New words: Aplomb and Jaunty

Boys and girls, the new words for this week are: aplomb and jaunty. With the death of Madam Kwa Geok Choo (Mrs. Lee Kuan Yew), Mediacorp had made the documentary clip below describing the life of the lady. In it is included one of the rare clips of an interview with Madam Kwa from some years back, where she was describing Mr. Lee Kuan Yew in his younger days. Madam Kwa not being known to give speeches often. In the clip, the English educated Madam Kwa was using the two terms: aplomb and jaunty. Pay attention at 1 minute 17 seconds into the clip.

In a time like this, where there is an opportunity for Singapore to look back at this lady and consider her the grandmother of our nation, I am not sure the choice of that particular clip was the most appropriate. There are social murmurings that certain segments of society exhibit a detachment from the average Singaporean, and showcasing the use of words that most Singaporeans do not know, may not be the best idea. Perhaps the propaganda intention is to show Madam Kwa as someone special and worldly, and they have succeeded in that. Her life and works are enough of a proof of that. I feel that there was a missed opportunity to give the general public a sense that she was one of us.

a·plomb

/əˈplɒm, əˈplʌm/
–noun
1. imperturbable self-possession, poise, or assurance.
2. the perpendicular, or vertical, position.

jaun·ty

/ˈdʒɔn ti, ˈdʒɑn-/
–adjective, -ti·er, -ti·est.
1. easy and sprightly in manner or bearing: to walk with a jaunty step.
2. smartly trim, as clothing: a jaunty hat.

From Dictionary.com

OCBC cardholders only Jay Chou concert

I am not a fan of Jay Chou, nor do I intend to go to the concert. However, after reading Straits Times Life’s article about the sales tactics for Jay Chou’s concert, I felt the need to ask some fundamental questions.

The situation is that for the first three days of ticket sales, fans can only buy the tickets if they own an OCBC credit card. To me, this tantamount to not accepting payment from any other sources as legal tender, and as such, if not illegal, is definitely unethical. OCBC has worked hard to build its brand over the years, and have successfully won over quite a lot of customers, however, this particular decision strikes me as a downright cynical and manipulative. The concert organizers were either very well compensated for their collusion, or bought into some flowery marketing jargon like exclusivity.

I have posed the question of whether this is legal to Monetary Authorities of Singapore (MAS) and to stlife@sph.com.sg. And whether this is the sort of competition between banks that MAS approves of.

Who should pay for maternity leave?

Traditionally, it had been the women who paid for it, either by leaving work, or by returning to work after a month, at the cost of time together with the newborn.

In the 2004 Marriage and Parenthood package, 12 weeks of paid maternity leave was provided. The first 8 weeks paid by the employer, and the last 4 weeks paid by the government. This was a very encouraging move for working mothers and mothers-to-be. However, it almost immediately started to rear its ugly head, that pregnant women were unjustifiably laid off, or many small companies were reluctant to hire newly wed or women of a child-bearing age.

Small companies versus Large corporations

While activists may condemn small companies for their actions, they should also take a look at the situation from their perspective. Small companies may live on the edge of their profit margins. With a small headcount, every employee is needed all the time. With the current trends where employees tend to stay only one to three years at any given job, three months of paid leave seem an eternity, especially when the employer has no choice but to find a replacement, doubling their financial burden. And what replacement would only want to work for 3 months?

Anyone who has worked in a large multinational company, or in the public service will probably be aware that the problem is significantly less pronounced. Women working in large companies and in public service seem to face less issue with pregnancy and maternity leave. Large multinational companies are also less frequently guilty of wrongfully dismissing mothers-to-be.

A matter of perspective is probably another reason why there is such a difference between small and large organizations. The issue is that many large organizations have been around for generations. They can take the long view that a newly added member to society will one day grow into a consumer. Their large workforce may take the burden of women taking maternity leave in the same percentage as a small company, but it is evenly spread out throughout the year, in various departments, so it can have a less critical impact.

Small businesses may not even see where they will be in a decade, much less a whole generation away. They do not feel like true stakeholders in population growth because they cannot tangibly see the results, leading to another push factor.

Employment in Singapore moving ever so slightly away from a dependence of large multinational companies, due to a lot of these companies relocating to other parts of Asia as a result of them no longer being such a culture shock and a hardship posting anymore. It would be small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), that pick up the employment shortfall into the future.

A case for the government to pay

Let us look at how much the Ministry of Defence pays for our boys in green. For the 2 years of full-time National Service, the servicemen are paid about half or a third of what they are likely to be making if they were working. This is equivalent of 8 months of a young person’s working wages.

The servicemen are then required to serve 10 years of reservist training. Averaging to about two weeks a year, three if they were key appointment holders or officers. This can and do last up to the age of 40. Which means that the Ministry of Defence is paying two weeks of the wages of men who are 38-40, every single year. I daresay that an average 38 year old’s wages is possibly double that of a similar worker at 23.

All in all, the Ministry of Defence pays a minimum of 13 months of a serviceman’s wages over those 10 years. At least five or more of those months to employers to help them support the National Service. The role of the Singapore Armed Forces is to act as a deterrent to hostile forces abroad, and also to reassure Singaporeans that their defence is taken seriously.

Traditionally, men have been the bread-winners of our society, and in order for the National Service system to work, the government pays employers the wages of their employees during those times of training. The same mindset must be taken for women now, because women employment is increasingly becoming critical to our nationhood.

On one hand, it will show that the government is serious about women’s equality in the workplace. The amount paid to employers over the 10+ years of National Service can be equated to a minimum of 6 months of maternity leave paid during the lifetime of a Singaporean woman. That is the minimum of two child’s worth of maternity leave.

Will it work?

The first question would be, where would the money come from? The same might have been asked about the money for the National Service. Nothing could be more true to the commitment of Total Defence than the supporting of Singaporeans having the next generation of citizens. If the Ministries have ever argued about who should pick up the tab for this, then they do not deserve their million dollar pays. The Singapore Armed Forces protects our trade, finance, manpower, culture, art and our home, but their budget is fully borne by the Ministry of Defence. Likewise, higher childbirth will benefit all aspects of the our society, so the burden needs to be shared.

Ask any woman planning to have children whether they would rather work for a small company or a large company or public service, and you are likely to hear the latter.This move would come some way to equalizing the two types of organizations. With the cost savings, it might discourage some large companies from relocating elsewhere in Asia, and it would relief a burden from smaller companies as they do not get hit twice or thrice by an employee going on long leave. While there are still many large organizations employing women in Singapore, the urgency may not be there yet, but it definitely a necessary step when that balance tips.

Whether this would encourage women to have more children or not is beyond me. It would ease one of their worries about their employaibility.

Economic Downturn What?

Interesting article in Media magazine that I thought I would share. It goes a little to describe some symptoms of our current strange economic crisis that seems to hit certain industries very hard but leave other industries benefiting.

Illegal Sex Drugs Kills, apparently.

Saw this horizontal half page two colour ad in the Straits Times last week. Scanned it but never had the time to put it up. I am quite sure this slipped under quite a few people’s radar, so here it is. There are so many interesting things to talk about this ad, I could write a paper about it. The fun never seems to end with this ad, every time I see it I find something new.

At a recent The Association of Accredited Advertising Agents (4As) award show, the panel of judges had a casual conversation between themselves and they talked about how the “Ginseng Gives You Power” ad in Geylang Ave 3 was the corniest ad they have ever seen, but at the same time, the best ad placement ever.The ad has been refined with another headline, it has lost its corniness somewhat, but still has pride of place in Geylang.

Women prefer to bully women

An interesting article in My Paper yesterday seems quite pertinent to some recent happenings in Singapore. Of course, this study was done in the US, so cultural, women’s rights, worker’s rights and so forth all come into play.

This survey brings out some interesting statistics, and perspectives. Some advocates of women’s rights might decide that the fact that only 40% of bullies are women mean that women have not achieved equality in the workplace, hence had less opportunity to be in the position to bully. While bullying of subordinates is the most obvious, bullying of peers is probably the most prolific but less glaring. Bully of superiors happens to, but like husband-beating, often goes unreported.

The result of men being equal opportunity bullies and women quite a lot more likely to bully other women. So many factors play into this, but I do wonder if there is a root to this behaviour. I do believe that women, in the workplace play two competitive games. One only with other women, and one with the rest of the organisation. They may not win the latter, blaming glass ceilings, but they sure as hell would do everything to win the former. Is that a psychology ingrained by 10,000 years of largely patriachal society?

I think the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) saga brought to light something that we, as a society have known for quite a while. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Obviously it applies to more things than love. Throw in a dozen Type A personalities into the mix, and you will get fireworks.

Many people have an opinion about women bosses. I do believe that most males and anecdotally, many females, find it quite hard to work with women bosses, for a variety of reasons. A veritable minefield that this XY is not going to go tap dancing through. I was raised by five women of strong personality and they have earned my respect for strong women, I am still glad that I have yet to have a woman boss or superior in a competitive work environment.

What about Lee Bee Wah and Liu Guodong? Apparently Lee Bee Wah cannot see past her own nose and realise that there are dividends to be made if only she appeared to be gracious. Once again she walked into a trap laid out specifically to test her, and so bringing to the forefront her detachment, and by association, the government’s detachment from the general public mood. MM Lee might think highly of Lee Bee Wah, but he has yet to impart in her some of his shrewder tactics. That is complacency for you. Yet one more weak link to protect at the ballots.

Closer to home, one of my acquaintance recently revealed that he has not spoken to a female superior of his for over a year. They are no longer on speaking terms. She brought him into the company about a year and a half ago, them having worked together previously some years back. He went on to successfully head a branch office in a neighbouring city. She accused him of undermining her, simply by being doing his job well. Her local head office flounders while the foreign branch office thrives. Perhaps I am only seeing one side of the story, but such behaviour does the reputation of women bosses no good at all. Again, I am glad I am no longer of that industry, where people go to work with knives in front of them, not needing to hide it behind their backs.

Does the competitive workplace environment, and power gained from it magnify already existing tendencies, or does it bring out an ugly side in us? Some have decided that being positive means stepping forward, some may decide that stepping out is the only way to get a positive result. I have opted out of that world, and continue to try my best to stay out of it, as I hope to leave a benigh, and if possible a benevolent effect on the world. Take no bullshit, but try not to dish out any yourself.

We are finally AWARE

Hands up, those of you who have not heard of the women’s rights organisation AWARE before this saga came into the press some weeks back.

Hands up, those of you who know that AWARE exists, but have not spent a single second thinking about them for the last 5 years. 10 years.

A friend commented on his Facebook that the “New Guard Ousted” headline from yesterday’s Straits Times front page would have refered to the government in any other country. Perhaps the main reason why the AWARE saga has caught our collective imagination was because it is the closest thing to democracy that we have experienced.

A political commentator mentioned once that Taiwan’s Democracy has finally matured, after they voted out the KMT, the nationalist government that ruled them for 50 years, voted in the opposition DPP, and after a decade voted them out again. The Taiwanese have seen both sides and have forced both sides to change with the ballot box.

A similar change is currently unfolding in Malaysia, where the people have given the Anwar led PKR coalition a chance in many states. This has forced the incumbent of four decades, UMNO, to change. To be more inclusive to the minority races. How this will all unfold is yet to be seen.

Indonesia and Thailand are lands of posturing, where multiple strong factions muscle for influence and power, a musical chairs of power and counter balance. The Phillipines is a popularity contest, where the march of this emotional people keeps the presidential seat hot.

We seldom get to see politcs at work in Singapore, but over the course of a few weeks, we saw a Coup d’etat at the ballot, the airing of dirty laundry on both sides, death threats, the meddling of the Church, the meddling of DBS, the mobilization of the people and a crushing of a rebellion, again at the ballot. And now, we are finally AWARE.

We actually learned more about what AWARE does in these short weeks than in the decades it has existed. We have all had to decide for ourselves where we stand on women’s rights, gay rights and the power of the Church over our multicultural life. We have had to think about where we would like to see change, and where we think continuity will serve us the best. We have seen a fight for our hearts and minds, and a little of the power of the people. We have seen the power the media plays in a democracy. Was it democracy at its best? Probably not, but it was democracy of a sort at work.

And it is not just us, the humble citizens that are learning these lessons. The politicians got their lesson in Politics 101 while under the shadow of a discussion about a post-Lee Kuan Yew PAP and Singapore. The heads of Churches have got a clearer idea about their “OB Markers”. And shareholders got a clearer idea of what their directors and executives get up to in their free time.

Is the saga over at AWARE? Who knows, it is likely that the coup plotters would fade into the background with their tails behind their legs, unsure of how public opinion turned on them so suddenly. But the spotlight is now on AWARE, and on other non-governmental agencies like them. Their actions would be scrutinized from here on, just as the NKF saga brought our attention onto charities. Even then, I doubt the rot has totally been cleaned from charities.

I had hoped that the sacking of former table tennis team manager Anthony Lee and head coach Liu Guodong would have sparked enough of a public outcry to shake sports associations to their bones. But perhaps the parties are too linked to the government and enough crisis management was done to prevent the pitch forks coming out. Too bad that episode passed and sports associations are now back to their old ways. Hopefully another crisis would erupt soon enough.

Congratulations Singapore. I would like to believe that this is a watershed for Singaporean’s collective awareness of democracy.

China avoids bad news in 2009, so far

A year ago, right about now, every one was wondering whether to dump all of their funds invested in China companies, in anticipation for a post Olympics economic readjustments. At that point, I am sure that more than a few financial analyist was looking at China and wondering when the bubble will burst and whether China will be the epicentre of the next financial crisis.

Similarly, with the experience of SARS and the various health and food scares coming out of China, more than a few scientist were expecting the next pandemic to come out of South China.

It is a double whammy for the US that they were the cause of the current financial crisis, and that the epicentre of the current Influenza A (H1N1) was in neighbouring Mexico, and spread into the US and Canada.

2008 was the year China was in the news most, more often than not for reasons they would rather avoid. I am sure more than a few officials in China are breathing a sigh of relief that China has so far avoided getting into the news limelight in 2009.

But the year is still young. Perhaps the lesson here is that the more you want to hog the limelight, the more the glare of scrutiny is on you.

May Day May Day

In our current economic situation, it might be a good time to look again at the symbolism and origins of the May 1st Labour Day. Also the International Worker’s Day. It is celebrated on May 1st in the majority of the world, although Americans associate it with Socialism and Communism.

Ironically, the May 1st association is to commemorate the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago. Where police fired upon and killed many protesters asking for an 8 hour work day.

Let us not forget that in the end of the 19th century and the beginnings of the 20th century, capitalism was of the pretty much a free for all. There was no workers’ rights to speak off. In was in this environment that socialism and communism was born. People were not choosing between socialism and capitalism as we know it today.

One of the companies  earliest to realize that giving workers’ some rights would prevent them from rising up under the banner of socialism was Krupp. Ironically, they were the one of the main companies that armed the German army in the war in 1877, the Great War, and World War 2. They still exist making escalators and elevators. It was under the shadow of a possible people’s revolution that workers’ rights was born.

The evils of capitalism today is not the same as those of the late 19th century. Workers now have rights, they also have shares of their own employer’s and other companies. And they expect those share prices to rise. They live on borrowed money and inflated dreams. And unlike the late 19th century, they have no one but themselves to blame for their current situation.

Now that employees are also shareholders, and our retirement pensions are tied to the profitability of companies, how relevant is Labour Day? Now employees are also employers, of domestic maids who have next to zero rights under the Ministry of Manpower. The world is still letting 6000 people die  in preventable work related deaths every day. Have we moved on from that fateful day in 1886?

Ahmadinejad’s UN Speech

Every news company is talking about the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech accusing Israel of racism during the United Nations World Conference Against Racism. Most of them did not fail to mention Ahmadinejad’s previous speech in 2005 about wanting to “wipe Israel off the map”, which itself is contentious, and focused mainly on the walkout of this or that country’s delegates.

It took me a while to find the full speech and at the tabloid Anorak, of all places. I have reproduced it here.

Governments must be encouraged and supported in their fights at eradicating this barbaric racism. Efforts must be made to put an end to Zionism…

Those in authority at the time set off two world wars [were] killing hundred of millions of people and causing mass destruction.

Those who won [the Second World War], considered that the world was with them [and] set up laws that were oppressive and trampling.

The Security Council set up after World War II, let’s analyze it. The veto vote – is that equality? Is that justice? Is that equality amongst human beings? Or rather is it arrogance and humiliation? The Security Council must be the most important body for decision-making in order to promote peace. If a law is based on force, how can we secure peace and justice? The seeking of power and arrogance means racism, injustice and occupation.

As was the case after World War II, armies occupied other territories and people were transferred from territories. In reality, under the pretext of compensating for the evil done in the name of xenophobia, they in fact set up the most violent xenophobes, in Palestine.

The Security Council made it possible for that illegitimate government to be set up. For 60 years, this government was supported by the world. Many Western countries say they are fighting racism; but in fact support it with occupation, bombings and crimes such as those committed in Gaza. These countries support the criminals…

Lets disregard our views about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran for the moment. And try to take a step back from any position that we hold on the Israel-Palestinian issue and look at this. This speech was obviously designed for an Iranian audience, since Ahmadinejad is coming up for elections soon, and is also Middle-East centric, which is just another replacement for the usual Western centric world view.

I am quite sure the world truly sympathized with the Jews after World War 2. And they earned the respect of many neutrals with their David versus Goliath spirit during the 1967 and 1973 wars. And just to prove that the pen is mightier than the sword, they have over the years, adopted two terms that set their struggle different from anyone else’s. Instead of genocide, which happens to everyone else, they have “The Holocaust”. Instead of racial or religious discrimination that everyone else suffers, they suffer “anti-semitism”.

Discrimination is about difference, and the Jews insisted on the use of different terms as a tool to highlight their very different type of discrimination. But are they so very different from other oppressed people? Do you suffer differently if you were the victim of genocide as opposed to the victim of “The Holocaust”? Do you suffer differently if you were the victim of racial or religious discrimination as opposed to the victim of “anti-semitism”? By the use of both terms exclusively, they have set themselves apart from the rest of the world. They have exclusivfied their suffering.

Israel is probably the embodiment of why we need to seperate religion and race from the state. The identity of the Jewish people, as a race, as a religion, is intertwine with that of Israel as a state. Simply put, if you have a soverign issue with the state of Israel, it automatically drags race and religion into the issue. If you have a problem with the Judaism religion, it automatically drags the survival of the Jewish state into the problem. In other words, by sowing the seeds of words, Israel will alway win the war of words. And again Israel has set itself apart from the rest of the other hundred over nations in the world. Just as all other nations around the world is asking their own citizens to embrace multi-culturalism, and asking other nations to become secular states, many nations are allowing Israel to have a state based around a racial and religious identity.

As the world shifts slowly from a Western-centric point of view, and sense of history, the power of words like “The Holocaust” and “anti-semitism” would gradually weaken. The uproar at the UN World Conference Against Racism, the boycotts, and the tone and slant of many news articles shows that many still see it from this Western viewpoint. Well, if the UN World Conference Against Racism was held as a barometer about the state of racism in the world today, they got a very clear picture. A clear line was drawn between which nations took offence, and which nations were ambivalent.