Kevin Low

My family is currently fostering yet another Singapore Special (the affectionate term we use to refer to the stray mongrels found in Singapore); he is really sweet, gentle and while he was called a monkey by the previous fosters, has not given us any trouble from ill will. The challenge we have is that he is quite anxious, and jittery most of the times when encountering new things outside. Nevertheless, he is curious and learning fast, so we hope he will overcome his fears one by one and be more adoptable.

No dog is perfect and for most of these mixed breeds who has been living on the street, they are usually naturally selected to be the ones who are quick to run from danger, constantly hiding away, hating novelty and see strangers as bad. These behaviours which lead to their survival out there are mostly driven by fear and anxiety. But these aren’t the behaviours we want in dogs who are pets. They make for poor social companions and have bad social etiquette.

However, they can be trained in the medium to longer term. Mostly through different games, activities and exercises. Looking at my new foster puppy reminds me of just being Singaporeans. We tend to have the reputation of being goody kids, obedient but it’s mostly because of fear. I see how much of my foster dog’s potential forgone because he is so fearful all the time. His great intelligence, sensitivity and gentleness is gone mostly because fear is so overriding. We humans are not so different and I think as Singaporeans, we are mostly still dwelling in a lot of fear. Of the unknowns, of not being well-liked, of being on the ‘wrong side’, of not having enough, and the list goes on.

Does GDP really give us a good sense of standards of living? Is the English Premier League winning team better football players than those who lost? Is the student who scored higher on a Chemistry test better in Chemistry than the one who scored lower? Does getting into McKinsey means you are better than someone who didn’t get in?

What does a figure, threshold, passing line, timing, grade really say about people, teams, organisations, countries? They give rather general, objective facts: eg. A team scored more goals; or a student answered more questions correctly. But they don’t easily translate to ‘this is a better team’ or that ‘this is a smarter student’. Maybe, but there is a myriad of reasons for that translation to fail. And we acknowledge these measures to be imperfect.

So why do we still act as if those figures, lines, scores really mean those things? How do we find better ways to measure things and get people to stop relying on imperfect measures that does no better than random guessing? How do we teach people to handle things that are in-between; how should they approach those imperfect but still valid measures? What is the story they should be telling themselves?

Lots of questions, more to ponder than to answer. The trouble is, are we even asking ourselves those questions? Are we thinking about them? Are we finding that these answers would be key to unlock a better future?

When we are confronted with taking an action that adheres to the spirit of a rule but breaks the rule, what do we do? Does that action honour the overall spirit of the society in setting the rule, or does it honour the protection of ourselves instead? And when protecting ourselves, is it at the expense of someone else?

When we follow standard operating procedures that no longer really serve the objectives they were created for, what are we honouring? The people who wrote the manual? The process itself? Or the old objectives?

When we are confronted with evidence that turns in face of what we believe in; do we change our perception of that evidence to continue perpetuating our beliefs or do we change our beliefs instead? What are we honouring when we do things one way or another? Do we honour our beliefs? Or are we honouring the system of evidence-based decision-making?

If all we want is to honour rules, objectives that do not change, or to rely more on evidence than on beliefs, then we want to use technology that help us with rule-keeping, process-running and decision-making. But for everything else, there are humans up for it.

I’ve been in Ghana, at a village in central region, where people would spend time in the afternoon having tea together and just watching vehicles and livestock pass the village without doing much. They probably did a lot of work in the morning already at their fields and it was too hot to work anyways. So they rested.

In New Zealand, the dairy industry peaks at a certain period where the cycles of the cows’ lactation were somehow optimised. People worked intensively during the peak periods and then there would be lull periods where people worked shorter hours and produced much less.

In many sectors and aspects of life, there are seasons, cycles and time of activity, and lull. Yet the modern, urban life seems to think that productivity is achieved by squeezing every ounce of time, forgetting that resting can be productive. The mobile devices we carry with us do indeed give us greater ability to do work on the fly but all that attention, and capacity might be wearing us thin and wearing us out.

Over the past decades where we experienced the most improvements in quality of life and changes in standards of living in the world, it was mostly when productivity was gained through the world working together more and more, through trade and international supply chains, smoothing out volatility through more accurate transmission of price and volume signals. Taking this to the next level, of individual productivity, will unlikely make that much of a dent for the progress of humanity even if it makes one feel great.

Perhaps then, it’s time to recognise the cycles and seasons we ought to have in our lives.

This is going to be a very light-hearted and very Singaporean piece.

I put on my shorts, don on my SAF admin tee before carrying a NDP tote bag with some NTUC vouchers and tissue packets, slipping on my sandals preparing to leave the house. Yes, I honestly can’t really be bothered with how I dress especially when going around the neighbourhood. And these days, neighbourhood can even consist of shopping for stuff or dinning out at Orchard Road. It dawned on me that I’ve basically become an uncle since many years ago. Yes, I also drink Teh Si Kosong or Kopi Si Kosong, mainly because sugar free, and my childhood asthma has given me a hot-drink habit.

I wonder what being an uncle really is. At the most superficial level, it’s just having a niece or nephew. Or friends with kids? But really, entering uncle-hood is about going past the level of maturity of a youth concerned about how he looks and the impression he gives ladies. It is when you embrace the freedom of being able to dress and speak comfortably with less restraint from the social confidence of having been around long enough.

After all, uncles are the ones carrying Decathlon small Quecha bags (which used to cost $3.90 but now $4.90 due to inflation), wearing Decathlon tees and shorts, or often also some other tees either from Thailand or bought from some other Pasar Malam (in pre-covid era).

This is not to be confused with ‘boomer uncles’. They take uncle-hood to another level. They are prudent about expenditures, often complaining about price increases. They take an interest in politics and current affairs, politely offering their feedback on a range of policies to younger ones, without necessarily desiring to take change into their own hands.

But there are also pretty great uncles, like Mr Loo Cheng Chuan of the 1M65 movement, who have been doling out less conventional advice and wisdom. As an influencer, he’s been really active and have generated a following with his genuine, Singaporean-style sharing without too much of the embellishments that is out to impress.

When we step into the workforce from university, the transition feels quite natural. It is more of a change of cars than shifting of gears so we are more receptive of change and open to whatever culture we may have to learn and fit in. Whatever we pick up at the job will be seen as “what’s how work life is like”. So we accept it because we generalise it.

But what if we knew things can be different? We can have more holidays, we don’t have to stay in office past 7pm, or how things can work well differently? Then it might be harder for us to accept. So it is critical that we know our possibilities. Not the vague ones but real concrete ones – through work offers, actual job experiences.

That’s why in your second or third job, it gets harder to make compromises, and you become more assertive. And in today’s job markets where labour is tight, companies are often complaining about workers switching or being self-entitled. The truth is that companies can no longer just force staff to fit into a culture but to hire for a culture they want to create, and have that culture attract more of the people we want to work with.

I’m not saying you should be switching jobs often and keep tempting yourself with other offers; but it is important to recognise that the possibilities are limited to the boundaries that you define for yourself within the environment. And whether you’re trying to fit into that small tight space, or something much bigger.

When you share your problems with a friend, or with the team, or even the organisation whom you think is at fault, are you venting or trying to come up with a solution. In reality, a problem always bifurcates into two separate issues, one being the actual fact of something unresolved, and the other being the worries, projections of the future implications of the unresolved problems weighing down on one emotionally.

Often, we need to deal with the emotional aspect of the problem before we can deal with the physical aspects. And that is the reason customer service is so important, the sense that someone is on the other end of the line, listening, empathising and working with you to move towards something helps lay the foundation for solving the genuine problem. But then we have to be frank and open to ourselves and those we are engaging, that we are venting, and not in the mode for working on solutions yet.

Because there will be people who don’t want to deal with your venting nonsense; they prefer to get down to the problem rather than dance around it. They would be really happy to work with you to get to a solution though. So be clear what are your objectives – to yourself, as well as others. When you are ready for the solution, and to get on with the hard work, you can then get on to the real problem-solving.

The removal of mid-year examinations was heralded as a bit of a success to move away from the traditional education system that was seen as rigid, fixated on testing. But it has caused anxiety once again as the main stakeholders including parents, teachers and students themselves became unsure whether more stakes are going to be piled on the end-of-year examination and they also wonder what kind of measure would be a good way of knowing where the student is by way of mastering the materials.

If you ask me, the exams were a poor way to determine the level of mastery of the students anyways. And ultimately, it is not exams that we need to abolish but the attitude of over-emphasizing it. I still remember distinctly my Chinese teacher for Secondary 3 and 4 telling the class, ‘grades are not important; what is important is the process’ but goes on to get students to memorise the materials in order to score A1 on exam. He took away my motivation to gain true mastery of the subject when he gave me 2/3 for forming my own sentences rather than regurgitating the ones he gave us to memorise. When asked why I was marked down, he said it was easier for him to mark and determine that I was correct when I gave him a ‘perfect answer’ which I was supposed to memorise.

This overall society’s idea of education as being about perfect answers, grades and studying for exams, is what is preventing us from truly moulding a future.

I’ve been thinking more and more about cognitive flexibility and I begin to realise that besides being able to drop our expectations immediately once reality deviates, it is also important to stop dwelling on mistakes. Rather, it is to use mistakes in the right way. For immediate mistakes, that has no real impact, like a wrong word used in a speech, it’s great to be able to gloss over it and continue with the performance.

For those that takes longer to be revealed, it is important that we respond to it by ensuring that we can take follow-up actions so that you can turn whatever comes up into something of value. To look upon ‘mistakes’ as opportunities to right a course, but not to necessary try to restore things to what we had originally expected. Rather, make it better, in view of the context of things.

That is the great wisdom from Miles Davies.