School Holidays are Here, time to Hit the Books !

This is Andrew, my second son.He is 11 this year and has a charming disposition and very playful. As this is the holidays one would think that he would be out having fun every day ? No,in fact he is having tuition every 2 days and
Call me a Kiasu Parent (Scared to Lose) but I believe in the old Idiom "An idle mind is always Mischievious". Look at my
young days as a kid.

I cast back my memory and one phrase comes to mind "Care Free !" In the 'old days' in the Primary School, we had
no fear of exams,very little homework and plenty of time flying and fighting kites ,plucking rambutans,chikus,catching
spiders and the things we did to irritate our "Por Por" or Grandma like put sneezing powder in her favourite cup. You
can bet I was an Indian Chief with my Gang and was caned for all kinds of chaos created. I can see alot of myself in
Andrew, so the saying "like Father like Son" is very apt. Those days are long gone and Singapore we know is also
alot more global and fast moving.

Back to the present,we live in Globalised World like it or not so we have to compete and our children have to
compete even harder for hard to come by jobs if we want to have "the good life" and "the better retirement".
So he has to do homework during the school holidays but also has time to go out and have short break
visits plus getting invitations to several birthday parties and play his Maplestory game.

Andrew is very fortunate that he has visited 6 countries and has travelled every year since
he was 1 year old. He has learnt to snow board at 10 and has visited Beijing this March, one place I have
not even visited.So all in all, this is the normal Kid's life. Study, Fun, Travel interspersed with lots of
Maple Story Games.

Penang 2008 ; the Next Singapore or City with No Buzz ?

I finished a short trip to Penang on business, the last time I was there was in July 2007,for some technical training.
My impressions after about 1 year away,although I used to visit Penang every month on so in the past, is that the pace
of development has picked up tremendously as far as private property (there are condos and landed bungalows,semi-ds
and terraces aplenty with fanciful names like Hillcrest Residences and the Mayfair) and price psf of RM 300 psf to
RM 500 psf are expensive by Malaysian standards. However I feel these are artificially set high by the developers
and speculators and not reflective of any major immigration patterns of foreigners or new PRs coming to
live in Penang.

Penang is now managed by the opposition Gerakan party and the island has lot alot of its laid back charm,
compared with even 10 to 15 years ago.Where there was just kms of open beachfront and quaint hawker centres
near the beach,now there are many condos lining chock-a block along Gurney drive all the way to Ferringhi beach. Businesswise, in my very small microsegment outlook of the Reliability and Test Equipment market, it is very quiet,
and our reps have not sold anything for 1 and a half years.Manufacturing has been going downhill what with the lure of cheaper labour overseas (read India, China and Vietnam) and tourism dollar in my opinion is slowing (my Malaysian airways flight was not even half-full) and this being the school holidays in Singapore, many people are going to cheaper and
more value fo money locations like Bangkok,Ho Chinh Minh or even Hong Kong for cheaper tickets. I paid S$430
for a rountrip economy class and that is expensive for a 'shortbreak' holiday.

So if tourism is slowing,manufacturing is slowing, a change in the State Government what's up on the
horizon for Penang ? Nothing Much is what I figure. A lot of new buildings with No Buzz.

Page from the Past 1 - Inter-Varsity Debates '86

This is a Page from the Past ; In 1986, I was the 1st speaker
in the (then) Nanyang Technological Institute (NTI) Debating team which
reached the finals of the Inter-Varsity Debates.Along the way we beat,
the National Institute of Education (NIE) team (quarter-finals) and
the National University of Singapore (NUS) Team 1 in the semis.
We took on the NUS Team 2 in the Finals (televised on TCS Channel 12)
in front of 200 supporters in the studio and the camera crew.

We won everything EXCEPT the overall team title ;
Best Speaker of Series : Jaspal Singh, Best Speaker of Evening : Philip Lim.
It was a feat in those days as the NTI then was not yet a full fledged
university and had only the Engineering faculty (our degrees were conferred by NUS) and NTI was only 4 years old then.

The NUS teams had law undergraduates in their teams and eloquent speakers from a cohort of over 14,000.We on the other hand had less than 2,000 undergraduates and only from the Engineering faculty.I am glad I had a small hand in putting NTI then "on the map" of Singapore's education landscape.

Our team : Me (1st),Richard Pereria (2nd),Philip Lim (4th),Sukhdeep(Res)and Jaspal Singh(3rd).

Singapore - Small Country with Big Heart

I am proud that Singapore being a small country can contribute to the relief efforts of the Sichaun earthquake in China.We are only 1 of 4 countries that has been offered Search and Rescue Teams and our Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team (DART) had arrived in Chengdu on Friday 16th to begin work.Formed in 1990,they have been active in recent years in the Kashmir earthquake in 2005,the Tsunami in 2004 and now this.
Money can be pledged and donated,that China has plenty of it (over USD 1 trillion in foreign reserves) but DART has
the specialised expertise and equipment in disaster search and rescue as well as extricating survivors and victims.They
are also risking their lives to help others.
Singapore may be small but we have a big heart.

China Sichuan Province Earthquake - What it Tells Me

The heart wrenching pictures from the Net and newspapers tell the painful story and reminds me that once again that life is fleeting and we must not fritter our lives away making excessive money at the expense of our relationships with our loved ones,friends,family and neighbours.It could be all over in an instant, so no-one is
going to say "I should have closed more orders from Motorola" or "Why did ____ only
score 52 for maths mid year exam ?" Blank - name of your son or daughter.

The children in the pictures could very well look like your nieces,nephews,sons and daughters and Premier Wen Jia Bao as the kindly uncle trying to give them some
hope in a bad,no terrible situation.They may be orphans who have lost their families and all around them.How does one make any sense out of all this ? I can only
pray for their inner peace and solitude.

" When we have no more tears to cry,
When we have no way to answer why,
Our time of reckoning will come,one day
When we will make those ____tards pay
Have hope,my friend,I pray
Sieze the day,Sieze the day "

And Now for the Good News - 6 months till Ski Season !!

This past week, we have had the double whammy of natural disasters,the Nargis Cyclone in Myanmar (4th May)and
2 days ago the Earthquake in Szechuan, China (12th May).Rather than focus on the imminent since that's what papers are
for,I thought I would write about something totally irrelavant.

Its only 6 months till the next Ski Season ! Last year (9 - 15 Dec) we went to the Vivaldi Park Ski Resort in Daemyung
Chuncheon,South Korea. Organised inexpensively by YMCA it is a ski camp for beginner and intermediate skiiers.The
photo shows the Intermediate slope and we stayed at the resort for 4 nights on a quad (4) or quin (5) sharing basis.

The experience is great especially for all of us from the boys (13 and 10) who took up the Snowboarding and
managed to slither down the wide gentle slopes easily by the 3rd day. My wife and I took the ski classes ably trained
by Andy,our ski instructor who is an undergrad training to be an anaesthesist. As I had a prior taste in 2006, I was
very keen to improve my skiing and have my karate and running experience to thank for my quick progress in this new
sport. We plan to go to Hokkaido Japan this December 2008.

The ski experience ? It is the overall coordination utilising hands,legs (particularly the knees),balance,eyes and
back to navigate the slopes and avoid all manner of obstacles like fallen skiers, snowboarders,bumps and slippery
snow and requiring to appear graceful and not fall flat on your face or tumble down the slope.It is definately
NOT for the couch potato as some level of fitness and balance is absolutely necessary.

This year is the Blue or (maybe?) Black Diamonds at Hokkaido for us !! Ceong ah !

Thoughts over Coffee- Myanmar

Its Monday 12th May, and as I have my morning coffee at my club,I feel very fortunate that I don't have to report to a "desk" or "clock-in" as I can manage from outside the office. My thoughts,and sympathies go to the people of Myanmar, which has been ravaged by Cyclone Nargis and has claimed 100,000 lives.The feeling of being so helpess even though I am going to donate some hard-earned money cannot go away. In this society of instant gratification and reality TV,nothing is so hypocritical as for us Singaporeans as to watch and do nothing.The poor people of Myanmar have had so much suffering and now this ??

Many organisations and relief groups have sent supplies but the Myanmar authorities have been very slow to authorise visas giving the signal that "we want help and money but we'll handle this ourselves thank you". This is leading to needless time wasting and countless deaths through lack of organised emergency health care and doctors,specialists and emergency operations crew CAN make a major difference.

Can't ASEAN as a collective group influence the military junta and at least appear to coordinate something rather than keep silent on this major catastrophe ? It shows just how fragile ASEAN is as a societal grouping,as it is fundamental that humans have the access to basic food and water AND medicine.

Just my thoughts this May Monday.