Enchanted Pt 2

Now I know how to embed youtube on my blog,

These are my other 2 fav music as well:



And:




Enjoy!

Alan Menken is as close to a Rodgers and Hammerstein of our time!

Blogged with Flock

Enchanted

I went with my 2 older girls to see this Disney. All I can say is that the Disney folks have not lost the magic. I feared that with Pixar's acquisition, they would have lost the ability to create the timeless classics like Snow White, Cinderella, Lion King etc.... but I was wrong.

My younger one (3 yo) got freaked a couple of times, ie the time Giselle transformed to a real life character, the troll scene in the beginning, and the wicked stepmother/dragon scene at the end, but overall enjoyed the happy scenes.

My current faves are:


Enjoy!

Blogged with Flock

Wedding Anniversary

The missus and I celebrated our 8th year together. A small landmark, but a good one still.

We had wanted to do Japanese and we saw a good deal with ABN AMRO for Kaisan Jap restaurant at Raffles Hotel Arcade. Unfortunately, numerous calls to the restaurant was not answered.

So when the day came, we decided to take a chance and go there without any reservation. Our back-up plan was Hanabi at Odeon Towers. When we got to Raffles Hotel arcade, looking for Kaisan, we realized why no one picked up the phone. The restaurant had closed.

Unbelievable!

And the ABN offer is good thru to March 08. I guess someone needs to update that!

So off we went to Hanabi. Luckily for us, it was a weekday night and we could walk in without reservation.

The food as usual was good. We pigged out on sashimi, my primary favorite being tune, cobia and yellow tail. Somehow Salmon didn't do anything for me.  As part of their 3rd anniversary, they also served a free dish of giant prawn deepfried and coated with some roe sauce. It was deep-fried so you could eat everything, and the sauce was quite yummy though nothing to shout about.

We tried a few cooked dishes, but again nothing spectacular.

So all in all, it was a good meal, not too expensive (about 80 for both of us) compared to our previous anniversaries which we did at Lawry's and Les Amis.

And.. we went to a massage the day after in HV. Again not too expensive (compared to Amrita Spa) but equally as good.

Blogged with Flock

Singapore's Public Transport

This has been a really hot topic lately, what with the increase of fares for the busses and the "outing" of SMRT and SBS Transit that their return on net assets is higher than that of SIA (how could that be???)

In anycase, many people have written many things about it and now I would like to formally contribute to the case that it is.

I have just returned from a week in London. THis year alone, I have spen about 4 - 5 weeks in London, and travelling to the other cities within England, and almost all the time, I have done so using the train system, and on one unfortunate occasion, on their bus (though no fault of the bus company or driver, but moi)

And what I find most amazing is the Tube lines that snake through central London and the suburbs, and then there is the network of railway that connects the further towns to London and other towns.

And more amazingly there is a cacophany of buses that travel via road above the tube.

So how does Singapore reduce the log-jam that most drivers find themselves in today at peak hours (I know as I traversed the ECP last night attending a friend's mother's wake)?

I think the concept of SMRT and SBS both running busses and trains as a form of competition is fundamentally flawed. Why? Because the market is so small that there isn't room for any type of free market movement, let alone a duopoly. If a completely free market movement of the transportation occurs, the only real competition is on the roads with busses as the rail network is a virtual monopoly.

So what is the best way forward for Singapore. I think in his letter to the papers, Tan Kin Lian got it right. It's gotta be a "hub and spoke" system. Why? Let's look at this.

Trains do not compete with the other automobiles for space as the busses currently experiences. So in terms of the most effective people mover, it has got to be the train system. Therefore, the MRT stations then become a "hub" for the public transport.

As for busses, what they should do then is to be the spoke of the system, moving people from condos, HDBs, landed, schools to the hub, and vice-versa. The busses should not replicate the train lines, at least as much as possible. And the busses have to serve this role as much as possible, meaning a bus should arrive at a bus stop say every 5 minutes at peak hours, and 10 minutes at the off-hours. I believe there is enough busses in Singapore to achieve this goal.

The administrators at LTA should take a leaf from the Transport for London, or TfL and they way they administer the transportation system for London. There is no distinguishing mark on the busses and the trains, as they all get contracted from TfL to run the service. But for a business to take on the contract, there must be enough money to be made all around so there needs to be a certain % of revenue sharing on top of the tender.

So for instance the tender to run the rail networks would include:

1) A service level agreement that covers arrival and departure frequencies, and say carriage/trains up-time.

2) Rail maintenance services. This could essentially be separated or kept with the same tender, and should include the maintenance of the rail lines, as well as upgrading the stations etc.

As we already know how many carriages are there, then the company tendering for the job would need to decide how much it would cost to maintain all of the above, plus manpower costs etc. So this would be the basic tender pricing.

The government would award the winning bid with the full tender, but to make the cake sweeter, perhaps 10% of all revenue collected would be given to the company running the rail line to encourage them to maintain the standards. If the SLA is not being met, then the fines come first from the 10% revenue sharing, and eventually it will cut into the company's operating profit from the tender.

For the bus service, this may be a tougher pickle to crack as there are many busses plying the roads. But the same principle applies. THe government could buy-up all the public busses currently plying the road from SBS transit and SMRT, and call it Transport for Singapore, TfS. Mutiple companies could then bid for certain regional areas of Singapore (ie Toa Payoh district, Jurong West district), instead of just a duopoly. In the end, it could be SBS Transit taking the most of the action, but it would also allow smaller bandings of individual transport companies to compete for a certain area.

Again an SLA would be signed with these companies that would include frequencies of arrivals at each bus-stop, and a maintenance of the busses. THe maintenance could also go to a big company like STAR Auto who's main line of business IS in the line of transportation maintenance.

To enforce the SLA, each bus would be fitted with a tracking device or GPS (which is plentiful now - there is no need for reinventing the wheel, just need to know how to harvest the info). Our GSM system can also triangulate the position of the busses, and possibly cross reference to any jams occuring on the road (to prevent inequitable fines for reasons completely out of the driver's hand).

Again, there would be an element of revenue sharing to allow the company to benefit from providing the service.

THen, finally, ERP. I believe the ERP needs to be increased to something that pinches the pocket. It's politically unsound, but I believe needs to be done to sway people's mind to take the public. However, it needs to be balanced with a park and ride system, which was tested but not really taken off in a big way. More parking needs to be devoted to this system to make it enticing for people to use, and ideally park and ride participants should pay for way less than market rates for the use of the car-parks, not market rates as then there would be no incentive.

There... I've said it all... and so much for my dreams of owning a car of my own.

But there is a silver lining to all this. I find time to answer email, and catch up on reading when I am on the public... which is something I have noticed a lot of Londoners do in the Tube.. Blackberrying other even though there is no signal.. but that's a productive hour answering email instead of getting frustrated on the roads.

I just think now is the time to re-invent public transport in Singapore. There's a jam, and it's still moving and I hope the civil servants won't wait until there is a standing jam on the roads before making the decisions.

technorati tags:public transport, singapore, tfl, Transport for London, London tube, rail, bus, trains, SMRT, SBS Transit, ERP, Congestion charge, Park and ride, parking

Blogged with Flock

Circle of Life

I have actually wanted to write about this for a while. THis week highlights the circle of life for me. On one hand, my mother has lost her best friend to Cancer, and on the other, my friend has just given birth and the baby's life is just starting. And me, I am in the middle of it all.

Let me start with my mom's best friend, a wonderful lady by the name of Gladys Peters. She came from a poor family in Kedah, and was the oldest among many siblings. Her father passed away early and she was forced to take on the role of parent together with her mom at a young age.

My mom got to know Aunty Gladys (as we all called her) when they were enrolled in Nursing school, I believe in Penang. When? I don't really know. Both my mom and her came from similar backgrounds (poor) and I guess bonded through the years.

My mom would wistfully recollect the many things that they did together, like climbing coconut trees, scrimping on their Nursing allowance to give to the family back home. I guess both of them got into all kinds of mischief, including the time when Aunty Gladys went to see the late Uncle John (her then potential suitor) and used my mom as smoke-screen.

Aunty Gladys was the pereniel joker, and I was fortunate to be beneficiary of some of her jokes, albeit some crude ones. Some are mildly racist in nature, but all in good fun. Things that I remember from spending time with her and Uncle John , included a very healthy dose of jokes, Uncle John and trying to coax some bird he was keeping to talk, and my first stuffed sandwich - I have no clue what was the stuffing, but it was one of those that 'cook" in a contraption that .. basically made a sandwich. And she still called the ex-PM of Malaysia, Tun Dr M by his professional title: Doctor! - you see both my mom and her had at one time server under Dr M and/or his wife, Dr Siti Hasmah.

Early last week, we got a call from my brother and then from Aunty Filo (Aunty Gladys' sister) informing us that Aunty Gladys was in a bad way suffering from the final stages of CA. Details were sketchy and we made plans to travel to KL to see her. Little did we know that she was REALLY in a bad way, and finally passed away Friday morning, and we were late by about 24 hours. We managed to go for the funeral service, but it was not the same as seeing her alive, but alas, it was better than nothing.

After the fact, we found out that she had given strict instructions not to contact my mom while she was undergoing chemo, and it was only when she was finally admitted to ICU for the last time did the family finally called us. A wasted opportunity for my mom to speak to her best friend one last time.

That night after the funeral, we had coconut juice and we toasted Aunty Gladys, remembering her coconut picking skills in hey younger days. She's a one of a kind.. and that's the way it should be.

While one journey ends, another starts. One of my ex-colleague is celebrating the 1st month milestone in her daughter's life. She texted me I guess when I was in the air on my way to London late June, and when I got to Heathrow, the happy news was received. I was kinda chargrined that the little one had not heeded my request to wait until I got home from the UK before popping from her mommy's tummy.. but as they said, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

I will see the bub for the first time this Sat, and hopefully, I will see more of the little one, together with my 3 not-so-little-ones-anymore in the future.

technorati tags:life, death, birth, gladys peters, John Peters, coconut, joker, Dr Mahathir, nurse

Blogged with Flock

Calm amidst the Storm

I took particular interest in the article on the Straits Time yesterday on Nadya Hutagalung tumultous past has calmed down, thanks to her dual support of her hubby and Buddhism.

Hooray to Buddhism, as this is one of the VERY VERY few times that ST carries an article on a notable artiste that has embraced Buddhism.

I am a Buddhist, thought I can't quite that I am card-carrying Buddhist aiming to show everyone the way to Nirvana. Buddhism, I find, is an intensely private religion or more of a way of life where one should practice what one preaches. It combines philosophy, inner reflection and meditation as a way to self discovery.

To me, it is so private that no one notices it and sometimes I feel as if it is losing its luster to other more "hip" religions. And frankly I can understand why it feels as if it's losing its luster.

First, many Buddhist organizations do not make a big show of it's events apart from during Wesak Day. Secondly, not many people feel the call of attending classes or sermons on a weekly basis.

Thirdly, when I was growing up, Buddhist classes were mainly talking about mundane stuff like suffering etc etc and chanting some Pali verses which I have no clue what I am chanting about. At that stage I had other pressing problems (like girlfriends - or lack of, trying to fit into a clique) than to debate about suffering, karma etc etc.

But it is as scientific as any religion gets, and is one where you reap what you sow (the concept of Karma). It invites people to come and see (ehi passiko).I respect this aspect of the religion as it encourages curiousity, and allows for multiple diversity in views. Some may find Buddhism their ideal religion, and to other, other religions may be more suitable for them.

In order for Buddhism to take a more prominent role in society, I believe that it should renew itself to appeal with the younger generation, and speak more with ease and not in tongues. While I appreciate the appeal of the philosophy, I doubt that we will find many discoverers who will follow through, when they start debating through many of the philosophical phrases like:

Emptiness is form, form is emptiness, emptiness is nothing but form and form is nothing but emptiness.

THis phrase is from the Heart Sutra, which is one of the most powerful (if not confusing) phrase I have come across.

I believe that Buddhism needs to connect with more lay people and simplify the Dhamma for people to be able to enjoy the serenity of Buddhism.

It is an uphill struggle to get people to understand the Dhamma, but I am glad that Nadya has found it!

I hope you too will find it.... one day. Ehi Passiko!

technorati tags:buddhism, nadya hutagalung, dhamma, relevance, renewal, karma

Blogged with Flock

Fair Use - My FOOT!

I recently bought a CD, Lisa Ono, only to find that the CD is copy-protected by some technology from Midbar Tech.

I have copy protected CDs. As far as I am concerned, I am a responsible person who do not encourage music piracy, nor participate in it. I have been buying original music since time immemorial - I started buying originals since I was 12 years old and had to save up money over 2 weeks to buy my special tapes.

I digress, but the point of the matter is that fair use allows the user to make a small number of copies of his music collection for his own personal use. For instance, I listen to music at home, in the car and at work, and if you are like me, you will find that carrying the CD from home to the car to the office on a daily basis is not only a chore, it is ridiculous!

What is even more ridiculous is the RIAA, through the promotion of this Midbar technology, wants the use to buy 3 copies of the CD just for his own personal use. It's as good as robbing the consumer.

In this case, I do support all the hackers who try to find ways to defeat such copyrights because it is my right to listen to music that I have purchased however I want, provided I do not profit illegally from it.

I find this practice archaic, and undemocratic. Personally, I stuffed up as I should have looked closer at the CD sleeve to see if this was copy protected or not. I learnt the hard way with Sheila Majid's new Legenda CD, I've been bitted twice now with Lisa Ono's CD.

I swear that this will be my last CD that I will ever buy that have copy protection on it, and I hope both the RIAA or whoever promoted this technology, as well as the company itself go bust, as they are living in the ancient times. I this Steve Jobs is onto something, about eliminating copyright.

Blogged with Flock

Sprucing up the entrepreneurial scene - On Philip Yeo's to-do list when he takes over as Spring Singapore chairman in April: Championing technology SMEs

On January 10, there was an article on ST interviewing Chairman-designate of Spring Singapore, Mr Philip Yeo.

The article chronicles what he intends on doing as CHairman on Spring and I laud his approach of making the SME's more technology centric, and utilizing (hopefully) the fruits of the R&D dollars that have been pumped into the universities and research agencies.

His 4 main thrusts is:

Money

Markets

Management

Technology

While I may not be the best person to discuss Markets and Management, I can definitely hold my owon on Money and Technology.

Money: in the article, he has mentioned working with the banks to release money for SMEs. But how does one become an SME to begin with. One has to go through a start-up phase, and the bank's charter is not to put money into high risk business propositions. Insteads, banks are typically utilized to provide factoring services, capex loans etc etc.

So the quandary is still unsolved. How does one make the leap from start-up to growth (in the truest definition of the word SME, start-ups also fall into this category) stage companies.

Once again, as I run through my mind to search out funding opportunities for really young companies, and my mind tells me that there really isn't that many sources. IN the US and EU, most of the funding opporunities come from Venture Capital and Angel Investors.

But here in Singapore, VC community primarily plays in Series A or B funding rounds, and prefer to stay away from seed stage funding as it is deemed to be too risky and the outlook for an exit is... well unclear and uncertain.

Angel investors in Singapore/Asia are a different animal altogther. They are mainly formed by high net worth individuals, and from feedback (I have not directly dealt with Angels myself) is that their outlook is relatively short term, so unless you can project and super high growth rate plus a plan to be profitable from day 1, good luck courting Angel money.

But can anyone blame them (the Angels)? If I put myself in their shoes, I believe I would act the same as the source of funding came from my own sweat, and of course, the entrepreneur would have to work his ass off to make my money go the extra mile or two.

So in essence, the Chairman-designate has not truly resolved the issue of money for SMEs. Besides, banks do not offer to open the little black book that could help the entrepreneur open doors to other suppliers and customers, whereas VCs generally pitch that as their value-add, and I have personally seen this relationship work to the benefit of small companies.

As for technology, without compromising too much of the confidentiality clause I have signed, I believe one should cast a critical eye on the research work that has been done in Singapore. Reporters who write about science and technology shoulds follow up their story after 12 months of it being published to determine what has become of their story, especially those technologies that are pitched as looking for commercialization partners?

How many of these are successfully commercialized? And how many are still sitting on the shelf awaiting commercialization? THose that are still on the shelf, the question should then move towards "What Happened?" and let no stones go unturned? Is it because of unfavorable licensing terms? Is it because it would cost the licensee another 3 million dollars to take it to the market? Or is it because simply the technology does not work as touted, or is not "World-class"?

But this is definitely the next step in pushing our SMEs forward. No way back as going back would be disastrous!

technorati tags:philip yeo, spring, R&D, SME, investment, technology, banks, money

Blogged with Flock

Red Herring: Florida Could Juice VC Activity

THis is something that I think the Singapore government should consider. Currently, the only program that is active in such activities is the EDB SEEDs and SEEDs II program, BUT the main difference is that EDB does not discriminate whether the investors are institutional VCs, angel investors, blur people or idiots, just so long as the investors are not directly related to the founders or management of the start-up.

Giving tax credit to institutional VCs will help start-ups more than giving matching funding to Angels, primarily, in the Singapore context, IMHO, angel investors are not really angels and have unrealistic expectations of the start-up company and may end up hurting the very company they hope to make money from.

I also belive that TIF may have similar terms and conditions that they put into the fund they invest in, but word on the street is that TIF is currently not a very active participant. Hopefully I am wrong and TIF continues to encourage local VCs to invest locally.


From the Red Herring:

Florida Could Juice VC Activity

Legislation would encourage funding to back the state’s startups.
December 26, 2006

By Ken Schachter

Florida lawmakers are hoping a 2007 legislative lift will open the venture capital spigot to the state’s early-stage companies.

Though the session won’t start in earnest until March, lawmakers already are in talks to revive legislation designed to encourage venture capitalists to fund startups.

Sen. Evelyn Lynn said talks have begun to shape the language of new legislation designed to remedy the dearth of venture capital in the state.

One approach, she said, would seek to commercialize intellectual property emerging from the state university system.

“We’re talking about a lot of different things,” added the Daytona Beach Republican.
In 2006, Lynn co-sponsored legislation that would have provided $75 million in tax credits as backing for the Florida Opportunity Fund, a venture capital “fund of funds” to support state businesses and technologies.

In his 2006 budget proposal, Gov. Jeb Bush endorsed such a fund, noting that Florida accounted for only 0.3 percent of the nation’s seed financing, 1.2 percent of early stage funding and 1.4 percent of venture funding in 2004. Total state VC spending for 2003 and 2004 was more than $555 million on 114 deals, according to Enterprise Florida.

Though Bush will be leaving the governor’s mansion in 2007, his successor, Gov.-elect Charlie Crist, was a co-sponsor of the bill to create the Florida Opportunity Fund and is expected offer continued support. Under that plan, the state set aside $75 million in contingent tax credits as a guaranty for investors. Arkansas, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah offer similar programs backed by tax credits.

The legislation would have mandated that VC funds receiving investments from the Florida Opportunity Fund put an equal amount of their own capital into Florida startups. The fund was designed to seek to withdraw its investments in portfolio companies within three to five years.

Cutting Subsidies for Non-Singaporeans

I have written in the past about the reduction in subsidies for non-Singaporeans, and what I thought about it.

In this week's the Edge Singapore, an article was also written on this topic, as part of the larger review of where Singapore currently finds herself in.

To this article is quite an eye opener. For instance some of the statistics qouted are quite jarring.
1) By cutting the subsidies for PRs and foreigners, the total savings realized per year is only 66 million, which is 0.86% of the total Singapore healthcare spending. The article goes to qoute that only 7% - 9% of PRs and non-PRs' treatment is subsidized, which means most PRs and non-PRs either do not use the public heatlthcare system here or are already going through the private route.

2) By increasing the GST, the cost of living and doing business in Singapore would have increased by 2% points, which could translate to roughly 3 - 4 billion in increased takings for the government. The GST cost will be bornes by everyone, regardless of whether they are visitors, Singaporeans, PRs, Expats, Aliens, Cats, Dogs and the like. BUT the support package will only benefit Singaporeans.

I hate to say it, but how fair is this? I most probably could say that it would not affect me much, but it would definitely affect the average factory operator who are PRs and non-citizens (and I believe there will be a lot of them!) I recall that when I was working in production, while we preferred hiring Singaporeans, we find that most Singaporean operators we hire would not last long due to the perceived hardship of the job.

3) The other area of the article that I was truly surprised was the GINI coefficient.

Wikipedia explains the GINI coefficient as:
"The Gini coefficient is a measure of inequality of a distribution.....

The Gini coefficient is often used to measure income inequality. Here, 0 corresponds to perfect income equality (i.e. everyone has the same income) and 1 corresponds to perfect income inequality (i.e. one person has all the income, while everyone else has zero income)."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

Singapore's GINI coefficient is 0.425, which sandwiches us between Burundi and Kenya. (Source)

The most ideal country: Azerbaijan, Denmark and Japan.
THe least ideal country: Botswana, Lesotho and Namibia

Now isn't it shameful that Singapore, which prides itself as a first world country could have such a low (relatively) GINI index?

So what happened? Is it the relentless pursuit of wealth? Is it the relenless pursuit of attracting high net worth individuals to relocate to Singapore that skewed the index? Or is it that the wealth that Singapore has amassed is actually concentrated on a few thousands of people, whereas the rest of the people still struggle.

With my very own eyes, I see that the riches of the country is spread among the upper strata. Those who could dish out 2,000+ psf for a 99 year leashold apartment, or give blank checks to property agents to "chope" choice units at 6th Avenue.

So much so that even I, who humbly consider myself in the slightly upper-middle class find it hard to swallow and comprehend how to survive in such a market. In the words of Alan Greenspan: Irrational Exuberance in the property market, and it sure looks like another bubble is forming or has formed.

Yet on the other side of the coin, we see families with 6, 7 people living in a 1 room flat, with the older kids resorting to sleeping at the void-decks or parks to get more "fresh air".

So what should the assistance package comprise of? GST offset for Singaporeans? Cheaper h0using for Singaporeans? More New Economy shares for Singaporeans? One time disbursement into Singaporean's CPF SA account?

THe problem with many solutions traditionally tried and tested recently results in an instant gratification feeling among those the package was meant to help. No long term plan, just instant redemption of the benefits.

I feel instead the government should allocate the money into education and pre-sickness education.

Perhaps better would be to not to raise the GST at all and then identify inefficiencies in the system to find ways to reduce cost.

But then again, how do you resolve robbing from peter, paul and mary and give back only to peter?