Ian On The Red Dot

I commented on 10 Touchpoints a while ago.  My main issue was the lack of collaborative tools for people to come together and help design a better Sinapore.

Via JoshSpear.com, I learn of Open Architecture Network.  This is what 10 Touchpoints could have been.

My friends ask me why I chose to work at an Indian IT firm. The pay isn’t as high as the western MNCs. In fact, its lower than the market rate prevalent in Singapore.

One reason I gave is that since Indian IT firms were supposedly such a threat to the industry, one could benefit from working in it to understand what is going on.

After 7 months of working here, I have come to the conclusion that we as Singaporeans need not be overly worried about the supposed all powerful twin threats of the rise of India and China. Sure, things will get more competitive, but the key thing to note is (like in this case) an Indian IT firm is just like any other firm - it has its strengths and it has its weaknesses.

We also should not worry about an influx of these foreign talents. The thing is, these people provide opportunities for Singaporeans. Take my industry for an example. The allowance of an influx of foreign IT personnel have allowed companies in the finance industry to plant their regional headquarters here. Singapore has qualities that attract these companies such as our legal, corporate and governmental infrastructure, but wages might have been a deal breaker. Also, we might not have had enough IT personnel for all the companies wanting to establish their regional IT headquarters here. Allowing the foreign talents to come in to fill the IT positions helps push the decision in Singapore’s favour.

What happens now is that there are positions in management that Singaporeans can go for. A good number of my peers have joined the IT departments of such companies that manage the projects done by companies like mine.

The thing is, we shouldn’t compete for positions at the bottom of the value chain. These foreign talents do allow Singaporeans to move up the value chain. Of course, there is also the argument about Singaporeans losing out on management positions going to other foreign talents.

I can’t comment on that because I don’t have personal experience with that. Anyway, one thing does come to mind - when does foreign talent become foreign labour. Like for my industry, would we consider the programmers from Indian foreign talent or foreign labour?

Anyway, this post started out with the intention of talking about the Cricket World Cup. It is a big thing, and because of the influx of foreign talent into Singapore, it is actually a big thing to a significant number of people in Singapore.

I remembered how during the Soccer World Cup, there were enterprising businesses that took advantage of that period by catering to fans. Maybe Singaporeans could look into how we can cater to the needs of these foreign talents too. I’m sure there are opportunities to do so and to actually do well.

For example, my colleague subscribed for the package which allows him to watch the matches live. I think the package costs more than $100. He told me that back in India, he might have spent more during this period, but since he is here, he is just going home to watch the games. I don’t know, but that sounds like an opportunity to cater to a need by providing him a better experience of watching the Cricket World Cup.

In any case, I guess I just wanted to say don’t be discouraged about this change in Singapore society, but look at it as opportunities waiting to be seized.

Wikipedia has a host of entries related to game theory. I was reading some of the entries and the El Farol Bar problem caused light bulbs to start flashing. The situation in NUS when it comes to group projects is sort of like what happens with El Farol.

If more than 60% of the team is contributing, then some people would have been better off not contributing.

If less than 60% of the team is contributing, then some people would have been better off if they had contributed.

Its not an exact match but in a way, it kinda fits…

I needed to do some research so I went to the National Library Site to search for books related to the stuff I needed. I totally hated the interface. And when I did find a book I might be interested in, the information given was not enough for me to make the decision if I should go down to the library to borrow it. Maybe the information was there and I wasn’t used to the interface so didn’t know how to get it.

Then I remembered BookJetty created by Herryanto Siatono of Pluit Solutions. BookJetty was a site I knew about for sometime. When I first discovered it, I thought it was a really cool and impressive mashup. That was it.

Today, I’m in love with it. Totally. In. Love. I guess it takes a moment when you really need a useful tool to appreciate a site like BookJetty. I got the needed information easily, without needing to look for how to get the information. This site is more than a mashup. I apologise for ever having thought of it just that way.
It makes you wonder how a national organisation like the National Library Board with all its resources cannot produce a tool as useful as BookJetty created by a one man team with presumably less resources (then again, intellect and ability are resources too, so I guess …).

I watched ‘300′ with a few of my friends last week. It had been a show the guys had been eagerly waiting for. It was worth the wait. Every frame of the movie was an artpiece, a beautiful rendering of what was drawn in the graphic novel. While some of the reviewers in the MSM didn’t think too much about the show, I feel most of them missed the point. Sometimes, a movie doesn’t need to make a point. It doesn’t need to have some deeper meatier meaning below it to justify its existence. A good movie can be one that provides good entertainment during the time I am in the cinema. Period.

Anyway, after the movie, as we were walking out of the cinema, someone commented, “Those Spartans were gay. King Leonidas was damn gay”. And we all agreed. King Leonidas and his spartans were indeed damn ‘gay’.

It wasn’t just them. In this season of the Premiership, Cristiano Ronaldo also has been damn ‘gay’. He has been making dazzling runs, putting in good crosses and scoring match-winners.

And the most ‘gay’ of them all - Roger Federer.

I remember when I was in secondary school, the word ‘gay’ was equal in meaning to the word ‘faggot’. It was derogatory. If someone called you a ‘gay’, it meant you were a pussy, a weak person. Not a real man.

But now its different. Now, if someone called you ‘gay’, it meant you were somewhat a god in something. So Federer is ‘gay’ because he is a skillful tennis player and dominates his sport. Ronaldo is ‘gay’ because he is a talented soccer player. Leonidas was ‘gay’ because he killed shit loads of the invading force and stood for something - Honour and Duty. He was a real man.

I started wondering on the way home when the word ‘gay’ became a common word in my vocabulary and when did its meaning change. I realised for me, the change happened when I started lan gaming, specifically when I starting playing Warcraft then Dota on Battlenet.

Whenever we played against some player who could own us, meaning he could keep killing our heroes, and we couldn’t do shit against him and his items were so much better like he had 1 Divine Rapier, 1 Aegis, 1 BoT and 3 other Level 3 items and we had just boots…we would call him ‘gay’ meaning he was so damn good that we wanted to be leavers (which of course we didn’t do).

But now when I think about the South Park episodes I have watched, I think South Park might have started the shift in the way the word was used long before it became a common phrase for online gaming.

Anyway, I think the use of the word in our culture has changed. I won’t be presumptuous and speak for everyone, but within my circle of friends and then some, it has indeed been the case. I’m not sure how the gays may feel that we have co-opted the word ‘gay’ although I feel this time it isn’t as bad as when people co-opted the word ’spastic’ to use as a derogatory adjective.

The thing is, I couldn’t help but wonder if the increased acceptance of homosexuality among our population, especially the younger generation is because of this. Is the way we use the word an effect of this increased acceptance or is it the cause of an increased acceptance because it helped change our mental associations between the word ‘gay’, the people who are gay and our image of what is ‘gay’ (however flawed both extremes might be).  Maybe its both.

When I first entered the hallowed halls of this great institution, I heard the hushed whisperings of the existence of a mighty artifact. It was known to make fools wise and learned men idiots.

As an apprentice, I never dared ask about this artifact and the power it was supposed to have.

After the first solstice, all the young apprentices were to be tested by the oracles of knowledge. We were made to sit in the great cavernous halls in numbing cold and given the questions which the oracles had issued and that the scribes had recorded.

I would always feel after each test that I had failed, that I had been found wanting and would be punished for my inadequecy. I shared my burden with an elder. He looked at me compassionately and said, “Never despair young one. Now quickly, prepare some offerings to the gods and follow me!”

He led me quickly through the dark corridors underneath the institution to a secret chamber and inside was an altar. Perched on the altar was a crescent-shaped object made out of gold.

“Offer your sacrifice now and pray that the gods grant you grace.”

Unquestioning, though puzzled, I got on my knees and offered the sacrifices I had brought. And I prayed sincerely for the hope that I would not be found wanting.

When the scribes announced the results of the test, I had done well. I was shocked and deeply grateful to the mercies that had been bestowed on me. I knew in the deepest of my heart that I didn’t deserve my results. Unlike the orators, debaters and philosophers, when the oracles asked an apprentice a question, there was only one answer - there was no room for open-ended discussion. Either you knew the answer or you didn’t. And I was sure that I haven’t answered enough questions to have done so well and those I had answered, I never did have any confidence in the rightness of my answers.

Puzzled, I asked my elder what had happened.

“No one knows for sure how the gods wield the mighty crescent, but over the years, the elders have seen its effects. We believe that the gods work on 3 principles. All man is never equal, and should never be made equal. There must be those who are raised onto pedestals and those who must be confined below it. And a man’s worth is determined by those who surround him and is not like how those philosophers would argue to be an intrinsic quality of an individual.”

I never fully understood what my elder was saying then, but now, as I sit alone in my own confines, aged and hunched by the burdens of the world I begin to understand what had happened.

The truth was the gods never really valued man, but they saw the value in branding a man. But what was the point of branding all man the same even if they could be argued to be equal in both ability and intellect. Good only has meaning because of evil, hot because of cold. The notion of a man being called capable only had real worth if he could be considered to be more capable than someone else. And yet, there were times that certain tests of the oracles showed that all man was not capable. Then what? It would never do good for our gods who never liked to lose face to other gods that their worshippers and those they had chosen to be educated by the scribes were of below par ability and intellect. And so they wield the great crescent, to ensure that even though the apprentices of an art had been deemed by the oracles to be unworthy to become elders of it, they would. After all, the only thing that mattered was that some was more worthy than others.

As I sit here alone, at a time when nothing seems to matter anymore, I allow myself to chuckle at the irony of it all. In a land where my gods proclaim the value of community over individualism, where my gods poured derision on the exaltation of the principles of individualism of the western lands, this is the land where no one shares, and one can only be considered worthy at the expense of another.

——————————————————————————————-

Pardon the indulgence, this post was due to:
The campus observer has an article on the assessment of the NUS grading system.

Also, while everything else may be made up, my seniors in NUS did indeed use the phrase “Pray to the Bell Curve”.

I have a problem.

I tend to get obsessive about things.  One step away from obsessive compulsive disorder.

Anyway, I got a call today.  Actually a few missed calls from the same number.

The number is  62352209.

I tried to return the call but whoever was on the other side just cut the call off or let it ring until there was a timeout.

Damn frustrating.  I mean if its important enough to call multiple times then it should be important enough for me to return.  Right?

So I called Singtel’s 100 number.  The operator could only tell me roughly where the call came from but not the identity of the caller.

So nvm.

I decided to consult something more ‘powderful’.

I decided to consult the Oracle Of Google.

And guess what… I found this on Ping.sg.

The number belongs to some company doing surveys.  Someone got my number from somewhere…  Grr…  Then again, I used to be stupid enough to actually give accurate details to those people who accost you on the streets of Orchard Rd.

30 minutes of my life has been wasted.

Test your knowledge about the countries of the world. I got 70. Basically tried to remember the teams at the World Cup, Euro Championships and the nationalities of the players from EPL.

Went down to Paradigm Infinitum yesterday to browse through their boardgames and decided to buy “Lost Cities” which is a two player cardgame.

Lost Cities is a game with two kinds of cards: expedition cards and investment cards. There are 5 sets of expedition cards where each set has 9 cards with values from 2 - 10. The idea is to play expedition cards in order of increasing value (but not necessarily in consecutive order). At the end of the game, the values of the cards played for each expedition is totalled and 20 points is substracted from this total. The 20 points represent the cost of the expedition and the remaining value after the deduction is the value of the expedition.

If no expedition cards have been played, the value of the expedition is zero. However, if any investment cards have been played for that expedition without any expedition cards for it played, then the value of the expedition is (number of investment cards + 1) * -20.

Investment cards can only be played for an expedition before any expedition cards are played for that expedition. There are 3 investment cards for each expedition. If at the end of the game, the value of an expedition is 10, then the points scored from it is (number of investment cards + 1) * 10. Playing an investment card is a risk because of the multiplier effect and the fact that an expedition could result in a negative value.

There are only two ways to get rid of a card from your hand - to play it or discard it. The thing about discarding cards is that your opponent can choose to draw the card that has been discarded by you. Once you have played a card or discarded it, only then can you draw another card or choose to take a card previously discarded.

After reading the rules, I started thinking of what were the possible strategies to play this game. Since you could only play investment cards at the start of an expedition, you would only want to play it when you are reasonably sure you can complete that expedition. The starting hand is 8 cards, so it would be unlikely that you can be sure an expedition can be completed based on that.

The rules can be found here.

I realised straightaway that one of the ‘agonizing’ moments of this game was when do you decide that the chance of completing an expedition based on the cards in your hand and the discarded cards is high enough to warrant the risk of playing an investment card before the start of that expedition.

Another ‘agonizing’ moment would be when to start an expedition but since the penalty of such an expedition is lower if its value is negative due to no investment card being played, then it would be reasonable to say that such an expedition could be started earlier with less certainty of completion and with less agony because the penalty is less (this is from the perspective of a slightly risk averse way of playing the game).

In any case, one cannot wait too long for the certainty of an expedition before starting to play it because the game ends when the last card is drawn so there might not be time to complete the planned expedition.

Somehow, at this point I started thinking about Singapore and all our investments to be a Biotech hub, an IDM hub, a Sports hub, a BTMICE hub…and whether they would pay off. I wonder whether we had the necessary ‘cards’ to finish the ‘expeditions’ and not be penalised because of the wasted investments.

While “Lost Cities” has an element of luck because one cannot predict the cards that will be drawn, the planning and execution of our investments is arguably not. However, in the context of the plans that Singapore has laid, it can be said that we do not control all the cards in our hand if we had them in the first place.

A lot of our plans seem to rest on the hope that we can attract foreign talent and keep them here. But as seen in the case of the Sentosa CEO Darrell Metzger leaving before the completion of the plan he created, we can never really count on foreign talent staying the course in Singapore. Sure, what he did while he was here was awesome and Sentosa has really really improved but one cannot help but feel he was using Singapore as a parking lot until something better came along. And do not be fooled by his sentiments that Sentosa will definitely be a success because the next stage is crucial and if not executed properly, all the good work will have be wasted.

While I don’t disagree with the idea that we should bring in foreign talent with the skills to meet a specific need that Singaporean cannot like what Mr Wang has said, an important aspect of this is knowledge transfer. One of the results of Mr Metzger leaving is a global head hunt for the next CEO. What? I know 3 years isn’t a very long time, but shouldn’t it have been part of some plan to put a Singaporean as an understudy so that if anything happens, we do not need to go out and do another head hunt to get a foreign talent in.

MM Lee said that Singaporeans should not have a crutch mentality, but I feel our country already do. Sometimes we are too dependent on foreign talent to ensure the success of our plans. And that is dangerous, because in the end, we will just get penalised. So if we do need foreign talent now, we need to ensure that we get as much knowledge transfer out of them as possible and not factor in that we can attract them here and get them to stay. If they stay, its a bonus. If they do not, then its ok, the plan still works based on attracting them and squeezing out of them as much knowledge as we can.
So like what Mr Wang talked about, we really only should bring in foreign talent that has some knowledge to transfer to us and not invest so much in the guppies of other nations and we need to make sure that in every industry, just like what Mr Yeo is doing for the biotech industry, that our guppies learn as much as possible from the whales as soon as possible.

Malcolm Gladwell’s book called “The Tipping Point” talks about the epidemic of suicides that hit this island in the Pacific called ‘Micronesia’. The book is a really insightful book that tries to explain how small things can make a big difference and how ideas, messages and products are spread.

The chapter on suicide in the island tries to explain what caused this epidemic of suicides. Basically, there was a period in this island’s history where young males just starting committing suicides over the most trivial reasons.

Three things that can be taken away from the study of this phenomenon that happened in the island.

1. Suicide became a perverse rite of adolescence despite its finality.

2. Suicide was a form of self-expression for the young males.

3. Previous cases of suicide gave ‘permission’ to other males to do what was previously an unthinkable act.

I don’t know about you guys, but taking the train has become different for me ever since the first MRT suicide. I cannot comprehend why anyone would want to die that way and every time I am on the platform, I wonder about it. And somewhere at the back of my mind is the siren’s call to just take that small step and give it a try. But of course I never do. I have no reason to because I have no interest in committing suicide.

But in a way when Gladwell talks about ‘permission’, I can understand it and see how it applies to Singapore’s recent cases of MRT suicides. Make no mistake, suicide is nothing new in Singapore. But this way to die is and in a way so is the reason to die .

The first person who killed himself did it partly because of the financial state he was in and the desperation, frustration and depression it created. While he probably didn’t intend for this consequence, his suicide will probably ‘inspire’ other people in similar situations to kill themselves by MRT suicides not just because they have been given ‘permission’ to do so, but also because in a perverse way, it could become a form of self expression for this people to a country and government who just doesn’t seem to care.

Soon, MRT suicides for a period of time could become a rite of poverty in Singapore.