Small Nation and the Second Hand Smoke

The haze serve to remind us that we can be easily affected by the action (or in action) of our neighboring countries. That the reason we have ASEAN to iron out regional issue in a thoughtful, gentleman and mature manner in achieving a WIN-WIN for all. Rather than one tactless minister resorting to accusing Singaporean of "Acting Like A Child". This minister do the entire ASEAN community no good with such comments as a representative from Indonesia. Is he under the Indonesian government payroll or some Palm Oil Companies left and right pocket? Yet on another side of the court, we have another mini-star firing off his rhetoric salvo forgetting this is not a local Opposition party handling some Hawker Center issues.

The Silver lining in this very hazy war of politics and diplomacy is the objective approach of Indonesian Foreign Minister to refocus the attention on fighting the forest fire and the assuring appearance of our PM on TV to inform our citizen the way ahead to tackle both the haze as well as health issues of the people.

Hope it paves the way to 1) Get ride of the fire and thus the haze 2)Prevent occurrence by persecuting errand Companies as well as help equip poorer farmers with alternative means of forest clearing or even a staggered slash and burn schedule to reduce number of hot spot at any time.

Half a million or 1 million dollar is not enough to solve the problem when the money lands in the wrong hands. We rather keep in in our nation reserve at the moment.

Further liberalization of camera phone use

Picture this. A man walking into a sensitive installation, wearing Google Glass equipped with a discreet miniature camera. He proceeded to take pictures of anything and everything he sees. Now rewind the story and this time we have a women, wearing a miniature camera the size of a blouse button. The permutation of scenario are numerous yet the reaction from are the same.... Increase security checks, increase spot check and new rules to mete out severe punishment to perpetrators. Not to mention the finger pointing and blaming game.

Welcome to the brand new world where anyone can have access to James Bond style spying tools and every security department are scrambling to find ways to prevent the sneak in of camera devices and leakage of sensitive photos. Lots of money and time are spend to prevent an elusive force whose stealth is up to the imagination and poker face of the smuggler. This resources are simply spend to suppress the singular issue of unauthorized photography and unfortunately at the same time deprive the increase value of mobile photography.

In the end, whether an individual decides to embark on internal espionage or simply the thrill of taking pictures and posting it on the internet boils down to INTENT. The best security measures may not be able to stop some one with a strong intention. Its boils down to education, discipline and instilling a sense of security ownership to the people.

Imagine one day we are all allowed to liberally bring in camera equipped phone into sensitive installation yet having the good discipline and education to ensure we do not take photos of sensitive facilities or equipment. Think about the value we can add to our work with this new found capability.

To be fair, there are already efforts to relax the rule of camera devices and it is a welcome change. There can however be further liberalization down the road for employee and the same time reducing the coverage of "No Camera Zone". Interestingly camera phone restriction did create a niche revenue stream for Telco and mobile phone-makers selling non-camera phone.

Happiness and Our Population - A gamers view

After 2 weeks of writing my Capstone Project Proposal and dozen of literature reviews, I realize my Ang Mo and critical writing skills are truly degrading. May be a result of lack of linguistic exercise from such a long time away from blogging. Its time to put those academic work a side for a while and share my opinion on the "Population White Paper".

No....I haven't read the Population White Paper and I don't intend to start reviewing its content. This job are better suited for our Statesman. I wonder how many people do actually read it from head to tail but I am sure most will appreciate the emotional disturbance to citizen this White Paper had, which the Parliament had already voted in favor. No thanks to the overwhelming White-shirtess votes.

Is a 6.9 million population even viable in Singapore? It all depends on the resources are country can provide to support such huge numbers on a tiny island. The basics like food, water, sanitation, shelter and healthcare are absolute necessary for humanity survival. State planner are of course ready to predict/forecast the resource demands using whatever mathematical model or super computer they had. What about happiness of Singaporean? Can it be measured at all?

If anyone had played the computer game, Civilization (I, II, III, IV and now V), you would be very careful on your citizen happiness level. As the smart player (or ruler) in the game, beside fielding a armed force to scare the shit out of other civilization from attacking you,  you will also watch out for domestic affairs like production, gold and most importantly populations. Production and Gold output of the civilization greatly depend on the number of citizen that can work the territory and like our Gahmen, I love to have lots of gold reserve for emergency us as well as urging my citizen to be more productive at work. The simplest way to increase either of this are simply to increase population.

Now the problem of increase population, in this game, is the decrease in citizen happiness. The counter such effect, we start building "Happiness" building like a Colosseum, Theatre, Wonders ...etc etc. Sometime, we implement policy to improve the existing happiness of our people. Sometimes a civilization with great culture value translate to improved happiness when adopting certain policy.

Using a computer game to illustrate effect of increased population may be slightly naive due to its "helicopter" view of real work situation but this games does set me thinking on the reasons of our unhappiness. Why are we unhappy with further increase in population? In my view, its  a case of lack of resources (happiness building), high cost of resources( the price citizen had to pay for happiness building), invasion of culture (losing culture value) and poor policy making.

In the game, players aim to dominate other civilization before 2030 through Military, Science, Diplomacy or Culture. I wonder what Singapore will be like in 2030. Large population don't guaranteed a civilization success, neither lots of gold and production level. In real life, I am a firm believer that even with a Singaporean core of just 2.7 million.... there are plenty of talents to lead our country to  greater success on the world stage. In the meantime, I hope our government are truly honest that the White paper is just a projection.

Isn't it time to get back on Blogging?

Pathetic....only one blog in 2012 and the blog had been dormant for a year. Think its time to get back and write my piece of mind. There definately some cock and bull story to talk about. Maybe my opinion on population white paper will be a good start.  Stay tune.