Wifey's new sword

Wifey just came home with a sword! I would prefer a light sabre but such things don't exist yet if ever.

The blade I was told is 30 inches long. Wielding it I think it weights about a tennis racquet. It is also shiny but beyond that I know nothing more since we aren't supposed to touch it. I wonder if it would rust.

Now when can we see this thing in action?

Hong Kong: When to run and save your lives

I saw this off my phone yesterday but it wasn't the first of many reminders that Beijing will be absolutely uncompromising. Beijing will pay any price for Hong Kong to behave because if HK doesn't China's leaders fear the whole nation would become unstable. Never mind that this will set back to square one all effort invested in wooing Taiwan to return. To Beijing that is only a question of when, the how isn't important. Beijing assumes in good time China will be irresistible. They seems intoxicated by this fallacy.

So what's the point for pointing out the obvious. The reason is the safety of the students.

Beijing will not hesitate to repeat the 1989 incident if it proves necessary. The question is how and when it might happen. I think the moment they sack CY Leung, those who cherish their lives should quickly run home. You have made your point, there is no point getting shot by the para military police. HK police will not fire on Hong Kong students but the Chinese troops will not hesitate.

Beijing doesn't even bother to try very hard to resolve the stand off. It's laziness is appalling. Therefore you can conclude that Xi Jinping may even be able to make political capital out of his opponents in a crack down on Hong Kong.

At the very least, CY Leung should have enough tactical sense to start writing letters to the parents of these students to persuade them to bring their kids home.

The trouble with Hong Kong leaders is they are not leaders but mere managers. To Hongkongers they could never step up to the plate and lead, neither could they impress Beijing.

As for the tycoons they will not try to do their part to save the place. They are only interested in safeguarding their wealth. Some of this wealth would be lost to the mainlanders. KS Li was a canary in the coal mine for those who were watching and understanding the oracles.

SQ and Changi couldn't do this yet

8 million views in six days and counting. This is a touch your heart wonderful message put out by KLM-Schipol airport.



This post exists because I also happened to have read Margaret Heffrman article, The Limits of Ideology: Lessons from Singapore.

Why can't SQ or Changi Airport to something equivalent. Easiest for me to quote a segment from Hefferman.

Poetry or Money?

I have a Singaporean friend who has spent substantial periods away from her country, working in the U.S. and Europe. What, I asked her, did she miss when she went away? "The fact that everything works," was her reply. Why did she keep leaving? "Because that's not enough."

The clean streets, high levels of service and safety that characterize Singapore are all efficient - but efficiency is fundamentally a negative virtue: an absence of friction rather than a richness of experience. And efficiency, Low and Vadaketh argue, masks an emptiness. All that order is bought: with fines for transgression. The emphasis on monetary sanctions has produced a populace that is compliant and submissive - but not socially engaged. The competitive emphasis on individualism coupled with obedience and conformity may make things work but it doesn't make them meaningful. Where is the rich skein of dependencies, shared triumphs and victories, rights and responsibilities that lie at the heart of every dynamic society?

Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, once insisted that "poetry is a luxury we cannot afford" but few still believe that that is still true. More recently, concert halls and art schools have sprung up but they rarely feature indigenous art or art forms and Singaporeans are hard pressed to define their shared cultural values. It may be that poetry is just what Singaporeans need now to understand who they are and why they care.

Viktor Frankl, Man Search for Meaning, the title of the book opens the door to how important meaning in life is.

We have done very well but that's hardly enough. Too many people thought in a rich country they could have more or less settled the butter and bread issues but in our political culture and system no government would welcome that day because that is the day we fail. For society to pursue meaning is a scary thing. Arriving as a developed country in a hurry we didn't realize that we might have to wait for a very long time to become ready to make the next leap toward meaning.

Meanwhile we keep getting better at defining our problems but not its solutions. For now people should just find meaning in life at the personal and family level. Use the economic substrate created by this place to help make it happen for you. But most people will have to keep spinning the wheel of the rat race even as the hour glass put the government on notice that time must eventually run out.

Ropes or Petard for Roy Ngerng

The average and even the less than average Singaporean know which side his bread is buttered. Our society is practically unanimous in condemning Roy Ngerng and Han Hui Hui callous behavior recently at Hong Lim Park.

I have never agreed with the PM suing Roy. And the money Roy received for fighting the lawsuit wasn't so much for Roy per se buat as a lightning rod against defamation suits. The PM's father started it and for a different political context than the one we are living in today. That tactic should be retired already.

No more political entertainers like Harbans Singh. No more former bicycle thieves.

It was only a matter of time either Roy accumulated enough rope to hang himself or worse be hung by his own petard.

It was never about personalities and always about issues. We are not the Philippines or Pakistan by a long shot. Our leaders ought to have more confidence in our judgement.

This is not Hong Kong anymore

Not Hong Kong any more?


Effective 1997 during the hand over Hong Kong to China, the territory begins to change if you are an optimist or started to die slowly if you are a pessimist.

One country, Two systems is just the euphemism of making Hong Kong become like Southern China taken over a long time frame, long by the political calendar and not the historical one.

A similar but more positive change is also happening to Singapore. We are changing from a regional node to a global city.

This is the fate of city states, i.e., they keep changing constantly to stay relevant. Beijing wants Hong Kong to be relevant to China and then the world. On the other hand, Hong Kong wants to be left alone and be globally relevant on her own terms. This is a affront to Chinese sovereignty and will not be tolerated as China rises.

These young Hong Kong people are naive. They are using western methods against an authoritarian government in Beijing. It doesn't work. On the other hand they mustn't take Beijing reneging on universal suffrage by 2017 quietly.

What does China fear most about Hong Kong? Twenty years ago they had much to fear especially when she wasn't even a member of the WTO. Today you have little leverage against Beijing. Now Beijing not so much fear but is most worried that the best and brightest of Hong Kong leave.

The Hong Kong you people love is going away and never coming back. The China that is coming isn't one you can live with. You have chosen not to leave quietly but I am sure eventually you will realize you can't do much except make a new home somewhere else. After all it is not Hong Kong anymore.

Perhaps you once thought you could make China like Hong Kong but you never succeeded selling this to China's leaders. They couldn't get as rich or as quickly on the Hong Kong formula. China never learned from Singapore how to be incorruptible either. Like everywhere else its leaders are selfish and power hungry.

Hong Kong is an after thought or a pawn in Beijing power play that is getting less and less important to them. Compared to the courage and genius Deng came up with One country, Two systems, Hongkongers never realize Beijing took the laziest way out over the 2017 universal suffrage issue. Of course it won't work.

Etude's cute packaging

Wifey bought several items from Etude yesterday and the cutest of the lot was: Put Your Hands Up!

Korean beauty products are noticeably more competitive that the other famous old names. If the upstart's products are good they would still have to keep chipping away at the stalwarts because the brands are very sticky.

ISIS: This guy explains Obama's thoughts

Thomas Friedman is among the few intelligent and thoughtful writers who understand the cerebral Obama well. I have said so before and this latest piece by Friedman only adds to that impression.

For now everyone's common enemy is ISIS. This is stopping everyone from engaging or combating each others like before. So they want to cut down the ISIS to the size that it is no longer an existential threat to current Arab, Persian and Turkish rulers. They borrow US air power even as the six participating Arab states supply token participation blasting away at ISIS in Syria.

America cannot be seen to blithely walk away from Iraq and so much return to enable and empower the people in the region to help them set the house in order.

The present circumstances will not last and it is uninteresting to study. What is both tragic and interesting is the irreversible decline of the Arab civilization. That it must get a lot worse before it has any chance to get better. That is nobody can help them save themselves and America will wait for Arab troops to be ready however long it takes to take the land war to ISIS themselves. Meanwhile the media will only spin simple and wrong stories of good guys kicking the butt of the baddies. Nothing is so simple.

The big idea? Islam is in crisis. As competing groups fight for the soul of the religion (I didn't say faith) things will get messy. In the essence the fights will be about power and not religion or faith. Religion will be used to legitimized victorious power. The faithful must snatch back their hijacked religion. This is a stretch but I hope Indonesia as the most populous and multi-religious Muslim country can make a big contribution. If we succeed at least the risk of terrorism in our local backyard will be minimized.