In January 2008, just when investors are shorting U.S. banks, Tony Tan spent billions of dollars of Singapore taxpayers’ monies to invest in Citigroup and UBS.
To justify his reckless actions, Tony Tan said in an interview with the Business Times, “In the case of UBS, they have a worldwide global wealth management business which is something not replicable by any bank. Citigroup has an international worldwide consumer business which is also unique.”
At the time, Jim Rogers, a former partner of George Soros in the famed Quantum Fund, said he felt “sad” for Singapore as it would be losing a lot of money.
Rogers continued, “They’re making a big mistake; these banks have many more problems still ahead. They should wait until these companies are really on the ropes a few years from now . . . and trading at $5 a share.”
Rogers also expressed doubts about the capability of GIC’s fund managers, including Tony Tan, “I know these people, and they have never given me the impression that they’re smarter than anyone else…They have gigantic amounts of money, but they’ve made a bad judgment in these cases.”
Recently a quoted quote from MP Zainudin Nordin went out of control in the social sphere. A blogger had decided that it was fun to create a photoshop of him with part of his quote. The blogger decidedly highlighted a specific statement “Gang rape is after all democracy in action” on it. This, of course, got the attention of MP and the blogger was asked to remove the photo. Note that the demand was not to stop commenting on his quoted quote, but a specific request to remove a misrepresented photo. Of course, like an unapologetic spoilt child who just drove over the neighbour cat with his Ferrari complaining that the cat dirtied the tires, he complained about it on this blog: Read the rest of this entry
The results are out, BN won the polls. The world did not end, of course. Life will continue as we know it. Maybe not much will change also. So why am I so concerned as a Singaporean about the Malaysian election? Like me, many Singaporeans also have spouses, family and relatives who are Malaysians; my sister and mom are. Like me, many Singaporeans have Malaysian friends and even partners. And like me, many Singaporeans travel regularly or occasionally to Malaysian for holidays or work. Read the rest of this entry
Tourism Board of Singapore just got another mouthful of blasters from Singapore bloggers with their new promotion video which uses Shiok! to describe various situations of enjoyment in Singapore.
Many people have really harsh words for the video. True, there are some situations where Singaporeans will not be caught dead saying shiok like canopy walk, night safari, LV shopping (actually unless they are getting 80% discount) or partying the night away, but is the video really that badly done? What the video seems to be trying to convey is a sense of awe that the participant felt. Yes, we may not say shiok all the time or even use shiok, but its just a gimmicky verbalization After all, its only a short video, we cannot aim to teach too many Singlish in one video.
I think we must consider who the target audience is, which I believe are tourists from the Western regions. The video is just trying to portray or sell an imagine of Singapore that has a variety of exciting and mesmerizing attractions and things to do. This is a tourist promotion video for heavens sake, this is not an academic treatment of what Singapore is really like or what living in Singapore is like. I think from a tourist point of view, the video did its job to introduce Singapore as a destination and its shiokness to go with it. Of course, I do hope that we don’t end up with tourists saying shiok all the time for the inane reasons, just like how they try to end with “Lah” in the most stupid ways sometimes. Read the rest of this entry
One wonders why in the past two years, the Malaysian government has started picking on gay people and hammering out anti-gay agenda of their own. One is probably the liberalisation of gay marriage and gay equality around the world. But I think the main agenda is really because its morality call allows people to be distracted from talking about real issues in Malaysia.
Gay equality is a hot topic at the moment around the world and there are not lack of arguments on both sides for and against it. The more fervent the anti-gay camp, normally fronted by religions groups and powerful conservative politics, an almost equal response results. This is especially attractive for a government which have nothing more to offer but to use morality or lack of as a noisy distraction to real issues. Using religious morality also allows the political party to distance themselves from more liberal parties (or parties who wished to be more liberal), but what is worst now is that the other political party also stand behind the anti-gay agenda because they don’t want to lose out in the election fight. Of course, that may already be their stance in the first place. Read the rest of this entry
I don’t really understand the intention of the author in this article:
The author seems to suggest that there are valid reasons to be angry at foreign workers and there are valid reasons to dislike them because they talk too loud, they smell and they crowd the public transport and you have to fight for seats. Also, to vomiting level, the oft repeated “they are taking away our jobs” So if they were to speak softer, smell better and give all Singaporeans (how do you tell?) seats in buses and trains, they can be tolerated? But wait, they are still taking away our jobs! So they cannot be tolerated and its right to heap hatred and anger at them.
Also I notice a lot of times this anger seems to be one directional. Asked if they would agree if citizens of foreign countries treat friends, relatives or Singaporeans who may be staying, working and studying there they way some anti-FTs are doing now, you may even get a blank stare. It may never occur to them that Singaporeans can also be foreign talents in foreign countries, reaping as much money as they can, staying in well-oiled apartments and maybe behaving badly too. Read the rest of this entry
Caveat: this is just my own experience learning Thai, I may have gotten some stuff incorrect and I am not a Thai nor language teacher for sure. My intention is not to teach Thai, but to supplement whatever you are currently already reading with my own experience.
The Thai tonal system is the first thing anyone will notice when hearing a Thai person speak or when you start learning thai. For a Chinese or tonal speaking language person, the tonal system is not difficult to learn. One of the unfortunate thing about being a Singaporean is that, I have a good command of English and at the same time am confortable with speaking Chinese, but most English language books are written for English-speaking-only audience. Worst still a lot of equivalent tonal system or phonetics using English alphabets are used (just like the over liberal use of romanji in a lot of Japanese language books). It really screws up properly language learning. Read the rest of this entry
The first time I heard of this song, it was sang by Calorie Blah Blah, but they are not the original singer. Anyway, the song is very haunting and the lyrics really captures a person’s feelings “in love” especially when trying to convince the other party of his love. Read the rest of this entry
This is a response to the article
Neediness or over-neediness causes issues in any relationship, it doesn’t have to between two men. Even neediness between parent and children (maybe from the parent side) make cause issues. Neediness is not unique between two men only; as long as one side or both sides have unrealistic expectation coupled with fairy romance ideology, its a deal breaker over the long term. Everything is very rosy at the start with all these neediness for sure because it probably an important part of bonding, but beyond an expiry date, neediness can become a drag. Read the rest of this entry
Recent events in pycon, a developers conference, has me thinking what empowerment should really mean and has it gone overboard?
A tweet declaring that sexist jokes were uttered during a conference has led to the firing of two people and divided the tech world.
The situation spiraled out of control after Adria Richards’ took a picture of the two men who joked about “big dongles” and posted it on Twitter.
Jokes that lead to tweets, which lead to two people losing their jobs.
Two people have been fired and the tech world battle of the sexes rages on after a joke about dongles at a conference and a subsequent tweet. Read the rest of this entry