economic situation facing Singapore. The main question is, what should we do as a nation, with the current situation at hand in which there are rising economic giants in the region, and neighbouring countries that are catching up?

In a previous post, I had touched on this too. After attending the lecture today, I had some other thoughts. Singaporeans in the early days have been through a lot to build up the nation. The leaders then thought long and hard, and came up with a formula for success, given the economic situation then. We also adopted a system in which we left the major decisions to the government, which in turn tried to be a good government by attracting the best of the best talents in Singapore via various policies/schemes.

All that was fine when the economic situation does not change as fast as the speed of an electron. When information was still carried by sea and air mail, and overseas telephone calls were expensive, we can afford to wait for the government to help us analyse the economic situation, and come up with broad directions on where to head for next. But when information moves at the speed of the electron, and deals are made or broken over the Internet, we can no longer wait for the government to go through their process before we act. By the time the government comes up something, it may be too late to act.

Another thing to consider is how we have been teaching our people. We have taught ourselves a sense of competition. People are always competing against one another. We compete in school, to see who has the better score for PSLE, who gets to go to a better school (we rank our schools too, based on the results of their students). Then it is who gets the better GCE 'O' level results. And so on, as we move into tertiary education. We compete to get scholarships, and thus securing for ourselves good jobs with good prospects either with the civil service or with the private sector.

The result? This stringent selection process means that those who eventually get selected for top positions went through the process, passing each time, never failing (if they failed, they get weeded out of the selection process). It makes one think if these selected leaders of the future are able to face failure. For life is about failures. We have to learn to handle our failures and turn them into future successes. If Thomas Edison had succeeded in making the light bulb on his first attempt, he would not be remembered for his spirit.

I think the future lies not in following the current and past model for success. Yes, the government has brought us so far, they have shown us what worked, what brought success in the past, given the economic situation then. However, if we try to apply the same process to a different economic situation, it just may not work. What we need to do now is to educate our people to learn to think for themselves, to decide on their own paths, given the understanding they have about their own abilities and the geographical, political, economical and social situation in Singapore and the region. And our education system must be able to instill a sense of competition in our people, without instilling in them the fear of failure.

And we need to change the way we think about competition. If we build an airport, and subsequent a neighbour follows suit and build their own airport, it is not because they are out to compete with us, to steal our business, to kill our advantage in that area. No, they built an airport because it is a requirement of their own economic growth. We should not be looking at how to undermine the developments going on in our neighbouring countries, or how to compete with them to get more business. Instead, we should be focusing on exploring new areas of business, we should be looking at how to exploit the new economic situation brought about by the growth of our neighbours. If economics is just a zero sum game, then the future of the world is bleak, since it means that there is no way for mankind to benefit as a whole.

Thus, the challenge for Singapore is to develop a people that can think for themselves, that can make their own decisions, and know how to handle competition in a healthy manner. This, I think, is the first step in bringing us towards becoming a first world state, with the economic resilience and the human quality to match.

Living life

Taiji has really changed my perspective of how to live life. I try not to be too assertive. I try not to push people to deliver. I am less concerned about winning or losing. "Fail fail loh." And I am more ready to listen to others, and give way to them. See my post in my other blog on taiji for more.

March

March has started (actually, already one day has passed... it is now past midnight, well into the second day of March). How time flies. March is actually the first month of the Roman calendar (if I so recall correctly), it is the start of spring, and cherry blossoms should be starting to bloom soon in Japan (starting from the south, working its way up to Tokyo around the end of March). And of course, for Singaporean students, March is when they have a one-week break from school!