The art of making a first class impression on others

When people met you for the very first time. They WILL form a lasting impression about you in exactly three minutes and twenty five seconds. That is the nature of all human beings. We are all hardwired this way. Often this mental imprint that they have formed about someone is likely to adhere with them for a very very long time….knowing this is like possessing the skeleton key in the palm of your hands that will enable you to open many doors in life.

Not knowing this is to go thru life without a design, rhyme or purpose….you are likely to go around in big and small circles.

Always put all of yourself into the making a first class impression on others. Make it really count….hammer that gold standard so very hard and forcefully in the way one stamps a hallmark on a silver heirloom.

Most people are cinchai about this. Wonder no more why others are also cinchai about them as well. In life you only get out what you are willing to put in.

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‘My enemies have been conducting a secret and insidious psychological war to spread vile rumors concerning me in the city. They do this for one objective to make sure that I get nowhere in life by ensuring all the doors of power are closed to me forever. They tell everyone who cares to listen. Do not be fooled by his impeccable credentials. He is a gangster (by the way my loyal readers, do I come across as a gangsta? How ridiculous!) He grabs land like a cheap pirate. He has a chequered past and there are ship loads of warrant arrest out for him through out the length and breadth of Africa for every conceivable crime known to civilized society…yada yada yada yada lah.

But despite their best efforts to undermine my good name. No one believes them! Absolutely no one lah! Not even the roti man!

Because should we ever have the privilege to met and talk one day over a cuppa, you will certainly be convinced without a shadow of doubt, there is absolutely no truth in all these malicious rumors. They are all lies. All of them!

As I am a man who can always be relied upon to always leave a lasting and memorable impression on you – where I can almost guarantee 100% you will always make the extra effort to come back for more of me. That is all it takes to tip the balance in your favor….the rest is just moot.

Never waste your time on trying to fight those who try their best to undermine you. Just ignore them. Better still consign them to the garbage heap. They are not even worth one minute of your time. It’s a bloody waste of time and energy.

Just focus on the jugular…significant and important by managing yourself and others to perfection. Do this and only this and I can almost guarantee you.

Everything else will fall magically into it’s rightfully place.

The wise have always known this. As for stupid people they will spend their time fighting shadows and wearing themselves out!’

Sorry is worthless…..make it right!

When you commit a wrong to another. Follow it up with firm affirmative action. Make a genuine offer within a reasonable span of time for restitution. You need not say, sorry. That is optional. After all you must understand, to very serious people, sorry alone is a worthless and useless thing. It has zero utility.

For example if you are guilty of trying to cheat someone in a land deal. Then offer that person an equivalent piece of land at fair price and forfeit or pay out of your own pocket for the brokerage commission as a sign that you are genuinely remorseful and have taken all steps to mend the broken fellowship.

IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE THESE THINGS. THEN YOU ARE NOT IN A POSITION TO SAY THE OTHER SIDE IS SMALL HEARTED OR UNWILLING TO FORGIVE AND MOVE ON.

In reality, the other aide has every right to rebuff your apology as it lacks the essential component of restitution.

Only after doing all this and when your peace offer is rejected can you say all of the above.

This is the ONLY way serious and mature people go about the business of righting wrongs. There is no other way, but this one way.

Only children and women say sorry and expect to be forgiven. But you must also understand, that is why people don’t take them seriously.

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‘One day when I was walking around my lands. I caught a farmer red handed stealing durians from my orchard. When I confronted this fellow. He smiled and said, sorry. So the following day I visited his newly imported Vietnamese wife he recently bought and when some villagers told him, they had seen me playing around with her fun bags, this fellow came up to me huffing and puffing demanding to know whether it was true. Naturally, I smiled and said even if it’s true….. sorry lah! But he was still very angry. That was when I drew his attention to the obvious by mentioning – now you understand how worthless that word is to me and also you as well – I then asked of this man would he like me to visit his new wife more often? He said, there will be trouble if you do that. I went on to point out to this man, yes. I imagine there would be some trouble, but I am sure that magic fix all word sorry followed by a smile can always be reliably entrusted to find a way to make things better, don’t you think so? He said no. While recounting all this. I motioned to his smiling brand new wife to come over and sit on my lap while I bounced her up and down while teaching her to chant sorry again and again. Through it all my expression was hard and stern as I meant to teach this man a very important life lesson – somewhere in all this, the farmer lowered his head and offered ten durians for every single one he had stolen from me for the whole season. He never used that word again. Neither did I have any cause to use it either…that I imagine says a lot about what I really think about the word sorry.’

Managing jealous people

The best way to manage jealous people is to give them all the impression – you are no threat to them and if possible convince them, they are smarter than you.

This way, you not only keep them dumb like a katakana dalam tempurung (frog in a well’ but they will bask in complacency and be lulled into a false sense of security. It is not very difficult to sell the idea to stupid people. They are wise and savvy. Once you can seed this idea into their head – they will stop learning, become proud and begin building castles in the air.

That is exactly the place where you want them to be – in the kill zone – where when you plan your next move against them. They will have absolutely no idea what hit them.

Remember this without surprise, there can be no such thing as a decisive and speedy victory.

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‘The best revenge you can inflict on your enemies – is not to waste your time trying to show them how intelligent you are. No money there. Or to diffuse all your precious time and energy trying to win an argument. No money there either. Or to come out as the most popular guy. Sorry no money there also.

All you have to do is to enable you to win is work on the idea of living your well.

That’s the gold standard of revenge. That is when you win, while they are all wallowing in their cesspit of delusion and fantasy. The rest you can just as well throw out of the window…it wouldn’t matter in the least.

Only investing in the things that allows you go live well under your own term s truly matters, pays out big dividends and edifies you to reach higher. This is the most efficient to seek the ultimate revenge.

Anything else is just second rate.

Let the Media Literacy Council and Calvin Cheng go to the dogs

What separates man from animals is really only human decency. As much as one abhors terrorist and terrorism – children will always remain a special case. Simply because they know no better other than what they have been taught.

To suggest children must and should be killed even if their parents may be terrorist points to a very deranged and unsound mind.

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‘If and when you associate with a pariah. Do not be surprised, if people begin treating you like a pariah as well. This is because it is neither realistic nor reasonable to expect most sane and level headed people to elide the theoretical question – why are you associating with someone with such questionable moral and ethical values? Neither can you blame or regard most people as unreasonable should they conclude, ‘maybe you too are a pariah, that is why both of you are drawn together, as you both share common values.

This is how a pariah can destroy your reputation, credibility and life. Beware of the pariah.

Wonder no more why no one gives two flying fucks what the media literary council has to say.

This is what happens when one runs with pariah dogs.’

A typical busy day in the city

Start at 7.00 sharp. Usually I walk around my garden and play with the dogs before I hit the city. I know I look awake but I am really still asleep. Believe it or not.

By 9.30. I’ve just finished a meeting with a management team of a new enterprise in the food industry. They have sunk millions to manufacture boutique jam and bake bread….but they have hit a snag.

After two hours and a bit. By the looks of it, I’ve managed to hypnotize and charm everyone into buying into how things should be done….my way lah!

People who fund enterprises respect me a lot. They all know I seriously know what works and what doesn’t.

Usually when I face resistance to change. I make it point to soften up the women folk by dunking them into my back pocket before I even start. Being able to do just this is key, otherwise all you would be doing is wasting time as there are too many snakes on the plane…eliminate all resistance. Make everyone think you are the greatest guy on thus planet!

After lunch around 1.30 pm. I begin to lay down the facts of life fast and furious – I spare no quarter, this will not work! This is not good! This or that needs to be changed! These people are clueless when it comes to organizing a proper work flow – their kitchen looks more like a mortuary. Usually I try to pull this off diplomatically, but to hit home, one also has to be firm and assertive and this can only come from having a very clear vision of what will work and fail. The trick is to be able to communicate all this in such a way where no one has to lose face or feel threatened and everybody believes it’s their idea, when it’s really yours!

That is the highest acme of leadership when it comes to managing yourself and others.

At 11.00 pm. I am cruising down to the Arab quarter of Bukit Bintang to sell my perfume wood and oils. This is a rough neighborhood. They have their own laws and customs here the Al Alewi’s don’t do business with the Maik, the Maik do some business with the Omani’s, except only during Ramadan…the Druze don’t like to buy oils in standard units of measurements, they prefer the caravaners way of buying with one, two or three thumbs …break any of these rules and all you would end up doing is pissing loads of people off who probably don’t mind putting you in a pine box. But I am good to go. Done this so many times. Everyone knows me. They call me ustaz – teacher.

Every age has a strawberry generation

Every age has it’s challenges. Every age is uniquely vexing in it’s own way.

Will Singapore ever be free from the likes of Kong Hee & Co?

I don’t think most people really comprehend the allure of a mega church. That’s to say they haven’t really looked at how sublimely clever the whole idea of faith is packaged. Or for that matter considered how well suited it is to fulfilling almost every aspects of an individuals life needs in this modern and stressful age.

If it were truly a matter of just God alone, then it would be relatively easy to get a handle on why mega churches are mega churches…but a mega church is much more than the basic idea of God – it offers a total life solution – the warmth, comfort and security of community, camaraderie, shared values and in certain cases can even supply one with a compelling reason why life is worth living.

It’s like one of those super duper cruise ships that is so big that you don’t even feel as if you’re at sea – it’s a total immersive experience that plugs into every aspect of what makes you human with a dash of spirituality.

That idea will I imagine always appeal to Singaporeans to some extent, only because the marketing concept of a mega church can embody all the hopes and aspirations of most people much more succinctly than even family, friends or the weekend warrior club. As a consequence adherents don’t mind, being someone else. They don’t even mind, if there are gaps and missing spaces in the narrative. They don’t even feel the compelling need to question and interrogate what’s before them. As full membership first requires suspending disbelief.

Simply because to continue belonging, to continue receiving, to continue the journey in faith – one is constantly forced to subjugate the self and if possible arrest all thinking processes to such a degree that it becomes almost impossible to hold a different POV from the pervasive narrative of the church.

This accounts for why perfectly sane and intelligent people are more than willing to give their money and time to mega churches – to them, it’s not merely the idea of worshipping God, it’s much bigger than that as ultimately it’s a lifestyle choice that feeds into many aspects of their needs at so many different levels of understanding.

To say I pity these robots is like ploughing the sea. Because when they read what I have to write about mega churches they would probably pity me instead for being a lost sheep fumbling in darkness.

So let us agree to disagree lah. You go your way. I go mine. After all the world is large enough to accommodate our difference of opinion.

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‘I am always very clear and straight forward. That’s why people who try to sell me apple pie illusions and sweet fantasies all invariably get very exasperated only to end up storming away. But that’s OK with me.

As I am very comfortable with that idea. I never ever take it personally.

As I don’t see anything wrong about asking pointed questions like, why can’t I donate to my favorite charity, the autistic cause? Why do I have to give the church 10% of my salary when I don’t even earn enough to cover my monthly commitments? How is it possible that my father can multiply my wealth a thousand fold when all I seem to see is him taking whatever little I have from myself and others all the time? Why does the church need so much money? What’s happening in the accounting services in heaven….why does he always need a bit of $? What’s going on lah! Why can’t I just worship in peace without people harassing all the time to buy things that I don’t ever need? Where is God in all the dazzle and razzmatazz? Where?

As I said, I don’t ever mind walking the high road all by myself. I’ve done it before many many times – not if the cost of having to agree, conform and tow the line means I am forced to live in some lie that makes me feel like a phony.

I can’t imagine anything more depressing than living in an elaborate lie.

I’ve tried to do that a few times in the name of the common good – to close one eye and to just let it slide, but at the end, I just feel miserable and it eats me up from within, so usually I end up walking away….it’s very sad, I know, but that’s the only way I know how to live my life. I don’t know any other way but this one way to live a purpose driven life.’

Time for soul searching in the Workers Party

Someone asked me recently, why did the WP perform so badly in the GE. I told this person, some say it’s the post LKY effect. Then there are others who continue to insist the PAP has fixed many of it’s problems.

This person was not happy with my reply. So he asked again….but WHY do you think the WP performed so badly?

To which I answered, ‘I don’t know….to be honest. I don’t think the entire leadership in WP knows either…that could be why they are all smiles and seem to appear quite non chalant about their catastrophic performance….and that in a nutshell is the problem.

In a well electorally attuned political outfit, they would all be soul searching….but that is another party political party…WP is different.

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‘Politics like life is basically, a game of chess. To win you have to make smart moves. Knowing where each chess piece should sit on the board in the beginning, middle and end of the game can only come with insight and knowledge – this is the essence of all dangerous games!

Any game that involves winning, drawing or losing is intrinsically dangerous. Don’t delude yourself by thinking otherwise!

If you lack that one strategic insight and knowledge that politics like life is intrinsically a dangerous. All you’re really doing is moving chess pieces up and down the board without a coherent strategy or a clear understanding of what you’re doing along with what’s at stake….. and you will lose!

It’s the same if you have never taken the trouble to sit down in a quiet place and reflect seriously on where you want to go with your life….because failing to do just that alone is by default treating life lightly and not regarding it with the respect that it deserves…i.e life is inherently dangerous.

And if all you’re doing is waking up every day, putting on your make up or tie and the only thing that occupies your train of thoughts is trying to make it to the mythical level 20 of angry birds when you’re on the MRT going to work. That to me is even worse…as not only are you not aware living is dangerous. But it’s conceivable you’re already brain dead!

You’re not even in the game!

Unfortunately, most people never ever think life is a dangerous affair – to paraphrase, they don’t ever want to take ownership over their destiny. To put it another way – they cannot deal with the reality that plain ordinary living can ever be dangerous!

They much prefer to outsource the dangerous aspect of life to someone they saw on TV. Or go thru life with roughly the same intellectual power it takes to tie shoelaces where they take cold comfort in the idea – somewhere…someone is actually cracking their heads to make their life’s better and safer!

Truth is this! No one ever thinks hard and long about your well being. Why should they! Not hard enough at least where they will always put you first and foremost except maybe the people who really love and care for you and even so, sometimes they don’t bother either, as they have their own problems to deal with. So if anything is going to change for the better – it’s really comes right down to you and only you and no one else, but you!

It all boils down to one discipline – thinking seriously about life and coming to terms with the idea that life is intrinsically dangerous.

When I was in my thirties, I was looking at people in their forties and fifties getting retrenched in the name of right sizing. I still remember thinking to myself, ‘what kinda of fuck up word is right sizing? Then I said to myself, just plain ordinary living is so fucking dangerous man!’

I remember watching those poor sods all wearing a dumb look as they walked out of their cubicles holding cardboard boxes….they all looked lost, as if the road of life had suddenly taken an unexpected wrong turn they didn’t even see coming – somewhere in all this, I experienced a moment of epiphany, this is going to happen to me one day….I am not going to play this shitty snake and ladders game where someone tells me one day I am not good enough and sends me packing.

Living is fucking dangerous!

If I am going to swim in shark infested waters then I might as well take my chances in the business world lah. I may go bankrupt, if things don’t pan out the way I planned it or see it in the movie theater somewhere in my head…then again I might just make it to the other side…but at least, if I get chopped. I can be assured I was really not good enough and it’s not from someone whose just telling me this as if he or she is reading it all off from a laminated card that HR prepared on 101 of how to retrench with a heart!

I am not saying I am smart. What I am saying is it’s a tragedy when people don’t even see the wisdom of spending time thinking long or hard about where they’re going, let alone come to terms with the reality – living is a inherently dangerous proposition.

Being a businessman isn’t easy – it’s fucking dangerous! My life is not perfect. Not 100% at least. Some months, it flows sweet and clear. Other months, it’s touch and go. But when I average it out. I rather be where I am now than where I was….and that is the only thing that really matters.

My point is this attitude comes with the territory, it’s like an occupational liability where one simply accepts living is inherently fraught with danger. I am not even talking about the sort of living that requires you to operate heavy machinery or duck bullets. Just plain ordinary living, the sort where you just go to NTUC after work to buy a loaf of bread can be so very dangerous especially when you don’t bother to use your brain and see your life as a chess piece on the black and white squares of life.

The only people in Singapore who I know embody the belief that it’s possible to live, work and play in a bubble wrapped world is the leadership of the Workers Party – what you have here is essentially a group of risk adverse people who have no realistic understanding of the demands of power and politics in Singapore and because they don’t understand that just as living is dangerous, politics might also dangerous as well and this at least requires a modicum of acceptance. You can get sued, bankrupted, your name could be dragged across mud fields…but hey, that’s politics man! You mean you never watch the movie Gandhi meh!

If WP wants a political environment with twelve airbags and five stars safety rating then I say they are not realistic and it’s better to rebrand WP as an alternative lifestyle hub where they hold free yoga sessions and have a store selling reiki crystals and incense sticks at subsidized prices – that way at least they could really add more value to Singaporeans than what they are currently doing.

My take is simply this – if you happen to be a political outfit in Singapore and all you can do is keep silent all the time, then I say, you have summarily forfeited your mandate and worse of all you don’t have a coherent strategy that accounts for your raison to exist – you’re no bloody good – it’s an epic fail. No point even considering their manifesto.

That was why as far back as 2013, I’ve been telling people not to vote WP. Vote them in for what? So that their MP’s can sponge off 13K per month while keeping mum on topical issues that affect thousands of Singaporeans and stakeholders. You got to be kidding me right! My life is not simple. Your life is also not simple. So why should the life of a WP politician be happy and so simple?

But let me be realistic – this is my point of view. It’s personal.

All I am saying. If you cannot accept that politics is Singapore is inherently dangerous. Then don’t be a politician. Just like maybe if you can’t bear mosquitoes and flies, then don’t be a farmer!

My point of view….may count for nuts.

Only it’s bears repeating – it’s no accident that people who regularly read my blog do relatively well in life.

Because I am not like Mr Brown – I don’t do stupid things like behave like a kid when I am pushing into my fifties. I don’t spend my time quibbling whether playing angry birds or Soduku is much more pleasurable to reading manga comics on the MRT. I don’t recreate an image of how I want to come across to myself and broader world in Instagram and selfies that depicts some illusion of what my life is when I know it’s not like that. Everything that I do. I do for a purpose. Above all I come to terms with the idea living is inherently dangerous….so I manage it as best I can to get the most out of it.

Just like a chess piece. It’s all designed to fall together into some grand design….most of the time, I get it right 70%. On the epic runs it’s close to 80% and that I guess is all that you can really hope for in life – to know deep down that no matter how the chips of life may fall, you can still stand and live life under your own terms.

But I certainly

I think if more people just take the trouble to set aside some quiet time to think about where they’re really going along with how they want to get there…everything will just fall right in place.

The problem as I see it

But most importantly. To win in this game. One has to learn lessons along the way. What worked in the past does not necessarily hold true in future chess games – it’s interactive, one makes it up as the game unfurls and to some extent that requires knowledge, and by learning the lessons that are
accumulate along the way.

We become each and every piece within the game called life!’

Learning how to be alone

Most people cringe with fear at the very prospects of being alone…that’s only because we have all been scripted since the moment of our youth to believe being alone is a form of failure or character flaw.

Frequently this mental conditioning is so pervasive and subtle that often we find ourselves having to be someone else rather than who we really are. Or indulging in stupid things like marinating all of ourselves in a community of strangers in the hope that somewhere in all this great diffusion of effort and energy – we would be able to discover of sense of identity and to know where we truly belong and who we really are.

In truth, it is only when we strive daily to be comfortable with loneliness that we are able to discover who we really are and what we really want out of life.

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The end of the road for Kong Hee & Co

I don’t relish this. Neither am I gloating. As spending time in jail is seriously no fun lah! But how else is civilized society suppose to deal with con men who regularly use the name of God for nefarious ends?

My only hope is Kong Hee will genuinely repent for his sins. Hopefully jail time will be able to provide him and his motley crew with ample time to reflect on the error of their ways…..but what about the naive and brainwashed people who were all conned?

Is there any justice for them? Can they for instance get their money back?

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‘One reason why I decided to be a businessman instead of remaining a cookie cutter salary man is because I really enjoying giving others a fabulous deal. Whenever I can do this. I get a high. I can see the sheer happiness in the man’s eyes when I count off the money. He knows I appreciate the dedication and quality of his labor and above all he knows that I regard it as a sacred thing that deserves to be treated with the deepest respect.

I call this understanding dignity of labor. That is why people who work alongside or for me always come back. I have an incredibly low rate of turn over. If you do business with me. The chances (providing you are dead serious and take pride in your craft) you will always come back again!

Having said that, I am also a businessman who likes to get a fabulous deal back as well.

If I don’t get a good deal, it’s not unusual for me to jump up and down and throw my temper – if I find that people are trying to take advantage of me, cheat or fix me up. It’s even worse.

I will fill up a bottle of Johnny Walker with chinese tea and pretend to drink myself blind in the kopitiam, all the while lamenting, ‘I am the man who has renounced evil, but it is so hard to walk the path of righteousness, as some people make it impossible for me.’ I will sing vulgar Tamil songs and start fights in the local chettynad. I will smear shoe polish around my eyes and look like a panda and loiter around the village temple talking aloud, ‘it is so hard to be a good man…so very hard….I may have to throw in the towel.’

When the villagers see all this – they will all be very anxious. They will murmur to themselves, the forces of evil are attacking the farmer…the poor soul is tortured. They will get very angry with those people who try to cheat me.

Recently a couple of 5 cents cheap pirate landowners conspired to flood my lands by secretly constructing water locks along the river – I hoodwinked them with a host of countermeasures which I put in place in secret by building better locks which I personally designed and supervised.

Now their lands are flooded.

You know what they call me? They say that I am a gangster. Can you imagine that!

They all openly call me a gangster in a public function. All because I outwitted them by secretly building better water locks which diverted the angry river to their side to flood the shit out of them! Turning all of them into U boat commanders overnight!

Bloody daughter fuckers!

There is no way to win with these cheaters. The way I see it, they deserve their grief lah and much more.

After all who asked these cheaters and saboteurs to kachau (harass) me! It’s not as if I went around conspiring to flood their lands – everyone knows I have long since taken a solemn vow to renounce evil. Even the bloody roti man in the village knows this. So why go disturb a cobra…after all who is really at fault when the cobra feels threaten and strikes mercilessly!

Tell me who is to blame?’

Is ISIS Islam?

Well the mini skirt answer is they certainly have nothing to do with the Hare Krishna’s!

Very often the Islamic State’s approach is summarily dismissed by moderate Muslims as un Islamic since they are accused of selectively quoting the Hadith and Sunna to further violence and terrorism.

The problem with that automatic response that has remain unchanged since the days of Yasser Arafat is that it denies the reality – Islam is not a monolithic body of knowledge. That incidentally is true of every religion on this planet as well! If anything islam is a very wide ranging and diverse corpus of teachings, ideology, philosophy and suggested way to live with no centrally controlled authority to maintain contextual and interpretative fidelity to what is right and wrong…true and false…manufactured and adulterated…embellished and pure etc etc.

Truth remains. Many of ISIS ideology, policies and actions, as heinous and inexplicable as they are to the Western mind, can sit very comfortably within the vast geography of Islamic teachings….there is a lot of room for accommodation and even more for improvisation, that is the main problem in a nutshell.

Critics and moderate Muslims may continue to insist vehemently ISIS is only selectively citing Islamic verses in order to legitimize many of their evil actions to its followers, but ironically that is precisely what gives ISIS it’s credibility : they are able to account for their actions coherently by citing a theological basis.

Of course, I am not suggesting for one moment that ISIS is mainstream Islam. Or that Islam condones murder and terrorism….but to assign a label that ISIS is un-Islamic without bothering to go into details is to deny the diversity and range of Islamic teachings that exist in the vast geography of the Islamic world – that ultimately has to be a self-defeating stance…only because it denies reality.

Besides it is an argument that ignores some very basic evidence concerning what continues to power ISIS, and hinders comprehensive understanding concerning why adherents of ISIS believe and do the things they do along with supplying possible answers as to their ultimate goal.

To intelligently resolve this perennial hubris of what is Islamic and un-Islamic. Muslim scholars and community leaders would do well to consider conceiving a central controlling authority on similar lines with the Vatican to vet religious text so that religious material are never taken out of context to legitimize or weaponize terrorism or any wrong doing. Coming to think of it, maybe Christians should also do the same as well.

People and planet would be much safer if the ambit of all religion is strictly delineated to ONLY promote peace and mutual co-existence.

Religion after all can mean so many things to so many different people.

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‘When I first started commercial farming in the kampung. I was once asked by the headmaster of the village school to clear up a confusion concerning which was ‘righter’ or ‘wronger’ – to say,

I have two thumbs and eight fingers or I have ten fingers?

I told this teacher casually one can use both phrases interchangeably as to the best of my knowledge the thumb is also a finger and finger doesn’t necessarily exclude the thumb.

Shortly thereafter a mini war of words erupted in village school. One faction comprising of mainly art stream teachers who liked to make fun of me for not having a wife insisted that thumbs were not fingers at all. They said, if thumbs are fingers, then why do the look so different from fingers? Why was there a need to even create a separate word to describe the shortest finger as a thumb?

The science stream teachers on the otherhand continued to insist thumbs were a form of fingers. They believed since a thumb fulfilled the same functions as fingers, they were in every sense of the word fingers.

As for the village kids, they went around asking unsuspecting people who were not from the village, how many fingers do I have? To which most would naturally reply, ten. Only for them to stick out their thumb and ask of this stranger, what do you call this then? To which most would naturally reply, a thumb. Only for the children to ask a rather confounded man thereafter, now how many fingers do I have? After this, they laughed and ran away leaving the poor sod scratching his head none the wiser.

Eventually to resolve the war of whether fingers are thumbs or thumbs are fingers. I had to issue a written retraction to clarify that I was not qualified to make such a distinction and it would be better if the school wrote directly to either the ministry of education or British Council to clarify the confusion concerning thumbs and fingers.

Sometimes I think religion is a bit like this story – it’s ultimately a matter of interpretation and from what vantage you choose to see a thing. The only problem is, there is no one to write too for further clarification…and that has to problematic…..maybe that is the problem.’

Who really is ISIS?

To understand. The wise say, one would do well to go back to the very beginning of a story….

Before 2003, the borders of Syria and Iraq were stable. Secular Pan Arab nationalism appeared to have triumphed over the ancient forces of tribal enmity and the incendiary religious divide between Sunnis, and Shiites. Different religious communities—Yezidis, Shabaks, Maliki, Al Alewi, Christians, Kaka’is, Shias, and Sunnis—continued to live alongside one another in relative peace and harmony. Iraqis and Syrians had better incomes, education, health systems, and infrastructure, and an apparently more optimistic outlook, than most in the developing world.

Even though sectarianism has always been a powerful solvent that threatened to tear Iraqi society apart – this was in part palliated by the national ideology that ruled Iraq based on the Pan-Arabism first promulgated by Gamel Nasser which legitimized Sunni rule over the majority Shiite.

Outwardly, the ideology of the Baath Party was blind to the divisions of sectarianism – it specifically promoted a cross-sectarian society by leveraging on secular Arab nationalism. For example, millions of Shiites were members of Baath party.

After 2003 when Bush invaded Iraq and installed Ahmed Chalabi as a puppet de facto leader – sectarian violence erupted between Sunni and Shiites. Pandaro’s box had been opened. This resulted in the systematic alienation and marginalization of Sunni’s in post-Saddam Iraq and also inspired the uprising in Syria.

Today, US foreign occupation is over and many Iraqi Sunnis still insist life was much better during the good old days of Sadam – as under the present day sectarian-centric Shiite leadership of Maliki, the Sunni’s have become marginalized from jobs and all opportunities for self determination. A once proud people has been reduced to wander from wadi to wadi like the Palestinians. Many Sunni’s feel short changed and cheated. Above all they feel powerless and naturally they are all very angry with the West who once rolled in with tanks and promised them a better tomorrow which never really materialized.

It is this tsunami of collective sentiment of powerlessness and hopelessness that fuels mass sunnification presently in both Iraq and Syria. This is the nucleas of what, we call ISIS today.

Bombs will solve nothing…if anything in my humble opinion, it will only reinforce failure and history will repeat itself again. Only clever diplomacy to carve a homeland for the Sunni’s can put an end to all this insanity.

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‘Recently I was asked by the village elders to use my influence to reason with the world’s greatest troublemaker. Some of them advised me to give him a stern rebuke. Others suggested an ultimatum. Then there were those who demanded that I teach him a lesson. I told them all very plainly that I would do none of these things as I am not a hired gun. Besides it is well known to all that I have taken a solemn vow to renounce evil. I went on to tell these anxious old men. I am only willing to mediate under the laws of the old country – and the rules are clear, they all had to share with me truthfully HOW the world’s greatest troublemaker managed to end up in this corner of the world.

My words were something to the effect – ‘after all, the world is so big…how did the world’s greatest troublemaker end up here? It is truly a mathematical improbability…there must more to this than meets the eye.’

After a long pause when it became very clear to me no one was prepared to share the history of how a perfectly reasonable and sane man was transformed into the world’s greatest troublemaker….I told the village elders brusquely, I don’t have time for this. I got up. The meeting ended abruptly.

Two days later one of the village elders came to me privately and recounted the story of what happened 20 long years ago. The entire village had once conspired to cheat this man by selling him a piece of land that turned into a mosquito infested swamp during the rainy season. Since they had shown him the land only during the dry season – it looked wonderful then. But after purchasing it, it turned out be a nightmare and he had to labor all by himself for many years to make it productive. Somewhere in the struggle. His wife died of malaria. The elder who showed me the grave of the trovulemakers wife murmured to himself – this is our shame and ever since then the man has harbored a great mistrust along with red hot anger for the entire village.

A few days later when the rest of the elders came to see me again – I told them all that they had a moral duty under the ancient laws to right this wrong that they once committed 20 years ago with compound interest. I went on to tell them all, this they could do by offering a handsome parcel of land that next came up, where all of us will not bid for it to keep the price low and reasonable. Those who conspired in this con job would have to subsidize the partial of purchase of these lands from the largesse of the village common fund which they had to pay back with interest. As concession to save face the identities of the ring leaders would never be revealed.

They all agreed because the world’s greatest troublemaker was causing too many incidences of heart attacks and high blood pressure amongst the villagers.

On the day a handsome piece of land was put up for sale. I personally took the grant and visited the world’s greatest troublemaker – I told him plainly in a businesslike manner, I have here bearing an offer of peace from the village…a beautiful piece of land at a reasonable price, partially paid in full as an act of restitution for past crimes.

The man sneered at me. I snapped a chopsticks and held it up as an outstretched hand and asked of him, do you know the language of the old country? He bowed his head apologized and whispered, ‘they have sent a prefect to give me justice.’

There was however one condition and I would only reveal when I showed this man the land. When the troublemaker saw the land, he exclaimed, ‘she is truly a beauty.’ That was when I dug a hole and put my hand on his shoulder and asked him to put all his hatred and bitterness into it. It is a very ancient custom that goes all the way back to the old country – to tell one’s deepest pain to the earth to bear witness and to cover it with a clump of dirt thereafter. Never to ever speak of it thereafter.

The man wailed like a baby as he slowly recounted his sorrowful story into the hole that he had carried like a mill stone around his neck for so many years, while I encouraged him to put it all in and to leave nothing behind.

Thereafter the man who was once bitter, angry and mistrustful was magically reincarnated into a very happy, reasonable and convivial fellow.

They say I am wise beyond my years. But that is only because I heed the advise of the wise. Who once said, if a man truly want to understand a thing…then he must always go back to the very beginning of the story. Never just take and run with a thing, just because someone tells you to do so…understand it for what it is and not what others say it is.’

Coming full circle

Everyone once told me, don’t hire him…he’s a troublemaker…he has a criminal record…..you will regret it. But nonetheless, I went along with my gut feel and hired him as a harvester.

In the beginning, he proved difficult and no one really wanted to work alongside him…so I created a special role for him, one where Harun could work all by himself. I rarely ever spoke to him.

I kept my word to him always. I was always firm, but fair. Paid him on time. I treated him no different from my other workers, except maybe I made allowances for the fact that everyone was convinced he was a good for nothing troublemaker by always giving him the benefit of the doubt.

This morning, after paying Harun and informing him that I had decided to give him an opportunity to earn extra income by harvesting all the fruit from my durian orchard this season. This is a rare privilege I only give to workers I consider exceptional. Harun said to me, thank you farmer for respecting and treating me like a human being all these years.

I did not say anything…I simply smiled….small steps…always small steps Harun.

It is strange but for the four years that Harun has worked for me…this is the only time we had ever talked.

Later on I discovered a durian outside my gate….it was a gift, the first fruit of the season.

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‘We can only learn to be kind by receiving kindness. We can only learn to give unconditional love by being totally loved warts and all. We can only learn the wisdom of seeking to understand, if were once marooned in our skulls only for someone to take the trouble to understand why we are so angry and sad. We can only be fair and just, if we were once availed from injustice by fairness.

In the same way, if we hate, it is only because we are victims of hatred ourselves. Man is like a mirrored lake….be very careful what you put into the heart of a man… As it always has a way of coming back.’

Log 18-11-15

Will Bombing ISIS to the Stone Age end terrorism?

What concerns me most is the mechanics. Principally, I am in agreement ISIS needs to be neutralized. However, I can’t help but feel discouraged, when – the mechanism – that is so often forwarded only seems to involve vaporizing these terrorist with bombs.

To me if the solution is really as simple as dropping well aimed ordnance to end the problem – then ISIS along with every terrorist organization on this planet would have been brought to heel long ago.

But that is not the case.

The problem as I see it is….it’s a very complicated problem that has a lot to do with the solution itself. The problem with the Western mind is it’s tendency to be presentist thereby eliding history completely….this to me is a great omission that will prove very costly for all who love peace.

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‘Air strikes. Even those coupled with the best intelligence will achieve very little without infantry and armor. I don’t really know what’s the grand strategy of the Western coalition.

As what is needed to prosecute this war to it’s logical conclusion is very clear and unambiguous – A professional force to dislodge the self-proclaimed ISIS caliphate and establish command and control nationally and regionally.

Currently only the Kurds seem to be the only proxies at ground zero. But they can only go around the edges, specifically in the North. Short of an occupying force, all the Western alliance can do is pray and hope, the squabbling politicians in Baghdad can get their act together and form a Shiite army to reclaim the country’s Sunni heartland that ISIS now occupies. However this assessment is not realistic because it doesn’t take into account historical tribal and sectarian division of labor and skill of arms between the Sunni’s and Shiites.

What is often elided in popular Arab history in the Western narrative is both Sadam and Asad are not stupid people. If they are really dummies as TIME Magazine says they are, they wouldn’t have been able to establish an efficient network of command and control thru out the region to perpetuate their hegemony virtually unchallenged for over fifty years over such a large social and cultural footprint.

This the Baathist did very effectively thru a subtle process of social engineering (though officially they claimed to be ideologically opposed to tribalism and clans) that divided Arab society along very orthodox lines where the Shiites were predominantly streamed as bazaari’s – they were the merchant class and clerics. These people are good for selling carpets and fermenting goats milk into cheese and yogurt….but they are not administrators and have less skill arms in warcraft. In both Iraq and Syria, there has always been an understated policy to retain the skill of arms only in the hands of the Sunni minority to allow them to perpetuate their class politics and to discriminate against the Shiites majority.

That’s why you regularly hear incredulous stories of one company of ISIS fighters being able to encircle two or three Shiite brigades.

The Sunnis on the otherhand thru mellinia of natural selection have to be smarter and much more resourceful and ruthless to enable them to thrive and survive in a Shiite majority social and cultural landscape. This they did by perpetuating their hegemony thru a convoluted tribal network than involved clansmen and the patronage of Sadam thru the Ba’athist, many of the Sunni’s gained core competencies in the sciences, management, warcraft and statecraft.

Contrary to stereotypical depiction of the Western press, these are not backward people – they were looking seriously into nuclear power as far back as 1975 even before the Shah of Iran took an interest in atomic power. So comparisons between ISIS and Hezbollah to me is highly misleading and disengenous – Hezbollah never had an opportunity to develop the comprehensive experiential knowledge needed to run even a proto government, state, let alone a province or even a township. As they were constantly harried by the Isrealites and the Druze.

The Ba’athist Sunni’s on the otherhand who for some inexplicable reason the Western media is content to term semantically under the broad umbrella of the acronym ISIS have, this is not terra incognito to them – that is why ISIS doesn’t seem to have any problems cobbling together the intellectual capital to manage the complexity of operating oil refineries, monetizing oil proceeds thru thru complex banking financial instruments, servicing and flying aircrafts, right to waging a professional war etc etc – statecraft is not new territory to them. This is what the Sunni Baathist have been doing very well for the last half a century in Iraq!

The real incompetents are the current Shiite amateur hour politicians, bureaucrats and apparatchiks in Baghdad led by Maliki, they have absolutely no idea what they are doing which shouldn’t be surprising. As their chief architect was a con man par excellence – Ahmed Chalabi! This fellow is such a smooth talker he even makes Kong Yee look like tissue paper salesman in Bedok interchange on a day when the food stalls are all closed for spring cleaning. Chalabi single handedly conned everyone from Bush right down to the director of the CIA to put all their chips on him and go to war! That is why Iraq is in a right mess it is today! But that is another story for another time.

Contrary to Western propaganda Iraq under Sadam Hussein was not a backward country, not at all – the average Iraqi enjoyed a first world standard of living with access to free comprehensive healthcare and tertiary education. There was no sectarian violence between Sunni’s and Shiites in Iraq unlike many other Pan Arab countries, with the exception of the Kurds. Stupid people cannot harmonize the conflicting interest of 150 tribes and hold it together for fifty years! That to me by every definition requires some measure of statesmanship. If Sadam Hussein was ruthless, it was simply because such a personality was precisely what was required to keep the inherent secretarian and religious divisions from balkanising Iraq. It’s really an accretion of form having to comply with functional realities.

So to me the Sunni’s are not irrational and stupid people. And since ISIS is essentially a Sunni intifada movement, for lack of a better word – when we use the term ISIS, what we are referring too is a Sunni reawakening.

Just replace the acronym ISIS with Sunni and what becomes almost apparent immideately is this is a Sunni versus Shiite struggle. Don’t complicate life by manufacturing new acronyms that take you further away from that simple understanding of what the fight is all about.

Moving forward. To me it makes far more sense for the US and EU to work with the Asad regime than to try to overthrow him. In this respect I happen to believe Putin has a far more realistic strategy on how to prosecute this war than any other world leader. As he is very determined to prevent a repeat of what occured in 2003 when the US invaded Iraq without formulating the achievable exit strategy. This should prompt the perceptive reader to ask with the benefit of hindsight – whether it would have been wiser for the coalition forces in 2003 to work alongside the Ba’athist than to dismantle the entire oligarchy that held tenuous tribal and sectarian links intact. Rather than to pursue a cavalier strategy of attempting to reinvent the wheel by installing an experimental Chalabi administration that eventually turned out to be a Frankenstein. If this strategy of tacit complicity and collaboration had been pursued from the onset, like how the Nazis once reached detente and collaborated with the Vichy French to allow the French autonomy to manage their national and colonial interest, it’s very unlikely that the US would have found itself stuck in a quagmire. Neither would sectarian divide between the Sunni’s and Shiites have resulted in an ideological implosion in the way it did thru out the Arab world today.

The way I see it. There is really only one impending reality that will always be in the preamble of how to do deal with ISIS in the long term. The pressing need for the Western coalition to commit boots on the ground. If they cannot find the resolve to make that commitment.

Then I say, go for Plan B i.e it makes far more sense for the western coalition to work towards partitioning Iraq in the same way Pakistan was separated from India. Or how North Korea was divided from the South by the 34th parallel out of sheer ideological necessity to stave off a prolonged war of attrition – at some point, in the whole conflagration of trying to sort out the Sunni and Shiite divide – it’s conceivable this may well be a irreconcillaible theological and ideological divide since the schism has deep historical roots that comes encrusted with tribal enmity that goes back thousands of years to the time of Ali. I think at some point of reckoning, the perceptive reader would have to agree with me that, if there is any possibility of reaching a consensus in the form of detente or an armistice between the West and ISIS, then this cannot be accomplished by trying to vaporize ISIS with bombs.

If history teaches us anything it is only this – Violence begets violence.

That is why I am completely opposed to bombing ISIS. I don’t believe this is the solution. The way I see it, if you want to bomb them – then be prepared to commit troops on the ground to wage a conventional war to it’s logical strategic end…if not, then, don’t bomb and work instead towards partitioning Iraq along sectarian lines.

Diplomacy and mutual coexistence should be given a chance.’

It’s so good

My yield is going to be spectacular next year. I’ve cut all the right moves. Thrown out the farming bible – turned everything on it’s head and gone my own way. For a long period it seemed as if I was barreling full speed in a dark tunnel of doubt – not really knowing whether I had done the right thing. Even mulled endlessly whether perhaps I had been driven by my arrogance….but recently…I see light. Yes. It’s a just a solitary tongue of light in darkness, but I know it’s going to get brighter – it’s good to go!

Yes, I’ve done the right thing to disregard what should be done and righter still was my decision to follow my gut feel.

It’s been a very hard year. But as I sit back and look at it all – I’ve made the right calls 8 out of 10….it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to be so very good.

I am happy.

Paris Attack -14/11/15

This is a new type of terrorism. The model bears striking similarities with the Mumbai attack. Small groups usually comprising of very young men striking simultaneously at soft targets with semi automatics.

The world will never be the same again

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‘For many many years the public has been mentally conditioned to only outsourced security to the police, army and clandestine services. In the light of the recent Paris attack. I do not believe this model is sustainable any longer….to me it is very clear. The forces of evil have discovered a wonder weapon to strike effectively with relative economy by targetting soft targets.

Hence this mentality dependence of calling 911 is obsolete at best and at worse it is only a security blanket.

It is in every sense of the word a useless response to this new form of psychological warfare and terrorism!

Forgive me, if I speak plainly. Realistically! The only race on this planet that has managed to develop a coherent response to these sort of surprised and coordinated attacks are the Jews. No one else even comes close to their core competencies in interdicting terrorist threats of this genre. The Jews by virtue of necessity and reality brought forth by having to survive in a tumultuous region have thru the years rewritten the book on security – specifically what impresses me most is their ability to recruit every single person in Israel as an integral component of the security apparatus. Result: 360 degree defense.

That is why in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, it’s not unusual to find members of the public asking, whose backpack is this? Why is this shopping bag left here? This is proactive security. Total security at source point. The gold standard of what I refer too as the only way to respond intelligently to terrorism in our age – where ordinary citizens are not only bystanders waiting for the police to arrive, but they are empowered to take measures to interdict and neutralize threats.

In a sense, only the Jews have been able to successfully streamline their security apparatus to recruit the general public to such a degree every Jew in Israel is honorary member of Mossad. No other race has been able to accomplish this remarkable feat with the organizational discipline and skill arms. Not even the fat Americans can do this! As for the Europeans, they are clueless. Singaporeans lagi worse – zero situational awareness lah!

The way in which the Jews have been able to root this culture of 360 degree security is thru a regimen of rigorous realistic training…they train, train and train relentlessly. The Jew is fundamentally a no nonsense fellow. He never takes peace for granted. If anything he is under no illusions, peace is a function of constant vigilance. This way when an attack strikes. The response is usually automatic. There is no fumbling. Everyone knows the drill. They have mental muscle memory to respond effectively. No lost of opportunity cost thru indecisiveness or lousy leadership like the failed response of the little India riot. Where so many people are twiddling their thumbs and waiting for someone to make a decision. No comedy circus show like in Mumbai when you had cross eyed policemen armed with antique Lee Enfied 303’s facing off with an determined enemy armed with semi automatics.

I can testify personally to the effectiveness of their methods in being able to interdict threats. As since many people want to kill me. I have managed to escape death on numerous occasions only because I weave many of their methods and above all cultivate a total defense psyche into my daily life.

My movements are random. There is no discernable pattern or routine to speak of. I never walk into a building without a floor plan in my head. I am always fifteen minutes early for an appointment. One hour is even better to check out the location for an ambush. My car always has a full tank of gas…it is never parked in a place where I cannot check on it….just in case. I have two of everything, three is even better, two spare tires, two cars even double rations of emergency MRE’s just in case. There are no less than seven layers of security where I live which involves the elaborate use of deception and misinformation – no one knows my location at any one time. I can appear and disappear at will. I never reveal my location casually. If I do so, usually I deploy deception to mask my movements. My time table is top secret. I don’t even trust my mobile phone as I can be tracked electronically and I train, train and train, till this attitude becomes the only way I know to live my life. This is what the Jew has taught me. Don’t rely on the police or army to save you. As an individual – you have to take ownership of security!

The world must learn to set aside their ideological differences with the Jews. But instead they take comfort in empty words from politicians who speak about peace, fraternity and equality, not realizing, their words are meaningless against the face of this new terror threat – they are like children who do not realize they are waging war against a very cunning and determined enemy that is prepared to do anything including killing innocent civilians.

Truth is this! Prolonged peace has lulled the West into a false sense of security, where they have become flabby, complacent and woefully unprepared for this new form of warfare.

Only the Jews have a proven and realistic solution to this new form of terror. I don’t care about their politics….I care even less about whether it’s morally correct for them to construct a wall that separates Israel from the West Bank…all I care about is their skill of arms in managing terrorism.

The world would do well to set aside their political, ideological difference and pride and learn diligently from the Jews! Either that or learn to live with this tragedy of watching more innocent and naive by standers getting slaughtered by a vicious and determined enemy.

Adapt or die!

Why the Worker’s Party lost big time in 2015

What was supposed to be an easy peasy walk over for the Workers’ Party (WP) in Aljunied GRC turned out to be a touch and go event.

This should prompt the perceptive reader to ask – why did the voters turn out in such huge numbers this time for the ruling party all across the island? Why weren’t the WP able to replicate the same conditions that accounted for the 2011 victory?

Many theories have been postulated, some say it’s the post LKY effect. Other suggest, the PAP has fixed many of it’s problems etc etc.

My personal theory on why the WP performed so abysmally this time round was because the WP chief Low Thia Khiang pursued the wrong strategy – he kept quiet. He didn’t want to ruffle feathers and worse of all he actually believed that WP could just continue to harvest the benefits as the collective consciousness seemed to be against the PAP.

In truth during his shambolic leadership from 2011 to 2015, the entire WP team, including party heavy weights chairman Sylvia Lim, Mr Pritam Singh, Mr Chen Show Mao and Mr Muhamad Faisal Abdul Manap all impersonated submarines on ultra silent mode. The sum total of what they all had to say from 2011 to 2015 could very well fit into a postage stamp….hardly a whimper!

Wonder no more why so many people who once put their faith in WP – gave them all the thumbs down this time round.

Low Thia Khiang should step down and take full responsibility for WP’s monumental failure!

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‘This Low Thia Khiang is what I call a cheap durian jatuh kaki. Please you can all quote me. If he has a problem with that label, I will gladly see him in court. But I digress.

In the kampung there is a sort of vagabond who will appear just around the durian season. This character is an opportunist. His life mission statement is – something can come out of nothing – so during the durian season he will squat around durian orchards and when the fruit falls – he picks it up and sells it.

To put it another way, this is the same zero imagination strategy Low Thia Khiang has been pursuing since their spectacular victory in 2011.

This fellow actually believes, he needs to do very little except be in the right place at the right time to win!

He doesn’t believe in sticking his neck out….taking calculated risk….and going for the summit. That accounts for why the WP has consistently remained silent on so many contentious and divisive issues that affect millions of Singaporeans and stakeholders – they were silent when the PAP brought the internet to heel with a slew of draconian laws…not a single word…not even so much as a whimper. Again they were silent when many bloggers were hauled up and shut down. They preferred to take strength in silence. They are many other cases as well, where many expected to them to weigh in, but instead they kept mum.

Yes, I don’t disagree silence is certainly golden – but please let us not forget that aphorism needs to be put in the correct context. As it pays nought, when people expect you to say something and you plumb to remain silent instead – then in my book. I say you are not only cowardly, but you have also demonstrated to all that who once supported you, you do not have a firm understanding of what it takes to be a political leader. You are what politic pundits call a fair weather politician – someone who prefers to get by, by playing it safe.

By opting to remain silent when everyone expects you to say something. It demonstrates the highest level of dereliction of duty along with a total failure to scale the important….as result, you fail!

So I will call Mr Low a cheap durian jatuh kaki! Please quote me. You have every right to do so and I will encourage you to do so.

As this five cents durian jatuh kaki actually believes, he can reap all the benefits without having to stick his neck out one millimeter.

Six months before the 2015 GE, if you scroll back at my blog post. I advised, George Yeo to run. I wrote unequivocally, he will win! You know why – because since as far back as 2013. I have been telling everyone – the only thing WP is good for is keeping mum and pretending as if they live in a parallel universe. That to me is hardly an exageration and a very accurate description of WP, because since their political inception into main stream politics. They have adopted a mind boggling strategy of say and do absolutely nothing on every single occasion – as a result many in the internet simply gave up on them as an alternative to PAP.

Many netizens even privately asked me – should we fight alongside WP? I told them plainly, what’s the point when they don’t even support you? Fight for them for what!

I challenge Mr Low and the WP to sue me. Only be mindful. I am a very rich man. So I don’t mind going nine rounds with this cheap durian jatuh kaki in court lah. To me they are a bunch of useless opportunist.

If I have any regrets, it is only this. I did not forcefully make an personal case to write to General Yeo to contest the Aljunied seat – as we had already gathered reliable intelligence from the grassroot level as far back as 2013, WP would suffer a monumental defeat. Had the good general contested – it would probably tip just enough and Aljunied would have been one of the greatest come back stories in Singapore’s political history. But that is something I have to live with….that I admit was a failure of leadership on my part.

As Singapore is a small country and we need capable leaders we can all respect and emulate.’

Rich and poor people

Rich people are all incredibly smart in their own special way. If they are stupid. They cannot possibly be rich. Not for very long at least.

People who are poor seldom ever think imaginatively about WHY and HOW rich people managed to accumulate their wealth. Frequently, they fall into the misplaced belief – rich people are not so different from them and the only distinguishing factor is, they are just lucky.

This misguided understanding of rich people misleads terribly.

As when you examine the lives of rich people carefully…they all have something very unique and special about them that accounts for why they are so different from all others to enable them to do what they do so very well….make money!

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‘If you want to be rich. There is no need to upload Robert Kiyosaki or Stephen Covey into your head. That is optional to me. Why would you want to do something as complicated as that when there is a far easier and more effective way to get to where you want to go?

All you need to do is to set aside your ego and observe very carefully how rich people work and live.

The key phrase is ‘set aside your ego.’ I feel the need to emphasize this point only because most people seem to have a very serious problem when it comes to that aspect of preparing themselves for the learning process. Most of the time, they are not able to free themselves from the shackles of jealousy and envy and as a consequence they can never prepare themselves adequately to learn from rich people because they harbor deep seated feelings of inadequacy, insecurities and inferiority that can only hinder their education when it comes to learning from rich people.

Their pride and ego stops them from improving their lot – that is to say, when they see a man who is more successful than them, they run him down, instead of asking themselves really jugular questions like how did he reach where he is? What did he do? How does he organize his time? Does he have a method to manage himself and others that I can learn from?

Most people find it impossible to set aside their ego and pride and get over their prejudices and fear when it comes to learning from rich people. That if you ask me is their main hindrance and what actually holds them back in life!

They suffer from the same psychological trap, when average looking men and women see someone who looks much more attractive than them…they take comfort in the ideal, looks don’t count and while they are doing this, they are munching on Old Chang Kee fish balls. They don’t realize the reason why that man or woman looks like a million dollars is because they work very hard to look the very best they can – they take pride in the whole idea of outward appearance – they are crafting their personal brand – they consider themselves the CEO of their persona etc etc

If you able to set aside your pride, prejudices and fear concerning rich people. Then you will see that all rich people and when I say rich, I am referring to people who can consistently beat the curve and not just someone who lives in a penthouse and drives a Ferrari. Those people are not truly rich. Because rich people never ever spent money buying property that is impossible to sell or for that matter splurge out a million bucks on a car. Why would any rich person do something as stupid as that. These are not rich people. And even if they are, they cannot be rich for very long. They are just seriously confused folk. As rich people rarely ever make those sort of big ticket lousy decisions.

They are very strategic – that is to say, they know what is important and what is nonsensical and above all, they are very decisive. They don’t vacillate and dilly dally.

For example, you don’t see rich people doing stupid things like buy ten watches every year. They buy a Rolex and that’s it…it’s the best and they wear it till the day they die.

They drive cars that all have excellent resale value because they know a car is a depreciable asset, it’s a bloody liability and they all live very simple lives. Above all they are very clear about what works and how they want to play the game to get ahead. So if they give you five minutes to make your case and you run around in circles wasting their time….they will have absolutely no problem whatsoever in showing you the door!

Be mindful of this. Because not too long ago I saw a man who had his whole business plan thrown out of the window because he was using words like right sizing instead of down sizing. Never use fuzzy and ambiguous words when you try to pitch an idea to very serious folk because you will just end up losing your credibility.

Neither do rich people don’t spent their time doing stupid things like complaining or debating whether we live in a fair and equitable society – they see the world as it is and not in the way other people wish it should be. ‘should be’ is a pipe dream. ‘As it is,’ is reality. There is a world of difference.

Rich people never complain that they’re in a shit job or that management doesn’t appreciate them enough to provision A,B and C. If the working conditions are less than ideal. They just pack up and go!

They got no time for that stupid game where you hate Mondays so much that you wish, you didn’t have to wake up to go to work or figure out whether you should fake a MC, only to spend the rest of the week being miserable while looking eagerly to Friday and the weekend….not realizing you’re dead from Monday to Friday and really only come to life during the weekend. I mean if you do that, then you’re no better than a zombie.

To rich people that’s a stupid game like Pokemon or Soduku….it’s stupid because if you’re in that mode, you have already lost big time in life.

Like I said, if conditions are less than ideal. They just pick up and go!

That is why in life, one should always learn as much as possible by simply observing how rich people live and work…..if you do nothing else in life except this one thing. I can more or less guarantee you, you will get ahead in life.

Don’t complicated things. There is no need to open your brain like a jar of jam and pour in information….just observe carefully and above all work on setting aside your ego and everything will fall nicely into place.’

Master and apprentice

For 4,000 space years secret knowledge in the brotherhood has been passed down thru a one to one mentorship program. The master is always mindful that if he strings it too hard..the string might snap suddenly. And all he would end up doing despite his best intentions and efforts is to demoralize the apprentice.

On the other hand, if it’s strung too loose….it will not play either. If discipline and intellectual rigor is not constantly maintained this will create a lag between theory and reality, it is only a matter of time before the apprentice will ask, ‘why am I wasting my time following this mad man.’

For everything to come together marvelously, the tension needs to be just right.

‘Be always mindful of the company you keep. Guard your mind always like a Praetorian. Because your mind is exactly like a plant. If you prefer to cultivate the friendship of shallow and stupid people because you are insecure around people who are smarter and richer than you. You will also end up shallow and stupid like them as well.

One day when you need your mind to shift gears to move….it will fail you. As a shallow and stupid mind cannot go uphill. Downhill can.

Similarly if you cultivate the friendship of only stupid people who talk all day about how to win in life by playing TOTO. Then you too will end up spending the best part of your life chasing the rainbow of meaningless numbers leading you deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of the mother of all stupidity.

Worse of all. You will lose sight of reality and spend most of your time thinking what magic numbers to buy to make you rich. Not realizing that the chances of winning stands at near zero.

In the same way, if you cultivate the friendship of stupid people, who talk no end about smart phones, Pokemon, false eye lashes, what color of dye to use for hair, what is the latest color for nails and how to photoshop the pictures you post regularly in Instagram…then you too will end up as a big fat nothing. The worse part is when you grow old. You will just be boring and lonely.

Same also goes if you spend all your time talking about football. You are likely to end up pear shaped and stupid.

Be clear…you are the CEO of your own personal branding as an individual. You only have one life. One opportunity to be the man or woman who you were meant to be…so make the best of it because the clock ticking.

Make significant connections! Do not fall victim to envy, resentment and anger just because other people are smarter and richer than you. Instead try to find out what is their secret recipe and if they have good habits that you admire, emulate and learn by observing them diligently.

As when you cultivate the company of serious men who have no time for nonsense and who are the true servants of the truth…if you do only this and nothing else in life.

Eventually you too will become a very serious man who is capable of doing very big things.

Everyone who reads my blog wins in life….this to me is not a coincidence. Not at all! If anything it is the highest expression of the meeting of minds!

This is wisdom. Research and study this well. And never tell proud and stupid people this. As once they know this. They will no longer be stupid….keep them dumb. As when a person is dumb, he is his worse enemy.’