Happy National Day Singapore

The tip 

Of a peninsula

A point where fisherman met

To barter and make merry

To raise families

A future from the sea

The tip

Of a storm 

Lightning and thunder

Between pride and empires

In a lion, a prince saw hope

And gave a name 

The tip

Of colonial commerce 

Worth fighting for 

It took white men to see potential

To connect the dots 

And attract the hopeful

The tip

Of power changing hands

On bicycles they came

Towards guns pointed away

To christen a new darkness

As light of the south

The tip 

Of a resolute spear

A yearning to lead ourselves

Grateful for the tired master

But unsure in changing tides

Red menace, hungry neighbours 

The tip

Of a painful birth

An abortion of political relations

From united federation

To a fragile state 

No looking back now

Everyone suddenly together 

The tip

Of a vision

One man, his team, a million people

To clear and clean

To transform and progress

Under a firm hand

With eagle eye and furrowed brow

The tip

Of greatness

Never there but always inching closer

The people driven

Children learning, gears turning 

You can count on me

Because this is my country

The tip

Of destiny

A people proud but not content

In a glittering city they call home

Also home to a fleeting army

Together in a tiny boat 

Of rising expectations

The tip

Of certain uncertainty 

We take careful steps

On shifting ground

Shaping a shared future

Of ups and downs

A red dot set to glow brighter

Saying Yes To KL

I have been spending quite a lot of time in KL recently. I volunteered to do a job there for the local office, replacing temporarily the marketing manager there who left in April. The last few months has been airport rides to Changi at 5pm, passing through security and immigration twice, a train to and from KLIA and KL Sentral, and taxis to a hotel room. After two work days, I'd leave at 4pm then the LRT to KL Sentral and another plane back home. Hectic. I called it 'a long way home' two ways. 

We had a short handover. I mean short like a 4-5 hours. Maybe the expectation was that a "hub" guy would know more than just "hub" stuff. It was a bit of both. The reality of executing locally is very different in practice than the scraps of information, hearsay and emails we "hub" people piece together to make a semblance of what a local role and its responsibilities are like. 

But I went in with eyes open, brain ready, smile flashing and right hand outstretched. And the Malaysia team welcomed me with open arms and a ton of stuff. 

It was eye opening to say the least. The numbers, goodness. Dealing with moving finances, planning spend, pouring over work statements, checking POs, fy16 planning, staring at Excel sheets upon Excel sheets pivoted against other Excel sheets - that's the stuff marketing folks are made of. The meetings with agencies, checking facts and branding, logo placements, even social posts were easy compared to juggling finances. Thank God for a3 printouts. 

The agencies are well agencies. Being from a couple myself, I can understand their position and eagerness to perform. I dealt with three and all have their quirks. I felt somehow all three were being under-utilised with respect to their full potential. They weren't being challenged or tested. So I tried to shake things up a bit where I could. It was fun. 

My colleagues in KL are part of a small team. They are solid people. Hardworking, enthusiastic and driven. It was amazing to see how everyone supported everyone. From the top down and bottom up. Success for one was success for all. They also partied hard. Good lord, they can party. 

The most unexpected part of the exercise was that I liked it. I grew to like it even more than I realised I could. I think it was part new adventure, part power trip and part new people and surroundings. I was also meeting clients and talking about how my company could help their business. It was refreshing. Things were moving. Everything was fluid and unconstrained. The potential to make things happen was, is, palpable. 

I told my 'temp job' manager that if they gave me  my salary in sgd and put back my CPF, I'd have a run for the role. But alas, no KL for me. 

What's sucky about KL is that it's just waiting to be brilliant. The city is alive but held back by bad planning, silly rules and a general malaise about change. Things could be great if people want it to. Those courageous ones seem to want to leave or just work hard to make their own heaven within the madness. 

My run up north is coming to an end soon and I will relish the privilege. It's hard managing two jobs but it helped me grow. It might be the seven years in the same place that's affecting me. Maybe it's something else. Seeing possibilities from saying yes, from something out of the blue, made me understand myself better. It was well worth the sacrifice. 

I managed to catch a few movies in 40 minute segments. Last one was The Age Of Ultron, a long one in 3 flights. 

Hue Ball, A Metaphor For How We've Made A Mess Of Things

Saw a review of Hue Ball, an iPhone game, posted on Twitter. Described as addictive. I downloaded it and started playing. Essentially you start with a cannon swinging left to right and three stationary coloured circles on the screen. Every several seconds these 3 circles will develop layers and the player is supposed to shoot circles/balls from the cannon to prevent these layers from accumulating. Each layer or circle destroyed is a point earned. Targeting a circle is much like playing snooker or pool. You can aim straight or bounce off other circles or balls or the walls. So that's the skill but I guess. Each layer is a colour hence 'Hue 'in the name of the game. Admitted the colours get pretty as they layer up.

Start

Three things to be aware of. One, the layers can't exceed five else the circle becomes a permanent skull face. So the player has to keep the shooting and aiming right. Two, each ball shot out becomes a layer-accumulating circle. So the more you shoot, the more you have to shoot at. Three, when the ball you shot out bounces back towards and touches the cannon line, the life counter decreases. So the more bad ricochets that happen, the quicker the game is over.

I've been playing this game for about two weeks. It is fun but then I got existential about it. The game is a metaphor for humankind! Hear me out - you start off with a cannon that's doing nothing, minding it's own business (that's people).  The 3 circles in the open frame are just out there accumulating layers as time goes by (that's the earth or animals or plants). One is compelled by the need to earn points (that's greed or need to be a busybody) to blast a cannonball out at the three circles. Left on their own these circles would turn into skull faces and the player wouldn't even be affected or suffer any disadvantage. The need to intervene and perhaps gain a perceived advantage compels the player to shoot balls, with or without realising that this action causes an immediate effect on the external environment, and also has a lingering long term effect that needs to be dealt with sooner or later. The more shots fired, the greater likelihood that the open frame is pitted with more circles to contend with, each one growing as time goes by. See where I am getting at? 

The mess after a while

Let's say the open frame represents the environment. The more we mess with it or try to control it, the more problems we create. We chop down trees to make stuff. There's less forest to clean the air and control greenhouse gases. The animals too have nowhere left to hide and enter our cities. We then have to deal with more issues than we started with. 

Let's say the open frame represents Saddam-era Iraq. The problems were there but not the kind that the western powers said there were (as later proved). A coalition of the willing was raised to liberate Iraq from tyranny and mayhem at a huge financial, moral and human cost. And today, we are nowhere close to having a peaceful Iraq. Each intervention caused more bloodshed, more lives lost, more confusion among locals and allies, less trust between the Arab States and the West, more pockets of self-styled militia waiting to get a piece of the action with no simple end in sight. The more cannonballs shot out, the more balls to juggle, manage, deflect and solve for. 

For every action, there is reaction. For every cause, an effect. That's what Hue Ball is about. That's also what life is about. 

We're here to do God knows what. Survive maybe. On a TV commercial for a green movement, there was a line "We need the Earth to survive, the Earth does not need us." It's true. Leaving this alone is sometimes the best thing to do. 

Sort of leaving things alone

Another line from a song comes to mind too - the road to hell is paved with good intentions. A shocking statement to say the least. But think about about all the things that have been done in the name of all that is right, good or holy that have ended in varying degrees of fiasco, mayhem and arsed up. 

It's the history of humankind, in a harmless point and shoot game. 

I Grew Up With Lee Kuan Yew

I grew up with Lee Kuan Yew. My dad always made his priority to be in tune with Singapore politics and the ongoing witty repartee between JB Jeyaratnam and LKY always tickled his fancy. In my home we knew who LKY was and what he had done and what he was doing. My dad always made sure the only channel on at news time was the channel with the news. We saw LKY and his ministers on our black and white TV but ignored them. We were kids so what did we care. My dad would mutter things under his breath and sometimes out loud whenever something important was announced by the newscaster. Perhaps Duncan Watt. My father also enjoyed our tit-for-tat exchanges with Malaysia aka Mahatir. 

This was the 80s, when the Singapore dollar was gaining strength against the Malaysian ringgit. I remember notices on SBS buses reminding passengers not to use Malaysian coins anymore. I was in primary school. Singapore politics was as important to me then as learning to make chappatis. (I still can't make chappatis.) And LKY was Prime Minister and that was all that mattered. I was very proud of my little country. I was fascinated by how the economy had grown, that people moved from kampongs to flats, we had a spanking new airport (My dad brought my sister and I to the opening day of Changi Aiport, 1 July 1981. I remember the falling water columns and the crowd.) and many tall buildings in the city. And double decker buses. And that the MRT was coming. Oh boy trains! We were poor, and the affluence around me was astounding and impressive. To be hankered after. 

I can't really recall much about LKY and Singapore politics in teenage years. I know LKY left his role as PM in 1990 and Goh Chok Tong took over. (There was this disturbing picture of GCT and some ministers in their swimming trunks on the Straits Times front page. Shudder.)

I guess the other key thing that stood out to me from a young age while in LKY's rule was that he sued many people and publications. He always won. 

It was in JC when my mind was opened to the possibility that the politics in my country was special, and not necessarily the best for her people. Gasp! I blame GP, it did its job. When you're open to ideas and exposed to other schools of thought, policy and government, you start to better appreciate, comprehend and question your own status quo. Then came National Service, the true melting pot of all and sundry, from all walks of life, every man from the brave to the depraved. I could not blame LKY for NS because I knew Singapore needed conscripted men to ensure its freedom would not never be at stake. At the same time, I knew people who hated NS and by extension LKY. They felt NS was a waste of time, a quantifiable loss in the prime of their lives, an unworthy taxation on time and talent. I just went on with it, hoping to finish my time unscathed (everyone comes out scarred, in one way or another). 

University was a time for ideas, and more thought about my country and where it was heading. There was localised politics, voting for committee leadership in clubs and halls of residence. It was silly and inconsequential, though I know some ambitious types took it very seriously. I learned then what it meant to have power. I remember hall presidents making bold statements and acting like their lives depended on the permeable hearts and minds of their residents. They planned actions and words carefully so as to achieve a desired outcome, or at least the perception of a successful conclusion. I was impressed. I also came to understand how political office could shape one's character, for better and worse. More importantly, I came to associate power with money, that he who has one without the other is handicapped like a rich prince in waiting - stuck in a tunnel vision of ambition but constantly bugged by those who want to leech along for the ride. He who has both is king. (In Singapore, there are many kings it seems.)

Am I jaded by the political system LKY spawned? Perhaps. Maybe because I see the government's hand in everything. The whole country was the result of something truly planned, completely inorganic. Many are thankful for the peace, stability and affluence that LKY's vision manifested into. I am also. There is no place on the planet like Singapore. The problem perhaps is that the hand in everything has taken away for the need for the people to step up. The reliance on the government to solve our problems has created a creative vacuum, and a debilitating apathy toward proactivity. We merely complain when things go wrong, gripe and moan at the slightest inconvenience. In the era when little went wrong, we hardly questioned the leaders that be, because there was no reason to. Also due to a fear perhaps instilled in us by LKY. We owed him so much - the success of this island, its regional and international standing, our rapid ascent into the First World - that we dared not bite the hand the fed us. That was the generation that grew up in the 60s and 70s, the ones who saw, felt and enjoyed the most change. They were submissive and obliging. They saw how those who even slightly smelled of dissent were dealt with. Zeus was liberal with the lightning bolts from Mount Olympus. There seemed to be just one way, his way. Those who grew up in the 80s and 90s were surrounded by the prosperity the LKY way wrought. These youngsters had less to be thankful for in a way, as recipients of their parents' hard work and perseverance. Lower marginal utility I suppose. Not surprisingly, it is their voice which is now heard loud as it calls for change in the way our government thinks and acts, a generation demanding more, appreciating less - a scenario unfamiliar in the times of LKY's reign. 

Every beginning has an end - a fade into white. Lee Kuan Yew thrust himself into the political scene to make change, way back in 1954, a time of much tension, some turmoil and a little upheaval. He persuaded his followers to support the merger with Malaysia, saying we could not survive as a small island alone, then to take steps to forge nationhood when Malaysia no longer wanted this troublesome little tip of the peninsula. He had a plan and a team of similarly motivated politicians who wanted to see this little red dot glow red hot. Every man, woman and child regardless of colour, language or belief, united in making things better with action, ambition and energy. And it worked. LKY's magnum opus is the ground I walk on. Last week, he passed away at the age of 91. So we begin again? No, we have always been challenging ourselves to be better. The storms and winds may be very different from the weather in 1965 but our foundations today are stronger, built upon the blood and character of many good men and women. What's not new is that we know we can make it, because we know have to. LKY has shown us how. It is the indefatigable Singapore spirit coursing through the veins of a still young nation that will lead us. There will be compromises to make, there must be open-minded consensus to underscore our actions. Every end has a beginning - a spear of red. Majulah Singapura.