Thursday, February 26, 2009

Better business leader

I am amused when ChannelNewsAsia's host Joanna Leow, on today's Business morning hour around 850am,interviews some guru about how business leaders should lead their companies in such difficult times. When the guru explained that leaders should set an example in the company and reach out to them, and keep in communication with the staff, she quickly cited a rhetorical example cum question: "Oh like President Obama in yesterday's fireside address to the people of America?"

I am not sure to be amazed, saddened or shocked, firstly it was meant for business leaders, but the way America bails out corporations these days, she is not faulted for thinking so, especially when our nation is functioning like Singapore Inc. And secondly, she did not cite our great leaders of Singapore. Especially given the fact perhaps her KPI depends on it since our state traditional media tends to be biased towards the ruling party of our "democratic" nation. Oh but wait, there isn't much to cite given the fact that we the citizens of Sillypore have been recently faced with:

1) told to throw our aged to a lower-cost neighbouring country because its more expensive here;
2) been labelled a lesser mortal because we feel that some perm sec spending 45k on cooking lessons is indigestible with the common people;
3) threatened that new media is being watched - bloggers can be identified and prosecuted even if they seem to be anonymous;
4) and also been told to embrace the wonderful "miraculous" Jan budget despite calls by opposition to relook to a more focused attention on helping the retrenched which can hit 100,000 this year, while finding out that we lost at least a $100 billion by our scholar/elitist filled GIC and Temasek entities. A humongous sum which could afford to pay for each and every working Singaporean a sum of at least $50k per annum. And I think theoretically that will bring us out of a contraction expected for the next few years.


Anyway forget about all that crap, but I really applaud President Obama's speech, it make me believe in the American system and I understand why so many people strive to go to the land of the free though it is in so much shit. And I believe Joanna was taking an hour break through the live telecast of Obama's speech yesterday and was like me, totally impressed. But the sorry fact that I have to live with is that I am a Sillyporean awaiting for something similar and to look towards my leaders - business leaders or not.

In case you missed out on Obama's speech - Video and Text.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Balloon


Having a feeling right now, which I cannot describe. Sort of a childhood flashback or a longing. I felt that I have finally lost my balloon, as it lifts higher and higher. Often I feel I would be somehow tall enough, smart enough to get it back, and that it will always be there floating near enough, but this time I really lost it. You look out into the skies and you see the balloon floating further and further away...as I stared up ahead and gripped my hand tight, I wished I had held on to it and never had let it go.

Finally

Thinking about it days and nights, often wondering when and how. It constantly flashed across my mind - Eventually it will come, just be patient. Many times, I rushed and failed. To sense and mind, a long-awaited maturity finally set in. When everyone around you has stopped playing and started shopping for prams and diapers; when raising families is a norm, it finally caved upon the puerile psyche.

Slowly, the unfolding starts, revealing parts of the unknown. Apprehensive over what might unfold, I stopped buying toys, shoes, unworn tees. Collections of alcohol, shot glasses, intricate toys, shoes I've amassed over the years stopped in its tracks wondering when I will ever get my own place to display them. Will I ever find "the one" who will accept the infantile?

All along it should never be an acceptance, but the growing out of an unacceptable state of mind. I realised the importance of what IFs and how it should BEs.

I finally know what I want. It's not about making choices or taking chances, it's about knowing what you want and accepting it. It's about knowing what you do not want and not accepting it. Yes, my mind is often in the state of uncertainty, flipping switches in states of 1 or 0.

In saying that I guess, I need to sort out my love life first. Which will lead me to setting up my own family, the part which I am missing and finally ribbing my brains out.

And in my family, rules have to be set. No tolerance of things I hate. If I can do it, why can't the person I choose to share my life with, have done it?

I detest :

1) gambling
2) smoking
3) cheating
4) sloth
5) greed
6) stupidity
7) impatience
8) bad sportsmanship
9) unfilial
10)untrust

Many of which I am guilty of myself and thus at times I do dislike what I have done. If you are a friend, acquaintance, hell-no do what you want. But if we are to be eternally fused together, going forward the feets have to be moving together. We have to be helping one another and understanding each other's limitations, fears, dreams, hopes and goals. So there is a need to know how it should be, how I need to get there.

For the last few years, realising what I have lost and what I want back and I can only reflect upon how did I lose it and how I need to change and improve myself. That's how it should be to lead me to the what if.

So for now, singlehood is a choice as I ponder if I should get my own place amidst such difficult times, but I do need to start living on my own and await the elusive "one" whom I believe will come in "her" own time. The only question that I will stumble over is what if "she" never comes. Only heaven knows.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

The Great Debaters

A movie I recommend everyone who wants and has a righteous mind to see. Inspired by a true story of actual historical events of Wiley College. I learnt a great deal from this film.

Trailer of the "The Great Debaters"


Two of the best lines that is awe-inspiring.

Spoken by James L. Farmer, Sr:
Do what you "have to do" in order that we "can do" what we "want to do"


Spoken by James Farmer, Jr in the final debate with Harvard:
In Texas they lynch Negroes. My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his neck and set on fire. We drove through a lynch mob, pressed our faces against the floorboard. I looked at my teammates. I saw the fear in their eyes and, worse, the shame. What was this Negro's crime that he should be hung without trial in a dark forest filled with fog. Was he a thief? Was he a killer? Or just a Negro? Was he a sharecropper? A preacher? Were his children waiting up for him? And who are we to just lie there and do nothing. No matter what he did, the mob was the criminal. But the law did nothing. Just left us wondering, "Why?" My opponent says nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral. But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow south. Not when Negroes are denied housing. Turned away from schools, hospitals. And not when we are lynched. St Augustine said, "An unjust law is no law at all.' Which means I have a right, even a duty to resist. With violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Cycles

It is said that in everything, there exists a cycle. Like we humans belong to a life cycle of birth, growth, reproduction and ultimately death. It is said that a fruit fly has the shortest life cycle which spans only a week. While us humans have evolved to having a life cycle of about 70-80 years.

We humans also belong to a bigger ecological cycle where our very actions have incurred the wrath of Mother Nature, depleting ozone layers resulting in the phenomenon Global Warming which we are all familar with nowadays. You observe the very cold winters in Europe and Russia and the droughts all over the world. Even in just one continent of Australia, we see bush fires down south and floodings up north. I once read that a 4 degrees celcius rise in global temperatures will melt enough polar ice caps to raise the sea levels which will engulf Singapore.

I believe we all belong in this ecological cycle where there is a feedback loop and slowly but surely, planet Earth will heal itself. But at what severe consequences, given the fact how much of Earth we have already savaged and plundered? And will it be within my lifetime, I can only wait. We all heard about the great floods and ice age and watch them in the movies - 'The Day After Tomorrow' starring Dennis Quaid struck a chord with me as a possible doomsday scenario we might have coming.

I've recently went to the Vivocity National Geographic Store and have set my eyes on the Solio Chargers which look fabulous! And are quite a steal at about S$99 only, with all the handphone/gadget chargers there is on the market but the only problem, it has a limited life span on the batteries of only one year.



They fold into a nice compact mode when not in use.


Still deciding if I should spend my limited GST credits on them to reduce my carbon footprint, and charge my mobile and PSP from it.

As I usually love to digress and remain incoherent in my posts for this is not a GP essay but a personal blog. I return to my topic of being in a cycle.

We humans are also in a cycle where the last 10 years we have seen many of the brightest and elite students around the world scrambling to emulate the success of high paying successful Wall Street bankers, financiers, traders etc. The financial world has indeed welcomed the brain drain from many other industries.

20 years prior to the the brain drain, we saw a technology spurt where Bill Gates (Microsoft), Len Bosack (Cisco), William Hewlett and David Packard (HP), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Ross Freeman (Xilinx), Jerry Yang (Yahoo), Morris Chang (TSMC) and more recently Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google) create communication platforms, software enablers, knowledge/data transfers and exchange, chips and wafers which gave the masses handphones, laptops, gadgets which enable everyone access to knowledge on the internet, communication devices, satellite access maps to see the world. These engineers, school drop-outs did it for the love of creating value from photo/video sharing to VoIP calls which help the world become closer, bridge the gap of information access between countries.

While the recent spurt of greed in the financial world to offer questionable CDOs and loans which lead to the subprime crisis can only come from scumbags who are driven by monetary gains of millions of dollars of salaries and bonuses year after year based on potential future gains which never realised. Do we really need to pay so much to have these top brains before they can work and actually create value?

Akin to me walking into a bank and finding a relationship manager or a personal finance consultant, whom I have paid out fees to have them sell me funds, investment portfolios which might have tanked after a couple of years. Can I blame them? I paid money to someone to take care of it for me. If I had kept it in a biscuit tin at home, the money might have lost out to inflation, currency fluctuations, but at least I have only myself to blame. That being so, I guess I won't be mock for keeping them in biscuit tins, because it can't be as bad as the 30-40% losses Singapore's brightest and most brillant have lost in 8 months and so far demonstrated that buying biscuit tins instead of banks might have been the best investment move these days.

So will all banks around the world soon be nationalised? Will capping salaries at US$500k result in non-competitive, slack culture in the financial world? I guess there will be a cycle to regenerate the financial systems. I believe there will be good people willing to take the job despite the monetary rewards being limited. Have we forgotten the fact that some people do create things for the love of creating value. Perhaps we need to re-define what constitutes good - greed is obviously not the way to go.

With each meltdown or crisis, a new technology/industrial revolution will often begin - Agriculture, Motoring, Steel/Metals, Semiconductors, Dot-com era, Oil Production.

So which cycle will soon follow?

I hope it will be eco-green-bio-related, so that I won't see Mother Nature's wrath in Singapore during my lifetime as many others around the world have seen lately.


Lastly a cycle I hope will not be foregone in the next election - goes out to the greater mortals whom we have entrusted our forefathers' billions. They have painted a wonderful analogy that if we pay peanuts we get monkeys. Right now million dollar peanuts seems to still get monkeys racking up $100 billion losses, I am glad we did not really feed them peanuts, we might all end up moving to other countries being maids and foreign workers. Oh wait, maybe that's why we are now given the option to shift our aged to Malaysia. I hope a cycle will soon come to regenerate our political system. I believe there will be many good Sillyporeans out there who can do a better job than the self-absorbed monkeys we have currently in place and perhaps cost less!


A quote that I really love:

“I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.” - Socrates (Ancient Greek Philosopher, 470 BC-399 BC).

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Just not right

My million dollar Hell Health minister just made suggestions to ship our aged to Johor, and I do not think I twisted any words, because that's how I see it. I hear lots of undeveloped land, unused buildings being discussed on newspapers, for foreign workers. I see lots of 18-hole golf courses in Singapore. Has the Singapore Inc entity became so heartless? I wish I could ship my f#$king minister back to Malaysia.

This is a nice video, I won't not take care of my parents because I fear retribution or my future generation might do the same. Somehow in my generation, my moral upbringing taught me it's just not right. I guess million-dollar-ivory-towered-greater-mortals have different moral education.



When is enough finally enough? Has Singapore lost its heart? Singapore is a disgrace.

Play the blame game


Shocking events for my February 2009:

1) Supporting Pistons is at an all time low. Detroit Pistons are now under .500 into the upcoming All-Star Break. First time in many years and especially so after trading Chauncy Billups for Allen Iverson. Winning a championship is bleak this season.

"It's not a good feeling,'' Iverson said. "The whole thing is to stay positive, stay together, not to point fingers and play the blame game.

"You don't win a championship at the All-Star break.''


2) Groundhog Day which I thought being a film starring Bill Murray back in 1993, was all pretense. But I saw on the news lately that it is actually true! And for this year Punxsutawney Phil - the only true weather forecasting groundhog has predicted another 6 weeks of winter! Mind you, this groundhog day holiday has been celebrated since 1886 and Punxsutawney Phil has been making predictions for over 120 years and has so far been 100% correct! And in the film, Bill Murray was struck like a modern day Christmas Scrooge experience of being stuck on the same day and he blamed Punxsutawney Phil for it and tried to kill it even! I loved this show, watched it at least 10 times! Gave me hope of having many chances on trying to make the day and your life a better one.

In all matters of having traditions, basketball championships, and having many chances - We had a shocking revelation of Ho Ching (Empress Ho, wife of Emperor Lee, together they make the "HoLee" heavens of Greater Mortals - haha just kidding!) stepping down from Temasek. Was it a case of losing billions of our taxpayers' money; over 31% in a short 8 months which caused her to step down?

The spread of wildfire across the internet had many speculations on her decision to step down and the breaking of traditions that we now have an Ang Moh groundhog who can accurately predict in this turmoil times. Do we need to point fingers and play the blame game? Anyway our state Strait propaganda Times did mention citing various sources that we are doing not so bad, above average given that the world has lost at least 40%. Let's move on, it's an honest mistake.

Do we blame the star player in the NBA if the team has more losses than wins? Do we in this case blame the groundhog for predicting a longer winter? And in this case will a change of groundhog be an easier way out of explaining what went terribly wrong? Well, seriously I don't get paid millions to question Temasek where did the tax dollars of my grandfathers, father, mother, sister and myself went.(notice my grandmothers are not mentioned here - I think they were housewives back then) But I expect my gahmen to question them since transparency has always been an excuse and not just pat them on their back to say game over, good try, now let 'Chip' ang moh be scapegoat with prosperous 'Good Year' name give it a try.

I for one will be f@#%ing Iverson from the sidelines; will probably not go to the games; or buy any Pistons jersey - which my direct actions has some consequences to their profits and in many times, we have seen star players like Iverson, will be f$%*ing traded away. As he has been traded from Philly to Nuggets and now to my Pistons.

So seriously Iverson, I don't blame you. And you are right, stay positive and we are only half way there, got chance one. You are but a player, I'm f$#*ing pointing my fingers at the coach, the owners and the president of Pistons' organisation who made the choice to trade Billups for you. But still a word of caution, you better shape up or move out! According to Inside Hoops, your 2008-2009 salary was US$20,840,625 and I could have bought a lot more better players for probably half that price.

So back to my gahmen, who said she was qualified? And how much did she costs us again for the past 8 years? Unlike the film in Groundhog day, we only have $185 billion,$120ish billion, very little money left to play. Ang Moh groundhog...will Singapore have a long cold winter ahead?

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Deep Thoughts

The past couple of weeks has been lots of resting and spending time with my family and relatives over Chinese Lunar New Year. I wanted to blog about being called a lesser mortal by a MP; I wanted to blog about being called a bacterium. Judging from feedbacks I got from the status and links I have posted on my facebook profile, I bet it would be an interesting blog entry. But then again I suspect the bacterium-calling-New Paper article was written by an old school friend and I think its best to sit on the fence on that.

I just got back my well-missed bicycle after hiding it away in my huge locker room further down the road since Nov when my sister was back for a visit. Besides gaining alot of weight during this long period of not cycling I have lost all focus and reflections which I do when I go cycling. So I got on my bike and search for time alone to think and reflect on the past happenings lately.

On a side note, I want to digress that blogging is great, it is a means to showcase our individual thoughts and opinions and indeed it is stupid to regulate or even charge to be able to blog (in relation to the Association of Singapore Bloggers fiasco). Its just plain stupid if I need to pay to write in my diary, but saying this. Unlike a personal diary, which is often laid to rest in some hidden corner, locked away in some drawer, unseen by prying eyes. A blog well, it is open to the world. Of course you can put a password to it, but then what's the point of blogging? Sure you can send out invites to people you want to read, but then again it makes no point of it being opinions and thoughts if its limited to whom can read it, its like writing love notes to friends who are approved to pass it along. Totally senseless. Most people blog so that it can be mass read. And perhaps try to profit from it. My reason for blogging besides for free booze which most have known, is so I can make a footprint in this vast Universe. But be cautious in what you blog and who it can affect on a personal level. Normally I blog general issues which will not harm anyone, not even Greater mortals!

"Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow..." - Lawrence Clark Powell


And this issue of being anonymous, what's the problem? My friends know who I am, and I don't give a f#$% if I am just a statistic or if you give a s#$% about my opinions.
Seriously, the 2 reasons why I try to make my blog as senseless as it is, and the anonymity of not posting my name is in case with the crisis unfolding, I might eventually be working for a GLC or the Singapore Gahmen and no way I am going to risk shutting down my online crap box. Secondly, which is more important, I like my kick ass avatar/nick/moniker which I have kept since I got my shoe back in the mid 90s.

Ok time to get back on track for my deep thoughts which I have made recently. I reflected on the person I am and the person I was and the person I want to be. I recently got a chance to kidnap some less fortunate kids and spend some time with them, and I realised how much I like kids. Back in the Uni days, I enjoyed going to help out at a children's home. Besides the fact I get torn apart knowing them and realising how lost a kid can be without proper family upbringing. It shook my very foundation of dating and the fact that I need to slow things down - look at what I really want. I have a habit of moving too fast, which I get reprimanded by my closest friends and their wives. Seriously, this is not a "I like fast car, fast women" thing that I think I am guilty of. But I tend to be a passionate person, but a past issue has caused me to change to person I used to be. Trust is a stupid thing, like lending money to a friend, only to lose that friend. I rather be making excuses to not lend money, so that I can keep that friend. I trusted and made a terrible mistake back in 2007 and for 2009 I decided to slow things down but again this has caused dire consequences as I found like money its hard to take back what you have given.

So I guess like money I need to make excuses not to lend or in this case not to give.
And like today's banks, I need to set criteria and conditions on who I can lend to. The worse thing is...I am a tough complicated bank to deal with. I don't do no minibonds.