Kylie X concert in Singapore

The Missus and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary early by going to Kylie's X concert.

I planned to get us there a bit early, and was wondering if we should eat at home or at the venue. Wisely she said to eat at home, as when we got out towards the venue, the AYE was chockers because of an accident.I was thinking: Murphy's Law. So we took the CBD route instead and got hit by 2 ERPs, anyways, after spending 200 bucks for tics, what's 2 bucks.

The concert doors opened at 8, and the audiences slowly filtered in and there was a DJ to keep the audience occupied playing club music, as if to set the tone for the rest of the concert. I did notice some young kids accompanying their parents, and rue'ed a missed chance of bringing our oldest one with us, but then again if we had brought the oldest one with us, the other 2 younger ones would have kicked up a stinker!

I also noticed a lot of preggie mommas at the concert, 3 within line of sight, so they must be really committed fans. After all, this is the first time Kylie is in town since the beginning of her career 20 years ago. I also noticed a young muslim couple, with the lady wearing tudung, and remarked that if this was in Malaysia, it would have been haram for them to come to the concert (a cynical reference to the recent hoo haa about Muslims doing yoga and it being haram)

There were a couple of people who came in with feather boas, and a few "showgirls" as well. I was telling my wife how Kylie's songs have a big following in gay clubs, and she wondered how I knew ;)

The concert started at 9, straight away with 2 of her hits. I must admit that I am not a real big fan of Kylie (meaning I know some of her songs, but don't follow her religiously). Her 2 number was that infectious tune "Can't get you out of my head", and damm that tune is really really infectious, in fact, it's still in my head now.

I turned around and saw that that young muslim couple were the first to leap out of their chairs and dance like no tomorrow! Kudos! Damm they really know how to enjoy themselves, and I don't think it made them any less pious Muslim.

Anyways, then the pregnant lady in front of me also gets up and starts to dance! WOW! Is this Singapore? I looked around (I was still sitting, engine is still cold) and almost 90% of the crowd was on their feet. EXCELLENT!

There was excellent choreography, and the wife, who has a dance background, remarked that Kylie's movement is all accounted for down to her hand movement (I looked, and it follows the beat of the drum)

The dancers were excellent, and her costume changes were amazing. Her set followed a theme, which jived with the songs she sang for the set.

It was too infectious, and I finally got off my ass and danced with the rest of the party people halfway through the concert.

She bade farewell, and I thought, damm that was it? I glanced at my watch, and it was already 1030 and she'd been going non-stop for 90 minutes. After numerous cheers and claps and shouts, she emerged or an encore.

Not a 1 song encore, but another set for the encore. The encore was a bit less scripted I felt, with a bit more time to banter and all. Actually she had 2 encores, but we all knew she was coming out again for the second one.

The final song for the day pull all of us back to the 80's when she broke on to the scene with "I should be so lucky" and everyone danced, and sang with her.

All in all, I'd pay 500 bucks (but in view of the economic downturn, perhaps could be better spent). 200 was well spent , enjoyed every second of it. It was like a 2 hour rave party.

And it's the closests that we've gone boogeying in a long long time. And hopefully Kylie doesn't take another 20 years before she comes back again.

Patents: quality or quantity?

I had a good laugh the other day when I met with an ex-colleague who told me that the debate on whether an organization should go for quantity or quality when it comes to patent filing is still raging.

Even more incredulous, is this is a premeir organization! naturally I find such debate to be so silly because it is quite obvious quality will trump quantity any time of the day, especially in technology.

However, admittedly there are situations where quantity is more important and one of the situation warranting such a model would be when an organization is trying to create and incentivize their r n d department.

I had gone through this same exercise when I was part of an organization bringing r n d into a traditionally manufacturing complex. Patents were alien to this people, and we had drawn people from manufacturing to man the development teams, with a sprinkling of new graduates like myself. The boss was an old hand in r n d, and had crafted a scheme to encourage disclosures of potential patents by just putting forth a 4 slide ppt.

his scheme was idiot-proof:
Slide 1: introduction and problem statement
Slide 2: your solution
Slide 3: more details of your solution
Slide 4: cost savings as a result of adopting this thingamajig

Not perfect, but it got the ball rolling.

But past the initial 2 years, the internal patenting committee put up additional barriers and lifted the hurdle higher such that we introduced more quality into the pipeline.

Now this was for an organization that at best had basic engineering degree holders with a few graduate degrees and post-grads.

How about for an organization where you had tons of post-grads? Shouldn't this NOT even be a question? (re: quality vs quantity). If quantity ruled the day, would be throwing hard earned money after useless technology patents, or can we afford to play the numbers' game and let fate decide?

In any situation, I'd advocate quality and especially in this tough climate, we need to make tougher decisions instead of molly-collding the egos of these people.

Sound-off : what do you think?

Sound-off: does age matter when deciding value one brings to the table?

Sound-off: does grey hair matter when it comes to doing business?

Recently I have been trying to approach a potential client to offer my services to his organization. We had a good discussion I felt, and I am planning to do a show and tell to the rest of his group come the new year.

But I understood he had some queries on the number of years I have under my belt, ie I'm too young and indirectly perhaps fears on whether I can properly represent what I said to him or not.

While I don't hold it against anyone, but fundamentally the answer should be: does age matter?

arguably I can understand and justify his concern, afterall, he will be the one trying to rally his colleagues to attend the show and tell on his behalf come the new year, so if I am too wet behind the ears, the surely it will impact is reputation and that of his boss as well.

So for this case, I intend to show him what I am made of. If the work I had done had sufficiently impressed the ex-CEO of a listed company, then I think it should do for him, his colleagues and his boss as well.

enough said for my experience, but I would like to expand that to the larger picture of singapore and perhaps the asian countries.

Entrepreneurial activity in the US is mainly done by fresh grads or your people, with a few grey haired serial entrepreneurs thrown into the soup. And yet they are able to survive. I haven't done extensive research into whether they are able to thrive without a grey haired Ceo or not, but google is a good case study. I believe (and I could be very wrong here) that sergei brin and larry page got their start and first customers before eric schimdt came on board (he was the grey haired boss). VC and angels all judged them by the technology they had and as well as the customers. It was only later when they were in the growth mode did the Board bring in Eric.

Here if everyone expects an older boss to always helm the venture, then where does that leave our younger generation of entrepreneurs? Are they then doomed to failure from the onset or do they justify bringing in an older person as CEO and possibly high salary and higher burn rate at the same time?

For my case, I am thankful that my potential client had not raise his private thoughts to his boss, and that he was willing to give me a chance to prove my mettle to his colleagues, I guess some of whom may not be as forgiving.

As I said when the show and tell comes, then the proof will be in the pudding.

But what do you think? is this experience prevalent in this part of the world or not?