Finally got down to updating some of the things on this website including a contact form, the publications page which was getting a tad bit too outdated and also putting in some pictures which hopefully cheers up the text-filled site a little.
Author Archives: Kevin L
Project Work Guidebook 2016
So after fumbling about for a while and a bit of a hiatus from writing I finally got down to completing the latest edition of our Project Work Guidebook. A while back this was supposed to be the combined effort of my cousin, Kimberly, and I. It didn’t work. Apparently, her student life at Raffles Junior College was busier than my life at NYU as a masters’ student. This time, with already the previous edition as a strong foundation to work on, I expanded the chapter relating to research – adding materials on research methodology and approaches.
More importantly, acknowledging that time is a struggle for most of the students doing PW; I’ve added an appendix to provide some guidance about how to manage the team’s time. It is important to set customized milestones according to what is to be included in your project and these targets should be refined as one gets more information while also closer to the deadlines.
So boys and girls who are entering JC or simply still confused about this Project Work thing – hope this will be a good and useful read for you!
Using Economics
Ha-Joon Chang does a brilliant job trying to make slightly more obscure bits of Economics accessible to the public and in so doing, demonstrate the significance of understanding the history of the development of economic thought.
Modes of Productivity
Excellent piece on Productivity.
Lucky Breaks for the Port
Several lucky breaks provided a huge push for Singapore growth, escalating volume of east-west trade, and raising the importance of Singapore as a trading hub. For 50 years from 1830, the world saw several significant changes that changed the global economic conditions and the shifting political weights leading to further entrenchment of Singapore’s position a major global port.
Improvements in seafaring technologies
Seafaring technology was improving rapidly after the emergence of Singapore as a port; the first experimental steamships started in the early 1800s and then by 1830s, regional steamboats were running around in Europe as well as along the coasts and rivers of United States of Americas. Ocean-going steamships followed and the first steamship (by Peninsular & Oriental Steamship Co.) carrying mails (passengers, and parcels) arrived in Singapore in 1845.
Steamships shortened the voyage between the east and west significantly, whilst it used to take months (and would vary according to seasons) to sail from London to Singapore, the advent of steamships reduced this journey to approximately 40 days throughout the year. Improvements in the next decade would shave the time down to a single month. This drove up not only the trading activities but also encouraged more visitors to Singapore who would hang around for a short-term stay.
Opium Wars & opening of China market
The end of the first Opium War concluded in 1842 with the signing of the Treaty of Nanking that forcibly opened up the Chinese market to imports from the west. The Chinese market proved attractive to the Europeans and even the Americans who were (unfortunately) buying huge volumes of opium in Turkey to be sold in China. Some of these opium of course ended up within the Singapore market but that is a story for another day.
The ceding of Hong Kong to the British provided a permanent base in the South China sea, further providing for this whole string of territories that help to connect the west to the east for British merchants. Trade between the west and the east grew significantly as a result and these trade flows all will have to pass through Singapore at least for some services.
The turmoil during the First and Second Opium wars also contributed to mass immigration of Chinese in search of more stable lives and also jobs. This particular wave of immigration ensured the dominance of the Chinese ethnic group on the island and also provided a huge youthful workforce with a taste for hardship and hunger for improvements. This labour base ensured that trade services develop and there were sufficient crew to service the incoming vessels.
Opening of Suez Canal
The opening of Suez Canal in 1869 provided further push to east-west trade through shortening of the voyage between Europe and Asia. Trading ships no longer had to sail down to the Cape of Good Hope and up again towards the Gulf of Aden. Trade volume through Singapore almost doubled just within the single year progressing from 1869 to 1870.
The status of a free port continued to attract trading ships as well as merchants. The rival ports of Jakarta (then called Batavia) and Manila levied tariffs and thus were less attractive. American, Jewish, Armenian, Indian, Chinese and Arab traders started setting up trading houses in Singapore. The diversity and multiculturalism was at the heart of this colony; just as its growth and development was powered by the world events. In that sense, Singapore was never quite ‘left-behind’ nor ever unplugged from this world system after the British established themselves.
Entrepreneurship in Singapore
Brought on a little tour of Block 71 today. It’s a wonderful little place for entrepreneurs and business-starter wannabes to try and work on their ideas or start work on their ideas without too much capital nor too much expense. Rental is mostly free, particularly in the co-working space; power is free too so you can be your first employee at a desk and get free power, sometimes with free coffee and potentially free events to attend. Life probably has never been so good for an entrepreneur.
Of course, the costs associated with failure is significant given the opportunity costs. Most of these kids can command pretty decent amount of pay in the existing tight labour market; but I think that place offers a kind of co-working experience, ideas-exchange and tinkering culture that would prove valuable for these entrepreneur wannabes.
What I am concerned about is that this sort of spirit remains only within the tech sector without spewing into the more traditional sort of engineering-based industries. The real economy is still stubbornly reliant on manufacturing to grow. The rise of services is simply an accounting illusion; manufacturing increasingly outsource some of their process design and engineering to third party ‘consulting firms’ which are services. Therefore, value that was previously treated as being generated from manufacturing now becomes re-classified as services. The economic activities taking place is still the same. The bulk of these ‘new services’ are just repackaging and most of the staff or ‘entrepreneurs’ are merely ex-employees who have started these new businesses to capture the benefits of increasing outsourcing.
Yet in order for things to be changed, there has to be more cross-pollination. By far, there is no evidence that the consulting services yielded more engineering innovation in their respective spheres. If anything, the increase in competition only serves to drive improvement in slightly more superficial things such as more user-friendly 3D modelling graphics or better visuals that have little impact on the actual carrying out of the projects. In other words, the kind of market competition we have been generating may not actually be good. This is something for our economic ministries to ponder over…
Raffles’ Port City
In 1819, when Sir Stamford Raffles came to strike a deal that made Singapore a British colony, the population of Singapore is approximately 150. In 2 years, the population rose to 5000 mostly as a result of the establishment of the port providing ready access to population from other centers. By 1860 however, the resident population ballooned to around 80,800 comprising mainly of “temporary” immigrants coming from India, China as well as from the surrounding islands. This wasn’t purely luck or a matter of economic policy. Several things the British did was particularly important for encouraging the trade flows through Singapore and pushing the growth of Singapore into an important center for trade in the region.
Just 5 years after the establishment of Singapore as a free port under British rule, in 1824, the English and the Dutch brokered a deal to exchange Bencoolen (or Bengkulu in Sumatra) for Malacca. This was particularly important; the other port that was controlled by the British in the region was Penang, which the English established since 1790; the location was not that popular since ships from the east will still have to pass through the Straits of Malacca before reaching Penang.
With Penang and Singapore under the control of the British, the rivalry between the English and the Dutch in the region meant that Dutch control of the Straits of Malacca through possession of Malacca was a significant bottleneck. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 resolved the rivalry (somewhat) by allocating spheres of influence, opening up the entire chain of territories – Penang, Malacca and Singapore to British control and thus greater incentive for the Royal Navy to maintain the safety of the trading ships passing through the Straits of Malacca. The Dutch Navy was given the same responsibility on the side of the straits closer to Indonesia. Before that, piracy was extremely rampant along that straits and the numerous islands around provided safe bays for pirate ships. Stepping up security in these waters gave way to higher flow of trading ships thus facilitating the boom of the port of Singapore.
By 1825, the population of Singapore went past the 10,000 mark. And in 1826, the British East India Company officially took on Singapore as a colony of the British Empire after John Crawfurd signed a second treaty with the Sultan of Johor and the Temenggong, which extended British control of Singapore over to the entire island instead of just the port. The formation of the Straits Settlement consisting of Penang, Malacca and Singapore happened in the same year with Penang designated as the capital. In 1830, the capital was shifted to Singapore, further entrenching the important institutions of British governance in Singapore.
The decisions made by British to build up and enhance the value of Singapore and the injection of top civil servants and managerial talents into Singapore due to its designation as capital of the Straits Settlements (and subsequent establishment of the Straits Settlements as a crown colony in 1867) played an extremely important role in shaping the economic, political and administrative environment which proved extremely favourable to Singapore. The strength of governance has always been an important quality our growth has been attributed to – and it seems to have dated back way before the country’s independence.
Singapore Economic History
During my days doing my Masters, I had always wanted to start working on studying Singapore’s Economic history, primarily because we should be learning from the way we developed and not blindly attributing it to some brilliance on the part of individuals or organisation. To break down the black box and understand the practice of growth is something I endeavour as an Economist while the reluctance to attribute our development to specific individuals but rather to consider it down to naturalistic observations about policy, culture, and zeitgeist is my responsibility as an informed voter.
For one, the idea of Singapore as a location suited for trade really started way earlier than we initially had thought; and it has gone by various names: Sabana (2nd Century), Pulau Ujong (3rd Century), Simha-pura (transliterated somehow to ‘Singapura’ – 11th-13th Century and used later on as well), Tamasek (around 1330s), Temasek (circa 1689) and finally Singapore. It gained some importance as a port in 14th Century with trading by merchants as far as China, gaining some immigrants along the way; subsequently as a regional port under the Sultanate of Johor in 16-17th Century. In 1613 however, some Portuguese supposedly destroyed a settlement around the main river, killing most commercial activities on the island until Sir Stamford Raffles landed in 1819, reviving the port status of the territory.
It was indeed, no special original brilliance of Sir Stamford Raffles that helped Singapore become positioned as a entre-port; rather, his effort was the recognition of the need for British navy protection, garnering the resources required to build up this port and rallying support to keep this port a tax-free one that would help enjoy endless flow of ships and traders. The status of a free port was definitely innovation within the British Empire at that time. This particular innovation we inherited much later and became an important economic policy.
Training Philosophy
I believe in learning. And behind all that slogging for grades, what I really see is development of ability, and acquisition of skills. Grades and scores may be performance/progress indicators or checkpoints for me to assess my development, but in no way defining me.
When it comes to work, I absolutely believe that training is necessary – not so much developing our skills from scratch. No one can reverse all the bad habits of speech (eg. fillers, pet words, etc.) within a day or even a week but such training sessions serves to consolidate what we already know into one place and focus our application in various areas, often in a more disciplined manner. So many people I’ve come across in life have so much potential but the environment does not encourage them to shoot for the longer term goals of self-improvement, only the short-term objectives of completing the work on-hand.
At any workplace, there are only 2 kinds of things that you can take with you when you leave. One is your track record (project references, achievements) and the other is your skills. In every project, we should seek to emerge from each one more capable and being able to deliver more or better in the next one. We should never be falling back on something we have already done. In other words, the only way to avoid becoming too comfortable with one’s position is to keep focusing on potential. And that means, while there is the 2 kinds of takeaways – what we should be putting our attention on is our skills.
Therefore, hurry to brush up skills and pull up socks, not to meet deadlines (though that eventually must be met anyways).
Thinking on your feet
I just went through a course on effective presentation skills and it was mentioned that Q&A is actually the most important part of the presentation – in fact so important it is more important than the presentation itself. After all, Q&A is where it is much harder to prepare and you are more vulnerable. I remember the trainer saying, some people are just born able to think on their feet and others will have to develop the ability to do so over their life.
It actually got me thinking about it. What set people apart in this sense? How was Tharman able to answer Stephen Sackur so quickly about the Trampoline that the host was a little surprised and stumped for a bit? It’s actually through preparation. It isn’t quite ‘born’, as we would think of. The truth is all of life is preparation. The way you spend every moment in your life, whether you have chosen it or not, is preparation for all of the moments ahead. And having the habit of thinking, having thought through different things, having pondered over issues far and wide or about things in the periphery of the related topic, is part of all the preparation that brought you to the point of being able to ‘think on your feet’. It might feel like you had a stroke of genius at the moment or people might have thought so but it’s not genius. It’s hard work, dedication and devotion to the topic area or issue implicated.
So prepare well for all the times ahead you have. And think; it sure takes practice but you get better.