The Rolling Stones - Doom and Gloom

World Happiness Report 2017 - a very transient and subjective method of measuring the 'good life'

My niece Hannah, with Aunt Terrie and Mum Rebekah 

Recently in the last 5 years, the United Nations sacntioned a think tank, called Sustainable Development  Solutions Network to find out, in measurable terms, the factors which cause people to be happy. So, after 5 years, the World Happiness Report 2017 is out and there are 5 main criteria which cause people living in that country to be 'happy'. Inevitably there will be a ranking of the countries worldwide, and Singapore came in a respectable 26th, but 4 rungs lower than 2016.  It however, is a Western influenced think-tank using few abstract values (only 2) and the remainder being what they (the think tank) think would make people in that country 'happy'.

Terrie and Grandma  

    The criteria are as listed below : 

1. Per capita gross domestic product (per capita GDP)

2. Healthy Life expectancy

3. Freedom

4. Generosity

5. Social Support

6. Absence of Corruption in Government or Business

Lets look at each criteria one by one :

1. Per capita GDP ; - I think this criteria is totally off the mark

 This is just the ratio of the gross domestic production of a country in total real numbers divided by the resident population ; the correlation is that the  higher  the GDP the 'richer' the country. But does a 'richer' country which has rapidly ageing population make it a more 'happy' one ? 

The USA has one of the highest per capita GDP in the world, the inner cities are teeming with crime and stories of heartbreak, homelessness and substance use, gangs and family breakdowns. How can this be a 'happy' country.

Same goes for the Nordic countries, the lack of sunlight for close to half a year causes severe depression and high suicide rates in the population especially amongst the elderly. Again, how can this be a factor to be considered seriously ? 

Singapore is also a high per capita GDP country. But the reality is that it is also stressful, given that we have no natural resources and have to rely on our brainpower and initiative to eke out a sustainable and profitable enterprise for the long run. The high cost of living here also does not make Singapore a 'chill out' and 'hang loose' place like, for example, Bali in Indonesia. 

If we have saved and invested wisely, we would presumably lead happy and comfortable lives with our retirement savings (ie. CPF), but then again, this is always the plan. And plans do go awry. 

2. Healthy Life Expectancy 

    This I agree is crucial, to have many healthy years  to a person's life is a vital component to  a person being happy. If a person can have a healthy life, that is one big worry off his mind and he would be 'happier' than those who have contracted life threatening diseases.

    For developed countries including Singapore, healthcare services are worldclass, but again, the proper mindset from young to eat healthy, exercise regularly and go for regular medical checkups are so important.  

3.  Freedom

    This I disagree. Again many people I have met in supposedly not free countries are happier than totally free countries. The peoples of Myanmar are far more happy than the lot I have seen in European states or the developed countries. Freedom is a very personal concept. Many people are happy just being told what to do, at the expense of freedom of movement, and expression and just exist or adapt without those freedoms which the Western democracies speak so highly about.

    The 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution states 'the freedom to bear arms'. Again, this has more downsides than upsides. While personal freedoms allow (by law) this, where then is the freedom of the ordinary people to be able to walk the street or parks day or night without the fear of being robbed, shot or raped at gunpoint ??

    There should be limits on freedom especially for the greater good of society, so individual

freedoms need to be moderated and checked, and legislated. 

4. Generosity 

    This I agree. A sharing society is a caring society. Inclusiveness makes everyone share the load of the bad and enjoying the fruits of the good. If a country is rich, it should enact many programs to help the poor,  including their neighbours, because, if both neighbours are about there in terms of wealth generation and savings, it would benefit both countries.  

5. Social Support

    I agree here too. There are many who fall through the cracks or safety nets of society and if there is no social support in the forms of Government Welfare services, Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), religious organizations and Social enterprises, then there will always be unhappy people in their midst.

    Russia and some of the former Soviet states comes to mind, where there is the severe absence of these groups (I may be wrong though). 

6. Absence of Corruption in Government 

   I disagree again here. Clean government while it is good, does not a happy and healthy population make. 

   In my next few posts, I will humbly submit what I think are the requisite parameters (at both personal level and country level) to be happy.

   The pursuit of happiness while it is a basic human right, may not be suitable to everyone.

   

Raising your Game

Altitude Gym at Bukit Timah Rifle Range Road ; the air O2 level is set at 3000 m 

       Altitude training has been proven to be very effective for athletes of all disciplines worldwide, and Singapore is the latest in the Asian region to invest into this technology. My company is fortunate to be associated with ATS from Australia, and the concept of this technology is quite simple ; air in our atmosphere is made up of O2 (20%) and N2 (80%) with trace elements of CO2, and other noxious gases. If you ascend vertically (either by climbing up a mountain, flying a jet aircarft or just sitting inside the basket of a hot air balloon), the composition of air changes with O2 thinning the higher up you go. 

      Studies have shown than at 5000 m (about two thirds of Mount Everest), the O2 in the air is around 11% and the N2 content is much more. Hence the word 'thinning' of the air is referring to the depleted oxygen in the near stratosphere. As experienced mountaineers will tell you, the air at those levels make it VERY DIFFICULT TO BREATHE let alone exercise.

This is why, the good sports scientists around the world have found out that our human body is very adaptable and the blood vessels with our blood capillaries (little platelets) which carry oxygen from our lungs to the various parts of the body are able to ADAPT in the presence of depleted oxygen and work that much harder to do the same amount of work ie. walking or running.

3000 m translates to O2 of  14.3  %

      In actual fact, to run at the same speed at 5000 m, a normal person would have to expend easily 30% - 40% MORE effort ie. energy just to keep at the same running / walking speed. The body then COMPENSATES by doing more with less ; it becomes more biomechanically efficient in transporting the O2 either transporting the O2 30% FASTER  to achieve the same output of work done.   

    So, an athlete who has had the benefit of altitude training (say 2 weeks running up in the mountains of 3000 m) will upon returning to sea-level, find that his blood transporting efficiency will have INCREASED up to 30% and hence (in theory) he can run up to 30 -40% faster than his best timing when he last trained at sea-level.

Fully Equipped with Hypoxic Function ; the friendly staff at ATS are always welcoming

      

       There are plenty of articles of Hypoxic effects on raising the games of athletes. My focus this and the coming years will be on providing the relevant equipment (gyms and /or chambers) and working with great principals such as ATS for the betterment of athletes to 

                                                 Raise Their Games

     Needless to say, there are numerous athletes who are using the Gym's facilities and their improvements is reflected in achieving their Personal Bests (PB) or medals at International Meets such as the Asian Games or even the Olympics.  

       

Preparing and Proftting from the Unknown - Unknowns

Noel 

        I am rereading this fascinating book called The Art of Thinking Clearly by Ralf Dobelli. In it are 99 short ideas which help people like myself develop independent thought.  This short story is called the Black Swan episode, and the jist of the story is this. People learn by attending both school which is a cumulative compilation of people's past experiences and lessons conjugated into basic building blocks of alphabets, logic, math, science, humanities, history and literature. The other is the huge and no holds barred life experiences. Every person is shaped primarily by genes, values transmitted by our parents, caregivers, teachers, relatives, friends, schoolmates and when you start working, colleagues.

       Our responses will be in line with what we have been taught either in a logical, musical, spiritual and religious sense as we take references to firstly our earliest and secondly our most cognizant responses to what we see and experience. Every one's interpretation of an event is moulded and each person's account will be tainted by what he or she is most familiar with.

       The term Black Swan is an event which up to the current time has never occurred in the concious realm of the ordinary. Things like the the explosion of Mount Pompeii in Italy, the Ice Age taking place, the creation of fire, the invention of the Atomic Bomb, Nuclear bomb, the findings of Copernicus which postulated that the Earth is not the Centre of the Universe, the creation of the Internet, handphones and the like.

     In 2004, the then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, that there are the Known Knowns (those are facts), there are the Known Unknowns (we know what we dont know

but we know that it exists) and the Unknown Unknowns (we do not even know that it ever is possible to exist).  

    So what happens when the Unthinkable happens ?  Ralf Dobelli suggests the following in the meantime, get out of debt, save conservatively, invest moderately - this is to stay afloat during a negative Black Swan event ; The election of the populist Donald Trump, could possibly be the negative Black Swan event. 

     In the positive Black Swan event, Dr. Dobelli suggests in the meantime that we should   work at either being an artist, an inventor or an entrepreneur with a scalable product.

     Bring it On !!  

Goodbye Mr. Berry ; thank you for the music !

I read with sadness that one of the pioneers of Rock and Roll, Chuck Berry died today at 90 years of age. He was one of the true founders of the music genre Rock and Roll. There are many pioneers, but Chuck Berry was truly one of the guitar greats. His life was rocked by that of many rock musicians, and scandal. He was incarcerated and never won a Grammy outright. 

But like all great musicians, 'he could play a guitar like ringing a bell". The genius of a master is to make the inanely difficult seem to easy to do. 

Chuck, give them the music wherever you are ! 


As a footnote, the piano player reminds me of Animal of Sesame Street ! Hahahaha ! 

The rolling back of Dodd Frank bill will spell danger for the conflict mines.

     I read an article in the National Geographic whereby the tin, gold and tantalum, mines based in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were being pressured by the then US sanction under Dodd Frank ruling to exercise 'due dilligence' as it was ruining many young Congolese, many as young as 8 or 9 years old. The mines are located in the eastern DRC which are normally run by organizations who employ young Congolese at rock bottom salaries and no health insurance. Since the eastern DRC is ruled mainly by warlords who and the mines are located far away from the capital of Kinshasa, most of the commodities end up being sold to middle-men companies and are then re-sold to other companies before ending up in the smelter (high temperature furnace) of some newly developing country which makes semiconductors, or elecronic circuit cards. 

   You see, the tin, gold and tantalum form the key rare earth materials for the semiconductor industry. The gold is used as wires bonded within the die of the IC chip. Tin and tantalum form the base material for the underfill of PCB printed circuit boards and tin also forms the contact points as solder ball material between the IC chip and the chip card or motherboard.

    The Eastern part of Congo is ruled by warlords and only Kinshasa is under Federal control. Hence the mines setup by multinational corporations providing vertical integration to the supply chain of the semiconductor industry such as the raw tantalum and gold were forced to reduce the exploitation of child labour as per the Dodd Frank ruling which embargoed or made more stricter regualtions trading with the US. The warlords sold the raw materials to the middle-men companies in exchange for funds and weaponry to continue their dominace.  

    Now with the Trump White House doing a roll back on many trade deals such as the TPP and the NAFTA, the failing President has made another boo-boo. With the revoking of the Dodd Frank ruling regarding conflict mines, many of these so called industry giants will be back to their old ways, of employing child labour and causing untold and unimaginable suffering to the emerging African subcontinent.

   A tragedy is unfolding within our lifetimes.  

Battle of Hertgen Forest - Good War Movie ; worth 90 minutes of your time.