I love numbers. Love maths since primary school, enjoyed it through my academic experience. Did well, mostly As except one stage where basketball over took importance over everything, did so badly in Secondary 2 that it scared my parents and they sent for a home tutor.
But it was only when I started working in semiconductor industry before I realised numbers appear differently to everyone. How we crunch it, how we view it seems to make a different statement. This intrigues me further.
I used to do data analysis with semiconductor figures of gate oxide thickness, processing time of individual process steps, etch rate times etc...the list goes on and on. Think about how your IC chips in your computer or mobile phone come about. Hundreds of process steps, thousands of recipes, equipment, engineers and technicians handling - add these up and that makes data analyses in my job the toughest way of finding a defect or a particle in the chip which made it fail.
I recently had dinner with my US visiting VP of HR and the questions he ask entails our views of Singapore and he reveal he was a hip-swinging Woodstocker in the 70s with the V-sign going "Peace!". I realised my views were similar to his - we seek to challenge, never settling for being #1 and we need to be there to give an alternative view, to oppose not for the sake of opposing, but to seek the truth, the better solution. In some sense, I see his passion similar to mine.
Sometimes this leads to being labelled a maverick in many ways, from political views to even basketball teams. I realised if one has a passion for something he/she believes in, they tend to have views on it. I then look to my female colleague whom she prefers a status quo, everything remains as is - with the government, with life. Her answer to what would you change in Singapore if you have a chance to do it was - nothing.
Are we that perfect? I have to agree with this recent statistics that has surfaced.
Singapore is ranked third in the world by the World Bank in terms of GDP (PPP) per capita ($49,288). (source is from Wikipedia) We have a sovereign wealth fund which is one of the highest in the world, though recent losses have depleted ~30% of it, while many other funds have reaped a 30% increase in the equities market. We have the highest paid government civil servants in the world which will ensure that corruption is to the minimal.
But these numbers do not mean a thing if you look at it from another perspective. Something perhaps my female colleague has failed to see and quite often ask me why I am so biased - I forgot to tell her that I wonder the same about her. Our income gap, as measured by the Gini Coefficient, is the highest among the 20 most developed economies. This means the wealth distribution is of high disparity. So while our GDP is high, this is because the minority at the top has earned even more money while the poor remained or became poorer. You would think how could that be, the per capita reflects an average salary. Yes - average meaning we sum it up and divided by the working population. If the poor get poorer, with the rich earning more, it will make up for the shortfall. With the looks of cars queuing up to get into the latest shopping haven Ion @ Orchard, you will then realise there is no recession and where is the poor. Well you will need to search but not too far off. I have seen homeless people sleeping at City Link near the Esplanade side, they will not be there on weekends, but on Fridays as I made my way to my usual coffee place, they will be there. You can see the videos I posted earlier of old people rummaging through bins looking for food or valuables. Our foreign import policies have depress wages, made more Singaporeans lose jobs because of their cheaper costs which increases revenues of coffeeshop owners, engineering companies etc. Did my female colleague realise that foreign workers being alone, can survive sharing a room with 8 others, their eventual place of residence will be elsewhere etc. Did she realise that inflation is a foreign word to the back-broken aunties picking up cans, she just need to know where to buy $1 chicken rice and that $0.50 cannot get her on a bus ride anymore.
I am disheartened by my colleague's lack of passion in this sense. Our government need to extend out that hand when we know many old people refuse to take handouts because this nation builders of our past and heritage have pride. More pride than our civil servants who continuously justify "corruption-free" reasons with grossly over paid salaries. They make me spit at the words "civil" and "public service". And I blame my colleague for not voicing out, for thinking that not rocking the boat is the better choice; thus not caring about the fact that not everything is fine in Singapore. We cannot get complacent with the forever #1 thinking here. As we all know Singapore has already lost #1 airport status, we also know cleaners are sleeping in there because seriously Changi Airport Terminal 3 is so quiet, I wish students will all go there to study to give it some life. One day, be it Seoul Incheon International Airport, someone out there will surpass you and it is not because we are spending less money on our airports or ministers. But because of complacencies. Too much gratitude, wrong history learnings attribute success to a selected few and hence they have so much power in their hands. We worsen the situation by placing them onto that ivory tower, unable to see the lesser mortals.
Everyone has but one vote, though we all know that without a level playing field, many of us have yet to cast a vote, especially me despite over 10 years of eligibility. If there is one thing I would like to change in Singapore; it is not for a level playing field for the oppositions, it is not for more NMPs like Sadasivan who has stepped up and make me believe there is hope; but I wish for a discerning voter who can make sense of the numbers that the state media feeds you. Do not look at the 2006 Happiness study and think that we are a happy lot, look at the 2009 one and decide for yourself. So they might break up the population with GRCs, they might dangle carrots or cash rebates, but to the discerning Singaporean - we should know better. So think before you vote, it decides your future generations - the policies made now affects them as well.
