To Summon or not to Summon...
You could almost hear the friendly parking attendent debating with himself.
Having dinner along a street at Bugis, Seng Aik's mouth-watering establishment turned out to be more than what some of our fellow diners had bitten off.
Parked along this no-parking street were rows of vehicles belonging to customers who had made the trip to savor the treats. Chomping away merrily without a care, no one noticed the traffic parking attendents prowling nearby.
It came as no surprise when an alert waiter sounded the alarm. Those who drove were shaken out of their seats and bee-lined for their vehicles with keys in hand.
It was all in vain however, as our resourceful parking attendents had chalk-marked the tires of the cars. Even the most inventive reasons by imaginative motorists could not prevent an affordable dinner from turning into an expensive one.
The chalk mark, as it was explained to some, were indicators that their cars had been sitting unattended for half an hour. Our friendly parking attendents had been merciful enough to give drivers a fair chance. And half an hour is an eternity in a no-parking zone.
While stuffing our mouths with food, Seng Aik was suddenly contemplative of what he had witnessed.
As he chewed, his eyes dimmed to the realization that fifty or so dollars in summons could buy you a feast for four at this very establishment. Nevermind that we had to repeat our order many times to a waiter who kept coming back to us with the wrong item.
To summon or not to summon? For those who didn't drive that night, life was belly full.
The Right man for the Job? Part 2
On 12th August 2004, Lee Hsien Loong will become Singapore’s third Prime Minister. Though coming out to be his own man, the younger Lee might well be a chip of the old block.
In his recent address at Harvard University, Lee Hsien Loong stated that new and exciting times were ahead for Singapore. “We are prepared”, he said, “to take the plunge.”
Yet he hardly seems the plunging type.
Son of Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, the younger Lee shares his father’s measured, practical and technocratic approach to government. Exuding a somewhat condescending and didactic bent, he has shown a tendency to chide and admonish rather than charm and encourage.
His speeches are filled with grim economic prognosis and sternly urge Singaporeans to tighten their belts. After a fourteen-year interval under the affable Goh Chock Tong, most Singaporeans will find the reversion of leadership to the Lee dynasty more like a cold shower than an exhilarating leap into the unknown.
Political reality in Singapore is seen like a monopoly. Senior Minister Lee still commands a powerful stature in parliament and supervises the Government Linked Investment Corporation (GIC), which manages Singapore’s foreign reserves. The younger Lee’s wife, Ho Ching, is chairman of Temasek, a government holding company that owns stakes in Singapore’s biggest firms. His younger brother Lee Hsien Yang, runs Singapore Telecommunications.
Supporters defend this concentration of power on grounds of ability and talent. The younger Lee’s rise through the ranks of the army to become a brigadier-general by the age of 32 and his promotion to the post of Deputy Prime Minister after only six years in politics seems nothing short of miraculous.
The younger Lee certainly projects great intelligence and determination, as demonstrated by his fight with cancer and in stoically enduring the death of his first wife. As a then-colonel in the army, he employed helicopters to rescue trapped passengers during the dramatic cable car disaster. As finance minister, he implemented much-needed and long-delayed liberalization of the financial sector. Though his father says that he should already be prime minister, conspiracy theorists put it down to concerns of nepotism.
In reality however, Mr. Goh was already groomed by Lee senior to succeed him. Having started a decade before the younger Lee entered politics, it would have been pre-mature to install his son. Better to have the younger Lee in a position where he could grow into his role and rise through the ranks. True enough, when Mr. Goh became Prime Minister, he promptly made Lee junior his deputy.
The incumbent has never had any rivals. Within the internal party’s nomination process, Mr. Lee was selected unanimously. In a state where the ruling People’s Action Party controls all but two seats in parliament, Mr. Lee defends the government’s more underhanded election tactics, such as threatening to put districts that vote for the opposition at the bottom of the list for public spending. He claims to want a more vigorous public debate, but at the same time, promises to demolish any critic who undermines the government’s standing. While rightfully so, this is not an empty threat. Opposition members have found themselves bankrupt after losing defamation suits while others wind up in jail.
As an example of how the government is prepared to open up, Mr. Lee cite recent relaxation of restrictions on busking and bungee jumping. Registration of a society has been made easier, though stopping short of doing away with the registration process altogether. Singaporeans do not yet have complete freedom to chew gum either. Though the ban on imports has been lifted, these are sold at pharmacies to registered buyers only. The government has also signaled a more liberal attitude towards homosexuality, while stopping short of officially recognizing the gay community. This was done after research showed that cities with high concentration of gay residents tend also to be centers of innovation.
On the economic front, the government’s planned economic reforms are less than revolutionary. Mr. Lee firmly believes in free-market economics. As finance minister and head of the central bank, he has cut taxes and liberalized the CPF pension system. In addition, he has opened up the banking sector to foreign competition. The government is also pursuing free-trade agreements with as many countries as possible. Though the details published in the papers show win-win situations for all parties concerned, as the government is keen to point out, skeptics wonder if there is more given away in an effort to win these agreements.
At the same time, it refuses to abandon the idea that it is the job of the government to champion particular industries. Currently it is pursuing investment in education and biotechnology, just as it once promoted electronics and petrochemicals. Nor has it followed through on talk of reducing government meddling in the economy, through outfits like Temasek and the GIC. In short, Mr. Lee seems to be sticking to Singapore’s special blend of a free market but state directed economy.
These policies have worked successfully and have propelled Singapore from third to first world nation in a generation. The economy is certainly doing very well. Posting a twelve percent growth in the second quarter, this is certainly good news compared to a year ago when the region was affected by the SARS outbreak. True to his word, Mr. Goh delayed stepping down until the economy was in better shape. So the next six months will be telling as to how the younger Lee grows into his role as Prime Minister and the reforms he would bring. Half expected to surprise political observers, Mr. Lee is far too pragmatic to fix something that is not broken.
Pop Up Conversations Part 2
Over sumptuous Indian food from The Frontier, Siva and I got down to some serious discussion about Hitler and the German Army's tactics during World War II.
Done more in an attempt to clear some misconceptions about Hitler's alleged Jewish ancestry, I explained that...
There were some rumors hinting that Hitler's grandfather was Jewish. Few reputable historians on the Holocaust believe that this is so. It is more likely that Hitler tried to keep the murky history of his family quite secret because there was a high incidence of insanity and feeble-mindedness in his ancestors.
However rumors die hard.
One of Hitler's lieutenants, Hans Frank, declared during the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-46, that Hitler's grandmother had worked in the town of Graz as a servant in the home of a Jewish family named Frankenberger. He further claimed that she was seduced by the head of the household and that Hitler's grandfather was the result of that liaison.
A subsequent analysis of Frank's statement by
Simon Wiesenthal disclosed that there was no evidence of any Jewish family named Frankenberger ever living in Graz. In addition, Jews had been driven out of Graz in the 15th century and had not been allowed to return until 1856, nearly twenty years after Hitler's grandfather had been born.
Blitzkrieg
Or Lightning war.
Hitler had seen for himself and experienced the costly effects of trench warfare during World War I. Blunt frontal assaults served little or no gain while racking up a butcher's bargain of dead and dying.
In the closing days of the war, the German high command was employing an embryonic form of "shock" warfare by utilizing "shock troops" to flank static Allied trenches. The results were promising. However non-existent supply lines hampered and limited what such tactics could achieve.
After the armistice at Versailles, the Germany army was limited to one hundred thousand men. But lessons learned in World War I and Prussian esprit-de-corps provided visionary Germany commanders the flexibility in experimenting with a different form of warfare.
In the interim years before Hitler came to power, the new German army was highly mobile and trained to fight a war on two fronts. After assuming power, Hitler, who had long seen the benefits, ordered the continued development of such tactics.
Pioneering generals like
Eric von Manstein,
Erwin Rommel and
Heinz Guderian, took the opportunity to perfect Blitzkrieg on training bases in Russia.
The concept employs mass divisions of tanks penetrating a weak point in enemy defenses, with motorized infantry exploiting and pouring through the gap. Enemy positions would be isolated and destroyed with the bulk of the invading force racing to towards the enemy capital.
Simultaneously, air attacks would be launched against the enemy’s rear and its air force would be neutralized. This would be supported with airborne troops dropped inside enemy territory to secure airfields or bridges, for example.
Another deciding factor is the close coordination between ground and air forces for simultaneous attacks against the enemy. Difficult pockets of resistance would be bombed from the air.
So although the armies of the day were evenly matched, it was the doctrine and tactics employed which set the German army far ahead of the Poles, French and the central European countries.
Britain was saved by the English Channel and the Royal Air Force, while Russia suffered a huge blood-letting before they too, improvised and revamped the way they waged war.
But then There were None...
While waiting for our bumboat ride to Pulau Ubin yesterday morning, Susan, Kim, Chandra and I turned our heads toward a procession filing out of an outpost-of-a-tin-shack that housed Singapore Immigration.
Casually placing our eyeballs on a group of elderly folk, they were heading to some unnamed destination in Malaysia. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary except for the fact they were holding hands as they creaked their way down the even creakier steps of Changi Jetty.
Now if there was ever a time to wonder about a possible disaster waiting to happen, this wasn't one of them. No sooner had the first gentleman placed his slipper-clad foot onto the slippery deck of the bumboat, did he lose his balance and fall ceremoniously into the water.
Usually that would have been the end of the affair.
However the laws of physics are rather precise. In forgetting to let go of the other hand he was holding onto, an entire chain of five uncles and aunties went yelling and screaming into the water with him.
All save for one woman who had just set foot onto the jetty steps. Poised just like the last lady standing, she continued to decend those same creaky steps with all the purpose she could muster.
Initially it was assumed that she was coming to the aid of her inundated compatriots. Stopping at the edge of the water, she seemed to stand still for a moment. However the sight of her dog-paddling friends was just too much for her. Wobbling weakly in the knees, she lost her balance and fell in after an eternity of indecision.
Our friendly bumboat drivers, usually accustomed to many forms of watersports, were taken aback at the sight of so many dog-paddling humans. Apparently they weren't accustomed to this kind of variety. To their credit, the shocked inertia was barely perceptable and they swung into action by fishing our hapless folk out of the water.
The sole irony was that the first gentleman's slipper remained unscathed on the deck of the bumboat. The same could not be said of the soggy clothes, soggy hair and soggy handbags of our soggy compatriots being pulled from the water. Even lemmings would have been so proud.
At first, there were many. But then there were none...
The Hour of the Wolf, Part 4
Last night, an ex-neighbor of mine lay slumped on the floor in a corner of a packed disco. Through the dim lights and smoke, I saw that he was drooling and quite unconscious. His doped-up companions revealed that he was quite high on drugs too.
It is no surprise that he would end up in such a bad way. In fact, I had made that prediction many years ago. After playing countless matches of football on the field beside our appartment block, it was the general consensus that he had the best chance of making a career in football. But that was on the premise that he had the will and determination to go through with it. None of which were flowing in abundence in his veins.
Ironically, it was him and another neighbor who were my closest companions. Our families were among the first to move in to our new estate and we would organize block parties to welcome the new arrivals.
When it came to group sport and outings, we took the cake by organzing events that kids from neighboring blocks would race to participate in. Come rain or shine, exam period or holiday season, what started out as a neighbourly gathering quickly became the group to be seen with.
Since we were buddies, there wasn't little that we kept from each other, However quite unexpectedly, I was informed of a remark he made about the death of my girlfriend. An investigation revealed that he had been running a rumor campaign behind my back. Thus adding to my grief, was the shock that one of my trusted associates had been out to hurt me. For what point of jealousy or envy, I do not know. A judgement was subsequently handed down and his deeds were filed away for a future follow-up.
Fast forward a decade and that night, seeing him slumped down on the floor, I was in two minds on abandoning him to his fate. Or reporting him to the police officers prowling outside.
After a quick review of his guilt, I received the only deserving thing a former friend could hear - his companions assuring me indirectly that they would keep him that way for a long time to come.
As I rejoined my friends, I thought of another wrong in need of justice. And as chance would have it, a reckoning will come soon.
If you wait by the river long enough, the body of your enemy will come floating by.
