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New York, New York

I had some free time to explore New York. This was my first time there, so it was quite interesting for me.

I spent most of my time in museums. New York has some really spectacular museums - you could spend an entire day or two in a large one, if you really wanted to see all the exhibits.



Here's a picture I took at the Natural History Museum. The museum has plenty of dinosaur fossils and the picture shows one of the largest ones.

When you're standing right there, close to the fossil, it's pretty remarkable to think that once upon a time, such a massive creature was real and alive, and stomping and stamping its way around planet Earth.

I also visited the world-renowned Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. Quite delighted to see many famous paintings which up till then, I had only come across in books, postcards etc.

Here's one of the paintings, The Death of Socrates. A painting that you would appreciate a lot more, if you saw the real thing in full size, and also know the story of how Socrates died.

I also went to the Apple store to buy an iPad for a friend. The iPads are still selling like hot cakes. You can't get them unless you place a prior reservation. And the rule is that the reservation lasts for only 24 hours - you need to pick it up within that time.

I would have bought one for myself, but I'm not sure how an iPad would gel with the data plans in Singapore.


It seems to me that in the long run, an iPad is the way to go, for a book lover like me. I've often had to restrain myself from buying more books, because my house is already full of books and they take up so much space. I throw away and give away books, and yet I still have so many.

With an iPad, I could switch to reading ebooks. Right now though, I'm not too sure what the range of available book titles would be like.
Gadis Bispak Imut

The Reality TV Show

I'm back from New York. I passed my reality TV show - not with flying colours, but I passed, and that's that. So I guess I'm on track for promotion early next year.

One really interesting thing we did was a complex business simulation exercise. The course participants were broken up into six groups. Each group was supposed to be one company.

At the beginning of the game, each company has exactly the same balance sheet, sells the products and owns the same kind of factory equipment. Each group then has to make a set of decisions, on issues like how much to invest in R&D; how much to spend on employee training; how many employees to hire or fire; whether to purchase new industrial equipment or not; and what price to set for the products.

At the end of each round, each team's decisions are entered into a complex computer model. Decisions made by any one team influence the result of all other teams, because the parameters of the game are that all six companies are operasting in the same market.

The model then spits out a detailed set of results, which are publicly announced. These include results such as which team gained the most market share; which team wins an award for "Best Factory"; which team produced goods with the highest quality; at what price each team sold its products etc etc.

Then there is a set of confidential results for each company, detailing its financial performance in that particular round, and also details about its inventory holdings, and its productivity ratios.

The objective of the simulation exercise is to see which team can generate the highest retained earnings, over seven rounds.

The game is quite complex, and takes into account a wide range of factors such as the depreciation of assets over time; the life cycle of the factory machines; fluctuations in market demand; and changes in interest rates. The teams also have options to do things like borrow money from the bank.

Each team can also carry out quality improvement projects; engage external consultants; purchase market forecast reports etc. Each of these decisions come with a price, of course, and each company has a limited amount of money.

The game ran over a period of one and a half days.

Anyway, I was the CEO of my team and we won - yes, we were No. 1, making 67.1 million dollars over seven game periods.

You can think of the game as a very complicated kind of Monopoly.

The other interesting feature of the game is that each team had a psychologist sitting in the room of each team. The psychologist was there to observe each participant in the team.

This part of the exercise was to focus on intrapersonal and interpersonal skills. After the game, each participant gets to discuss his own performance with the psychologist, who will comment on the participant's observed behaviour.

Each participant also receives a grade, on a very broad set of different criteria, such as whether he was collaborative; whether he communicated clearly; whether he was confident etc.

Although I was the CEO of the winning team, I only got an average score as CEO. The psychologist said that my weakness, under time pressure, was in commanding and persuading my team members, whenever I had to articulate an innovative strategy or complex idea.



I was also criticised for being poor in delegating. I personally over-focused on details, when as CEO I should be splitting up the tasks more, and getting my team members to do the analysis.

Innovation and far-sightedness were noted, as my key strengths. In Round 2, when my team members were mostly thinking about Round 2, I was already strategising and planning ahead for Rounds 5 to 7.

Gadis Bispak Imut

Oxford University Press - Gazing at Stars

Got an email from Christine Lindop, a freelance editor with Oxford University Press. She is working on a new book - a collection of short stories specially edited for readers for whom English is a foreign language.

This is part of a series entitled Bookworms World Stories, which showcase the work of writers in English from different parts of the world. Christine's volume is scheduled for publication in 2011 and will consist of stories from Asia.

I'm known for my poetry rather than for my short stories, but Oxford University Press told me that they would like to use one of my poems, entitled Accident, in the preliminary pages of their book. That's because my poem has inspired the title of their book, Gazing at Stars.

I said ok. This is the poem:
Accident

And I,
gazing at stars,
stumbled over you,
tripped
and
fell painfully in love,
couldn't get up
for ages.

Okay, the actual poem doesn't really look like that. The lines are arranged and spaced in a certain way, to suggest serendipitious wanderings and a sudden fall. But Blogger doesn't seem to give me any option to replicate the line arrangements - it automatically aligns all the lines for me.
Gadis Bispak Imut

Little Snippets From Mr Wang's Daily Life

Professor Edwin Thumboo is compiling a new anthology of poetry and wanted to include one of my poems in it. My publisher emailed to ask if I had any objections. A slightly strange question, since my publisher holds the copyright for the next nine years and I have no grounds to object anyway. But anyway, I am perfectly okay and happy with the idea.

The new anthology is aimed at students in Singapore schools, and will contain a selection of poems from writers all over the world. The objective is to expose the students, through poetry, to a variety of different social, cultural and linguistic contexts. Edwin Thumboo wants to use the following poem of mine:

    My Father Takes My Son For A Walk

    Small waves sing and sigh and run to the shore,
    Push and pull at their ankles, as they walk hand-in-hand
    Along the edge of the sea.

    My father is white-haired now, his shoulders stoop.
    With each step he is approaching the end of his life
    Altthough in this moment he does not think of it.

    My son is a young child. Shells and boats excite him.
    In the years ahead, the old man beside him will
    Become for him an uncertain memory.

    I have my own journey. I am watching them,
    As if from a very great distance, as if I were a wave
    Travelling out into the endless sea.

Gadis Bispak Imut

"But I Didn't Tell A Lie ... I Just Didn't Tell The Whole Truth" - The SAF

In March, an SAF training accident occurred. A few days ago, the Straits Times reported it:
    ST May 25, 2010
    SAF commando shot by Thai villager
    By Jermyn Chow & Lester Kok

    A COMMANDO on a night training exercise in Thailand was accidentally shot by a local villager out hunting.

    First-Sergeant Woo Teng Hai, a regular from the 1st Commando Battalion, suffered head injuries in the incident on March 13.

    The 25-year-old serviceman was hit by pellets from a shotgun, the Defence Ministry told The Straits Times yesterday. He is now on medical leave.

    Mindef spokesman Darius Lim said 1st Sgt Woo was taking part in a 'routine training exercise' in a 'designated training area' in Kanchanaburi province, west of Bangkok.

But the story was not complete. It was missing a very material piece of information.

Another SAF servicement had been shot. He is a 19-year-old NSF. More than two months after the accident, the shotgun pellets are still lodged in his cheekbones and shoulder.

How did these facts now come to light? Did Mindef tell the public about it? Nope. Mindef kept very quiet about it. Instead it was an unnamed relative of the NSF who called the Straits Times, to report it.
    ST May 26, 2010
    Another SAF soldier shot by Thai farmer too
    By Jermyn Chow & Lester Kok

    NOT one but two Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) soldiers were hurt while out on a night military exercise in Thailand in March.

    A local farmer out hunting accidentally shot Private J. Pritheery Raj, a full-time national serviceman (NSF). Two shotgun pellets are still lodged in his cheekbones and his right shoulder.

    The 19-year-old is now on medical leave.

    News of this second shooting surfaced after a relative of Pte Raj called The Straits Times on reading its report that a villager had fired his shotgun at First Sergeant Woo Teng Hai. The regular commando is said to have been blinded in his right eye.

    The Defence Ministry, which had confirmed the accidental shooting of 1st Sgt Woo on Monday, admitted yesterday that another soldier had also been hurt in the same incident.
It was a cover-up. Exposed by the NSF's relative.

This is a simple example of why Singaporeans do not trust the SAF. All too often, the SAF just does not behave with integrity.

My only hope is that the SAF will treat both servicemen - the regular and the NSF - fairly, and give them proper compensation.

And not treat them in the the way they had treated ex-NSF serviceman Lawrence Leow.
Gadis Bispak Imut

Life Without A Blog

A few readers have asked why I have been blogging less and less frequently. One colleague expressed his "disappointment". Another reader asked if everything was okay in my life.

Well, everything is okay. Except that I've been too busy with various things (mostly work and family), to be blogging a lot. That's one answer, and it is true. However, another answer (equally true) is that I just don't feel that interested in blogging anymore. In fact I have been feeling distinterested for some time.

It seems a waste to just abandon the blog, especially when I've kept it going for quite a few years. On the other hand, to keep it going just for the sake of keeping it going also seems to be an illogical decision.

Well, everything is impermanent. Blogs are no exception. Most of the Singapore bloggers whom I once considered as my "contemporaries" have largely vanished from the scene as well. That includes Xeno Boy; Molly Meek; Singapore Angle and Singabloodypore. I wonder how many people even remember those blogs/bloggers now.

I've noticed that the less I blog, the less I bother to keep up with the news. Once upon a time, reading the online Straits Times was pretty much a daily habit for me. Now, many days might pass, before I bother to read it once. I still read Today quite frequently, but mostly because I often get handed a free copy while on the way to work.

Due to my regular inattention to the news, I feel somewhat out of touch with this country now. Nevertheless my life goes on smoothly. Sounds a little strange, but it seems eminently possible to get by just fine in one's own life, without knowing too much about the broader national developments. I mean developments in areas like politics, government, education, healthcare, the economy etc.

Maybe the nature of the world now is that people can just easily zero in on the specific information they need, when they need it. For example, you don't need to be reading the newspapers regularly, to know what's happening in the property market. Instead, right at the time when you want to know, you can just google to find out what you want to know. And you could get much more relevant, detailed information from a few dedicated property websites, than from the mainstream media.

I've considered blogging about topics other than current affairs. To some extent, I've already done it. In many of my posts this year, I have often mixed news articles with personal anecdotes drawn from my own everyday experiences. Then again, perhaps the most important question is whether I'm wasting my time blogging here. And whether I should be doing something else.

It's been almost a year since my book Two Baby Hands was published. Part of me feels that it's high time I got started on a second book (I'm considering short stories - I have plenty of ideas floating around in my head). But writing a book takes a lot of time, and I'm not a full-time writer. To succeed, I need to decide exactly what I want to do or not, and after that, I just have to avoid spending any time on things that I don't want to do.

So the question for myself is - do I want to blog, or not? Hmmm.
Gadis Bispak Imut

Marina Bay Sands - An Embarrassing Show

Well, this is one hotel that I will be avoiding, at least for the next one or two years. Hope they get their act together, by then.
    ST May 6, 2010
    Uproar over Marina Bay Sands conference woes
    By Ng Kai Ling & Lim Wei Chean

    ORGANISERS of the first conference held at Marina Bay Sands (MBS) are looking into taking action against the integrated resort (IR) for the problems which plagued the event from the word go.

    They say MBS failed to deliver the 'unmatched guest experience' it promised when it first signed the deal early last year.

    Mr Yap Wai Ming, chairman of this year's organising committee for the Inter-Pacific Bar Association (IPBA) conference, said they will take stock of all the things that went wrong before meeting MBS to discuss the issue. He did not give a date for the meeting.

    The IPBA conference, a prestigious meeting of lawyers now into its 20th year, was the first event hosted at the IR, which threw open its doors on April 27 after months of delay. More than 1,000 lawyers and judges from all over the world, including the United States, Japan and Chile, attended the meet, which started on Sunday and ended yesterday.

    By the time it was over, delegates had compiled a long list of complaints about MBS, ranging from minor irritations to major flaws:

    - At the five-star Marina Bay Sands Hotel, some delegates spent the first night without air conditioning.

    - Some guests had to make calls using their mobile phones because the room phones were not working.

    - Some rooms had no hot water or working toilet flushes.

    - Facilities like the gymnasium, spa and swimming pool were not ready for use.

    But the problems did not end at the hotel rooms.

    At the Sands Expo and Convention Centre, sound quality in the conference rooms was poor, and meetings were interrupted by construction noise or worse.

    Mr Yap said an IPBA committee meeting had to be reconvened along a corridor because of loud piped music playing in the meeting room. He said MBS told them it was unable to turn the music off as the sound engineer was not around.

    To add insult to injury, the power went out for more than half an hour in the conference room on Tuesday during the address by the Chief Justice of the Australian state of New South Wales.

    The inadequacies so irked the delegates that one of them, lawyer Axel Reeg from Germany, raised a motion during the annual general meeting (AGM) yesterday that the association take a 'fair and tough stance' against MBS for not delivering what it promised.

    'The conference has been world class. The venue was presented to us as going to be world class. Sadly, it is not yet world class...I think we should rename Marina Bay Sands to Construction Bay,' the 51-year-old told the assembled lawyers at the AGM.

    Mr Yap said MBS should have been more honest about the progress of the IR right from the start, when it knew that its planned opening last December would have to be pushed back because of unforeseen construction setbacks and labour shortages.
    One of my lawyer friends, who was staying over at the hotel for the conference, told me that the hotel even messed up the check-in/check-out times for their guests.

    Five hours before my friend was due to check out, the hotel staff thought that she and her husband had already checked out. The hotel staff assigned the room to a new guest and insisted on sending his luggage to my friend's room.

    My friend had to tell them exasperatedly, "Wait, WAIT. You are making a mistake. This is MY room. You can't give a stranger a key to enter into MY room. This is a security breach!!"

    She also telephoned several times to ask for mineral water, but it never came. Oh, and she had to use her own handphone to call. The telephone in her hotel room was not working.

    There were other horror stories - about hotel guests getting stuck in lifts etc. In one case, the lift worked, but only partially - the door opened only halfway, so the hotel guests had to squeeze their way out.

    * * * * * * * * * * *

    A terrible start, for the highly-billed IR. What happened to the quality control?
    Gadis Bispak Imut

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