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This is the scene taken of the Workers' party (an opposition party in SIngapore) election rally on April 28 2006.

This picture is at an open field. Its surrounded by high-rise public housing all round. And eyewitnesses say that the stairs and floors of these public housing flats (more than 10 floors) were filled with pple. Crowd attendance was in the 5-digits., about 10,000-15,000.

Why are opposition election rallies so well attended? Are the opposition politicians striking a chord with the public vis a vis the ruling-party (PAP)'s own poorly-attended election rallies? Are the sizes of attendance figures a barometer of actual vote count? Or just plain curiousity that have no political consequence?

All i know is, the popularity of the opposition is understated in Singapore media. We don;t seem to have objective opinions in our local mainstream media and it seems to be hindering public opinion of our local political scene and making it very biased towards the ruling party when it might not be the case.

Are you a Singaporean? Voting for the first time? Dunno who to vote?

• Do not succumb to apathy.
  
• Do not link your vote to $ or material desires.
  
• Attend political rallies with an open mind.
  
• Do your own research. Read the manifestos. Some parties spent 2 years writing them (PAP and WP)
• Vote for Singapore's Soul.

More on the Hougang Election Rally here.

Related Articles: Political Podcasting Blues, Peasant Culture and Stupid Singaporeans

The Singapore-MIT Alliance programme is implementing this approach. During their stint at MIT, NUS students … meet with experienced entrepreneurs who imbue them with the “entrepreneurial” spirit. However, merely learning the ropes does not suffice, Magnanti stresses. "You need a supporting ecosystem to provide the right incentives, structure, and freedom." He sees Singapore as having the infrastructure, capital, and talent; however, he feels the nation needs an infusion of more risk-taking.

 So is the 4th element of "culture" what's lacking in Singapore? This has been a pet topic for discussion ever since i returned from Silicon valley. So much rehashing that it might be of low value-add to go into another debate about it. 

This article is interesting as it holds up Singaporeans alongside the Indians and Chinese as "a new breed of graduates who, having a strong foundation of technical expertise, also possess the additional leadership qualities of inventiveness, risk-taking, and a sense of adventure", "in contrast to a persistent perception held by many that Asians are staid or even stoic".

But other than that, its just a leisure read for those of us who came back from SV, not much new ground broken or insights. Its a pretty good read for those who want to know how to link their engineering knowledge with entrepreneurship and those engineers thinking of moving into the business sectors. 

Thomson found that all Blueprint companies grew exponentially after reaching a threshold of around $50 million in annual revenues. Then their sales soared in a steep curve, reaching $1 billion in an average of four years (eBay (Research), Google (Research)), six years (Starbucks (Research)), or 12 years (Dreyer's Ice Cream, Adobe). A majority of Blueprint companies reached the billion-dollar mark in four or six years after hitting $50 million. And unlike the VC-fueled dot-bombs of the late 1990s, most Blueprint companies were profitable from an early stage. They also rewarded their shareholders: At the end of 2005, 60 of the Nasdaq 100 companies were Blueprint firms.

This book talks about how to identify so-called "Blueprint" companies in today's world based on his empirical study of "7,454 U.S.-based corporations that went public after 1980" and interviews with executives at these billion-dollar enterprises.

Quick Stock Tips for the Near Future from the book:

• in leisure products
• nursing homes for aging boomers
• energy, natural resources,
• specialty chemicals
• semiconductors for consumer gadgets
• Our increasingly harried society is also likely to embrace any time-saving product or service.

Based on this article. Check out the website for the book here. Order from Amazon here. I know how this looks, but I am not advertising, just sharing. =)

Check out how fast the cam is to catch the bursting process of this balloon!

More pics here. Thanks to this blog that profiles digital media and other cool stuff.

What Chinese Singaporeans have inherited from their grandparents is peasant culture, explained “peasant judge” online. “Peasants don’t care for much else except a bowl of rice on the table, a roof over their heads, and the chance to go out to the rice fields to do the daily back-breaking chores day in day out.”

“A better word to describe the Singaporean is naïve, which comes about because of a paternalistic and rather efficient government. Everything is so structured and laid-out that the people do not need to fight for a living, blunting their ability to compete. They’re lulled into thinking the outside world also behave like Singapore.”

Businessmen from Taiwan and Hong Kong are more alert to opportunities, as well as cheats, compared to even the capable Singa-poreans, whose preoccupation is getting a high salary.

They know where to take the short cuts when faced with a problem; Singaporeans will just sit and wait for better days.

Quotes above from here.

Almost 4 months back in Singapore from the SF Bay Area, I can still acutely feel the difference between the culture here and back in the Valley.

Where there was hope and optimism everywhere I go or seek in the Bay Area, there's despondency in Singapore, people complaining all the time about their boring lives, work, crass social behavior, a mind-numbing education system thats overly reliant on exams, taxi drivers trying to practise political activism within the confines of their steel-bound universes, while out in the open world, they shut up fearful of a social policy that frowns on social dissent especially.

But i was free, once. And yes this might sound like a dreamy musing. But everyone, (maybe almost), really felt the air in America was much fresher and freer than the stifling one here. We were free to realise our true ambitions and learn to be proud to flaunt it. We learn to take criticism in our stride, for if no one dissents with your opinions, it means you ain't thinking enough about issues and also you are denied a chance to practise your intellectual faculties in arguing for your own opinion.

People shy away from having opinions here. I define an opinion as one where one do not just think about it at the back of one's head but communicate and seek propagation of his/ her opinions in order to bring about the realization of that thought into action. There's an enormous social pressure of ensuring conformity to the norm and the casting away of deviance.

But deviance is good, for it creates a balanced society and a complete continuum of thoughts, personalities and character of the society. From a balanced and free society comes about equilibrum. I am no sociology student or engineer. But something I read before tells me that most people will eventually go to a natural state and creating an equilibrum. The problem is, the equilibrum n SIngapore is very top-down engineered by the ruling class since the day of our founding. have nothing against that. Because we were a new nation that had to swallow tough measures and bitter medicine in order to become what we are today.

But we are different now. We are economically, a First World Nation. But we seem to be Third World in terms of being a civic society. I remember a Belgian friend of mine telling me that he was handed a pamphlet on how to wash his hands when he got onto the plane for SIngapore by a SIA stewardess. This was due to the SARS scare. Extend this paternalistic pamphlet and analyze it in the context of Singapore's social campaigns — the "Speak English" of the 1980s to mid 1990s, then "Speak Mandarin"/ "Mandarin is COOL" campaign today (because China is strong now)… Let me gaze into the crystal ball. By the frequency of trips to Middle East by our leaders in recent months, "Speak Arabic" campaign is not too far away as the efficient social propaganda machine churns and chugs along in our "air-conditioned" nation.

If you have to read newspapers, do not read local media. Read widely, blogs, international news, tomorrow.sg, whatever it takes, get conflicting viewpoints on the same issue. Mainstream society here needs to snap out of "peasant-hood" and develop a socially critical consciousness.

Thanks to Justin who inspired this article. Check out his post here.

 Check out what Saatchi and Saatchi did with steaming manhole covers for their client.

 Thanks to this site and Digg.

Better late than never! =)

DATE: 22 APRIL 2006 (SATURDAY)

TIME: 2PM

VENUE: COFFEE CLUB, RAFFLES PLACE
No 7, Raffles Place, Singapore 048625
Tel : 6532 6273

HOW TO GET THERE:
TALE MRT TO RAFFLES PLACE MRT.
TAKE THE EXIT LEADING TO ARCADE/OCEAN TOWER.
COFFEE CLUB RAFFLES PLACE OUTLET IS LOCATED AT THE LAWN IN FRONT OF OCEAN TOWERS

Here's the map

RSVP here.

Hu Jintao’s visit to US brought him first to the business community, sidestepping the political maelstrom that awaits him at Washington DC.

“Show me the money!” — thats the not-too-subtle message China is telling America as billion dollar deals are signed with Boeing and Microsoft.

“And screw you with your human rights complaints and currency manipulation accusations, businesses that piss China off will not enjoy priviledged access to the deals struck with Boeing and MS.”

Here’s an excerpt of the CNN article by Lou Dobbs that talks about this:

China’s economy has grown by an average of about 10 percent a year over the past two decades. This year, China moved ahead of Britain and France to become the world’s fourth-largest economy. It’s also changing the global supply chain, becoming the world’s leading buyer of basic commodities, whether grain, meat, coal and steel, and is second to only the United States in consumption of oil. China is buying up American companies and other multinational corporations with almost $900 billion of hard currency reserves. China has now arrived, and we no longer refer to our series on China’s rapid economic and military build-up as “Red Star Rising.” The title of that reporting is now “Red Storm.”

But Dobbs is showing isolationist traits in his rant towards the end of the article. Althought he doesn’t fault China for its rights to economic prowess, he should do well to remember that the fault of US’ economic dependency lies NOT at failed policies in managing unfair, unequal US-Sino trade practices BUT AT the appaling undeveloped human resource infrastructure of middle class America.

Dun blame Walmart for outsourcing to China, dun blame Chinese workers for taking away low-end manufacturing jobs. Blame the inflexible labor laws and the xenophobic mentalities of disaffected, displaced middle class workers who have grown complacent in the excesses of the US domestic labor market.

If you dun cure that, there’s nothing you can do to prevent US corporate leaders to continue scouring the world for cheap labor and deals and please, wake up and smell the roses, its not just the Chinese thats giving you headaches but also Mexican immigrants running across the Texas border of your reigning President’s home state.

Hard to believe, but my persistent obsession with my own traffic has led me to a new hypothesis today.

I hypothesize the rise to prominence of the political blog in Singapore. Mr Brown, Mr Wang, Tomorrow.Sg et al, (i dun read alot of local political blogs) all appear to garner decent following by critiquing local political developments, particularly in today's election climate. My posts have experienced traffic spikes whenever I remotely have political jibes inside and it is a prevalent trend that I pick up new readers whenever I blog about politics, a rare occurrence that simulataneously explains both my turtle-paced traffic growth and short-lived traffic spikes.

What does this trend portend? I see it as a natural progression and maturing of the local blogging circle. After all, if anyone tracked the popularity of Technorati during its nascent stages, blogs on politics and technology formed the twin pillars that propelled the growth and adoption of its search engine. Whereas Singapore blogosphere does not have technology blogs as the other pillar to bolster its growth, in its place, we had Xiaxue/DawnYeo/DaphneTeo to liven up the blogosphere while the mainstream bloggers figured out the learning curve via the political route.

Now, with political blogs, we might see the advent of a new dawn for the SIngaporean blogosphere, where a major proportion of young Singaporeans (that account for roughly 30-40% of Singapore's electorate, according to LKY) have their eyes and mind trained on.

Which also brings me to the point of the "walled-garden" approach of the ruling Administration on the podcasting ban for the upcoming elections. Such bans might have been intended to clip the wings of the more internet-oriented strategies of the political opposition (perhaps taking a leaf out of Howard Dean's success in online political rallying during the US Presidential Elections?), but its symbolises a slap in the face for the more tech-savvy youths of Singapore, the so-called "apathetic" bunch of people a new liberalized and politically-inclusive Singapore was supposed to reach out to. Whats there to fear from the Opposition even if they have podcasts? They can't even get their own ship in order and come on, potential podcast listeners are most likely to be highly well-read netizens of divergent political views readily available on the web. You think they are dumb enough to believe and lap up every single morsel of criticism from the Opposition?

Rather, the Administration should have looked towards the future benefits of a more liberal internet policy. Increasing access to political views via the convenient Internet pipeline to the hearts of Spore youths is a long-term strategy that will reap returns in the next series of elections over the next decade. Although podcasts might seem inconsequential in the overall array of internet communication tools available, the current ban heralds narrow-mindedness and petty politicking that will not go down well with the online community. I understand the lack of policing and controls on the internet might have contributed to such a conservative policy, but hey, if the incumbent political party leave all the innovating to the opposition, history tells us the more creative underdogs will save the day eventually.

There's a disconnect somewhere. I think we have reached a watershed for local political devt currently because the timing could not  have been more opportune after the made-for-TV interview of LKY vs Young Sporeans. Vivian Balakrishnan should now shoulder the burden of mustering his team and pondering how to generate political goodwill amongst the young, internet-savvy generation of Singapore.

This is gonna be a post on my views of Web 2.0 innovation.

 Was reading Noah's post yesterday about his "doomsday prophesy" on Zooomr.com, an alleged Flickr.com copycat. Techcrunch recently featured pixrat.com , another online photo-sharing copycat  as well with many common Web 2.0 bells and whistles. The general grip was about the lack of innovative, revolutionary features in these copycats. Despite a lack of freshness in innovation, hype is surging not only in the Web 2.0 community but also in the corporate sector in the form of M&As from NewsCorp, building up towards a potentially cataclysmic consequence that could see the bursting of another Silicon Valley Bubble.

 Or will it? My opinion is the whole Web 2.0 frenzy was about useability. Making the machine-human interface friendlier so you, me and your grandma could learn to use the internet just like going to the grocery store. F*** the terminology like AJAX, geo-tagging, APIs, RSS, and all the other mambo-jumbo dished out as tech jargon. The names dun matter, what they all do is more important – making web-browsing simple and from my perspective here in Singapore, a lot of websites in the world are bloody hard to navigate that it seemed design was completely done without the user in mind. There is a huge gap between web design and web usage. This disparity fuelled the Web 2.0 boom and before we start projecting the demise of Web 2.0, lets take a look around the world and appreciate the scale of the problem. i.e. There's still a lot of websites out here that needs that Web 2.0 juice.

The whole Web 2.0 frenzy could be construed as a race for useability. Innovators and developers found a the problem and are racing in a quest for self-gratification or getting bought out (depends on who you speak to).

On the other hand, major media companies like NewsCorp who didn't really "get the web" are just buying new core competencies, and similarly engaging in a race for new channels to reach the same targetted users. The key metric of determining their targets is the useability again. Because useability generates high traffic and large communities, justifiying customer acquisition and mindshare as quantifiable business objectives for their acquisitions. Going beyond Newscorp, there are many other media companies who dun "get the web" yet too, and beyond those leeching off Apple iTunes or Google Video, we can be sure the Business Development guys at CBS, Viacom are cracking their heads thinking what and where to buy next just to catch up.

So here's a great opportunity for us: understand useability, develop something that simply works and we might just strike the jackpot. It could be photo-sharing ((a href="http://www.flickr.com">FLickr), news-reading (Digg/ NewsVine), music downloading (iTunes), video-viewing (Youtube), social networking (Facebook), personal finance (Billmonk) or just about any other damn thing in our mundane routine lives that can be solved way better by the web. 

Keep it Simple, Keep it Useable and money will come. True?