Financial Freedom SG

I recently wrote back to two different HR people following up on two ex-colleagues who worked with and reported to me in my past job as they were applying for new jobs. It seems that more companies are following up on the referees and references to check about the potential recruits that they are hiring.

Some of them follow up on the telephone, while others prefer a written short report covering areas that they are interested to know more about the incoming recruit.
I hope that I have given a fair and objective reference check and that they land the jobs.

In my past two employment opportunities, I did not seek the job, it actually came to me via people that I know from my previous job. The previous job I landed in was because an ex-colleague recommended me. The current job is because one of the manager in a vendor company who worked with me on a project recommended me.

I read an article which argues that as you become more experienced, it is your contacts and people who have worked with you that helps you progress and land you a new job. So when working, it is important to be professional, not play one party against another and also to lend help when necessary.

I believe in the mantra that you praise publicly and scold privately. The recently retired football manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, is a master of keeping dirty linen private. He can throw teacups and kick soccer boots at people (ask David Beckham) behind closed doors, but in public, he doesn’t slam or put down his own players.

It makes people realise that it is okay to make genuine mistakes and get berated behind closed doors but you don’t get humiliated in public.

In the different jobs that I have done, I think I can count on one hand the number of people that I will really NOT like to work with again. The majority are people that have strengths that overcomes any weaknesses that they may have.

I hope the same applies to me, so that is why some of these people recommended me when they have a position vacant.

It is these contacts that you make in your career that is more important, I think, than the salary that you are earning.

So go update your Linkedin to make sure that you have all your colleagues, friends and acquaintances that you have made in your job linked to your profile as you never know if one of them will give you an offer you cannot refuse.

Encountered an MRT breakdown in the NEL line yesterday evening. The end result was complete chaos as the bus stops were crowded, buses were jam packed, there was non-existent signs of breakdown, no public address at NEL, no free shuttle bus.

I didn’t wait to find out what happen or for instructions on what to do when there was a crowd of people waiting outside the NEL turnstiles. i immediately headed for the bus stop to take a bus ride home. What took less than 10 minutes ride became a stressful 35 minutes journey on a packed bus in a breakdown induced jam as people drove to pick up their loved ones who were trapped because of the breakdown.

It seems that after numerous breakdowns, the transportation companies are still at a loss about what to do in a breakdown.

I’d like to suggest that they take a leaf out of the Tokyo management of such an event.

I was caught in such a situation while travelling in Japan with my wife. What stood out for me was that the staff were well prepared for such emergencies and the stress of such event was taken out as standby or actual station staff were prepared with free tickets to other train and bus systems to take you to the station or near to where you want to go to.

It is possible if the transportation network is as dense, as duplicated and as complex as the Tokyo network. Their trains are on time, every time and the delay is at most 18 seconds on average unless there is a breakdown or major disaster like an earthquake.

Singapore’s train network while good is far from the world class standards of the Tokyo network.

 

In the event of a train disruption, I will like to suggest the below, with D being the moment a train or the system is being disrupted.

D+5 min- Driver or staff has tried emergency SOPs to revive or restart the system and train with no success.

i. Company central HQ is informed (if they were yet to know).

ii. Message is sent out for train disruption to all public channels (apps, facebook, radio, tv stations, sms etc). Staff on leave or standby staff are activated to stations affected.

iii. Staff at all stations is informed of the disruption and where it occurs regardless of whether they are the ones affected so that this is made known to all commuters and they can plan for alternate routes.

iv. Signage is place at all turnstiles with the information of the disruption.

v. Standard message is played at all MRT station of the disruption.

vi. Shuttle bus companies are activated by HQ. Buses do not go to every station but from one station to one or two stations along the affected line. The buses loop around and carry on for the opposite direction. This will mean that the queues are dispersed.

vii. Staff at affected stations hands out free tickets for commuters to take alternate routes to destinations.

viii. Taxi companies are activated to send their taxis to pick up stranded commuters and encourage commuters to share the cab for common destinations. Taxi drivers pick up these free tickets to exchange for cash or free rental for the day.

ix. Buses on affected routes are made free for commuters and more buses are channelled to affected routes.

x. Radio and mass media communications advise commuters not to arrange for pick ups from family as this will jam roads. But if they do insist on picking up, to also pick other stranded commuters in exchange for the tickets which can be exchanged for cashcard top up.

xi. Pre appointed areas designated for pick up from free shuttle bus and taxis.

 

D+30 minutes, the standby staff should have started to arrive to ease the load of the existing staff. Additional tickets for issuance may have to be delivered from HQ to affected stations. If situation is worsened or widespread, more private buses may be activated to cope with the breakdown.

Depending on the number of stations down, the breakdown is coded yellow, orange and red and the level of resources and activation of public resources is levelled for accordingly to the state of breakdown.

Cost for all the above measures to be borne by the transport company who had the breakdown.

The crux will be the free tickets given out which should be valid only for the day of the breakdown and only exchanged for cash card top up or rental for taxis which should go somewhat to prevent people from lining up just to get the free tickets.

If there are redundancies planned to the transit systems like bypass lines for trains to go past stranded trains, alternative transportation lines like what you see for the Tokyo subway, that will also help commuters plan a more roundabout  to skirt around the breakdown area. That will also help in easing the transport load that the transport companies are facing too.

Just some thoughts for contingency planning for breakdown.

My wife got herself an iphone 4 and pass me her old iphone 3 recently. So have been exploring the different functions of the new phone.

The key thing is that with the iphone it really allows you to carry the internet with you in a pocket. Something that the rest of the iphone imitators have been quick to ape and mimic.

So what is the another thing that makes the experience useful?

I will say that it is the apps that you can download from the many makers of the apps. So it has been a good experience downloading and trying out the various finance related apps.

These are whaf i have downloaded and found useful:

1. Bloomberg. This app allows you to read snippets of the financial news happening around the world. Also gives you updates on the various indices and stock prices.

2. Piggie. A useful app that allows you to key in what you spend to keep track of your expenses and income. Great for budgeting.

3. POEMS. I use the POEMS site to buy and sell shares and ETFs so I downloaded their app to check out its features. Haven't use it as yet to buy or sell anything, but it looks easy to use and intuitive enough.

4. OCBC. The banks are into apps in a big way and one of the world's safest bank is also into it. Went in to check out what they offered and see the bank account. Not like it is rolling in with interest but banks are into mobile platforms and embracing technology.

That were some of the more useful apps which are free. I have checked other apps but some like the Economist takes ages to load.

What about you? Found any interesting apps to share?

Just a few more days left before the nearly the whole of Singapore gets to vote except for the poor folks at Tanjong Pagar GRC who didn’t get to vote because of the make shift opposition team were late by 35 seconds.

I wonder if the guy timing the lateness or punctuality is using a Rolex and his time is according to the standard time?

Anyway, back to the elections.

This is the election that is going to define if Singaporeans deserve a working democracy or if the citizens here have been cowed into submission to accept a quasi democracy.

I have sold off quite a bit of my stock holdings last week as I anticipate that there could be a negative reaction from fund managers if or when they discover on the 7th that the PAP has lost quite a few seats or even lost the majority. They will withdraw the funds back overseas and the market could dip quite a bit.

Then again the scenario that the PAP wins all the seats and there is no opposition could also pan out as the two opposition members, bravely or foolishly, gave up their relatively safe seats to venture to unchartered territory to try to win a GRC or two. For the people who don’t know the Singapore political scene, Singapore must be the only place on earth where it isn’t a one man one vote system but when you vote, you vote a team of 4, 5 or even 6 people in the team. Even if one is a free rider or you absolutely don’t like one, they still get in.

So I have pre-empted the “sell in May and go away” saying by one week. I will be waiting for an opportunity to go back into the market when things have calmed itself down.

What about you? What do you feel about Singapore’s election and how it will affect the market?

Saw this interesting article about “10 Signs It’s Time to Quit Your Job” and it made me smile.

There are a lot of reasons why people leave their jobs and I left mine about half a year ago. Some of the signs are there, but not others like “You don’t like most of your coworkers.”

I’ve been blessed with good co-workers so far. Touch wood.

And looking at the signs, there are some that I think are more important to me than others. Like a bad boss, not making enough, and feeling stressed.

While it is stressful looking for a job, one of the perks of it is that you get to choose your new boss also. Most people forget that the interview is a two way process. Your potential boss choose or may not choose you. You can do the same.

Being paid better is often a reason for people to jump ship and move, while it isn’t the be all and end all, our dear friend Maslow did come up with the hierarchy of needs.

At the bottom is your physical needs of food, water, safety etc. That is where the moolah comes in useful to pay for all of that too.

The thing is that once that need is fulfilled, people look for other things. You can have all the money, but if the job stressed you out, make you feel like a loser, where you don’t learn anything new, you probably won’t stay for long.

So are you paid what you are worth? If you are, you are probably one of the lucky few who are on their way to financial freedom.

If not, what are doing about it?

Did something which the normal man on the street will encounter if you don't have a car. Like try taking a taxi early morning at 6.30 am.

Maybe I was stupid or naive.

I was trying taking the cab after the midnight surcharge had ended, but just before the peak hour surcharges kicked in.

What happened? I couldn't get a single cab. Those that were on the road were doing their own admin. Like ferrying their own kids to school, taking a leak, going for breakfast. Whatever.

So I tried calling the cab by dialing their hot-line. Which was really hot. It was so hot that i couldn't get through for 15 minutes.

By that time it was 7am, 30 minutes later. I had started calling only 15 minutes into my wait.

Suffice to say that it took me one complete hour to finally get a cab from a driver who heard what I had to say and drove out of the way to pick me up.

So in one day, there was utter frustration and also daylight for me. Cost of taxi ride? Almost $40 for the surcharge, call booking and a long journey on roads with heavy traffic.

Moral of the story for me?

Not to buy a car :) But to take the MRT if i could to the nearer location, so that I have more options. And to start out a journey early. Also the taxi driver advised that I can use the sms next time and bypass the phone operator.

Sorry to whine, but I remember just a few years ago when I had to go back for reservist and never had to face such problems as what I have encountered today. Guess Singapore is changing and in some ways, not for better.

I saw this post on “How to Test Response” and equally importantly a video about a kid in India who knows quite a few languages (in this case an understatement) to sell his peacock feathers.

If you cannot see the embedded video, go to the link here: Lingo Kid.

If you didn’t click go and see the post by Ramit, do so. It may not look investing related, but it has the same principles.

How do you trust what you are doing is correct?

You can go back to first principles, to test and see the results or just lie to yourself. The second option is easier.

In the post he has crystalised how to change something to doing these four things:

1. Just do something different
2. Acknowledge that knowing is not enough
3. Chunk it. Break it up to easier bits and do it bit by bit.
4. Test it.

So if you aren’t an investor. It’s time to be one. If you aren’t a saver. It’s time to do something different.

Set targets for things you aim to do and break it up to bits and pieces so that it is easier to do it. Save $25 more a week. In 4 weeks it’d be $100. In a year it’s $1300 more.

It’s puny but it could be the start of your investment monies.

For me, after reading the post and watching the video where the little kid puts all the salesmen and saleswomen I have known or seen to shame, my resolution is to test my ideas for investing and note it down.

This helps to crystalise the investment thoughts and ideas that I have to see if it works in the real world.

Investing is hard enough without your stock analyst/ expert giving you two very different opinions about the same stock in the same report.

The brokerage can send you their analyst reports that they come up with each trading day. Sometimes, it is just for entertainment. Like the one I received today.

When I saw the first part about Genting Singapore being an ‘outperform’, it felt good to have just bought some shares of that yesterday. Then I fell off my chair when I saw that in the same report, it recommended you sell it.

It’s like going to the casino and you buy both the red and black colours.

The only way the analyst will be wrong on this counter is if the stock went sideways and don’t move. And it could. I kid you not. I once bought a counter that never moved for a year in terms of its price.

I have a problem that when the stock analyst give their target price and opinions, it is often without regards to the timeframe that they are looking at. For example, is their opinion valid for just 6 months? Or is it one year target? Because it makes better sense if you analyse it technically and say that it points to a short term move downwards but in a year or two timeframe, you expect the prices to be this much higher.

More importantly, it fits the analogy that Warren Buffett’s mentor, Benjamin Graham, said of stock markets:

In the short term it is a voting machine, but in the long term it is a weighing machine.

So, the people who trade stocks professionally may not have as big an advantage over you and me.     

Saw the story of one unnamed Singapore tycoon who lost $100 million and who did not even bat an eyelid.

And then read on Yahoo, the story of one armless Chinese guy called Liu Wei who won the China version of China Got Talent.

Watch the amazing video here if you can’t see the embedded video. If you don’t understand Chinese, just skip to around 2:20 to watch the performance.

Recently got my wife to finally open a stock trading account with Phillip Securities. She now has a POEMS account. The other day, we received a mailer from them saying that her trading account is linked to the bank account.

So technically, we can pay through that account for the shares we were going to buy. So I put up two buy orders on the Internet on Saturday bidding at the selling price at the close of the last market day.

Both were done on Monday, and now it is already T+2 days but there is nothing on the EPS screen when we log on to the bank’s Internet banking screen.

I had to take out my dusty chequebook and write out the amount to pay for shares that should have been already been paid for. Instead of fretting and getting my wife all worked up about making a trip to the cashier office tomorrow to pay for the shares.

I am still hoping that tomorrow being T+3, the contract order will miraculously appear on the bank’s EPS screen and my wife doesn’t have to make a trip down. Or I will get a earful from her. Again :)

Wish me luck tomorrow.

And oh, SGX, MAS, CDP and banks, please get your act together and work out something to ease or speed up the payment modes. If one fine day we move to a T+1 day for payment of shares bought, you cannot have banks taking two business days to transfer money between them over the Internet. Or have EPS set up but not reflecting trades or contracts till T+3. And aren’t we supposed to be in the internet age where everything is fast or be “faster, cheaper.”

Read on Yahoo news about “Food Blogger Who Demands Free Meal Sparks Outrage Online.”

I’ve blogged about the need for more frugal living so that one can keep expenses down and save more. But there is a difference between being cheapskate and just a plain ****.

To be a blogger whose views are being read by many, there has to be a basic sense of ethics. If you are paid for doing a review, I believe it is only honest to state plainly that this is a sponsored or paid review.

Else be like what the other bloggers who were outraged at the antics the blogger, Brad Lau. Those bloggers paid in full and even shunned the limelight. This will likely make them experience what an ordinary member of public will be eating in the restaurant. Unlike the outrageous blogger who called one day in advance and even brought 3 other ‘friends’ for his free lunch. Like they are some big shots. In the end the restaurant waived off half the bill, but being Mr Brad Lau ungraciously threw his credit card at the counter before storming out.

If I was the owner, I will ask him to pay in full or I call the police. Famous blogger or not.

Anyway, his blog is closed now. Maybe forever.

So if you have to be frugal, being that does not mean taking advantage of others’ goodwill or imposing on the generosity of others.

May you have a frugal and gracious week ahead.

If you haven't heard it by now, the theme song for this year's parade: "Song For Singapore" by Corrine May which is one of the very best national day theme songs ever:

It is her employer too.

One of the hot news in Singapore besides the flooding is that a Filipina maid has inherited S$6 million from her late employer after 20 years of devoted service.

The news wire are all focused on her getting the $6 million windfall. How simple she is, how humble she still is. And also how her life has changed as she may face possible threats to her life back in Philippines as wealthy people have been kidnapped and even killed.

I would have liked some news about how the medical doctor amassed and accumulated $6 million in her life. Was she good at what she did? Or did she accumulate it through a frugal lifestyle. What was she like as a person? If anything, it will be interesting to find out how Dr Quek gained financial freedom.

For the maid, she came to a foreign country at the young age of 27 years old and took care of the mother of the late Dr Quek Kai Miew.

Journalists in a story sometimes focus too much on one side and not the other.

As a subtext to this story, the free paper, Mypaper showed another side to the life of a maid. A photo was posted of a maid who had to tied her employer’s shoelaces in a public shopping area while she was talking to another person.

I’d bet that the second maid will not receive $6 million after 20 years of tying shoelaces of her unreasonable employer. Not that her employer has $6 million to give away anyway.

Have a good weekend.

 

Source:

1. Filipina maid inherits millions from employer

2. Woman who had maid tie her shoelaces was capable of doing it herself

We all know the story about the octopus who predicted the winners of all 8 matches correctly. Even the stunning upset of Germany by Serbia in the group matches.

What if as investors, we can match Paul and go 8 for 8? And each time we double the money.

Let’s start with $1000 and we do a table:

 

	$1000
1st	$2000
2nd	$4000
3rd	$8000
4th	$16,000
5th	$32,000
6th	$64,000
7th	$128,000
8th	$256,000

After the 8th iteration, and the money gained is considerable. A quarter of a million. If you are right two more times, it is a million.

All you have to do is to be right 8 times in a row like Paul. Better yet if you are right 10 times.

So, do you think you can time your purchase/selling of investment such that you get a return that doubles each time? While preventing a loss?

Or like what Peter Lynch and other legendary investors do by finding a few great investments and getting a few multi-baggers.

“Say you pick 5 stocks, and you’ve done all the research you can and you’re sure these are solid companies. Well some of them might go down, but even if 4 of the 5 are losers, if you hit just one 10 or 20 or 200 bagger, it makes up for the rest (a 10 bagger is a stock that increases 10 times in value). Look for 10 baggers, look for quality, and you’ll win out every time.” Peter Lynch

If I had a Paul the Octopus, I’d put the logos of two companies in the tank and ask him to choose. I’d bet a lot of people will buy the shares of the company that it choose.

Went for training for the past two days. Learnt about Personal Effectiveness and found out that the trainer was an ex teacher too. They are everywhere :)

As part of the early morning exercise, we were asked to craft questions to ask each other. So our group asked what should you do if personal goals weren’t aligned with company goals.

On reflection, it will likely be that goals weren’t be aligned in a close fit.

More important that values are aligned.

Why?

Remember the whistle blower who raised the alarm on Enron? Her value system wasn’t aligned with the values that Enron espoused.

What about the current hue and cry over Goldman? It is perfectly alright for a company to seek profit and be profit motivated. But what if it is at the expense of the customers? Is it right to take a position against what you ask your customers to buy? Profit, yes, you will make lots, from both the customer and later when the position you take comes true. Ethically or morally?

Then you have Arthur Andersen, at one time one of the largest accounting firm on the face of the planet. They hampered criminal investigations by shredding documents that were damaging to themselves in their flawed ‘audit’ of Enron. What if you were the employee asked to shred these documents?

For the purpose of this article, what about the German soldiers and citizens who are ordinary human being just like you and me but they chose to drive the trains, guard the camps and press the buttons that gassed and killed millions of Jews in the death camps? The citizens knew and chose to look the other way. They smelt the fear, the saw the disappearance of their Jewish neighbours, some even lived near these camps which were perpetually burning evidence and it rained ashes of human remains and bits of bones.

I remember a famous quote I saw online in Germany about this:

“When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.”

Right here in Singapore, remember the collapse of the Kallang part of the now opened Circle line? Well, this article on LTA official grilled on ‘two hats’ shows that the Qualifed Person with conflicting interests, passed the site as safe even though he knew LTA engineers suspected something was wrong and were asking the contractor to relook the design.

So the next time, as a leader or employee, you hear dissenting views and opinions in the workplace. Stop judging the person’s loyalty to you or the company. It could be that it is an ethical issue, or moral issue. It could be that the person feel that the decision is wrong, will lead to a loss of time doing this product, pushing this service etc. In the end, you could be right and the dissenting person could be wrong. But he or she cared enough about it to make people think again.

Celebrate diversity.

 

Sources:

1. Martin Niemoller- Wikipedia.

Everything is regulated here in Singapore. From a fine for littering and jaywalking, a ban on chewing gum, to even the age and the amount you can withdraw when you reach retirement.

The government even goes into regulating how much money you got to have in your retirement account before you can use it for investment. Which is $20,000 in your ordinary account if you didn’t know. With all these rules and regulations governing our finances, you would have thought that every thing here is fine and dandy.

Scratch a little deeper, you will find something weird going on. It is perfectly ‘alright’ for the civil servants to lost millions and billions in speculative investments into financial firms in USA in 2008 at the height of the financial meltdown. However, when one of the more humane Member of Parliament, Dr Lily Neo, wanted to increase the amount given to the poorest as financial assistance, she was scolded by millionaire minister Dr Vivian Balakrishnan who berated her for asking for more. “How much do you want!” A bit of Oliver Twist in there.

So the moral of the story is to prepare for your retirement yourself. No help is forthcoming from our ‘superior’, millionaire ministers who are high and mighty and would question every dollar given to the destitute and scold citizens who quibble over mere millions given to them.

Sources: TGIF Up Till The Spring Equinox…

I read an article recently about a lady who took up every insurance policy that unscrupulous agents persuaded her to take up.

It ended up causing her to pay a quarter of her monthly salary to pay these premiums and fat cat insurance agents. She has kids and is now thinking that she needs to use those money taken up by insurance to put aside for savings and emergency funds.

I remember when I was a student, I encountered a great teacher named, Steve Litvin. He taught me oral and written communication and I still remember a particular lesson that is applicable for this instance. His lessons are always interesting :)

This applies to any scenario where you want to refuse any offer in a polite way. It’s called “Broken Record”, sort of like an old gramophone record or needle record which is damaged and keeps playing the same track over and over again.

So if any sales person asks you for a minute, you reply, “Sorry, I am in a hurry.” If he or she persist, you repeat the same words no matter what the person says or asks you. So if they ask, “Are you stupid or what” (unlikely, but even if they lose their cool, you shouldn’t), you reply… “Sorry, I am in a hurry”. If they ask you for the phone number, you repeat the magical words. If they ask you for your name, it is still “Sorry, I am in a hurry.”

Instead of “Sorry, I am in a hurry”, you can use “I am not interested, thank you” or something else to that effect. The important thing is to keep repeating the same words, smile and either walk on or wait for the sales person to get tired and move on.

Hope that helps you avoid some of those challenging situations for people who don’t respect your personal right to say ‘NO!’ in a way that isn’t tiring or impolite for you too.

The stunning electoral defeat of the Liberal Democrats in Japan is a political tsunami that saw its roots in the people power overturning of Marcos in Philippines in 1986, the political awakening by Chinese students in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the election of Aung San Suu Kyi as Prime Minister in 1990 despite the maneuverings of the military, the democratization of Indonesia in recent years, the near defeat of the Barisan Nasional in Malaysia's recent elections.

All these shows the awakening of the people in Asia to the idea that a government of the people, by the people and for the people is something that is not limited to America or just a Western ideal or concept.

The choice to choose one's government is key to the idea of democracy.

Despite being entrenched within their countries, all those authoritarian or despotic rulers lost the respect of their population and eventually their veneer of being all powerful and all conquering.

The LDP rule Japan since its found in 1955. Its party members thought they were invulnerable, as despite previous scandals, unpopular policies like a consumer tax etc, they were voted back to office by an electorate which knew no better alternative.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Over 50 years of unhindered path to the rule of Japan brought much early economic success. In a way, people in Japan are similar to Singapore, conservative, deferring to authority,

But the challenges of a declining birthrate, stagnating economy, and a multitude of problems which the LDP did not handle properly or totally ignored, opened the door to the Democratic Party of Japan.

The Democratic Party promised to strengthen social safety net, and raise the birthrate by giving families a straight cash handouts of $270 per month per child. It will curb the power of the all powerful ministries in Japan.

The world's second largest economy has just become a truly functional democracy, one that will make politicians nervous, sober instead of being drunk.

Its reverberations are being felt, all the way to Singapore to beyond our shores. All the dominant one party quasi democracy or dictatorship must be sweating now.

Time to look at buying into the Japanese economy? ETFs for the Nikkei index anyone?

Sources:

1.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/world/asia/31japan.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&src=twt&twt=nytimes

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democratic_Party_%28Japan%29

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_of_Japan

4. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8229744.stm

Yesterday was Singapore's high water mark for the government- the annual National Day Rally. I have forgotten since when it slowly became drab and then later almost nonsensical. From something I used to look forward to listening, it is now to me almost like the colourless chatter of a DJ's monologue. I didn't watch one minute of the latest installment.

The disenchantment of ordinary people like me with the present crop of self serving, money and or power grubbing politicians you find now, seems to extend to many countries in Asia. Japan will likely lose its dominant party that has been entrenched in its country for many long decades. From a vibrant and energetic party that led the country on a stunning recovery from the ashes of war to one of the top economies of the world to a party that has become ineffectual and a laughing stock.

Then in Taiwan, you see the slow reactions of the local government to the disaster struck by the massive typhoon that hit its shores. Their leader has taken responsibility, beyond that it has probably huge implications on the Taiwanese elections that is due at the end of the year. It could mean that the opposition party could recover and become a more effective countervailing force in the politics and be a proper watchdog that the President will have to be careful of.

You mess up and be prepared to be voted out.

In Singapore, there is no such force. Thus, you lose billions or a terrorist in jail, you can walk away smiling while your subordinates or some fall guys get fired. Will we suffer from it? Only time will tell.

I am currently reading a book "Team of Rivals" that chronicles the life of Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest leader that ever lived. It showed the dedication, humanity, selflessness and democratic principles that enabled the rise of the Republican party in American politics. It showed how a group of disparate people, who were intense rivals coming together to serve their country, can do despite the obstacles like a full blown civil war during their administration.

I've not finished the book, but it has made me want to find out more about Lincoln. Someone who believes in the right of all the people to choose and their right to freedom and the benefits it will bring to his country, even though these people were slaves.

A government of the people, by the people and for the people.

It should be the definitive textbook for all aspiring politicians or civil servant.

Singapore's government has become one of the millionaires, by the millionaires and for the millionaires.

What does this have to do with the economy or financial freedom? Nothing and everything.

While looking around for the OCBC advertisement that I wanted, I managed to find an even more enjoyable one. But you have to watch it till the end. It'd be worth your while.