Ian On The Red Dot

Over Singapore’s 40-odd years of independence, our bureaucracy has gone from a small team of bold visionaries with amazing execution abilities that never says die – true entrepreneurs who founded a nation – to a 110,000-odd strong Civil Service that has gotten so used to status quo and top-down leadership that it has deemed fit to leave most of the heavy brain lifting and risk taking to our Cabinet.

James Chan suggests a solution – an Agency of the Future.

Why do we need bonds? What are we scared of?

Meng says:

The assumption is that Singapore is inferior, that nobody who’s had a nice foreign education would live and work here if they didn’t have to.

The recent hatred against Thio Li-Ann which surfaced online after news broke about the invitation extended to her to be visiting human rights professor at New York University School of Law is ridiculous.

One accusation that has been levied her way is that she is responsible for repressing the homosexuals in Singapore. That is a presporterous notion. She has not done any repressing of any sort. Lest anyone forgets, the little piece of law Section 377A has been around for quite some time and although she made a vile contemptible speech in Parliament when arguing for the retention of Section 377A, she did not advocate the active enforcement of that law.

Some might argue that the mere advocacy for retention is tantamount to oppression. That would only be seeing half of the picture. It was Parliament as a body that decided not to repeal Section 377A.

Any discontent that needs to be shown, should be expressed at the elected members of Parliament. Compared to Thio Li-Ann, they are having it too easy from the same community that would demonize Thio Li-Ann. It would be naive to think that none of them share similar views as Thio Li-Ann.

And if they don’t then, discontentment at them is even more justified, because what sort of leaders do we have if they are the sort who do not stand by their own personal convictions.

Ah …yes, the sort who listen to the majority and represent those views.

It sickens me when our leaders use the majority as an expedient wall to hide behind when it suits their political agenda. It sickens me that during the debate we had members of Parliament who sat on the fence by saying that the law was only retained because of the existence of a conservative majority.

Yes, the members of Parliament are our elected representatives, but there are times when they have shown the capacity to lead by their convictions, to make the tough decisions and then convince the public they are right (strangely, recently, this usually happens when they are trying to burden us more financially or trying to be coy about the nation’s finances).

The debate for the repealing of Section 377A was one such time where they should have led by personal convictions. The law stood. And this begs the question, are they individuals who are incapable of making a stand or do their convictions lie in a different direction from which they profess. These are the individuals we should be giving a tougher time.

Hounding Thio Li-Ann serves no purpose. It is merely vindicative. Childish and useless.

Some quick thoughts – there is a difference between:

1. Go and work on something and let me see.
2. Go and work on something and let’s discuss how we can make things better.
3. Go and work on something and then I’ll contribute by saying whatever you do is shit AND then I’ll finally give my ideas.

I hate ‘blue-dress-red-dress’ working relationships. You know, the kind you get with some girlfriends. She will hold up a red dress and a blue dress and ask you which one she should wear. Either she has a clue or doesn’t. If she does, your opinion doesn’t matter. If she doesn’t, she will only make up her mind after you give your answer, and she will always choose the other dress.

If you are stuck in a team like that, time to stick a gun in your mouth. And maybe pull the trigger.

Phone rings at 4am.

Guy who was sleeping picks up phone.

Girl: Are you awake?

Guy: I am now.

Asking someone who has just answered the phone whether he or she is awake is a dumb question. The correct question would be ‘Were you sleeping?’.

Actually, just dispense with the question and apologize for calling at an insane time just to whine about how miserable your life is when you are staying in a bungalow, have an awesome salary, a great job, a great bunch of friends BUT cannot seem to find the right guy for yourself only because you have a roving pair of eyes.

NY Mag has an article cautioning excessive praise for your children

Some excepts:

Since the 1969 publication of The Psychology of Self-Esteem, in which Nathaniel Branden opined that self-esteem was the single most important facet of a person, the belief that one must do whatever he can to achieve positive self-esteem has become a movement with broad societal effects. Anything potentially damaging to kids’ self-esteem was axed. Competitions were frowned upon. Soccer coaches stopped counting goals and handed out trophies to everyone. Teachers threw out their red pencils. Criticism was replaced with ubiquitous, even undeserved, praise.

Dweck and Blackwell’s work is part of a larger academic challenge to one of the self-esteem movement’s key tenets: that praise, self-esteem, and performance rise and fall together.

Psychologist Carol Dweck:

“Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

But all praise is not equal—and, as Dweck demonstrated, the effects of praise can vary significantly depending on the praise given. To be effective, researchers have found, praise needs to be specific. (The hockey players were specifically complimented on the number of times they checked an opponent.)

In the opinion of cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, a teacher who praises a child may be unwittingly sending the message that the student reached the limit of his innate ability, while a teacher who criticizes a pupil conveys the message that he can improve his performance even further.

Their meta-analysis determined that praised students become risk-averse and lack perceived autonomy. The scholars found consistent correlations between a liberal use of praise and students’ “shorter task persistence, more eye-checking with the teacher, and inflected speech such that answers have the intonation of questions.”

Dweck’s research on overpraised kids strongly suggests that image maintenance becomes their primary concern—they are more competitive and more interested in tearing others down. A raft of very alarming studies illustrate this.

In one, students are given two puzzle tests. Between the first and the second, they are offered a choice between learning a new puzzle strategy for the second test or finding out how they did compared with other students on the first test: They have only enough time to do one or the other. Students praised for intelligence choose to find out their class rank, rather than use the time to prepare.

In another, students get a do-it-yourself report card and are told these forms will be mailed to students at another school—they’ll never meet these students and don’t know their names. Of the kids praised for their intelligence, 40 percent lie, inflating their scores. Of the kids praised for effort, few lie.

Cloninger has trained rats and mice in mazes to have persistence by carefully not rewarding them when they get to the finish. “The key is intermittent reinforcement,” says Cloninger. The brain has to learn that frustrating spells can be worked through. “A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not have persistence, because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.”

On a personal note:

Notwithstanding the rather confusing environment I had at home (an environment I concede I must try to have a fresh perspective in light of the article), I grew up in a system filled with effusive praise for my intelligence, one that reached its peak when I streamed ’successfully’ to the top of Singapore’s ranking system. Being part of that system, I developed a lot of bad habits and ineffective mental models. It was around my NS time that I entered what one might consider a rather bleak period in my life.

And I wasn’t prepared to handle it. I’m still not sure if NS made the handling of the period worse or it played an integral part of the breaking process needed to start from scratch. What I do know is that unlearning was hard and I resisted that process.

During my university days, I was still stuck with a lot of the baggage from the earlier years. I’m now painfully aware that I was ‘handicapped’ by my ‘if-I-cant-make-it-perfect-then-I-won’t-do-it-because-I-don’t-want-to-fail-perfection’ mentality. The friends who knew me since my JC days, those that I made along the way, those that stuck through those periods with me, and those who I made over many nights of quite contemptible self-pity were witnesses, to be slightly dramatic about it, a rather self-destructive phase of my life.

I’m pretty sure I’m not out of the woods yet. I’m not sure I’ll ever be. What I do take comfort in, is that I’m beginning to be aware of what was happening to me during those periods, and how the way I was ‘nurtured’ and ‘praised’ affected me and how I allowed it to affect me.

This awareness is now a compass I’m carrying.

On another note:

“At least you did your best” is a meaningless platitude. It does nothing for the receiver who is neither comforted nor provided with a plan to improve. One shouldn’t shy from criticisms or brutal evaluation of performance if it comes with concrete points for improvement. We tend to do a lot of criticizing and evaluating but little of the latter needed to make the criticisms and evaluation meaningful.

Kottke has curated tons of links related to the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing.

The giant Apollo 11 post

Apollo 11 landing on TV as it aired 40 years ago

Cool photos of the Apollo landing sites from low Moon orbit

Firstly, congrats to Nadnut and Geekonomics for winning the blogathon.

Now…what was its point?

Some time mid-way through the competition, a troll appeared on Twitter.

John Kerr, head of Edelman Digital Asia, mentioned the event rather unflattering in his blog post ‘No money, no social media honey?‘.

There are also grumbles against events like a Blogathon in Singapore, where high-value prizes are being given out to selected participating bloggers and the creeping realization that the event is about hardcore brand promotion, rather than promoting blogging or raising money for charity, which is the well-known focus for a ‘Blogathon.’ I don’t know many journalists who would get involved under a structure like this – celebrities yes, media no.

Firstly – bloggers can be journalists, celebrities, or maybe, horror of horrors, even both. So yeah, maybe journalists won’t take part in a blogathon, but hey, if they wanted journalists, they might have called it a journathon. Blogging is a medium. Bloggers are people who write and distribute their content using a certain medium.

Secondly, for a post lamenting the state of disclosure and transparency with regards to the relationship between bloggers and companies, I find it funny that John Kerr would actually take issue with an event that is being so clear and upfront that it is being sponsored by certain brands and that there is going to be some (hardcore) brand promotion. Although, frankly, I was at the event, and I didn’t really see how it was more ‘hardcore’ than any other sort of event promoting any other brands. Maybe John Kerr prefers his movies stamped with meaningless ratings, with cutaways, lots of allusion to sex scenes, maybe a few silhouette shots thrown in, which does nothing for the movie plot instead of just maybe 1 good scene which while uncensored, exposes the dynamics of the relationship between the characters clearly (and yes, sex scenes don’t always need to be for gratuitous titillation).

The question that should be asked is, “What’s the point of sponsoring any sort of competition ?”

Like, what’s the point of the Subaru Challenge, which if you ask me, and even if you didn’t, I think is way more of an abuse on the contestants’ bodies than what the bloggers were put through.

Borrowed an image from Keropok because he had the nicest shot of the challenge. He also covered the blogathon here.

People who think the blogathon violates the spirit of blogging, whatever this spirit might be and the only kind of spirit I really think anyone should NEVER violate is the kind that come in bottles and taste a little smoky ( i.e. drinking whiskey with coke as a mixer – now, that’s a violation of spirit that should never happen), should just take their head out of their ass and realize that the blogathon is just a format.

Just like a marathon can be run as a competition or just as a way to spend time with friends (yes, I have some wickedly ’sick’ friends who run marathons as a way to hangout) or a way to raise funds for charity or just a way to exercise, a blogation as a format can be used for many purposes.

This time it was used as a competition where the contestants happened to be bloggers. Simple enough? Let’s break it down some more. Contestants (who happened to be bloggers) do some sort of activity (blog) to win prizes. This blogathon is really just beginning to look like any other sort of competition. How boring.

Now to the existential question – is it only bloggers who can take part in a blogathon? But if you never blogged before, and you take part in a blogathon as a contestant, have you now become a blogger?

But I’m really digressing.

So, the question that should be answered is “What’s the point of organizing or sponsoring any sort of competition?”

I can’t speak for the team from Ogilvy, and I would never have the audacity to, but I shall share 7 (because 7 is the number of completeness) points on how this blogathon might have, well, just achieved some sort of ROI at least with a supporter of the competition like me.

1. People learned about the Tangs website. Did you know there was a Tangs website? Well, now you and I do. And it isn’t some ugly looking corporate website from last century like the one for Ngee Ann City.

2. I was unconsciously introduced to the ‘Fashion Spy’ feature section of Tangs’ website. When I first visited the site, I zeroed in on that section. Why? Because the bloggers had earlier been blogging using a similar format.

Now, if you are wondering how blogging can help brand awareness, imagine if you request bloggers to blog in a certain way. That certain format could become easily identifiable on your own site or easily identified as related to your site. SCORE! 1 point to social media.

3. This isn’t exactly a product of the blogathon but more of Lenovo’s continued involvement in Singapore’s social media scene. When someone asked me what sort of Vista-based laptop he should get, my immediate answer was a Lenovo ThinkPad. Which is surprising considering that I use a DELL at work (then again, maybe not).

4. I haven’t been using facial wash (because the tube is empty) for a couple of weeks now, and coupled with the stress at work, my face is really showing the effects which Nadnut so honestly pointed out. Why no facial wash? I haven’t been buying my own facial wash for some time. I usually use whatever is found lying around in the toilet or whatever the gf buys for me because, well, guys aren’t supposed to bother about such frivolous stuff like toiletries. Anyway, now the brand Kiehl is stuck in my head, and the next time I get dragged along for shopping, I’ll probably only check that brand out cos seriously I know shit about such stuff and spending a couple of hours being exposed to good looking guys touting that brand, well, it must work for me too…right…right? Weak-minded I am.

5. Mainstream buzz.

6. Why are there activities held at that big empty space outside Ngee Ann City? Well, to make the shopping center a hub of activities. Why have road-shows? Why have give-away contests? Why have mini concerts? One doesn’t need much imagination to see how the blogathon as an event temporarily turned that little corner of Orchard Road into the hub of activities for that day. Get people near the store, they might just enter the store. Pure Genius. Almost diabolical.

7. Lastly, and I think this is the killer way the blogathon might have succeeded. The bloggers were placed in a display window. What’s the point of a display window. Err..duh, to display things. But short of putting naked women in a display window, how do you get people to actually look at what’s in it. Putting the bloggers there got people to look into the display windows. And if Tangs have merchandizing, marketing and window-dressing people worth their salt, 3 months down the road, when I’m shopping for something, somewhere in my unconscious brain, things are going to start kicking in and I’ll be drawn to some shiny object whispering seductively ‘buy me, buy me’ and I wouldn’t even know why. Although I’ll guess and say I might have seen in displayed somewhere, somewhere close to friends.

Anyway, recap.

1. Competitions – Not new.
2. Awarding sponsored prizes for competitions – Not new.
3. Getting contestants to do things to win prizes – Not new.

Lastly, the blogathon was a little like a reality TV show. One of the main reasons for the success of any reality TV show is the casting of the contestants. If you want drama, you got to cast properly – place the pretentious vicious school belle in the same room as the nerdy, kind, never-been-kissed social outcast.

In the case of the blogathon, I think the team scored with casting or at least with the bloggers nadnut, dk, claudia and aaron. I follow these 4 bloggers rather regularly and from what they usually write about products on their blogs, I know that they do not embellish. They will try to find something good to say, and usually they can, because good, can always be found (not all products are made evil) but they won’t say more than what they can.

For a blogathon, if you want trust, if you want promotion with any shred of credibility (and in this case, I think the bloggers had pages load of that), then casting is important.

You can write the script. Allow improvisation. Build the stage. Get great lighting. Find excellent props. In the end, it is the actors who deliver the lines that really matter. This time, I think they deserve a standing ovation. It was an honest performance.

I saw something on Facebook and didn’t think much about it until I realized it has been 3 years since I graduated.

3 years.

Do you know what that means to a lot of my peers from NUS?

It means now they can start leaving Singapore for possibly ‘greener’ pastures.

I wonder though … for them, is it ‘See You Later’ or ‘Good Bye. Good Riddance. Thanks for the MONEY! Suckers!’.

Dk commented that no matter how they draw the lines, there will still be jokers who will block the exit (or is entrance).

Over at the post, there have been some suggestions on how to prevent commuters from blocking the path of those who want to exit.

Spikes, Sweeping doors…

Nothing will work.

Well, there is 1 solution that could work. You put all boarding passengers behind another door some distance away. Once the alighting passengers have cleared, the second door will open, allowing the commuters to board the train. This is something like the system used by the monorail system over at Sentosa.

In the end though, all these actions is just an attempt to control very expected behavior. The key is to change the behavior. Not control it.

How to change? Remove the incentive to want to rush into a train. Now, from my observation, people block the entrance (or is it exit) of the train not because they are concerned about getting into the train, nor concerned about getting into the train first.

What they are actually concerned about is getting into the train early enough to grab a seat.

So, the key to changing the behavior is to remove all the seats on trains.

Yup. No more seats, nothing to fight about.

But wait, what about old people, pregnant women, disabled passengers.

Hmmm…what about them…. they aren’t getting seats already…so what would be the difference?

This year’s competition’s theme was healthcare. From the competition site:

The theme for this year’s competition will be on healthcare. The possibilities are endless: mobile applications, web services, and even interfacing with Wii remotes (hint: Python can do it in just 5 lines). So put on your thinking cap and get those creative juices flowing!

It was actually quite trivial to guess some of the possible challenges especially looking at the description of the partners:

This year’s competition will be held in collaboration with the Health Promotion Board and the Singapore Anti-tuberculosis Association, to educate our youths and the public, through the competition, the benefits of healthy living and the harmful effects of smoking.

Like any well-trained product of the Singaporean Education System, my mind started racing when I read the competition’s site. I told my Vietnamese teammates during our first meeting that the people who will eventually win the competition are those who prepared for it beforehand.

They agreed.

Our main disagreement was the kind of preparation involved.

I shared with them that I understood how the Singaporean student’s mind generally works. There were definitely going to be teams who will attempt to spot the challenges, take a gamble and prepare a finished product before the actual competition leaving the day itself for the polishing of their work.

I was right.

On that day, I can pin-point at least 3 teams who finished their entry the minute they read the list of possible challenges to attempt. In the toilet, I heard one guy commenting to another that their friend had hit the jackpot with his project.

My teammates and I also decided to prepare for the competition. However, our preparation was confined to coding stubs that we could easily extend depending on the nature of the project. We also tested a basic system for communication between an Android application and a Django-powered portal.

Am I sore that other teams prepared beforehand. I’m not sure. I don’t exactly think they took the easy way out because the effort to prepare something before the competition isn’t trivial. What if I knew such a team won? Would I be sore? Probably. Because the efforts they took totally goes against the spirit of a 24-hour programming competition.

Yet I’m probably angrier with myself for not preparing better for the competition by writing more stubs and being more familiar with each platforms (i.e. Android and Django).

It would be a dumb-ass generalization to say that all Singaporeans spot questions and like to take the seemingly easier way out in preparation for such stuff and all foreigners do not. I do not have the temerity to assert that ONLY and ALL Singaporean students do this.

But I do know this, speaking as a recovering member of the Singaporean Education System, and that is our system does have the tendency to produce such students.

Regardless of the behavior of foreign students, it would be a total shame if Singaporeans only know how to exploit loopholes to win. Even more of a shame, if we do exploit such loopholes and do not win.