On 27th March, i will sit at table 17 with all my army friends, toasting yum seng for steven, another army friend. Its his wedding day and i had just received his wedding invitation card.
The feeling of having an invitation card is quite strange. When you flipped open, the usually childish( boys in army are all like that), boorish, un-goodlooking( the stupid army garb) friend of yours suddenly turned into a sauve young man. When you stare at the eyes of the groom in the wedding picture, you can sense that " ah...he is now a man, responsible young fella" and of course, the happiness in him. You look at the bride, yes, woman indeed look their best in their gown.
I have enter this decade called the young and swinging 20s. In another word, it means a decade of receiving wedding invitations. I think, before my turn of giving out invitation comes, i will countless ang bao already. Suddenly it all felt so strange. When i was young and was about to attend wedding dinners with my parents, they would keep pondering how much to put inside the red packet. Too much you hurt your own pocket but too little you are telling the whole world you are going for a cheap meal at a fancy restaurant.
Now, it become my turn to sratch my head and think what amount is the right amount.
But before i do it, yum seng, steven!
Friday, March 18, 2005
Sunday, March 13, 2005
We are all dead people
"I see dead people". Yes....the sixth sense. I watched it yesterday. An amazing movie by M night shyamalan. The story revolve around this kid who say he can see dead people and this doctor who cure it. The ulitmate twister is at the end of the show, when the doc himself realise he is dead already for over 1 year.
Anyway, i think this movie is rather philosophical. On the surface, it seems the doc help to cure the kid, but rather, it is the kid who help the doc instead. The doctor told the kid:" hear what those dead people want to say, they need help". Actually, the kid has been doing that, although to only one person and that is the doctor. The doctor need to sort of atone for his sin of mis diagnosing the guy who killed him. And here come the kid who is similiar to that guy whom killed malcom, the doc.
So in another word, the kid help the doc by letting the doc diagnose him.
Another part of which i like is how the kid says:" everybody just want to see what they want to see". Certainly, we are the one who really want to see what we want to see. We are the one to set the rules and regulation. Sometimes truth don't present itself very much as truth. Sad.
Anyway, i think this movie is rather philosophical. On the surface, it seems the doc help to cure the kid, but rather, it is the kid who help the doc instead. The doctor told the kid:" hear what those dead people want to say, they need help". Actually, the kid has been doing that, although to only one person and that is the doctor. The doctor need to sort of atone for his sin of mis diagnosing the guy who killed him. And here come the kid who is similiar to that guy whom killed malcom, the doc.
So in another word, the kid help the doc by letting the doc diagnose him.
Another part of which i like is how the kid says:" everybody just want to see what they want to see". Certainly, we are the one who really want to see what we want to see. We are the one to set the rules and regulation. Sometimes truth don't present itself very much as truth. Sad.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Biggest joke in parliment
Today i read the newspapers. NCMP Steve Chia asked a question which i think is damn stupid. He suggest that the allowance of MP to be tied to the number of questions each MP asked. Then one minister, forgot who he is, said if the allowance is to be cut, the first to be cut is the NCMP, which i think...hm...true.
Hai~...how come whenever the opposition ask a question, they always get shot down. It so paiseh. Our opposition still at its infant stage i think. Just too bad....just to bad. Anyway, i believe like i mentioned earlier, elections are coming. Perhaps after national day or the release of 3rd quarter economy forecast. It should be around november. I think so.
Hai~...how come whenever the opposition ask a question, they always get shot down. It so paiseh. Our opposition still at its infant stage i think. Just too bad....just to bad. Anyway, i believe like i mentioned earlier, elections are coming. Perhaps after national day or the release of 3rd quarter economy forecast. It should be around november. I think so.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
A case of paradox
Structural economy changes has swept Singapore. From a traditionally strong manufacturing and perhaps textile industry, we have slowly morph into one which is strong in bio-medical sciences and other higher end technology. However it means some workers has to be displaced in order to fulfill the majority.
"Lactura paucourm serva multos", meaning sacrifice a few for the sake of the others, was clearly adhered here. Education need alot of time and patience. Re-skilling our workers definitely need some time changing. The problem is, does our society allow for this to take place? Time and tide wait for no man, especially in a society in Singapore, a little fish constantly moving around in order to survive, such time can be a bane and a huge cost. However if we don't allocate this time for our workers, workers being the fuel for our economy engine, will instead, hinder the engine. Such is the delimma of changing the economy.
Recently, news makers start to talk about how we can retrain the old folks, raising retirement age or even be more protectionist by reserving some jobs for the old folks. Again, this time paradox came into place. I realise alot of people miss out the larger picture. The small picture is, when you start applying the protectionist idea of reserving jobs for old folks, you are not letting the market function by the invisible hand( read: Adam Smith). Market or economy could just be unstable and it won't show the true side to the demand and supply of workers for that kind of jobs catered, or should i say, protected. Wages too is affected. Health insurance, a huge cost, would also be incurred as the mortality charges of old people are higher. When company do that , they would need to find alternative way to make up for that incurred expenses and consumers durable prices may just increase.
However to me is, do Singapore really can allocate time for retraining, for patiences and for seeing results. Hardware wise, the government is doing a good job, setting up WDA in CDCs to help workers so that they can help themselves to retrain themselves. But as we grow older for which our level of comprehension slows, time taken to really learned is definitely longer than the youg workers.
Similarly in the old folks context, structural economy bring about changes. To retrain and re learn. One need time, the older, the more. But as i mentioned earlier that Singapore is a small fish which time must be grabbed fast, can we just slow down our pace for the changes to take place?
Recently one of my ex- colleague received his O level result. His score is dissapointing, to his own standard. But can he be blamed? Self personal time is making way for company expansion, for hitting deadline. Try telling to your boss that your own personal re-learning is crucial to Singapore' total growth and he will tell you one cow less doesn't make any changes to New Zealand milk production.
Even if this colleague of mine take up the daring path and quit his job in order to concentrate fully on studies for which he will get good result, can the society promised him with a job upon graduation or a pay that is on par to his educational level? I afraid at this present stituation, it is hard to satisfy.
Upgrade has been the word for us after HDB flats. But i would like to mention, this doesn't work if we ourselves are willing but our superiors doesn't believe in that. I rather milk dry this worker rather than him after getting higher education, leave the company or ask for higher pay.
If our workers do not re train to have the skills needed for the new economy, ultimately, our economy is the one which is going to suffer as human is the fuel for the growth. We need a core group make up of Singaporean in order to continue the running of our engines. Do you use lubricant to run your engine totally? No! Foreign talent are just like lubricants, they make it smoother only.
Singapore, beside encouraging its people to train, also need to see whether it really support wholeheartedly, and i mean, by slowing down the pace, giving time. But at that stituation, can we still catch up and survive?
"Lactura paucourm serva multos", meaning sacrifice a few for the sake of the others, was clearly adhered here. Education need alot of time and patience. Re-skilling our workers definitely need some time changing. The problem is, does our society allow for this to take place? Time and tide wait for no man, especially in a society in Singapore, a little fish constantly moving around in order to survive, such time can be a bane and a huge cost. However if we don't allocate this time for our workers, workers being the fuel for our economy engine, will instead, hinder the engine. Such is the delimma of changing the economy.
Recently, news makers start to talk about how we can retrain the old folks, raising retirement age or even be more protectionist by reserving some jobs for the old folks. Again, this time paradox came into place. I realise alot of people miss out the larger picture. The small picture is, when you start applying the protectionist idea of reserving jobs for old folks, you are not letting the market function by the invisible hand( read: Adam Smith). Market or economy could just be unstable and it won't show the true side to the demand and supply of workers for that kind of jobs catered, or should i say, protected. Wages too is affected. Health insurance, a huge cost, would also be incurred as the mortality charges of old people are higher. When company do that , they would need to find alternative way to make up for that incurred expenses and consumers durable prices may just increase.
However to me is, do Singapore really can allocate time for retraining, for patiences and for seeing results. Hardware wise, the government is doing a good job, setting up WDA in CDCs to help workers so that they can help themselves to retrain themselves. But as we grow older for which our level of comprehension slows, time taken to really learned is definitely longer than the youg workers.
Similarly in the old folks context, structural economy bring about changes. To retrain and re learn. One need time, the older, the more. But as i mentioned earlier that Singapore is a small fish which time must be grabbed fast, can we just slow down our pace for the changes to take place?
Recently one of my ex- colleague received his O level result. His score is dissapointing, to his own standard. But can he be blamed? Self personal time is making way for company expansion, for hitting deadline. Try telling to your boss that your own personal re-learning is crucial to Singapore' total growth and he will tell you one cow less doesn't make any changes to New Zealand milk production.
Even if this colleague of mine take up the daring path and quit his job in order to concentrate fully on studies for which he will get good result, can the society promised him with a job upon graduation or a pay that is on par to his educational level? I afraid at this present stituation, it is hard to satisfy.
Upgrade has been the word for us after HDB flats. But i would like to mention, this doesn't work if we ourselves are willing but our superiors doesn't believe in that. I rather milk dry this worker rather than him after getting higher education, leave the company or ask for higher pay.
If our workers do not re train to have the skills needed for the new economy, ultimately, our economy is the one which is going to suffer as human is the fuel for the growth. We need a core group make up of Singaporean in order to continue the running of our engines. Do you use lubricant to run your engine totally? No! Foreign talent are just like lubricants, they make it smoother only.
Singapore, beside encouraging its people to train, also need to see whether it really support wholeheartedly, and i mean, by slowing down the pace, giving time. But at that stituation, can we still catch up and survive?
Finding a balance between pay and low prices
(This article was written by US secretary of labor from 1993 to 1997. He is the author of Reason: Why Liberals will win the battle for America. Copy write: New York Times Syndicate)
By Robert Reich
Bowing to intense pressure from neighborhood and labor groups, a real estate developer has just given up plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a mall in Queens, thereby blocking Wal-Mart's plan to open its first store in New York City. In the eyes of Wal0Mart's detractors, the chain embodies the worst kind of economic exploitation: It pays its 1.2 million American workers an average of only US $9.68 an hour, does not provide most of them with health insurance, keeps out unions and has a checkered history on labor law.
But isn't Wal-Mart really being punished for our sins? After all, it is not as if it created the world's largest retailer by putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to shop there. Instead, Wal- Mart has lured customers with low prices.
Wal-Mart may have perfected this technique, but you can find it almost everywhere these days. Corporations are in fierce competition to get and keep customers, so they pass the bulk of their cost cuts through to consumers as lower prices. Products are made in China at a fraction of the cost of making them here, and American consumers get great deals. Back- office work, along with computer programming and data crunching, is ‘’off shored’’ to India, so our dollars go even further.
Meanwhile, we pressure companies to give us even better bargains.
The fact is, today’s economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers deals because it hammers workers and communities.
We can blame big corporations, but we are mostly making this bargain with ourselves. The easier it is for us to get great deals, the stronger the downward pressure on wages and benefits. Last year, the real wages of hourly workers, who make up about 80% of the workforce, dropped for the first time in more than a decade. The easier it is for us to find better professional services, the harder professionals have to hustle to attract and keep client. The more efficiently we can buy products worldwide, the more stress we put on our own communities.
But we are not just consumers. We are also workers and citizens. How do we strike the right balance? To claim that people should not go to Wal-Mart or look for cut-rate airfares or services or shop on the Internet is paternalistic tripe. No one is a better judge of what people want than they themselves.
The problem is, the choices we make in the market do not fully reflect our values as workers or as citizens. I did not want our community bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to close (as it did) yet I still bought books from Amazon.com. We may not see the larger bargain when our own job is not directly affected. I do not like what is happening to airline workers, but I still try for the cheapest fare I can get.
The only way for the workers or citizens in us to trump the consumers in us is through laws and regulations that make our purchases a social choice as well as a personal one.
A requirement that companies with more than 50 employees offer their workers affordable health insurance, for example, might increase slightly the price of their goods and services. My inner consumer will not like that very much, but the worker in me thinks it a fair price to pay. Same with a rise in the minimum wage or a change in labor laws making it easier for employees to negotiate better terms.
I would not go so far as to re-regulate the airline industry or hobble free trade with China and India, but I would like the government to offer wage insurance to ease the pain of sudden losses of pay. And I would support labor standards that make trade agreements a bit fairer.
These provisions might end up costing me some money, but the citizen in me thinks they are worth the price. You might think differently, but as a nation we are not even having this sort of discussion. Instead, our debates about economic change take place between two warring camps: Those who want the best consumer deals, and those who want to preserve jobs and communities much as they are. Indeed finding ways to soften the blows, compensate the losers or slow the pace of change- so the consumers in us can enjoy lower prices and better products without wreaking too much damage on us in our role as workers- we go to battle.
I do not know if Wal- Mart will ever make it into New York. I do know that New Yorkers, like most other American, want the great deals that can be had in a globalising high-tech economy. Yet the prices on sales tags do not reflect the full prices we have to pay as workers and citizens. A sensible public debate would focus on how to make that total price as low as possible.
Published in Straits Times, march 1st, 2005
By Robert Reich
Bowing to intense pressure from neighborhood and labor groups, a real estate developer has just given up plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a mall in Queens, thereby blocking Wal-Mart's plan to open its first store in New York City. In the eyes of Wal0Mart's detractors, the chain embodies the worst kind of economic exploitation: It pays its 1.2 million American workers an average of only US $9.68 an hour, does not provide most of them with health insurance, keeps out unions and has a checkered history on labor law.
But isn't Wal-Mart really being punished for our sins? After all, it is not as if it created the world's largest retailer by putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to shop there. Instead, Wal- Mart has lured customers with low prices.
Wal-Mart may have perfected this technique, but you can find it almost everywhere these days. Corporations are in fierce competition to get and keep customers, so they pass the bulk of their cost cuts through to consumers as lower prices. Products are made in China at a fraction of the cost of making them here, and American consumers get great deals. Back- office work, along with computer programming and data crunching, is ‘’off shored’’ to India, so our dollars go even further.
Meanwhile, we pressure companies to give us even better bargains.
The fact is, today’s economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers deals because it hammers workers and communities.
We can blame big corporations, but we are mostly making this bargain with ourselves. The easier it is for us to get great deals, the stronger the downward pressure on wages and benefits. Last year, the real wages of hourly workers, who make up about 80% of the workforce, dropped for the first time in more than a decade. The easier it is for us to find better professional services, the harder professionals have to hustle to attract and keep client. The more efficiently we can buy products worldwide, the more stress we put on our own communities.
But we are not just consumers. We are also workers and citizens. How do we strike the right balance? To claim that people should not go to Wal-Mart or look for cut-rate airfares or services or shop on the Internet is paternalistic tripe. No one is a better judge of what people want than they themselves.
The problem is, the choices we make in the market do not fully reflect our values as workers or as citizens. I did not want our community bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to close (as it did) yet I still bought books from Amazon.com. We may not see the larger bargain when our own job is not directly affected. I do not like what is happening to airline workers, but I still try for the cheapest fare I can get.
The only way for the workers or citizens in us to trump the consumers in us is through laws and regulations that make our purchases a social choice as well as a personal one.
A requirement that companies with more than 50 employees offer their workers affordable health insurance, for example, might increase slightly the price of their goods and services. My inner consumer will not like that very much, but the worker in me thinks it a fair price to pay. Same with a rise in the minimum wage or a change in labor laws making it easier for employees to negotiate better terms.
I would not go so far as to re-regulate the airline industry or hobble free trade with China and India, but I would like the government to offer wage insurance to ease the pain of sudden losses of pay. And I would support labor standards that make trade agreements a bit fairer.
These provisions might end up costing me some money, but the citizen in me thinks they are worth the price. You might think differently, but as a nation we are not even having this sort of discussion. Instead, our debates about economic change take place between two warring camps: Those who want the best consumer deals, and those who want to preserve jobs and communities much as they are. Indeed finding ways to soften the blows, compensate the losers or slow the pace of change- so the consumers in us can enjoy lower prices and better products without wreaking too much damage on us in our role as workers- we go to battle.
I do not know if Wal- Mart will ever make it into New York. I do know that New Yorkers, like most other American, want the great deals that can be had in a globalising high-tech economy. Yet the prices on sales tags do not reflect the full prices we have to pay as workers and citizens. A sensible public debate would focus on how to make that total price as low as possible.
Published in Straits Times, march 1st, 2005
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