Design for Future

Look like designing is the way to have a future. Apple is the most visible and best example of design at work. With great design come great profit. Design is the blue ocean of tomorrow. We have to start thinking about better design to win the heart of consumers.

Red Star Resturant

This resturant is at the top of multi-storey carpark in Blk 54 Chin Swee Road. Hong Kong traditional style of dim sum where trolleys are pushed around all the tables to serve fresh and piping hot. The food is not comparable to Hua Ting but it is a lot more affordable and very authentic. The atmosphere is just like a resturant in Hong Kong. This also bring back memories of Cantonese Resturants in Toronto. Yum Cha is an excellent way to spend the weekends and public holidays especially in winter.

The variety of dim sums is huge, many not available in other resturants. Food is a little salty to my liking. However, overall it is a fantastic experience with the crowd and noise of a typical resturant in Hong Kong. Yes, I do miss Hong Kong. I do not go there anymore except to transit once in a while.

New Rules

I am reading Glimmer, which is about design. Bruce Mau is a top designer and 1998 crisis, he had calls from business leaders seeking his help as the old rules of business are no longer working. It is very interesting.

The rules in today's business world has changed. Rise of the two giants - China and India is disrupting the world economy. Cost is dropping dramatically for products made-in-China and IT and medical services outsource to India. Large companies are in danger of becoming outdated and obsolete as the systems and process and more importantly the culture stiffened like arteriosclerosis. Working harder and harder using the same tactics hoping for different results.

It is interesting my boss keep harping over and over again that doing the same things and expecting different results is insanity and yet he keep insisting we do things that has been tried and did not work. This reminds me of Kishore Mahbuni who says that US is declining in power and the Americans are vehmently denying and cursing Kishore and continue to claim and feel they are the only Superpower and Master of the Universe. How sad for the rest of the world.

Monday Morning

It is a quiet Monday. No school as all the school teachers were up all night on Saturday to count votes. Tomorrow is Hari Raya Puasa. No Muslim food stalls will be open.

The pressure to build flats and HDB accelerated plans to build more flats has taken away a lot of the flat lands that citizens used to enjoys pastimes like flying kites and model airplanes. It is very sad. We are all work and no play in the near future as all our playgrounds have become blocks of flats.

My French neighbour just returned from his summer holidays in France. He says Frenchs are not big into shopping like Singaporeans. They like history and historical buildings. They enjoys the atmosphere of different country. They do not travel to do shopping.

A Regular Sunday

Excitement over and we have a new President-elect. I slept through the "twist and turn" and "cliff-hanging moments" through the night when vote counting and re-count was done.

The PCN was filled with exercise fanatic as usual and malls were just as busy. We have our usual routine of tuitions, meals and malls. Really, Singapore is a yawn. This is why it is so attractive to investors and immigrants from all over the world.

Light Rain

Rain lightly sprinkle all day today. This has a magical effect of cooling the atmosphere making it feel like fall in Canada. Yes, I missed the seasons. It is nice to enjoy the cool weather. The day is filled with tuitions, shopping malls and exercise. The malls is very busy. Everyone is buying even including my favorite haunt Kinokuniya. I am a little surprised by the long queue as there isn't a 20% discount sales on.

I am feeling tired and sleepy as I was up 5am in the morning. I could not sleep and I forsee this is going to be a few nights before I can recover.

My Favorite Activities

I missed my reading. I am distracted at work to read. Luckily, the audiobooks are helping me to continue to read although I may not be paying too much attention at times. My motto is Reading maketh a Man. I also need to write to achieve a dream of being published one day. Today is a blog with a tiny readership. However, I know I have to write every day. My writings are quite dull at time and mostly a diary of my activities and books I read. Sometimes I missed a day or two due to work worries. The other reason is blogging is blocked in China. China has a tight control over the internet.

I am also wondering if I have less thinking time as I listen to audiobooks. Thinking is an important activity that gets push aside when reading audiobooks. So now my thinking space is while driving alone which is quite infrequent. I also think while swimming.

My favorite activities in order of priority: Reading, Thinking and Writing. TRW instead of 3R:)

D-Day Tomorrow

Tomorrow, we will find out who the next President of Singapore will be. I hope our new President will have a heart for Singapore. Anyway, the President is just a figure head and we may have lots of hulala for nothing. The campaigning is over. The 4 candidates must be holding their breath. I wish them luck.

Who To Vote?

The columnists and journalists are writing on the ideal President they like to see elected. No one state or articulate their preference. It is against the law to publicly state your preference as voting is secret. 4 candidates and 4 boxes and crossed only one. It is quite tough to figure out who. There are so many pros and cons on each candidates. I think they are all good men. Unfortunately, only one Tan can be elected. So I hope our President Tan will be a great one. If not, we will elect a new President when his term expires.

The new President has a few years to show his performance and bring Singaporeans together.

Open Letter from a GM of Borders in US

Our social commentator, Mr. Brown has an excellent blog at Mrbrown.com. I remember a letter he publishes from a General Manager of Borders Store who worked in Borders Singapore before. I reproduces the letter below which I hope in not in violation of copyright laws. It was posted on April 21, 2011.

Today is my last day with the company. After 23 years I thought I would be sad but am in fact relieved. The Borders most of us loved closed down years ago and it was a slow death by a thousand cuts each time another great GM, DM or RD was forced out.
I am the last GM from Dion country in Florida. We were a tight group and were consistently the highest performing district in the company, developing many processes and procedures that were rolled out to the entire company. Sure we did question the status quo with questions like (7 years ago) "whats our plan to deal with digital music?" and were seriously told not to worry about it, it would never effect us. Some of us were let go for not being better lemmings… some of us stuck around in the hope that it would get better, some of us left with their actual dignity.

As each of our stores closed down this month we kept our staffs motivated with our own limited money. We bought pizza, had parties, bought fresh sharpies to follow your ridiculous procedure. Even though we would all soon be unemployed with no severance and living in a state with the highest unemployment rate and worst benefits. Our staff trusted us and did their best and deserved better than what the company was giving so yeah, we took up the slack that's what proper leaders do.

Every new regional VP insisted the economy was no excuse. We in the store were obviously failures in the company's eyes. In our eyes our leaders were failures. A cacophony of yes men that woudn't take a stand and fight for the things that could have saved us and were too proud to listen to anyone in the field.

You had great success with your plans this year: outsource customer care, pull bargain from the vestibules during the holiday season, not purchase school reading titles, cut hours and increase workload, roll out more functionality in atlas that barely functioned to begin with, discount excessively to buy loyalty, create an environment that managed to an audit at the expense of all else, and under-develop a web presence that demotivated the staff and frustrated the customers.

Yes, you and your team should be proud of all you have accomplished. Only a few more stores to go and you will reach your goal of total annihilation. For that and all you have done to degrade, torment, abuse and demoralize us please by all means keep my 23 years of severance and add it to your bonus. You deserve it. Be sure to keep two gold pieces for your ferry ride to hell.

Renee
Tampa, Florida

The End of a Great Bookstore

All good things must come to an end. Borders main store is closed after 13 years in operation. Borders is the first superstore in books and usher in a new era in book scene. The neighbourhood bookstores all went belly up. MPH and Times have to revamp and until today is still struggling. In the end, poor management and leadership in Borders parent company in US causes the inevitable decline and now demise of a great bookstore. While leadership keeps blaming Amazon.com, e-books and everything else and never looking at themselves. Kinokuniya is thriving in the same environment. We know the real reason for Borders closing shop.

Now, we are left with only Kinokuniya. MPH and Times are a distant second.

Kishore Mahbubani

After reading his article in International Herald Tribune - A Rudderless World(http://mahbubani.net/), I did some search in the internet and find Kishore is a prolific writer and also have his interview with HardTalk BBC in Youtube.

I read his views and find I had formed opinions similar to his. West is on the decline was his mantra. The interview in BBC HardTalk is very telling. The BBC host has no desire to listen to Kishore's views and response. It is so obvious that the West is so full of themselves. They are the eyes that see but see not itself.

US and Europe will continue to decline if they refuse to see the current realities. This may be good for the East. Although East and West are interdependent, West had be strong in the past 200 years. The arrogance of money and power of economic superiority is hard for the West to give up. It is a matter of time that East will be equal and then surpass the West.

Jim Rogers, the billionaire has the foresight that the East is the future. He engaged a fulltime Mandarin tutor from Beijing for his daughters. Knowing Chinese Language he says is the best gift for he has for his kids.

Peaceful Sunday

Routine tasks for today. For Christians, today is a day of rest for God and I feel like God today. No God's power but enjoy's God's rest day:)

Chomp Chomp's roti prata for breakfast. Porridge for lunch and freshly baked bread for dinner. In between, B3 and I cycled to CompassPoint so that he can buy his latest fad, Crazy Bones. I swam and B3 had a great time in the pool playing with the gym ball.

After dinner, we will be sending B1 back to camp. He was home this morning. Well, this is life serving the country.

Terrible Upheaval

The stock market is down and with it many people financial wellbeing including mine:(. Warren Buffett is reputed to be buying as he see this as buying opportunities. He know the right shares to buy. I do not have his prescient capability on stock pick.

With this downturn, the global economy looks shaky in the immediate future. This time the crisis is different. QE or quantitative easing i.e. printing of money and pumping them into the economy gave the global economy impetus to recover. However, this time America is more or less bankrupt. A small group of tea party members force the stalemate in the debt negotiation with Obama. They insisted and won on no tax increase. So the rich pays much lower tax than middle class Americans.

The Dean of LKY School of Public Policy, Kishore Mahbubani lament the lack of political leadership in the West and China and India is too busy with internal affairs to deal with global issues. I pray for the world to get healthy again.

No Blogging Allowed!

China still prevent blogging. I have no access. So even communication on internet can be controlled. It is a society where many aspects of social order are managed very strictly. I am not sure if freedom of speech or rather lack of freedom of speech is bad. However, it is not a good feeling that I cannot blog about my travel or daily experience.

It has been a tiring 4 days trip in Shanghai with some last min changes. I do not like surprises but we get surprises very often nowadays. Surprises are quite disruptive. However, I must be say we did accomplished a lot in this trip and this is a good reminder that face-to-face meetings is mandatory for business. Video conference or other electronic communication I doubt will ever replace business travel.

Vignettes of Presidential Candidates

On the news are vignettes of Presidential Candidates doing their campaigning. It is the first time we see Mrs. Tony Tan on the TV so frequently. Everyone is working hard to win votes. Tony Tan seems a little old and reminds me of Former MM Lee in his movements. I am a little worried as I am also aging. True I still have many good years to go before reaching their age. However, it may be better to go earlier before one become unfirm and saddled with chronic problems that plagues the oldies.

I have not seen Tan Cheng Bock on TV and how he walks. Maybe he is fitter.

National Day's Rally Speech

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong national rally speech this evening introduced a lot of policy changes. Very positive changes indeed. A lot of the issues raised during the General Election in May was addressed. HDB's income ceiling raised by $2,000 to $10,000. Healthcare benefits expanded to start at 40 years old instead of 55 for subsidised chronic care but he also caution that US is in trouble because of the healthcare benefits. The social safety net for Autistic kids, the school for autistic kids - Pathlight will be expanded in capacity to accomodate more kids with learning disability.

So as he move to a more populist policy as our government can afford, he also cited the country currently in difficulties due to unaffordable policy.

It is so easy for him to get historical clips for presentation from all the stories. I like the Malaysia's cup where Fandi Ahmad scored the 4th and final goal and Singapore won the 1994 Malaysia's Cup. I think this is the great highlight of PM Lee's speech.

Chicken Soup for the Soul

I borrow a couple more audiobooks. Chicken Soup for the Soul is a lot more interesting that Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Some of the American sayings is hard to understand. It is a double twist like "Can become Could only if you try". I have no idea what this mean except it meant a lot to the author.

Exam fever and B2 has to study for his "O" level but he is still spending time watching soap operas in the evening.

Meanwhile on the news, the World Bank's Chief says the fundamentals in global economy is not good and it will be a rocky road ahead.

Ernest Hemingway Short Stories

I started to listen to the short stories by Ernest Hemingway. The dialogue was natural and description interesting. However, I do not understand the stories. It ended just hanging there. I am not so ready for literature yet. I need more training on culture.

Embarking on New Grounds

I went to National Library to borrow audiobooks. I chose fiction this time. Since reading fiction helps the mind and improves thinking ;) I also think it is time to enjoy fiction. It can be engaging and hard to put down like Stephen King's stories. I chose short stories so that it is not so tedious. I listened to Ken Follet's story and it is very interesting but too long. Takes more than two weeks to listen.

I have been reading only non-fiction for many years. Reviewing my reading habits, I have been reading non-fiction for many years. I think I stopped reading fiction when I have to do literature for "O" level. I did not enjoy analysing stories, what did the authors have in mind when they write certain passages, what messages readers are supposed to receive, blah, blah, blah. It takes the pleasure of reading! I focus on non-fiction to improve my performance at work and climb the corporate ladder. Nowadays, I read just to keep up with the management and leadership research published by management thinkers and professors

After such a long break from fiction, I feel I am embarking on new grounds again. The Short Stories - Ernest Hemingway and The Cassandra Compact - Robert Ludlum...here I come!

Nephews

My sister-in-law and her husband is in US. So we host the two boys over yesterday and today. We are so used to our own life that it is so disruptive to our usual flow. They enjoyed the company of their cousin. However, the younger one keeps breaking B3's toys. Their nanny is rather stout compare to my current domestic help.

Originally, they were scheduled to leave tomorrow morning. However, the older boy keeping crying and wanting to go home. Finally, his aunt relented and we sent them back home. The last two days seems like a long time.

Future Mind

This book is light reading. Plenty of examples and stats about brainstorming. Best thinking is usually done when alone - up in the air, 30,000 ft above the ground in an airplane, jogging or swimming, driving or in the shower.

In-depth and slow reading is the way to increase thinking capabilities. Digital browsing cause shadow thinking. So the old way is required for innovation.

Meaningful Day for Singaporeans

It is 46th birthday for our country. Spectacular fireworks and live performance that take a year to prepare and rehearse. It is a grand finale. I am quite emotionally detached although I loved Singapore I am not the kind celebrate this kind of event even Chinese New Year. It is food that I celebrate. Have a good meal is my preferred way. Treat others well. Be kind and the world will be a better place.

On TV, it seems many Singaporeans waited for many hours just to get a good place to view the fireworks. I wonder what they do to while time and how to answer the call of nature;) It is so much easier to watch from the comfort of my living room.

Happy Returns, Singapore! My hometown.

Unwell

I am down with sore throat and cough. Nose is congested, so breathing is laboured. Congestion also cause sinus headache. I should have seen a doctor to get medicine to relief my symptons. I thought I will get better but instead I am feeling weak and exhausted.

The book Future Minds by Richard Watson says reading fiction has direct correlation with IQ scores. Today, with all the electronics media like TV, internet, emails caused attention span to shorten and hyperactivity. Reading a book slows down our minds and allow us more time to think. Thinking helps us solve deep problems.

National Day's Eve

School is only half day. So all the school kids are out have a party. They love to it. I was cycling past B2's school during lunch time and one of his classmate recognised me. "Uncle have you heard..." and started to giggle. Other classmates were giggling too. So I stopped my bike and asked. However, he changed his mind and says it is nothing. He did not have anything to say. The rest of the students were in the joke as well but since I only know this guy, I can only asked him. I decided to let him go and continue my ride.

The good thing about living near the school is I am easily recognised as B2 does cycling with me. It is fun just to talk to the kids.

Future and Forecast

Since Kinokuniya has 20% discount, I acquired a couple of titles on future. I noticed British authors are getting more exposure in the book scene. It used to be mainly American, now more British and Australian authors are featured. I like American authors more as I prefers their straightforward style. British titles are harder to complete from cover to cover at least for me. Even Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth is not crack open yet although I enjoyed the TV serial so much. I must get the audio version as it is easier to read when I am riding.

I wonder many times I read and learn so much but not translating into wealth. Knowledge alone cannot make me rich. I am reading and learning about so many business topics and issues and have opinion. However, I am not successful. Now the stock market is down. My net worth strunk as a result. I should be looking at opportunity to buy.... yet the possibility of the market dropping further. I wish I have foresight instead of hindsight! All my learning did not help me to do well in the stock market.

Busy as Usual

B1 returned home late last night. I picked him up from Yio Chu Kang Station. By the time we reached home it is midnight. We start early in the morning with tuition and piano lesson. After tuition, B2 has to go back to school. We pick him up and send him off. Then we have our nasi lemak brunch again. It is so nice to eat at home. Bedok Hawker is full of houseflies and exudes poor hygiene.

We adjourned to Takashimaya to take refuge from the afternoon heat. Kinokuniya has 20% for its 12th anniversary. The crowd was enthusiastic and queues were long. Queues for the cashiers, queue for member cards, queue for gift wraps. Kino conducts roaring business. It is very successful indeed.

At night, we had D24 durians. 3 for $10. Small size but good taste.

It is good we are together as a family with all three boys at home for weekends.

The Geography of Time

A social psychologist looking at concept of time. The first part is quite dry and I was unable to continue to read. Today, I decided to skip and head straight to the second part which is on the three unwritten rules of time which we are all familiar with. Time is limited, time means money and waiting time equals status. Treating time like a resource or money is stressing us. Especially when you are waiting for someone. The longer you wait, the less important you are.

The unwritten rules make a lot of sense to me. This is all I could recall for now:)

TCM or Traditional Chinese Medicine

My wife and I attended a dinner talk this evening on traditional Chinese Medicine. It is all about balance or yin and yang. There are different herbs that is cooling or heaty in nature. Different herbs has medicinal effects on human. Some contains active drugs like phyto-estrogen (tang kwei) or ginsenosides (ginseng). The drugs do acts like western medicine.

It is good to learn more about Chinese herbs. My big concern is all the chemicals that may come with the herbs as they are likely to be treated with pesticides or growth hormones.

Eating can be Dangerous

We try a new resturant in KL. Traditional zhi char with salted chicken, roast chicken, roast duck and other Cantonese fare. I ordered a bunch of dishes and all of them taste rather good. Most of the food were eaten up. Only the roast duck was not popular.

There is only one or two of us in the table of 9 that did not feel anything. A colleague and I had diahorrea. Two had stomach upset as they have high tolerance for local food. I did not have a chance to check with a couple of other colleagues. This resturant is now on my banned list.


On the positive note, we tried a resturant that serves pork. It was fantastic. The barbeque pork ribs and pork belly were awesome. We also tried their apple crisp and bread pudding ala mode. I polished of the leftovers of both desserts. No wonder my weight keeps going up. Weak resistance to hi-cal sweets!

I need to control my food passion. We had durians on Monday evening and I felt sick after dinner. It took two hours of walking to clear my discomfort. Luckily, my body managed to fight and recover. Eating in KL can be dangerous....