Reading glasses pecha

Ending the year with a pair of broken reading glasses - my first, which I bought for $10 sometime before I discovered pasar malam were selling them for $8 and ABC or Valu$ offering theirs at $2.05!

Gotta go and get another of those $2.05 ones.

SG: Small country in a hostile world

I shall begin by quoting from the story.

“The failure to see what was happening worries me quite deeply,” said Dr Shashi Jayakumar, Head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

“Because if you look at the Singapore point of view, we are a small country and we are vulnerable. We cannot afford to be consistently and strategically surprised in that way.”

Years back in this blog I sometimes lamented that we are becoming less able at seeing threats over the horizon. Now we have someone lamenting the fact. We cannot offer what we do not have. What we can and must do is to understand what has changed and respond quickly which I briefly explained two days ago in a blog post.

Ambassador Chan was interviewed on the sideline of this program and CNA has made available a YouTube version.



"Small country", I get it immediately but "hostile world" there is another way to view it. It is hostile if developments are inimical to our plans and ambitions. If we adapt our plans to a changed environment and is prepared to do whatever it take to survive and prosper, we might discover the world is less hostile and after a while even be full of opportunities.

Look at how Kissinger himself is adapting to Trump. Now he praised Trump as 'a phenomenon that foreign countries haven't seen' and says his election is an 'extraordinary opportunity' See the story in the Daily Mail.

Kissinger is reshaping to so that he can remain relevant. We must do the same. Is Kissinger selling out? I don't think so but that is not easy to explain. The man has great depth and is easy to misunderstand him. Here is a good example published in Project Syndicate by Dominique Moisi (got to be an European eh): How Dr. Strangelove Learned to Love Trump.

If that is how Kissinger responded, I think his teacher the late LKY were he in charge would lead Singapore to make the necessary adjustments as well. What these might be I have not thought them through and perhaps might not know.

Bought Logitech K380 keyboard

I am improving the quality of my work life with a new keyboard: Logitech K380 at $32.75 by ordering it off Qo10 with Video Pro at Sim Lim Square. The regular price is $54

I opted self collect to take the daughter on an orientation shopping at SL Square. Apparently you don't collect your order from the main shop. A guy from the shop smiled and told me everyone makes this mistake.

So here was where we went to pick up this keyboard.

I grudgingly accepted that I can't do a print screen with this keyboard but was pleasantly surprised that I could. Some of the keys are also programmable. Here are the short cuts. 

Now my PC, Tablet and Smartphone are all connected to this keyboard. When desk real estate is scarce this is much welcomed. 

Finally this is a low profile keyboard, practically silent. This is very important as I have injured my hands several times with regular keyboards. Finally I found a keyboard as suitable for typing as the Microsoft Arc Keyboard. 

The year of the cock aka Trump

This isn't just some digital art, it a large size figure in Shanxi, China surrounded by shopping malls. People's Daily and Global Times published it and I imagine other malls are going to try to out do this one in both size and creativity. Attract crowds, wefies and more sales eh?

Update: Jan 9 9:50 pm

I had suggested there will be more such Trump cocks. In fact it is turning out to be far more than I had expected!

A beautiful 26.9 Celsius

A photo taken with my Tab A instead of my Note 4. Can tell the quality is poorer but then I didn't have my phone with me.

Last night was very cool and the children decided not to have the aircon on. In fact one complained she shivered. When was the last time we had such enjoyable temperatures?

The Christmas/New Year week is often wet and cooler. We like it that way.

Bought MS Designer Bluetooth Desktop

Bought the Microsoft Designer Bluetooth Desktop for the daughter this morning. Members received 20% discount. With this keyboard her hard and noisy pounding have just disappeared.

The warranty is good for three years and I made it a point to take a picture of the thermal paper receipt.

There were several occasions I regretted throwing the receipt away as I wanted to enforce the warranty on Microsoft. They have their fair share of lemons.

Adapting to a changing world order quickly

My ex boss sent me this earlier today and remarked she is shocked to read such a view from writer who is the head of the department of Strategy & Policy at NUS Business School.

My response to her as follows, trying to get used to the changing world order as quickly as possible.

With the election of Trump, the world is changing at warp speed. This don would never have contributed such an article if Hillary Clinton was elected. It woud simply be unacceptable.

Such views are always there but private. Trump's election legitimized their purblicity.

I tell myself better quickly understand what is happening than moping over what is lost. Just go back to the 70s and imagine the folks in power now looking back would view Nixon and Kissinger as having made a huge mistake to nanny China into the free world. So their attitude is to undo that mistake and all the follows. The Trump team will not listen to Kissinger and the smart Chinese should by now already know it is useless to get Kissinger input.

Demons have broken out of their prisons to wreak havoc upon us.

There is one and only one way for the US to accept the rise of China. Any other way will lead to war between them. America will never be secure and confident enough to allow China to be stronger than what she is already unless it is a democracy like the UK or itself. For decades their hope and they had faith that with economic prosperity the Chinese would demand democracy. Had they known this was never going to happen they would not even support China's admission to the WTO.

So in a sense this is quite simple: Either China converts to democracy when the Americans sent missionaries or else thy will mount a crusade against her.

They cannot understand why Taiwan and Korea could be democracies but not China and the enemy must be the CCP.