The seventh month of the lunar calendar has started yesterday. It signaled the start of the Hungry Ghosts Festival, a traditional event for the Chinese to pray to their ancestors. In Singapore, it means the start of the getai, with lots of people singing on makeshift stages all over the island. It is going to be a lively month!
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Esmeralda in town
Thursday, August 09, 2012
Celebrating Singapore's 47th birthday
Today is National Day in Singapore. It has been 47 years since Singapore gained independence. A good time to reflect on what it means to be Singaporean.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
RSN Leads a Multinational Task Unit in Naval Exercise off Hawaii
Fly our nation's flag high in the waters off Hawaii, thousands of miles from home. Well done guys!
RSN Leads a Multinational Task Unit in Naval Exercise off Hawaii
RSN Leads a Multinational Task Unit in Naval Exercise off Hawaii
Saturday, July 07, 2012
Kiasu Singaporeans
Singaporeans are known for being kiasu, or being afraid of losing. Yet this fear of losing is exactly what causes us to lose. Because when you are afraid of losing, it clouds your judgment... your mind keeps thinking about loss, it becomes preoccupied with loss rather than focusing on the issue at hand. In the end, this fear of losing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; the mind becomes preoccupied, thus it is not able to analyse what is needed to succeed, and thus you end up failing.
It is time we wean ourselves from this bad trait. Yes, it is good to stay competitive, it is good to want to come up top. But we should not become too preoccupied with success or failure to the point that we lose sight of the important things in life.
It is time we wean ourselves from this bad trait. Yes, it is good to stay competitive, it is good to want to come up top. But we should not become too preoccupied with success or failure to the point that we lose sight of the important things in life.
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
Fatal accident on Tanah Merah Coast Road
There was an accident along Tanah Merah Coast Road yesterday, in which one died and 25 others were injured. It sounded very familiar. There was once when I was driving along that same road, when a dumpster came head on towards me. That dumpster was trying to overtake another dumpster on the opposite lane, and strayed into my lane. I quickly kept as left as I could to the side of the road, the dumpster passed me by inches, and I lived to tell the tale. The road is not dangerous; it is made dangerous by those who misuse it.
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
More malls rolling out free wi-fi
Saw this article about more malls rolling out free wi-fi in Singapore.
It is about time... if a coffee shop in Vietnam offers free wi-fi, as the "most future-ready Asian city", Singapore should not be far behind, if not actually leading the edge.
It is about time... if a coffee shop in Vietnam offers free wi-fi, as the "most future-ready Asian city", Singapore should not be far behind, if not actually leading the edge.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Learning from classics
The world is ever changing, so some would ask, "What can we learn from the study of the classics?" Classical works dating from ancient China and ancient Greece might have been appropriate for their times, but how relevant are they in today's world? After all, the ancient world did not have computers, the Internet, the United Nations, electricity, modern transportation, etc.
Yet I believe there can be things that we can continue to learn from the classics. After all, human nature has not changed. While technology may be advanced over the last two millenia, things dealing with human nature and the dealings between human beings (such as social sciences) are still as relevant today as they were two thousand years ago. That is probably why we still continue to study the classical Greek works by Plato and Socrates, why the thoughts of Sun-tzu, Confucius and Lao-tzu are still being studied today.
Yet I believe there can be things that we can continue to learn from the classics. After all, human nature has not changed. While technology may be advanced over the last two millenia, things dealing with human nature and the dealings between human beings (such as social sciences) are still as relevant today as they were two thousand years ago. That is probably why we still continue to study the classical Greek works by Plato and Socrates, why the thoughts of Sun-tzu, Confucius and Lao-tzu are still being studied today.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Article: Spoilt West invites its own decline
Just want to share this article by Peter Hartcher, the international editor at the Sydney Morning Herald. It echoes my thoughts about how we are fueling inflation without basis and eventually, the bubble will burst and we will be in trouble.
------------
Spoilt West invites its own decline
June 12, 2012
It is easy and natural to think of the woes of the West's main powers as an economic problem. Because that's the way it is presented to us. And it is economic - at least, superficially. But if you take a step back, what we're really living through is the decline of the West.
It's not just about Spain's debts and Europe's currency, or even just about Europe. It's not just about Washington's deficits and the US recession, or even just about the US.
These are the symptoms and the locations of a common dysfunction, not driven by some remote economic force but by people and politics. That dysfunction is very human, very normal and very simple. The central driver in the decline of the West is indulgence.
This indulgence has worked through three channels. First is government spending. In country after country, political leaders have indulged their electorates and powerful special interests. They gave in to demands and pressures and expectations. They spent money they didn't have. Everyone wants more handouts and bigger subsidies but no one wants to pay more taxes. Political leaders are supposed to manage these conflicting pressures in the national interest. They did not. The deficits began and didn't stop. They piled up.
The main powers of the Western bloc, since World War II at least, have included not just western Europe and the US but also Japan. All three of these huge economies have been guilty of extravagant spending and inadequate taxing.
The pensioners and public servants and governments of Greece have had a lot of bad press in the last year or two for their indulgence. They've been roundly abused for expecting too much in welfare payments and retirement benefits and for not paying enough tax.
And it's true there has been quite a bit of wasteful middle-class welfare and ill-disciplined social welfare paid to the voters of many eurozone countries. But most of the governments of Europe have also wantonly indulged powerful special interests.
Farmers, for example. Almost half the European Union's annual budget - 47 per cent - is spent on subsidies to farmers. The Common Agricultural Policy props up hopelessly uncompetitive farmers who should have gone out of business.
But they are a powerful and organised political force, so they get paid for being uncompetitive. This is a weakness shared by Japan and the US, too, though not as extravagantly.
The most famous American subsidisation of a special interest is its wasteful spending on military programs. In the early 2000s, the US accounted for only 5 per cent of world population but just under half of all global military spending. Another way of putting it is that the US spent almost as much on defence as the other 190 countries of the world put together.
Japan's special fetish has long been construction spending. Not just since the tsunami but for decades before that. In 2003, for instance, it spent 40 per cent of the national budget on construction in what was already one of the world's most overbuilt countries.
One reason was the fact that, for a long time, the construction sector kicked back a share of the money to the politicians who decided the spending. Under the reign of one former top figure in the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Shin Kanemaru, it was a fixed 2 per cent cash kickback on contracts awarded - a huge pay-off.
The second channel through which indulgence was exercised was the central banks. Central banks in Japan, then the US and Europe, made money too cheap for too long. It was an indulgence. But it was a fatal one.
Central banks were granted independence from politicians for an excellent reason - most people love low interest rates and politicians love giving people what they want. But if you keep rates too low for too long, it pushes up prices and creates terrible problems. Until the 1980s, excess money went into the price of consumer goods and you got inflation breakouts.
But from the '80s onwards, something changed. Excess money started flowing into the price of assets instead - shares and real estate, in particular. The Japanese let this happen in the '80s and when the ''bubble economy'' popped, it went into a slump from which it is still recovering.
The US - telling itself it was special and different and better and, in any case, it had the genius Alan Greenspan - made exactly the same mistake. It got the same result.
Why did it do it? Greenspan, as Jim Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer sagely said, was a better politician than he was a central banker. He kept the great American party going and became a national hero for doing it, even though it was intoxicated on cheap money, until it came to its inevitable end.
The third channel was the banking sector and the high-rolling investment banks in particular. Politicians and regulators in the US, mainly, but also in Europe, indulged the fantastic profitability and the generous political donations of the investment banks.
Under cover of the ideology of the free market and its supposedly miraculous ability to reach perfect equilibrium, they created new and virulent ways of profiteering from the great gushers of cheap money flowing from the central banks. Subprime mortgage lending was one.
Of course, when it all crashed, the political leaders had to bail out the banks. And that was expensive. The cost was added to the towering public debts that the politicians had already accumulated. And so the cycle feeds itself anew.
By last year, the average public debt of the eurozone nations was 82 per cent of the size of their total gross domestic product, far above the permitted maximum of 60 per cent. In the US, the figure was 103 per cent. In Japan it was 230 per cent.
As these great Western powers grew richer, they grew flabbier and more indulgent to the point of collapse.
It's a very old story in the history of civilisations, told anew in our time.
Peter Hartcher
------------
Spoilt West invites its own decline
June 12, 2012
It is easy and natural to think of the woes of the West's main powers as an economic problem. Because that's the way it is presented to us. And it is economic - at least, superficially. But if you take a step back, what we're really living through is the decline of the West.
It's not just about Spain's debts and Europe's currency, or even just about Europe. It's not just about Washington's deficits and the US recession, or even just about the US.
These are the symptoms and the locations of a common dysfunction, not driven by some remote economic force but by people and politics. That dysfunction is very human, very normal and very simple. The central driver in the decline of the West is indulgence.
This indulgence has worked through three channels. First is government spending. In country after country, political leaders have indulged their electorates and powerful special interests. They gave in to demands and pressures and expectations. They spent money they didn't have. Everyone wants more handouts and bigger subsidies but no one wants to pay more taxes. Political leaders are supposed to manage these conflicting pressures in the national interest. They did not. The deficits began and didn't stop. They piled up.
The main powers of the Western bloc, since World War II at least, have included not just western Europe and the US but also Japan. All three of these huge economies have been guilty of extravagant spending and inadequate taxing.
The pensioners and public servants and governments of Greece have had a lot of bad press in the last year or two for their indulgence. They've been roundly abused for expecting too much in welfare payments and retirement benefits and for not paying enough tax.
And it's true there has been quite a bit of wasteful middle-class welfare and ill-disciplined social welfare paid to the voters of many eurozone countries. But most of the governments of Europe have also wantonly indulged powerful special interests.
Farmers, for example. Almost half the European Union's annual budget - 47 per cent - is spent on subsidies to farmers. The Common Agricultural Policy props up hopelessly uncompetitive farmers who should have gone out of business.
But they are a powerful and organised political force, so they get paid for being uncompetitive. This is a weakness shared by Japan and the US, too, though not as extravagantly.
The most famous American subsidisation of a special interest is its wasteful spending on military programs. In the early 2000s, the US accounted for only 5 per cent of world population but just under half of all global military spending. Another way of putting it is that the US spent almost as much on defence as the other 190 countries of the world put together.
Japan's special fetish has long been construction spending. Not just since the tsunami but for decades before that. In 2003, for instance, it spent 40 per cent of the national budget on construction in what was already one of the world's most overbuilt countries.
One reason was the fact that, for a long time, the construction sector kicked back a share of the money to the politicians who decided the spending. Under the reign of one former top figure in the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Shin Kanemaru, it was a fixed 2 per cent cash kickback on contracts awarded - a huge pay-off.
The second channel through which indulgence was exercised was the central banks. Central banks in Japan, then the US and Europe, made money too cheap for too long. It was an indulgence. But it was a fatal one.
Central banks were granted independence from politicians for an excellent reason - most people love low interest rates and politicians love giving people what they want. But if you keep rates too low for too long, it pushes up prices and creates terrible problems. Until the 1980s, excess money went into the price of consumer goods and you got inflation breakouts.
But from the '80s onwards, something changed. Excess money started flowing into the price of assets instead - shares and real estate, in particular. The Japanese let this happen in the '80s and when the ''bubble economy'' popped, it went into a slump from which it is still recovering.
The US - telling itself it was special and different and better and, in any case, it had the genius Alan Greenspan - made exactly the same mistake. It got the same result.
Why did it do it? Greenspan, as Jim Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer sagely said, was a better politician than he was a central banker. He kept the great American party going and became a national hero for doing it, even though it was intoxicated on cheap money, until it came to its inevitable end.
The third channel was the banking sector and the high-rolling investment banks in particular. Politicians and regulators in the US, mainly, but also in Europe, indulged the fantastic profitability and the generous political donations of the investment banks.
Under cover of the ideology of the free market and its supposedly miraculous ability to reach perfect equilibrium, they created new and virulent ways of profiteering from the great gushers of cheap money flowing from the central banks. Subprime mortgage lending was one.
Of course, when it all crashed, the political leaders had to bail out the banks. And that was expensive. The cost was added to the towering public debts that the politicians had already accumulated. And so the cycle feeds itself anew.
By last year, the average public debt of the eurozone nations was 82 per cent of the size of their total gross domestic product, far above the permitted maximum of 60 per cent. In the US, the figure was 103 per cent. In Japan it was 230 per cent.
As these great Western powers grew richer, they grew flabbier and more indulgent to the point of collapse.
It's a very old story in the history of civilisations, told anew in our time.
Peter Hartcher
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
Getting money for the job
When given a problem to solve, there are two ways to go about it:
1. Find out what you need to solve the problem, keep asking for those resources (the money...) until you get it.
2. Find out what you resources you can get, then work within those resources to solve the problem.
Option 1 sounds to me like someone who is really serious about solving the problem, and thus he keeps trying to make sure he has everything he needs to solve the problem. He wants to make sure he does a proper job of solving the problem.
Option 2 sounds to me like someone who just wants to solve the problem... get the boss off his back. It may seem like a solution at first, but it probably won't hold in the long run...but then, the guy is no longer around to be blamed. Problem is then passed to the next guy.
So, are you serious about it? Or are you just buying time? Do you get what you need to solve the problem? Or work within your means to solve the problem? Do you take the difficult way, or choose the easy way out?
1. Find out what you need to solve the problem, keep asking for those resources (the money...) until you get it.
2. Find out what you resources you can get, then work within those resources to solve the problem.
Option 1 sounds to me like someone who is really serious about solving the problem, and thus he keeps trying to make sure he has everything he needs to solve the problem. He wants to make sure he does a proper job of solving the problem.
Option 2 sounds to me like someone who just wants to solve the problem... get the boss off his back. It may seem like a solution at first, but it probably won't hold in the long run...but then, the guy is no longer around to be blamed. Problem is then passed to the next guy.
So, are you serious about it? Or are you just buying time? Do you get what you need to solve the problem? Or work within your means to solve the problem? Do you take the difficult way, or choose the easy way out?
Transit of Venus
Rare event happening... the next time this happens will be in 2117, long after I am gone. It is the transit of Venus through the Sun, and it is happening on 5 and 6 June 2012. I should be able to see it tomorrow morning starting around 6am.
Friday, June 01, 2012
Work is the best form of cohesion
Some years back, one of my bosses told me that "work is the best form of cohesion". Today, I am starting to truly understand what this really means. We can do all sorts of team-building activities together, like playing paintball, those leadership games, having retreats. But nothing brings together a group so much as having a common goal and working together towards it.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Forced break to rest
I haven't had a chance to really practise taiji for a while. Not because I am lazy, but because the work schedule lately has been so tight. When you sleep only 3 hours a day, after 5 days when the weekend finally comes, even if I want to go for taiji practice, the body tells me "no" and I end up sleeping the weekend away, just to catch up on lost sleep.
Hopefully, the work schedule lightens up a bit, and I get to catch up on lost taiji practice soon.
Hopefully, the work schedule lightens up a bit, and I get to catch up on lost taiji practice soon.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Japan and the Wider World
This is a book by Akira Iriye, about Japan's foreign policy. It offers a good insight on the development of Japan's foreign policy since the Meiji Restoration, and how it is based on pragmatism rather than idealism. Japan's foreign policy is not guided by an ideology; instead, it seeks to protect Japanese interests in a changing world. Living in Japan and interacting with the Japanese, I kind of feel that this is very true. The Japanese are quick to bring in foreign ideas if they are useful, because they are practical people. This practicality probably reflects in her foreign policy as pragmatism.
Sunday, May 06, 2012
Passion drives the poet's pen
Passion drives the poet's pen,
The ink runs dry when love goes out;
Sorrow drives the writer's hand,
Ideas stop flowing when joy is about.
The ink runs dry when love goes out;
Sorrow drives the writer's hand,
Ideas stop flowing when joy is about.
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