Category Archives: Life

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…

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).

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.

Listened to Tim Keller’s Sermon again and thought this line was worth noting down:

“Forgiveness is you may go. Free justification is you may come.”

And then I got to listen to another sermon by Michael Baughen, and another line he shared struck me too:

“Religion is about achieving, the gospel is about believing.”

Yet it’s so tough because we are told we have to give an account of ourselves – so ‘despite’ this so-called free grace, our deeds are fruits of the faith and the surest manifestation of our lacking in our faith. In Jerry Bridges’ ‘Respectable Sins’, he quotes from older writers who calls for believers to:

“Work as if it all depends on you, and yet trust as if you did not work at all.”

That was all helpful, now on to living a life justified by faith.

It’s been a long time since I actually sat down to write an article, not to mention an article about my faith. I must say I haven’t been particularly attentive to the gradual shifts that are taking place in the world though I have my eyes set upon the economy, the structural things in the economy of Singapore. Having spent more than the past 4 years being abroad, I always thought I could share some new perspective about Singapore – how things are different here or the same. And more important, how much we have come to be part of ‘the world’.

The debates of the world that sets groups of people up against each other can stem from a variety of factors and in particular, culture seem to be highlighted. While globalization is said to make the world more homogenous, the role in its ability to bring cultures together so they may clash and interact in more profound manner is understated. In the clashing of cultures, and attempt to reconcile things, I believe that we have not become more polarized but allowed ourselves to accept sub-par standards of clarity that generates even more controversy. The refusal to clarify often stems from sensitivity – political, racial, religious or whatever. And one that I would like to highlight here is our messing up of the concepts of tolerance and forgiveness.

First, we look at the concept of forgiveness, which is more or less lost in this modern world. And the reason is that we have lost the concept of sin. We no longer think about transgressions the way we do. We think of it as a single-sided thing involving a mistake – the outcome and consequences that one has to bear is solely attributed to the system in place. The one that the victim has to bear no longer is part of that picture. This very subtle shift towards self-centeredness as a whole society is probably something people have observed time and again but seemed, by and large to be praised rather than resented. The ‘mistakes’ is therefore to be dealt with through the penalty of the system, a punishment that allows you to ‘pay’ for the mistake rather than to be forgiven of it. There is absolutely no mention of forgiveness in this whole cycle – the culprit doesn’t need to be forgiven by the victim, just to be released or ‘dealt with’ by the system of justice. And there is no wonder why we find that justice and forgiveness is incompatible. This is because we see punishment as diametrically opposing to forgiveness – and that if one were to consider wrong-doing a ‘sin’ then punishments are but necessary ‘sins’ against ‘sinfulness’.

Forgiveness, rather, has to do with a pardon of the deed itself that still involve a cost from the deed – not so much the punishment that is just a fraction of the true costs, designed to attempt to pass on the cost the deed creates back to the perpetuator. Of course, God and all of us realize this merely serves to multiply the fallen-ness in the world when this punishment is not meted out by God. Only God, who is able to renew and restore, can also channel His wrath righteously at the perpetuator. Not even the victim, bearing just part of the cost of the deed (as God bears the other part) can be qualified to take revenge, having no means whatsoever to restore his state through his revenge. Vengeance therefore, can only be of the Lord’s. As victims, what we can offer on our part is only ‘forgiveness’ and that is to bear that cost inflicted upon ourselves and carry it no further. As culprits/sinners, all we can do is to ask for forgiveness, from the victims and from God Himself.

By now you might have realized that what we have always thought forgiveness is, or involves, is tolerance. But it isn’t. We can think of tolerance as something that has elements of overlap with forgiveness but misses the mark. I would say one could capture their relationship with a Venn diagram where the overlapping part involves the bearing of costs of the deed. What does not overlap that is in Tolerance, is that of being indifferent to the deed itself as a matter of principle. Forgiveness, on the other hand, by virtue of its necessity having arisen from the presence of a ‘sin’, will have to involve rejecting the deed. It would require that the deed in itself be considered morally wrong. Forgiveness does not allow you to ignore the evilness of the deed; rather, it fundamentally requires you to trust in and place your hopes on the repentance of the one who is forgiven. Tolerance requires nothing of that sort; rather it involves an inner stoicism that is rejected by Christians as the path to salvation. To believe one is tolerant can breed self-righteousness and that is why people who preach tolerance are themselves non-tolerant of people seen as intolerant. They might not have observed the irony but that by itself already shows that tolerance is not the lifeboat that can take us out of this mess in conflicts – whether it is about abortion or homosexuality, or Amos Yee. It is forgiveness.

After pondering for a moment I finally decided to get a copy of Turabian’s Manual for Writers; as well as Umbeto Eco’s “How to Write a Thesis”. Writing skills turned out to be incredibly important for a public service job – and it pays to brush up my writing even if my career turns towards a more private-sector slant.

I’ve officially taken down ERPZ.net. It’s been running since 2009, collecting materials I used for tutoring Economics and Mathematics as well as General Paper. But life has progressed to a point that maintaining a site like that became increasingly difficult. As student life passes on into working life, the content of ERPZ.net may become increasingly distant from the audience it was originally targeting.

I’ve shifted my focus to writing more targeted rather than broad materials for students as evident from the eBooks published last year. I hope to continue this endeavour and benefit more students in Singapore in the years to come.

I experienced a revival of interest in the intersection of Economics and Philosophy (or rather, the attempt to reconnect Economics with its philosophical roots) was sparked by Michael Sandel’s ‘Moral Limit of Markets’. I got to see his brilliance at the recent Rethinking Economics conference held in New York City. As it turns out, there is a passage from Analects of Confucius quoted by a recent article in New Yorker (it was a story about recent developments in cancer research involving the approach of targeting cancer cells and coaxing them to mature instead of dividing further):

If you use laws to direct the people, and punishments to control them, they will merely try to evade the punishments, and will have no sense of shame. But if by virtue you guide them, ad by the rites you control them, there will be a sense of shame and of right.

Of course, I’ve dealt with this before in something I once wrote introducing Sandel’s book. As a matter of fact indeed, Sandel is trying to draw to our attention something we already know at the back of our mind but decides to stay silent about.

There is something about our handwriting that reveals our character, people say. And strangely, this is not something wise of this new age of more-typing-than-writing, it is something that has been around for a while now. As I graded script after script, I discover to my horror how handwritings of students have gotten way worse compared to my days in school. There is something about the weakness of grip on the pen, the poor positioning of letters on a word, senselessness of certain curls. And it reveals a sloppy manner no other aspects of you would have been able to show.

Clarity of thought is also amply demonstrated in hand written pieces because you can no longer copy-paste or splice the stuff that you have previously written. Planning ahead and knowing what you are trying to articulate becomes immensely important. Unfortunately this art seems to have been lost through the rise of technology and its emphasis faded in pursuit of new ideals in American education.