Shikata ga nai

Following the Japanese earthquake, tsunami on 9 March, 2011, a generous friend took out $50,000 as seed money and suggested I organize a Charity bicycle ride to rally HPA members and Singaporeans to support the Japanese people. We took on an ambitious target of $200,000 with less than a month to organize.

A day before the ride, I was despondent, stuck at $130,000 collection for over a week. At 2pm, one fairy godmother, who wished to remain anonymous, came along and cheered me with a $50,000 cheque. This was then broadcasted and an hour later, one godfather underwrote to top up to $200,000. Eventually, we overshot slightly.  

Several parties came forward to chip in, be it ambulance, logistical support, private companies and manpower from NParks. We did not spend a dime on anything. Even the banners were re-cycled stuff. Every dollar raised went to the Japanese Disaster 2011 fund through the Singapore Red Cross Society. We had about 40 cyclists and 20 odd walkers.

Through my Japanese friend, we thought it would be befitting to invite the Japanese ambassador to grace this event. We also contacted a local Japanese radio channel and some Japanese related advertising agencies. The idea was to attract Japanese in Singapore to step forward, participate alongside us.

Unfortunately, this was not to be. The reply from the Japanese embassy was totally alien to me. We invited, waited with bated breath and then this:

“Thank you for your heartfelt concerns of the recent earthquake in Japan.  I am sorry for this rather late reply. We deeply appreciate your generous intentions and enthusiasm in organizing the Charity Bicycle Ride to raise money to help those affected by the disaster.   

After much consideration and discussion, it is with great regret that we have to decline your kind invitation, as it would not be suitable for the Embassy of Japan to make association with charity events due to the fact that Japan is the country that receives the donations and relief support”.

I was bemused. Later on, I found out that the word ‘charity’ caused lots of discomfort. We had always used this word in our previous charity drives. Apparently, it became awkward for a rich nation to accept charity!

About his time, a BBC commentator had this to say about wealthy Japan. He said: “If Japan gets knocked down by a vehicle, it is likely to reject any ambulance that comes along. It will instead call for it’s own ambulance”.

So I asked my Japanese friend his interpretation on this matter. He had this to say:

“It is very difficult to say anything about Japanese embassy but I give you some example for you to grasp Japanese embassy way of thinking.

When I was introduce Secretary of Japanese Association to Japanese ambassador (

last one), I was requested to submit resume before I visited. When I was invited my senior Japanese friend to have lunch with Singapore Ambassador to Japan

in Tokyo, I was not requested anything before hand.

So my personal opinion is Japanese ambassador is behave like tycoon while Singapore ambassador is like sales director of Singapore. You can find who is more working for the nation and citizens. I am very sorry about Japanese embassy reaction”.

My Japanese friend felt sheepish. Then again, Meira Chand wrote a very good piece following disaster in Straits Times and had this to say: “Japanese society is structured, among other things, upon the element of shame. Loss of face is a dishonour that is hard to bear on any level”. She went on to say: “Shikata ga nai, it cannot be helped…”

I wish all Japanese to be more upbeat with the word Gambatte. It’s more uplifting, positive and rousing. In Google translate, Shikata ga nai is roughly translated as “NO CHOICE”.

Oh yes, my generous friend who gave $50,000 from his own pocket had a choice, moved by the repeated scenes on TV of that catastrophic tsunami that hit Japan. May the souls of 15,000 victims rest in peace and may our Singapore ambassadors around the world continue to be sales directors of our little red dot. 

P/S: In all, the Singapore Red Cross collected about $34 million. Most of this money will be spent in building/reconstruction of infrastructure which have more meaningful values.

First world marred by third

The day before I was to go on a driving holiday up to Penang, I was flat out on my back. Everything I took simply got thrown out of my stomach. The world was a spin and I checked into hospital; stayed 2 days. It was a severe inner ear infection and vertigo kicked in.

Upon discharge, I was not able to drive. Judgement of positioning, depth and distance were impaired, likewise hearing on my right. In short, spatial orientation is off and has to be recalibrated. I broke a tall glass in restaurant, chipped a cup or two and almost tip over a road side barrier riding my bicycle!

The experience is a nagging tipsy feeling and rehab is a good option. It’s a science called vestibular therapy.  It works by having you perform motions that are intended to make you dizzy while at the same time making you focus on your body position. Three receptors are at play for an able body person-vestibular system (inner ear balance), ocular (eyesight) and lastly our skeletal, muscular movements.

So post medical leave, I went back to work using our public transport system, largely on trains, buses and occasional taxi rides. It’s no big deal as my formative years were walking, cycling, sampan, ferry boat to school. After three weeks of public commute, I would rate our  transport system as first world.

Understandably, some parts of Singapore (North-South line, Jurong East-City) are congested on trains during peak hours. These are best addressed by frequencies and capacities (supply vs demand) or even pricing differentiation to ‘incentivise’ early birds to work. Conversely, ‘disincentive’ of more expensive fare during peak period, much like vehicular ERP to spread the load. I imagine latter to be highly unpopular.

It helps that my home is only a 3 minute walk to the train station. I take a train, switch over to another and then a feeder bus to work. In all, it’s 50 mins compare to 30 mins of driving. You get to read, go about doing eye rehab exercises or simply people watching on trains. It’s therapeutic.

Alighting from train, I have the option of 2 feeder buses to work and a spoilt choice of 4 feeder buses on my way back to the train station. The connection from train station to bus stop is sheltered. Our bus captains are generally patient.

Most buses are ‘handicapped friendly’, allocating a generous slot, good for 2 wheelchairs. In the 3 weeks, I did not witness any one on wheelchairs. It can be argued that the same slot is a wonderful place to park one’s foldable bicycle, a practice that’s allowed only after 9:30am. Our buses are clean, air-conditioned, armed to it’s teeth with ‘stop buzzers’ all over including a ‘low buzzer’ for those on wheelchairs. There's no reason for alighting one too many stops.

I only wish our bus captains are better trained especially when accelerating and decelerating. The anal ones tend to jerk and it’s most unpleasant when standing or trying to alight. With the double-deckers, the hissing sounds emitted (from hydraulics) are quite annoying. Thus far, I have not experience bus captain ‘skipping bus stop’ despite congestion at peak hour.

Our trains are clean, frequent and reliable. I feel it puzzling that in the tropics, our trains are grossly cold at most times. The ‘reserve seats’ for elderly, handicapped are respected.

As for our citizen drivers, we have some way to go. One morning, the sky opened, pouring buckets once I alighted at my destination. The bus stop to overhead bridge is sheltered, likewise the overhead bridge itself. Upon stepping down the overhead bridge, the walk way to my office building is also sheltered. Dry so far; I did not have to use my umbrella! So I trotted along the sheltered walkway. A huge private car zoomed past, hit a puddle of water and I was spilled wet up to my knees. I could only shout the b*!&% word (I meant bastard, not bitch). The next vehicle was a double-decker. The bus captain had more sympathy. He actually moved at a measured speed without spitting on me.    

If only more of our heart ware are  in place, we would be first world, first class.

Blowing in the wind

I was taught many folk songs whilst in upper secondary school by Shanta Abisheganaden. I remembered songs such as Red River Valley, Oh Shenandoah, 500 miles and of course Blowing in the wind. Post GE, the departures of GCT and LKY from cabinet echoes the lyrics of BITW: 'the answer my friend is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind'. There were too many why and too few why not.

So I went back to history to try to make sense of some of these tumultuous changes over GE and how democracy evolved through the years. Aljunied GRC started off as a tough touch-and-go situation. GY maximised the use of new media to reach out especially to Gen Y. Arguably, new media worked in favour of the opposition at the speed of light. It is said that 'bad news' travels 13 more times than good news. So we should not be surprised by it's viral effect, be it TPL or Yammy in cyberspace.

While GCT said SG is going to be in trouble if we lose GY, he is mostly correct. But the counter-argument by LTK of 'why have elections when one cannot lose' sat well with the disenchanted. When LKY came in with this 'live to repent' if one chooses the opposing side, it backfired big-time. I remembered a posting on FB immediately after this Gen Y voted. This person said: 'this is demockracy. I just voted. Do I have to repent for next 5 years?'.

So it came to being that Aljunied GRC was reduced to a 'good man who came to a bad end'; Boethius (c. 480-524) in the Middle Ages. In 524, he was charged with disloyalty and sentenced to death. While awaiting execution, he wrote 'The Consolation of Philosophy', one of the most widely read book back then. In a dialogue between Boethius and Lady Philosophy, who appeared in his cell, he poured out his soul and asked: "If God is, whence come evil things?" She comforted him that from limited perspective of humans, God works in mysterious ways.

In a more recent book "The Belief Instinct", Jesse Bering put it succinctly by saying: "Life isn't unfair. It isn't fair either. It just is".

If we fast forward to the Age of Enlightenment, we have the British Philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) who mirrored the laws of human society as would Isaac Newton in the laws of motion and gravity. He spoke of a community that submits to the absolute authority, maybe a king or legislature, and that power is unquestioned. According to him, to be free of chaos, people must put themselves in a sort of prison of their own construction and he warns: "life can be nasty, brutish and short, said over the English Civil War". Of course, he had the King on his side.

The Enlightment period is also a time when thinkers tried to explore and discover better ways to organise society. Hence John Locke (1632-1704) propounded the social contract theory where people gain safety and security for themselves and their property by surrendering some of their rights to government. The government in turn must respect certain rights of its people, preserves the rights to life, liberty and punishes citizens who violate the rights of others. This resembles the roots of modern elected government.

Interesting enough, another character Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) came along before the French Revolution with these famous contradictory words: "Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains". He argued that people are basically good and that institutions of society corrupted them over the centuries! So 'shaking the box', said GY, post GE may be a good thing.

So it has been 300 years on as society continues to evolve. Most societies lived under an elected government, whatever its imperfection. The recent GE opened the eyes of the population as more than 90% locals enjoyed the constitutional right to vote the party of their choice.

The aftershock of Aljunied GRC jolted many Singaporeans with some asking for GY to return into parliament, government, the President and be the 'voice of the people'. The die is cast, no replay, no play, play (horsing around) and sadly all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumoty together again.

Some years back, the late Samuel Huntington from Harvard once compared our political system against the Taiwanese. He opined that the Taiwanese political system will survive because it is democratic. Conversely, he thought the Singapore political system will be hard to survive beyond LKY. The buzz and energy generated from the recent GE showed otherwise. That there is already vitality and vibrancy with LKY 'well and alive' bode well for SG.

As Winston Churchill once said: "Democracy can be an exasperating, messy system, the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".

For me, I am still a virgin voter, deprive of my constitutional right as a result of a last-minute walk over!

All the same, we should be proud that our election process is clean, civilised and safe and that the man on the street has the the freedom of choice every 5 years.

If we are not willing to engage, then who?

It was reported in ST that increasingly, we now have "masked commuters" (wearing those blinkers used on planes) on MRT taking up reserved seats meant for elderly, pregnant ladies and infants. Interestingly, no commuter would act to interrupt commuter's slumber when the seat is really needed for the above. So we end up taking pictures, post these in cyberspace with the view to shame them. I am doubtful.

Last Sat, I took a swim in a shared pool. My temperature went up 2 degrees when I witnessed a foreigner jumped in without taking a wash. I turn around, and said: 'excuse me, you really should take a wash' before entering pool. I left it as that.

When I completed my laps, I got out of the pool and notice another person about to wade in. I interrupted him most gently by saying: Excuse me. You need to first wash before entering the pool. You must be kidding, he exclaimed. I pointed to the 'instructions board', reiterated that it is part of standard swimming procedures. Then he tried to be funny saying: 'are you sure all these people wash before entering?'. I said I don't know but I sure DID. He got the message.

P/S: Foreigners or otherwise, I would have exactly the same conversation.