Category Archives: Personal Life

I have long wanted to produce a discourse on the problems with our Economics syllabus of the A Levels but this time I just happen to get the right amount of fuel for it. That’s after getting a really lousy score for an essay I have written that I was pretty proud of. The marker’s comments: “Recognise that you are well-read but exploration of crucial concepts needs more emphasis/details as required by the A Levels syllabus”.

So what can I say about that? True, I do have the knack for not defining terms I deem not worth defining, such as ‘Market Failure’, or ‘Public Goods’ and reading The Economist have trained me to give no attention to explanation of ‘simple but crucial’ concepts of occupational immobility or how negative externality arises (I cited a mere example for that). These are too insignificant compared to the point that I am arguing, that we cannot leave the allocation of economic resources to price mechanism alone. That’s dangerous. Too bad, the people, preoccupied with fulfilling the A Level syllabus, failed to allow students to pursue the true essence of Economics and thus have to force students to write out what they know (about extremely basic concepts) in order to give scores for that. That being true, even if we produce a college standard theory paper to answer the exact question in A Levels would probably fail the paper.

For Sciences, what we are learning is far from the stuff in the cutting edge of research and education can hardly catch up for students to be working on really profound stuff because this information are generally not that easily accessible. Unfortunately, for humanities, the exploration of further and more profound concepts by an ordinary student like me is possible with the publication and the fact that the subject can be elaborated and explained in much simpler languages even for rather advanced portions. This feature is derived from the very fact that Economics is fundamentally very basic common sense that has been tested and made into theories. As such, having reached higher and attempting to climb further, I have to let go of the rungs at the bottom and give up my existing position. This is a dilemma and I really hope things change with the introduction of Macro-economics that is even more all-encompassing.

Formalization of education has very much benefitted us in the education of sciences, but for the arts, perhaps we should receive much more freedom. Geography, and History, both do not require us to give explanation on how statistics lie or explain very fundamental concepts like why wars occur and why weathering arises. So I guess, we should not be expected to be explaining to our markers that negative externality can be defined in some way though it do not always apply and narrate some very textbooks stuff that do not support the main argument at all.

These are the huge topics to be tested tomorrow while all the others are enjoying their post-promos celebrations. The Mathematics examination practice frustrations drove me into a series of frenzy gaming session (which includes the dumb Miniclip Table Tennis and Heli Attack 3). The gaming session continued today with the part-holiday mood since tomorrow is the alleged last paper (that’s to assume that Chemistry Mock SPA is nothing to do with promos). I have been working through the lectures over the whole year and gained a certain degree of enlightenment on the issue which I have decided to talk about as a pre-paper writing exercise.

The fundamental ideas beneath the whole ideas interweaving the two topics is the comparison between the EMDCs and the ELDCs. After going through all the materials, we can safely make a few generationalisations: ELDCs face problems because of very standard factors that combines in the worst possible way. These factors includes corrupt government, lack of education of citizens, uneven distribution of resources, income, resource allocation, investments, funding, infrastructural development. All these spatial biasness translates into the problem within the urbanisation processes. Population problems of the ELDCs shares similar factors that includes lack of educated citizens, and the social mindset, coupled with poor institutional policies in place to tackle problems.

In contrast, the EMDCs are always blessed with economic growth, even if it is a little stagnant, great governments, with well-established political system that facilitates economic growth (namely, market economy or capitalist) and they would already have the infrastructures in place to solve the problems. In fact, most of the time, they are not perceived as problems at all. Underlying all these great perks of EMDCs is the fundamental product of the social and economic change that has taken place over the past few centuries – fertility drop. Following this drop, the population to share the resources amongst falls and everyone has a bigger piece of the pie, as compared to the ELDCs. It is thus rather clear that low population and momentum in the first place do pave the way for development.

I always argue that the existing EMDCs, the rising economies (ie. Korea, Singapore & Hong Kong) and the ELDCs usually have rather different paths of development. The EMDC experience is one that is confined to arcane ideas with a weird concoction of traditionalist ‘classful’ society and modernization in the old-odd way. The rising economies, on the other hand, have their secret in staying small and confining areas to control and regulate. The result of these closed control, open trade and economy system usually allows for better moderation of growth (as in what is desirable and wanted is taken in and the bad stuff are either prevented from entering all eliminated all together). Of course, the rising economies owe the growth to their size, the indigenous Asian culture and values, in addition to their willingness to experiment with alternative styles of development.

The ELDCs, the last point on hand, tends to have very weak structures. These weak structures give rise to chaos and breeds more problems. Those experiencing rapid growth have this ‘old’ problem of pollution probably because of the level of technology in which they engage. Unfortunately, this engagement of technology is not homogenous because they manufacturing sectors are not labour intenstive enough. The result is increasing unemployment, population rising not proportionate to increase in tax revenues and thus more burden on government and hence more debt incurred. This downward spiral is something that can really happen if the existing balance is not sustained by the trust of debtor or their kindness and cause the nation to collapse entirely.

Then again, no one is offering any solutions – and who’s this kid here talking these bunch of crap anyway…

These are the huge topics to be tested tomorrow while all the others are enjoying their post-promos celebrations. The Mathematics examination practice frustrations drove me into a series of frenzy gaming session (which includes the dumb Miniclip Table Tennis and Heli Attack 3). The gaming session continued today with the part-holiday mood since tomorrow is the alleged last paper (that’s to assume that Chemistry Mock SPA is nothing to do with promos). I have been working through the lectures over the whole year and gained a certain degree of enlightenment on the issue which I have decided to talk about as a pre-paper writing exercise.

The fundamental ideas beneath the whole ideas interweaving the two topics is the comparison between the EMDCs and the ELDCs. After going through all the materials, we can safely make a few generationalisations: ELDCs face problems because of very standard factors that combines in the worst possible way. These factors includes corrupt government, lack of education of citizens, uneven distribution of resources, income, resource allocation, investments, funding, infrastructural development. All these spatial biasness translates into the problem within the urbanisation processes. Population problems of the ELDCs shares similar factors that includes lack of educated citizens, and the social mindset, coupled with poor institutional policies in place to tackle problems.

In contrast, the EMDCs are always blessed with economic growth, even if it is a little stagnant, great governments, with well-established political system that facilitates economic growth (namely, market economy or capitalist) and they would already have the infrastructures in place to solve the problems. In fact, most of the time, they are not perceived as problems at all. Underlying all these great perks of EMDCs is the fundamental product of the social and economic change that has taken place over the past few centuries – fertility drop. Following this drop, the population to share the resources amongst falls and everyone has a bigger piece of the pie, as compared to the ELDCs. It is thus rather clear that low population and momentum in the first place do pave the way for development.

I always argue that the existing EMDCs, the rising economies (ie. Korea, Singapore & Hong Kong) and the ELDCs usually have rather different paths of development. The EMDC experience is one that is confined to arcane ideas with a weird concoction of traditionalist ‘classful’ society and modernization in the old-odd way. The rising economies, on the other hand, have their secret in staying small and confining areas to control and regulate. The result of these closed control, open trade and economy system usually allows for better moderation of growth (as in what is desirable and wanted is taken in and the bad stuff are either prevented from entering all eliminated all together). Of course, the rising economies owe the growth to their size, the indigenous Asian culture and values, in addition to their willingness to experiment with alternative styles of development.

The ELDCs, the last point on hand, tends to have very weak structures. These weak structures give rise to chaos and breeds more problems. Those experiencing rapid growth have this ‘old’ problem of pollution probably because of the level of technology in which they engage. Unfortunately, this engagement of technology is not homogenous because they manufacturing sectors are not labour intenstive enough. The result is increasing unemployment, population rising not proportionate to increase in tax revenues and thus more burden on government and hence more debt incurred. This downward spiral is something that can really happen if the existing balance is not sustained by the trust of debtor or their kindness and cause the nation to collapse entirely.

Then again, no one is offering any solutions – and who’s this kid here talking these bunch of crap anyway…

After struggling with W. H. Davies to argue the relevance of his view of life, strangling James Lovelock with the fallacious argument of doomsday, praising Frank Furedi’s optimistic take on ‘Necessity is the mother of Invention’, shooting down claims that the Airline Industry can be explained by Kinked Demand Curve or Price Leadership Model, whacking Adam Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand’ with John Keynes’ Feet, setting myself on fire by attempting to dissolve Lithium Aluminium Hydride in Water, and obtaining a mono-ester with the reaction between a di-hydroxy compound with an acyl chloride, pitting Willis against King in the weathering of Granite – or even worse, ignoring the formation of limestone pavements in temperate Karst landscapes, the week is finally over.

If you haven’t notice, the above is more of a sentence than a paragraph, that summarised what I did over this week’s weekdays. Promotion examinations is like tackling a dumb beast stuffed with irratic questions that stems from the syllabus that we follow and looking weird so that we freak out. I must admit I am not doing as well as expected and I guess carelessness played a huge part. The next and final papers are stuff which I am less confident about and hopefully, the carelessness no longer surface.

After the mad week, I took a little break by re-doing the banner on top of this site for a bit, making the eyes of the croc a larger and adding dumb words and a little more colours. Someone told me to add a tagboard here – something which I tried long ago but then spam was simply getting out of hand, so no more tagboard/crapbox here.

Given that I am having Economics tomorrow, I thought it would be interesting to pen something that implicates the fundamental ideas of Economics that I conceived while surfing (and not mugging) the net.

Economics, as we are taught, is the study of how humans deal with the problem of ‘Scarcity’, how we allocate resources to achieve maximal efficiency and make everyone happy. The problem of ‘Scarcity’, in turn, arises from the fact that limited resources that we have cannot satisfy the unlimited wants that we have. In view of that, we have to make choices and decide to work with only a limited number of wants satisfied. Today, we live as though the problem of ‘Scarcity’ has been solved and Economics essay question constantly trick us with lame questions like ‘Discuss if economic growth is able to solve the problem of ‘Scarcity”. It turns out that we may have been wrong all the time – the problem of ‘Scarcity’ that arises naturally have been solved. To explain, the problem we are facing now is one that involves the creation of demands/wants.

The basis of this problem of ‘Scarcity’ has a few dimenstions – time period, the idea of ‘unlimited wants’ and perhaps the problem of want-creation. To begin, time period is extremely important because the statement on scarcity is made based on the ‘long run’ perspective. In short run, scarcity can cease to be a problem, or don’t even arise at all: just imagine the last time when you had a Buffet dinner, where you have finished stuffing yourself and continue to see the endless plates of food being stocked and replenished. For that moment, everyone would have decided that there’s no such thing as scarcity. But as mentioned, it is only for that moment, in long run (or a few hours after you walk out of the restaurant), you will experience the scarcity we seek to study in Economics. So, in long run, scarcity must prevail because the need for certain basic stuff/wants must prevail. Hey, wait a minute, most of the basic wants for survival are replenishable by the Earth’s system – so I guess under primitive conditions, the problem still doesn’t arise even in long run.

At this point, we have already considered part of the idea of ‘unlimited wants’. There’s a great deal of problem with this assumption that we have unlimited wants. We cannot say that we all strive for ever higher standards of living. The reason why people at this point of time strives for that is because it is possible, at least for some people and the results of such luxury are glaringly pleasurable. However, our imagination of a higher standard of living that have yet to exist do not motivate us to strive for that as much as one that already exist but is currently not obtainable at personal level. As such, we can easily say that it is inequality that furthers the problem of want-creation and thus worsens the problem of scarcity with the creation of endless wants. As decided, wants are finite within a time period, and in fact, the wants of a person, within his lifespan, must be finite, at least by default. Unfortunately, this assumption of unlimited, or infinite wants exist because of the fact that there’s a want-creation mechanism driving everything – inequality, advertising and perhaps imperfect information.

Having mentioned that, the want-creation mechanism that stems from production (advertising) is the key player accounting for this ‘unlimited wants’ that we are facing in long run. This is just like when we are really bloated after 5 ‘second-servings’ in a Buffet and decides that we’ll have a final go with that Cheese-baked Salmon that just arrived at the food counter – just to make sure our money is well-spent. As John Locke have argued, we all have a finite capacity for consumption (or ‘real consumption’) but the fact that we can accumulate wealth enables us to ‘purchase without real consumption of the good’. To be able to accumulate wealth is like to be able to accumulate hunger before a buffet and thus the capacity to consume. This allows the want-creation mechanism to work because you can hold far more food than you should be able to when you have ‘accumluated hunger’ (that is, assuming you can) and new dishes will be able to tempt you continually.

Such, undermines the whole idea of the problem of ‘Scarcity’. We, as beings of intellect, have invented means of allowing over[false]consumption and want creation. Even when you don’t need that tiny amount of marginal benefit, the fact that you had all the initial wants satisfied pushes you to take it; similarly, though you are bloated, the thought that you can make your money more worthed it motivates you to take the salmon. Inequality, which I have deemed inevitable, together with the Imperfect Information, operates naturally to further the problem of want-creation – the glaring inequality irrationalizes the people, and limited information makes them think that the higher living standards only does them good, ultimately increasing the demand and furthering the problem of ‘Scarcity’.

We are, far from solving the problem we have created ourselves and not the one that arises naturally, but that’s probably a problem to sustain the congregation of man in bid to prove the improvements can be made with a more unified system. The Undercover Economist had an interesting Introduction, which I read in the bookstore, as predicted by Tim Harford himself. It narrated a basic argument in support of the statement, ‘No Man is an Island’ and it has illustrated, quite nicely, the good that the economic system has brought us that is inconceivable when our ancestors were still foraging for tree roots [and checking if they are edible]. The problem, is that we had to sustain the growth, unfortunately, by keeping the demand alive, making it truly endless and unlimited, to keep up with depletion and thus continuing the problem of ‘Scarcity’ to justify the existence of the economy. Or perhaps, the whole point of this ever increasing demand stems from some hedonistic concept that is probably a product of the notion of unlimited demands and thus a cyclic argument that economic theories often ends up in (just like the kinked demand curve).

I have, in this essay, addressed the evolution of the problem of ‘Scarcity’ at this age and outlined the justification for this problem to prevail. It appears, then that our decendents would eventually have to end up with the dilemma of whether to preserve for the new beings that comes or just simply live like there’s no tomorrow (something we have truly embraced at the turn of the century – besides the escalated environmental concerns that do not exactly translate into actions*). It is perhaps then, time to turn back to mugging and maybe thinking a little more about Economic stuff that goes way beyond our Sloman-Concepts and Parkins-Notions.

*Maybe it would be better for Bjorn Lomborg to address that

Given that I am having Economics tomorrow, I thought it would be interesting to pen something that implicates the fundamental ideas of Economics that I conceived while surfing (and not mugging) the net.

Economics, as we are taught, is the study of how humans deal with the problem of ‘Scarcity’, how we allocate resources to achieve maximal efficiency and make everyone happy. The problem of ‘Scarcity’, in turn, arises from the fact that limited resources that we have cannot satisfy the unlimited wants that we have. In view of that, we have to make choices and decide to work with only a limited number of wants satisfied. Today, we live as though the problem of ‘Scarcity’ has been solved and Economics essay question constantly trick us with lame questions like ‘Discuss if economic growth is able to solve the problem of ‘Scarcity”. It turns out that we may have been wrong all the time – the problem of ‘Scarcity’ that arises naturally have been solved. To explain, the problem we are facing now is one that involves the creation of demands/wants.

The basis of this problem of ‘Scarcity’ has a few dimenstions – time period, the idea of ‘unlimited wants’ and perhaps the problem of want-creation. To begin, time period is extremely important because the statement on scarcity is made based on the ‘long run’ perspective. In short run, scarcity can cease to be a problem, or don’t even arise at all: just imagine the last time when you had a Buffet dinner, where you have finished stuffing yourself and continue to see the endless plates of food being stocked and replenished. For that moment, everyone would have decided that there’s no such thing as scarcity. But as mentioned, it is only for that moment, in long run (or a few hours after you walk out of the restaurant), you will experience the scarcity we seek to study in Economics. So, in long run, scarcity must prevail because the need for certain basic stuff/wants must prevail. Hey, wait a minute, most of the basic wants for survival are replenishable by the Earth’s system – so I guess under primitive conditions, the problem still doesn’t arise even in long run.

At this point, we have already considered part of the idea of ‘unlimited wants’. There’s a great deal of problem with this assumption that we have unlimited wants. We cannot say that we all strive for ever higher standards of living. The reason why people at this point of time strives for that is because it is possible, at least for some people and the results of such luxury are glaringly pleasurable. However, our imagination of a higher standard of living that have yet to exist do not motivate us to strive for that as much as one that already exist but is currently not obtainable at personal level. As such, we can easily say that it is inequality that furthers the problem of want-creation and thus worsens the problem of scarcity with the creation of endless wants. As decided, wants are finite within a time period, and in fact, the wants of a person, within his lifespan, must be finite, at least by default. Unfortunately, this assumption of unlimited, or infinite wants exist because of the fact that there’s a want-creation mechanism driving everything – inequality, advertising and perhaps imperfect information.

Having mentioned that, the want-creation mechanism that stems from production (advertising) is the key player accounting for this ‘unlimited wants’ that we are facing in long run. This is just like when we are really bloated after 5 ‘second-servings’ in a Buffet and decides that we’ll have a final go with that Cheese-baked Salmon that just arrived at the food counter – just to make sure our money is well-spent. As John Locke have argued, we all have a finite capacity for consumption (or ‘real consumption’) but the fact that we can accumulate wealth enables us to ‘purchase without real consumption of the good’. To be able to accumulate wealth is like to be able to accumulate hunger before a buffet and thus the capacity to consume. This allows the want-creation mechanism to work because you can hold far more food than you should be able to when you have ‘accumluated hunger’ (that is, assuming you can) and new dishes will be able to tempt you continually.

Such, undermines the whole idea of the problem of ‘Scarcity’. We, as beings of intellect, have invented means of allowing over[false]consumption and want creation. Even when you don’t need that tiny amount of marginal benefit, the fact that you had all the initial wants satisfied pushes you to take it; similarly, though you are bloated, the thought that you can make your money more worthed it motivates you to take the salmon. Inequality, which I have deemed inevitable, together with the Imperfect Information, operates naturally to further the problem of want-creation – the glaring inequality irrationalizes the people, and limited information makes them think that the higher living standards only does them good, ultimately increasing the demand and furthering the problem of ‘Scarcity’.

We are, far from solving the problem we have created ourselves and not the one that arises naturally, but that’s probably a problem to sustain the congregation of man in bid to prove the improvements can be made with a more unified system. The Undercover Economist had an interesting Introduction, which I read in the bookstore, as predicted by Tim Harford himself. It narrated a basic argument in support of the statement, ‘No Man is an Island’ and it has illustrated, quite nicely, the good that the economic system has brought us that is inconceivable when our ancestors were still foraging for tree roots [and checking if they are edible]. The problem, is that we had to sustain the growth, unfortunately, by keeping the demand alive, making it truly endless and unlimited, to keep up with depletion and thus continuing the problem of ‘Scarcity’ to justify the existence of the economy. Or perhaps, the whole point of this ever increasing demand stems from some hedonistic concept that is probably a product of the notion of unlimited demands and thus a cyclic argument that economic theories often ends up in (just like the kinked demand curve).

I have, in this essay, addressed the evolution of the problem of ‘Scarcity’ at this age and outlined the justification for this problem to prevail. It appears, then that our decendents would eventually have to end up with the dilemma of whether to preserve for the new beings that comes or just simply live like there’s no tomorrow (something we have truly embraced at the turn of the century – besides the escalated environmental concerns that do not exactly translate into actions*). It is perhaps then, time to turn back to mugging and maybe thinking a little more about Economic stuff that goes way beyond our Sloman-Concepts and Parkins-Notions.

*Maybe it would be better for Bjorn Lomborg to address that

Economics lessons have been pretty dry with focus turned to the syllabus, which forces students to look into highly superficial issues and to give answers that can be expected. Although they require intense analysis, and really deep thinking, the breadth appears highly restricted and there’s not much efforts to highlight special features of different context. For example, in a nation like Singapore, Monopolies may be good because of the highly limited market size and so on. I thought it would be a little more interesting to say something about the trend of pseudo-privatisation in light of the world’s event and the fact that we have began advocating privatisation in our economics textbooks.

Economics started out as a biased study – it favoured market economy and offered no other solutions to distribution and use of resources, despite the fact that it has pointed out several problems with existing mechanisms. It sets out to predict and recommend economic decisions and such – the main differing feature from the study of Business. As such, one can expect the whole focus to be on praising market economy and the private businesses. In the beginning, that was true, but subsequent efforts to identify problems of the study proved very much the flawed nature of the classical theories because of technological and practice changes that set in after the World Wars and the Great Depression. In addition, the successes of certain planned system at the initial stage of a developing region that boomed helped convince people that a degree of control is required in the world of economics – at least before the people are able to discipline themselves.

The movement started out with Marx and then toned down by Keynes. It was powerful and Nationalization became more than just a moral obligation of the government (it was so for the Brits before). There’s now an economic reason for Nationalization – it was to combat the dangers and then ills of the market economy that may just pop out and cause chaos. But as novel methods of control came in, nationalization had to give way to the regulations that were seen as being more efficient. The efficiency of the economy remained the most important consideration despite understanding the danger of free market (which is deemed the most efficient of all – at least economic efficiency, not social efficiency).

Then the capitalist fought back with trade, globalization and whatever network that helped raise demand almost infinitely and made it possible for privatization to become important – to keep up with the market and the rest of the world, in product development, research and management. It made privatization the trend, the priority, the goal, of many economies – at least for those who were forced upon such aims by trade agreements and trade organizations. It was another victory of the capitalist over the left-wingers (not too sure, maybe I used this word wrongly) though it was an overhaul of the capitalist perspective (Monetarism became much more important in this so there was an incorporation of the socialist ideas as well).

So much for the support of privatization and historical setting but the main point is not even raised. These aims, being forced upon the nations of different nature, had to retain control over key industries and at least those important in generating the revenues for the government and such. Such requirement that the governments deregulate markets and try to allow more competition ends up resulting in more control unfortunately. The overt nationalization, under such circumstances, cannot work. The government had to show, at least as apparently as possible, that there exist competition, or potential for competition. This caused the rise of ‘Pseudo-Privatization’, where the government retains almost full control over the key industries or prefered businesses that are generating lots of profits. This is made possible by complicating different processes and issuing highly exclusive licenses for starting the businesses.

Asian societies have not been comfortable with intense competition – mainly because they had a great culture of collaboration, and emphasized the importance of working together in the business in order to prosper. As such, the governments would like to retain as much control as possible to reduce uncertainty that may be present in an event when key industries are bought over by foreginers. The intention of pseudo-privatization is largely good, to protect the interest of the nation and its people. Fortunately, to privatize would mean the need to raise prices, and that compromises the interest of the consumer and this have not been solved mainly because the owners of the firms eventually benefit from the higher prices. It is under such circumstances that the government and firm owners are gaining more control rather than less.

To the distaste of citizens, there’s another scenario that’s worse off. Governments try to raise revenue by deregulating a industry that is highly profitable, then allow competition while they own the original firm through government-link companies or huge corporations started by the family members of those who may be in the government (though it may not necesssarily constitute neopotism) and this would result in the non-allocative efficient equilibrium across such industries – highly undesirable by the standards of the college economic textbook.

The general strategy of pseudo-privatization is making it obligatory for the firms to expose accounting information and company data by forcing them to list publicly when they attain a certain size, then the main ‘investing arm’ of the government will try takeover firms that have been privatize or capture rival firms with their [infinite] financial power. They would then manage the firms professionally, generating enough revenue to cover up such costs and advertising mainly to give foreigners the illusion that the market have been deregulated. This translates into unnecesary spending and thus worse consumer welfare.

It would then perhaps be better sometimes for firms to be nationalized if they are just pseudo-privatised because it simply creates a worse scenario for the consumers. It is important, though that we recognize that these pseudo-privatized firms helps create jobs and thus stimulates and propel the economy – something deemed extremely desirable in a society in need of demand and purchasing power. So looking back at the point I made earlier, small markets, should still have lots of pseudo-privatized firms; so that they may have a chance to be as good as our nation.

Life’s probably getting a little too dry and some incidents prove that my sense of humour and wit is getting distorted by the pressures of education (or otherwise). At least, they happen in a way that makes me laugh – so I must say there’s no harm sharing.

Few days back, when I was lazing around, refusing to acknowledge the fact that examination is just 400 hours away, and playing Tennis on my Sony Ecrisson, the phone rang. The handphone, not my house phone. Being alone in my bedroom, I looked around, hesitated for a moment or two, and looked at the screen to find out which irritating friend was preventing me from enjoying my game, I realised the number came from an unknown caller. Annoyed, I picked up the phone with the characteristic dry ‘hello’ that arises in calls that irritates me.

Caller: *In a shocked-that-someone-picked-up-the-call tone* Oh! Hello! Good Afternoon!

Vib: *Pretending to be concerned but absolutely clueless tone* Yes?

Caller: I am from Lifestyle Limited (or whatever lameshit corporation that does cold-calling) and we are promoting this cruise package for…

Vib: …I think you called the wrong number… *Confidently, and eager to get back to the game of Tennis on the handphone*

Caller: *Concerned and confused* …Er, why do you say so?

Vib: *Loss for words*…Er… Because this is a handphone number… *Slapping myself for the lame excuse and the predicted subsequent lameness*

Caller: Oh… *Loss for words and absolutely stumped and confused* So whose handphone is this?

Vib: *Decides that the opportunity to lame around has arrived*…Er…I have no idea… *In the spoilt-American-kid-with-funny-accent way of speaking* …this phone just appeared in my house …

Caller: *Totally freaked out and anxious to end the conversation* Er…okay, bye bye!

So I just invented another method to rid myself of dumb cold-callers. I later perfected this technique, adding a ‘Hohoho, God bless you!’ before the call ends abruptly to amuse myself further. I’ll probably try it when the next cold-caller comes.

Next up, my mom has been lame all the while, but this time she totally breakthrough.

Vib: This piece of essay is totally crap…

Vib’s Mom: So you are implying that your essay is totally prawns?

Vib: *Absolutely loss for words. Stares at Mom*

Vib’s Mom: *Pretends nothing happened*

That’s a rather typical day in my house so to speak but I am damn put off by this lame one that I decided to blog anyway.

Step into the Popular Bookstore in the top floor of Majestic months back and the Chinese-educated applaud their great efforts for getting in the majestic array of Chinese books, that ranges from translated literature, arts, magazines, and even deluxe package novel series. For decades, the true Chinese of Singapore have not had such an academic haven. It is unfortunate that Chinese scholars have this really great sense of thrift that often translates into dog-earred books dumped back on the shelf, stacks of unsold but thoroughly read novel series, weird people who are strangely familiar because you see them in the bookstore reading some books every single time you go. The courageous attempt by the bookstore to slash prices proved further that these scholars has great affinity for money.

Alas, English books packed shelves eventually began emerging from the majestically designed, formerly ‘all-chinese’ bookstore. I believe it would soon take over half of the huge hall. Thinking back about the times when I frequent the Calligraphy shelf (now displaced by the English stuff), I began to regret not buying certain books I have come across. I took for granted that I could finish that few books just by visiting the bookstore now and then. The same applies for some other inspirational sort of books (but I can heck those).

I guess bookstores have to be caught in this dilemma of balancing profits with sincere encouragement for customers to get great books. That’s the case of publishers as well. Good books that could have otherwise been published was not because the publishers didn’t think they were profitable. In effect, the market system is definitely not in sync with the academic world. Looking at this fundamental assumption of rationality of consumers, we may have to sigh. The brave attempt by Popular to rejuvenate the ‘Chinese’ kind of reading culture failed pretty terribly because of several factors – though there are still many things to be happy about.

Firstly, the majority of Singaporeans (those born and raised in singapore) who would read Chinese books are really limited. Often, I find myself the only kid (maybe I am not) in the Chinese section (which takes up three quarter of the space in the bookstore). Most people at the ‘Chinese-educated’ age are at the financial-sensitive age where their price elasticity of demand for books are really high and thus, it is hard for the bookstore to extract profits from them. The second group of customers, those foreign residents educated in Chinese might be attracted but they really take up too little of the whole market and more importantly, the Popular@Majestic isn’t really that popular so to speak.

Life as an economic individual in this world isn’t going to be as smooth-riding nowadays.

Wanted to write another posts ranting about the dumb Singaporean/Asian lifestyle that requires that we mug and work harder during holidays but I decided that it was unnecessary in getting people convinced that we are not living very well – I guess it is too obvious.

Nah, don’t feel like writing anymore. Mugging Time.