TR EMERITUS

I saw a post that KFC has introduced a self driving kiosk to provide food to customers in Shanghai. My question is - why does KFC not introduce this kiosk in Singapore? A friend said - because Singapore has regulations on self driving vehicles. I am sure that Shanghai has similar regulations. The key difference is - the leaders in Shanghai is willing to approve the self driving kiosks, but the leaders in Singapore is not willing to give this approval. Why is there a difference in the approach of the leaders in these two countries? Somehow, Shanghai has a system where the leaders are willing to take the responsibility, unlike the leaders in Singapore who wish to play safe. This is why Shanghai and other cities in China can be innovative, while Singapore cannot. My friend then said - there are many places in Singapore that are not suitable for self driving kiosks. I agree. I asked him to look for places where the self driving kiosks can operate safely and allow the operation within this safe environment. There is no need to give blanket approval for these kiosks to operate all over the place. The approval can, for example, be restricted to the following: a) Along pavements that are wide enough for the kiosks to move around b) The speed of the kiosks should be less than 6 km per hour, similar to the speed of walking. If we want to be innovative, we should look for what can be done, rather than what cannot be done. Do you agree?   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →

NUS dismisses professor over sexual misconduct and harassment of student. This time it involves a certain Professor Theodore G. Hopf, an academic from the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. I ask why did such harassments or sexual offences happened again? WHY? I ask why another such sexual harassment case? Haven't we have got enough of such disgusting and disgraceful sexual harassment cases in our tertiary institutions over the recent past? Something is seriously wrong and sick with our universities and our largely timid, sucking, indifferent and kia tai ji Suckerporeans shouldn't continue to just adopt a couldn't be bothered attitudes anymore. I do not wish the next student to be molested or screwed to be your daughter or relative's or somebody you know. Our daughters and female students deserve to be safe in schools. It is getting out of hand. I consider the pap government and the universities have failed us. Our super well-paid and well-fed Education Minister, the university boards and even the Law Minister shouldn't keep quiet any longer. I demand proper and useful accountability and lesser of their predictable and standard replies anymore. Shameful and utter failure of our respect and regards for our university and its standing. Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →

It’s generally not advised to talk about death when you’re talking about your birthday but since I spent my 46th birthday lying in a hospital bed (I had a nasty pain in my knee and thought it was gout and a mater of just taking pain killers and gout medication, but then the polyclinic doctor noticed that I had a fever and decided that I needed to be sent to hospital), I thought the topic of mortality was worth visiting. It was probably not a coincidence but on 25 November 2020, one of soccer’s greatest players, Diego Maradona died of heart failure. The following day, when I switched onto my social media, I discovered that Mr. Ameerali Jumhaboy, former Chairman of Scotts Holding had passed away. While I was by no means close to the late Mr. Jumhaboy, we knew each other, attended the same talks at Institute of South Asian Studies (ISEAS – where we both gave a French Ambassador a hard time to making a big deal of Iranian nuclear proliferation but turned a blind eye to Israel’s obvious disregard for nuclear treaties). Then on the day that I got discharged from hospital, I got the news that my Dad had to be admitted into hospital for an operation. Social media feeds on Saturday also announced that FC Kholi, the first CEO of Tata Consultancy had died. Then, at the time of writing, I’ve just seen the news that Mr. Terry Hsieh, CEO of Zappos Group passed away on my birthday. He was 46. So, with the death and illness of people who had somehow touched my life, either from personal contact or from their very reputations, while lying on my hospital bed, was a timely reminder of the fact that life is fragile. Sure, FC Kholi and Ameer Jumhaboy were old men and at the age where dying is an expectation. Sure, Diego Maradona didn’t exactly live a healthy lifestyle after his playing days. However, the point remains that men who were giants in their respective fields died and when you’re someone lying in a hospital bed, in the middle of a pandemic, reading about all these guys dying, you’re bound to start thinking a little. For me, my delight was the fact that my daughter, who had turned 21 two weeks before seemed psychologically prepared for my incapacitation. She called her mum in Vietnam and kept in touch by text to get updates on how I was progressing. She wanted to know if I had eaten and how much phone battery I had and whether she needed to fetch me at discharge. Quite often, we forget that we’re frail beings. We are also egotistical beings, who tend to create a personal narrative around ourselves. Somehow, our role in the success of this and that gets bigger while we down play the failures. If one has achieved a modicum of success, this process of developing a self-centred narrative gets worse. I have an acquaintance who is the habit of telling his staff that “If all of you collapse, I’ll still thrive but if I collapse all of you better worry.” While I can appreciate the machismo of the sentiment, my acquaintance doesn’t quite realize that he’s underlying a personal failure. He’s forgotten about his own mortality and failed to prepare his people for the possibility of his demise. If he collapses, so does everything else around him. Let’s take the example of the late FC Kholi, who was by all accounts very successful. However, he was aware of his mortality and built a business that could outlast him. Tata Consultancy Services was in the position to pay him tribute on his death because in life, he had seen to it that Tata Consultancy Services would thrive without him. As I’ve said in an earlier posting, running an organization is like being a parent. You have to prepare people for the eventuality of living without you. I’m glad my kid showed that she was more than ready to manage without me. If I have become “useless” to her very survival, it’s a good thing because she’s ready to face the world without me. The second point that lying in your hospital bed does is to make you appreciate the important things in life. Yes, your work is important because you need to earn a living and because, well hopefully it gives you some meaning in life. However, is any job worth killing yourself over? Simply put, businesses can always replace you. First it was the reality of cheaper labour from China and India. Now, it’s artificial intelligence. Why, for example do you need five certified professional accountants looking through a set of bank statements over several months when a machine can do the job in a few minutes? I still hear of too many people who think being overworked is a badge of pride. Sure, if you’re in your 20s and you can pull all night assignments 24-7, it’s a sign that you’re paying your dues and willing to work hard (one of the points that broke my first marriage). However, if you’re still doing that in your forties, it’s probably a sign of great inefficiency at the expense of your personal health. Sure, its important to earn a living and to be able to provide for the family. However, that should not mean that one should still work without sleep in order to maintain one’s salary as a regular thing, you have to question the value of the job. For example, if you inform an employer that you’ve just been hospitalized and show him the medical leave certificate and you get greeted with all sorts of comments at 1045 at night about how you’re causing problems, then surely it’s a sign that you are better off working as a ditch cleaner rather than dealing with a businessman who celebrates personal incompetence. We are human and we need to accept and prepare for our fragility as much as we enjoy celebrating our victories. Failing to acknowledge this will only cement our personal failures.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →