The New Blogger Challenge

Like Bernard Leong, I was recently interviewed by Jude Yew, a Singaporean PhD student doing research on the impact of new media during the 2006 General Elections.

However, during the interview, I did not feel very interested in talking about last year's General Elections at all. Internet time moves differently, as I told Jude, and the 2006 General Elections already feels like a distant memory to me. So the interview became a more meandering, loosely structured conversation about socio political blogging in Singapore.

I don't even feel like blogging about the interview. Except to say that during the interview, I expressed disappointment at the lack of depth in serious blogging in Singapore.

In my opinion, a disproportionately high proportion of readworthy blog content is being produced by a very small number of S'pore bloggers. The same few usual suspects.

So the health of the Singapore blogosphere is at risk. It is constantly at risk. All it would take is the departure of a few significant bloggers (eg Alex Au, Aaron Ng, Molly Meek, XenoBoy and a few others) and suddenly the tap would run dry.

I said that it was this serious lack of depth that compelled me to continue my own sociopolitical blogging. If there were a sufficient number of readworthy sociopolitical bloggers in Singapore, I would be quite happy to "retire" or blog instead about my other interests (and I have many).

As it is, I often feel grudgingly compelled to blog about social, political and economic issues in Singapore every now and then. Just to keep the flame alive. Keep people thinking. Ensure that the discussion goes on.

And I still get a steady stream of emails from readers, all the time, and more than I can respond to. Readers who say, "Mr Wang, could you please blog about this, could you blog about that, I would appreciate your views etc etc".

It does make me wonder. Why do I still have to do this? By now, surely I've already done more than my fair share of blogospheric National Service. I wish 20 new, serious, sociopolitical bloggers would appear next week or next month to "replace" me. Yes, 20. Out of one entire nation. Is that really too much to ask?

Go on. Take this as a challenge. Be one of the 20 new, serious, sociopolitical bloggers. Start a blog. Write something readworthy. Then email me or put a link in the comment section of this post. I'll publicise you. And if you want it, I'll help you along with tips and suggestions on how to get at least 10,000 readers a month.

Baca Selengkapnya »»

Work, Religion, Money, Psychics and Other Assorted Things

Murabaha; riba; gharar; arbun; wakil; sukuk; fiqh; salam; hadith; haram; musharaka. My new vocabulary.

Caught a plane on Tuesday night to Kuala Lumpur to attend a conference on Islamic finance. In the past five years, Islamic finance has gained more and more prominence, as banks all over the world explore ways to tap into the great amount of wealth in the Middle East. Even DBS has moved (very seriously) into this area - hence we now have The Islamic Bank of Asia in Singapore.

Islamic finance, however, is a topic of which I have very little knowledge. And so, on the brief flight to KL, I found myself attempting to speed-read through an Islamic finance textbook. In the process, I became more intrigued by Islam, than by Islamic finance itself, and made a mental note to find out more about this religion.

Next morning, at the conference, I was one of the few non-Muslims in a predominantly Muslim audience. The conference speaker was a white man, with a very American accent. However, it quickly became apparent that he too was very Muslim. Abdulkader Thomas was his name, and as he went through the course, he spoke Arabic, wrote Arabic, quoted Islamic scholars, and referred often to the Quran and the life and times of the Prophet Mohammed.

Very curiously, at a certain time in the course, Abdulkader briefly alluded to having studied biblical Hebrew during university (could he have originally been Jewish?!), but I did not get any convenient chance to ask him about his unusual spiritual journey through life.

My personal mission was really to explore ways by which modern derivatives (famously described by Warren Buffett as "financial weapons of mass destruction") might be integrated with Islamic finance, and thereby be made palatable to Islamic clients. But it quickly became clear to me that I was on a long trip into uncharted waters. Abdulkader made it quite clear that this was an area with more questions than answers.

I am either on the edge of the next hot innovation in the investment banking world, or at the entrance of a long winding passage leading to a dead end. The religious underpinnings of Islamic finance are, well, very Islamic, and if I don't learn to think more like a Muslim, I doubt if I will go very far with the creation of new Islamic financial products,

Caught some TV from my hotel room this week - watching mostly Discovery Channel documentaries - and there were two which interested me, in particular. The first documentary was about João Teixeira de Faria, more popularly known as John of God, a faith healer in Brazil. This was the first time I'd heard of him, although apparently he has been doing his faith healing for decades and is already very well-known, receiving patients from many different countries.

The documentary showed, in rather graphic detail, John stabbing people with his unsterilised knife, slitting open their stomachs and back muscles etc, and pulling out their cancer tumours, cysts etc with his bare, exposed hands. As we would expect of faith healers, his patients experience no pain, and almost no bleeding, and apparently no post-operation infections either. Like Jane Roberts, John of God is a channeller. He calls upon "spirits of the dead" to enter his body, and use him as a vehicle to carry out the operations - thereafter, John himself has no recollection of how happened.

The second Discovery documentary was entitled Psychic Vietnam. This is about a Vietnamese government project to use a small number of psychics (tested and screened by government officials) to locate the remains of long-deceased, missing Vietnamese soldiers who had died during the Vietnamese war, 30 years ago. Here's a BBC commentary on the show. The actual documentary is quite interesting - it relates how the remains have been sent for DNA testing, and verified to be the remains of the person that the psychic says they are.

Visited the Kinojuniya bookstore at Suria KLCC and was pleasantly surprised to discover that its "Religion" section has much more variety than the one at Singapore's Kinokuniya, and this despite the fact that Malaysia is predominantly Muslim, while Singapore supposedly has more religious heterogenieity.

Two of my new acquisitions are "A Course in Miracles" (this is no ordinary "Christian" book, do click on link to find out how it was allegedly written) as well as "The Life And Teachings of Sai Baba of Shirdi" - India's mysterious, and living, godman (did you know he has a temple in Singapore too, somewhere around Moulmein Road?).

All in all, a rather interesting trip to KL, yielding much serendipitious, varied fodder for my metaphysical grazing.

Baca Selengkapnya »»

Salaries in Singapore

I found, through Tomorrow, an interesting blog that's all about salaries in Singapore. Here it is - Salary.sg.

There are lots of interesting posts on that blog, including this nifty one which allows you to benchmark your own annual income (or anyone else's) against the general population of taxpayers in Singapore. Anyone tried typing in PM Lee Hsien Loong's annual income yet? Heheh.

The post featured on Tomorrow was this one - Median Income By Age Group. It tells you the median gross monthly salary of managers (the generalists) and professionals (the specialists), by different age groups. To get a more complete picture, you would want to plow through the original MOM report, but Salary.Sg's graph does give a quick, convenient snapshot.

Baca Selengkapnya »»

Retirement, Money and Singaporeans

A Straits Times article, about retirement, savings and Singaporeans' expectations.

ST Aug 11, 2007
Retire? Not so soon, say many
Singaporeans polled
They need to carry on working because of worries
over insufficient savings
By Lydia Lim

SINGAPOREANS are in no hurry to retire and most want to work beyond the official retirement age of 62, some even into their 70s.

It's a case of 'CPF no enough' for many of these workers.

Seven in 10 polled last month in a Straits Times Insight survey on CPF said they do not think their savings in the national pension fund will see them through old age.

Six in 10 of them said the same of their Medisave funds for hospital bills and specified treatments.

The survey of 636 Singapore residents aged 30 and above found that apart from CPF, 77 per cent expect to be able to draw from other sources of retirement income, mainly savings, investments and insurance.

But a significant minority of 23 per cent had nothing else set aside.

One cause for concern is that only one in two Singaporeans has done any financial planning for retirement.

Even fewer, three in 10, have done their sums on how much they need to squirrel away.

What may mitigate against any resulting savings shortfall is their willingness to work beyond the retirement age of 62. Some two-thirds said they plan to do so.

Of these, one-third are willing to work up to age 65, another third up to age 70 and the remaining third into their 70s.

The journalist has got her thinking hat on backwards. The truth can be stated much more simply. It doesn't really matter what the "official" retirement age is. You will go on working as long as you (a) need the money, and (b) are still able to keep working.

Unless you regard suicide as an alternative, you don't have a choice. What were you thinking - that Singapore is a welfare state?

Blue-collar and lower-income workers are the most likely to want to work longer.
Eight in 10 plan to do so, against six in 10 among professionals, managers, executives and business types, or those drawing more than $3,000 a month.

Older Singaporeans are also more likely to want to work past the retirement age than those in their 30s.

The vast majority - 83 per cent - are however against a recent suggestion by ministers to raise the age when they can draw down their CPF minimum sum. It is currently 62.

The only practical significance of the "official" retirement age is that it is also the age when you can start utilising (in tiny little monthly instalments) your CPF minimum sum. For an explanation of how this works, refer to my old post here.

The survey findings also revealed a good amount of ignorance of the workings of the CPF system. Seven in 10 do not know how much they had in their CPF accounts.
And one in two does not know the rate of return on CPF savings.

Of the half who do, most - 63 per cent - are unhappy with the interest rate, which
stands at 2.5 per cent for Ordinary Account savings and 4 per cent for Special and Medisave Account savings.

The top two changes CPF members would like to see are more flexibility in the use of their money, and a higher interest rate on their savings.

Financial experts and Members of Parliament said it is good that Singaporeans feel no false sense of security over their retirement finances.

Manpower Minister Ng Eng Hen emphasised in an e-mail interview that a critical factor in determining what is enough for retirement is how long people work in relation to how long they can expect to live. Average life expectancy has risen from 61 years when CPF was introduced in 1955, to 80 today.

I believe that in the long run, what will catch many people off-guard is how long they end up living. Life expectancies (except in very poor countries) have steadily been rising over many decades and the curves don't seem to show any sign of topping off.

In 1900, life expectancy at birth in the United States was only 47 years. By year 2000, it had climbed to 77 years (an increase of 30 years). In 1950, life expectancy in China was 35 years. By 2000, it had risen to 71 years.

If you google around to check out what the scientists and doctors have to say about new medical discoveries and research and their implications for how long people are going to live, well, you'd probably be quite startled. Anti-aging medicine has become an industry in itself.

The question is - how long can you afford it? Not the medicine. I mean - life itself. Living 10, 20 years longer than you expected means that you need money to support yourself for an additional 10, 20 years. That's a pretty long time.

Baca Selengkapnya »»

Green Thoughts

A volunteer writer from a local environmental group just interviewed me. His article is for a publication that will be released at the time of the next National Youth Environment Forum (yes, we do have such things in Singapore).

Initially I had sensed a little tentativeness on his part. That was probably because he had gone through my blogs and found that I had never really written much about the environment before. He may have been wondering whether I would have anything interesting or insightful to say about environmental issues.

Well, in the end, I don't think he was disappointed. There are many things in the world which Mr Wang hasn't blogged about yet, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have opinions about them, heheh.

Purely by coincidence, I've just come back from a trip to Australia. During that time, I met up with an ecology/environmental volunteer with a special interest in plants. He was a 63-year-old man who cycled 60 km that morning, so as to meet me. The reason why he didn't drive is that he doesn't own a car. The reason why he doesn't own a car is that he does not want to contribute to air pollution and the global consumption of petroleum resources.

He also told me that until last year, he never turned on the heating in his home. If it was cold, he would just wear thicker clothes and sleep with more blankets. Conserving electricity is his other little way of helping to protect the environment. It's only now, when he's starting to get some arthritis in his joints, that he has started turning on the heating during winter.

Until recently, Western Australia was having a prolonged drought right now, and this old man felt that it was a "blessing in disguise". He said that the drought had the benefit of teaching Australians to be more environmentally aware. He proceeded to give me a detailed theory of what the true cost of beef should be, taking into account the cost of the amount of water it takes to raise a cow.

What I saw in this old man was a deep love for Mother Earth and a very strong sense of responsibility for the environment. Do such staunch advocates of the green movement exist in Singapore? Perhaps, but there can't be many.

As I was telling my interviewer, the level of environmental awareness in Singapore will be driven more by economics than anything else. If water and electricity become more expensive; if petrol prices go up; if more shopping centres start charging for plastic bags - these are the sorts of things that will make Singaporeans sit up, take notice and start adopting greener sorts of lifestyles and habits.

Baca Selengkapnya »»

National Education

Learn more about the old & poor in Singapore. Click here.

Baca Selengkapnya »»

The Mandatory National Day Post

A few weeks ago, a free Singapore flag was delivered to my doorstep, wrapped in clear plastic. It's the kind which HDB residents are supposed to hang over their parapets or outside their windows, to exhibit their patriotism to the world, on National Day.

I have a mild adversion about doing such things. I still remember how some citizens, a few years back, were fined for not hanging out their flags properly.

The exact details escape me now. But I think in one case, the chap didn't hang his flag properly, a heavy storm came along, and the flag became crumpled, messy or something like that. The chap didn't bother to tidy up his flag. Later he was fined by the government. Some obscure offence having to do with disrespect to the state flag.

So I looked at my own flag, still in its plastic packaging, and I couldn't decide whether to hang it out or throw it away. Hanging it out would entail a risk of getting fined, a small risk no doubt, but why take any unnecessary risks at all. At the same time, throwing away the flag seemed vaguely wrong and a bit wasteful (I am quite environmentally conscious - I will blog more about this in future). I considered using the flag as a rag, but I was afraid the strong red colour would run.

Unable to decide, I left the flag on the dining table for the time being. A few days later, when I looked around for it, it was gone. I asked Mrs Wang, "Do you know where's that flag?"

"Threw it away," she said.

"You threw it away?"

"Yeah. Down the rubbish chute. Why do you ask? Were you planning to hang it out?"

"No, not really."

"Well then, that's why I threw it away. Our place got too much junk, anything we don't want to use, we just gotta throw it away. Otherwise we kena one big mess, how?"

Mrs Wang is a true blue Singaporean, pragmatic to the bone.


**********

Yesterday my little daughter came back from her playschool with a little national flag painted on her cheek. Apparently the theme in class that day was National Day. All the kids had a little national flag painted on their cheeks or hands.

It was some kind of non-water soluble ink. I was a little annoyed. She looked cute but the ink wouldn't wash off easily. It's still on her face right now. I think it will take another day or two before it comes off completely.

But my mild annoyance really stemmed from the fact that nowadays I doubt whether patriotism is a desirable value to instill in our kids. In fact, I believe that one day, patriotism will become widely viewed as an odd, useless anachronism. Something like the way we regard communism in North Korea and Cuba today.

Globalisation is changing Singapore - and the rest of the world. I see this very clearly in my own work. The world is shrinking quickly and getting more and more interconnected. I believe that the optimal approach would be for the kids to grow up with a very global, international perspective on life. As it is, they are already living in a country heavily populated with non-citizens. I can easily imagine that in the course of their own adult lifetimes, they may well end up living, studying and working for substantial periods of time in half a dozen different countries. They could easily end up holding multiple citizenships or PR status.

The kids need to grow up being very open and receptive to the idea that they may move and move again. Home will be just any place where they stay for more than three or four years. It is important that they are not handicapped by any dubious concepts like patriotism. By any strange notions that they belong to any particular corner of the planet. By any odd idea that they should be loyal to any specific red dot on the global map.

New horizons would open up for them, if they could see themselves as true citizens of the entire world. They must learn to be able to be comfortable, make friends and interact with people of all sorts of different cultures, anywhere in the world. I'm going to have to scrub harder at that little red-&-white smudge, on my daughter's cheek.

Baca Selengkapnya »»