Tag Archives: motivation

My artist self

There seems to be some conventional or prevailing wisdom about people having to keep to their lanes in different ways. So there are so-called norms for being a worker, being a father, a brother, a son and so on. Overlay that with the dimension of culture, including heritage and religion, you get a different set of different norms that as an individual, you are expected to display.

And so all my life I’ve somehow been defying classifications. One of the big divisions in school I had was between a ‘science’ student and an ‘art’ student. In high school, I defied that classification by doing arts (not just humanities but even fine arts, digital arts, and film) alongside all of the sciences (biology, physics, chemistry). When I entered junior college, I took two science subjects and two arts subjects as my main subjects.

And when it came to college, I just had to go to a school that offered a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Economics when in most places, Economics was considered a Bachelor of Arts (BA). And then in my masters of economics, despite joining the advanced mathematics course, I also did a module in Economic & Business history.

I often recognise the value and importance of arts despite being an economist and finding it difficult to quantify the value that arts generate. Life in Singapore has become so draining and taxing on the human spirit often because we don’t know how arts play a role in helping us recover and restoring dimensions of our lives that we fail to see or identify. In recent times, as I caught plays from Checkpoint theatre and various films or shorts produced by Singaporeans about life in Singapore, even poetry that is written about life (eg. Government Haikus), I begin to see more and more that we all need arts more than we know. It could well be what will keep us alive.

Strategy and the Greeks

I was watching Carl Sagan’s explanation of how the Greeks knew that the earth was spherical and how Eratosthenes (then head librarian of Alexandria) calculated the circumference of the Earth without even leaving his home country. It’s a brilliant one worth watching:

Brilliant men in the past would have mastered astronomy, geometry, and mathematics and played the role of military strategists. The ability to make observations in nature and draw interpretations were essential to determine the approach on the battlefield.

Yet, today, with technologies supporting the interpretation of observations and supplying multitude of information to leaders, there’s less of a need for the ‘strategist’. Rather, the tasks of looking and interpreting the various information is decentralised and the information comes together already processed for decision-making.

In such a world, we use resources to displace thinking. Eratosthenes will have to pit his wits against the rocket ships, satellites and scientists with funds for expedition who will say that his calculation yields a figure which is ~2.5% off the mark.

The role of strategic thinking has diminished in importance in the societies which are highly developed and well-resourced. Every now and then, someone comes from seemingly nowhere and overcome an incumbent with all the position, and the resources. A David and Goliath story. In many ways, DeepSeek is an example of that; especially when put in contrast with Sam Altman’s response to a question from an audience at a talk where he said that any worthy competitor to OpenAI will have to invest massive resources and datasets to train another LLM to achieve the prowess of ChatGPT.

I think we need to go back to a culture that appreciates strategic thinking and this sort of brilliance. And believe once again that it isn’t just about resources and overwhelming others with abundance. For those who feels limited by their resources, let the ability to think strategically provide a channel and means to defeat the giants.

Hydrogen’s bad news

Things hasn’t been the most positive for hydrogen the past 2 years or so. Hyzon Motor is on the verge of ‘giving up’, while When one look back, it is a wonder why we felt comfortable ignoring some of the bigger problems associated with hydrogen. It is definitely less ‘trendy’ to tout hydrogen as the solution for the energy transition these days.

One of the challenge about the climate and energy transition is that it is a transition. And that means there is going to be change happening over time; and the challenge is that we don’t really know what the end point is in terms of the technology and pathways even when we know that we’re trying to have a go at net zero.

In the meantime, as we struggle to determine what we’ll use to fuel our aircrafts or vessels, we are making decisions on replacing these equipment, and trying to project cashflows over an asset lifespan or 20-30 years. These all without the certainty of the fuel being available is extremely challenging. So instead, we are more likely to bet on things not changing rather than things changing.

Hydrogen continues to face an uphill battle when it comes to the science, the technology and economics. But there is still good reasons for us to continue refining the technology we have. In the mean time, while we are still trying to decarbonise what we can, we try to leverage the resources that are available more immediately. We can optimise our biofuel supply chains more to achieve lower carbon intensity. Along that journey, we can improve our traceability of feedstocks and biofuel supply chains.

Now, biofuels or any of the new fuels will never be as ‘cheap’ as fossil fuel. And just because they are chemically almost equivalent to the hydrocarbons we dig from the ground doesn’t mean they are the same. This means we will have to continue working at pricing carbon and allowing the real price of carbon to hit all of us. Governments can protect the economically vulnerable not by blocking the transition but ensuring that more and more of that carbon revenues gets directed to support the vulnerable who may not be able to deal with the cost from the transition.

Biofuels could even be a commercialisation pathway for green hydrogen as the hydrogen can contribute to boosting the biofuel yields of organic feedstocks in the FT-Gasification pathway and improve the overall economics of the project when there is access to cheap renewable electricity. It’s almost like blending e-fuels into the mix already. This is a plausible intermediate step for us to encourage more green hydrogen production to sufficiently create more scale to bring down the costs.

The technology surrounding logistics for hydrogen then needs to improve before the end-use equipment would transform. Changing end-use equipment is still the hardest to do. Even if it’s just the heavy industrial users who have to change.

So the good news is that we may still eventually land on hydrogen in some shape or form. It may not be what we are envisioning now, but it’s vital to recognise that the time horizon is probably a lot more stretched out than we think.

Pie-eating contests

Charlie Munger once said of the legal profession that it was very much like a pie-eating contest where the winner gets to eat more pie.

I laughed at that.

Because many other professions are the same. The capable staff gets more work to do; and having proven himself, gets promoted into handling more responsibilities.

But for most part, workaholics love their pie.

And to a large extent, for some, they don’t care about winning or losing at pie-eating. What matters to them is they get to eat pie.

Maybe that appreciation for work is what we need. Not to obsess so much over the winning or losing but instead, focus on the pie. And when the pie is no longer tasty, you quit. Because there wasn’t so much at stake to begin with.

Touting on streets

I’m not sure if it’s just me, but these days, when I’m walking in public spaces, I get really tense and stressed when people approach me to try and get me to do something. Something inside me feels like they are stealing my attention and time without my permission. Yet, at the same time, I do want to be kind and empathise with the person working hard on the street.

Forgiveness and repentance

Someone asked whether God forgives every single sin conceivable or possible. Most likely, the person asking the question thinks of ‘sin’ as some immoral, atrocious deed. As Christians, we see sin as inherently a rebellion against God and His order.

So, I’d answer that God, indeed, can forgive every single sin. And He has shown that by sending Christ to die on the cross. He made Christ pay the price for every sin.

The follow-on question, of course, is, “So why isn’t everyone saved?”

That is because I’d continue, “Every sin is forgiven, but not every sinner is repentant.”

The modern narrative about wrong-doing and forgiveness is such that forgiveness is an antidote against resentment, as if the forgiveness is for the victim or recipient of the wrongdoing, rather than the wrongdoer. And then that’s it; we say nothing about the wrong-doer or the part he/she has. Apologies? Making a restitution? What if that is beyond the person? The very least is repentance. Repentance is an appreciation of what sin constitutes, acknowledgement of culpability, and recognising the forgiveness for what it is, and subsequently being liberated from the guilt.

Story of guilt

I was listening to this episode of John Dickson’s Undeceptions Podcast, in which he and his guests discuss Guilt. With sin being a vital part of the Christian faith, it is unsurprising that a Christian podcast will explore this topic of guilt. What is surprising to me is that the culture of victimhood that we find ourselves in today is so intertwined with the sense of guilt that is ever-present in our lives. I say it as though it’s a statement of truth, but don’t take my word here for it.

Playing the victim has become so much more acceptable, so it has become a way to avoid culpability. If you’re the victim, it’s hard to be in the wrong; in fact, you’ve probably been wronged by some perpetrator – whether it is the system or some rules and process that didn’t have you in mind or just someone else! Moreover, we are now more conscious of the ‘victim-blaming’ behaviours, so it is all the more advantageous to identify oneself with and as the victim.

Yet in trying to stave off our guilt about the conditions of life that we might have to go through, the sense that we did not live the best life we could have, we might also take away our agency. When you cast yourself as the victim, you’re just someone subject to others and everything else.

What if we don’t have to be the victim to be non-guilty?

Stress from uncertainty

There is a fair bit of stress that is associated with uncertainty and we know it. Yet modernity gives us a lot of tools to prepare, and make certain bits of the future which only makes us crave for more control and perhaps heighten our expectations that the uncertainty can be eliminated.

So part of our stress now comes from the expectation of certainty. We no longer how to enjoy flexibility, and embrace the dynamism that exists in uncertainty. And then when everything is under control, we find ourselves bored, craving for some kind of variation and so on.

As the aspects of work that has complete certainty slowly gets outsourced to computers, robots and perhaps even artificial intelligence, we are going to be getting the harder bits of work. The ones that require us to actually embrace uncertainty; the type that involves no one knowing the answer. We need to regain our ability to think and solve problems bit by bit as opposed to treating everything as though there has to be a right answer and we have to get it right.

Grasping mistakes

We are embarrassed about our mistakes. We need to get over them, and often, we do so by avoiding them. Please don’t talk about it or revisit the experience. That can be psychologically comforting. But are we doing justice to the cost that we bear for the mistakes?

I’ve written quite a fair bit in the past about the social or culture attitude towards mistakes, and I think a lot of the ideas are still worth exploring:

All of this is so that we can build and develop wisdom, where we know how to work within and navigate a dynamic environment. The problem with theoretical approaches and specific methodologies to achieving outcomes is that they assume that there is an ordered, stable environment within which we conduct our activities. Sometimes, that is just not exactly the case.