Watching movies the right way….can definitely make you a better person…providing.

I am quite a weirdo. Because I don’t ever watch a movie just for fun. To me time is important. So if I am going to give up two hours of my undivided attention to a task. It has to be worth my while. That’s why I first go thru the top 100 movies that academy awarded directors and actors consider worthy..after that I watch like tons of reviews. I prefer to read them along with critiques, all the time jotting down notes to get a handle on what’s really happening below the surface of what I am watching. Then once I have enough knowledge about the movie…I watch. So to me a movie isn’t just a two hour affair, it’s more like project.

Take the case of this 80s movie Tampopo, it didn’t do well in Japan. But in the west it managed a cult following and a central theme that runs strong in the movie is humility i.e if you want to be really good at something. You have to humble enough to accept your flaws and work hard on improving your weak points.

Like I said. I learn a lot from movies….but you must know how to watch them. Even a flick as seemingly vapid as Star Wars can be educational at so many levels if one watches it with the right mind set. I learnt for example that the Jedi philosophy could be applied in many areas of my life to patch up leaks. And it worked. So that just goes to show you that watching movies isnt a complete waste of time…it may just change you for the better.

Trust mme. When i say, you learn alot here.

As you proceed into your 50’s and beyond

It’s important to reflect daily on your thoughts, words and deeds….simply because as you age. You begin to realise that YOU have the potential to be your best friend and worst enemy.

What Thai Cong should serious consider doing

I met up recently with my sartorially inclined read club. I go there about once a year! Just kidding. Actually, I quite like them. These are basically a bunch of men who met up regularly online, all dressed like peacocoks to chit chat about how to put your best foot forward with fine tailoring and the right accessories. Somewhere in this discussion the flavor of the month, the sartorialist Thai Cong cropped up and I was asked – what can he do to further enhance his image? My advice (not that I am a position to give any, just take a look at what a mess I am. Trust me, there’s no photoshopping here…just good olde shoot from the hip snap to print) is once one hits 50. One should seriously hit the gym and take up some resistance training like lifting weights. Because at 50, there’s really only so much fine tailoring and accessorising the details can be expected to deliver on the mileage of making a memorable impression. For one to go up one level at that vintage. One cannot run away from the reality of age and ageing. Not after 50. If I was not really genuine about the good image of my friend Thai Cong. I wouldn’t have linked him. Bear in mind before I linked him to our vast network, Thai Cong was just harvest 20K views, now it gets 500K per episode, so my only motivation in giving my dear friend some advise is so that he doesn’t end up like an old uncle caricature like above……like I said, after 50 a man needs to hit the gym, bc what u don’t use, you will ultimately lose! That’s why I am going to take my own advice and maybe the next pic I take will not end up disappointing so many.

If someone put a gun to my head and screamed, give Thai Cong one sartorial word of wisdom. It will probably be this. The suits are perfect. But they can pair better with the suits. check out the video on shoe glacage.

This is the enhanced version. As you can all see…there’s no significant improvement in appearance and a large chunk of that has to do with the body politics of hitting fifty and beyond. This simply underscores my point, to make further gains with fine tailoring goes only so far…to go beyond that glass ceiling one cannot run away from pumping iron and I need to do this!

Singapore can be the Ibiza of fake meat…yes it can!

I am convinced this is the biggest thing since Tiger Balm…..I can understand if some people choose to roll their eyes and say…Well, I don’t see anything big in this! Only understand these are the same folk who reacted the same way when I got excited about electric cars, private enterprise venturing into space, crytocurrencies etc etc. Why is this so exciting? Let me share with you why because AVA is not going to tell you! They don’t know. Neither will that other government Pravda site mothership run a special on this either…because they don’t know either. It’s exciting because you can gain entry into this business model by just experimenting with your secret recipe in your kitchen. You don’t need to spend millions in equipment or to jump thru hoops just to get the four corners of your business model right. You could just as well go down to NTUC buy yourself a few cans of chickpeas or dhall and whip up something and tweak it till no one can be quite sure what they’re munching on…but its nice and they want more of it! And once you are at that point, you are good to go. So dont let anyone tell you. You need to go into this by first spending millions building an off shore seaweed plant and processing it with equipment you really only see in Star wars and only then can you really be considered credible….think of it this way. You can do it the same way Col Saunders once did it for KFC. And trust me. That’s a lot to get excited about!

Thai Cong is shopping for a TV

Many have written in and mentioned why do you post this? I dont understand vietnamese….. Well guess what? I dont either….not a single word! But that doesnt mean we dont know whats going on. Maybe we should just regard this as a social experiment, where we might ask ourselves – do we actually need those who we choose to understand to verbalise their thoughts, intentions and yearnings? Besides you all know that I like to indulge in weird pursuits……. Right? So letz not get judgemental abt Mr Thai Cong. I think for those who want to understand his philosophy towards work, life and play, it best to go to 4.02 mark and just hear what he has to say. We can all learn a lot from Thai Cong because he drives a remarkable lifestyle reality drama to promote his franchise of high end products and services in a relatively poor country. To me just that alone has to be exceptional in every sense…so stop bitching and just enjoy, it’s not as if these days you have one million and one things to do except maybe check out what is in your fridge and you just did that five minutes ago!..so just hang loose and go with the flow the Thai Cong way.

Will fake meat make it in Singapore?

https://vegnews.com/2020/12/singapore-becomes-first-country-in-the-world-to-allow-sale-of-cell-based-meat

This is the future for Singapore. If you really want to be bigger than Elon Musk in let’s say five years from now (and this is just a conservative projection). Then this is one industry that you should seriously consider going into. Because at the current threshold level, the entry cost is still low. But it will not stay this way for long. In my assessment, the shift towards fake meat will be based primary on health benefits. As real meat is not only very cost ineffcient to produce, but its also a logistical nightmare. But the main tipping point in favor of fake meat is simply this – what many do not realise is the amount of antibiotics and chemical enhancers that currently goes into producing real meat is so overwhelmingly excessive that I don’t think any sane person will want to go near it in the next five or ten years. I am not saying real meat will go the way of cigarettes completely, it will not. Because in the future there will always be botique farms that maybe only produce ten cows per year, but the cost will be simply out of reach for most. All I am saying is its simply a production and cost to opportunity calculation – in the future, mankind will have to eat less real meat otherwise we will just kill ourselves! And end up destroying the planet. The next question is will fake meat be as good as real meat? The paradox is real meat these days don’t even taste like meat as it was ten or twenty years ago. let me give you a real life example, if you buy a slab of butter these days, it doesn’t spread or taste like butter in the past, that’s because cows these days are feed oil palm based feed, so this idea that fake meat will never be as good as real meat will always be a red herring argument. The other question is will the govt support this initiative? Well all I can say is Singapore Inc needs to go thru a paradigm shift not only organizationally, but mentally as well, when it comes to retooling the wealth creation engines. But I think the civil servants who drove this idea should be given a free holiday in Batam. Just make it happen lah!

Thai Cong – Parc Villa

Thai Cong dancing

Virus or Vaccine……

In the final chapter of the Corona story. I have very little doubt it will come down to really only two non negotiable realities…..virus or vaccine. Those who have been vaccinated will have a higher chance of being spared the ravages of the disease. Those who are yet to be vaccinated will have to run the proverbial gauntlet and take their chances.

The perils of a one horse trick nation

If you tell me that Singapore has no choice other than to engage the world for its prosperity. Then I say, its conceivable that sort of strategy is highly dangerous and even flawed in a Covid infested world. As a strategy really only makes sense when it is able to take stock of the risk against the expected pay outs. When the risk keeps outstripping the payouts…..then the ONLY logical thing to do is to throw out the old strategy and come out with a new blueprint on how to move forward. Of course to abandon the old, one would first need to ask – how long will this pandemic last?

I think. The way we frame a question usually produces the type of answers we either anticipate or expect.

The correct question in my opinion should be, what if there’s no definitive cut of point to this pandemic? What if the virus keeps perpetuating itself genetically by mutating all the time? In my assessment this is not an implausible assumption as much as one that bears out repeatedly in the real world. Then at some point in the sequence of this logic, one would have to entertain the theoretical possibility that the virus will at some point be so advanced that it even negates the efficacy of the current vaccines. Or renders them so impotent that a new iteration of vaccines needs to combat the new improved virus. Then not only will you be back in square one. But because the virus would be advancely deadly by that stage, it may be wiser to retool the wealth creating strategy than to keep on insisting robotically that Singapore has no choice but to engage the rest of the world to survive.

The power of love

I am talking really only about the real thing…of course. But if you have ever been loved. Then I think its something that will always stay with you for the rest of your life. Its like something really permanent like eczema or rock. The feeling of being loved is so strong that it can really only be supernatural. BC even if you are out of love…the very memory of being loved is enough to carry you thru. Love is like being exposed to plutonium or going thru a quadruple heart by pass, that sort of experience can really only lance into you at a cellular level and go so deep into your soul that even if you happen to be out of love. The power of the memory of being loved might just be enough to take you safely to the otherside. That is why people who are fortunate enough to be loved should always count themselves blessed. As they have a rock in life…..and to have a rock in life simply means you can jump off a ledge and that which will catch you in mid air and deliver you safely to mother earth is nothing less than the awesome power of love. Only love has the magical power to do this. Now you know why the loved in this world can do so many wondrous things……… They have wings.

The Pilgrim

People who are accustomed to sufferance have a sheen about them. You can even make it out in the way they talk and carry themselves. It’s as if they have gone to a place that is so far off the edge of human consciousness, that they have borne witness to things that no one else can ever understand….except maybe people who are like them. This I imagine might be why old soldiers never ever talk about war when they gather together. They just seem to embody a strangeness like men looking beyond the present into some distant place that’s so foreign and alien that they’re permeated with the futility of trying to describe it to others.

About $

The funny thing about money is really just this. At first you spend the first part of your life chasing it. You dont really think long and hard about the why’s or whether it’s even worth it. But that could be because you have always been a victim of not having enough of it. And once you get it. You buy the things that you could never afford or rather you approach it with a sort of vengeance. Eventually the novelty wears off and you begin to realise that it’s chimeric, thats to say all your aspirations and dreams that you ever had about the transformational power of money was really a crock of shit. The way I see it is like this. Not everyone who has come to money sees it that way. Only those who are most comfortable with money really have this insight and when you have reached this realization. Then suddenly all you really want to do is to lead a simple life that is really one or two rungs above a beggars existence. You don’t even want furniture. Or for that matter most of the things the average family has. Maybe three changes of shirts and the same with pants and a simple bedding and stuff that you could perhaps fit into a carton box…..but the irony is that you are worth millions.

moonscape

It would seem photography is just about perspective, light and subject matter. But there might also be a fourth dimension about a worthy photograph….that’s the feeling it evokes and stirs in one. The problem as I see it, is the difficulty of distilling, bottling and conveying this feeling simply because no two people can possibly feel the same about something, not even if they happen to view the same thing. But despite this, one should at least try and I think the dissonance between this aspiration and failing to fulfill it is what actually makes the subject that much more poignant than what it is.

Vantage

Coronavirus 4 Mankind 0

Resting Monk

Ciano

He was never really given the credit, he rightly deserved. Though he was the youngest foreign minister in Fascist Italy from 1936 – 43. Ciano proved to be not only exceptionally intelligent to realise the alliance between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany would certainly end in tragedy. But he also proved to be a man who had the uncanny ability to see beyond the superficiality of Realpolitik into the underlying treachery, betrayal and complicity of power and politics of the inter war period.

The Sad, Sad and never ending Sad story of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH)

Its official SPH is dead. They insisted right to the very end. They had a sacred ramrod duty of upholding the ideal of forwarding fair, reliable and credible news……. the gold standard of the ‘truth.’ Just like Pravda. Now they have ended up in the rubbish heap of history…..as no one seems interested to vote with their wallets for their version of the ‘truth.’ I guess they will probably roll out the trite and tested bullocart that carries the caption, well newspapers all over the workd have been dying since the advent of the internet…..so we are no different from the rest. That may well be one iteration of the ‘truth.’ But in reality if they really did forward the truth, why would any sane and reasonable person not support them with their wallets. I am not a British citizen, but I am a fee paying subscriber to the Guardian…..so let us not say that declining readership is inexorable.

Win all the battles, but still lost the war! Dont pin the blame on LKY. He bowed out a long time ago. Be a real man go down with the sinking bathtub!

3 key success characteristics abt Thai Cong

1. Thai Cong works hard…… He is very serious abt his craft. I dont want to describe it as passionate… As it is an overused word that has become a bullshit descriptive term….. Let us just say. TC is very serious about what it takes to be the best in his field.
2. TC aspires to be a subject matter expert. He just doesnt know about aesthetics and symmetry and proportions…. There’s a genuine aspiration to know about the philosophy behind form and how it all flows to the functional. So this is not shiki miki. This is very deep knowledge and serious commitment to education.
3. TC knows how to brand himself. He holds himself out as knowledgable, competent and the best of what it means to be an original conceptualiser. So he is just not a run of the mill interior designer and specifier. Rather TC is a synthesiser of new knowlege. A content producer…… And that makes him the rarest of the rare. In summary. We have a diabolically trilogy at work that all makes TC very desirable….. Dilligence, Competence and Branding.

Food can be much cheaper in Singapore

People who claim Singapore has an abundance of cheap food invariably commit one or two errors in forming their assumptions. The first is they often do not differentiate between price and nutritional utility or value. Sure in the hawker fair. Food in Singapore cost very little and theyre also tasty as well, but one cannot escape conomic reality. As often these cheap eats offer inferior nutritional and dietary value. The second is its important to differentiate between quality and inferior food. I am not talking about taste as much as nutrients per buck.

You can’t bullshit me. As I am a primary producer. So I know the power and politics of food and the entire economic ecology. The only way to deliver good and affordably priced food is to have equity in the production process. Because good food is not cheap to produce. The yield is comparatively less to chemically induced growth food that also uses herbicides. Good food production is also perniciously erratic unlike chemically induced food where it is possible to boost performance and yield artificially.

Sure you can chow on a five dollar chicken rice in most food courts in Singapore 2021. But like I said, that doesn’t mean the food you consume is cheap. It just means you are consuming inferior food that doesn’t come close to delivering the nutritional value for you to live sustainably.

A better way to assess food prices is to ask – how much does it cost to eat a nutrient rich meal in Singapore.