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

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.

Thai Cong

He brings a very Parisian Savior Faire experience to backwater Vietnam….I have been watching a lot of his videos. I don’t know what they are talking abt…but I don’t think that’s important. So far it’s definitely interesting. Because I would expect this in Singapore or Hong Kong, but to pull this off in saigon vietnam…that has to be incredibly interesting by every definition…. Thai Cong sells FRATO and Baccarat Crystals. The former is like the Bristol Motors of the furniture world and the latter is like the Haute Couture of cut crystal ware….. Even in Singapore. I dont even know a single person who owns a Frato side table. I bet he goes for Pitti Uomo as well!

I cant but help admire trendsetters.

The Importance of Food Security in Singapore

Understand this! Food producers need to move beyond the panacea of vertical farming. Currently many only grow Romaine or Iceberg lettuce. That is not even serious food. For many years I have been advocating a no nonsense food supply chain and this would also logically include livestock such as poultry and fisheries. To my understanding this is a sector that can create more jobs than even manufacturing. It is also a natural hedge. As agriculture is known to be boringly stable and the opposite of happening, but I think one compelling reason to seriously look into agriculture as a serious economic growth engine is simply because if you look around who is actually doing well these days, it’s really ONLY farmers and breeders. They have not been affected at all by the ravages of Covid. The question is HOW to transition from the realm of theory to reality. I think begins with political will. And in the case of Singapore there is not Minister for agriculture and livestock…that would have to first change.

Because it is pointless for me to talk abt big plans when ppl r half hearted.

What happens when leaders refuse the REALITY pill?

They can really only reinforce failure…….. and I do understand why they see this as the ONLY option. But this does not alter the reality, they are wrong. It is conceivable the old business model of wealth creation is broken. To me the decline started even before Covid. The advent of the age of Corona merely accelerated this decline and will continue to do so. Some trends will simply have to run its course such as the sentiment to look inwards instead of being part of the globalised community. It’s driven by domestic politics and a new stream of consciousness that is diametrically opposite from the past way of organizing personal and hierarchical success. In the next 10 years, there will be a massive shift from West to East. But most of it will be exclusively China centric and will not benefit periphery nations even if they are in Asia. The Chinese economy will grow by at least 3 times to what it is today and tbe intellectual capital will rise correspondingly.

The difficulty of swallowing REALITY

Many people can’t take the truth. WHY is a question. I much rather leave to you. Back to the point. When Barisan Nasional loss the elections. Many Malaysians and Singaporeans hailed it as the beginning of a new dawn…I on the other hand remained sanguine and thoroughly unconvinced that anything significant or substantial would ever change in the political, economic, social or cultural sphere in Malaysia. This wasn’t just a contrarian point of view for the sake of being different. I furnished well argued reasons to substantiate my conceptions….three years on, you decide whether I was right. Now we have Covid and though I understand WHY the Singaporean Govt feels the need to restart the economy by opening up slowly. My feel is this can only be a very serious mistake. As the Covid malaise is likely to drag on for years. Meanwhile we will all have to deal with the many iterations of the mutated virus. So what we are dealing with is NOT a problem that is going to go away in one, two or for that matter in five and possibly ten years…..and this should prompt many to ask the cogent question – if things are never going to go back to the way it used to be….should we look at how to remake the Singaporean economy?

Alcoholic Haze

Dark Sun

Sometimes you see clearest when it’s darkest