Heading east, heading west
I was never quite a poet. Can't write for jacksh*t. But heck, since I'm in a new land, I'm plunging myself for new beginnings, new experiences and new opportunities.
Just about a week ago, I took a flight eastwards from Singapore to SFO. Now I'm all starting to settle in here at Berkeley. It sure feels different to be back in school. Suddenly no income whatsoever and the weight of responsibility in making full use of this two years at b-school to accelerate my career.
In some ways, I wonder if I made the right decision. The world seems to be moving towards Asia and here I am, throwing myself headlong into the epicentre of current credit crunch on a land they call US of A. Within my lifetime, I'm quite sure I'll see Asia ascend as the region of movers and shakers. Asia will certainly rise to be a region where the world's major consumers and end-markets will thrive. But for now, the knowledge, the expertise, the innovation, the entrepreneurship and yes, even the capital, are here in the US of A.
It is make or break time...
New beginnings
It's been a long while since I've written on my blog. Then I was anonymous about my musings about the political scene in Singapore during the last election. Now I'm out-ing myself in the public internet sphere on my move to Berkeley to pursue an MBA.... for better or worse, I guess.
Stay tuned to the adventures in this foreign land...
Internet as new medium for public policy discourse
Very much agree with the approach of allowing the public to do the “crucifying” of the seditious bloggers. That's pretty similar to Mr Brown's point in the papers today that the internet is a self-regulating environment. If one starts spouting rubbish and making all kinds of seditious and inflammatory remarks, people will start slamming you back and that blog will become sidelined.
The online environment is really a credibility game, just like the real physical world we live in. Folks need to establish their “cred” in order for their comments to be recognised. That’s why many people continually return to read such blogs, with
Gayle,
Mr Brown,
Mr Wang and if I may add,
KTM too.
Newly-elected MP Denise Phua says that the internet was very one-sided during the election. My immediate thoughts are if she felt that the conversations were so one-sided, why didn’t the PAP take action by participating and responding to the comments online? Honestly, I didn't see too many PAP candidates jumping in onto the fray to speak their mind and engage the online community.
What I do hope to see is for our public officers to become more active in such online dialogues. Personally, it’s the civil servants who are the ones cooking up all the policies, drafting all the papers and sending them up to our elected Ministers for their approval. Our politicians are only the ones that give the final green light in implementing them (of course, they play much greater a role than just rubber-stamping but this is just to illustrate the policy development process). So having more civil servants speak up in their capacities as civil servants online will certainly be for the better in terms of policy development and the refinement of their ideas.
We always hear about how the govt is trying to reach out to our youths by setting up forums and blogs. The recent announcement of the Feedback Unit re-branding itself is one such example. I think that rather than start from scratch to build their own Feedback Unit blogs and essentially creating yet another one-way channel for the govt to literally publish info, the civil servants ought to start participating, debating and engaging the online community in all the online dialogues. This time, don’t just get the politicians involved. Heck, get the senior civil servants in too… the more we see more
Bilaharis spar with more Gayles, the better for the refinement and design of our govt policies.
Having said all of these, I'm sure there must be tonnes of civil servants actively reading and likely publishing anonymously on various blogs and forums. I guess that main problem is that many can't speak publicly about the work they do since it may be seen as contravening the Official Secrets Act. In the end, what the write online sometimes may not be reflected of what they do at work.
Working harder no longer is enough
Saw this from Legal Janitor and it provoked a lot of personal reflection. Agree with KTM that Mdm Hoe's gripe is more about younger Singaporeans' attitudes towards work. It's not as clear to me from the letter if she had fully understood the shift brought about by the intensified globalisation and the change in the nature of business today as you've talked about. But certainly, she has captured the essence on what Singaporeans in general ought to worry about these days -- how to keep up with the competition when others from China and India are willing to work harder and by golly, they are hungry and smart as hell too!
What's even more worrying is many of Singapore's smartest people don't have all the answers as to how to deal with the increased competition from China and India. I agree that China and India don't have what it takes now to lead this new economy of ideas and attention. So yes, Singaporeans can take relief for a while that we are re-tooling ourselves to target these emerging areas (and hopefully, be successful soon enough). But think about it: today, the Chinese and the Indians are clamouring to churn our "stuff" cheaper, faster and better. You can be sure that they are not sitting still and letting the Americans take the cultural lead in the "softer" areas like movies, music, art etc. Already, the Indians have got their Bollywood industry which produces more movies in any given year than Hollywood in USA. The Chinese are not going to just stop at being the best factories of the world. You can bet that they are now already strategising on their move up the value-chain, perhaps in providing better service for their products, in being end-to-end supply chain solutions etc.
So the personal question I always ask myself: where does that leave the poor Singaporean who is now no longer regarded as cheap like before but may not be able to outsmart the schrewd Chinese and scaringly intelligent and smooth-talking Indians? I studied all the hardcore stuff in school - IT, Engineering. Now I'm thinking maybe I should have done something "softer"... like law, journalism, marketing. Increasingly, engineers come cheaper elsewhere whereas at least, in fields where i would say the outcomes are less measurable, I may have stood a better chance to outlast counterparts from China and India, perhaps long enough before they also start catching up in these areas with this coming decade.
Sigh.... it ain't easy...
Pervasiveness of fear
I'm sure we've all yakked to death about LKY's live TV chat with the 10 post-65ers. I recall one key point tossed about was on fear... Yes, I'm talking about the Ken vs LKY tussle.... that we shouldn't have anything to fear about with the govt.
So if that's the case, here's a little small but very telling incident that I encountered today. I'm one of the few pathetic govt slaves kena arrowed to do election duty... you know, escort old aunties to the voting booth, direct traffic inside voting stations etc. So the boss of the voting station hauled us all up to do an on-site briefing as well as a walk-the-ground. The boss mentioned on many occasions that we had to ensure that everything runs smoothly during Polling Day.... that we had to get the school gates opened, that we had to ensure the toilets are unlocked etc. Why this obsession? Because he says that if we don't ensure these little things for voters' comfort, the voters might choose to vote for "the other party". And when that happens, the "higher-ups" will not be happy and "come after us".
Let's discount the fact that elections are supposed to be neutral, that we as election officials are neutral and yadda yadda. Even after putting all that aside, the fact that the boss can come up with such a convoluted and misleading logic just goes to show how pervasive this fear of the incumbent govt is.
And you know something, as I was composing this, I was wondering if I even should be posting it up here, especially with all the furor about Sedition Act, Elections Act and whatever other imaginable Act that the govt can use against blogging. But heck, I decided to click on the "Publish Post" button and here I am in Blogosphere, my virgin entry.
