merry christmas

and Happy new Year

wolf

miss the boat

for those who have been retrenched and could not find a job yet, our sympathy goes to you.
we have assumed that when economy recovered, you could find a job easily.

but when we heard stories after stories, it was increasing difficult to get a simple one.

because market became more competitive.

what NTU professor quote was correct when he said in 2003.

when economy recovered, we could not enjoy the fruits as the jobs were taken away by foreigners

.

he was correct as half or more went to foreigners.

our dearest friends, you have missed the boat.

tell the story right

city of possibilities: Born to be Free

city of possibilities: the truth

city of possibilities: No eyes to hear

taxi-driver

a few days ago, i woke up late in the morning as i slept late last night watching TV shows. i have assumed that there would be no problems as my working place was just nearyby and took about 10-15 minutes. i was wrong then.

after i have taken the bath, ate the fast breakfast and went out to take the cab.

for half an hours, i waited and wait and waited.

there was many cabs but not a single one would stop. some were empty while most of them were "on-call". it was changing shift period.

i was beginning to feel the heat as i would be late for work.

Luckily, there was a cab who stopped when i waved for him.on my calculation, i will be late for about 10-15 minutes late.

he pulled over and i told him the destination.

he was a new taxi-driver

we have a conversation and learnt that he was formely a storemen who was just left a month ago. he was given a month medical leave but his boss could give only a week. he refused and sent his resignation letter. he was given S$500. he asked his boss," is this enough?"

he was earning S$2000 per month at that time and was his boss's friend

while he was still in the company, his boss employed two foreigners (China) to take over his duties.

he was rather furious, angry and sad when he saw this happening but could not do anything about it.

he was in his fifties.

well, he drove me to my destination and i thanked him many times.

i was only late by 10 minutes.I could have late by an hour and because of him, i was late by 10 minutes.

Life's like that.

The Great Divide Part II

Fundamental changes as profound as when agricultural workers left the land for the cities and the whole fabric of society mutated. Now work is leaving the office and the factory for cyberspace.The idea of a job, born with the Machine Age, is changing beyond all recognition. Work is becoming increasingly casual and part time among the mass of workers. No one will protect their interests. Released from a single location, companies are free to ring the death knell of dinosaur trade-unions. Middle management, too, is under threat. Under the euphemistic banner of business process reengineering, companies are firing a quarter of managers.

The motto for everyone is "add value or perish".

Moralising politicians use the fact of "inhuman" working conditions in the Third World for their hypocritical justification of protectionist import controls in their pathetic attempts to stem the tide, but large corporations will ignore their pleas. Even President Clinton can't control corporate America in its feeding frenzy over the China market. Politicians, both the knaves and the naïve, incant the abracadabra words "training in new technology" and "jobs through growth" to conjure new jobs for the huge number of soon-to-be-unemployed. They will never learn that technology is the problem, not the solution. Today, productivity is delivered by a technology needing only a few machine minders. National economies can no longer grow themselves out of unemployment. Growth has been uncoupled from employment. It is created by the unique skills of a few entrepreneurial knowledge workers, not the labour of low-grade service and production workers. The continuous innovation of entrepreneurs is the real generator of wealth. Their income will increase substantially as countries compete in a global market for their wealth-generating services, without which states will drown in a whirlpool of poverty. Innovation happens in self generating hot spots with incentives that stimulate investment and profit.

The very concentration of innovation acts as a magnet for established innovators and a spur for new enterprise. But knowledge workers refuse to be treated as part of a homogeneous labour-force, as standardised units. Talent, entrepreneurship, innovation - the great dividers of humanity - are diviners of economic success. Egalitarianism goes out of the window in this dog-eat-dog world. The role of the state is to nurture, propagate and supply quality human raw material. Government is merely the supplier at the bottom end of the value chain that ultimately supplies wealth, which is the product not of labour, but of individual intellect and determination. If a state cannot produce a quality "people product" in sufficient quantities, then it must buy it in from abroad; it must scour the globe for élite knowledge workers, no matter what their age, sex, race or religion. This élite of rootless economic mercenaries will expect to pay less tax, not more. Governments everywhere are being forced to lower top tax rates in line with declining global levels. They will have to acquiesce to the will of global enterprises and their key employees. Tax credits, tax holidays and "regulatory arbitrage" will be the name of the game everywhere.

Politicians must find ways of attracting global employers in order to employ the local masses. If, however, the state maintains a greedy collectivist and populist stance, under the defunct motto "power to the people", then the entrepreneurial and knowledge aristocracy will move on to more lucrative and agreeable climes, leaving the country economically unviable, composed solely of the unproductive masses, sliding inevitably into a vicious circle of decline. The power in global economic forces means that the tax burden is irrevocably moving away from the élite on to the shoulders of the immobile. When Leona Helmsley said "only the little people pay taxes", she unwittingly making a prediction. Very soon, companies will be negotiating preferential tax deals, not only for themselves but also for chosen élite employees. Politicians may promise, but markets decide. Governments are impotent as they face a triple whammy: substantially lower tax revenues, increased social security payouts, and the need to support "deprived areas". The books just do not balance.

The liability of a large uneducated and ageing population is another problem. The masses, with only a Saturday night lottery to soften the blow, will put economic well-being before the dubious privilege of electing powerless representatives. The lights are going out for whole categories of employment, We are entering an age of resentment, an age of rage. Whole sectors of society who previously felt their future secure can see it slipping away. Dissent is fermenting, and normally law-abiding citizens, who have nothing to lose, are being sucked into a culture of protest and crime. In the winter of 1995, French workers and students took to the streets against Alain Juppé's government in a futile defence of their cradle-to-grave health and welfare systems. But as the peasants were protesting in Paris, the "gnomes of London" were profiting from speculation. The slow redistribution of wealth that has occurred over the last centuries is being rapidly reversed. The disposable income of the majority will be drastically reduced.

The rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer: the future is inequality. At the bottom of the heap we are witnessing an expanding underclass.

The streets of London are again littered with beggars. The self-glamorising "New Age travellers" cannot disguise the fact that they are just a bunch of nomadic losers, whose survival depends on handouts from the tax-payer. Those tax-payers will demand restrictions on the mobility of travellers in return for their charity. The new Criminal Justice legislation is just the first step to the reinvention of the Poor Laws.

The state must behave as an economic institution, a national firm judged against the new economic circumstances.

No state has an automatic right to exist.

Government, like every other enterprise, will have to survive on the efforts of an élite few. It must represent success not failure; but in the Information Age, governments chosen by the majority are governments chosen by losers. The "will of the people" voting for full employment, a minimum wage and fair taxation is merely turkeys voting for Christmas. The politics of envy is suicide. Democracy will degenerate to being the means of governing the immobile and dependent service workers. That citizens elect their slave masters makes their democracy slavery none the less. Democracy is an artefact from a time when the masses were needed. The big political question of the coming decades is how to find a socially acceptable means of dismantling democracy.

How can Middle England trust the present cast of parliamentary degenerates to lead us into this Brave New World ? How can we expect leadership from those who get elected by kissing babies, and stay there by kissing backsides ? The Tories, apologists for an aristocracy, have chosen the wrong aristocracy: yesterday's rather than tomorrow's. Despite all the spin-doctoring, Labour is still the party of the peasants; and the global power equation is unequivocal - "the sum of zeros is zero". As for the Liberal Democrats, Nietzsche says it all: "the honourable term for mediocre is, of course, the word 'liberal'". Who will defend us ?

Globalisation has shown the James Bond myth, where the state is good and global corporations (Spectre) bad, to be blatant state propaganda - a morality tale told by tax collectors. James Bond, the patron saint of civil servants, the thug of state, is now a geriatric. Goldfinger has won.

The world belongs to the global corporation.

The nation state is now desperately sick, and a "desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy"(Guy Fawkes).

The great divide Part I

THE SIGNS ARE CLEAR THE FUTURE IS INEQUALITY

by Ian Angel

As Markets become global and the traditional workplace gives way to cyberspace, only the élite will have anything to offer to the world's economies. Ian Angell predicts mass unemployment for the unskilled, and a slow death for the nation state.

'Many too many are born. The state was devised for the superfluous ones'. With these pitiless words from another century, Friedrich Nietzsche heralds the demise of the nation state as we enter the next. The industrial Age and its need for an over-supply of humanity spawned the nation state. But what is to be done with the glut as we enter the Information Age?

There will be no nice, tidy transition, rather a severe and total distortion with the past. One thing is certain: the masses will not win in the natural selection for dominance of an increasingly élitist and cosmopolitan world. Because of new technology the costs of production have dropped to a point where a billion new workers have entered the job-market. Companies are globalising and mobilising, chasing "spot markets" in cyberspace. The costs of overcoming time and space no longer buffer the impact of cheap labour. The state has to be part of the global economy, so it is incapable of fending off foreign incursions. Mass unemployment is a cancer infecting every nation state, sending shock waves through their workforces.



The electronic transfer of money offshore has made tax avoidance a bigger business than narcotics.
The next stop is off-planet banking. Unhindered by national barriers, corporations will be truly global. They can communicate globally, and their shareholders, executives and employees are spread out across the globe. They will relocate, physically, fiscally and electronically, to where the profit is greatest and the regulation least. Their profits are declared in low-tax countries, while they continue to operate in high-tax ones. The global company no longer supports the aspirations of the country of its birth. Companies large and small move. When a British plastics company switched its polythene bag factory from Telford to China, 150 British jobs were lost, but its payroll bill was cut by 90 per cent. Despite all the patriotic bleating, companies know that to remain competitive they can no longer afford to carry a large and overpriced inventory of a national "people product" of varying value and quality.

It is no accident that most companies are presently downsizing, delayering and outsourcing. Routine production jobs can be performed by robots or exported anywhere on the globe, so wages will converge world-wide to Third World levels.

"Social Dumping" is also dragging down wages for service work, a sector which is itself being increasingly automated. In 1994 the International Labour Organisation claimed that there were 800 million sub-employed people in the world; the West must now suffer its fair share. Job losses are not the result of some temporary downturn in the economic cycle, but are the result of structural changes. It is no good waiting for the upturn.

what comes around goes around

What goes around comes around.

Actually life is pretty much simple.
What you have done in the past will come back to you again.
However, if you did something bad, you have to repay them.

Not one times, 10 times but rather 100 fold.

If you could not believe, thought of the things you have done and you will realize.

Life is just a bout circles.

city of possibilities: differentiation

Linda, Linda,linda...

Here I am sitting at the library.
Confused, speechless, frustrated, disappointed, sad, blur, irritated, etc, drained of emotions.
I came here to library in the morning as early as 08.10am.

I drove to library feeling sleepy, coz of the timing having to wake up early.
I came to library early to check with OAM if I could switch classes and in the process to find out about the email I received yesterday.

Didn’t feel anything much when I was driving here. I was just thinking I am going to have a sleepy day and probably be missing a few calls and sms.

As I was driving in, it felt different. Going to library and yet not seeing Linda was certainly something that hit me as I was driving in. It had never happened b4. Not seeing her when I am in school was something that never happened b4 from exam time. Never. Not a single day.

This is the first time.

The effects of it hard hit me. But blocked it. Well, I did manage to successfully block it, as I was hungry. I had left my house in a hurry.

So I parked my car and went to canteen to have breakfast and a cup of strong black coffee. The coffee did wake me up. Then I was waiting outside library to use print the notes, just in case I had class today. I printed my session 3 and 4 notes. I was feel very different then itself.

The library was unusually quiet. So many other thoughts crossed my mind. At that point of time my worry was if I could change classes to join Kcool and the gang. I was so desperate to do it.

I just didn’t want to join another class. It sucks to know that our friend is just in another class and yet u can’t join them. And because this module involves a lot of project work, I can’t just sit in for her class and do my project works with my original class. And of course I had myself to blame for this coz it was me who registered wrongly. My body was aching, still is, from the soccer game I played. My hamstring especially.

I soon drove down to SSC and went inside to OAS office.

I had asked the receptionist about the email I received. She went in to check, after taking down my matriculation no. It took a while and I faintly overheard bits of the conversation.

But my mind didn’t accept it.

Subconsciously I tuned out coz I couldn’t hear clearly, but my brain did pick out a few words that I didn’t want to hear, so I consciously also tuned out. Sub-conscious and conscious minds both working hand in hand. Ha-ha.

I hoped for the best outcome. Without me realizing I had started praying.

The receptionist came back.

Well, well well. I am on academic warning. Why? Because my CGAP hadn’t reached 2.0. It was only 1.96. Yes-just 1.96. 0.04 pts short of being promoted. She didn’t do a good job explaining.

My questions were not exactly answered. But my stomach was sick. Butterflies all around it. So many questions encircled my mind. “Am I promoted or not?” that was the main question. alas. That feeling I had then was terrible. I’m not in jc or secondary school.

It’s a university that I am playing with. What was I doing? Disgust. That was the word that kept flashing across my mind. Disgusted with myself. How did I land up in such a position? On top of that, I felt as if I had no one to share how I was feeling with. Linda.

Where are you? The first name that came to my mind was Linda. Why? I am still asking myself. Is it because it was the most recent friendship I had? Why didn’t Belinda’s name strike my mind immediately?

Why? Coz I pushed her out of my mind for 3 months? Why? Y Linda? Was it coz I was in school and the thought of her kept lingering in my mind?

Thinking of the evenings we spent together, hugging each other, smell her freshness unique body odor; felt her fullness of her lips and also her soft, subtle and warm breast. Heaven. It was heaven.

Why is it coz the last time I came to SSC was with her? I also don't know. Was it coz she was the last person I had received some form of attn and care from, in terms of talking about personal stuff? I don't know. Soon after I wished I could talk to Belinda.

She does give me good advices and understands me so well. I know for sure that if she was in my life now, she would make me feel so much better. I am not saying Linda doesn’t. Linda does and even much better too.

But coz I have been with Belinda so long, she knows me better and I know she knows how to deal with me. I wanted to hear from Belinda. But I wanted to be in front of Linda. Why? Why? Then I started thinking. Where are my friends? I had no one to turn to. No one at all. I was left there standing alone. Wondering what to do, feeling stuck up.

Confused, angry, sad, disappointed. I felt like my world was crumbling right b4 my eyes. It’s my education. My mum and my education are my world.

That feeling I had then was what I had never experienced b4. Yet I stood calm enough to know that I shouldn’t call either of them. I stood strong to my decision.

Btw, all this happened when I was walking out from OAS. But of course b4 that I had checked about my switching of classes to formally join Kcool's class.

My tutor didn’t want any non-formal swap. She was insistent on me getting formal approval, the last I spoke to her on Tuesday. When I checked with the receptionist at the counter, that girl told me that they cant do a formal switch coz its too late and that I should try talking to my tutor and explaining my reasons and she can give me the green light to switch.

It’s was 9.20am then. My original class is supposed to start at 9.30am. So I rushed down to my class at N4 SR5. There were so few student in the class. So it was the best time to talk to her.

I asked her if I could switch class and told her that OAS had given her the green light to give me the green light to sit in and do an informal switch. It’s supposed to be between my tutor and me.

But no. Again she was persistent that I had got an formal approval. She said if my reasons are valid and strong, I should write in formally and that permission should be granted coz she has seen that happening b4.

Then I told her ok I will do that with supporting documents and all, but I explained to her my concern was if I should sit in for this class or the class tomorrow (Kcool’s class). She then again said, it’s my choice. If I think I can get permission to do a formal switch of class then I can leave. Whatever it is she asked me to make up my own mind about what I want to do as I am well aware of the whole situation.

I am stopping my typing here for the time being. I am going to walk by Linda’s classroom now. Tut rm 118. I had planned for this earlier.

UNSW

After just 3 months operating here, UNSW announced that it would shut down its Singapore campus.

Warwick had come to the same conclusion. When, in 2005, it rejected the Singapore government's invitation to set up a Singapore campus, the government and the local media tried to make it sound as if the final decision was based on financial (in)feasibility alone

Now Singapore and the UNSW have found out the hard way that it isn't so simple. If a university draws students not just on its brand name alone, but also in terms of its "geography", as Hilmer put it, then the pull of that brand name will not work its magic when transplanted into Singapore.

In other words, one cannot separate financial feasibility from socio-political geography.

The "Singapore" brand has suffered yet another blow.

In the end, universities should not be treated just as entreprise.

Students trust UNSW Asia because it was in Singapore where our government have been efficient. They have placed time and money in UNSW and in the end, there was no one could help them.

only they have themselves.

Now, the trust was broken.

10 years cycle

We have a extremly good year in 2006, where most of us getting good bonus, some even got 10-12 months. but we must not forget the 10 years' cycle.

it has happened in 1987, and again 1997.
This year, 2007 will not be spared as well.

The stock market crashed.

It will occur when we are least expected.

we will be expecting to happen in 3-4 months' time.

spiderman 3

Our government

They took over your jobs.
They deprive of their livings.
They took over your home where you used to live.
They discriminate you when you are above 40s.

It was not the foreign worker.
It was not them.

They blamed on globalizations.
They blamed on others.
But not themselves.



Then who?

Guessed?

Our own government.
They took over your old, comfortable jobs and gave you a toilet for you to clean all day, a place for you to sweep the rubbish, and they paid you less.

Your job was taken over by the “foreign talents” who knew nothing.

Dammed the Globalization

Dammed the Globalization said a CCTV anchorman said having a Starbucks coffee outlet in the Forbidden City makes a mockery of Chinese culture reported the Beijing News.

He was Rui Chenggang.

It was the greastest joke that Starbucks makes out of Forbidden City.

Starbucks coffee is operating in one of the museum's 9,999 rooms. The room covers some ten square meters and is not spacious enough to house any exhibition

In 2003, a KFC outlet said good-bye to its former home in Beihai Park, a group of imperial gardens located in central Beijing, after the ten-year contract ran out. Park officials believe KFC doesn't fit in the imperial garden landscape.

Globalization II

For me, it just meant capitalism without regard of humanity and all out for profit by retort to any means or methods, ethical or unethical to get it done.

and it sucked every resources that are being poured in.

With ever-increasing income-gap, the richer people paid less and less tax but those with lower-income ones are being taxed heavily and heavily.

It was further eroded as we import large number of unskilled worker (foreign Talents) which kept our wages artifically low.

Although there was fast economy growth, what was the use when we could not enjoy the fruits?

With our aging population, a large numbers of above 40s could not even find a job as it was "alloted" to foreigners as they were cheaper. Furthermore, they formed 25% of our population, which is "only" about 1 millions. So, NTU's team was right on mark when they said that half of the newly created jobs went to foreigners.

And our medical fees kept artifically high to have a high standard and we have kept on paying through our hard-earned medisave monies.

The cost of medical bills was instead higher inspite of recents changes.

It will come to a breaking point that all things will collapse, one day and it will.

The questions we should ask: WHEN?

Globlalization

What do this big word meant to us, as an ordinary person.

It was simply meaning that when you are over 35 years and highly paid??($1500-3000)and you have stayed in the same company for too long, you will be the first one to be retrenched..ops should say restructing, a nicer word for you to hear.

You will be replaced by those foreign talent(cheap Labour who are paid $500 a month).

For those who stay on, you have to be multi-tasked, that mean you have to do many people's job for one person's salary. The management is ensure no one is indispensible. everyone, excluding the top management, are expandable.

To cut cost further, your company out-sourced to other companies who tendered the lowest price. Lowest price did not equal to high standard. it just meant what you paid is what you get. And it will not stopped but continuing the downward spiraling

For the profit of the company, the 20% will go to 80% of ordinary workers like you and me while 80% will go to the top managment.

What they told you are not true but half truths. They said restructing was good for you and me, but they never said that if you are over 35 years, you will be the first on the chopping board and they said that life will get better.

Not for you but for them. they are no different than the sweat shops. They asked you to work for long hours and paid little, have less benefits or taken away.

also, they create a KPI (Key Performance Index) to measure your productivity. But do the top managment have KPI? Even as the company's profit plunged 80-90%, they still get the extra-ordinaary bonus and salaries.

The managment always said that they were democratic. But it was always top-down approach. They have decided what best for you without having to consulted you.

You are then told to do what they have decided. it was alway a familair deja-vu.

Peanuts

What I remember most about former NKF’s CEO was a remark by SM’s wife, Mrs. Goh Chok Tong.

She remarked that NKF’s CEO salary of S$60,000 was a peanut.

For 33% of our fellow Singaporean, our salaries was not even half of one peanut, not to talk about 10%. Ours is just a mere 0.01%

How pathetic we are.

good & evil

Good is evil, evil is good
clean is dirty, dirty is clean
living is dead, dead is living

Good people can be evil, and evil people can be good.
Good things can be found in evil people and evil things in good people.

spirited away