Position available - World Bank President

This is an advertisement to invite suitably qualified applicants to apply for the position of President - World Bank.

Beside the usual requirements, the following are additional criteria from my observation.

• You must have "z" in your surname. [The soon-to-be-last president is Mr Wolfowitz. The current candidate is Mr Zoellick.]
• You must promise not to promote your girlfriend / boyfriend using your position.

Please submit your application to me. Thank you.

Cycling on footpaths is ILLEGAL

But the MP for Tampines GRC and Minister for National Development Mah Bow Tan said let's do a trial to allow cycling on Tampines pathways for a YEAR.

To me, it is not just a matter of courtesy for a pleasant experience for cyclists and pedestrains. To me, it is just plain safety ignored without proper grounding and education for ALL residents.

Do not expect me to move aside for a cyclist to pass. If he or she touched me with his/her bike, I will sue him for physical assault, emotional disembowelment, loss of income and whatever else my lawyerS can think of.

Mr Mah, with due respect, please focus on clearing the jams off the roads and make them safe for all wheelers to use.

Let us not complicate the issue by bringing the unmotorised two-wheelers with significant kinetic energy onto the pedestrain pathways.

Good riddance to a lousy trial.

P/S - Btw, thank goodness I don't stay in Tampines.

Twister in Singapore

Pictures courtesy of a friend of a friend of a friend.

For those foreign readers of this blog, the water twister really happened in Singapore recently. This is not an unexplained UFO phenomenon.

UNSW today and Singapore's tomorrow

looking for you

Prior to the debacle, I do not have much of an impression nor opinion of UNSW. Now the whole Singapore knows and talks about UNSW.

UNSW’s dream may have cost the University’s trustees and even Singapore’s taxpayers a few millions dollars. UNSW’s non-performance may have cost some 150 students and families some inconveniences which I believe will eventually be sorted out. UNSW may have given some jobs to some Singapore contractors. UNSW may have temporarily retarded Singapore’s plan to be the education hub. UNSW has certainly lost a lot of “qualitative” goodwill too.

But coincidentally a few weeks before the fallout, I spoke to a media person about not seeing the expected explosion in foreign student numbers to date. The media person was vehemently in disagreement with me. To me, the current education hub theme is a recycled theme with a few new bits. I was a product of the old theme of bringing foreign students to Singapore from neighbouring countries.

What is important to Singapore is knowing what had contributed to the sad story of UNSW. Did the best academic brains in UNSW fail to do its costing, projections, budgeting, scenario analysis, financial analysis, marketing plan, etc etc etc before committing to the project? Is Professor Hilmer too impatient for the tree to bear fruits? Or does he know something we don't? What is/are/was/were EDB’s role/s in the project?

Why is it important to know?
We have two IRs coming on stream in 2-3 years’ time costing billions (not just millions) of dollars. We certainly cannot afford these two IRs to fail on the basis that “the actual tourists/MICE numbers are way below our projected figures”. Many lives are entangled to the fortune of these projects. Given the size of the 2 IRs, we certainly must have investors with DEEP pockets and knowhow to mitigate the risks.

One thing for sure - "No guarantee in life"

Taste of life

Awkward.

Hi friends,

Just had a plate of chicken rice that costs $5.05 inclusive of GST. Tasteless despite the tender but breasty meat that I had to swallow. In addition to that, I really dislike the practice of conveniently putting dishes (that I did not order) on my table and happily charging me for it.

How could the restaurant owner think they could get away with not delivering value for the price that a customer is paying? Yes running a business is tough but the customers too have their financial burden.

Sorry no more business from Edgar.

Racial Discrimination - Have you experienced it?

Yes, I have.

In the paper today, it is reported that AmBank, a second Malaysian bank (after MayBank) has scrapped plans to offer privileges to law firms which are at least 50% owned by ethnic Malays.

Even though the policy is officially scrapped, will the management staff, involved in assigning the bank's business to law firms, practise it in reality? My soul says "hope la".

Racial discrimination is a way of life, is part of the government and is deeply entombed in constitution in Malaysia.

Have you ever experience being a minority race in your country? I have.

So when will this "dynasauristic mindset" change? I really hope it will be soon.

How to increase your company's bottomline?

We can grow the bottomline by tackling the middleline and tweaking things about.

Traditionally, companies will focus their effort on growing their business is. customers and sales turnover. Nowadays, they do this:-

• print your monthly statement on both sides of a page
• change to 360-day year in interest calculation
• sending e-statements
• collecting monthly subscriptions in advance instead of arrear
• when they make your money "disappear" temporarily into a "black hole" when you do a fund transfer between accounts electronically

I am not saying all of the above are no good. Some are definitely enviromentally friendly (which i support). But may I appeal to your good heart to share some of that cost savings with the consumers?

Guys, can we try to focus our time and energy on growing the business, really? Please try to be really (and not superficially) productive.

Our days in Bangkok/Pattaya - as a "farmer"

my caddy, mew.. tremendously fair lady despite the sun..

a farmer working on the tee

another farmer on the fairway

we toiled from sunrise to sunset

the beautiful land

Our first trip after many years of discussion, it finally became a reality. We were at Burapha and Laem Chabang golf courses in Pattaya.

3 nights in Bangkok/Pattaya - As a Tourist

in S'pore budget airport

thaksin-built airport

puppy-trading in chatukchak

a very good tiger show @600 bahts

suicowboy as a "walking street"

suicowboy in its full living spirit

Forgotten to take pics of our dinners. There were plenty of seafood with beers to help with digestion and cholestrol.

3 nights in Bangkok/Pattaya - Hotels

Two hotels in two cities over 3 nights in Bangkok and Pattaya meant we were really living out of our suitcases.

Waking up and rushing out before sunrise and only going to bed way past midnites also meant we hardly had the opportunities to enjoy the hotel hospitalities.

First Time

P/S - My heartbeat at 4.20pm yesterday.

I wish to share this light-hearted piece for the weekend. I was really smitten when I heard this over Chinese radio station last evening.

The two DJs were bantering about their "first time". He said his first time was in Orchard. He and this girl were walking up and down Orchard Road in those days of dating. He was planning to do it at while crossing a road without traffic light.

The lady DJ asked, "Why do it at a crossing without the lights?"

He said it would be an opportune time for him to do it.

"So did you manage to?" she asked. He said he missed it as he was very nervous.

"Then?" she pursued eagerly.

He gingerly replied, "The girl asked me whether I had wanted to hold her hand. She then went on to hold my hand instead. That "first time" feeling was beyond words at that moment."

Moral of the story
Just ask the guys what they want. The guys will really appreciate it.

What does this mean?

For those uninitiated, here is a collection box placed on public land for residents to deposit recyclable items in return for nothing.

• I observed that we do have many people who understand recycling effort.
• They are also willing to give away those items for free. Not sure whether they know the proceeds from disposing those items benefit a private company with profit maximisation motive.
• The karang guni men and women are more than willing to pay you some pennies for the stuff but yet you are willing to give them away for free.
• Do you notice who are the people collecting the stuff from the boxes?
• Given the picture of a mess at the box, is it due to scheduling problem in clearing the boxes regularly OR is it due to enthusiatic people filling the boxes faster than they are being cleared?

Can you try to explain this phenomenon?

The "B" word

One thing we all learned quite well by the end of the Salary debate was the word:-

B E N C H M A R K I N G

A Malaysian's comment on the Salary debate

Hi friends,

The following is an extract from an article written by Tan Shao Qian pp27 in SIN CHEW JIT POH (17 APR 2007) entitled "IF THEY ARE FIRST-CLASS TALENT, ANY HARM IN PAYING THEM A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR?".

After reading the article sent by a friend to me, I asked myself, "Should I count their salaries or should I count my blessings?"

(Open Quote)
Are you convinced by Lee Hsien Loong argument? Pay a Singapore minister or the Prime Minister an annual income you would probably never be able to save in your lifetime. The reason is to maintain a first-class team. Times that figure by two plus and the S$3 million salary becomes more than RM7 million – a shocking amount, especially for us who are a strip of water away from Singapore.

Difficult to accept? But let us look at some stories besides the remuneration: Singapore was a country in a weak position with no resources when it was separated from Malaysia in 1965. Incidentally, the ringgit-Singapore dollar exchange rate was one to two; but barely 40 years later, the situation is reverse.

The wealth of Singaporeans has doubled. Not only that, when Malaysia’s per capita income was US$5,000 in 2006, that of Singapore was US$28,000, comparable to that of the US, Europe and Japan.

However, there is more to it. They have the world’s busiest port, airport and financial hub. Just as Lee Kuan Yew has said, which country in the world has risen from Third World to First World in one generation like Singapore.

If this still does not justify the million-dollar pay rise for Singapore ministers, then let us look at it from another angle. Malaysia’s Bank Negara lost RM30 billion in foreign exchange speculation during the Asia financial crisis; the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) suffered RM3 billion in paper losses and RM500 million in bad debt in 2004 and a host of third class projects chalked up large amounts of additional costs.

In addition, national enterprises – MAS and Proton – each lost a few billion ringgit due to mismanagement. And in the ongoing Perwaja corruption suit, RM1.5 billion was lost before Eric Chia took over. Then, there was Bumiputra Finance and many other corruption cases where investigation results were not disclosed.

One disheartening fact is that such a situation is not exclusive to Malaysia. ...... (End Quote)

At-least-$48mio Salary Debate

Quotable quotes

"One should not write their pay cheques."

"There is no comparative jobs in the private sectors." - Yet we are using "benchmarking" to justify salary increase.

"It is difficult to be specific with KPIs as their nature of jobs are more long term."

"I will donate my salary increase for next 5 years to charity." Wow!!!

"I do not expect my ministers or my MPs to do the same."

Bus lane woes...

Some bus lanes have gone off-limit to all other vehicles except SBS/MRT buses in recent times.

Why is it necessary? An effort to ensure the uninterrupted movement of these buses and thus encouraging them to be timely for the thousands of commuters.

Is it fair? It is certainly fair for the thousands of commuters. BUT the alternate view from the other road users - Are we privatising one-third or one-quarter of certain important roads for the benefit of public listed companies with profit motives for their respective shareholders?

We could get summon for straying into the bus lanes

P/S - Can someone send me a pic of the bus lane for this posting, pls?

They are challenging the Authority.

P/S It is not the same Mr Wong.

These people are challenging the Authority. The Authority is totally blind to these crimes being committed.

These people are going around putting up advertising with no regard to the civil society. They are pursuing their selfish objective of making monies for themselves at our expense.

They will stick these papers permanently on walls and pillars. They even sent people to go from door to door and throwing flyers (ie. rubbish) into your home in broad daylight.

Please respect each other.

Last night, my home was visited by 3 different persons seeking donations to dun-know-what-cause. First, a young girl, scantily dressed and asking for $2. Second, a man said to be partially paralysed in his left arm and carrying a banner in right arm. Third, a bulky man in black t-shirt went away hastily when I asked him how come tonight there are so many people asking for donations.

It was Good Friday. It definitely was not Christmas Day and Edgar was not visited by 3 "ghosts". Will the relevant Authority please do your job?

6.5 millions residents and lunch time Snooze

Not too sure how Singapore would be like with 6.5mio residents. I feel very suffocating as it is now with all the jams and difficulty in finding a quiet place to seek solitude.

Yes, how nice if we can all sleep like that without a care for the world... The people in the pic knew all along that a short sleep is good during work. Can someone pls tell my HR or CEO?

By product of En-bloc Sales

In my current series of costing lectures, we discussed about by products being an output from production of the main product.

Using the analogy of en-bloc sales and subsequent property development and consequent sales of these new units (being the main product of the developer, what can we do with the debris and steel (being the by product)from knocking down of these old buildings?

Answer - For land reclaimation ie. extending Singapore's land area.

Can you ponder on this point for a moment?
So if you were the owner of a granite quarry in the neighbouring country and supplying to Singapore, how would you feel when you see other people "wastefully" tearing down more than decent buildings, dumping the debris into the sea and consequently collecting billions from reclaimed land sales?

These reclaimed land could house more IRs, Suntec Cities etc etc etc...

Moral of the story
Be sensitive to your feelings... ha!

Pay increase for many soon!!!

Govt will announce the pay increase package for the office bearers and the Civil Service in early April.

Received an email petitioning recipients to go sign an online petition to object to the pay increase package and GST increase.

Increase GST to pay salaries? Of course not in my opinion. This is part and parcel of re-defining Singapore for the future.

We need the right people to implement and execute the plans. And we have to pay what is a fair wage. For otherwise, the strategies and plans will remain on paper and collecting dusts while Singapore rots away.

There is a price to pay for everything.