Apricots from the Olive Seed

These Turkish apricots from the Olive Seed are quite unusual. I picked up three packets for $10 yesterday. We had them before and left them for ages in the fridge. In our experience dried apricots would turn hard but only slightly with these ones.

Now with three packets I can eat my share, otherwise I had always left them for my daughter. She ate them so slowly that I often had to finish them for her when they are in their most unappetizing condition.

The OSC is done, what now?

I can't afford to write all that is on my mind on this subject. Too difficult and time consuming.

I was dismissive of the OSC at the beginning feeling that it was just training for new political office bearers. I still think it was but a lot more. Heng Swee Keat was sensitive to pick up the vibes along the way and they adjust course with grace. Thumbs up to him.

Again in my view ST didn't do a good a job reporting this and the gap is filled by BN. ST didn't even provide a link to the report. I found that at Bertha Henson's article.

One way I have dealt with uncertainty is from how this government has often played it with us - heads I win, tails you lose. I have gotten tails but am happy to lose because I also won.

We are decisively moving pass the LKY's generation. Government is completely converted from top down to two-way conversation. It took votes to make this happen.

The OSC format wasn't doable ten years ago. We need a more tolerant and mature culture, especially a better educated population. This format as I see it was born out of necessity because we have become cynical of the town hall approach. Every developed nation could do town hall meetings but this OSC is quite unique.

We can always do better but we are not going to beat ourselves up for failing to do so. Smarter to just keep trying. To me the OSC has failed to grasp the need for us to go beyond the good to the great, but I am asking for too much since we still understand greatness too narrowly. That requires depth but we are still sinking roots. On the other hand good is not enough for a little Red Dot to survive and I hope we have time to become great. A limited example of what I mean by greatness, since this concept is all-dimensional, is in my other post: Gates to Brin & Page: I am better than you. It cannot be so narrowly visioned as in Dr. Parag Khanna recent article in the ST as capital of Asia. Nobody wants us to be that, so many cities aspire to be and we can't fight tooth and nail to get there. Certainly we are not getting there the LKY style. That way evokes respect but never admiration or love. Every aspiring city would be competing to be respected, there is not enough respect to share around just like the number of top airports in our part of the world is growing. So how do we persuade them to let us be and when we are we cannot be the narrow conventional capital. Give you an idea, think Asimov's Second Foundation vs First Foundation. SG today as every aspiring city is so First Foundation genre. MBS, MBFC, Gardens by the Bay these First Foundation strategies only buy us time. We need a different game and the answer is how we educate our children. It is here we need to go from the good to the truly great, have the imagination and courage to do it completely different from everywhere else.

I am thinking beyond the next 20 years but the timber to build that future cannot be grown quickly. They must be seeded in our school today and this never had a chance in the OSC, think tanks or thinking organs of the government.

As has been and always shall be, we need to be lucky.


Update: 12:05pm

Worse than pity, it was wrong to have excluded the alternative political parties from participating in the OSC. On such matters the PAP thinks narrowly and selfishly like elsewhere, which is the last thing we need.

Much is lost as a consequence but how much you need imaginative counterfactual thinking to assess which few of us are capable.

Update: 3:50pm

Heng Swee Keat's heart is in the right place to focus on values but implementation needs plenty of better work especially when I saw how it was done at my daughter's school. I managed to find this in one of my earlier posts: Most important post to date: Failure of values here. At least the minister could grasp more clearly than most the difference between the technical and the adaptive.

Gates to Brin & Page: I am better than you

Link to CNet article.

I see this as just Mr. Gates trying to tell Google founders than I am better than you. Silly.

At the other extreme what impressed me totally and I am still trying to understand came from Mother Teresa, "...we can do no great thing; we can do small things with great love".

Recently I had received some articles on philanthropy especially the one by Peter Buffett the son of Warren Buffett.

I keep things as simple as possible. Here it is: Exemplary Help Giving. So on this score I am more with Google founders than Mr. Gates. The irony is that Warren Buffett is going to give most of his money to the Gates' Foundation. What to do? When you have made the money first then give this is what you are landed with. That mom and pop laundry gets it.

Nothing is better than apple pie ways.


Update: August 11, 11:25am

Bill Gates you are far inferior to my today's discovery: Our very own Tong Ming Ming. This is on top of that mom and pop laundry doing better than you.

I have only one takeaway from Bill Gates: Stop comparing.

Update: August 11, 3:40pm

No need to go out of the way. I have found another example in Mark Phooi to compare Bill Gates with today. He was giving back even as he was building his wealth - unlike Bill Gates who was crushing the competition and achieving world dominance. Our local boy was giving away the businesses his staff helped him built, giving away scholarships to a money losing educations business or later be realized more like a social enterprise.

And we haven't even start to talk about outside the slum what is the meaning of  doing small things with great love.

Not until lately when we threatened this government with our vote, they were only besotted with the likes of mega philanthropists like Gates, with winning the Summer Olympics.Where were there room from LaurentiaTan?

Update: August 17, 8:00am

The same spirit as that neighborhood laundry but by a corporate giant.

Jack Sim's advice to Independent.sg

I totally agree with Jack Sim. He also provided some how-tos but I think they are only doable if he was leading the enterprise. We have to be flexible about that.

His advice for PN Balji is as valid for Breakfast Network too.

The problem with the middle ground is that we tend to be passive. We are usually very busy and would not show up until it is quite late, e.g., our response to the PWP, FTs, schooling, recognizing Laurentia Tan wins etc., Fringe and special interests groups try to enlist us and they are always beating their drums to do that. They are wasting their time. They should always begin with issues of their children and/or bread and butter matters. In this vein it was stupid of the PAP to make a mountain out of the mole hill of hawker centre cleaning. Most of us saw that as nothing more than fixing the WP.

So the PM's National Day message was a good one. Show that his government is starting to listen and well on the way to fixing the wrongs. You will not get a score card full of As. That is not possible but the government is working to rectify the mistakes.

WP's National Day Video

In this video by the WP for this National Day I see lots of people that are not like my family but we live together cheek by jowl here. I also noticed the party bigwigs were absent and  best of all it tells me at the end of the video who we are preserving and growing this place for.



If you do not want to have kids, are you prepared to help keep this place going for other people's kids? We are not there yet but soon. Out of practical necessity friends will become kin taking care of those of us who are childless and without family when we are old. By then what's family would have to be redefined. This is not new. My adult father in law had an adopted mother when they came in a boat from China. As a result my wife had a loving and caring granny. So in another guise it can happen again.

What we are is far more precious than a Patek Philippe. I rejected the PP my dad gave me for something better.



"You never actually owned a Patek Philippe. You merely take care of it for the next generation."

I have no patience for the selfish old. And if we have to change the laws to protect the next generation, I would support that.

Revisiting President SR Nathan

I agree with Cho Vin Thai. Also it is better to know him as a person than as President. That office had been politicised by the government. Nobody can do the job well without friction with the government. The President who is above politics is nevertheless beneath the people and represents them. If the government of the day put its interests ahead of the people, we and therefore the President have a problem. In this sense I am glad Tan Cheng Bock did not win but at the same time I have no idea how he could reinvent the job either and succeed.

At least the humanity of SR Nathan could still emerge from a restrictive role, but not so with Tony Tan. He is too thin skinned and when the sharp barbs come he withdrew into a shell. How to be President this way? Tony Tan is just a PAP man. Until and unless the PAP is popular again, he would not be much welcomed either.

It is better for the President to come from civic society, the professionals or business with exemplary CSR. Otherwise the PE and office would continue to be political. But I am looking far ahead. Our immediate problem is to have a man or preferably woman fill the job and show how it can be effective and yet apolitical. Because the Singapore identity lacks depth, it might not yet be feasible. An effective President must draw the water from a deep well, which we haven't have yet. Today only George Yeo knows how to borrow other wells for our use.

I do not like to remember SR Nathan as President but I appreciate him very much for everything else he had done for us before he became head of state. For his humanity, sensitivity and especially courage.

The Genius of Breakfast Network

So Breakfast Network picked up my comment from in this blog. I am glad they appreciate it. I have also been selling their site to others. Happy to promote them.

Ah Bryan Ti again. Most times I don't agree with him but everyone is entitled to his/her opinion. Looks like this smart chap has more time than most of us. I would like to tell him to be more realistic. Our lives often do not depend on most of the news we receive so there is no need to get to the bottom of things. Where is the time for that? We would drill deep when we need to but daily we each have to look after our plot in the farm because our living depend on it. Either Bryan Ti is a multitasking genius that work and think super quickly or more likely he didn't need to make a living. We are not as sic unlucky as him.

Breakfast Network shouldn't waste time with comments like his. There are too few Bryan Tis to matter. ST is a talent business and when they cannot scoop up all the writing and story telling talent for themselves that's the beginning of regime change for them. Perhaps BN should grow quickly before similar start-ups come along. Find a deep pocket backer and compete vigorously and start to grab advertising revenue. Meanwhile SPH is making the same mistakes SIA was and continue to make.

BN window of opportunity is when ST could only watch her helplessly doing the 'unbecoming' and leveraging MSM assets for free. For pennies BN could do the things ST could not or dare not do. The latest example was the PM's National Day Speech in Singlish. I am sure the PM would appreciate that because that is far more memorable than the one in good English. At the same time he cannot be seen to promote Singlish.

BN filling the gaps is just classic entrepreneurship. SPH faces the Innovator's Dilemma. The theory is becoming reality for them. As for Byran Ti, he regularly mixed up the theory with the practical.

• 2 hours ago
• 

  Bryan Ti BN self-professes to critique the MSM through its articles. 
  
  By calling this a compliment, is BN somehow endorsing the view that one should read a critique of something, without first or eventually perusing what is being criticized to understand its context better, and then to decide whether the criticism is fair and valid?
  
  I regard that as quite a perverse and misplaced logic frankly, and I am very SURPRISED that the editor(s) of BN supports such a narrow view.
  
  If I post a SLANTED critique of a BN article, I wonder if BN would be happy that others swallow what I say, hook, line and sinker, without even bothering to refer to BN's article? 
  
  Your response, please, BN.
  
  CC. Kwan Jin Yao

  Like · Reply · 3 hours ago via mobile

• 

  Bertha Henson I don't quite get what you are saying. We do link our stuff back to original articles. But we're not sure about linking back to stuff that's behind a pay wall. Doesn't seem right to give people paid content for free. So we try to excerpt or quote here and there.

  Like · Reply · 2 hours ago

• 

  Bryan Ti Bertha, my point is not whether the link to the original article is provided.
  
  Instead, the issue is whether, in regarding the comment as a compliment, BN thinks it is right that people do not bother or find time to read BN's critique article IN CONJUNCTION with the original.
  
  To me, this is the general phenomenon with regards to how people peruse the so-called social or alternative media. So for example, people 'swallow' the articles critical of government policies and do not even bother to find out what the actual policies are, the rationale behind them as originally proffered by the policy-makers. 
  
  Is this phenomenon of reading critiques in isolation healthy and should BN be happy and proud if BN readers are behaving the same way?

  Like · Reply · 32 minutes ago via mobile

• 

  Zan Thang Bertha Henson: I have a question. Is Breakfast Network saying that it's "ok" to "not having the time to THINK through" and let you do it for them?

  Like · Reply · 52 minutes ago
• 

  Breakfast Network of course not! everyone shud take time to think thru! If no time, we try do it for u. one thing we do is we try to read different media to readers got different perspectives or more info here and there. Don't think people take time to compare

  Like · 2 · 30 minutes ago