flâneurose

When keying in PIN, cover the keypad, 'nuff said.

2012-01-07T23:07:00.000+08:00

By now, everyone and their mother should have heard about the theft of funds from DBS bank accounts through card skimming.

This is such an old scam that there are forum posts on it dating back to the early 2000s. Just do a Google search on it.

And just like in previous years, it was done in almost exactly the same manner: a card skimming device attached to the card reader and a spy camera to capture the PIN as it is punched in by the cardholder.

[Obviously, the ATM card you carry doesn't hold the PIN information. That is stored centrally at the bank itself.]

Which is why, for years and years since the first skimming incident, I have always covered the keypad with my left hand as I enter my PIN at the ATM with my right hand. In fact, I don't even look at the keypad when I enter my PIN. I use all five fingers to punch in my PIN with my right hand on the keypad, just like on a keyboard when I am at a desktop computer.

So, for those who haven't adopted such a habit yet, and the statistics indicate at least 400 / 2700 = 15% of users haven't, please do yourself a favor and cover the keypad when you are entering your PIN at an ATM.

Book List Refreshed

2011-11-27T16:30:00.000+08:00

I have removed:

Aftershock by David Wiedemer et al
Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook
Red Capitalism by Carl E. Walter and Fraser J. T. Howie
The Spirit Level by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson

I have added:

Extreme Money by Satyajit Das
Factions and Finance in China by Victor C. Shih
The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar (recommended)
Without Conscience by Robert D. Hare

The nascent crisis of affinity

2011-11-27T12:53:00.001+08:00

The Saturday edition of the Straits Times had a long series on heritage in Singapore. It was one of the better articles that they have published.

Why is it fashionable to talk about heritage now? Because with the progress and changes in the last decade, more and more Singaporeans are feeling that the parts of the Singapore Identity are being lost irrevocably. And as a result of this ineffable sense of loss, more Singaporeans are stepping forward to claim a piece of their rightful heritage.

I would wager most of us have never heard of Bukit Brown cemetery before part of it was put at risk by the LTA. Just like many of us had not stepped into the old National Library Building in years, or even decades, when plans were afoot to have it torn down.

And yet, like something long taken for granted, we are suddenly shocked when we are told of what we are to lose.

The Power of Place and the Power of the Narrative

It has been several years since the old Changi Prison was demolished. And while some parts of it were saved and a museum was built to commemorate the site, I still recall then how I marveled that Australian POWs and their descendants, literally thousands of miles away, actually made a formal effort to save the prison from being demolished. They stepped forward to claim what they felt was a part of their heritage, as far removed as they were on a foreign continent. Read more here.

I was naive then about the power of place and the power of the narrative. Now that I am older and hopefully wiser, no longer.

For Singaporean males who have served NS, the following should sound very familiar:

You don't see your NS friends on any kind of regular basis in your "real" life, but when the time for ICT rolls around, you pack up your stuff and grudgingly make your way back to camp. While doing ICT is a real drag, at least there is the bright spot of meeting old friends, friends you instantly connect with because of where you are and the situation you are in again.

That is the power of place. It provides an environment which allows you to pick up the conversations where you left off. There is no sense of awkwardness, unlike say, a high school reunion held in a hotel ballroom (which can be remarkably fraught with angst).

A lot of NS guys will find familiar the ICT routine of exchanging and retelling old stories from the days of full-time NS, of the pranks and practical jokes that people pulled, of the tics and mannerisms of various characters encountered, of the universally disliked officer or encik getting his comeuppance. They're all stories we've heard before and are familiar with, and yet retelling them is a comforting routine. You would think that we had all turned into doddering old men with no teeth in our gums, reminiscing over the glory days of our youth.

And that is the power of the narrative. Retelling a story keeps it alive and preserves the memory of it and how it binds the various participants and actors together. It reinforces a shared sense of history and the closeness of the collective.

In many ways, the power of place reinforces the power of the narrative. That is why some Australian and British POWs visited Changi Prison every year before it was demolished. In all likelihood, every time they visited the prison, they cracked the same old jokes, retold the same old stories and lingered over the same old corners of the Prison that they were imprisoned in so many years ago.

A place becomes a cultural and historical touchstone, and a metaphysical repository of memories. I use the word metaphysical because the memories are embedded not just in the artifacts or in the structure, but in the very space that is enclosed and defined by the structure itself.

In truth, the government should be glad that many Singaporeans are expressing disquietude over the destruction of Bukit Brown or the demolition of Rochor.

The unthinking civil servant believes that these Singaporeans are being difficult, obdurate and overly sentimental. The savvier civil servant believes that "engagement" with the public should have been done earlier, with consultation exercises carried out to assuage the disgruntled (but with the same end result as the government-crafted plan called for).

In contrast, the most enlightened civil servant would, I submit, rejoice that Singaporeans still care enough about their heritage to lock horns with the authorities over part of its demise. The enlightened civil servant would also recognize that the loss of any part of our shared heritage, however necessary, is lamentable, even if it is preserved with museums or commemorative plaques.

Because eventually, when there is little left to be lost, all that will remain will be the sound of silence. No one will care enough to speak up about what is Singapore. That is, if there are any who care who remain in the first place.

The crisis of affinity

This brings me to my topic for today, what I call the crisis of affinity, the erosion of Singapore's collective sense of belonging and a shared destiny and vision for the future.

As meteoric as our economic growth has been in the last decade, I think something valuable has been lost along the way. What is vexing is that it is so difficult to put a finger on what exactly has been lost. And yet, I sense the loss, as I wrote about it in the Two-Tier Society. And it is not merely a sense of misplaced nostalgia.

The last 10 years have seen great changes in Singapore, not all for the better. The pace of demolition and construction, and the loss of shared urban spaces and the memories they represent is bad enough. But to compound matters, we have had a huge foreigner influx and a widening gulf in income inequality.

Some would argue that having more foreigners doesn't dilute our store of memories, but only adds to it. A greater foreigner presence enlivens Singapore and makes it more interesting, diverse and cosmopolitan.

I would agree, but up to a point. That point ends where foreigners are privileged over citizens in work and school, when it is painfully clear that Singapore is a stepping stone for them to better places, or when by their sheer numbers, assertiveness, competitiveness and sense of entitlement, transform the very character of the place.

I never thought I would say this, being very much invested in my identity as a city person: To the Indonesian, Filipino, Mainland Chinese, Indian, Myanmarese, Vietnamese and Malaysian immigrant here in search of a better life, I appreciate that Singapore is your land of opportunity and your New York. But I don't much like the New Yorker that you're collectively turning me into (with all the attendant stereotypes).

What happens to Singapore if we all become a nation of narcissistic New Yorkers?

As for income inequality, what is there left to be said that I have not said already? Income inequality is inherently divisive and corrosive to affinity. People from different socio-economic strata lead different lives, have different narratives on what is important, what is to be valued, and what groups, ideas or philosophies they individually identify with. The Wee Shu Min incident years ago should have made this abundantly clear. You can trust me on this when I say income inequality is not conducive to building a strong society with a sense of the collective. I know.

A strong economy can cover up a lot of cracks. But who's to know what will happen when the shining facade is peeled away? I have called this a nascent crisis of affinity. But how nascent it is remains to be seen.

Goh Chok Tong drew a lot of flak/comments for his stayers and quitters remark years ago in a time of adversity. The government should not fear criticism the next time it decides to level such an question at Singaporeans. It should fear the possibility of a deafening silence instead.

Observations on the Foreigner Dominated Office at Work

2011-10-31T23:20:00.002+08:00

I took on a temp position in a financial services company several weeks ago as a preliminary step towards a permanent career change; I formerly worked as a research engineer in the public sector.

[As to why I decided to change careers, well, that's a little personal, and perhaps I'll blog about it some other day when I am more settled in a permanent job.]

My current workplace is strikingly different from my previous workplace. For one thing, my previous employer, for reasons peculiar to the nature of the work, generally hired only Singapore citizens and a handful of permanent residents (don't ask why). In contrast, in the department of my current employer where I work, the office is filled with foreigners on work visas. I estimate Singaporeans comprise something between 20 and 30 percent of the employees. The rest include Malaysians, Indonesians, Hong Kongers, Indians and Westerners from various countries (the UK, Australia, etc.).

It is one thing to be intellectually aware of how Singaporeans compete with the many foreigners that have arrived in our country in recent years, it is quite another to be thrust into the thick of it after being formerly ensconced in the public sector.

I'm not bitter or resentful about it, even with my current employment challenges. One might as well complain about why it rains or why it's so damnably hot here all the time. I'm not the optimistic or "think positive" sort, but I much prefer practical thoughts on how to move past (or around) obstacles in order to get what I want, rather than caviling about how unfair life is.

As a former researcher who used to professionally observe and interview people at work (I trained formally as an engineer, but I worked frequently with psychologists and the occasional sociologist), I took the opportunity of working in the modern Singapore office to observe the dynamics of foreigners working here, and to think about the impact it has on Singaporeans.

A lot of people have ~~complained~~ commented on foreign competition for jobs, but beyond the obvious, I haven't really read anything substantive with the details articulated well. And even though I do have foreigner friends in Singapore, working in an office full of foreigners allows certain insights to come through that would not have otherwise occurred to me within the more personal confines of friendship.

This post is a collection of my own observations and reflections after several weeks of working in a foreigner dominated office.

Demographics

First, the caveat: the sample size I have is small, and arguably biased. This caveat applies equally to all the subsections that come after this one.

Most of the foreigners in my workplace are, as mentioned previously, of the nationalities I listed above. They are generally youngish, ranging from the mid-20s to the early and mid-30s, which squares with the data I reconstructed in a previous post. The gender split in my office, however, is relatively even.

The single to married ratio runs at about 2:1. A few of the singles date. Those that are married have one, or no kids, and where they have kids, the kids are generally infants or toddlers, meaning the kids came relatively recently, when they were in their early thirties.

In general, most of my coworkers do not have extended family here. Immediate family is a bit more common, either in the form of spouses or sometimes siblings (with whom they frequently share a rental apartment with, especially the Malaysians and Indonesians).

Living Arrangements

Married folks tend to buy, singles tend to rent. It's as simple, and as expected, as that. Ergo, as most of my coworkers are single, rentals predominate. My office is along Shenton Way, so most of my coworkers live in relatively central locations.

Driving is uncommon.

Languages

The dominant language is, of course, English. However, Mandarin and Cantonese are frequently spoken in my office. This isn't at all surprising given the presence of Malaysians and Hong Kongers.

Working hours

Perhaps it is mostly a function of the private sector in general and the financial services industry in particular, but my coworkers work longer hours than I am used to. Where at my previous employer I used to knock off on the dot at 6 pm, people in my current office routinely leave at between 7:30 pm and 8:30 pm. FYI, the day starts at about 9 am.

And yes, I am fully aware that many people in Singapore work longer hours than these, and that these are not particularly onerous hours.

Is it because foreigners are likelier to be single with no families to return home to that they work longer hours? Or is it because the same ambitions and aspirations that drive people to find work in a foreign city also motivates them to put in more hours at the office? Does this up the bar for the Singaporean worker, with resulting effects on the later age of marriage and the number of kids raised?

These are interesting questions, but I am also all too aware of confirmation bias to unhesitatingly state these as conclusions. Let's just leave them as intriguing questions to think about.

Socializing After Work

Perhaps because of the longer hours as well as the single status of many of my coworkers, going for dinner together after work is a common occurrence. My coworkers also sometimes meet up on Saturdays for lunch (usually at some place with good food). It could also be due to the more constricted social circles faced by workers in a foreign city.

The vibe in my current office is similar to the vibe I felt as a university student, and the vibe I felt when I used to visit friends working on Wall Street in New York (although because I am a career changer, many of my colleagues are much younger than I am). It was more of a single's lifestyle (as a single myself, I'm certainly not complaining about or judging it). Nor am I so myopic to not know that many people eventually grow out of this kind of lifestyle.

While I did have many single (Singaporean) colleagues in my previous job that I occasionally had dinner with after work, meeting on weekends was almost nonexistent. And the shorter working hours at my previous job meant that most people knocked off from work and met their other friends for dinner. Relationships at work are somewhat chummier in my current office than before.

It's interesting to think about what the social implications are for a government-sanctioned policy of mass immigration of foreigners of working age, and the potential impact it has on the local population: the rate of interracial and inter-nationality marriage (one of my female Singaporean coworkers is married...to a Malaysian in the same office), the delay in the rate of local family formation and lowering of birthrates, since the office culture encourages long hours, even on the viability of national service in the future.

With regard to NS, quite aside from the already low birthrates Singapore is experiencing, immigration has historically been driven by the young, and restless young men in particular. Will the children of expatriate men and local Singaporean women be lost to the SAF in the future should they choose to eschew citizenship? Was this one reason why nationality law was amended in 2004 to permit female citizens residing abroad to transmit their citizenship by descent? Are there other potential effects on dilution of national identity as a result of mass immigration?

Recruitment

I am just a temp, hence I fully intend to resume my job search in a couple of months (my position is a very short term one, more like an internship formalized into a temp position). So, it's hard to ignore the conversations in the office when candidates are being considered for fresh positions, or when resumes get sent in and scrutinized.

[I have to state here first that I am not being seriously considered for a permanent position in my current company mainly because of my lack of relevant industry experience, among other things, rather than my nationality.]

While I wouldn't go so far as to call it discrimination, the fact of the matter is that job searches, as in much of life, depend on referrals. The impression that I get is that it is common for someone to be hired in my company based on a personal referral from someone already working in the company. And since the department is staffed mainly with foreigners...well, you get the idea.

I have no idea how widespread this phenomenon is, but I would hardly be surprised if it was common across many companies and industrial sectors in Singapore.

It's not so much the fact that new hires get made on the basis of referrals as the fact that being a foreigner is no bar to getting hired in the first place that is so disturbing. Most industrialized and developed countries impose some barrier of entry to immigrants so that they have to meet a higher standard of credentialing, talent or performance than a citizen in order to obtain a job here.

The ease of foreigners in getting jobs here could be interpreted in a number of ways. One interpretation is that jobs are plentiful. Another is that foreigners have it easier than Singaporeans, with fewer obligations, such as NS, and fewer financial commitments, such as HDB mortgages. That allows them to be more competitive than local hires. Yet another interpretation is that foreigners are "hungrier", whatever that means, and are willing to work harder and to settle for less.

Here is one other interpretation: perhaps it is not how easy it is for immigrants to find jobs here that is salient, but what an indictment it is of how bereft of value Singapore citizenship really is.

Maybe the government is so confident that foreigners can't freeload off the system here (beyond the initial inducements made to attract them) that they feel free to throw the doors wide open to all comers without reservation. After all, if you can't earn your keep here each day every day, you certainly won't survive long here. Even citizens here do not enjoy much in the way of state-sponsored benefits (aka "free lunches").

Citizens, PRs or foreigners on work visas, we are all just fungible labor inputs into Singapore's economic machine, which is why I do not mince words when I say that Singapore citizenship is bereft of value.

Future Plans

It's interesting to speculate what plans foreigners have when they arrive and work in Singapore. Do they plan to stay on and make Singapore their permanent home, take up citizenship, perhaps start a family? Are we attracting the "right" people to come to Singapore, so to speak?

The short answer to this question is there is no answer. The general feeling that I get from many of my foreign-born colleagues is that they have no concrete plans. Nobody really knows what the future holds, and certainly nobody has made concrete plans that concern making their move to Singapore permanent. To many of colleagues, being in their mid-20s to mid-30s, these are highly abstract concerns for another day, another age, literally.

Oh, some hold permanent resident status, and a few have even bought property here. But given the ease and cost-benefit trade-off of permanent residency here, taking up PR status is a no-brainer. It's all carrots and no sticks. And a continually rising property market here in the last decade makes buying property a relatively easy commitment for the married folks to make, whether they eventually decide to stay or go elsewhere. For those who got in early in the cycle, it even made good financial sense. PR status and property ownership are not reliable indicators to base an assessment of how likely a foreigner is going to make Singapore their home for good.

As I have indicated in two previous posts, there is reason to believe that outflow rates may pick up years in the future, particularly if economic growth stalls, and population volatility will likely rise markedly as well. I wonder if the smart guys in our civil service take these factors into account in their rosy population projections.

On the New Civics and Moral Education Imperative

2011-09-28T01:01:00.000+08:00

"Pity the student who does not surpass the master."

The new Education Minister announced a new focus on Civics and Moral Education a few days ago.

Let's leave aside the issue of how ineffective classroom teaching generally is on imparting a values system. If you need comic relief on a related topic (the so-called MBA Oath), look here.

Mr Heng Swee Keat spoke on the importance of inculcating "social responsibility, personal and citizenship values in students".

What I find remarkable is how anyone can take seriously this pledge to uphold the importance of personal and citizenship values in Singapore.

Oh, I do not doubt the intent to place high importance on this initiative (although I have much darker things to say about the nature of that intent), but I question how much anyone can really expect to reap in terms of results, when so much in our environment demands a survivor's mentality.

The harsh environment begins as early as childhood, when students have to claw their way to the top of the heap in our highly competitive education system, one that allows no room for failure, since streaming starts so early. This is an education system that gave birth to acronyms such as ITE ("It's the end"). In addition, the fact that so many parents feel the need to resort to extra measures outside the state educational system, such as tuition, reveals the ineffectiveness of the educational system to act as a social leveler, and to improve social mobility here on this island.

Once kids reach adulthood and join the workplace, they have to compete with the numerous foreigners here for employment, and it certainly doesn't help that government imposed handicaps like National Service disadvantage citizens in their own country. Then there are the tax-payer sponsored inducements that are used to attract foreigners to come here that our own citizens aren't entitled to (such as university scholarships).

All the while, we are repeatedly told that there is "no free lunch", that we need to be "hungry" and have "spurs stuck in our hide". All this amid the highest levels of income inequality just about anywhere on Planet Earth.

We are also admonished frequently by the government that we have to avoid the dangers of a welfare state, that we need to take personal responsibility for our employment / health / retirement / elderly years etc.

It is sometimes ironic how Singapore can be thought of as a nanny state when in reality, many of our policies are designed for mandatory inclusion precisely so that the state can unburden itself of responsibilities onto the individual (e.g. CPF, Medisave and CPF Life), responsibilities that I might add, have traditionally been borne by the state in many developed countries.

The evidence of daily living in Singapore for the average citizen points to an existence marked by individual struggle.

And the flip side of meritocracy, as it is so avidly pursued here it is almost a state religion, is that individuals that 'make it' often feel they deserve their success, and can blithely ascribe their success solely to their own talents and abilities, and that those that fail deserve every iota of misery they endure.

Here in Singapore, it's every man for himself. If you want lunch, you had better go out there and get it yourself. There is a reason why every NSman knows and understands the acronym of SAF, "Serve and F*** Off".

Daily living in Singapore will inculcate values in students stronger than anything that can be taught in a classroom setting, government-sanctioned, civics, moral or otherwise. What those values are, you need only look around you in everyday Singapore to see.

And since the experience of daily living is shaped by government policies, it is only natural that students, upon growing to adulthood, will apply those same strictures that they have learnt in life to evaluating their own country and their government, with the same or greater degree of exactitude.

Pity the student who does not surpass the master.

The government shouldn't expect a free lunch themselves; the ever more pragmatic and survivalist Singaporean of the future will not pledge anything, much less his loyalty, to a place and its people simply because he was born and raised there. This breed of Singaporean includes, perhaps more so than any other group, those who are fervently pro-PAP and supportive of the material benefits that the PAP promises to deliver year after year.

Here's an interesting chart showing the negative correlation between income inequality and levels of social trust. And let us not forget that we have official confirmation that the income gap is not important. Old fogies like me who are just barely 30 may argue this point with the PM, but the PM need not worry.

The kids younger than me will be much more obliging towards taking the PM's words at face value. They will simply internalize this truth, adapt to reality, and concentrate on making more money for themselves. Just like the foreigners who come here because this is a great place to make money, enjoy the rich living (if you can afford it), and move on to someplace else if and when the weather changes. Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Just as the system encourages survivalist and individualistic leanings in its own citizens by design, it attracts foreigners with the same values system.

As for the personal and citizenship values Heng Swee Keat wants so badly, well, let me put it this way.

The government has long wanted its citizen proletariats to put in their all for the economy, which isn't exactly a positive for family life. Belatedly, the government decided it wanted the fertility rate to be higher, which it is failing miserably at raising.

The government wants "hungry" citizens as well, which students are today internalizing the importance of. Now, the government wants social responsibility, personal and citizenship values to be emphasized in addition.

I think that's going to work out about as well as the fertility rate.

Trouble in (Research) Paradise

2011-09-09T12:56:00.000+08:00

Front page article in the Straits Times - "$180m doled out from stalled biomed fund", the title of which is itself an anodyne sounding palliative.

I wrote on the capriciousness of research funding in Singapore and the impact it has on individuals two years ago, almost to the day, in my post Picking Winners.

I wrote then:

If there is a lesson to be drawn here, it is that the government in Singapore likes to 'pick winners', hence the title of this post. Like it or not, major segments of our economy are centrally planned. Even the number of doctors, lawyers, teachers and PhDs in Singapore is centrally planned.

For the individual, this works fine if the sector you work in is a 'winner' and the 'picking' part is still in the early stages. You'll do just fine, better than fine even, if you are a foreigner invited to come here.

But if you are late to the cycle, there is a real risk you could get shut out even before you get a foot in the door. Worst, if you are established in the 'winning' field that then becomes less winning, you are left behind, too old to switch fields when you get made redundant.

This Schumpetarian creative destruction may work well for Singapore's economy, but it can leave an exceedingly bitter taste in the mouth of the individual.

The requirement for industrial collaboration and quantifiable economic value generation in order to access government funding was obvious to those who knew where to look, right from the beginning of Singapore's great R&D enterprise. It was de-emphasized early on (otherwise, how else would we have attracted the whales?), but as I expected, not too long after Philip Yeo has exited the scene, the edifice is starting to crumble.

One of the most important lessons I learnt when I first started working in research as a fresh graduate was that running a research lab is a lot like running a small business.

Passion, curiosity, orginality, drive - these are all important attributes for a successful scientist. But to do science you need money. So, bringing money in is extremely important. It's the reason why if you've ever worked in a not-so-well funded lab, the PI (principal investigator) isn't as involved in the day-to-day running of the lab as you think he or she should be, but instead spends all their time writing grant proposals and making sales pitches to funding authorities.

And if you're really unlucky like I was, the pressures of "business development" start filtering down to the lower echelons of researchers, like fresh graduates. Developing technical expertise takes a backseat to helping to put food on the table.

It sounds strange, but managing tight lines of cash flow is a common activity in small research labs. That's because unlike for-profit companies, there is no luxury of a cash cushion or going to market to raise debt and equity financing. Oftentimes, money from a new project is directed to meeting the costs of an ongoing project due to unexpected delays, cost overruns or just plain overpromising/underbudgeting in the project proposal (usually in order to get the grant money in the first place).

Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, so to speak. That's why I say running your own research lab, which is what most scientists aspire to, is like running a small business.

So, researchers in Singapore are simply going to have to adapt to the new realities of research funding at A*Star. If you're a returning scholar who has long had your head in the clouds about doing science, and discovering new knowledge, and pursuing noble goals, it's time to wrap your mind around what are the important skills to learn in running a small business, meeting the needs of your industrial partners/customers, and appealing to bureaucrats' unhealthy obsession with KPIs. You're going to have to learn all this on your own; PhD programs generally don't teach these skills.

I have a lot more to say on this sudden change in research funding policies at A*Star, but it's difficult to cohere it all into an article. So, I'm going to take the lazy way out: quoting sections from the Straits Times article and interspersing my comments.

___

"Going to bed with industry makes us all very uneasy...Plus scientists don't make the best negotiators with savvy businessmen."

Especially if the businessmen can smell blood, like they do now. The scientists are desperate and everybody knows it. Negotiating from a position of weakness means extremely unfavorable terms on any deals made, you can count on that for sure.

"I feel very sorry for the younger scientists and scholars as the rules of the game have changed while they were looking the other way."

Read: You're going to be assessed and rewarded on your ability to bring in money, not on your ability to do good science. You can trash your doctoral work now if there's no way to spin it as having industrial or economic value.

And if your subspeciality happens to have little commercial value, well, sucks to be you.

"The whales are likely to be followed by other big and small research creatures."

Exodus. 'Nuff said. And the whale metaphor is getting so tired, it should be retired, just as Philip Yeo has left the scene. I wonder how many returning scholars are going to feel grateful to him for the scholarships he doled out so aggressively in years past. It's a terrible feeling to feel trapped.

"I do not know whether you can measure the performance of scientists by KPIs."

Ah, the tyranny of the KPIs again. What can't be measured or is difficult to measure generally won't be measured. See above on being assessed on ability to bring in money rather than ability to do good science.

"They must have signed research agreement with industry, or work with a medical doctor who is also a scientist, or create technology platforms that companies can use."

It is a sweet, sweet time to be a clinician scientist. Suddenly, everyone wants to be your new best friend.

"And he said that $180 million of the $600 million available for the next five years has been given out or will be given out soon, which shows institutes are able to access it successfully."

Let's see, in my experience, that can mean a few things:

1) Relaxation of the guidelines on awarding funding due to massive unhappiness on the ground.
2) Creative interpretation of the guidelines on awarding funding due to massive unhappiness on the ground.
3) Fantasy proposals that can't reasonably be delivered on, but that will only be a problem a few years later.

For (3), you can generally expect the scientists who wrote the proposals to intensify their job search with the time they have bought at A*Star with their unrealistic research proposals.

Either that, or manage expectations of the funding authorities when project deadlines near. That's not as difficult as it sounds, since in Singapore's bureaucracy, the management people get rotated every few years, so the person assessing project completion is quite often not the same person who approved the project.

"Last week, homegrown biotech firm S*Bio said it was slashing headcount by 80 percent after a deal with a US pharmaceutical firm did not go through as planned."

I'm shocked, shocked! And here I was thinking that everything was going hunky dory. I mean, if something bad had really happened in Biotech Land, I'm sure our authoritative Straits Times, voice of the nation, would have been all over it.

"But others are concerned about the ethics of working with industry....conflicts of interest."

See Science for Sale for example. Many other good books on this subject.

Fear-mongering before the next immigration surge

2011-09-08T12:42:00.001+08:00

The Straits Times had a front page article today entitled "Population will shrink without immigrants".

[Not coincidentally, they also had "Baby and talent dearth in Taiwan's economic spiral" in the Review section. Real subtle, Straits Times editors.]

As expected, post-GE 2011, it's going to be business as usual for the government. The only concession is a softer, more persuasive, consultation style of government. In other words, the packaging will be prettier, but the contents will still be the same.

This post isn't another polemic about the evils of immigration, or the problems it creates. That's kind of boring, and my blog is all about fresher perspectives.

Here, I'll be talking about some things which may not be immediately apparent to people thinking about immigration.

I haven't read the report produced by the Institute of Policy Studies, so I can't in fairness comment on their methods, their modeling parameters, and all that dense technical stuff.

That's also not terribly fun to do, or read.

In general, I'm not going to dispute their findings on how the population will shrink if immigration doesn't keep apace. I will take their findings on good faith.

But what I do find interesting is how the the Straits Times article reported on the demographic model's output based on the "net" immigration rate of 0, 30,000 or 60,000 people per annum. The numbers sound nice and pretty and round, but they blithely ignore the messy realities of life (like all models).

"All models are wrong, but some are useful." - George Box.

Let me put it this way by using an analogy.

Let's say you have a cup and you're trying to fill it with water from a running tap. You get to control how much the tap is turned and so the rate at which water drips into the cup.

Your goal is to control how fast the cup is filling up. Note, this is not the same as the rate at which water comes out of the tap. The goal is to attain a target rate for how fast the cup is filling up.

I have this magic device that can poke holes in the bottom of your cup so that water leaks from the bottom of the cup. This device can also magically seal holes in the bottom of the cup, so leakage rates can change moment to moment.

Again, let me reiterate, the goal is to achieve a target rate of how fast the cup is filling up. You only get to control the tap, not the leaks.

Oh, and lest you forget, how much water you have in your cup changes the leakage rate of water out of your cup. The pressure of a higher water level will of course force water to leak out the bottom faster.

Your job is to maintain a constant rate at which the cup is filled, whether it's 30,000 units per year or 60,000 units per year.

You also have a natural concern about how full the cup is. That's because the water is scalding hot and filling it to overflowing will burn you very badly. Oh, and your Mom will beat the crap out of you if the cup becomes too empty.

It doesn't take a genius to see that the faster the tap is flowing, the harder it is to get your job done correctly.

My point here is that increased dependence on immigration will almost certainly lead to greater volatility in population numbers, with attendant consequences on public policy planning, services and infrastructure. Immigration may well be necessary, but it is hardly an unalloyed good.

A previous post of mine during GE 2011 indicated that the data suggests that PRs generally start leaving once they are past the prime of their working life, in their 40s and over. That's hardly surprising. People are here for the economic opportunities and the money. They are not here for the yawning income inequality, the stressful lifestyle, the astronomical property prices and difficulties in starting a family, and all the things that we ungrateful locals complain about.

I wrote then that, "Our new PRs who are now aged in their 20s and 30s today could well leave en masse five, ten or twenty years from now."

A greater outflow rate in the future means a greater rate of immigration (of new people who are then in their 20s and 30s) will be needed to compensate. This means that the flux through our proverbial cup is going to increase. In other words, our cup is going to leak very fast in the future, so the tap had better been turned on really fast too.

Try keeping the cup from being too full or too empty then.

Over the long term, the volatility in population numbers may mean that in some years or decades our public infrastructure may be strained due to too many people (like now), but in some years or decades, when the economy is weak, our population numbers may slide dramatically, with lots of spare capacity everywhere (read: weak property market).

Our government will of course do all they can to ensure a vigorous and growing economy forever.

Forever, however, is a very long time.

Book List Refreshed! 31/08/2011

2011-08-31T18:00:00.003+08:00

Apologies for not blogging more frequently, but life has been...complicated lately.

Also, current affairs have lately been heavy on the Presidential Elections. I have had little interest in PE 2011, hence the dearth of posts. My only comment on the PE results, which probably would have been noted elsewhere in more popular blogs, is that it shows that Singapore's political center (composed of swing voters), has grown larger over the years, and will continue to grow larger. This is due in no small part to the Generational Shift Effect and the die-off of a large part of the PAP's core base.

In other words, the electorate in Singapore is maturing, and will more closely resemble that of developed countries, where win margins are narrower and political parties have to appeal more to the center bloc of swing voters.

[That is, if future global economic dislocations do not lead to a rise in political extremism in the years ahead. There is a non-zero probability of this happening in many countries.

And by "this", I mean the political extremism. The global economic dislocations are a certainty; it's only a question of when.]

As for my Book List, which this post is ostensibly about, I have removed:

America's Bubble Economy by David Wiedemer et al
The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics by Richard Koo
The Next Decade by George Friedman
Brilliant by Jane Brox

I have added:

Aftershock by David Wiedemer et al
Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
Red Capitalism by Carl Walter and Fraser Howie

Blogging Break

2011-07-26T19:05:00.003+08:00

I haven’t had much time to blog lately as I’ve been trying to engineer (no pun intended!) a career change to an actuarial position, which is a bit of a coincidence given that my last post was on the Presidential elections and one of the potential candidates happens to be an actuary.

In any case, as a career changer, I certainly have my work cut out for me in a job search. So, expect fewer updates from me in the interim. Later.

What a Non-PAP elected President Means

2011-07-26T19:00:00.002+08:00

The Presidential post in Singapore is largely a ceremonial position with no legislative powers. The key powers are veto powers, and frankly, with the comfortable, greater than two thirds majority that the ruling party enjoys in Parliament, those veto powers are largely moot.

Many people have commented on this, and as a result, have taken the view that the importance of the Presidential elections should be de-emphasised. Mr Shanmugam has also downplayed the importance of the role of the President.

The first view is a merely a mistake. The second is disingenuous.

We do not need to look further than Tony Tan to see how seriously the PAP is taking the Presidential elections. Although they have not stated it, it is clear from the extensive glowing coverage of Tony Tan in the “lamestream” media in recent weeks that he is the unofficial PAP-endorsed candidate. If the position was not very powerful or important, why would the PAP care so much about helping their preferred candidate win?

One of the most important ways that the ruling party has managed to hold power over the decades is the way it has managed to control the national conversation on national policies.

I have written on this in a previous post. By controlling the major media levers, the PAP holds the power of framing conversations on national policies (although this power is diminishing in the Information Age). And this has the effect of making it difficult for rational individuals in the population to form coherent and reasoned objections to policies that can then reach a wider audience and garner support.

A good propaganda system goes beyond simply trumpeting the virtues of such and such a policy. It ranges from setting up straw men counterarguments for the sake of “balance” in reporting, inundating the population with artfully conjured up statistics, redacting unhelpful information that detracts from the nation-building agenda, and taking surveys whose results give the appearance that all is hunky-dory on the surface, but wherein the survey methodology falls apart under even cursory scrutiny. More sophisticated techniques involve setting up and covertly funding or implicitly supporting “independent” think tanks that deliver voluminous research in support of existing or soon-to-be implemented policies.

Seen in this light, it is not difficult to understand why the President, even in a ceremonial role, has considerable power, power that has the potential to detract from the government’s carefully crafted policy messages.

Being a public figure with a public profile higher than the average MP, and perhaps on a par with a cabinet minister, the President may have no formal legislative powers, but he has the power of political patronage. He can make alternative viewpoints more credible. This is something which Yawning Bread wrote on in a recent piece. He can lend the prestige of his office and his voice to various causes which at best, do not enjoy PAP support, and at worst, are antithetical to the PAP’s ideologies.

And that is why the PAP government has a huge stake in the Presidential elections, even if it takes pains to appear distant (and for good reason, given the revelation of its declining popularity in GE 2011).

A President who does not toe the PAP party line (even if he is not a card-carrying member of the PAP, so to speak) on government policies can strike a singularly discordant note in the symphony that the government perpetually plays in an effort to convince the citizenry that the bitter medicine being doled out is indeed good for them. Who knows? He might even be shriller than the small coterie of opposition MPs in Parliament today.

And make no mistake; the PAP dreads the possibility of a President who is a loose cannon. Perhaps because our government is stuffed with technocrats and functionaries, many of whom were earmarked for the fast track early on in their careers, and who never had to practice at mollifying, scrambling, ‘fessing up and apologising, or just plain rolling with the punches, that the PAP is remarkably bad at dealing with situations that arise because they fall outside of its planning norms.

The very idea that the President was vested with the power to block drawing on the reserves was conceived under the presumption that the President would be a PAP man facing down the temporary anomaly of a hostile non-PAP-led Parliament. And now, the shoe is on the other foot.

The outcome that the PAP fears the most is not a rabidly anti-PAP President. That would be the second worst outcome.

The worst outcome would be a popular and vocal President, with a centrist position that is not in concord with the PAP’s policies, and who has excellent oratorical skills and is not afraid to use them.

The popularity factor is key. A rabidly PAP President would be an embarrassment certainly, but could be dismissed as “fringe” for the most part, and suitably stonewalled and marginalized.

The PAP’s methods of “managing” a popular and vocal President, however, would come off as unseemly at best. More likely than not, they would be perceived by the public as being ham-handed.

And the real danger in this election is that the President would almost by definition be a popular one. After all, it is because the position comes without legislative powers that party candidacy, gerrymandering, HDB upgrading, political track record, and all the other messy calculations associated with who to vote for in a general election don’t come into play.

In other words, being elected President means being liked. Needless to say, in recent years, the PAP and their ilk haven’t been very good at that.

Republished: The Two-Tier Society

2011-07-05T11:15:00.000+08:00

The Asia Mag requested to republish my previous post: The Two-Tier Society. You can see it here.

It's always gratifying when one's work is read and appreciated. Thanks, Asia Mag!

The Two-Tier Society

2011-06-20T18:07:00.000+08:00

The Straits Times today featured a fairly bland and benign, even banal story. It was entitled "Premium healthcare grows at a healthy pace." The full transcript is available (for now), strangely enough, at IM$avvy, a CPF companion website. I say strangely enough because the lux health screening packages described in the article are far beyond the reach of the average Singaporean, and yet, if there is one government institution all Singaporeans are acquainted intimately with, it is the CPF.

It has happened in business and banking (think private banking). It has happened with restaurants and fine dining. It has happened in the real estate market (Sentosa Cove, and too many condos to name). It has happened with entertainment venues, like our integrated resorts, and events, like Formula I. And it has happened in our healthcare as well. If the words "medical tourist hub" did not resoundingly ring in your head when you read this story, they should have.

Singapore is also home to the One Degree 15 Marina Club, Jetquay and FreePort. I could have chosen other examples, but these three resonate most with me as symbols of the excess, exclusivity, and expatriateness that define the new Singapore.

We have truly arrived as a first world city. Our level of immigration, connectedness to the global economy, our availability of goods and services, standards of quality, and costs of living, rival those of any of the global cities that Saskia Sassen describes in her work.

Unfortunately, at least for me, I am belatedly realizing that as much as I enjoy the energy associated with living in the "big city", warmth and homeyness are increasingly not what I identify with this city, Singapore, that I currently live in.

Inveighing against the wealth that comes to our shores from afar is a pointless, perhaps even foolish, exercise, given the benefits it brings to our economy.

I am not going to go into the complicated arguments that delve into whether inflation here has been driven up by foreign liquidity, or that medical tourism has indirectly caused an exodus of doctors to the private sector, or the multitudinous pernicious effects that income inequality has on measures of societal health, as detailed in The Spirit Level. That is better left to a day when my dispassionate, more analytical self, feels moved to comment.

But my quieter, more philosophical self senses the ineffable feeling that this city is increasingly being designed variously as a playground, a global bolthole, winter retreat, or Asian gateway, marketed primarily to the wealthy expatriate, and perhaps, incidentally, to the wealthy local (who may be a naturalized foreigner).

The feeling is particularly difficult to dispel when one considers the sorry state of public transportation while struggling to board a subway train at rush hour (with hordes of foreigners who are working class, of which I guess I am one too), or when one marvels at the price of government flats as they spiral ever higher out of reach, until the dream of owning a home becomes mere fantasy.

Each day I turn the pages of our increasingly irrelevant national newspaper, and my eyes glaze over the risibly fanciful names of newly launched condos in property ads, or the expensive marques that tout ever more sophisticated levels of automotive engineering and tasteful design. And I continue to wonder how relevant all this is to my life, beyond the evanescent pleasures of daydreaming that perhaps one day, I could have all this too.

Wishful thinking.

I am not overly worried about my future; not optimistic, but not worried either. I can differentiate between needs and wants, and my psychological constitution is strong enough to withstand the corrosive effects of income inequality.

Still, the feeling that Singapore is Home continues to recede. Feeling is irrational, and it defies logic and explanation. Yet there it is, and it persists in existing.

It is difficult to love a city that doesn't love you back, and that is both cold and hard. And it is not for nothing that cash is described as cold and hard.

Book List Refreshed! 09/06/2011

2011-06-09T12:00:00.001+08:00

I have removed:

Making Sense of Life by Evelyn Fox Keller
Richistan by Robert Frank
Econned by Yves Smith
The Post-Catastrophe Economy by Eric Janszen

I have added:

Brilliant by Jane Brox
The Spirit Level by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson
How to Disappear by Frank Ahearn and Eileen Horan
Dying of Money by Jens Parsson (Highly, highly recommended. Free downloads available in many places)

Keep the spin cycle on, and get ready to be hung out to dry...

2011-06-06T11:25:00.000+08:00

Today's edition of the Straits Times had the headline on the front page: "Government to review drainage after year's worst flood".

This is refreshing. The Straits Times is often deployed for spin damage control every time the government can't cover up ~~mismanagement~~ bad news. The rule appears to be: Cover up first. If not possible, then obfuscate, mislead and distract. And if that fails, underplay and de-emphasize. We now have a new fourth stage: pre-empt criticism and be seen to be DOING SOMETHING.

The front-page story read in an almost surreal way. Talking about review of drainage before describing the floods was putting the cart before the horse; I wasn't even aware that there had been floods yesterday before I picked up today's newspaper (I was holed up at home with a book over the weekend). The Straits Times seemed to be assuming that everyone knew about the floods before the story was printed today (not an unreasonable assumption to make in light of the digital age), but it certainly carried the faint scent of resignation of old world media.

Keep it up, nation-building press. The PAP government has your jobs, but with its continual expectation that you comply to its spin demands, the importance of those jobs will be eroded as the years roll by.

Conventional local media is already distrusted; it won’t be long before it ceases to be relevant altogether (especially when the older folks that depend on it die off). Then the SPH management will question the very need for investment into conventional media. What will follow will be smaller operating budgets, reduced headcount and dismal attempts at new media (to be repeated at X-year intervals with refreshed roadmaps / business plans).

The local print media need look no further than Mediacorpse to see the future. Diminished mindshare since fewer people tune in to free-to-air TV, diminished production values due to reduced budgets, and diminished advertising revenue due to irrelevance to consumers. Talent flight is a further result (as well as an accelerant to the crisis).

I don’t watch TV anymore, although my parents do, but it hasn’t escaped my attention that many TV ads, particularly outside primetime, are either ads about advertising on Mediacorpse or trailers for other programs. The Straits Times itself too carries its own advertisements exhorting subscriptions, as well as touting lucky draws for new subscribers. A sign of the times indeed.

I would cease reading the Straits Times if not for the fact that my family subscribes to it and it makes for convenient breakfast reading. However, I spend as little as 20 minutes reading the papers. I can often dispense with the Home Section in just 15 seconds; the Forum page is always ignored.

A few years ago, I might flip through past editions of the papers after returning from vacation. I no longer do so. In fact, now, if I do not pick up the papers at my appointed breakfast hour (usually because I have an early start that day), that day’s Straits Times edition will be left untouched, permanently. Reading the Straits Times is a function of my breakfast. It is not a goal in itself.

Even for someone like me with newspapers at home, the Straits Times no longer holds my attention. And I am just over 30. To younger Singaporeans, local newspapers are fast becoming an anachronism.

PS: Although causation is difficult to prove, one does have to wonder if road raising works along Orchard Road to deal with previous floods have shunted the problem to the Tanglin area. This could well be the flooding version of whac-a-mole.

GE 2011 aftermath, random quick thoughts, and prognostications.

2011-05-09T18:00:00.002+08:00

This post is going to be written stream-of-consciousness style...
___

Is the PAP going to mend its ways, or is it going to be business as usual? I would like to think the former will happen, but I am very skeptical. Many PAP politicians seem too ideologically wedded to their positions (Mah Bow Tan, Lim Swee Say, Lui Tuck Yew, the list goes on...). Certainly, few if any would publicly backtrack on their stated policies. The PM apologised in this election for his government's performance (garnering a 3.2% improvement in vote share for Ang Mo Kio relative to GE 2006), but tellingly, no other politician did, least of all those who were responsible for policies causing the most grief to the electorate (e.g. Mah Bow Tan). Still, given the apparent act of contrition by the PM, a wait-and-see approach seems warranted.

___

More people will be willing to step forward to stand for elections for opposition parties, particularly the WP. The risk-reward ratio has changed with the WP's success in Aljunied. The WP can only grow stronger with their increased popularity and rising public profile. I have no doubt their efforts at recruitment of quality candidates from the private sector will be far more fruitful than the PAP, as I have previously stated.
___

The practice of slipping in weak PAP candidates into Parliament via "safe" GRCs helmed by prominent politicians will be reassessed by the PAP. That doesn't mean that the practice will be abandoned, only that it will be exercised with greater care. Frankly, the fact that the PAP had to scrape up a Tin Pei Ling from the bottom of the barrel to make up the numbers betrays the difficulty they have in recruiting loyal, quality candidates in number. The parachute tactic will continue to be a necessary part of the PAP's election arsenal as long as Tin Pei Ling-types continue to be selected.

However, I am grateful for one thing. Thanks to the fact that Marine Parade GRC was actually contested in GE 2011 (the last time it was contested was in 1991!), it is now possible to quantify the effect of the parachute tactic on vote share (the "Tin Pei Ling effect").

Marine Parade GRC, helmed by Goh Chok Tong in 1991, secured 77.2% of the vote share, versus 56.65% in 2011. The average PAP vote share in 1991 was 61%, versus 60.14% in 2011, virtually the same. The TPL effect could hence have accounted for as much as a 19.69% [(77.2%-56.65%)-(61%-60.14%)] swing in vote share.

This estimate is a high ceiling estimate; the swing in vote share can also be attributed to Goh Chok Tong's diminished popularity, the fact that he is no longer PM as he was in 1991, the generally inferior quality of opposition party candidates in 1991, and of course, the polar opposite "Nicole Seah effect". Granted all that and the fact that 1991 and 2011 are literally 20 years apart, but I think the TPL effect is probably good for a 5% vote swing against the PAP.

Given that the PAP's average vote share in GE 2011 stands at about 60%, that means that a GRC "lifeboat" can probably only comfortably accommodate at most one low quality free-rider, assuming linear additivity. More than that and the PAP risks sinking the entire GRC.

___

Prof Jayakumar has noted that the fact that an Opposition had won a Group Representation Constituency (GRC) proves that the political system in Singapore works and does not benefit only the ruling party (see here). This statement is disingenuous. The fact that it has taken this long for an opposition party to win a GRC, with a team clearly superior to the one fielded by the PAP in Aljunied, in a more favorable political climate, and almost all constituencies contested that hence diluted the PAP's strength, is an exception that proves the rule that GRCs disadvantage opposition parties.

It is possible that with the loss of Aljunied, the PAP may rejig the GRC system to stack the deck further in its favor. Jayakumar's statement above provides the perfect validation for such a tactic.

It is especially important for the PAP to adjust the GRC system if more Tin Pei Ling-types are to be put up by the PAP in future elections. Lifeboats need to get bigger for a wider margin of safety. Equally, the PAP is having difficulty recruiting quality candidates in number to "hold down the fort". Cabinet ministers and other heavy-weights can only be spread so thinly over so many constituencies. We may see the advent of 8-member GRCs in the not-too-distant future.

Perhaps a more stringent requirement to have not one but two minority race candidates in each GRC. Perhaps even a hard requirement to have one Malay and one Indian candidate in each GRC. This would raise barriers to entry for the opposition even higher than they already are now.

___

One of the most startling things I observed when I stepped into a polling station for the very first time was the sheer number of old folks streaming in to vote. They came on walkers, canes and wheelchairs. Singapore's population has aged, and the oldest, staunchest of the PAP's supporters are literally aging and dying.

Lee Kuan Yew *may* have been right in saying that the young ~~don't know better to vote PAP~~ don't appreciate the struggles that we have gone through as a nation. Nonetheless, even the PAP has to acknowledge the relentless tide of mortality that is carrying away its most loyal bloc of voters. It must adjust its strategy and tactics accordingly if it is to remain victorious in the elections ahead. The Generational Shift Effect is starting to make itself felt, and it will grow stronger in the years to come.

___

If the recent PAP campaign is any indicator of how the PAP manages its internal affairs in planning and implementing public policies, then I am apprehensive what the future holds.

We had ministers saying things that contradicted each other, unilateral party reform proposed by one minister, and blame-shifting. Not to forget the MM's vote-WP-and-repent threat. Or the PM's apology that was followed by conspicuous silence by all the other ministers.

Ladies and gentlemen, it appears that we have preliminary indications of schisms and factionalism within the PAP itself. If this is what happens in public, what happens behind closed doors?

Then there is that vexing matter of who the next PM should be, as there is no heir apparent waiting in the wings at the moment. That means that the issue of succession is still very much undecided.

The PM can reshuffle ministers and redeploy those who are the most unpopular but who were nonetheless re-elected (Mah Bow Tan comes to mind). But every time he does so, he expends just that much more of his political capital within the PAP. If you were Mah Bow Tan and you kept insisting that housing was affordable, how kindly would you look on the PM deciding to reassign you to a different portfolio? You can only push people so much before they start pushing back.

The electorate is changing and demanding more choices. Is it possible that the PAP may also be changing and becoming more individualistic? And what might that mean for policy-making in the future?

Assessing the Generational Shift Effect in GE 2011

2011-05-08T14:14:00.000+08:00

This is a technical post, so it will be rather dry. Going by previous pageviews, I doubt many people will be interested to read further, but nonetheless, I will need to perform the analysis and archive the results here for my own records.

The Generational Shift Effect (GSE) was previously defined here. The objective of this post is to assess whether such an effect is in fact present.

Given the differences between each election in terms of candidates, issues and media use, it is a futile exercise to rigorously reduce the results of each election to individually quantifiable covariates. My approach here is to simply look at the data and to check for interesting trends.

To recap, the constituencies that I identified as possibly manifesting the GSE were Radin Mas, Pioneer, Moulmein-Kallang, Sembawang, Sengkang West and Punggol East. This group consists of 4 SMCs and 2 GRCs.

My approach is to compare the PAP's vote share in each constituency in GE 2011 and to compare it against the PAP's vote share in the most recent previous election. However, except for Sembawang (which in fact has had its boundaries redrawn), none of the constituencies in the group above existed in recent history prior to GE 2011. This may seem like a bad thing, but it does have a silver lining.

While previous data may not be directly comparable to current data due to redrawn GRC boundaries, every new constituency in 2011 has a progenitor GRC. We can compare the PAP's vote share for say, Sengkang West SMC in 2011 versus Ang Mo Kio GRC (its progenitor) in 2006. We can also compare the PAP's vote share for Sengkang West SMC in 2011 against Ang Mo Kio GRC in 2011. So, in effect, we have two data points for comparison.

What we are really interested in are differences. Using our example above, we can calculate how well the PAP fared in Sengkang West in 2011 versus 2006 (using Ang Mo Kio as a proxy), taking the difference [1st difference]. We can also calculate how well the PAP fared in Ang Mo Kio between 2011 and 2006, again taking the difference [2nd difference]. It is the divergence between these two differences that may be attributed to the GSE (and other factors).

Now, let's turn to the data. I have excluded Radin Mas SMC from this analysis. Radin Mas was carved out from Tanjong Pagar, which has had walkovers for the longest time, so historical voting data is unavailable. In addition, the 'Lee Kuan Yew effect' in Tanjong Pagar would probably swamp any other effect, so I'm not even going to bother with further analysis here.

Table 1 below shows PAP vote shares for the constituencies of interest in GE 2011 as well as the most recent election. Except for Sembawang GRC, data for the previous election is taken from the progenitor GRC. Also, all previous data relates to GE 2006, except for West Coast GRC, which was last contested in GE 1997.

Table 1. Comparing PAP vote shares for each constituency across elections. Larger image here.

From Table 1, it is clear that the PAP's vote share has declined for all the constituencies under study. But how does this compare to the progenitor GRCs?

Table 2 below reproduces the rightmost column from Table 1, and includes another column showing the change in the PAP's vote share in the progenitor GRCs. Note that Moulmein-Kallang progenitor data is unavailable since Moulmein-Kallang was carved out of Tanjong Pagar and Jalan Besar. Tanjong Pagar was uncontested and Jalan Besar no longer exists. In addition, I have included a column to show the change in the PAP's average vote share across elections.

Table 2. Comparing changes in PAP vote shares. Larger image here.

In every constituency under study (except Sembawang and Moulmein-Kallang), the drop in the PAP's vote share has exceeded the drop in the PAP's vote share in the progenitor GRC. It has also exceeded the drop in the average PAP vote share across elections. Most striking is the divergence seen in Sengkang West, which experienced a drop in PAP vote share by 8% while in contrast, its progenitor GRC of Ang Mo Kio actually improved in its PAP vote share by 3.2%.

In the case of Sengkang West, the large divergence in PAP vote share between Sengkang West and its progenitor is unlikely to be due to the GSE. It is far more likely due to the fact that Ang Mo Kio is helmed by PM Lee Hsien Loong. Similarly, the divergence for Punggol East may be explained by the presence of heavyweight Teo Chee Hean in progenitor Pasir Ris-Punggol. On an opposite note, Moulmein-Kallang's poor performance for the PAP in 2011 may be more attributable to the presence of Yaacob Ibrahim (Orchard Road floods) and Lui Tuck Yew (hardly a ray of sunshine, see here).

For the remaining 2 constituencies, it is more difficult to reject the presence of the GSE. Khaw Boon Wan helms Sembawang GRC. Notwithstanding his $8 gaffe, he is still one of the PAP's more popular and stalwart politicians. Yet Sembawang fared poorly relative to the fall in the PAP's average vote share in this election (-12.8% vs -6.5%). This is an unexpected result which I interpret as the GSE exerting itself. For Pioneer SMC, I can't think of major reasons for the larger than expected fall in vote share except for the possibility that Pioneer is demographically much different from its progenitor, West Coast GRC. Again, I think the GSE could have exerted itself here.

Table 3 below summarizes the foregoing discussion in assessing the GSE. I have included a column showing which opposition parties contested in each constituency for GE 2011. Note that Sembawang and Pioneer, which I flagged as having a high likelihood of GSE, were contested by SDP and NSP respectively. The WP was the big opposition party winner in this election, presumably due to their branding, as surmised by Yawning Bread. So, we can exclude the "WP effect" from explaining the large falls in PAP vote share these two constituencies. In addition, neither SDP nor NSP fielded their 'A' teams or top candidates in these constituencies as well, so candidate differences should be muted.

Table 3. Likelihood of GSE and possible explanations. Larger image here.

Voting along municipal lines: Penny-wise, Pound Foolish

2011-05-06T00:03:00.000+08:00

I have never accepted the logic behind voting along municipal lines in Singapore. Never.

For many years, one of the main reasons that Singaporeans have given for not voting for opposition party candidates is that the quality of candidates standing in their constituencies has been poor. And the quality of opposition party candidates has indeed been generally poor for much of Singapore's history.

Even Singaporeans disgruntled with the PAP frequently vote for the PAP when they perceive that opposition party candidates in their constituencies are inferior in breeding, credentials or capability compared to PAP candidates, which is often. I expect this election to be no different.

On the surface, this would make perfect sense. After all, who wants a doofus to represent them in Parliament? How could a clown the likes of many opposition party politicians effectively champion the interests of their constituents, particularly in a PAP-dominated parliament that is known to place Singaporeans in opposition wards last?

To me, however, this is missing the point entirely. Think of the last 5, 10 years. What issues have impacted your life the most? What have your heaviest concerns been about? What are the root causes of your worries, your angsts, and the things that keep you up late at night?

Almost without exception, I think I can state categorically that the most immediate concerns of most Singaporeans stem from issues related to national policies implemented in the last 10 years. These policies heavily impact important issues such as the cost of living, housing, influx of foreigners, income inequality, unemployment, health care, retirement and education.

In Singapore, the PAP designs and implements all major policies that govern the lives of Singaporeans. These are NATIONAL policies. In this country, national policies impact your life the most, and they have far-reaching effects on you, your family and your children.

These policies are more important than whether your MP can successfully petition for public funds to be spent in your constituency on playgrounds, covered walkways, refurbished wet markets and other matters that I deem of little consequence. Even the value of your property (if you own one) is dictated more by decisions made at the national level, e.g. zoning and land use planning done by the URA, or transportation infrastructure planned by the LTA.

If you feel hard done in by the PAP's policies, and practically every middle-class or lower income Singaporean is a victim on some level or in some aspect of their life, but you vote PAP because you think that the opposition party candidates standing in your constituency "cannot make it", then you are shooting yourself in the foot. You are being penny-wise, but pound foolish.

Realistically speaking, the PAP will still form the next government after this election due to the preponderance of their vote-share. That means they will still get to appoint all the cabinet ministers and still get to set all national policies.

This election is not about forming a new government. It is a referendum on the policies set by the present government. If you can't stomach the thought of voting in that unknown MP wannabe from the opposition in your constituency, think of it not as him representing your interests, but as him a visible signal of your displeasure with the PAP and how they must change their policies for the benefit of all Singaporeans.

All of the above would be true even if the quality of all opposition candidates was uniformly poor. But that is not true today. Today, the quality of many opposition candidates is as good, if not better, than the PAP candidates.

Many Singaporeans are excited about the contest in Aljunied, and I dare say, envious. They are envious not because voters in Aljunied actually have a realistic chance of voting in opposition party politicians in this election, but because Aljunied voters are in an enviable position of having to pick between two credible teams vying for their vote. It is not a dilemma, as some fool of a PAP supporter pointed out. It is a lovely feeling to be courted. A feeling that unfortunately few Singaporeans can claim to have experienced.

If you live in a constituency that has credible opposition party candidates, and you are unhappy with the current government's policies, you have no excuse not to vote for the opposition party.

If you are like me, and you live in a constituency contested by opposition party candidates that lack credibility, you still have good reason to vote for the opposition if you have felt victimized by our current government's policies. As I have highlighted above, voting along municipal lines is a case of being penny-wise, pound foolish. The wiser decision would be to vote along party lines.

Related to this is the great fear, played up by the PAP and their sycophantic mainstream media, that voting in opposition party candidates is tantamount to inviting legislative gridlock.

First of all, as I have pointed out above, legislative gridlock is a dim possibility given that the PAP is unlikely to lose more than 50% of seats in parliament. They will likely still get to pass all the policies they want. In fact, they are likely to retain more than the two thirds majority required to change the constitution at will, the highest law in the land.

Secondly, and this is an important point that I have not seen anyone in the media or blogosphere make, from my perspective as an average Singaporean, I do not think that legislative gridlock is such a bad thing if the policies that would have resulted otherwise were to impact my life negatively.

The PAP's greatest claim to fame is their contribution to economic growth. But as is patently clear to anyone who has an operating brain cell, the fruits of economic growth in this country have not been shared evenly, just like their costs. With every gain, there is a concomitant cost. The impressive rate of economic growth in recent years looks considerably less impressive when one takes into account the increased stresses that all of us experience from the rising cost of living, yawning income gaps, longer working hours, angst over retirement, more foreigners and strained infrastructure.

With regard to economic growth, ask yourself this: cui bono? Then ask yourself, who has borne the bulk of the costs?

Net-net, do you genuinely think that you are better off today? You MUST know the answer to this question if you are to vote wisely.

As a Singaporean, the last thing that I want in a government are smart, ambitious, capable people working against my best interests. Gridlock would be preferable. As Warren Buffett once put it, "In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you."

Even though the opposition party candidates in my constituency are less than impressive, I value them for what they are and what they represent to the PAP, rather than what they can do for me. I may not think highly of them, but they disagree with current PAP policy and like every opposition party, it is part of their campaign platform. As an instrument to convey my displeasure, that will suffice for my vote, at least for now.

When in doubt, turn to the data (Generational Shift Effect)

2011-04-29T02:00:00.001+08:00

"Younger voters in their 20s are more likely to vote for opposition parties than for the PAP. Conversely, older voters in their 50s and above are more likely to vote for the PAP."

If you do not agree with the above statement, you may safely ignore the rest of this post. If you do agree with the statement, then read on.

Nomination Day has come and gone and the battle lines have been drawn. The chips are in the air now, and who knows where they will fall?

I asked myself the same question and decided a little data sleuthing was in order.

I am no pundit, and I lack mystical powers that allow me to read the sentiment on the ground. What I have however, is census data, and a belief that younger folks are more likely to want change, while older folks would prefer the status quo.

The logical question to ask then, is in which constituencies do younger folks comprise a larger percentage of the population now, while older folks comprise a smaller percentage of the population?

Demographic data by geographical region is available from Census 2000 and Census 2010. Note that geographical regions in Census 2010 are demarcated by the URA 2008 Masterplan available here. The most distinctive differences between the geographical regions demarcated by Census 2010 and Census 2000 are that Census 2010 includes 3 new regions: Singapore River, Mandai and Punggol. However, only Punggol among the three has a significant population today. Otherwise, I am assuming here that differences in geographical regions between the two census are small.

Those Singapore citizens who were aged 40 and above back in year 2000 are now aged 50 and above. In every single region, they comprise a smaller percentage of that region's population today due to the effects of mortality. In contrast, those Singapore citizens who were aged 10-19 in year 2000 are now aged 20 - 29 and of eligible voting age. Not all geographical regions have experienced an increase in the percentage of population who are of this young age group, due to marriage as well as moving out of the family home. However, in most geographical regions, they now do constitute a larger percentage of the population than in year 2000.

Why did I choose these age cut-off points? Because previous data analysis revealed that new PRs in the last 10 years are overwhelmingly in their 20s and 30s today. I can't separate out the new PRs from the citizens among the younger Singapore residents, but I can safely assume that census data relating to residents aged 50 and above today is unadulterated by the addition of new PRs .

For every geographical region, I calculated 4 numbers:

(1) Percentage of population older than 10 that was aged 10-19 in year 2000

(2) Percentage of voting population aged 20-29 in year 2010

(3) Percentage of population older than 10 that was aged 40 and above in year 2000

(4) Percentage of voting population aged 50 and above in year 2010

I define here the Generational Shift Effect (GSE)

GSE = [(2) - (1)] - [(4) - (3)]

or more simply

GSE = (2) - (1) - (4) + (3)

The GSE is an indicator of how much younger a population in a geographical region has become since the last census in 2000, and by extension, how much more likely a geographical region is likely to swing away from the PAP in this election as compared to the election in 2001.

Below is a table showing the regions with GSEs larger than 10%.

Larger image available here.

The next step is to match the geographical regions in the census data with the electoral map. The most detailed electoral map I could find is available here.

I lack the technical skills to superimpose the 2008 URA Masterplan with the electoral map, so all I did was to eye-ball the two maps and judge which constituency each geographical region with GSE > 10% fell in. These affected constituencies are indicated in the rightmost column in the table above.

Naturally, some geographical regions are small, so they are swamped by the rest of the constituency they fall into. However, a few geographical regions occupy enough of a constituency that I deem it possible that the GSE will manifest itself in these constituencies in this election. These constituencies have been bolded in the table above. Tanjong Pagar is a walkover constituency, so it has not been bolded.

The constituencies in which the GSE is most likely to manifest itself are, IMHO, Radin Mas, Pioneer, Moulmein-Kallang, Sembawang, Sengkang West and Punggol East.

These constituencies won't necessarily be lost by the PAP; it's just that I predict the fight will be closer than most people expect.

As I have previously mentioned, one of the effects of gerrymandering (and walkovers) is that the PAP has distorted the voting signals upon which political parties rely on to judge ground sentiment over the years. If the GSE is as significant as I expect it to be, it may come as a surprise to some people should it exert itself in this election.

On a separate note, interestingly, Tanjong Pagar is a constituency in which the GSE is very strong. However, it is a walkover constituency helmed by Lee Kuan Yew. When Lee Kuan Yew retires from his political career, I fully expect the GSE to exert itself in the following election. Many of his staunchest supporters are growing as old as he is and dying off. The numbers reflect this.

When in doubt, turn to the data (GDP and Median Household Income)

2011-04-28T14:00:00.000+08:00

In the vein of the previous post, I will be analyzing data published by the government and available in the public domain to obtain a better understanding of issues important to this election. These posts have been motivated by the recent completion of Census 2010 and the impending election.

Today, we will compare GDP growth and the growth in median household income.

Information was obtained on GDP per capita (GDPC) at current market prices and median household income (MHI).

The charts below show that GDPC is positively correlated with MHI.

However, the growth in GDPC has far outpaced growth in MHI. For example, from 1999 to 2010, GDPC increased by 64.58%, while MHI increased by only 42.86%.

But let's be rigorous, lest I be accused of being selective about the base year in supporting my conclusions.

The table below shows the cumulative percentage increase in GDPC and MHI using each year between 1999 and 2010 as the base year. In each cell, the first percentage refers to GDPC and the second percentage (in parentheses) refers to MHI. Cells in which cumulative percentage increases in GDPC have outstripped MHI have been shaded red. Cells in which the opposite has occurred have been shaded blue.

There are a total of 46 red cells out of a total of 66 cells, meaning that MHI has on average fared worse than GDPC, base year effect or no.

Under the null hypothesis that each cell has 50-50 odds of being shaded blue or red, using a Gaussian approximation implies that such a result would occur less than 0.01% of the time if it were purely due to chance. Indeed, the test statistic is 3.2003, at the extreme right tail of the distribution.

But of course, such a statistical test is not truly valid, since data in each cell, being time-series data, is not independent of data in other cells. There is a dependency among the cells that violates the independence assumption of such a simple statistical test. Nonetheless, the results are illustrative.

Let's look at the data more closely. The chart below shows the annual rate of change (ARC) in GDPC and MHI for the years 2000 through to 2010.

It appears that the ARC for GDPC lies above MHI for 8 out of the 11 years.

In addition, the AAGR for MHI lies above GDPC only in periods of recession (dot-com in 2000, the recent financial crisis). Why is this important? Because in periods of recession, the unemployment rate rises and unemployment disproportionately affects the lower income groups with below MHI. This causes less downside volatility in the MHI during a recession. In contrast, a strong economy creates full employment which tends to drive up incomes across the board.

In other words, MHI is more sensitive to economic booms than busts. This may account for why the AAGR for MHI is above the AAGR for GDPC only in times of recession.

I think I can safely say that MHI has lagged behind GDPC over the last 10 years.

But let's not stop there.

MHI refers to median household income. Household income may have increased over the years because workers in the household are being paid more. But it may also have increased because there are now more workers in each household, or workers are now working longer hours.

The government doesn't provide data on the median hourly wage. But census and household surveys helpfully provide data on the number of workers in each household (2000, 2005 and 2010), as well as the number of hours worked each week by each worker (2000, 2005, data not yet available for 2010). Time-series data on number of hours worked each week is available from MOM here, but I would prefer to stick to using census data for source consistency.

Data on number of workers in each household was grouped for large households, e.g. all households with 5 or more workers were grouped together. Data on number of persons in each household was similarly grouped for large households, e.g. all households with 8 or more persons were grouped together. I ignored the "more than" part when I calculated the weighted average number of workers and number of persons in each household.

The data is presented below. Note that year 2005 was problematic, as grouping was done for households with 4 or more workers, and 6 or more persons (as opposed to 5 or more workers and 8 or more persons, as was seen in years 2000 and 2010). This may have accounted for the break in trend in 2005 for weighted average number of workers per household. Nonetheless, there are more workers on average per household in year 2010 as compared to year 2000.

From the data, it appears that Singapore resident households are increasing in their average number of workers per household even as households are becoming smaller. This is unsurprising due to the increasing prevalence of two-income households and fewer kids.

For the data on number of hours worked each week, the number of hours was reported in bands. I took the mid-point of each band and calculated the weighted average number of hours worked per worker. For the extremely hard workers who work 65 or more hours per week, I assumed that the midpoint of this band was 72.5 hours. This is arbitrary, but unimportant as only a small percentage of the population works such long hours.

The weighted average number of hours worked per week was 47.47 in 2000 and 48.22 in 2005. Data is unavailable from Census 2010. But the two data points suggest an increase over time.

So, not only has MHI lagged GDPC, when adjusted for number of workers in each household and number of hours worked each week, the picture looks even worse.

But again, let's press on further.

One of the effects of the surge in housing prices, lacklustre growth in MHI and burgeoning income inequality is that people have increasingly moved to the outskirts of the island. Think Sengkang and Punggol where new flats have been built in the last 10 years. How have travel times to work changed?

Data on travel times to work is available for 2005 and 2010, but not for 2000.

Using the same methodology as above, I calculated a weighted average travelling time to work. For the extreme band of people who take more than 1 hour to get to work, I assumed a midpoint of 75 minutes. Note that in 2005, 5.09% of workers took more than 1 hour to get to work, while in 2010, 6.19% of workers fell into that group.

The weighted average travelling time was 30.33 minutes in 2005 and 31.81 minutes in 2010. Again, the Singapore worker is worse off.

I think I've made my case: The PAP has sucked at its job in improving the lot of Singaporeans as measured by MHI relative to GDP growth over the last 10 years.

I wish I had the data on annual remuneration for cabinet ministers over the last 10 years. That data I am confident will keep pace with GDP growth.

When in doubt, turn to the data (Immigration)

2011-04-27T11:20:00.000+08:00

Census 2010 was completed last year. A census is a rich data source to mine for information. Since the government mouthpiece media is so completely useless in reporting news that I actually want to read, that might affect my voting decision, I have to obtain the data sets and perform the analysis myself.

If you want something done...

Readers may consider this post and my next few posts a public sharing service. All data sets obtained from Statistics Singapore.

Data for the following 3 charts obtained from here; pages v and 3. Note that SingStat considers Singapore residents to be comprised of Singapore citizens AND permanent residents.

Needless to say, foreigners as a percentage of our population have skyrocketed in the last 6 years. As of last year, 1 out of every 3 persons (36%) you see on the street is a foreigner.

The annualized growth rate for foreigners is even more astounding. See below.

Now let's turn to PRs and naturalized citizens.

SingStat does not distinguish between Singapore citizens and PRs in much of the data it reports, so it is difficult to get a handle on what characteristics differentiate citizens from PRs, such as age, race, sex, income level etc. I think it likely that it has this kind of data, but for whatever reason, it does not disclose this to the unwashed public. Too ~~incendiary~~ sensitive, I suppose.

Nonetheless, I can reconstruct data sets and make an educated guess at the age and sex profile of new PRs in the last 10 years by employing some actuarial tricks.

Data for this section of the post is obtained from Census 2000 Demographics Table 3 and Census 2010 Demographics Table 3. These tables break down the Singapore resident population into single years of age.

It is possible to use the Census 2000 data to project the expected breakdown of the Singapore resident population in 2010 by single years of age. To do this, we adjust the Census 2000 data by applying mortality rates, calculated from the 2005 complete life tables. I chose the 2005 tables for as an average as they fall midway between years 2000 and 2010, when the Census was held.

For example, a group of say, 21166 male babies aged between 0 and 1 year of age back in year 2000 should become a group of 21088 ten year olds due to the effects of mortality. However, there were in fact 24463 male ten year old Singapore residents in Census 2010.

I compared expected and actual numbers for both female and male Singapore residents for all ages starting from 0 to 89. I truncated the data beyond age 89 due to the small numbers of individuals involved and the difficulty in dealing with aggregated data.

The chart below shows (Actual - Expected Number of Singapore residents) plotted against age.

The difference in expected and actual numbers is accounted for by random fluctuations in mortality, citizens and existing PRs travelling abroad/returning to Singapore from abroad, and of course, new citizens and PRs.

In relation to travel for example, many students head to overseas universities to study. So, Singapore residents aged 8 to 15 in year 2000 are likely to show a larger than expected dip in numbers, more than mortality can solely account for, when they become the group of Singapore residents aged 18 to 25 in year 2010. They could be captured in the 2000 Census, but be abroad at the time of the 2010 Census.

Similarly, the group of Singapore residents aged 18 to 25 in year 2000 who were not captured in the 2000 Census may become a bigger group of residents aged 28 to 35 in year 2010 due to return from overseas studies.

However, we do not see this pattern in the data. There is a consistent positive divergence between actual and expected number of Singapore residents from age 10 all the way to age 50 (for males), and age 47 (for females).

What about Singapore citizens who head abroad to work and then subsequently return?This is unlikely to have great effect given that people are moving away and coming back all the time; the inflow and outflow should be matched, if not exactly equal.

The likeliest assumption to account for most of the divergence between actual and expected numbers is the increase in new PRs. This is not unreasonable given that between 2000 and 2010, we know for a fact that we added about 254000 PRs to our population (Census data 2000 and 2010). In comparison, my chart above shows that the sum of (Actual - Expected) for ages 10 through 50 add up to 269000, a difference of only about 6% from 254000.

Thus, my interpretation of the data is this:

There have been approximately 250000 new PRs in the last 10 years. Considerably more new PRs in the last 10 years are female than male (we're talking ~28% more females than males).

Most new PRs in the last 10 years are today, aged in their late 20s to early 40s. There is a small bump in the LHS of the chart that indicates that significant numbers of new PRs are kids born in Singapore to foreigner or PR parents. Either that, or many Singapore citizens had their kids abroad and brought them back in the last 10 years (also possible).

There is a persistent trend of (small) negative numbers in the chart above the age of about 50 (males) and 47 (females). Given the consistent negative numbers across ages above these two ages, this is unlikely to be a random fluctuation in mortality. This indicates that a number of Singapore residents (most likely PRs) leave the population through emigration rather than mortality.

PRs aren't necessarily leaving only after the ages of 50 and 47. More generally, the rate of PR departure starts to exceed the rate of PR arrival at these ages. The mean age at which PRs give up their PR is likely to be lower.

Note that Singapore isn't necessarily retaining large numbers of PRs even though the negative numbers past the age of about 50 are small relative to the big positive surges in the ages of 20 through 50. It is important to note that the departing PRs and the surge in new PRs relate to different ages and hence cohorts. Our new PRs who are now aged in their 20s and 30s today could well leave en masse five, ten or twenty years from now.

I reiterate the assumptions: I am ignoring new citizenship take-up, and emigration/travel abroad/return from abroad by Singapore residents, and attributing the divergence between actual and expected numbers of Singapore residents to PRs alone. These are not trivial assumptions to make, but I believe that these are reasonable assumptions in light of the data I have.

And all that is certainly more information than you're ever going to be able to get out of the government.

Why the PAP is finding it difficult to attract candidates from the private sector

2011-04-19T00:00:00.006+08:00

I had thought that more people would have commented on the story published in the Straits Times on 16 April, on how few high flying executives from the private sector are willing to join the PAP. But apparently not.

Someone did comment on it, but while I do agree with some of the ideas in that post, my opinion is a little different, and more nuanced.

Why is the PAP finding it difficult to attract candidates from the private sector?

To answer that question, we must first ask why people enter politics.

People enter politics for a number of reasons, but the most important (and noble) reason must be the idea of wanting to make a difference.

Many of the most celebrated politicians in history took on positions of leadership precisely at the point when they perceived the need for a change in direction for their country. Take FDR for example. He rose to the occasion to become POTUS at the height of the Great Depression. It is in times of crisis that we see great leaders arise. Our Minister Mentor is another example.

When you keep that fact in mind, and you consider the nature and character of the PAP as it is today, it is not a surprise that they have problems recruiting candidates from the private sector.

The PAP today is in the business of maintaining the status quo. And I do mean business. Our economic and other policies have been deemed successful by our political elite, and as such, they have signaled that no change is warranted.

With their electioneering tactics and iron-grip control of the civil service, the PAP has assured itself victory in every election. And even its greenest candidates need not fear being rejected by the electorate; they can just coast in on the coat-tails of a "heavy-weight" under the GRC system. If there were such a thing as a election guarantee in a democracy, this would be it.

In other words, the PAP of today is not a party of fiery orators, impassioned visionaries or trailblazing mavericks, full of piss and vinegar, to borrow that piquant phrase.

They don't have to be. The PAP today is a party of technocrats and functionaries, where an efficient party apparatus guarantees risk-free victory at elections, and continuity of policy after election. Policy which is set at the highest levels of the PAP food chain, if I might add, immune to criticism and disquiet even within the party itself.

Indeed, mavericks are probably personae non grata in the PAP. Some people accuse the PAP of recruiting only those that agree with their policy-making views. I would go further. In the environment of the PAP, they can ONLY recruit those who agree with their views, as a true dissenter would probably find the PAP a lonely and hostile place.

Oh, we hear of various fresh PAP faces saying that they don't agree with this or that PAP policy. Riiight. Just as our national newspaper is fond of printing both sides of an issue to give the appearance of "balance", but inevitably ends on one side of the argument: the PAP's.

Dissenters in the PAP either don't last long, are marginalized (think the late President Ong Teng Cheong when he refused the play the role of a straw puppet and actually had the temerity to request for information on the national reserves), are co-opted, or were never true dissenters to begin with.

In light of this, it is not hard to imagine why, with few exceptions, high flying corporate executives have little desire to join the PAP.

Put yourself in the shoes of a corporate high flyer who actually has aspirations to make a difference, to become a politician.

If you genuinely have issues with the PAP's policies, you are unlikely to want to join them. Trying to change the PAP from within is likely a fool's errand.

Even if you do agree with the PAP's policies, the PAP is unlikely to be a place that can satisfy your political aspirations. It's a monolithic top-down structure, where policy is decided at the top, your role is to support the status quo, and you have to toe the line. Because, after all, it's not like you enjoy an independent power base among your constituents, especially if you coasted in on the coat-tails of another politician. How independent can your opinion be when you owe your place in Parliament to another politician?

Worse, as a former corporate warrior, you would have given up your high salary, perks AND privacy. And for what? For this pale shadow of being a politician? More like a entry level political lackey.

Being a PAP Member of Parliament would be singularly unattractive in this case. It would be a corporate job without the corporate perks. In other words, it would be a step DOWN from being a corporate high flyer. Even a corporate high flyer who agrees he has benefited disproportionately from the PAP's policies and wants them to continue. No thanks, he might say, I just want a free ride on your policies.

Conversely, what kinds of people would view becoming a PAP Member of Parliament as a step up?

Simple. The people who are already in the public eye, think only glowingly of existing policy, and fall very naturally into the position of deferring to authority in the form of senior PAP politicians.

No surprise. The civil service. And the quasi-governmental organizations like the NTUC.

If you are a high-ranking civil servant, becoming a cabinet minister would represent the logical pinnacle of your civil service career progression.

Not so for a private sector corporate executive who has political aspirations. The calculus is far different.

I have a prediction here to make.

The trends are clear. The PAP is recruiting less and less from the private sector, while the converse is occurring for the opposition parties, particularly those with credibility, like the Workers Party.

Should the opposition parties actually make headway in this coming election by, say, winning a GRC, it would be a watershed moment. Being an opposition party member would demonstrably seem less risky, and more people who want to make a difference, who actually have some fire in their hearts, would join the opposition political parties from the private sector.

In contrast, because the PAP is recruiting increasingly from the public sector, it is going to be seen as more and more insular, and will find it ever harder to recruit from the private sector. No outsider wants to belong to an clubby old boys association where every former civil servant knows every other former civil servant. And over time, the PAP will become more homogeneous than it is already.

Hard truths you won’t read about elsewhere, Part V

2011-04-15T19:00:00.006+08:00

Our systems are brittle and our country is vulnerable. And our government has no desire to encourage a “crutch mentality”. It behoves every Singaporean to have a Plan B.

Many Singaporeans instinctively understand this hard truth, even though they may not articulate it.

The recent survey by the Institute of Policy Studies is telling. About half of young Singaporeans belong to the “Disengaged” and “Explorer” socio-psychological profile.

Interestingly, these profiles come from the more highly educated, higher income groups, who have presumably benefited more from the PAP’s economic policies than the lower income groups. Yet it is precisely the Disengaged and the Explorer who are pessimistic about Singapore’s economic future. The Explorer also feels threatened by foreign talent.

Why this irony?

Perhaps it is because the Disengaged and the Explorer, who have benefited more under the PAP’s policies, understand better the fragility upon which Singapore’s prosperity is built. And they also understand that what appears to be permanent can in fact be transient, that it can all vanish in a blink of the eye.

The PAP assiduously cultivates a siege mentality among the population, telling us that Singapore is highly vulnerable. Yet it would have us all believe that the PAP is the solution to Singapore’s problems, that self-sacrifice is what is required of all of us, that all of us need to close ranks around the PAP. Otherwise, the ship would capsize without the PAP at the helm.

Well, if Singapore were that vulnerable, should we not all express just a bit of scepticism at the PAP’s infallibility? That is a logical extension of the PAP’s own argument.

But no, that is not part of the official catechism. We are required to believe in the daunting odds we face as a nation, while suspending doubts as to the PAP’s abilities to shepherd Singaporeans through any storm.

And the PAP asks for more than just faith in their abilities, but also tolerance for their obscene salaries, and forbearance for personal costs on the part of citizens that grow more exacting with each policy that they implement. No crutch mentality here, thank you very much.

I wonder if the PAP realizes how successful they have been in instilling amongst Singaporeans the fear that Singapore is indeed vulnerable. The spectre of ever present disaster may have helped the PAP to solidify their grip on power over the decades, but at what cost?

We have imbibed the knowledge that tomorrow, this could all be over. And the PAP government has demonstrably shown through its policies and speeches and admonitions that as individual citizens, we're on our own; we shouldn't count on the government for retirement, healthcare, housing...even that ineffable feeling that this place should still feel like home, what with the incredible rate of immigration, and the attendant questions it raises of what citizenship here is really worth.

And we certainly shouldn't trouble the government with our disquietude. If we do, it's our fault, again. The implicit command is for us to be silent and be governed. If we participate, we are meant only to cheer, not to question.

Our national education programs talk loftily of a shared sense of destiny, of how our people are Singapore’s only resource, and yet the government has nurtured a crisis of affinity.

The statistic of importance is not how many youth are contemplating emigration now. It is how many youth would contemplate emigration in a time of countrywide bleakness.

Hard Truth #5 is not about emigration per se. It is about being prepared. As long as the living here is comfortable, there is no fear of Singaporeans activating Plan B. But Plan B exists. And it is ever at the back of everyone’s mind.

Once, while attending a Chinese New Year dinner hosted by the ambassador at the Singapore embassy in Washington DC, I overheard a spiel from a diplomat holding court amongst a group of university students. He claimed that for reasons of national security, our wealth [meaning reserves], must be kept outside of Singapore.

We should all take a leaf from the PAP’s investment playbook and hedge our bets abroad. Don't put all your eggs in the Singapore basket. What is good for the goose is also good for the gander .

I started this post by stating that many Singaporeans instinctively understand Hard Truth #5, even though they may not articulate it. For many of us, it is not a hard truth, but a simple reality, prudence even. I do not think I need to point out who the hard truth is meant for.

Hard truths you won’t read about elsewhere, Part IV

2011-04-14T19:00:00.007+08:00

As I should have made clear by now through all my previous posts, it is that unique combination of the PAP’s assuredness of political victory, single-mindedness in achievement of its goals, dismissal of criticism and self-aggrandizing braggadocio that puts us all at the mercy of their policies.

I do not think the result of this upcoming election is in much doubt, just like other elections. The PAP will be returned to power again, and for the foreseeable future. This is because of the PAP’s electioneering tactics, because a large segment of the population is supportive of the current regime, perhaps because they benefit greatly from current policy, and also because there is another very large segment of the population that votes like sheeple, perhaps to their own and others’ detriment.

As much as I and some other Singaporeans would prefer an alternative, hope is not a viable strategy.

Therefore, Hard Truth#4 is:

The PAP will continue to be returned to power for the foreseeable future, and their policies will continue to be set to our benefit, as well as to our detriment. Plan accordingly.

Some segments of the population do benefit disproportionately from the PAP’s policies.

The rich, the highly educated high income earners, the large business owners, foreign investors, foreign talent, high level corporate executives – these are the ones that Singapore welcomes and bends over backwards to accommodate.

If you are a member of one of these groups, life in Singapore is sweet indeed – so long as you toe the line and ignore the bad social outcomes all round. If you are a current net beneficiary of present day policies, you have less to worry about after elections are over. Does that mean that you should ignore issues of social and economic inequities? Perhaps, perhaps not. However, the shoe may well end up on the other foot one day.

If you are not a current net beneficiary, you should think about what’s going to happen after the elections.

Hard Truth #4 is about containment. It emphasizes mitigation and contingency planning, rather than changing a problematic situation.

What is likely to happen after the PAP returns to power?

A resumption of business as usual. A sequel of the movie we have just seen in the last few years, except that sequels by definition are sophomoric in effort.

Choose your career, your job, your course of study, your lifestyle, the number of kids you intend to have, your house, and your living arrangements with care.

Think critically about what you hear and read, especially from government-controlled media. Do not make decisions solely on advice from the government. Such advice may be in the best interests of “Singaporeans”, as per Hard Truth #3, but may not be in your best interests.

Hard Truth #4 means being self-sufficient, flexible and accommodative, like living and getting medical care across the border to mitigate the higher cost of living here. Such arrangements may not be ideal, but they are prudent.

It would be unwise to count on a PAP government for assistance when the same government has publicly expressed its desire to discourage a “crutch mentality”.

Hard Truth #5 in the next post will be the last in this series.

Hard truths you won’t read about elsewhere, Part III

2011-04-13T19:00:00.007+08:00

Policy-making in Singapore is indifferent to its ill-effects on large swathes of the population., much less to individuals. The term “Singaporeans” is an abstraction used to justify policy-making. In reality, individuals do not figure in the calculus at all.

Do Singapore’s policies sometimes go against the interests of individual Singaporeans? Do they occasionally curtail Singaporeans’ civil rights and privileges? Do policies sometimes require sacrifices from Singaporeans now and again for a greater good?

Of course they do. And sometimes for good reason. Some policies such as National Service exist for a reason, even if the implementation is unprofessional and the personal cost large.

But does this standard apply to all of the PAP’s policies? And do some policies result in such harm to individuals that they should not have been countenanced at all?

I can think of several off the top of my head.

As furrybrowndog has highlighted in his excellent post, CPF returns are dismal. And this policy, designed to serve retirement needs, is in fact failing on a grand scale. Instead, CPF Life is being introduced and is being made mandatory, along with the retirement age being raised. Realistically speaking, retirement is receding into the horizon for many Singaporeans. Yet while Rome burns, the PAP has over the years preferred to “invest” excess reserves.

Really, folks, while CPF monies are not directly linked to GIC and Temasek investments, that is just a verbal sleight of hand. The CPF fund holds Singapore government bonds, which means that Singaporeans are general creditors of the Singapore government. The proceeds of bond issuance to the CPF commingle with the working capital on the Singapore government balance sheet. Some of that money on the balance sheet inevitably ends up funding investments. It’s time to call the CPF what it really is, a cheap source of long term financing for the PAP government.

If you’re a low wage worker, think of how the relaxed immigration policy, GST hikes, and strenuous protestations by the PAP against a minimum wage policy, were all meant to boost economic growth, “help” the lower income groups, and increase national competitiveness.

Economic growth has indeed increased over the years, except of course, we all know that economic growth in the last several years has disproportionately benefited the higher income groups, putting paid to the idea that broad benefits accrue to “Singaporeans”. More like the top 20% of Singaporeans, per the Pareto distribution.

If you’re in the market for a house because, say, you’re a newly wed, you’re out of luck. Just like if you have ever been inconvenienced by a completed but unopened MRT station. Well, the just-in-time policy I described in Singapore, Inc. works just fine, according to the government. Too bad for you, the individual who has to delay marriage or deal with the inconvenience of public transportation.

If you’re single, “lagi worse” as we would say in the army. Regarding property, you can fuhgedditboutit. Private property is currently in the stratosphere, you won’t be eligible for HDB housing until 35, and even then, it’s going to be a pricey resale flat. Family-friendly values never sounded like a dirty word until you wanted your own place, even just a tiny little tenement, but were single and hence ineligible.

And if you’re one of those suckered into a “growth” industry that the Singapore wants to nurture, I hope your career had a roaring start. That is, if you even got a job in the industry. Attracting investment into the chosen industry was ever the apple of the PAP’s eye, never the individual, so take that lesson and learn something from it. [Take note, prospective Yale-NUS liberal arts students. You are lab rats, even if you don't know it.]

Finally, the death penalty could conceivably deter serious crimes, but if you are the one on death row, you as an individual certainly never figured in the policy-making process. Neither did any of us, as I recall. The death penalty in Singapore simply was.

Remember:

Policy-making in Singapore is indifferent to its ill-effects on large swathes of the population, much less to individuals. The term “Singaporeans” is an abstraction used to justify policy-making. In reality, individuals do not figure in the calculus at all.

The next time the PAP claims a policy is necessary for the continued well-being of the nation/“Singaporeans”/economy/the Merlion...

Take a deep breath, and batten down the hatches.

Hard truth #4 in the next post.

Hard truths you won’t read about elsewhere, Part II

2011-04-12T19:00:00.003+08:00

The current policies in Singapore have questionable sustainability, and their origins derive from misplaced incentives. As long as the incentive structures remain, we can expect new policies to be equally unsustainable.

For the longest time, strong economic growth has been the paramount policy objective. Yet, for a government so single-mindedly focused on economic growth, and so well-compensated for thinking about it, the PAP’s policies are remarkably unimaginative, loaded with undesirable side-effects, and in many cases, one-shot wonders.

In decades past, we followed a foreign direct investment and growth by exports economic model that was successful beyond our wildest dreams. This strategy has been replicated in economies such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and now China. China is the FDI elephant in the room, squeezing just about everybody out. Indeed, the FDI and export-driven model is unsustainable for just China alone; the world is too small to accommodate a mercantilist economy of China’s heft without severe global imbalances building up.

In response, the PAP has employed strategies such as massive immigration, casinos and a policy of keeping wages low. Our race up the value chain to secure higher value-added work is falling flat. Don’t ask about productivity increases.

We are bumping up against limits on every one of these policies. How high can the population go before our infrastructure simply breaks down? What destabilizing effects will continued massive immigration have on the social fabric in Singapore?

Are casinos worth the social problems they cause? And won’t their benefits melt away as more casinos spring up in neighbouring countries to capitalize on the gaming market? Are these transient benefits worth the permanent side-effects?

What about keeping wages low? Doesn’t that run counter to the aspiration of a better life for Singaporeans? And how low can they in fact go, compared to countries with rock-bottom costs like China?

And what of the high inflation period that we are entering into now? How will people with low wages survive in such an environment? What will low wages do to income inequality? A widening income gap already causes all sorts of problems. Do we really want it to be wider than it already is?

It is not just the PAP’s economic policies that are unsustainable.

The CPF scheme has morphed over the years beyond all recognition. It simply will not be sufficient to fund retirement for most people; retirement is going to be a dim possibility for many Singapore citizens. And the PAP’s stop-gap measure is CPF Life, which I have previously stated is simply a means to transfer the burden of longevity risk solely onto the shoulders of the individual. Perhaps it is time to call the CPF scheme what it really is, a cheap source of financing for the government.

The HDB 99 year leasehold problem has been commented on by another blogger. I personally do not think this is a *very* serious problem (for too many reasons to be elaborated here), but there is no question that that is also not a sustainable state of affairs.

Worse than being unsustainable, many policies work at cross-purposes to each other, such as immigration to boost GDP growth and family-friendly policies aimed at increasing the fertility rate.

The manifestation of policy schizophrenia is a reflection of the system’s misplaced incentives, placing GDP growth on a pedestal far above all else. As commenter Ponder Stibbons had previously remarked in my “Policy Schizophrenia” post, it is difficult to discriminate between policies genuinely designed to improve the quality of life for Singaporeans, from policies which improve the quality of life only as an incidental benefit. The main objective of many policies remains GDP growth.

After all, our politicians are incentivized to target this, much as Wall Street banksters game the system for short term gains.

As long as our incentive structures in government remain the same, government policies will continue to be unsustainable, with frequent stop-gap measures such as CPF Life and raising the retirement age, which brings me to Hard Truth #3:

Policy-making in Singapore is indifferent to its ill-effects on large swathes of the population, much less to individuals. “Singaporeans” is an abstraction used to justify policy-making. In reality, individuals do not figure in the calculus at all.

Description forthcoming in the next post.

Hard truths you won’t read about elsewhere, Part I

2011-04-12T00:52:00.002+08:00

With elections so near, the Straits Times has gone to town with recent prognostications and opinions by ministers from the ruling party. Coverage has been extensive, and article layout in the paper has been tweaked to give the PAP maximum favourable exposure. Most of all, Straits Times journalists have hung on to every word spoken by our ministers, branding each gem with the moniker of “hard truth”. The most recent egregious example was about how anything more than one strong political party was “unworkable”.

Since the media has seen fit to play fast and loose with the term “hard truths”, why shouldn’t I take a stab at it as well?

Here’s *my* list of hard truths, one you won’t read about in the mainstream media. Readers can judge for themselves how “hard” and how “truthful” they really are, compared to what is in print today.

The PAP government will fail one day. And when it does, it will likely take Singapore with it, permanently.

The long form argument for this is available in my previous post. Additional points follow.

Failure can be measured in many ways, just like success. And as anybody who has measured things over time will attest, measurements are useless unless they are consistent over time.

It wasn’t so very long ago, a decade perhaps, that our government laid down bold plans for Singapore to aspire to a Swiss standard of living, sending a football team to the World Cup (among other grandiloquent visions), and making Singapore a “best home”. For whatever reasons, these goals have been lost along the wayside. The GDP figure is now the primary determinant of success.

The PAP could already be failing Singapore, if held to the same measures of success and failure that were espoused by it so many years ago. That it sees itself as being successful may be a function of shifting metrics rather than a reflection of true performance. In other words, the PAP’s performance has been and continues to degrade, but its decline has been masked by the managing of its appearance.

Even in elections, the PAP chooses to delude itself. Gerrymandering may be a tactical strategy to retain power by the incumbent, but the flipside is that it also has the side effect of distorting the voting signals that political parties rely on. Without consistent GRC boundaries, how will any political party track its performance and endorsement by the population over time?

Unless the PAP knows the vote of each and every individual, and can model its election performance based on the votes cast and the historical drawing of GRC boundaries as they have changed at each election cycle, it will not understand how sentiment towards the PAP has evolved over the years and how this might translate into the political change. Possession of this kind of data is clearly prohibited under the current legal regime, if the regime is in fact adhered to.

Hypothetically (or not so hypothetically), if the PAP was indeed failing, and sentiment on the ground was indeed souring, it would not be apparent at all. And no political change would occur due to this masking of sentiment. The PAP would continue to congratulate itself on a job well done (and pay themselves accordingly). Wrongheaded policy errors would continue to be perpetuated unabated, until their deleterious effects become too late to reverse, and too obvious to ignore.

When an adverse outcome does finally materialize for Singapore, I expect its appearance (but not occurrence) to be non-linear in nature. In other words, it could happen really, really fast.

Consider how the severity of public transportation and housing problems in Singapore are related to the PAP’s immigration policy.

And consider how apparent these policy missteps were when the immigration policy was first conceived (Do the LTA and MND even talk to ICA??? And this is just for a country of all of 4.5 million people, not even as populous as the greater New York or Tokyo metropolitan area).

And consider how much consultation, monitoring and review the immigration policy subsequently received, after problems started becoming apparent. Or were criticisms just pooh-poohed and then superficially addressed only when elections finally rolled around.

Now imagine the effect multiplied a hundred-fold, across all the policies the PAP crafts and implements, those policies that have been articulated publicly, and those that are now being quietly implemented which none of us know about. And which will not brook any argument, criticism or consultation in the future.

The quality of the PAP’s policies is often criticized. But the quality of the PAP’s policy-making processes itself separately deserves scrutiny. The latter could have greater implications for Singapore’s future than any one policy crafted by the political elite, and I do not have a sanguine view of that at all.

Hard Truth #2 to be unveiled in the next post.

Book List Refreshed! 29/03/2011

2011-03-29T22:00:00.001+08:00

I have removed:

Power Hungry by Robert Bryce
Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet by Michael T. Klare
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein

I have added:

Econned by Yves Smith
The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics by Richard C. Koo
Making Sense of Life by Evelyn Fox Keller
The Next Decade by George Friedman

When the PAP loses an election, it will be time to leave.

2011-03-29T22:00:00.000+08:00

Elections are around the corner. I have not posted anything on the upcoming elections. This isn't because I am politically apathetic. On the contrary, I am politically more aware than most Singaporeans.

The reason why I have not posted anything on the upcoming elections is because I do not think the result is in any doubt. The PAP will be returned to power again. The only thing in question is how big of a majority will they command. Will it be merely overwhelming, or ludicrously so?

And we all know why the PAP is so successful during elections. It has stacked the deck in its favor, shifted goalposts where necessary, subverted supposedly non-partisan organizations, co-opted potential opponents, passed legislation favorable to itself, leashed the media in its service and cultivated an environment where dissent is stifled for fear of reprisal.

You would think that a political party that is so proud of its policy successes (and that never fails to remind us about it!) would be more confident that it would be returned to power at each election on its own merits. Yet, it wheedles for every advantage it can get.

Is this not a sign of weakness? Or is it because the PAP genuinely believes that Singaporeans are too stupid to make the "obvious choice"?

This is not a rhetorical question. How one answers it is an indication of one's view of Singapore and Singaporeans.

With all of its political safeguards in place, it would be a miracle if the PAP is NOT returned to power.

Which brings me back to the title of this post, "When the PAP loses an election, it will be time to leave."

Living conditions in Singapore would have to deteriorate to an extremely serious state for the PAP to lose elections even with all of their incumbent's advantages.

Singapore will never reach such a parlous state, people scoff. We're not Egypt, Libya or Yemen.

Actually, one thing I do agree with our esteemed Minister Mentor is that Singapore, being small and vulnerable, does stand at the edge of disaster all the time. I disagree, however with the remedy.

Our political elite decided long ago that the best solution to the problem of "The little island that could" was to have a powerful government, ruled by the PAP that is for all intents and purposes, THE government. And this government, presumably staffed with the most talented people, would run the country in the best way possible. And politically, this government would be unfettered by irksome little opposition parties that in more ~~democratic~~ inefficient countries, would have to be dealt with, or heaven forbid, accommodated.

That model might have worked in earlier days. Perhaps it might even have been necessary during those uncertain times. But that model is showing its age, just as the ideas, attitudes and perspectives of the ruling party are looking stagnant, unresponsive, disconnected, and worst of all, dogmatic. Any criticism of current PAP government policy is treated as heresy.

A monolithic government such as ours can coast along for a long while without major problems. But a true crisis, a black swan, one that the PAP cannot handle, will lead to catastrophic failure. And without a robust framework in place for orderly transition and change of political leadership, Singapore would fail and fail irrecoverably.

Our politics are as impoverished as our most disadvantaged citizens.

The PAP government has conflated its existence and success with the existence and success of Singapore itself. No less than Ngiam Tong Dow stated, "I think our leaders have to accept that Singapore is larger than the PAP."

By so systematically dismantling and disempowering political opposition, the PAP is planting the seeds of its own destruction. If and when the PAP slips from power, there will be no second chances for it. No renewal for the PAP can come from a desert wasteland if Singapore fails irrecoverably.

In the past few years since the last election, many Singaporeans have wondered if our country has lost its way. It doesn't feel like home anymore. The government appears disconnected from the aspirations and needs of citizens.

If this is what the PAP calls success, I am not sure I would want to stick around to see what failure is like.

If a change in direction is needed in our policies, then it is best that the change be made as soon as possible.

But just as police states everywhere have a nasty habit of tightening controls just as the population gets restive, I have no doubt that the PAP will stack the deck even more heavily in its favor if ever in the future it is at even the slightest risk of losing power.

The PAP is so sure that its policies are the correct course of action that it would persist even in the face of severe opprobrium. The only concession made would be the occasional window-dressing that we are seeing now.

And if anyone believes that current immigration and economic policy is going to be reversed after the election, they will be severely disabused of this notion in a matter of months.

This is a government that has a hard time taking responsibility and criticism even for a minor flash flood, what more a true crisis that might be a result of its own doing, such as the demographic time bomb that continues to tick.

Tick-tock.

When you are in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. The imperial nature of our government is not a sustainable state of affairs for any country, if only because men are proud and fallible. It is even less sustainable in a country like ours.

I can feel the hole becoming deeper.

I am less sanguine than our ministers who flippantly state that if the PAP were to lose its relevance, it will lose the mandate of the people and presumably gracefully step aside for a new party. Everything about the PAP shows that it would sooner change the rules of the game before that happens.

The question is, what will the PAP leave behind for a new government when it eventually does lose power, against all odds? A smoking ruin, or a shattered country?

When the PAP loses an election, it will be too late to leave. The time to leave would have been before.

If you're at all worried about a nuclear meltdown in Japan, read this!

2011-03-15T10:01:00.003+08:00

Article can be found here and here.

Quick Thoughts on Sunday Times, 13 March 2011

2011-03-13T11:41:00.003+08:00

"Not just an 'ordinary' girl from HDB family" - Think p.37

This article profiled Rachel Eng, a managing partner from the top law firm WongPartnership. Interestingly, Ms. Eng said little, if anything, about social mobility in her interview, but the Sunday Times chose to put a spin on it that way, billing the article as "Rachel Eng: Top Lawyer is a study in social mobility" on the front page sidebar. The writer, Wong Kim Hoh, also started his article by citing her as a prime example of social mobility.

Ms. Eng used the word "lucky", "blessed", and "alignment of the stars" in her interview. Granted, none of the these were in relation to her transcending her humble background to becoming a high-powered lawyer, but more in relation to her current living and working situation. But clearly, this is a woman who knows and counts her blessings.

In contrast, in today's edition, the quote from Ng Eng Hen on social mobility can be found on the next page, Think p. 38, "You are the one who can determine your own success - yes, life might be hard for you, but if you try, you can succeed, and other have."

To relate to a previous post of mine which resonated with many readers, I've found that people who transcend their backgrounds tend to fall into one of two categories. One is exemplified by Ng Eng Hen, who takes the view that "If [insert underprivileged person here] can do it, anyone can." In recent parliamentary proceedings, he used himself as an example.

Ms. Eng fits more closely with the second category. Such a person tends to recognize that while their own talent played a major role in their lives, luck, chance, opportunity and just being in the right place at the right time are also very important. They are more likely to, on seeing someone less privileged, go "There, but for the grace of...".

Ms. Eng's example drew from her own pioneering experiences in the then growing WongPartnership, now one of the largest law firms in Singapore. That must have been a remarkable opportunity for her, and she probably realizes that.

Is there a "correct" view? I am not wise enough to answer that, but I am without question more sympathetic to the latter view, that luck and opportunity are just as great determinants of a person's success as talent. The former view has always struck me as being somewhat narcissistic and presumptuous. Perhaps not coincidentally, Ms. Eng is a woman, while Ng Eng Hen is a man. Make of that what you will.

Needless to say, whichever view a person hews to will have implications on their opinions on what kinds of public policies should be implemented. The fact that we have ministers such as Ng Eng Hen (and Mah Bow Tan) in government who come from very humble backgrounds is no guarantee that they will look out for the little people from their perches. Indeed, the opposite may be truer than not.

"Google Looking for a Bigger Town" - Home p.19

Google Singapore is expanding. But as I realized years ago when I first graduated as a freshly minted engineer, you have a better chance of working for Google in Singapore if you're an accountant or a top sales and business development person than if you are an IT professional.

The same goes for any number of technology and engineering MNCs in Singapore. There are engineering jobs available, but the really interesting engineering jobs are simply not here.

If your ambition is to work in manufacturing, quality assurance, batch testing or any number of technical, ok-paying (and perhaps not even that), but relatively dull jobs, you should have no problems.

But if you want really interesting work, the kind that happens in the Googleplex, you can stop hoping right now.

It's a vicious cycle. Because the interesting jobs aren't here, good students are increasingly not taking up engineering. In my time, engineering was a relatively sought after choice (but many engineering graduates did not end up in engineering). Today, as my interns and psychology experiment participants (recruited from local universities) tell me, engineering is a "dumping ground". It is not even a popular choice of study now, much less working in engineering. Popular majors now are economics, business, banking and finance and information systems.

And because good students aren't taking up engineering, there is little reason for companies to relocate high value work here. Not that talent alone is enough to ensure that; there are a multitude of other reasons why high value work does not come here to Singapore.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? Well, it's bad if you're hellbent on being an engineer. But, than again, this is a situation that artists, musicians, writers and designers have long had to live with in Singapore. And they cope with it as best as they can, either venturing abroad or moderating their expectations here on this island.

Quick Thoughts on Straits Times, 20-21 February 2011

2011-02-20T13:05:00.003+08:00

Budget 2011

At the risk of taking this out of context, my favorite quote regarding the budget:

"The return of the 20 percent personal income tax rebate is designed to benefit the middle-income earners most and will be welcomed by all taxpayers. The changes to personal income tax rates are welcome, but with no adjustment to rates for many years, this is long overdue to bring us back to where we started in real terms."

- Ernst and Young human capital partner, Grahame Wright, p.A6, Saturday 19 February, 2011.

What Wright is saying is that we have been paying more income tax in real terms for the last several years due to inflation-induced bracket creep. The latest adjustments serve simply to correct an underlying unfairness that has been present for many years.

The comment should properly be interpreted only within the context of tax rates, but this is my favorite quote because the last clause of his comment so perfectly captures my sentiment regarding the entire budget.

Thank you for this budget. After losing ground for so many years, in real incomes, job prospects, foreign competition, retirement plans, housing, transport, and with the specter of serious inflation on the horizon, I am certain that Singaporeans are grateful to be returned to the starting line again in real terms.

This time around, perhaps you should remind us which direction we should face? I've never liked walking backwards. Easier for you too, you know, post-elections, when you need us to, uh, bend over.

"Never too old to start new businesses" - Invest, p. 30, Sunday 20 February, 2011.

Mr William Ong indicated that his best investment to date has been in commodities, particularly in gold and silver. $450,000 invested in 2006 is now worth $1.2 million, and with lower volatility than equities, if I may add.

I haven't done nearly as well, having jumped onto the bandwagon only in late 2007, and I certainly didn't have $450 grand of capital just lying around back then. But to recap from a previous post on 3 October, when a commenter raised concerns about the precious metals looking toppy, gold closed at USD1315.40 and silver closed at USD20.02 on that date. The most recent close for gold has been USD1388.20 (respectable but unspectacular) and silver USD32.30 (courtesy of a short squeeze).

Again, don't take this as advice to go long on gold and silver.

"Shrink from Shoebox Apartments" - Invest, p. 31, Sunday 20 February, 2011.

As I argued many moons ago, shoebox apartments are NOT a value proposition. My long form comment here.

My view of the property market has become more nuanced of late. I still hesitate to call it a bubble, but I still believe that prices are likely to come down within a matter of months. Not that that will help anybody. It won't help buyers and it most certainly won't help sellers.

Why not buyers? Because I think that prices are going to fall due to a double whammy of lower real household incomes due to inflation (courtesy of the money printing "Bernank") and rising interest rates (which at this point, can only go in one direction). That will really screw with the affordability of property, regardless of lower prices.

If we stir in a recession into the mix due to say, fresh (or rather, not so fresh but emerging from beneath the carpet) economic problems in the US, China or Europe, or an oil crisis due to unrest in the Middle East, it will only exacerbate matters.

Property prices may drift lower in the coming months ahead, but it's difficult to say who will be in the mood to buy then, given why they may drift lower. The only positive factors may be increased supply and the government relaxing the newly imposed restrictions on property transactions.

"Poor pickings in Orchard" - Lifestyle, p. 24, Sunday, 20 February, 2011

I have not been to Orchard in literally months. Too busy with other things. But this sure reminds me of an article I wrote. I wonder whether poor pickings are confined only to F&B outlets, or to a wider swathe of the retail scene. Reader comment welcome.

Crossing the Causeway for Medical Care Affects Everyone

2011-02-15T18:00:00.000+08:00

The New Paper had a story on Sunday about patients who cross over to Malaysia for cheaper medical services. Lucky Tan had one take on it, and Mr Wang another.

I had some thoughts on the story, but I had refrained from posting as I felt my thoughts didn't seem like they would be give that interesting of a perspective. Now however, since two prominent bloggers have expressed their views, and I share neither of those views, I think I will speak on the issue.

In actuality, I agree with both of them, but neither of these viewpoints were at the forefront of my thoughts as I read the story in The New Paper. Something else occupied my thoughts.

Like Lucky Tan, I consider the burden of providing affordable, and I mean truly affordable, medical care for Singaporeans as a duty incumbent on the government. But just like Mr Wang, I've long since given up hope on trusting, much less relying, on the state to do right by Singaporeans. The flipside of the Singaporean aphorism "you die, your business" is "the only one looking out for you, is you." In this country, you better believe it.

What occurred to me as I read the article was that the cost differential between medical care in Singapore and in Malaysia would have implications for all of us, even those of us who don't intend to ever travel to Malaysia for medical care.

If fewer patients seek medical care in Singapore, prices for medical services here are not going to fall. Medical services are like university education; the price only goes in one direction.

On the contrary, if more patients seek medical care across the Causeway, fixed expenses (such as building, maintenance and staff overheads) in the healthcare sector will need to be spread among a smaller number of patients. This will mean higher prices per patient even though the number of patients (customers) is falling. This is especially so if whatever subsidy the government claims to be providing the healthcare system is on a per patient basis, per admission.

If you're a hospital CEO in Singapore, you would probably respond to the phenomenon of fixed expenses spread among fewer patients in the following two ways.

The first would be to cut your expenses. This might mean a lower quality of service (e.g. foreign-born doctors from developing countries, which is already happening, cheaper medicines, fewer support staff). This is not so different from SMRT running fewer trains during non-peak hours; there might be fewer passengers, but the trains are just as packed and the commuting experience just as frustrating.

The second would be to pursue higher profit margin business: medical tourists. This might serve to cross-subsidise cost inefficiencies in the hospital. After all, it makes a lot more sense to invest resources in the segment of the business that is the most important from a revenue and cost-recovery standpoint. Medical tourists in their A class wards can expect high levels of attention and service, while the lower class wards would probably experience much less attentive service.

If you are Singaporean, all this will just make the prospect of crossing the Causeway for medical care even more attractive.

Even you are financially comfortable (but not wealthy) and are averse to the idea of traveling far from home for medical care, circumstances may change in the future that may warrant you to give this option some serious consideration.

The other option would be to purchase comprehensive and heavy health insurance coverage so that the expected cost of medical bills is transferred to a third party. For example, it is possible to purchase riders on Shield policies to remove deductibles, co-payments and category sub-limits. Under comprehensive cover, the total inpatient (but not outpatient) bill falls to zero. A patient under such cover would become indifferent to the cost of medical care. Such cover, naturally, comes at a commensurately higher price.

Being a lower income student in an "elite" institution

2011-02-07T20:09:00.006+08:00

The Straits Times had an article today, "Non-grad parents, but they made it to top schools". No transcript available, but very briefly, it talked about how only a minority of students today in top schools in Singapore hail from households where parents are non-university graduates. It also had some short interview-like snippets from the minority students.

In truth, the title of this article was disingenuous. It would have been more accurate to characterize these students as coming from low-income households rather than with non-grad parents. Perhaps some editor from the Straits Times wanted to avoid any association with that hot potato issue of income inequality.

Reading some of the students' comments stirred some memories. I too, was a lower income student studying in a top school. My family isn't poor by any measure, but disparities were still stark. Some background here.

The truth is, top schools have had a skewed income distribution for several years now. I certainly felt it keenly almost two decades ago. It is NOT a recent phenomenon.

On the off-chance that one of those kids might read this, here's the two cents worth of my reminisces, and some advice, if they will have it:

It is entirely understandable to feel a sense of being apart from your peers who come from much more privileged backgrounds. I call it that sense of "otherness".

Newsflash: It never goes away entirely. So, deal with it as best as you can.

Here's why that feeling of otherness never fades away entirely.

Today, in secondary school, you might feel inadequate because you can't afford to tote the latest iPod, iPad or iPhone. Or you might decline to join your friends at Starbucks or Cafe Cartel, or wherever it is young folks today hang out.

When you reach JC or in the early years of university, some of your wealthier peers will start experimenting with alcohol and clubbing. A few will start driving when their parents gift them with new cars. You'll probably still be taking public transport.

If you do well in school and decide to take up a scholarship to fully fund your university studies, congratulations, you'll have a fairly generous allowance to live on. Finally, some cash in hand!

Unfortunately, that's about the same time your wealthier peers, who might be studying abroad in the same university as you, start talking about ski vacations at Aspen, Whistler or Lake Tahoe. Or weekend getaways to New York for Restaurant Week (Nobu apparently is a great deal). Not exactly your average student's weekend plan.

[For the record, a scholarship allowance probably could pay for these luxuries in moderation, with cutbacks in other areas. But if you were raised in privation, you would find it difficult to justify the expense.]

And when you finally start working, you might see your better-off peers land prestigious unpaid internships, get a new car as a gift from their parents, or have their lavish wedding or new apartment paid for by family.

If you've been following so far, you would probably start wondering why any kid would voluntarily hang out with richer folk after they've grown up when the risk of feeling inferior is so great.

The problem is, when a student joins a top school, whether they realize it or not, important parameters for their social life are being set that will persist for years into the future.

There's a reason socio goes with economic in socio-economic status.

A person's education and upbringing determine their ambitions, drives, values, concerns and perspectives.

A student that has attended a top school will share a very similar set of characteristics (for want of a better word) as their peer group in their school, irrespective of financial background. But, family finances will impose very practical constraints that prevent the student from truly feeling a sense of kinship with their peers.

On the other hand, while a student attending a top school will empathize with someone who comes from a similarly less privileged background, they won't be able to identify with them because their set of characteristics are completely different.

This is just a very convoluted way of telling those lower income kids who attend top schools that they might find that they don't feel like they truly belong anywhere. Now, and in the future.

I first realized this to true when I had the privilege of serving as a man (that is, a corporal. I sooo did not want to liable until I am 50.) during NS. My platoon mates came from fairly average backgrounds, and their concerns were quite different from the friends that I had in school. Some clearly had family problems, and even today, their worries concern more about things like saving up for their parents' medical bills.

In contrast, friends I know from school are generally concerned with weighty matters like, which are the top MBA programs to apply for, what are the opportunities to work as a quant in a hedge fund, or is membership in One o-15 marina a good investment?

The problem is not that I can't appreciate why no one should attend an MBA program outside the top 8. The problem is that I can. Just like I know that getting Wilmott certification is advantageous for working as a quant. I just don't see myself getting hung up over stuff like that. Nor could I ever see myself discussing matters like this over a mess tin of Maggi noodles with my platoon mates during an outfield exercise.

This incongruity between social and economic status is something that any lower-income kid who attends a top school is going to have to grapple with in the years to come.

Do I have advice for lower-income kids who attend top schools? Absolutely.

First, if at all possible, get a part-time job. It can be at McDonalds, Starbucks or just giving tuition. It's something I didn't do as a kid, and I wonder if I made the right decision.

This might sound like irresponsible advice, but hear me out.

It's enormously empowering to make, and spend, your own money. On a practical note, it gives work experience at an early age, and it exposes you to different perspectives. Even minority lower income kids are cloistered to a certain extent in a top school. For once, you'll meet people who don't view not getting an "A" in Physics as an absolute disaster.

As for time taken away from studies, there is always enough time. It's only a matter of priorities. You don't need to top the class in a subject, especially if there is no financial incentive to go with it. If you were smart enough to get into a top school despite being financially disadvantaged, you're smart enough to wing an "A", if just scraping in. Don't work beyond what's required to get the maximum marginal benefit of good grades. That's valuable time you could be spending on something else.

As for how you might spend your income, there's no need to splash out on designer goods. You probably couldn't keep up with your peers anyway. But it would be nice to pay for the occasional meal out or movie.

And not to have to ask parents for the money to attend the school prom, and to actually have something nice to wear to it, priceless! Really, not having money just makes the awkwardness of the teenage years that much harder to bear.

Second piece of advice comes courtesy of Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-hour Workweek, whom I had the pleasure of transcribing an interview of on mturk not long ago.

Diversify your identity.

This is, in fact, very good advice for anybody. Ferriss advises the start-up founders he consults for to take up at least two activities outside of work, one of which is a sport. The rationale is that start-up entrepreneurs have a tendency to get caught up with and obsess over their companies. If they had a bad week at work because of setbacks, which are common with start-ups, it can still be a good week if they, say, clocked a new personal best for their running, or finally succeeded in their personal project at home.

Diversifying your identity is a way of avoiding or delaying burn-out.

I never experienced burn-out as a student, but I have often regretted spending as much time as I did on studies. I tell myself I should have cut loose and relaxed a bit more when I could.

If you're a lower income student in a top school, you're already under enormous pressure to "succeed", which makes it all the more important that you don't burn-out.

This is why having a job could be useful. If you make coffee part-time at Starbucks, you can be the best barista you can be, instead of just another student.

If not a job, instead of angling for a leadership position in school, take up a CCA just for FUN. If you go to church or temple or mosque, volunteer a few hours a week. It can be very helpful to step out of the bubble that a school, especially a top school, can resemble.

Go widen your social circle a little, get some perspective, and grow in different ways. As a person, you'll grow to become more resilient, not to mention much more interesting.

The Government's Argument Against the Minimum Wage

2011-01-16T18:00:00.001+08:00

Lately, there has been a bit of a fracas over whether or not to implement the minimum wage in Singapore (hint: it's not going to happen.)

I am neither for nor against the minimum wage in Singapore. I simply don't know enough to judge whether minimum wage is a good policy to adopt in Singapore.

What I am, however, much more interested in, is dissecting the government's motivations.

From the little that I know, I believe that it is fair to say that the strongest argument against minimum wage is what I shall term here the free market argument. Not coincidentally, it is also the argument that the government is fondest of promulgating.

What is the free market argument? It is that a minimum wage is a floor on the price of labor, and as such, it operates like any price control measure. Econ 101 tells us that if a price floor is below the market price, it has zero effect. When a price floor is above the market price however, it inevitably leads to surplus supply and dumping ("wine lakes" and "butter mountains"). It is the government's claim that distortions from intervening in the labor market will lead to low wage workers losing their jobs, and as such, the government should not implement a minimum wage.

The government's use of the free market argument is considerably weakened by the fact that the government, in fact, intervenes in the labor market ALL THE TIME.

It doesn't take a genius to observe that hordes of lowly paid, lowly skilled foreigners have been imported by the government over the last decade and a half. In an Econ class, that would be called shifting the supply curve to the right.

Tweaks to foreign worker levies, changes to CPF contribution rates, even massive ~~propaganda~~ promotional efforts to herd young people into industries earmarked for future investment and growth, every one of these is an intervention in the labor market. A darker and more sinister observation would be how unions have been systematically co-opted or dismantled since the early days of Singapore's history, with the whole unsavory process given a PR job, rebranded as a 'tripartite framework'.

The micromanagement of the labor market by the government belies its adherence to free market principles.

If they truly believed in free markets, I think they would more readily admit and correct the problems and distortions that have resulted from interventionist policies. These would include:

1. Years of neglect in investing in worker productivity.

2. An over-reliance on cheap foreign labor, which has meant a REDUCTION in our long term national competitiveness. Ceteris paribus, a preponderance of companies and industries that rely on cheap labor mean that much more competition for capital for hi tech and higher value-added companies that could have created higher quality jobs in years past.

3. Following on, a Catch-22 situation, where mis-allocation of capital due to the distortions of cheap foreign labor have resulted in companies that simply cannot survive should labor costs rise. The benefits of cheap labor to GDP growth are falling due to the law of diminishing returns, but if the cheap labor spigot is turned off, the economy will suffer proportionately.

4. Social and economic effects of a large foreigner population. These might include income inequality, a strain on public facilities and resources, the general sense of alienation the native population feels, etc. The list goes on.

The point here is not that intervention in the labor market is good or bad. The point is, for all their pretensions of subscribing to free market ideology, the government lacks the bona fides to claim the use of the free market argument against the minimum wage. Their track record is full of interventionist moves.

So, what's the real reason behind being so vociferous in opposing the minimum wage? The fear of low wage workers losing their jobs is just a cover. I think the real reason lies in point #3 I have highlighted above.

The economy has adapted structurally to an endless supply of cheap, not necessarily, foreign labor. The policy of encouraging cheap foreign immigrant labor is inherently twinned with NOT implementing the minimum wage. To implement something like a minimum wage is akin to cutting the economy off at the knees. There would be an inflationary impact throughout the economy from a domino effect.

The rapid economic growth in years past was assisted, if not directly caused, by massive imports of labor, together with the side effect of keeping local labor cheap. And what is a Singapore politician and civil servant worth if their KPI of economic growth is not being met? Certainly not their Current Estimated Potential.

The problem is that this strategy of cheap labor is starting to see its limits, particularly when we consider the global inflationary environment that is approaching. As inflation ramps up and the costs of other inputs rises, wage costs are going to constitute a smaller and smaller proportion of the total cost of doing business. As wages become less important, competing on wage cost becomes a less viable strategy.

More importantly, continuing with this strategy makes it harder and harder to turn from it. Leaning on a crutch all the time causes the muscles to atrophy. We had the opportunity to raise productivity in years past and in doing so, the wages of the low skilled worker. We ignored it in favor of continuing with cheap foreign labor. Like a country that has long subsidized petrol, we have failed to invest in fuel economy, and as result, every other car on the road is a gas guzzling SUV. In this case, every other company in our economy relies on cheap labor.

But I don't expect changes from our illustrious government officials anytime soon. As Upton Sinclair once said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Book List Refreshed!

2010-11-27T10:29:00.003+08:00

I haven't been blogging lately because I've been busy with a number of things. Just out-pro'ed from my annual Indentured/Conscription Training (ICT) which took away an additional 2 weeks of my life's time.

[And which cost me an estimated $200 - $600 in lost employer's CPF contributions and increased tax liabilities from artificially raised take-home pay. Yes, PAP, I keep a detailed count, thanks to your fine examples of governance over the years, and I will certainly "better the instruction".

Some of my friends lost quite a bit more in the 2 weeks, like lost accounts, sales and commissions.]

I will also be in Nepal in a week or so for paragliding lessons, so I definitely won't be blogging for a while.

On the plus side, I had a chance to catch up on my reading, so here's my book list refreshed.

I have removed:

The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton

Lessons from Private Equity any Company can Use by Hugh Macarthur and Orit Gadiesh

This Time is Different by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff

The Pose Method by Nicholas Romanov

I have added:

America's Bubble Economy by David Wiedemer et al

Richistan by Robert Frank

The Postcatastrophe Economy by Eric Janszen

When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson (which is available for free download here.)

A Disempowered Generation

2010-10-31T16:00:00.001+08:00

The Sunday Times, October 31, 2010.
A Disempowered Generation, page A14

Content from the original article was scraped and is available here with an...impassioned discussion.

Only in Singapore will career politicians reframe a political problem so that it appears to belong to the citizenry and not to them.

___

He said he was reflecting a sentiment held by many of his men in the SAF, who had to compete with foreigners for jobs. 'I feel that there is a dilution of the Singapore spirit in youth... We don't really feel comfortable in our country any more.'

Mr Goh's reply was one of deep concern. 'This is one early [early to the clueless, perhaps. Emphasis mine.] sign of danger... If this is happening, it is very serious.'

He asked Mr Lim why he felt disconnected.

...

'This is your country,' SM Goh replied. 'What do you want me to do to make you feel you belong?' [Note the defensive posture, emphasis mine]

___

News flash to Goh Chok Tong: If young Singaporeans are feeling disenchanted, disenfranchised and dissatisfied (I could have a field day with "dis"), it's not OUR problem. It's YOURS.

Young people are the bedrock of the nation. They are the future upon which the country is built. Just telling us to think positive and look at things purely from your privileged Senior Minister's perch isn't going to magically make all the negative feelings, which are grounded in real causes of your doing, go away.

The world is becoming smaller. For better or for worse, people are a lot more mobile now. It's one of the little consequences of globalization that Singapore has so readily embraced.

Telling the most mobile, talented and arguably, valuable demographic of your nation to suck it up and deal with it is practically laying out the red carpet for us to emigrate. Why not? Even if we wanted to hang that massive millstone of an HDB mortgage around our collective necks, even that has been priced out of our reach lately.

Marriage, family, kids to anchor us here? In case you haven't realized, those life stages are being postponed later and later. No thanks to you.

Voting out the current government to agitate for political change that's more responsive to our needs and aspirations? You should be so lucky we have that option. If we did feel our votes counted, fewer young people would feel so disenfranchised that they feel they need to move to a place where they actually have a voice. Sorry, again, political dissent and change is no-go in Singapore. And again, we ask, whose fault is that?

___

'If that is prevalent among young people over here, we've got a real problem,' SM Goh said. 'If the majority feel they don't belong here, then we have a fundamental problem. Then I would ask myself: What am I [GCT referring to himself, emphasis mine] doing here? Why should I [GCT referring to himself, emphasis mine] be working for people who don't feel they belong over here?'

___

Apparently, our politicians are beneath even the banksters responsible for the worst financial crisis in generations. At least bankers are satisfied to be paid lots of money for wrecking the global economy. Our dear Chok Tong doesn't just want millions of dollars in compensation, which he already gets. He wants to be loved and valued for his work too, by people who feel they belong here.

Funny, I thought the whole point of paying our ministers so much money was to counter the appeal of the private sector and its big bucks over the virtues of working in the public sector. I mean, the reason why we pay you so much was because there was the assumption (asserted by you and your compatriots) that talented people prioritize money over everything else. And here you are claiming that you want to be working, not just for money, but for people who care about your feelings?

What are you, nuts? Bi-polar or something? Afflicted with some affective disorder? Or perhaps you're not the talent we thought you were, since you need more than just millions of dollars. And while we're on that, if your feelings matter, why don't ours?

Let me reiterate my main point. The way young people feel is not our problem. It's YOURS. let me spell that out in case you don't understand one or more parts of it. Y-O-U-R P-R-O-B-L-E-M.

Your government is like a company giving their resigning staff an exit interview, asking for honest feedback, and then systematically rejecting criticism by saying, "It's too bad you feel that way. We're not sorry about it and frankly, we think it's unjustified for you to feel that way."

Fine. Stay on your lonely, delusional moral high ground. Since you're governing in the interests of the foreigners flooding the island, and the top 20% of income earners that benefit disproportionately from your income inequality inducing policies, you guys deserve each other. We'll keep out of your way. Way out.

SGX buying ASX: There are projects and there are "projects"

2010-10-27T19:00:00.001+08:00

It's old news that SGX is attempting to acquire ASX.

The merger is probably going to be value-destroying, as most M&A deals are. See here. The mature Australian market, the imminent loss of monopoly status for the ASX, and the massive amounts of debt AND equity that the SGX has to issue will probably drag down earnings badly in coming years.

The question to ask, of course, is the old Latin adage, "Cui Bono?"

SGX's senior management, and especially its new CEO, are the likeliest beneficiaries of any deal. They will reap massive bonuses for such a "bold" and "audacious" move should a deal go through. They might even be lauded as being "visionary" and showing "leadership". Not only that, as a helpful side benefit, CEO pay of financial institutions is highly correlated with the market capitalization of the institution. It's why banks have evolved to become TBTF.

When it's time to pay the piper, however, Magnus Bocker should have departed long ago to greener pastures. And the shareholders will reap a bitter harvest.

Why am I talking about this? Because the government doesn't operate so differently.

The government frequently rotates senior civil servants, especially scholars, among different ministries and government entities, arguing that doing so broadens exposure and helps senior civil servants to network with each other so the wheels of power are greased whenever things need to get done. We saw this most recently for YOG when everything including the kitchen sink was thrown at it to make it a "success".

What is less commonly known is that highly motivated Type-A civil servants like to leave a distinguishing mark on their most recently assumed 2-5 year appointment, a giant ego-stroking "I was here and I did [insert grandiose, high-falutin' project]". Kind of like a mongrel cur leaving a huge stinking piss stain to obliterate the mark left behind by the previous dog.

Indicators of such propensities include but are not limited to:

a) making deprecating remarks about one’s predecessor’s efforts, particularly remarks that have just the right balance of both obsequiousness, condescension and outright disdain [can’t be too obvious about it, right?].

b) insisting on a new five-year roadmap after just two years into the previous one [which was the length of tenure for the previous appointment holder], with an ironclad requirement that the new roadmap must be sufficiently different from the old one.

c) spending a lot of money underwriting a huge project with nebulous objectives, vague sounding actionable plans, lots of buzzwords, and making sure that it enjoys heavy publicity and the appearance of consultation.

It hasn't been uncommon encountering itinerant, know-it-all, hard-to-please dilettantes in my professional life. I call the phenomenon "Gai3 Chao2 Huan4 Dai4". On a practical note, a proposed project that takes more time to complete than the tenure of the local emperor is usually DOA.

For c) above, do not ever mistake such a project for a vanity project. A vanity project is frivolous and wasteful, but ultimately transparent and relatively pure in intentions.

Such projects serve deeper, more mercenary objectives, namely to elevate the appointment holder’s prestige, and to pad the resume in a quest for a loftier appointment two or more years down the road. Hardly a vanity project; there’s an important goal firmly in sight, just not the one written in the project proposal.

The especially annoying thing is, when reasonable people point out flaws or problems with such a project, it's never the criticisms that are addressed. Instead, the loyalty of the critics is loudly called into question, their judgment or their lack of "vision" is rubbished, and they and their opinions are otherwise dismissed, naysayers and doubting Thomas' all.

In Singapore, the YOG was only just one example in recent memory. There are, of course, others. Here’s a recent one, for instance. Read the last comment in the article and you will see why.

ACS - Weekus Horribilis

2010-10-08T18:00:00.001+08:00

Some disclosure and preamble:
I am an ex-ACS student, and the just resigned principal was principal for three of the four years I was there.

It's been a fun week for the ACS family. NOT.

First, Dr Ong Teck Chin abruptly resigned after an inquiry was made into "inappropriate behavior". Then, not a week passes and ACJC has to deal with the shocking revelation that two female students had been filmed making hot lesbian love in a school toilet cubicle, and the video had been subsequently circulated among students.

First story here, second story here. And full transcript for second story available here.

I'll deal with each story one by one.

Dr Ong should be considered innocent until proven guilty of behaving "inappropriately" towards one of his male teachers.

That said, I think we can all imagine what "behaving inappropriately" means. And where there's smoke...well, you know.

If the teacher was a woman, and I don't mean this in a bad way, there might be some who might question the veracity of her claims. But in this case, because the teacher was a man (let's face it, in a sexual harassment case, it's very rare for a man to play the victim card unless he really was a "victim", and even then...), I'm inclined to believe that there's solid evidence of inappropriate behavior.

Although, one does have to ask: If the teacher did have extensive evidence, that's an awful lot of instant messaging, email and voice recordings to have if it was just a case of harassment.

Either Dr Ong had been really persistent (looks like somebody' s still getting it up in their 60s), or there was something going on that just might have been consensual, and then turned sour. But that's just speculation on my part. Too much trashy TV might have something to do with it.

Somehow, all this just reminds me of Lord Browne and his boy toy. Or Ted Haggard. Or any number of other Christian leaders who have fallen by the wayside.

I am an alum of ACS, and I should properly be shocked, upset or outraged.

But I feel none of those things.

I'm actually amused. A little tickled. Oh, what the hell, I'm experiencing paroxysms of schadenfreude-laced pleasure. I'm a bad, bad person, I know. =)

The thing is, one of the indelible memories I have of my time in ACS was getting railed at every single Monday morning during chapel period. Far from being healing and uplifting, it was an almost toxic experience.

If it wasn't on the sins of having lustful thoughts, it was the evils of "satanic" Dungeons and Dragons role-playing games, Magic the Gathering trading cards (go figure), or the dangers of rock and roll music. There was one time the school even invited an American ex-gay minister to preach at the pulpit.

Well, the irony is rich indeed. With this sexual impropriety scandal involving the principal, it's always fun to see the sanctimonious, holier-than-thou types experience the cognitive dissonance of reconciling their pre-conceived notions with reality.

I actually have a little bit of sympathy for Dr Ong since he's going through hell right now (although if he was hitting on one of his teachers, it's his own damn fault), but I have no sympathy for those at ACS who are distressed by the turn of events.

Turns out that men who have the hots for other men don't just include effete, breathless, hand-wringing types. Or promiscuous, depraved sexual predators. Who knew they could also be fine, upstanding scholars, officers and gentlemen? Hello gay sociology 101, welcome to the real world, folks.

And then there's the ACJC scandal. Quite apart from the reprehensible behavior of students secretly filming other students doing the horizontal tango and then circulating the video, which is already a huge deal to handle, Kelvyna Chan now has a full-blown crisis to deal with because of the gay dimension as well.

Guess she won't be taking over Dr Ong anytime soon.

There's just no good way to deal with the ACJC scandal because our straitlaced culture and societal norms make even talking about anything involving gay people or gay sex taboo and uncomfortable. This is what happens when people sweep stuff beneath the carpet and ignore reality. Conversations that should have happened in the open during less tumultous times now have to be had on terms much less appealing.

Make no mistake. The filming and dissemination of the sex video was an malicious act that should be severely punished. The "having sex in a public place and hence invitation to be filmed" argument isn't an excuse.

But because there are undoubtedly ACJC students like this one: 'What I saw disgusted me,' said the second-year student, who said he could not bring himself to continue watching the rest of the clip, there will inevitably be some quarter of the student population who will somehow view this incident as okay because it involves victims whom they would consider as sexual deviants. Two girls who had it coming to them.

Because a frank conversation on sexual differences probably has never taken place at ACJC, how is Kelvyna Chan and the teachers at ACJC supposed to impress on their students that this kind of behavior, secretly filming other students having sex, is not acceptable, no matter who is involved?

How are they going to reassure their students that the school is a safe environment for learning? Not just for the kids who are still experimenting sexually, but for the collection of misfits, oddballs, and unconventional types that you find in any school who aren't part of the alpha clique of cool kids? Who's going to be safe from the Plastics at ACJC if the school doesn't send a strong message that this is unacceptable?

And if ACJC is really serious about discouraging kids from having sex at that vulnerable age, really, how useful are your abstinence-until-marriage sex-ed classes going to be for the segment of your student population for whom marriage is irrelevant? Like, hello? If you don't even acknowledge their existence, how are you even going to start that conversation with kids who are confused (or sure) about their sexuality?

I think Kelvyna Chan must be secretly glad the two girls have transferred out of her school. She can't expel them just for having sex; that would invite accusations of sexual discrimination. Yet, if they weren't expelled, there would have been a firestorm of protests from concerned parents that ACJC was degenerating in their moral standards. Remember, this is ACJC we're talking about. The same God-fearing Methodist folks who think Magic the Gathering cards are from the devil, to say nothing of sexual perversion.

So, the two girls have transferred out. Now, Kelvyna just has to decide what to do with the students responsible for the filming and circulation. Good luck with that.

Book List Refreshed!

2010-10-05T18:00:00.001+08:00

I have removed:

And then there's this by Bill Wasik
Falling Behind by Robert H. Frank
Liquidated by Karen Ho
Constructing Singapore by Michael T. Barr and Ziatko Skrbis

I have added:

The Pose Method of Running by Nicholas Romanov
Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet by Michael T. Klare
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein

Quick thoughts on the Sunday Times, 3 October 2010

2010-10-03T14:00:00.000+08:00

I haven’t had much time or inclination to write on substantive topics lately, but I’ve still had some thoughts. Just not enough to write lengthy posts on.

I’m starting a new tag, “quick thoughts”, to denote short posts that deal with random topics. Today’s quick thoughts are responses to the Sunday Times, 3 October 2010.

“Inflation Up: How to make your money work harder” – Invest, Page 30

No mention by Lorna Tan on the hardest inflation hedge of all: gold. Disclosure: I’ve been heavily invested in the precious metals for the past 2 plus years or so. That gold is still not mentioned in the mainstream media is great news; it means it hasn’t entered bubble territory, yet.

As always, I make no claims to offering investment advice. I do not share the gains or losses of readers, so make your own investment decisions. If you are at all interested in precious metals, please do your own research.

Personally, I’m invested in gold and silver exchange-traded funds, BUT not GLD or SLV. There have been some allegations or suspicions of fraudulent dealing by both. My holdings are in ZKB and ZSIL, both managed by the Zurich Cantonal Bank. Why? You’ll have to do your own research to figure out why. One thing to note: these two exchange traded funds are traded only on the Swiss Exchange, and the last I checked, only one broker in Singapore offers access to the Swiss Exchange, and that’s Saxo Capital Markets.

“Rail-life Stories” – lifestyle, Page 8

The closure of Tanjong Pagar railway station and its relocation to Woodlands is understandable. Sad, but understandable. It’s not just the land that the station sits on is prime and can be redeveloped, but also all the land that the railway currently sits on.

Still, it would be nice if we had the equivalent of a Grand Central Station or Union Station in downtown Singapore. I love the romantic look and feel of grand railway stations, and I have fond memories of Union Station. As a student at Hopkins, I used to take the train between Baltimore and DC when staying in Baltimore got too boring. Also, air tickets from Dulles International Airport were sometimes substantially cheaper compared to tickets from BWI airport.

High-speed rail between downtown Singapore and downtown Kuala Lumpur would lead to all sorts of positive synergistic effects.

“Screen off the sun” – Pulse, Page 10

I’m not a fan of sunscreen. I apply it to prevent sunburn, not out of a desire to be fair (heck, I’m a guy) or prevent skin cancer.

Unknown to many, there is a sunscreen controversy brewing out there. In a nutshell, there is some evidence to suggest that sunscreen, ironically enough, may increase the risk of malignant melanoma.

Personally, I’m more concerned with vitamin D deficiency. More and more studies have found vitamin D to be implicated in many crucial metabolic processes, and it's unclear if each of us is really getting the amount we ought to be getting. What compounds matters is that if we avoid sun exposure, there really aren’t that many dietary sources of the vitamin, especially if you don’t fancy dairy products.

Coldwater fish oil is one non-dairy source. The problem is that to purge fish oil of contaminants like PCBs, most reputable fish oil supplements, which are touted for their Omega acid content, are probably devoid of vitamin D, thanks to extensive purification processes.

So far, I haven’t found a really satisfactory solution. If you take fish oil, there are good fish oil products out there, like Carlson’s fish oil, which unfortunately isn’t available in Singapore, but still, it won’t provide you with Vitamin D. Personally, I just take Michael Pollan’s advice to eat food. So here’s to an extra serving of saba and shishamo whenever I eat Japanese.

Oh and contrary to Mary Schmich's advice, I'm laying off the sunscreen unless absolutely necessary.

Blogging Break

2010-09-16T19:00:00.001+08:00

I've been busy, and will continue to be busy for the next few weeks, so no blogging for the next few weeks.

Just got back from Bali over the Hari Raya weekend for a short paragliding holiday. I managed to get two flights in, which was helpful in exorcising the previous bad experience I had in Bali.

I met some wonderful people on my trip and made new friends, both pilots and non-pilots alike, so it was an enjoyable trip.

But now with the holiday over, work looms, and this week, I'll be moving house as well, so there's lots to do and no time to ~~bitch about~~ read local news, much less blog about it.

Updates will come later when the time and opportunity to write present themselves again.

Implications of No Retirement Age

2010-09-04T15:00:00.001+08:00

Frontpage article on the Straits Times today - MM Lee: If a man is fit, let him carry on working.

The issue of raising, or even doing away altogether with the retirement age, has been bandied about for quite a while now. Let's begin with a quote from MM Lee, his answer to the last question of the interview the Straits Times did with him (of which a transcript can be found in the Straits Times):

Q: Some Singaporeans disagree with your view that they should not retire but keep on working. They argue that the end of life is a happy retirement, not more work.

A: Those who want to engage in new pursuits, and develop new interests which they could not do so because of work, can do so. They will have no income and may run out of their savings and CPF monies earlier.

The most important thing, something that must always be kept uppermost in mind, is that the government does not want to own the "retirement problem". More to the point, it does not want citizens, for lack of their own funds, becoming destitute, so that the government is placed in the uncomfortable position of either having to loosen the purse-strings, or risk appearing heartless and stingy (and self-aggrandizing, with the massive ministerial pay packets it's famous for).

[Here, of course, we ignore the inconvenient fact that cabinet ministers in Singapore are one of the few groups of civil servants still eligible for pensions.]

Every other argument in favor of raising or abolishing the retirement age, including the rapidly ageing workforce, is a red herring. We've already imported foreign workers by the planeload. And the government has no qualms in importing more. As many as are needed to keep growth high. The recent speeches are just platitudes to placate the masses.

Once you comprehend the motivation behind why MM Lee desires to abolish the retirement age, things become much clearer.

Capable people whose skills are in demand, no matter what their age, are likely to be able to find employment no matter what their age. MM Lee falls into this category (although some would argue that he's manufactured his own need, but I digress). Such people are also likely to have sufficient financial resources to retire as and when they wish.

The real problem is those who can't afford to retire, and must continue working until the day they die to make ends meet. If they're unemployable beyond a certain age, due to some pesky thing called a retirement age, where is the money going to come from to feed and clothe these people? Heaven forbid that it be government.

Please note: In this post, I do not intend to make a stand for or against abolishing the retirement age. I am merely exploring motivations and implications. It just so happens that in exploring motivations, it is difficult not to arrive at the conclusion that the government is...how shall we call it, mercenary.

Somebody needs to pay for the retirement of citizens who cannot afford to not work even in their twilight years. Correction. Let me rephrase that. Somebody needs to finance the decommissioning costs of labor inputs who have outlived their productive life span, are passing into senescence, and who happen to have the statutory status of "citizen" on this island called "Singapore, (Inc.)".

There, that sounds suitably technocratic.

And there is a simple solution for that. Abolish retirement. Make people pay their own way from cradle to grave. And their employers too.

But realistically speaking, employers face massive problems with no retirement age, as amply covered in the Straits Time today. Those problems are serious and real. And besides, foreign direct investment, business and enterprise, these are the lifeblood of the Singapore economy. When push comes to shove, it is far easier to shortchange citizens than businesses here in Singapore. That's why corporate taxes were cut while GST was raised simultaneously in 2007.

Just two days after my last post, I have new predictions to add to my list. What else will the PAP do after being returned to power in the next elections?

1. Further reduce or even eliminate employers' contribution to CPF for workers after the age of 62.

2. Raise the age at which CPF can be withdrawn for retirement purposes (currently 55).

3. Other tweaks to the CPF scheme, such as raising the minimum sum, or requiring a larger amount to be set aside in Medisave. Perhaps more unusual changes, like permitting Medisave to be used for occupational therapy. Or an income-withdrawal matching scheme - you can only take out of CPF an amount that is proportionate to income you earn after 62.

4. The laws requiring employers to retain employees after 62 will certainly be passed at some point, and they will be enforced. But the terms under which employers extend employment to the elderly are likely to be relaxed and weighted in favor of employers. Employers may be free to offer a ~~starvation~~ minimum wage, few benefits or temporary contracts. It's not like the people who need the work are in a position to bargain. I mean, what are they going to do, petition the government for more equitable terms?

Aside from these predictions, there are other implications of abolishing the retirement age.

1. The civil service is going to lead the way. On paper, retaining staff with years of expertise sounds great. So does abolishing seniority-based wage structures. Admittedly, I have interacted with only a few senior civil servants in a personal capacity. But those few I have met all seem to have a very hard time relaxing their grip. It's almost a pathological condition. Having a very large group of people, all with considerable egos, jockeying for position in what already seems like a highly adversarial environment, seems like a hazardous position for bystanders. Like ordinary Singaporeans.

In my job, I've frequently been placed in the ludicrous position of helping to devise 5-year "roadmaps" every 2 years. Every person of "note" desires to put their personal stamp on their new appointment. Personal fiefdoms and what I like to call "turf issues" are remarkably common. If KPIs for civil servants and growth at all costs got us to where we are today, I hesitate to imagine what the future will hold when we have a civil service even more stuffed with highly driven, opinionated and competitive Type A's. Add crotchety, curmudgeon-y, and every other bad elderly cliche to the list.

2. With employers being compelled to retain older people, that means less labor flexibility, which, oddly enough, is sharply at odds with the national labor philosophy. That could ricochet all the way down through the generations. The Straits Times article mentioned Japan. Could we develop a freeter underclass as well?

3. Lots of people won't think too much now about the abolition of the retirement age. They're either too young, or think that they will be financially secure enough to afford voluntary retirement anyway, years from now, so the point is moot.

I am not even 30, but my opinion is different. The economy now is as good as it gets. Fiscal stimulus in developed countries can only go so far, and China's economy is a house built on sand. Normal people are now stretched to afford housing or the lifestyle they aspire to even in such a benign environment, having to take on massive amounts of debt (at currently low interest rates). What happens when all those finely laid plans are turned to dust? Things may appear far less sanguine years into the future.

Some thoughts on the National Day Rally Speech

2010-09-02T16:13:00.003+08:00

I didn't watch the National Day Rally speech on TV. Well, actually, I don't watch local TV, period. Local TV infuriates me, especially when it's a local politician talking-head.

But I skimmed through the details in the paper the next day. Mostly to find out what the "giveaways" were. I put giveaways in quotes as they're not freebies, not really.

As an NSman, I'm eligible for the $9000 CPF credit. Well, not exactly, I'm eligible for only a fraction of it actually. Figures. It's not what I've done for you yesterday that matters; it's what I can do for you today or tomorrow that matters. Very investment banking-like, it's yet another characteristic of the PAP government that hews close to the mentality of bankers. The irony, of course, is that the PAP government never fails to remind us of what it has done for us in the past, and that Singaporeans should be grateful. Well, I think I'll take a leaf from the PAP politician's book from here on. In fact, I've subscribed to that school of thought for quite some time now.

What can you do for me TODAY, PAP, that should make me want to put you back in office? Platitudes can be dispensed with. Show me the money. Otherwise, if I can't get an equitable slice of the pie, I would much rather the whole pie fly out the window. Or end up creaming your face. Think Ultimatum Game.

It's hardly a secret that elections are coming. The whole targeted NS credit is just another election sweetener - targeting the most disenchanted and reactionary segment of the population (the male youth) that has the least to lose and has the shallowest roots (no HDB loan, no career as yet, and no desire to settle down, especially in Singapore, in the near term). The NS credit is even clever in a way, with tiered rewards corresponding to how settled in and unlikely to rock the boat a citizen is.

What's interesting to think about, of course, is what's going to happen AFTER the upcoming elections. The PAP government giveth with one hand, but it has always taketh with another hand also. Long has the PAP government counted on Singaporeans having a memory a little shorter than an election cycle.

Let's have a thought experiment. A prediction game if you will. What do I think the PAP will "take away" after it has been returned to power?

1. GST. The GST offsets from the latest hike have just expired in 2010. That means that GST is fair game again for a hike. Perhaps not too likely, given the hue and cry the last time, but hey, when has unpopularity ever been a reason to stop the government from doing something it badly wants to do? YOG is the most recent example of that.

2. Hospital charges. The last big hike was perhaps in 2008. With the opening of the new Khoo Teck Puat hospital, the government can (honestly!) claim that they've been DOING SOMETHING. That sounds like a fine justification for an increase in charges, innit?

3. Local transportation. Not public transport; the distance-based thingy was a pet project that had only just been recently completed. Nope. If local transportation's going to get more expensive, it's going to be for drivers. No wait, it's not going to be more expensive, at least for [insert arbitrary figure greater than 50% here] of drivers. That's why it's full steam ahead for satellite-based ERP.

4. Ministerial salary increases. Hey, with the economy steaming ahead at double digit percentages, never mind the transient nature of globally-coordinated fiscal stimuli carried out through MORE sovereign debt and ~~money-printing~~ quantitative easing, there's no better time to pay our ministers even more, especially since they may need to take a pay cut later on when the sugar high of fiscal stimulus inevitably wears off. Kind of like retailers marking up merchandise and then discounting it again.

5. The press has gone to town with those wretched students who bilk their parents out of their CPF money for tertiary education. You know it's serious when they devote an editorial in the Straits Times to it. And the government has never liked it when there's even a remote risk of people not being able to afford their own retirement. Expect curbs in the future on usage of CPF money for tertiary education.

I might add to this list in the future. And I will certainly reproduce this list from time to time if and when any of the predictions materialize.

Amazon Mechanical Turk

2010-08-31T19:00:00.001+08:00

I've been spending a not inconsiderable amount of time on mturk.com lately.

I had heard of Amazon's Mechanical Turk quite a while back, but had never really bothered to check it out until recently. Basically, mturk allows humans to either request or work on what are known as Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) for micropayments. Read more here. If you're based in the USA or India, you can actually cash out your earnings. For everyone else, your earnings get deposited into an account with Amazon which you can then use to purchase items on Amazon.

It's generally difficult to make serious money (i.e. more than minimum wage) on mturk, although it's not unheard of. For Requestors, who may range from corporations to graduate students, the quality of work that you can get back from Workers on mturk is also of uncertain quality. But mturk is still a useful resource; that's why it's been around for a while.

I've been working on and off on mturk for the past two weeks or so as a personal project and experiment, and while I never really got to the point of making serious money, it was substantial enough to score me a chunk of change. I made about USD100 over about 10 to 15 hours of work spread over two weeks...and my first shipment of Amazon swag courtesy of mturk is en route to Singapore as we speak via vpost. This is probably an unsustainable figure though, as I scored some high-paying HITs that don't come by too often (One paid me $15 for a 750 word article I cranked out in a little over an hour).

I think I could probably sustainably make about $10 to $20 a week turking. That may not seem like a lot, but it does add up. More importantly, it doesn't feel like work. I complete HITs while surfing on the Internet, waiting for videos on Youtube to load, or just because doing HITs is fun. For instance, I've been completing a set of audio transcriptions of interviews done for a documentary on Polaroid, and it's been interesting hearing artists and photographers talk about why they still use Polaroid despite the prevalence of digital photography.

I've done transcriptions of classroom lectures by Mormons (deathly boring, and for some reason, mturk is stuffed with them), interviews with venture capitalists, interviews with an American manager of an auto components plant in Mexico who talks about offshoring of the auto industry (obviously part of a research study or dissertation), and an interview with the maker of the just released video game Mafia II (probably part of an entertainment channel that wanted a transcription).

So I'm a little picky with my HITs, but that's because I don't do it just for the money. Turking can be fun too.

If you ARE interested in making money on mturk, then you would probably want a strategy that maximizes profits and minimizes the time spent. Lots of strategies that you can google for out on the web. But personally, I'm just happy to make a few dollars each day doing something that's mildly enjoyable and not having to spend any cash at all the next time I order something from Amazon.

The Pose Method

2010-08-22T22:37:00.005+08:00

Perhaps it's because posts on my blog are linked from Singapore Daily that I have unconsiously written more from a socio-economic slant, although that wasn't the original intention with which I started this blog.

This blog was originally meant to serve as a repository of my thoughts as well as a communication tool, both with people I know personally (but often do not meet up with in person as often as I would like) and with people I don't know but might find interesting to converse with online.

In any case, it's been a while since I posted anything on running, which had been one primary subject for this blog. Running is, after all, something I spend about 10 hours on a week.

Today's post is on the Pose Method, a modified running form that is purported to improve performance.

Re-engineering one's form in any sport is never a simple or quick matter, particularly without coaching, so I had drastically reduced my mileage from the usual 40 - 60 kilometers per week (off-season) to a more moderate 25 kilometers per week in the last two months to experiment with the Pose Method. Of course, I took care not to sign up for any race this year, such as the Stanchart Marathon which I traditionally run at the end of the year, so there was no pressure to add mileage during the week.

There's a lot of information on the web on the Pose Method; it's just that most people haven't heard of it before. In fact, the creator of the Pose Method, Nicholas Romanov, first found widespread interest in the method not among runners, for which it had been originally developed for, but among the more ~~hardcore~~ open-minded triathlon community.

Very briefly, the Pose Method allegedly improves efficiency and performance while reducing the risk of injury, particularly chronic overuse injuries that typically plague runners. It does so by prescribing naturally falling forefoot landings, rapid ankle raising/pulling, and a forward lean that harnesses the force of gravity.

Does it work?

After two months of experimenting, I think it does. I'm running either faster, or at a comparable speed to what I was running before, but with noticeably less effort.

However, from my experience, the Pose Method is not without caveats.

The Pose Method requires the runner to run at a reasonably fast pace - an equivalent or better than four and a half minute per kilometer pace. That translates into a sub-eight minute per mile pace. If you can't run that fast, you're going to have problems with the forward lean part of the Pose Method.

Secondly, one of the virtues of the Pose Method is that it reduces the likelihood of injury to the joints, especially the knees, by prescribing forefoot landings. The impact of running, however, still needs to be absorbed somewhere, and in the case of the Pose Method, it's the calves and the Achilles tendons that do the job.

The first time I ran using a facsimile of the Pose Method, emphasising forefoot landings, I couldn't run for a week after. The Pose Method is murder on the calves for beginners, before the gastrocnemius and soleus have had time to adapt and remodel in response to the increased loading. Unfortunately, I found out about this only after beginning my training. Now, with increased practice though, I can comfortably run about 14 kilometers with the Pose Method.

Is the Pose Method right for you? Well, it depends on whether you can learn well using just books and videos, which is what I did. And if you're fine with the two caveats above. As I said, re-engineering form is never an easy endeavor, and you should never attempt it if you are currently training for a race or an event. Save it for the off-season instead.

[I have no way of proving it, but I suspect Straits Times journalists read blogs too, and more annoyingly, crib ideas from the blogosphere. It does seem an awful bit of coincidence that a post I had written several weeks back provided ideas for an article that ran just a few weeks later. It wasn't the first coincidental occurrence, but this was the most recent example. So this is just a placeholder here in case Jeanette Wang, resident runner and fitness editor at the Straits Times, or anyone else for that matter, decides to write something on the Pose Method and publish it in the local paper.]

The YOG will be a success

2010-08-17T19:00:00.005+08:00

It must be nice working for the government when you're in a position like Teo Ser Luck. Or Vivian Balakrishnan.

Ignoring that part of the reason why the YOG is being organized is to bolster your public profile just so you can stand for elections under the ruling party's banner in the near future, purely a coincidence I'm sure, the government will bend over backwards and pull out all the stops to make the event happen. Nay, not happen, make it a success even, a foregone conclusion.

Budget overrun? No problem. Triple the amount of money available, and doubtless there's more if needed. Concerned with transportation hiccups? Request that the LTA mandate a YOG-only lane that motorists must give way to, on pain of a fine. Put in a note to remind Ms. Saw from SMRT to run more trains, something a groundswell of grousing and bitching from the public failed to do. Stacks of tickets left unsold? Get MOE to conscript students and SAF commanders to force NSFs to attend the various events. Apathetic public? Enlist the "nation-building" press to print favorable stories and put the best possible spin on things. Whatever. Call in all the favors you need. The time and inconvenience to thousands of students, NSFs and motorists is...inconsequential when it comes to trading favors between powers that have a mutual understanding of how things really work here on the Island. I think they call it networking in the public service, and those job rotations are meant to foster this sort of thing.

As for inconveniencing the great unwashed, people are resources and factor inputs after all; they're meant to be used to achieve a desired result. If you have to, justify it with a nebulous claim of supporting the Olympic spirit, or an appeal to nationalistic sentiments. Doesn't matter that it runs counter to the average experience that a Singaporean grows up with, that if you want something, you've got to pay for it (hey, we learnt from the best.) You want my time, my passion, pay for it. Money talks and bullshit walks.

If a project that I had to manage at work were to meet with massive budget overruns, failure to meet specified targets, or inability to obtain customer buy-in, I would be hauled up before the risk management committee, along with my boss, for an earful. My bonus would be negatively affected, and my career prospects probably shot.

No recourse to summon extraordinary resources from distant realms, like what the organizers for the YOG can do. And of course the YOG will be a success. The only KPI for its success, after all, is that it was held. Nobody should doubt that the Anointed Ones for the YOG will receive anything other than accolades for this event. After all, worst things have occurred on the watch of other luminaries and nothing untoward has ever happened to them.

I wish I had a teflon career. With millions of dollars in wages and benefits. Pity. Common mortals like me are so...encumbered...with accountability.

When will housing prices return to 'normal'?

2010-07-29T18:30:00.001+08:00

I think few ordinary Singaporeans would think that housing in Singapore is affordable or reasonably priced.

Yet, while I share this view, I have been hesitant to label the Singapore housing situation a bubble, unlike many other bloggers or news sites. This is because there are several fundamental drivers for property prices in Singapore. Also, indicators for property valuations are mixed. For example, price-income ratios appear to be on high side, but price-rent ratios are more moderate.

Note, however, that this post does NOT constitute an exhortation to "buy now before it becomes even more expensive" or that property represents an excellent investment proposition in Singapore.

This post is on thinking about why housing prices have risen, what could cause prices to reverse, and how likely it is that prices will return to a more moderate, 'normal' level.

I have identified 5 drivers for the recent rise in property prices in the past 7 years or so:

1. Strong GDP growth and a relatively stable employment. Wage growth, however, is a separate issue. But clearly, at least some people, notably higher income groups (both local and expatriate) benefit from GDP growth.

2. High rates of immigration.

3. Liberalization in property-related policies. For example:

reduction in downpayment from 20% to 10% for HDB flats bought with bank loans, enacted in 2005.
permitting singles to buy any type of HDB flat, when previously they were restricted to 3-room flats.
permitting entire HDB flats to be rented out.
reducing the number of years flatowners must stay in their flats before they can be sold on the resale market.

Notably, HDB has backpedalled on some policies since property prices started sky-rocketing. I do not have an exhaustive list of all the policy changes that the government has enacted in the last 7 years or so (and there are many). Frankly, the housing policy system in Singapore, just like the CPF policies, are byzantine. But the overwhelming impression I get is that policies today are far more liberal than they were 7 years ago. Enlightened readers can correct me here if I am wrong.

4. Inelastic supply of property, in particular HDB flats. HDB's BTO scheme is largely responsible for the latter situation.

5. Ample liquidity, and low interest rates. This is a function of governments around the world flooding the markets with liquidity, particularly Bernanke's quantitative easing policy. There is a direct inverse relationship between property prices and interest rates.

Given these positive fundamental drivers, high property prices in Singapore may stay high for a very long time. 'Normal' could be a long time coming, which might be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your personal financial situation. Again, I have to reiterate here that I am NOT recommending investing or buying property now. I'm not in the market for Singapore property, or any property for that matter, now and in the foreseeable future, so I'm not talking my book.

How might the fundamental drivers listed above be affected such that property prices start to fall and moderate?

Clearly, government policy has a lot to do with policy liberalization, immigration and housing supply. Given how wedded our government is to immigration and just-in-time construction policy, I'm not holding my breath for change here. The government has shown a willingness to tweak housing policy, but it is evident that their effects are not as potent as increasing supply or restricting immigration. Barring a massive loss by the PAP at the next general election, which needless to say is a black swan event, we can safely conclude that policies conducive to high property prices will continue to persist.

As for economic growth, liquidity and low interest rates, these will largely depend on external factors. In particular, if the wheels come off the global economy due to fiscal stimulus wearing off, or if the China overcapacity, commodity-buying and property bubbles burst, or if the US dollar suffers a crisis of confidence, or if the sovereign bond market revolts and stages a massive puke-up...well, a lot of very bad things could happen in a very short time.

Singapore's economy would clearly suffer in such a situation, with knock-on effects on foreign direct investment, capital flows and property prices (and perhaps even immigration).

On balance, it's difficult to say when property prices in Singapore will revert to 'normal'. If you believe that high growth will continue, you might hold the view that housing prices have reached a permanent new plateau, never to descend again.

If on the other hand, you see unsustainable policies, interest rates, levels of debt both sovereign and household, and money-printing everywhere you look, you might have far less sanguine views.

Myself? Let me reiterate for the third time that this post does not constitute a recommendation or a forecast. Whatever I write could well be very wrong.

I think that property prices will continue to grind higher (keyword: grind, meaning protracted and choppy but with a directional bias) for the short to medium term, meaning 6-18 months or so. Perhaps longer. If an economic reversal occurs however, then property prices will probably plunge sharply and quickly. In other words, my view is that property price movements will be assymmetric in direction and magnitude. Less potential upside relative to potential downside.

What are some possible unintended consequences of massive immigration?

2010-07-18T16:20:00.001+08:00

Disclaimer: Some readers might take offense at this post. This post is not motivated by any form of xenophobia, and I will maintain as neutral a tone as I can manage throughout. The purpose of this post is as a thought experiment, to think about potential unintended, and more importantly, unexpected, consequences of unrestrained and massive immigration. If you've read the Black Swan, you can think of this post as an exercise in Black Swan hunting.

We know massive immigration causes problems. Particularly when immigrant populations are not well integrated into the mainstream population or when the native population is outnumbered by foreigners. For example, see the civil unrest in France in 2005, Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, or the July 2009 Urumqi riots in Xinjiang.

Immigration in Singapore appears to be mostly free of these problems, and the main concerns here have been more prosaic, if still important, such as the cost of housing, employment of citizens vis-a-vis foreigners, and the declining quality of life, particularly those who rely heavily on public services.

I don't intend to interrogate these consequences of immigration, as they are well known and noticed, but to look for consequences and effects that are less obvious, less often perceived. Things that won't be found in some official record somewhere, but are street observations that are undocumented, until perhaps sometime in the future.

Take neighborhoods for instance. I am a flaneur, and the tagline of my blog is "An obsession to walk the city to experience it". And what I've noticed over the years is the changing character of neighborhoods as a result of immigration.

We know neighborhoods change as a result of redevelopment and gentrification. Tiong Bahru for instance, while still retaining an air of authenticity, has been gentrified almost beyond recognition. The most accessible parts of Chinatown are one big giant tourist trap (the interior is still somewhat authentic). And most of the shophouses in the Tanjong Pagar conservation area are given over to offices, particularly law firms and accountants' offices. I should know, I used to temp there.

But some areas have changed mainly as a result of immigration. Joo Chiat, for instance, was and perhaps is still infamous for vice, mainly stemming from callgirls from China setting up shop there.

Then there are what I call 'immigrant enclaves', buildings or places that attract a disproportionate number belonging to a particular foreigner ethnic group. For example anyone who has spent any amount of time in Singapore would know that Lucky Plaza is Filipino central, particularly on weekends. As a JC student years ago who used to head to Orchard every weekend (to chill at Takashimaya 'Square'), I used to marvel at the number of Filipino maids who would picnic on the lawn where Ion Orchard is now situated at.

Similarly, Golden Mile Complex has long been popular with Thais. I remember one time I wandered there while looking for Army supplies at Beach Road and was bewildered by the sheer number of Thais and Thai signboards. I felt like I had been transported to Bangkok.

On recent trips to Peninsula Plaza, I noticed the vast numbers of Myanmarese businesses (travel agencies and shops) amid the ... piquant ... odor of that aging mall.

What, in practice, have I found to be the best indicator that an area or building has been colonized by an immigrant group?

Supermarkets. Because food is so integral to culture, and supermarkets are high volume, low margin businesses, ethnic supermarkets are the number one indicator of a sizeable immigrant presence. Places of worship are another great indicator, but still not as useful, or visible, as supermarkets.

It's not just places that change as a result of immigration. Industries and occupations change as a result of immigration too.

We've already talked about vice in Joo Chiat due to China girls. Then there's that infamous report on human trafficking in Singapore that the government has dismissed. Perhaps Singapore's allegedly lax stance on immigration has contributed directly or indirectly to the prevalence of human trafficking in the sex trade here. We have the ubiquitous Banglas in the construction industry, more accurately South Asians, as they comprise Indians and Pakistanis as well. Their social problems have been well-documented by The Online Citizen. And the nimby effect was clearly evident when the thorny problem of situating their dormitories came up. We have also seen the problems of customers communicating, or not communicating, with non-English speaking service staff. Everyone in Singapore has had experience with that. And university students in the local universities have long complained of lecturers from China or India who are unable to teach effectively due to their heavy accents.

What is less commonly remarked upon, noticed, or is simply a more recent phenomenon?

The Ministry of Manpower has an entire department of statisticians churning out labor statistics which are unfortunately publicly unavailable due to 'sensitivity', but we can make a few observations.

The IT industry and call centre industry is heavy with foreigners, particularly Filipinos. Anyone who has had to interrupt a meeting because of a cold call from a credit card representative would know this if he had deigned to notice. A friend who works as an IT recruiter has commented that it has been this way for quite a while.

And a colleague who complained of driving on the roads these days because of "aggressive" mainland China bus drivers clued me in on something I had noticed, but hadn't really internalized. Our bus drivers today are increasingly from China. And they're aggressive enough on the roads to have caused some drivers to take notice. Just a few days ago, a friend told me of how his bus driver got into an quarrel with a passenger due to a fallen tree branch incident which blocked traffic on an expressway. The bus drivers of today aren't the bus drivers of yesteryear, that's for sure.

We know of wildcat strikes in China at Honda factories. For better or for worse, immigrants to Singapore are generally not as ... tractable ... as native Singaporeans. If a critical part of our infrastructure like the public bus transport network is heavily dependent on foreigners of a particular ethnicity or creed, what happens if they have reason to get organized and demonstrate, protest or go on strike? Like the Falun Gong demonstration that happened in Singapore a while back? Or the diplomatic fracas that came in the wake of the Flor Contemplacion incident? There would potentially be a lot more unhappy Filipinos on Singapore soil today should a diplomatic incident like that happen again. And frankly, before 9/11, Singapore was lucky to not have sourced for immigrants from Muslim states that might subsequently have found our staunch relationship with the USA ... objectionable.

What about our other industries? Electronics, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, construction? Any possibility of some adverse event occurring simply because we are so critically dependent on "hired help" in those industries? Nobody knows, and the MOM a'int talking. Maybe we should start asking. Just sayin'.

Finally, immigration changes not just places and industries, but also people.

With every change, I find myself becoming less and less rooted to this island. A sizeable mass of Singaporeans has been disenchanted with "growth at all costs", income inequality and massive immigration. Because of immigration, some wags talk about being second class citizens in our own country. We have become disenchanted, disenfranchised and increasingly disconnected.

Home is where the heart is, but what happens when the heart itself has left the home?

I remember when the old National Library building was demolished despite massive public dissent, and the collective memories of generations was lost. Is that so different when neighborhoods are transformed through immigration? They may be revitalized, and that is undoubtedly a good thing for places plagued with urban decay, but something is lost nonetheless. Lost and unmourned.

Our local patois of Singlish is regularly denigrated (lah), as if being drowned in a babel of foreign tongues and accents is not challenge enough already. Will the day come when even ordering in a hawker centre is something that can't be done in Singlish? Because the service staff don't speak it, not at all?

And immigrants are brought in to "stick spurs" in our hides to make us work harder. We work plenty hard already, and are justly proud of our achievements. Yet we are told time and time again to work harder, cheaper, better, faster. We are exhorted to emulate some city or country, to strive to be the "insert city here" of the east. We are told we have to be hungry like some nationality or ethnic group. We are made to feel inadequate and insecure, and when we voice concerns, those concerns are belittled or dismissed. All the national education and NDP parades in the world will not be enough to dispel the actual experience of the modern day Singaporean. That despite having made it from third world to first, we are still not good enough. Hence the need for more immigration. We are not allowed to feel pride in being Singaporean.

The Singapore Tourism Board has been zealous in promoting the Uniquely Singapore brand. But no one seems to be paying attention to the fast eroding Uniquely Singaporean Identity. For better or for worse, we are getting disconnected from our place of birth. We already have a low birth rate. Do we need an escalating rate of migration among native born Singaporeans as well?

It is clear from recent news that the powers that be are intellectually wedded to a pro-immigration policy. But what might that tunnel vision bring us in the future, when the unintended consequences of massive immigration are fully felt?

Remark:

I am very interested in the transforming urban landscape in Singapore due to immigration. I would be much obliged to readers who can point out instances of neighborhoods or districts that seem to have taken on an overt foreign character.

"How Microbes Defend and Define Us"

2010-07-14T19:00:00.000+08:00

From The New York Times
By CARL ZIMMER
Published: July 12, 2010

In 2008, Dr. Khoruts, a gastroenterologist at the University of Minnesota, took on a patient suffering from a vicious gut infection of Clostridium difficile. She was crippled by constant diarrhea, which had left her in a wheelchair wearing diapers. Dr. Khoruts treated her with an assortment of antibiotics, but nothing could stop the bacteria. His patient was wasting away, losing 60 pounds over the course of eight months. “She was just dwindling down the drain, and she probably would have died,” Dr. Khoruts said.

Dr. Khoruts decided his patient needed a transplant. But he didn’t give her a piece of someone else’s intestines, or a stomach, or any other organ. Instead, he gave her some of her husband’s bacteria.

Dr. Khoruts mixed a small sample of her husband’s stool with saline solution and delivered it into her colon. Writing in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology last month, Dr. Khoruts and his colleagues reported that her diarrhea vanished in a day. Her Clostridium difficile infection disappeared as well and has not returned since.

The procedure — known as bacteriotherapy or fecal transplantation — had been carried out a few times over the past few decades. But Dr. Khoruts and his colleagues were able to do something previous doctors could not: they took a genetic survey of the bacteria in her intestines before and after the transplant.

Before the transplant, they found, her gut flora was in a desperate state. “The normal bacteria just didn’t exist in her,” said Dr. Khoruts. “She was colonized by all sorts of misfits.”

Two weeks after the transplant, the scientists analyzed the microbes again. Her husband’s microbes had taken over. “That community was able to function and cure her disease in a matter of days,” said Janet Jansson, a microbial ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a co-author of the paper. “I didn’t expect it to work. The project blew me away.”

Scientists are regularly blown away by the complexity, power, and sheer number of microbes that live in our bodies. “We have over 10 times more microbes than human cells in our bodies,” said George Weinstock of Washington University in St. Louis. But the microbiome, as it’s known, remains mostly a mystery. “It’s as if we have these other organs, and yet these are parts of our bodies we know nothing about.”

Dr. Weinstock is part of an international effort to shed light on those puzzling organs. He and his colleagues are cataloging thousands of new microbe species by gathering their DNA sequences. Meanwhile, other scientists are running experiments to figure out what those microbes are actually doing. They’re finding that the microbiome does a lot to keep us in good health. Ultimately, researchers hope, they will learn enough about the microbiome to enlist it in the fight against diseases.

“In just the last year, it really went from a small cottage industry to the big time,” said David Relman of Stanford University.

The microbiome first came to light in the mid-1600s, when the Dutch lens-grinder Antonie van Leeuwenhoek scraped the scum off his teeth, placed it under a microscope and discovered that it contained swimming creatures. Later generations of microbiologists continued to study microbes from our bodies, but they could only study the ones that could survive in a laboratory. For many species, this exile meant death.

In recent years, scientists have started to survey the microbiome in a new way: by gathering DNA. They scrape the skin or take a cheek swab and pull out the genetic material. Getting the DNA is fairly easy. Sequencing and making sense of it is hard, however, because a single sample may yield millions of fragments of DNA from hundreds of different species.

A number of teams are working together to tackle this problem in a systematic way. Dr. Weinstock is part of the biggest of these initiatives, known as the Human Microbiome Project. The $150 million initiative was started in 2007 by the National Institutes of Health. The project team is gathering samples from 18 different sites on the bodies of 300 volunteers.

To make sense of the genes that they’re gathering, they are sequencing the entire genomes of some 900 species that have been cultivated in the lab. Before the project, scientists had only sequenced about 20 species in the microbiome. In May, the scientists published details on the first 178 genomes. They discovered 29,693 genes that are unlike any known genes. (The entire human genome contains only around 20,000 protein-coding genes.)

“This was quite surprising to us, because these are organisms that have been studied for a long time,” said Karen E. Nelson of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md.

The new surveys are helping scientists understand the many ecosystems our bodies offer microbes. In the mouth alone, Dr. Relman estimates, there are between 500 and 1,000 species. “It hasn’t reached a plateau yet: the more people you look at, the more species you get,” he said. The mouth in turn is divided up into smaller ecosystems, like the tongue, the gums, the teeth. Each tooth—and even each side of each tooth—has a different combination of species.

Scientists are even discovering ecosystems in our bodies where they weren’t supposed to exist. Lungs have traditionally been considered to be sterile because microbiologists have never been able to rear microbes from them. A team of scientists at Imperial College London recently went hunting for DNA instead. Analyzing lung samples from healthy volunteers, they discovered 128 species of bacteria. Every square centimeter of our lungs is home to 2,000 microbes.

Some microbes can only survive in one part of the body, while others are more cosmopolitan. And the species found in one person’s body may be missing from another’s. Out of the 500 to 1,000 species of microbes identified in people’s mouths, for example, only about 100 to 200 live in any one person’s mouth at any given moment. Only 13 percent of the species on two people’s hands are the same. Only 17 percent of the species living on one person’s left hand also live on the right one.

This variation means that the total number of genes in the human microbiome must be colossal. European and Chinese researchers recently catalogued all the microbial genes in stool samples they collected from 124 individuals. In March, they published a list of 3.3 million genes.

The variation in our microbiomes emerges the moment we are born.

“You have a sterile baby coming from a germ-free environment into the world,” said Maria Dominguez-Bello, a microbiologist at the University of Puerto Rico. Recently, she and her colleagues studied how sterile babies get colonized in a hospital in the Venezuelan city of Puerto Ayacucho. They took samples from the bodies of newborns within minutes of birth. They found that babies born vaginally were coated with microbes from their mothers’ birth canals. But babies born by Caesarean section were covered in microbes typically found on the skin of adults.

“Our bet was that the Caesarean section babies were sterile, but it’s like they’re magnets,” said Dr. Dominguez-Bello.

We continue to be colonized every day of our lives. “Surrounding us and infusing us is this cloud of microbes,” said Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University. We end up with different species, but those species generally carry out the same essential chemistry that we need to survive. One of those tasks is breaking down complex plant molecules. “We have a pathetic number of enzymes encoded in the human genome, whereas microbes have a large arsenal,” said Dr. Gordon.

In addition to helping us digest, the microbiome helps us in many other ways. The microbes in our nose, for example, make antibiotics that can kill the dangerous pathogens we sniff. Our bodies wait for signals from microbes in order to fully develop. When scientists rear mice without any germ in their bodies, the mice end up with stunted intestines.

In order to co-exist with our microbiome, our immune system has to be able to tolerate thousands of harmless species, while attacking pathogens. Scientists are finding that the microbiome itself guides the immune system to the proper balance.

One way the immune system fights pathogens is with inflammation. Too much inflammation can be harmful, so we have immune cells that produce inflammation-reducing signals. Last month, Sarkis Mazmanian and June L. Round at Caltech reported that mice reared without a microbiome can’t produce an inflammation-reducing molecule called IL-10.

The scientists then inoculated the mice with a single species of gut bacteria, known as Bacteroides fragilis. Once the bacteria began to breed in the guts of the mice, they produced a signal that was taken up by certain immune cells. In response to the signal, the cells developed the ability to produce IL-10.

Scientists are not just finding new links between the microbiome and our health. They’re also finding that many diseases are accompanied by dramatic changes in the makeup of our inner ecosystems. The Imperial College team that discovered microbes in the lungs, for example, also discovered that people with asthma have a different collection of microbes than healthy people. Obese people also have a different set of species in their guts than people of normal weight.

In some cases, new microbes may simply move into our bodies when disease alters the landscape. In other cases, however, the microbes may help give rise to the disease. Some surveys suggest that babies delivered by Caesarian section are more likely to get skin infections from multiply-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It’s possible that they lack the defensive shield of microbes from their mother’s birth canal.

Caesarean sections have also been linked to an increase in asthma and allergies in children. So have the increased use of antibiotics in the United States and other developed countries. Children who live on farms — where they can get a healthy dose of microbes from the soil — are less prone to getting autoimmune disorders than children who grow up in cities.

Some scientists argue that these studies all point to the same conclusion: when children are deprived of their normal supply of microbes, their immune systems get a poor education. In some people, untutored immune cells become too eager to unleash a storm of inflammation. Instead of killing off invaders, they only damage the host’s own body.

A better understanding of the microbiome might give doctors a new way to fight some of these diseases. For more than a century, scientists have been investigating how to treat patients with beneficial bacteria. But probiotics, as they’re sometimes called, have only had limited success. The problem may lie in our ignorance of precisely how most microbes in our bodies affect our health.

Dr. Khoruts and his colleagues have carried out 15 more fecal transplants, 13 of which cured their patients. They’re now analyzing the microbiome of their patients to figure out precisely which species are wiping out the Clostridium difficile infections. Instead of a crude transplant, Dr. Khoruts hopes that eventually he can give his patients what he jokingly calls “God’s probiotic” — a pill containing microbes whose ability to fight infections has been scientifically validated.

Dr. Weinstock, however, warns that a deep understanding of the microbiome is a long way off.

“In terms of hard-boiled science, we’re falling short of the mark,” he said. A better picture of the microbiome will only emerge once scientists can use the genetic information Dr. Weinstock and his colleagues are gathering to run many more experiments.

“It’s just old-time science. There are no short-cuts around that,” he said.

Revisiting the Streisand Effect

2010-07-13T21:29:00.003+08:00

First, the MDA banned a new book unflattering to the Singapore government, as it promised to be an expose of the allegedly unsavory aspects of the death penalty, in particular the uneven way it is applied (h/t the online citizen).

Then, hardly a few days had passed before Martyn See's new film was banned. Again by the MDA, that paragon of virtue and guardian of Singapore's tender fragile minds.

You know what this reminds me of? When Royston Tan's film "15" was censored years ago, and he made a satirical film called "Cut" in retaliation and released it online, generating massive publicity. I remember this incident well, because I wrote a post on it waaay back in 2004 on www.newsintercom.org explaining that censoring 15 backfired on the Board of Film Censors as it generated a whole lot more interest in the film than if they had left well enough alone. Let's face it: "artsy" films like 15 play to largely a self-selected audience of intelligentsia that collectively already has a less than sanguine opinion of the establishment. Censoring the film was like tempting fate to unleash the dreaded Streisand Effect.

Martyn See was absolutely right in saying that "I like to thank the Minister for banning this [film]. It generates more interest on the video now." I for one, will be looking to view this video myself for a fresh perspective. Just like I will be interested in reading the book just banned by MDA.

This post is a corollary to what I have stated before, that the mainstream media is in danger of becoming irrelevant. Information wants to be free, and the MDA is fighting a losing battle.

"Google’s Do-It-Yourself App Creation Software"

2010-07-12T19:00:00.000+08:00

From The New York Times
By STEVE LOHR
Published: July 11, 2010

Google is bringing Android software development to the masses.

The company will offer a software tool, starting Monday, that is intended to make it easy for people to write applications for its Android smartphones.

The free software, called Google App Inventor for Android (http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/), has been under development for a year. User testing has been done mainly in schools with groups that included sixth graders, high school girls, nursing students and university undergraduates who are not computer science majors.

The thinking behind the initiative, Google said, is that as cellphones increasingly become the computers that people rely on most, users should be able to make applications themselves.

“The goal is to enable people to become creators, not just consumers, in this mobile world,” said Harold Abelson, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is on sabbatical at Google and led the project.

The project is a further sign that Google is betting that its strategy of opening up its technology to all kinds of developers will eventually give it the upper hand in the smartphone software market. Its leading rival, Apple, takes a more tightly managed approach to application development for the iPhone, controlling the software and vetting the programs available.

“We could only have done this because Android’s architecture is so open,” Mr. Abelson said.

Mr. Abelson is a longtime proponent of making intellectual and scientific resources more open. He is a founding director of the Free Software Foundation, Public Knowledge and the Creative Commons, and he helped initiate M.I.T.’s OpenCourseWare program, which offers free online course materials used in teaching the university’s classes.

The Google project, Mr. Abelson said, is intended to give users, especially young people, a simple tool to let them tinker with smartphone software, much as people have done with computers. Over the years, he noted, simplified programming tools like Basic, Logo and Scratch have opened the door to innovations of all kinds. Microsoft’s first product, for example, was a version of Basic, pared down to run on personal computers.

The Google application tool for Android enables people to drag and drop blocks of code — shown as graphic images and representing different smartphone capabilities— and put them together, similar to snapping together Lego blocks. The result is an application on that person’s smartphone.

For example, one student made a program to inform a selected list of friends, with a short text message, where he was every 15 minutes. The program was created by putting three graphic code blocks together: one block showed the phone’s location sensor, another showed a clock (which he set for 15-minute intervals), and third linked to a simple database on a Web site, listing the selected friends.

An onscreen button would turn on the program, Mr. Abelson explained, for perhaps a few hours on a Saturday night when the person wanted his friends to know where he was.

A student at the University of San Francisco, Mr. Abelson said, made a program that automatically replied to text messages, when he was driving. “Please don’t send me text messages,” it read. “I’m driving.”

A program by a nursing student at Indiana University enabled a phone to send an emergency message or make a call, if someone fell. It used the phone’s accelerometer to sense a fall. If the person did not get up in a short period or press an onscreen button, the program automatically texted or called the person designated to receive the alert.

“These aren’t the slickest applications in the world,” Mr. Abelson said. “But they are ones ordinary people can make, often in a matter of minutes.”

The Google tool, of course, works only for phones running Android software. A sign-up with a Google Gmail account is required. The tool is Web-based except for a small software download that automatically syncs the programs created on a personal computer, connected to the application inventor Web site, with an Android smartphone. When making programs, the phone must be connected to a computer with a U.S.B. link.

Liquidated - Parallels between Wall Street and the Singapore Civil Service

2010-07-08T19:00:00.001+08:00

I recently finished reading Liquidated by Karen Ho. It wasn't an easy read; in fact I skimmed through large chunks of it. Satyajit Das was right in saying that it reads like a doctoral dissertation.

Still, what struck me were some of the similarities between Wall Street investment bankers and how the Singapore civil service governs the country. Perhaps because I had been reading Constructing Singapore concurrently that the similarities popped right out. The parallels may or may not be spurious though; I'll leave that up to the readers of this post to decide for themselves.

First: Wall Street investment banks like to hire the best students from the best universities. Harvard and Princeton are the main hiring grounds, and potential hires are feted and treated like rock stars. Although I attended a relatively second tier institution in the United States during my time in university, even I felt the lure of the investment banks. All week during career week, students came walking out of the Glass Pavilion (an exhibition space in my school) carrying coveted swag from the banks.

Ho in her book postulates that the reason why Wall Street banks focus their hiring almost exclusively on the top universities is because they in effect leverage on the stellar reputation of top-tier universities to give themselves the sheen of prestige and extraordinary capability. That in turn helps to capture business. e.g. Goldman Sachs hires only the best students from Harvard. If you hire Goldman to represent your corporation, you've got the smartest guys in the room playing on your team.

It's not important that the people the investment banks hire really are individuals of the highest calibre. What's really the most important thing is that the perception that Wall Street investment banks hire only the best legitimizes why they can charge the astronomical fees they charge and how they can get away with the financial equivalent of murder when things fall apart. After all, if the smartest guys couldn't have saved the day, whocouldhaveknown???

In my mind, this doesn't seem so different from how the Singapore government insists on academic excellence in its highly credentialed acolytes, and has metrics like the infamous Current Estimated Potential. It's part of the reason why the government can make the boldfaced claim that we have to pay the highest ministerial salaries in the world to keep the good people we have in government, even if the actual performance of our ministers seems to be ~~mediocre~~ unremarkable.

Second: In her book, Ho talks about the myth of "increasing shareholder value". It's like a religion to investment banker types. Everyone in investment banking drinks the Kool-aid and uses the shareholder value argument to justify all kinds of business actions, such as mergers and acquisitions, even though years of academic research have shown that M&As typically destroy more value than they create. But investment bankers can't just sit on their asses doing nuffin'. Got to git them fees rollin' in.

The irony of course, is that the more bankers talk about creating or increasing shareholder value, the less they actually improve it. The opposite is truer more often than not.

Within the Singapore context, the concept of shareholder value is obviously irrelevant. Instead, here, GDP growth is the overriding concern. And every civil servant in Singapore is subject to what I call the tyranny of KPIs.

With regard to GDP growth, the problem is not growth per se, but the quality and sustainability of that growth. What use is growth if it is goosed by massively unsustainable immigration policies, finanical repression (think forced savings, high residential property prices, and low interest rates paid on depositors' funds) and suppressed wages? Worse, the positive aspects of growth are not spread evenly but accrue to those at the top of the income ladder. Yet we reward our highest civil servants and elected officeholders chiefly on the basis of this number. Is it any wonder that we have achieved spectacular GDP growth, but that the fruit of this Pyrrhic victory is bitter indeed?

As for KPIs, the concept is not unsound in theory, but excessive adherence to KPIs blinds the user to other, less tangible measures of performance. If something cannot or will not be measured, then it can't be important, can it? One is reminded of that story of the man searching for his lost keys beneath the streetlamp on a darkened street.

Like the red herring of shareholder value that bankers put forth, we have ministers and CEOs and other high priests telling us that such and such KPIs have been met or even surpassed. That everything is going according to plan. Yet that fails to assuage the disquietude in so many of us, that there are things happening here which are viscerally wrong. Like income inequality. Housing (un)affordability. Rising costs and the fast fading possibility of a comfortable retirement. Or any retirement for that matter. Of how this Singapore ... this place, just doesn't feel like home anymore.

Third: The investment banking industry has notoriously low job security. Job turnover is tremendous. You would think that investment bankers, hired and fired so easily, would have some empathy for the massive numbers of layoffs they're directly responsible for when they advise their client companies to layoff and outsource operations to cheaper countries. Turns out to be the opposite, according to Ho's research. Apparently, it is precisely because bankers have to hustle all the time in their highly volatile industry that they have precious little sympathy for others who can't do the same. Not being able to scramble when the times call for it is considered by bankers to be a personal failing rather than an unfortunate consequence of circumstances.

The highest levels of government in Singapore operate the same way. It's dog-eat-dog within the Admin Service, as is well known, and everyone there aspires to be the top dog. As a purported meritocracy, it was designed that way. A fall from grace from that height would be ... crushing. As a corollary, our senior commanders in the SAF devote great amounts of energy feathering their own nests and constantly keep half an eye on that coveted ministerial, GLC or statboard position for post retirement.

In such a situation, the problems that ordinary people face become mere abstractions, to be described in clinical terms like "structural unemployment". The same sentiment underlies brazen, clueless and flippant exhortations of workers to work "cheaper, better, faster".

That the highest levels of our government are paid handsomely for their work could in fact, be part of the problem, and it's not just me saying this. Research from Harvard indicates that "The More Leaders Make, the Meaner They Get."

Coping with Public Transportation

2010-07-07T22:55:00.003+08:00

The recent ~~fare hike~~ change to a distance-based charging formula for the public transportation system has upset quite a few people. Although I have not had the opportunity to check exactly how much my public transportation expenses have increased (I live a 5-minute walk away from my workplace), I am certain I am one of those negatively affected since I take mostly trunk services and avoid transfers like the plague.

This post isn't about me ranting about our ... flawed... public transportation system. I have commented on it previously here and in particular, "Why our public transportation system should be a cut above the rest.". I consider the latter to be one of the better posts I have written.

This post is about me embracing my inner anti-establishment self, and exercising my engineer's creativity.

In addition to being inherently anti-establishment, frankly, I'm disgusted with how a number of things are run in our country.

So I opt out. For instance, I've opted out of local media (don't watch TV and while I read the newspapers, I ignore the columnists and dispense with the entire paper in 15 minutes flat), and I tune out local events (like Formula 1 and YOG, *shudder*).

Unfortunately, as I don't drive, I can't opt out of public transportation. Much. And it's not like driving sets you completely free of "the system" either, what with satellite and GPS-based ERP on the horizon.

But there have to be some creative ways of opting out of public transportation at least partially right? Some way of coping with public transportation, so to speak?

Here are a few that I can think of:

1. Premium bus services. Heck, if you're going to pay more anyway, might as well get a premium product. More information on the LTA website www.publictransport.sg.

2. Park-n-ride. Only available to those who drive. Not very useful, I know. Still worth mentioning though. Again, see www.publictransport.sg for details.

3. Free shuttle bus services, often associated with out-of-the-way shopping malls. The most complete list is probably here, though it has not been recently updated.

4. Cycle or run to work. You have to be the sporty type though; let's face it, our culture and our climate are not conducive to a casual city person's Velib type service. As for running, well, you have to be in reasonably good shape to actually commute by running. When I used to work on a semi-regular basis at MINDEF, I ran home from work about once a week, traversing the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve by using a variation of one of my regular routes. I would enter the forest via the Dairy Farm Road entrance and exit out via Jalan Kampung Chantek, then continue running on to home.

5. Use a Segway. I've long fantasized about zipping past bumper-to-bumper road traffic during peak hours by segging (is that even a word?) along pedestrian pavements that run parallel to roads. Don't take this as literal advice though; I have no idea as to what the legality of using Segways on pedestrian pavements is in Singapore. Knowing our government, they would probably just as soon ban it as someone decides to do it.

Flash Floods and Spin Doctoring

2010-06-29T10:33:00.002+08:00

First, we had "Once in 50 years..."(21 November 2009)

Then we had the "choked drains". (17 June 2010)

The PM broke his silence and pronounced in sonorous tones that "Singapore can't be flood-free." (28 June 2010). You've got to hand it to the man. Such gravitas.

Finally, fresh off the press today, we have "More rain, less haze?", on the first page of the Home section. Sorry, no link here, it's too recent, so subscription is needed. I won't bother summarizing that article as the title is self-explanatory. Heck, I couldn't even summarize it if I wanted to, since I didn't read the article. Just like I didn't read the 3 articles I linked to above. No need to, since the intent behind the articles is transparent. I don't read crap, much less spin-doctored crap from the Straits Times.

Let's see...the first article was an excuse, but one which required no action on the part of the government. Invoking force majeure. Whocouldhaveknown? Nothing could have stopped the flooding. Cheap and easy.

The second was a passing-the-buck kind of excuse, implicitly implicating say, the cleaners, the heavy construction around the Orchard area resulting in massive amounts of debris, and a myriad of other factors. Everything except poor planning and forethought. It's the 'we did everything right, but other factors were beyond our control' equivalent.

Everyone together now, cue roll eyes.

With the third article, the media shifts into the damage control phase. No question why. After all, this is the second major flooding incident in as many weeks.

The third article cited above was a classic managing-your-expectations spiel. I can spot this a mile away. It was the very first lesson I learnt in the corporate world when I was fresh out of university. The strange thing is, for whatever reason, people who like exhorting others to manage their expectations are always consternated when they realize that whatever they say applies both ways. To get, you must give, so if you don't give, you also don't get. Good thing to keep in mind the next time elections roll around. Expectations should be managed all round.

The fourth article is the silver-lining argument, useful for mollifying the occasional petulant child. It has to strike just the right balance between being patronizing, remonstrating and yet count-your-blessings uplifting all at the same time. Otherwise it just comes across as patronizing. Which is the case here. It's too obvious, coming just the day after the third article.

If our nation-building press is hewing to the formula that it has set down in the past, the next slew of articles will probably involve Singaporeans 'doing our part'. You know, like when Mas Selamat escaped and we were all rebuked for being too "complacent".

Some possibilities (in case our ever imaginative press hits a mental block and feels the need to crib ideas from my humble blog):

Recast these flooding incidents into a renewed anti-littering campaign. After all, litter could be what caused those culverts to get clogged. Right, PUB?
Plea for public vigilance and appeal to the communitarian sense. Singaporeans should be proactive and call the NEA/PUB everytime they see clogged drains and culverts! How about a local variation of the "If you see something, say something" campaign in NYC? You could pay somebody $400000 and reuse the same tagline.
Turn this into a platform promoting increased use of public transportation. There wouldn't be quite so many complaints if there weren't so many cars affected on the roads. After all, the MRT trains are immune to flooding. Never mind that our public transportation system is already bursting at the seams.

PS: To our press, if you do end up using any of my ideas, please do credit my blog. That is the professional thing to do, y'know?

"Stuy Town - Who got 'stuffed'"

2010-06-24T19:00:00.001+08:00

The story that follows my post below is clear enough if you understand a bit of finance. But for those who don't, here's the 'friendly' neighborhood analogy.

Imagine, if you will, Franny Maeck, a real estate investor in a run-down, broken town. The town mayor is offering "housing credits" - basically payments, to the investor to incentivize her into putting money into real estate in the town.

Franny agrees, and her investments take the form of loaning out funds to people to buy houses in the town. Franny has no problems raising funds, because she has the mayor himself backing her, so she can borrow at very favorable interest rates in the market. We'll leave aside the thorny issue of why the mayor, who is backing Franny, doesn't just invest in the real estate himself.

Back to the real estate investor. Now of course, Franny wants to get other investors on board to spread the risk and increase the investment pool of funds. So she ropes in Gullible InCorporated, from a faraway town that is swimming in wealth, but nonetheless has citizens that scrounge in trash bins for metal cans to sell.

Gullible InCorporated is only too happy to invest, thinking that Franny is an expert at these things, and what's more, Franny has put her own money in this. She has skin in the game!

Too bad for Gullible InCorporated though, that Franny knows only too well that the particular houses that they're investing in are run-down, prone to collapse, and could spontaneously burst into flames at any time.

Franny has wisely bought insurance on the houses, so she can collect when, not if, the houses burn down. So her money's safe. She didn't mention this to Gullible though, who's still blissfully unaware. Until, that is, months after the houses have already burnt down. In the meantime, she's toting up her insurance gains on her Abacus.

______________________

Good thing we don't have something called Gullible InCorporated here. It's such a relief we have really competent people looking after our money. After all, these are the people that keep our streets free of floodwater, our public transportation system secure, and limping, incapacitated would-be terrorists safely locked up. And if they didn't manage to do all these things, our nation-building press would certainly call them out on it and subject them to the strictest scrutiny.

And our very, very competent people certainly are worth every penny we pay them. Heck, if we want things cleaner and safer, just like our town councils, we should definitely pay them even more.

________________________
Stuy Town – Who Got “Stuffed”?
Via: zero hedge Posted: 2010-06-22

Stuyvesant Town in NYC is possibly the worst RE deal in US history. This 2006 vintage mega ($5.4b) deal finally went bust in January. Fannie and Freddie together hold $1.5 billion of the $3.0b senior mortgage bonds. The equity and mezzanine lenders have been wiped out. The WJS did a piece on this horrible deal back in January. In that article they had an interesting quote from a Freddie Mac spokeswoman:

"Freddie Mac doesn't expect any losses"

I thought at the time that this was one of those things that might come back and bite them in the ass. It was not clear to me that the senior mortgage was money good. If it were, then the mez. and equity guys would not have folded as fast as they did.

The Fannie and Freddie mortgage bonds were equal in legal status (parri passu) to a $1.5 mortgage loan provided by Wachovia. After the deal closed Wachovia put this debt into a much larger CMO. Fitch did an analysis of the CMO in April. The report concluded that the Wachovia/Stuy Town mortgage was not money good. I called Fitch and got a confirmation. The Fitch assessment of the property value is $1.8b. This value was based on a discounted analysis of the rent and future Capex requirements. (See 4/1 Fitch report, Wachovia C-30)

This information was in direct conflict with the Freddie claim back in January that they expected no loss. I thought I had a “gotcha” story. To confirm it I asked the FHFA some questions. Consider this exchange:

BK: Comment on Fitch value of 1.8B?
FHFA: This is Fitch’s estimate. Other firms estimates place the values between $1.6 and $2.2 billion depending on the cap rate.

BK: Did F/F put the securities in a larger CMO transaction?
FHFA: No, they did not put the securities into a CMO. The GSEs approached this as typical investors.

BK: Did F/F have other credit enhancement?
FHFA: F/F had enhancements for this deal that were typical for large loan deals. Other investors had the same enhancements.

BK: Did F/F do this to get low-income housing credits?
FHFA: They did receive housing goals credits and did so in the context of meeting their standard securities investment criteria.

Some thoughts on this.

-The market will ultimately determine the value of Stuy Town, but for the FHFA to provide a range of estimates that are all below the mortgage value is a confirmation that this deal is upside down.

-Consider the second and third comments together. They did not put the bonds in a CMO transaction where they would take back the highest rated tranches. They chose instead to obtain other “enhancements”. This means they bought a form of single name CDS protection. This information confirms the Freddie statement that they would not incur a loss. Color me shocked at this.

-F/F were arbitraging their balance sheet. They were able to borrow at spreads over treasuries back then. They bought risky Stuy Town bonds that had a fat coupon with taxpayer guaranteed money. But then they paid away most of that premium buying CDS protection. They did not trust the deal from the get go. So why did they do it? The answer is in the last response. A motivating factor for Fannie and Freddie to participate in a highly leveraged RE deal was to get housing credits. There is a lesson in this. These housing credits are ass backwards. They do not encourage low-income housing. They encourage speculation.

-The statement, “Other investors had the same enhancements” is interesting. The question comes to mind, “What other investors had the credit enhancements”? This is the list of suspects.

Wachovia Bank
Government of Singapore
CALPERS
CALSTERS
Florida State Pension Fund
Church of England
S/L Green
Black Rock
Tishman Speyer
DG Hypo Bank
Hartford Financial
Allied Irish Bank

I am willing to put long odds that it was not Wachovia that bought the protection. They tried to enhance their position by putting the mortgage and a bunch of other crude in a CMO. It was not the Government of Singapore (GIC). They have confirmed that they have written off their investment of $675 million.

Someday we will know who those “other investors” are. I wonder if Singapore was aware of the fact that F/F was buying enhancements on their senior position at the time the deal was struck. If the senior guys were nervous, then the mez. guys should have been quaking. But that is not they way this played out. This disclosure issue is somewhat like the problem Goldman has with Abacus. Did everyone in the deal fully understand the interests/objectives of the other participants? Would any of the other investors backed out if they understood F/F were hedging their bets? Did everyone have the same objectives for participating?

-Having two government agencies provide $1.5b (25%) to a transaction gives the deal credibility. But the evidence suggests that the anchor lenders did not believe in the transaction. I’m sure the Singapore government is upset with the results. I wonder how they will feel knowing that some of the investors are getting out whole while they took a bath.

-I would love to know who was the provider of the CDS that enhanced the F/F Stuy Town bonds. Back in 2006 it could have been anyone. One name that comes to my mind is AIG. I hope it's not them. We have had enough financial Greek tragedies.

-F/F have no loss. Wachovia split its share of the mortgage up and sold it a hundred ways. The old mez debt and equity have tossed in the towel. A question to ask at this point is: why not resolve this problem by condoizing Stuy Town? The pricing would reflect the current value of ~$2b. The long-term renters would be able to benefit from this. Others would be able to find housing at an acceptable cost. Stuy Town was never worth $5.4b. F/F should move to get this off their books without loss. That way the people of NYC would be the beneficiaries of the worst RE deal ever.

Book List Refreshed!

2010-06-23T22:10:00.003+08:00

I have removed:

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton
Poorly Made in China by Paul Midler
Cheap: The high cost of discount culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell
Toolbox for Sustainable City Living by Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew

I have added:

The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton
Lessons from Private Equity any Company can Use by Orit Gadiesh and Hugh MacArthur
This Time is Different by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff
Power Hungry by Robert Bryce

"BP-Style Extreme Energy Nightmares to Come"

2010-06-23T19:00:00.001+08:00

From TomDispatch.com

BP-Style Extreme Energy Nightmares to Come
Four Scenarios for the Next Energy Mega-Disaster
By Michael T. Klare

On June 15th, in their testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the chief executives of America’s leading oil companies argued that BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was an aberration -- something that would not have occurred with proper corporate oversight and will not happen again once proper safeguards are put in place. This is fallacious, if not an outright lie. The Deep Horizon explosion was the inevitable result of a relentless effort to extract oil from ever deeper and more hazardous locations. In fact, as long as the industry continues its relentless, reckless pursuit of “extreme energy” -- oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium obtained from geologically, environmentally, and politically unsafe areas -- more such calamities are destined to occur.

At the onset of the modern industrial era, basic fuels were easy to obtain from large, near-at-hand energy deposits in relatively safe and friendly locations. The rise of the automobile and the spread of suburbia, for example, were made possible by the availability of cheap and abundant oil from large reservoirs in California, Texas, and Oklahoma, and from the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico. But these and equivalent deposits of coal, gas, and uranium have been depleted. This means the survival of our energy-centric civilization increasingly relies on supplies obtained from risky locations -- deep underground, far at sea, north of the Arctic circle, in complex geological formations, or in unsafe political environments. That guarantees the equivalent of two, three, four, or more Gulf-oil-spill-style disasters in our energy future.

Back in 2005, the CEO of Chevron, David O’Reilly, put the situation about as bluntly as an oil executive could. “One thing is clear,” he said, “the era of easy oil is over. Demand is soaring like never before… At the same time, many of the world’s oil and gas fields are maturing. And new energy discoveries are mainly occurring in places where resources are difficult to extract, physically, economically, and even politically.”

O’Reilly promised then that his firm, like the other energy giants, would do whatever it took to secure this “difficult energy” to satisfy rising global demand. And he proved a man of his word. As a result, BP, Chevron, Exxon, and the rest of the energy giants launched a drive to obtain traditional fuels from hazardous locations, setting the stage for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and those sure to follow. As long as the industry stays on this course, rather than undertaking the transition to an alternative energy future, more such catastrophes are inevitable, no matter how sophisticated the technology or scrupulous the oversight.

The only question is: What will the next Deepwater Horizon disaster look like (other than another Deepwater Horizon disaster)? The choices are many, but here are four possible scenarios for future Gulf-scale energy calamities. None of these is inevitable, but each has a plausible basis in fact.

Scenario 1: Newfoundland -- Hibernia Platform Destroyed by Iceberg

Approximately 190 miles off the coast of Newfoundland in what locals call “Iceberg Alley” sits the Hibernia oil platform, the world’s largest offshore drilling facility. Built at a cost of some $5 billion, Hibernia consists of a 37,000-ton “topsides” facility mounted on a 600,000-ton steel-and-concrete gravity base structure (GBS) resting on the ocean floor, some 260 feet below the surface. This mammoth facility, normally manned by 185 crew members, produces about 135,000 barrels of oil per day. Four companies (ExxonMobil, Chevron, Murphy Oil, and Statoil) plus the government of Canada participate in the joint venture established to operate the platform.

The Hibernia platform is reinforced to withstand a direct impact by one of the icebergs that regularly sail through this stretch of water, located just a few hundred miles from where the Titanic infamously hit an iceberg and sank in 1912. Sixteen giant steel ribs protrude from the GBS, positioned in such a way as to absorb the blow of an iceberg and distribute it over the entire structure. However, the GBS itself is hollow, and contains a storage container for 1.3 million barrels of crude oil -- about five times the amount released in the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.

The owners of the Hibernia platform insist that the design will withstand a blow from even the largest iceberg. As global warming advances and the Greenland glaciers melt, however, massive chunks of ice will be sent floating into the North Atlantic on a path past Hibernia. Add increased storm activity (another effect of global warming) to an increase in iceberg frequency and you have a formula for overwhelming the Hibernia’s defenses.

Here’s the scenario: It’s the stormy winter of 2018, not an uncommon situation in the North Atlantic at that time of year. Winds exceed 80 miles per hour, visibility is zilch, and iceberg-spotter planes are grounded. Towering waves rise to heights of 50 feet or more, leaving harbor-bound the giant tugs the Hibernia’s owners use to nudge icebergs from the platform’s path. Evacuation of the crew by ship or helicopter is impossible.

Without warning, a gigantic, storm-propelled iceberg strikes the Hibernia, rupturing the GBS and spilling more than one million barrels of oil into rough waters. The topside facility is severed from the base structure and plunges into the ocean, killing all 185 crew members. Every connection to the undersea wells is ruptured, and 135,000 barrels of oil start flowing into the Atlantic every day (approximately twice the amount now coming from the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico). The area is impossible to reach by plane or ship in the constant bad weather, meaning emergency repairs can’t be undertaken for weeks -- not until at least five million additional barrels of oil have poured into the ocean. As a result, one of the world’s most prolific fishing grounds -- the Grand Banks off Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Cape Cod -- is thoroughly poisoned.

Does this sound extreme? Think again. On February 15, 1982, a giant drillship, the Ocean Ranger (the “Ocean Danger” to its habitués), was operating in the very spot Hibernia now occupies when it was struck by 50-foot waves in a storm and sank, taking the lives of 84 crew members. Because no drilling was under way at the time, there were no environmental consequences, but the loss of the Ocean Ranger -- a vessel very much like the Deepwater Horizon -- should be a reminder of just how vulnerable otherwise strong structures can be to the North Atlantic’s winter fury.

Scenario 2: Nigeria -- America’s Oil Quagmire

Nigeria is now America’s fifth leading supplier of oil (after Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela). Long worried about the possibility that political turmoil in the Middle East might diminish the oil flow from Saudi Arabia just as Mexico’s major fields were reaching a state of depletion, American officials have worked hard to increase Nigerian imports. However, most of that country’s oil comes from the troubled Niger Delta region, whose impoverished residents receive few benefits but all of the environmental damage from the oil extraction there. As a result, they have taken up arms in a bid for a greater share of the revenues the Nigerian government collects from the foreign energy companies doing the drilling. Leading this drive is the Movement for the Emancipation for the Niger Delta (MEND), a ragtag guerrilla group that has demonstrated remarkable success in disrupting oil company operations.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) rates Nigeria’s innate oil-production capacity at about 2.7 million barrels per day. Thanks to insurgent activity in the Delta, however, actual output has fallen significantly below this. “Since December 2005, Nigeria has experienced increased pipeline vandalism, kidnappings, and militant takeovers of oil facilities in the Niger Delta,” the department reported in May 2009. “[K]idnappings of oil workers for ransom are common and security concerns have led some oil services firms to pull out of the country.”

Washington views the insurgency as a threat to America’s “energy security,” and so a reason for aiding the Nigerian military. “Disruption of supply from Nigeria would represent a major blow to U.S. oil security,” the State Department noted in 2006. In August 2009, on a visit to Nigeria, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised even more military aid for oil protection purposes.

Here, then, is scenario #2: It’s 2013. The Delta insurgency has only grown, driving Nigeria’s oil output down to a third of its capacity. Global oil demand is substantially higher and rising, while production slips everywhere. Gasoline prices have reached $5 per gallon in the U.S. with no end in sight, and the economy seems headed toward yet another deep recession.

The barely functioning civilian government in Abuja, the capital, is overthrown by a Muslim-dominated military junta that promises to impose order and restore the oil flow in the Delta. Some Christian elements of the military promptly defect, joining MEND. Oil facilities across the country are suddenly under attack; oil pipelines are bombed, while foreign oil workers are kidnapped or killed in record numbers. The foreign oil companies running the show begin to shut down operations. Global oil prices go through the roof.

When a dozen American oil workers are executed and a like number held hostage by a newly announced rebel group, the president addresses the nation from the Oval Office, declares that U.S. energy security is at risk, and sends 20,000 Marines and Army troops into the Delta to join the Special Operations forces already there. Major port facilities are quickly secured, but the American expeditionary force soon finds itself literally in an oil quagmire, an almost unimaginable landscape of oil spills in which they find themselves fighting a set of interlocked insurgencies that show no sign of fading. Casualties rise as they attempt to protect far-flung pipelines in an impenetrable swamp not unlike the Mekong Delta of Vietnam War fame.

Sound implausible? Consider this: in May 2008, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command and the Joint Forces Command conducted a crisis simulation at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that involved precisely such a scenario, also set in 2013. The simulation, “Unified Quest 2008,” was linked to the formation of the U.S. Africa Command (Africom), the new combat organization established by President Bush in February 2007 to oversee American military operations in Africa. An oil-related crisis in Nigeria, it was suggested, represented one of the more likely scenarios for intervention by U.S. forces assigned to Africom. Although the exercise did not explicitly endorse a military move of this sort, it left little doubt that such a response would be Washington’s only practical choice.

Scenario 3: Brazil -- Cyclone Hits “Pre-Salt” Oil Rigs

In November 2007, Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petróleo Brasileiro (Petrobras), announced a remarkable discovery: in a tract of the South Atlantic some 180 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, it had found a giant oil reservoir buried beneath a mile and a half of water and a thick layer of salt. Called “pre-salt” oil because of its unique geological positioning, the deposit was estimated to hold 8 to 12 billion barrels of oil, making this the biggest discovery in the Western Hemisphere in 40 years. Further test drilling by Petrobras and its partners revealed that the initial find -- at a field called Tupi -- was linked to other deepwater “pre-salt” reservoirs, bringing the total offshore potential to 50 billion barrels or more. (To put that in perspective, Saudi Arabia is believed to possess reserves of 264 billion barrels and the United States, 30 billion.)

With this discovery, Brazil could “jump from an intermediate producer to among the world’s largest producers,” said Dilma Rousseff, chief cabinet official under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and thought to be his most likely successor. To ensure that the Brazilian state exercises ultimate control over the development of these reservoirs, President da Silva -- “Lula,” as he is widely known -- and Rousseff have introduced legislation in the Brazilian Congress giving Petrobras control over all new fields in the basin. In addition, Lula has proposed that profits from the pre-salt fields be channeled into a new social fund to alleviate poverty and underdevelopment in the country. All this has given the government a huge stake in the accelerated development of the pre-salt fields.

Extracting oil a mile and half under the water and from beneath two-and-a-half miles of shifting sand and salt will, however, require the utilization of technology even more advanced than that employed on the Deepwater Horizon. In addition, the pre-salt fields are interspersed with layers of high-pressure gas (as appears to have been the case in the Gulf), increasing the risk of a blow-out. Brazil does not experience hurricanes as does the Gulf of Mexico, but in 2004, its coastline was ravaged by a surprise subtropical cyclone that achieved hurricane strength. Some climatologists believe that hurricane-like storms of this sort, once largely unknown in the South Atlantic, will become more common as global warming only increases.

Which brings us to scenario #3: It’s 2020, by which time the pre-salt area off Rio will be host to hundreds of deepwater drilling rigs. Imagine, then, a subtropical cyclone with hurricane-force winds and massive waves that suddenly strikes this area, toppling dozens of the rigs and damaging most of the others, wiping out in a matter of hours an investment of over $200 billion. Given a few days warning, most of the crews of these platforms have been evacuated. Freak winds, however, down several helicopters, killing some 50 oil workers and flight crew members. Adding to the horror, attempts to seal so many undersea wells at such depths fail, and oil in historically unprecedented quantities begins gushing into the South Atlantic. As the cyclone grows to full strength, giant waves carry the oil inexorably toward shore.

Since the storm-driven assault cannot be stopped, Rio de Janeiro’s famous snow-white beaches are soon blanketed in a layer of sticky black petroleum, and in a matter of weeks, parts of Brazil’s coastal waters have become a “dead ocean.” Clean-up efforts, when finally initiated, prove exceedingly difficult and costly, adding immeasurably to the financial burden of the Brazilian state, now saddled with a broken and bankrupt Petrobras. Meanwhile, the struggle to seal all the leaking pre-salt wells in the deep Atlantic proves a Herculean task as, month after month, oil continues to gush into the Atlantic.

Scenario 4: East China Sea -- A Clash Over Subsea Gas

At one time, most wars between states were fought over disputed borders or contested pieces of land. Today, most boundaries are fixed by international treaty and few wars are fought over territory. But a new type of conflict is arising: contests over disputed maritime boundaries in areas that harbor valuable subsea resources, particularly oil and natural gas deposits. Such disputes have already occurred in the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, the East and South China Seas, and other circumscribed bodies of water. In each case, the surrounding states claim vast offshore tracts that overlap, producing -- in a world that may be increasingly starved for energy -- potentially explosive disputes.

One of them is between China and Japan over their mutual boundary in the East China Sea. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which both countries have signed, each is allowed to exercise control over an “exclusive economic zone” (EEZ) extending 200 nautical miles (about 230 standard miles) from its coastline. But the East China Sea is only about 360 miles across at its widest point between the two countries. You see the problem.

In addition, the U.N. convention allows mainland states to claim an extended EEZ stretching to their outer continental shelf (OCS). In China’s case, that means nearly all the way to Japan -- or so say the Chinese. Japan insists that the offshore boundary between the two countries should fall midway between them, or about 180 miles from either shore. This means that there are now two competing boundaries in the East China Sea. As fate would have it, in the gray area between them houses a promising natural gas field called Chunxiao by the Chinese and Shirakaba by the Japanese. Both countries claim that the field lies within their EEZ, and is theirs alone to exploit.

For years, Chinese and Japanese officials have been meeting to resolve this dispute -- to no avail. In the meantime, each side has taken steps to begin the exploitation of the undersea gas field. China has installed drilling rigs right up to the median line claimed by Japan as the boundary between them and is now drilling for gas there; Japan has conducted seismic surveys in the gray area between the two lines. China claims that Japan’s actions represent an illegal infringement; Japan says that the Chinese rigs are sucking up gas from the Japanese side of the median line, and so stealing their property. Each side sees this dispute through a highly nationalistic prism and appears unwilling to back down. Both sides have deployed military forces in the contested area, seeking to demonstrate their resolve to prevail in the dispute.

Here, then, is Scenario #4: It’s 2022. Successive attempts to resolve the boundary dispute through negotiations have failed. China has installed a string of drilling platforms along the median line claimed by Japan and, according to Japanese officials, has extended undersea drill pipes deep into Japanese territory. An ultra-nationalistic, right-wing government has taken power in Japan, vowing finally to assert control over Japanese sovereign territory. Japanese drill ships, accompanied by naval escorts and fighter planes, are sent into the area claimed by China. The Chinese respond with their warships and order the Japanese to withdraw. The two fleets converge and begin to target each other with guns, missiles, and torpedoes.

At this point, the “fog of war” (in strategic theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s famous phrase) takes over. As a Chinese vessel steams perilously close to a Japanese ship in an attempt to drive it off, the captain of that vessel panics, and orders his crew to open fire; other Japanese crews, disobeying orders from superior officers, do the same. Before long, a full-scale naval battle ensues, with several sunken ships and hundreds of casualties. Japanese aircraft then attack the nearby Chinese drill rigs, producing hundreds of additional casualties and yet another deep-sea environmental disaster. At this point, with both sides bringing in reinforcements and girding for full-scale war, the U.S. president makes an emergency visit to the region in a desperate effort to negotiate a cease-fire.

Such a scenario is hardly implausible. Since September 2005, China has deployed a naval squadron in the East China Sea, sending its ships right up to the median line -- a boundary that exists in Japanese documents, but is not, of course, visible to the naked eye (and so can be easily overstepped). On one occasion, Japanese naval aircraft flew close to a Chinese ship in what must have seemed a menacing fashion, leading the crew to train its antiaircraft guns on the approaching plane. Fortunately, no shots were fired. But what would have happened if the Japanese plane had come a little bit closer, or the Chinese captain was a bit more worried? One of these days, as those gas supplies become even more valuable and the hair-trigger quality of the situation increases, the outcome may not be so benign.

These are, of course, only a few examples of why, in a world ever more reliant on energy supplies acquired from remote and hazardous locations, BP-like catastrophes are sure to occur. While none of these specific calamities are guaranteed to happen, something like them surely will -- unless we take dramatic steps now to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and speed the transition to a post-carbon world. In such a world, most of our energy would come from renewable wind, solar, and geothermal sources that are commonplace and don’t have to be tracked down a mile or more under the water or in the icebound north. Such resources generally would not be linked to the sort of disputed boundaries or borderlands that can produce future resource wars.

Until then, prepare yourselves. The disaster in the Gulf is no anomaly. It’s an arrow pointing toward future nightmares.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, TomDispatch.com regular, and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. A documentary movie version of his previous book, Blood and Oil, is available from the Media Education Foundation.

Lake Maninjau FunFly 2010

2010-06-13T10:43:00.011+08:00

I was out of town a few weeks ago for a paragliding event, and spent the last couple of weeks catching up on work after that.

Despite being in a scenic, culturally rich and diverse region, I've always found it somewhat surprising that most Singaporeans do not venture beyond a few familiar destinations for their holidays. Perhaps it has to do with not wanting to leave their comfort zone, or the desire for a fuss-free vacation, but most Singaporeans generally would limit themselves to Phuket, Bali, Bangkok, Hong Kong and a few other places. The more adventurous might head to the Indochina region or to places in the Philipines. And the favorite activities of Singaporean tourists are typically shopping and eating, which is something of a pity since that's pretty much what most Singaporeans do on weekends in Singapore too.

On some level, I can identify with Singaporeans on this, but fortunately, as a result of taking up paragliding, I've had my eyes opened to the diversity of the region. There are just so many great places to fly in the region and as a result of my flying habit, I've been pushed to explore the region a bit more thoroughly.

I travelled to Lake Maninjau on Sumatra, Indonesia, for the annual FunFly festival a few weeks ago. As a novice pilot, the range of sites suitable for me to fly is limited and I had been told that Lake Maninjau offered wonderful flying even for novices.

And it was wonderful indeed. I logged 8 flights and doubled my airtime to date. And met some wonderful people as well.

Lake Maninjau is diminutive, but a real gem of a lake. See for yourself. These are views from Puncak Lawang, the launch site.

What made my holiday unusual was that the annual paragliding event is billed as an "International Festival", which is really just an excuse for the local Indonesian authorities to throw a big shebang of a party to get media coverage, increase tourism exposure, and get some facetime for the local officials. The pilots (all seven of us) were just the accessories for the event. Not that I wasn't bemused by it all. It was funny when the officials had clearly recycled their speeches from previous years, as there were obviously no pilots from Hong Kong this year, contrary to their grandiose speechs at the podium. For the record, there were 2 Singaporeans, a Malaysian, a German, an American, and 2 Australians this year. Here's a pic of the procession at the opening of the Festival.

It wasn't all flying at Lake Maninjau though; on days with bad weather, like fog for instance in the morning:

we did other things, like drive around the lake. The earthquake devastation from the Padang earthquake of 2009 was still evident in some places.

And relaxing by the lake in the evenings with a Bintang was simply great.

The hotel was built right by the lake, so going for a dip at anytime was no problem at all, though the water was far from clear. Kind of like swimming in an aquarium. All green and murky with fish everywhere.

But as far as a tourist destination goes, I have to say that Lake Maninjau, while beautiful, has much less to offer to the non-pilot. There are no other activities there other than flying, and even Internet access is to be found only in small roadside shops. Tellingly, none of the other pilots had brought their spouses or significant others with them. For destinations with activities for non-pilots, Phuket and Bali (typical Singaporean tourist destinations), are still better bets.

Notes for pilots:

I went to Maninjau in May and the weather was ok, though comments from other pilots had it that the weather was better the previous year. There was a fair bit of parawaiting, but that's par for the course in this sport. One has to pay one's dues on occasion. The season doesn't end in May but extends for a few more months. Contact Sumatra Paragliding for details.

Launch is from Puncak Lawang, about 1000 m above the lake, and is relatively easy, even for a novice like myself. The pics at the beginning of this post of the lake were taken from Puncak Lawang. The LZ is a grass patch, muddy in some places, demarcated by a road, the lakeshore, and fish ponds/rice paddies on the other two sides. It is fairly large and landing is generally ok when there is wind coming from the lake. When the wind is cross or when there is no wind, it can get a little tricky, but is still manageable. Note that the LZ lies beyond powerlines, so it is imperative to fly over the power lines first. It is generally a bad idea to cross back over the power lines once one is over the LZ. Altitude can be lost over the lake before the final approach. Below is a zoomed in view of the LZ from Puncak Lawang. It is the grass patch 2 o'clock from the 4 red-roofed houses in the centre of the pic.

The flying is mostly ridge soaring, but thermic flying is possible. The air can be bumpy in some places, but the flying is mostly safe. On good days, the air just got really lifty and it was possible to see the volcanoes behind the launch far in the distance. No pics for that though; I like my hands on the controls when I'm flying.

At the time of my visit, a new launch site was being developed as an alternative to Puncak Lawang. Here is a pic of the lake from the new launch site, a zoomed in view of the same LZ from the new launch site, and finally, a zoomed in view of the Puncak Lawang launch site from the new launch site. Note that Puncak Lawang in the pic is at the grass patch at the very top of the pic, bordered by trees. The open field slightly below it, bordering the winding road up the mountain, is an LZ suitable for top landing, for those with the requisite skills.

Getting there:

Tigerair used to have direct flights from Changi to Padang Minangkabau Airport, but these were discontinued during the Great Recession of 2009. No word on when flights will resume, but I'm not holding my breath. Airasia still flies to Padang from Kuala Lumpur, for those based in KL.

The most direct way to get to Lake Maninjau if you're based in Singapore is to take the Penguin ferry to Batam Centre from Harborfront, then a taxi from Batam Centre to Batam Hang Nadim Airport, then a flight to Padang on Mandala Airlines. From Padang, it's about a three hour drive to Maninjau. The total journey time takes something like 7-9 hours inclusive of waiting time, which is amazing when you consider that on an atlas, Maninjau and Singapore are sooo close to each other.

"The New Touch-Face of Vending Machines"

2010-05-26T19:51:00.000+08:00

From The New York Times
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
Published: May 25, 2010

Vending machines in neon-splashed Tokyo have electronic eyes that evaluate customers’ skin and wrinkles to determine whether they are old enough to buy tobacco. In bathrooms at upscale Canadian bars, vending machines with flat irons enable women to defrizz their locks. In Abu Dhabi, the lobby of a luxury hotel has a vending machine that dispenses gold bars and coins at more than $1,000 an ounce.

A new breed of vending machine is proliferating around the world — and while the United States is coming late to the party, Dr Pepper and Baby Ruth are already feeling sidelined.

Flashy and futuristic, souped-up machines are popping up everywhere, be it the Mondrian hotel in Miami or at Macy’s in Minneapolis. They have touch screens instead of buttons, facades that glow and pulse, and technology intended to blunt vending machine rage — sensors that ensure that a customer’s credit card is not charged unless the chosen item has dropped. These machines are not for quarters: purchases are measured in dollar amounts that typically start at two figures and go up.

Changing consumer preferences about shopping and the high cost of operating brick-and-mortar stores are inspiring premium brands to rethink how they sell their wares. As Gower Smith, whose company, ZoomSystems, has created about 1,000 automated kiosks called ZoomShops, put it, “A ZoomShop costs less than an employee.”

And with examples overseas showing there is money to be made, the so-called automated retail store (the term vending machine is so Industrial Revolution) is venturing into fashion, beauty products, electronics and more.

A couple of months ago, the Body Shop cosmetics franchise began offering skin care products with ingredients like hemp and vitamin E in deluxe machines at airports; soon will come shopping centers.

In the fall and winter, a company called U*tique will begin selling high-end beauty products in machines that light up when customers approach — a better reception than shoppers see from most retail employees.

In the last few years, Best Buy, Sephora, Apple and Proactiv have put their products in vending machines. Quiksilver offers board shorts and bikinis in machines at Standard hotels.

Such machines also offer nascent brands that have no store outlet another way to bring their products to market. Customers can make returns by calling a phone number on the receipt.

In an age of iPads, high-speed Internet service, A.T.M.’s and self-service check-in at airports, consumers expect instant gratification. Not only are they accustomed to researching and buying products on their own by touching screens and pressing buttons; they often prefer it.

A study published in 2008 by NCR Corporation found that 86 percent of North American consumers were more likely to do business with companies offering some sort of self-service. Many respondents also said they had a more positive perception of a brand if it offered self-service technology. This appears to be especially true of young shoppers.

“You will hear in studies, ‘My mom shops at the beauty counter, and I want to shop for products on my own,’ ” said Mara Segal, chief executive of U*tique, which plans to install up to 20 automated machines this year before going full throttle in 2011. “They are actively avoiding the counter.”

The new machines are meant to provide a feeling of discovery and charm often lacking in traditional retailing. Indeed, the machines are not “stocked” — they are, as Ms. Segal put it, “curated.” Merchandise in U*tique machines is arranged and lighted like works of modern art in a series of dainty portals, evoking a neon honeycomb.

“We put a lot of attention and focus on all the things that are sexy about retail,” she said.

The machines — which bridge the gap between old-fashioned stores and online shopping — are not only being installed in airports and malls. They are materializing in supermarkets, military bases, college campuses, even chain stores.

The economics make it easy to see why. Mall stores produce about $330 a square foot a year, while a 28-square-foot ZoomShop can generate $3,000 to $10,000 a square foot a year, Mr. Smith said.

Or consider airports, where stores make about $1,000 a square foot and ZoomShops generate $10,000 to $40,000 a square foot, he said. ZoomSystems, based in San Francisco, charges the brands in its machines a fee that includes the cost of rent at an airport or mall. Landlords typically take a percentage of the sales too.

As Mr. Smith noted, the attraction goes beyond payroll and rental expenses. If an airline closes a terminal, or if customer traffic is slow in a particular mall corridor, the machine can be unplugged and moved.

Machines have fewer inventory problems and less theft than a traditional store. Additionally, the main way a brick-and-mortar store discovers what its customers want is when they check out. Automated machines, in contrast, learn about consumers’ shopping habits from the moment they begin using the machine because every click is tracked.

“We’re starting to see, more and more, weirder items and weirder machines,” said Christopher D. Salyers, the author of a new book, “Vending Machines: Coined Consumerism” (Mark Batty Publisher), that chronicles the rise of the machines, from the boom in the 1800s Tutti-Frutti gum era to today.

At the same time, the classic vending machine business — sales of soda and snacks — is troubled. Research by IBISWorld said the industry is in decline because of trends toward more healthful eating, increased cigarette regulation, declining industrial work forces and more competition from fast-food restaurants and convenience stores open late or 24 hours.

Revenues for vending operators are expected to be $11.3 billion this year, according to IBISWorld, up from $11.1 billion in 2009. Yet the industry is expected to grow only 1 percent a year through 2015, down from a 2 percent growth rate over the five years ending 2010.

The newfangled machines, which cost $3,000 to tens of thousands of dollars, are now a small part of the industry, generating less than a $1 billion in revenue, said Chris Rezendes of VDC Research.

And expanding the vending frontier has not been without setbacks. One of the first automated convenience stores in the United States began operating in 2002 and was controversial.

Known as Shop 2000, it offered sundries — eggs, diapers, condoms — in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington. But as it turned out, one man’s convenience was another’s dehumanizing eyesore and the machine was shut down.

Other parts of the world are less hesitant. In Europe and Asia consumers buy underwear, umbrellas, toys, pizza and organic strawberries from machines.

Japan has one vending machine for about every 23 people, Mr. Salyers said. The country’s population density, low crime rate and fascination with technology have made it a vending paradise.

“They just line the streets,” Mr. Salyers said. “You can’t find a trash can there. But you can find a vending machine.”

"Migrating Thousands of Miles With Nary a Stop"

2010-05-25T17:44:00.002+08:00

From The New York Times
By CARL ZIMMER
Published: May 24, 2010

In 1976, the biologist Robert E. Gill Jr. came to the southern coast of Alaska to survey the birds preparing for their migrations for the winter. One species in particular, wading birds called bar-tailed godwits, puzzled him deeply. They were too fat.

“They looked like flying softballs,” said Mr. Gill.

At the time, scientists knew that bar-tailed godwits spend their winters in places like New Zealand and Australia. To get there, most researchers assumed, the birds took a series of flights down through Asia, stopping along the way to rest and eat. After all, they were land birds, not sea birds that could dive for food in the ocean. But in Alaska, Mr. Gill observed, the bar-tailed godwits were feasting on clams and worms as if they were not going to be able to eat for a very long time.

“I wondered, why is that bird putting on that much fat?” he said.

Mr. Gill wondered if the bar-tailed godwit actually stayed in the air for a much longer time than scientists believed. It was a difficult idea to test, because he could not actually follow the birds in flight. For 30 years he managed as best he could, building a network of bird-watchers who looked for migrating godwits over the Pacific Ocean. Finally, in 2006, technology caught up with Mr. Gill’s ideas. He and his colleagues were able to implant satellite transmitters in bar-tailed godwits and track their flight.

The transmitters sent their location to Mr. Gill’s computer, and he sometimes stayed up until 2 in the morning to see the latest signal appear on the Google Earth program running on his laptop. Just as he had suspected, the bar-tailed godwits headed out over the open ocean and flew south through the Pacific. They did not stop at islands along the way. Instead, they traveled up to 7,100 miles in nine days — the longest nonstop flight ever recorded. “I was speechless,” Mr. Gill said.

Since then, scientists have tracked a number of other migrating birds, and they are beginning now to publish their results. Those results make clear that the bar-tailed godwit is not alone. Other species of birds can fly several thousand miles nonstop on their migrations, and scientists anticipate that as they gather more data in the years to come, more birds will join these elite ranks.

“I think it’s going to be a number of examples,” said Anders Hedenström of Lund University in Sweden.

As more birds prove to be ultramarathoners, biologists are turning their attention to how they manage such spectacular feats of endurance. Consider what might be the ultimate test of human endurance in sports, the Tour de France: Every day, bicyclists pedal up and down mountains for hours. In the process, they raise their metabolism to about five times their resting rate.

The bar-tailed godwit, by contrast, elevates its metabolic rate between 8 and 10 times. And instead of ending each day with a big dinner and a good night’s rest, the birds fly through the night, slowly starving themselves as they travel 40 miles an hour.

“I’m in awe of the fact that birds like godwits can fly like this,” said Theunis Piersma, a biologist at the University of Groningen.

Not long ago, ornithologists had far lower expectations for birds. Ruby-throated hummingbirds, for example, were known to spend winters in Central America and head to the United States for the summer. But ornithologists believed that the hummingbirds burned so much fuel flapping their wings that they simply could not survive a nonstop trip across the Gulf of Mexico. They were thought to have flown over Mexico, making stops to refuel.

In fact, ruby-throated hummingbirds returning north in the spring will set out from the Yucatán Peninsula in the evening and arrive in the southern United States the next afternoon.

In the 1960s, zoologists began to track bears and other mammals with radio collars, and then later moved on to satellite transmitters. All the while, ornithologists could only look on in envy. The weight and drag of the trackers made them impossible to put on migrating birds.

Over the past decade, however, transmitters have finally shrunk to a size birds can handle. In Mr. Gill’s first successful experiment with bar-tailed godwits, he and his colleagues slipped a battery-powered model weighing just under an ounce into the abdominal cavity of the birds, which weigh about 12 ounces ounces and have a wingspan of 30 inches.

The epic odyssey that those transmitters recorded spurred Mr. Gill and other researchers to gather more data, both on bar-tailed godwits and other species. And even as they planned their experiments, tracking technology got better. This summer, for example, Mr. Gill will implant bar-tailed godwits with transmitters that weigh only six-tenths of an ounce.

Still, most migrating birds are so small that even a transmitter of that weight — about the same as three nickels — would be an intolerable burden. Fortunately, researchers have been able to scale down a different kind of tracking device. Known as a geolocator, it can get as light as two grains of rice, less than two-hundreths of an ounce. “Now we can track really small birds,” Dr. Hedenström said.

Geolocators can get so small because they do not communicate with satellites. Instead, they just record changing light levels. If scientists can recapture birds carrying geolocators, they can retrieve the data from the devices and use sophisticated computer programs to figure out the location of the birds based on the rising and setting of the sun.

In 2007, Carsten Egevang of Aarhus University in Denmark and his colleagues attached geolocators to Arctic terns nesting in Greenland. Based on years of bird spotting, the scientists knew that the terns migrated to the Southern Ocean around Antarctica and then returned to the Arctic the following spring. But they did not know much more than that. “It was all based on snapshots,” Dr. Egevang said.

In 2008, the scientists managed to capture 10 Arctic terns that had come back to Greenland. It then took them months to make sense of the data. “You have to use three kinds of special software,” Dr. Egevang said. “It takes quite a long time.”

The researchers reported this February that the Arctic terns flew from Greenland to a region of the Atlantic off the coast of North Africa, where they spent about three weeks. Unlike bar-tailed godwits, which wade on beaches for food, Arctic terns are ocean birds that can dive for fish in the open sea.

The Arctic terns then resumed their journey south. They spent five months in the Southern Ocean. “They probably just stayed on an iceberg and fished,” Dr. Egevang said.

In the spring, the terns then returned to the Arctic, often hugging the coasts of South America or Africa along the way. All told, the birds logged as much as 49,700 miles on their geolocators, the longest migration ever recorded. Over the 30-year lifetime of a tern, it may migrate about 1.5 million miles — the distance a spaceship would cover if it went to the moon and back three times.

Other scientists are now placing geolocators on small wading birds as well. In a paper to be published in the Wader Study Group Bulletin, a team of ornithologists describe attaching geolocators to four ruddy turnstones. The birds left northern Australia in May 2009 and flew nonstop to Taiwan, a distance of 4,700 miles.

After a few days in Taiwan, the ruddy turnstones took flight again, making a series of trips northward until they reached Alaska. At the end of the summer, three of the four birds took the same route back south. The fourth struck out on a different path. It flew 3,800 miles nonstop to the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific. From there, it flew 3,100 miles back to Australia.

Mr. Gill and his colleagues have recorded similar odysseys from other wading birds, using satellite transmitters. They found that bristle-thighed curlews fly as far as 6,000 miles without a stop, traveling from Alaska to the Marshall Islands. They have also recorded whimbrels flying 5,000 miles nonstop from Alaska to Central America.

This spring, scientists are attaching geolocators to more birds, and they expect to find new champions. One population of red knots, for example, is now arriving in Delaware Bay from its wintering grounds 5,500 miles away in Argentina. “My bet is that a lot of them make it in one go,” Dr. Piersma said.

The long journeys these transmitters are revealing pose a biological puzzle. Dr. Piersma and other scientists are trying to figure out how the birds manage to push their bodies so far beyond most animals, and why.

As Mr. Gill observed when he first observed bar-tailed godwits, a long journey requires a lot of food. It turns out that long-distance migrators will enlarge their liver and intestines as they feed, so that they can convert their food as fast as possible. They build up large breast muscles and convert the rest of their food to fat.

By the time the birds are ready to leave, their bodies are 55 percent fat. In humans, anything more than 30 percent is considered obese. But as soon as the birds are done eating, their livers and intestines become dead weight. They then essentially “eat” their organs, which shrink 25 percent. The birds use the proteins to build up their muscles even more.

Once they take flight, the birds take whatever help they can get. Bar-tailed godwits time their departure with the onset of stormy weather, so that they can take advantage of tailwinds. “That gives them an extra push,” Dr. Hedenström said.

The birds then fly for thousands of miles. How they get to their final destinations remains a mystery. One thing is clear: they somehow know where they are, even when they are flying over vast expanses of featureless ocean. “It’s as if they have a GPS on board,” Dr. Piersma said.

A bird like a bar-tailed godwit cannot rely on the tricks used by birds that take short migrations. They cannot follow landmarks, for example. Some birds use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate. But they do so by sensing the tilt of the field lines. At the equator, the lines run parallel to the surface, making them useless for birds that have to travel between hemispheres. Dr. Piersma suspects that when birds travel several thousand miles, they have to combine several different navigation tricks together.

As spectacular as these migrations may be, it may not take long for birds to evolve them. Long-distance migrators are closely related to short-distance birds. It is possible that many birds have the potential to push themselves to make these vast journeys, but they do not because the costs outweigh the benefits.

When animals raise their metabolism above four or five times their resting rate (the Tour de France level), they can become so exhausted that they become very vulnerable to predators. They can even become more prone to getting sick. Birds that go on long migrations may have escaped this tradeoff.

Birds like the bar-tailed godwit have found places like the coast of Alaska where the supply of food is high and predators are scarce. By flying over the open ocean, they continue to avoid predators. They may also reduce their odds of picking up a parasite from another bird.

Their destinations are also safe enough for them to recover. Bar-tailed godwits that arrive in New Zealand face no predators, and so they can simply rest. “They just look exhausted. They’ll land and just go to sleep for several hours before they do anything else,” Mr. Gill said.

Unfortunately, some of the habitats on which these endurance champions depend are under serious threat. In the Delaware Bay, for example, fisherman are scooping up horseshoe crab eggs, which birds like the red knot travel thousands of miles to eat. When bar-tailed godwits return to Alaska in the spring, they make one stop along the coast of China and Korea, a favorite spot for many other migrating birds. The coastal wetlands there are disappearing fast, and many migrant birds are in decline.

“I hope we have these birds to study 100 years from now,” Dr. Piersma said. “But sometimes I wonder.”

Singaporean students being exam smart is NOT the problem

2010-05-11T10:47:00.014+08:00

Per se, that is. I'll explain in a bit.

WARNING: Loooong post ahead.

Just yesterday, I was out to lunch with my boss, who has an only child in Primary 2 (that's second grade for my American readers). I had known that he has always been concerned with the stressful school environment in Singapore, hence I immediately understood where he was coming from when he broached the topic of how kids in school are being taught to be exam smart instead of actually being educated.

That got me thinking about the "problem" of how Singaporean students are schooled to be exam smart. According to conventional wisdom in Singapore, kids becoming exam smart is deemed a big problem, by parents, educators, employers and the (G)overnment. It is perceived as being inimical to creativity, genuine learning and performance. I put the word problem in "quotes" as after some pondering, I realized that being exam smart by itself is in fact, not something to be greatly concerned over. I see it is a symptom, not the cause, of a deeper, more subtle malaise.

To put things in perspective, let's look at it this way. It has been about 15 years since I left secondary school (7th through 10th grades), and even back then, the ubiquitous ten year series (TYS) was already in widespread use in schools. That implies that ten year series assessment books have been in use for well nigh on two decades, or even longer. And if there's any indicator of exam smartness being the educational zeitgeist, the pervasive use of TYS has got to be the premier indicator.

If being exam smart really was such a huge problem, well, we have had that huge problem for twenty or so years now, and society hasn't yet fallen apart. After all, the people that formerly used TYS in schools (like myself) now constitute the bulk of the workforce.

Frankly, I found TYS to be useful when I was a student. It is by asking and answering questions that one learns to apply and understand concepts in less abstract contexts, leading to a fuller, deeper understanding of the material. So what if those questions happen to be old exam questions? And if studying TYS leads one to NOT venture "beyond the syllabus", why, what's wrong with that? I'll venture beyond the syllabus if and when I need to, as time and other committments permit. In the working world, it is uncommon for people to invest time and effort in learning things that are either not immediately relevant to their jobs, or not relevant for the foreseeable future. Certainly, companies want to use their training budgets as cost-effectively as possible.

And for those who criticize our students as being too exam smart and hence the cause of the dearth of entrepreneurs, inventors, thinkers and artists here in Singapore, that's a tall claim to prove. The lack of the above in Singapore today could be attributed to any number of antecedents, such as the tiny market, insular culture, lack of a risk-taking climate, and inhospitable arts scene, to name but a few.

So if I have labeled exam smartness as merely a symptom of a deeper malaise, what is that deeper malaise?

I believe that the malaise has to do with the entire attitude of the average Singaporean student (and in particular, their parents' attitude as well) towards education.

The attitude towards education in Singapore is that it is a hurdle to be crossed, an achievement to be marked by certificates, accolades and other trophies. Education is a means to an end - a high flying career (in particular to the exalted legal, medical and governmental professions), good remuneration and just all round success in life.

So Singaporean students and parents do what is required when a hurdle, nay, a challenge, is thrown down before them. A challenge that must be surmounted in order to attain the Singapore dream and reach the good life.

What do Singaporeans do? They enlist platoons of private tutors, assemble their materiel of TYS and study notes, and put mission critical status on academics and grades. And in fact, that's not enough. The same thinking that informs the heavy emphasis on academics is in truth, responsible for the voluminous student resumes we see today (at least at the "elite" level). We're talking about leadership positions in the CCAs (co-curricular activities, formerly known as extra-curricular activities), volunteering in charitable organizations, participating in school sports, and landing that position on the school debate team, or the science team, or Model UN, or whatever it is that students do today.

[I'll leave aside the thorny issue of students participating in activities that don't really draw their interest but look good on an academic transcript for some other day, if ever. Personally, I don't think it would be accurate to say that students do these things out of resume padding instead of interest. It is probably better just to take things at face value and give students the benefit of the doubt. In any case, it is an issue that concerns "elites" more so than regular Singaporeans.]

It is my considered opinion that this acquisitive, means-to-an-end attitude and approach towards education in Singapore schools that is damaging and dysfunctional.

If the goal is to ace the exams to earn stellar grades, then naturally Singaporeans mug and cram for their exams, seek out private tuition and studiously stick to learning only what is in the syllabus, sometimes verbatim. Exam smartness is the resulting symptom, but what is the resulting condition?

I think the most deficient quality of the Singapore student is the inability to learn independently, and this is the condition that we are actively breeding into our school-going population.

Being able to learn independently requires a number of skills, the most fundamental of which must be the ability to discriminate between what one should learn and what one can put aside, at least for the moment. Of course, independent learning also involves being able to source for information on one’s own, cultivating internal motivation and discipline, and knowing how to ask important and intelligent questions.

And what are we doing in our educational system? The intense drive to achieve stellar grades practically requires private tuition for students, and what is tuition but spoonfeeding and a crutch in the bubble-like school environment that has no equivalent in the real world? If students are not allowed the opportunity to take more responsibility for their own learning, simply because of the frenzy surrounding attaining good grades, how will they learn to learn independently? Exams test for understanding of material in the syllabus, but they do not generally test for why the material is important and how it relates to other things in this complex world of ours. But in the madcap rush to ace exams, there is simply no time and no space for students to consider these things in the classroom setting, suitably facilitated by teachers. How then will students learn to discriminate amongst the things that they should learn in the future, and thereby cultivate a healthy lifelong attitude towards learning?

And make no mistake, learning independently will become increasingly more important in the future.

Why is that? Because even as the trend is towards greater degrees of specialization in a myriad number of fields, the trend is also moving towards broader knowledge of a diverse range of formerly unrelated fields. Various different fields are now blending together to create new industries and businesses at the intersections. Careers, professions, jobs … none of these are monolithic and they all will evolve over time, sometimes unrecognizably so. It is impossible and a contradiction in terms to provide education to everyone that is both broad and deep. The challenge of education in the coming years ahead, globally and not just in Singapore, is to equip students with the skills to learn independently, because there are just far too many things to learn in this complex world of ours to ever teach them all in a formal classroom setting. It is the skills associated with learning independently that will continue to stand students, workers and professionals in good stead throughout their careers.

First example: Fifteen years ago and earlier, it may have been okay to be a competent software engineer who writes code for a living. But today, one of the world's foremost technology companies, worth north of USD160 billion in market cap, has as its flagship product a free web service that is almost completely ad-driven. I am of course talking about Google. Even Microsoft's products come in a box (sooo last century). Not Google, or Facebook. Today, it isn't enough just to be a competent programmer. The best software engineers also have an understanding of how humans use technology, which naturally requires diverse knowledge and skill sets, and they combine that knowledge to create new products and services that could literally destroy the business models of existing companies. If you're an engineer whose skill set is limited to programming, well, you had better be a really good programmer (like world class), because just writing code isn't going to cut it in the future. Or you could follow your job when it makes its way to India, if you find that appealing.

Second example: The newspaper business today is slowly going out of business. Nobody in print today has a good idea of how to reinvent newspapers to deal with the challenge posed by the Internet. People pretty much prefer to get their news off the web these days, particularly if the newspapers are not credible (hint hint, Singapore). And ad revenue as a result is falling...and falling. If you are a journalist today, in particular a print journalist, you should ideally have a firm grasp of today's ubiquitous computing technologies and all the affordances it provides. This is almost certainly something today's journalists were not taught in journalism school. Why is it important for journalists to understand technology? Because Larry Kramer said so!, that's why. The nature of media itself is evolving, faster than even the news wire services and broadcasting corporations, much less the slow-mo dinosaur that is the newspaper business. Journalists today need to change with the times, and engaging with their readers through technology is absolutely essential. That is, if they intend to stay relevant. If you are a journalist today at a press conference or an media attendee at an important event, you had better be blogging live on-site and sending regular Twitter updates into the cloud, because if you have to wait until you're back at the newsroom to file your story, no one's going to read it because that's just so five minutes ago.

The book or the classroom course to help the journalist to deal with these technological and societal changes hasn't been written yet (the software engineer's situation is a little less dire). Frankly, even if it were, I'm not confident it would stay (or even be) relevant because the pace of change today is frantic. There is no other option but to learn continuously and independently from everything around oneself.

I'm skeptical that students today are being equipped to deal with these rapid changes. In my opinion, students in Singapore have not been socialized into taking more responsibility for their own learning, nor have they been taught the skills to do so.

To recap my entire long spiel, exam smartness is NOT the problem, it is but a symptom. The real problem lies in students being taught in an environment that fails to impart the skills of learning independently.