Nirvana - Singapore style

After much toil, sleepless night and worries, preparing for the entrance exam to the Shanghai Jiao Tong MBA. I really need a much deserved break.
Everything at least is behind me now. I can start my life afresh.

Goh has just announced that he will moot the idea of making structural changes to the CPF scheme which has been serving Singaporean well for the past three decade.
This is the last bastion that he has to lower the overall employee cost per person.

1 Sing = 3 Malaysian = 8 Thai = 13 Chinese = 18 Indians.

Ave mfg wage in China is just about 5% that in US.
US$150 a month vs US$3000.
Sing $7.14 US/hour
China $0.53 US/hour
Malaysia $2.68 US/hour
Taiwan $6.13 US/hour

Singapore certainly can achieve a cost advantage given the infrastructure to run any business. The employee cost now constitute a significant portion of any company’s running cost in Singapore.

DB2 and theory of wild ducks..

Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher, used to tell this parable. It has meaning to all who are serious about life.
With his mates this duck was flying in the springtime northward across Europe. During the flight he came down in a Danish barnyard where there were tame ducks. He enjoyed some of their corn. He stayed for an hour, then for a day, then for a week, then for a month, and finally, because he relished the good fare and the safety of the barnyard, he stayed all summer. But one autumn day when the flock of wild ducks were winging their way southward again, they passed over the barnyard, and their mate heard their cries. He was stirred with a strange thrill of joy and delight, and with a great flapping of wings he rose in the air to join his old comrades in their flight.
But he found that his good fare had made him so soft and heavy that he could rise no higher than the eaves of the barn. So he dropped back again to the barnyard and said to himself, "Oh, well, my life is safe here, and the food is good." Every spring and autumn when he heard the wild ducks honking, his eyes would gleam for a moment and he would begin to flap his wings. But finally the day came when the wild ducks flew over him and uttered their cry, and he paid not the slightest attention to them. (1001 Stories, Kent Hughes)
Unless we act upon to our higher aspirations, they will soon lose their appeal.

Former IBM Chairman Thomas J. Watson, Jr., wrote, "In IBM we frequently refer to our need for 'wild ducks.' The moral is drawn from a story by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who told of a man who fed the wild ducks flying south in great flocks each fall. After a while some of the ducks no longer bothered to fly south; they wintered in Denmark on what he fed them. In time they flew less and less. After three or four years they grew so lazy and fat that they found difficulty in flying at all. Kierkegaard drew his point: you can make wild ducks tame, but you can never make tame ducks wild again. One might also add that the duck who is tamed will never go anywhere any more. We are convinced that any business needs its wild ducks. And in IBM we try not to tame them."

Goh national days speech. From valley to peak.

On average, 1 in 9 people in the private sector is supporting a civil servant. Some 11 percent of every non-civil servant’s pay goes toward keeping the civil service running.
47% to keep the business humming.

Jobless rate 5 percent = 85,000.
Total Workforce = 1,700,000

Sept.

SM Lee - oldest politician on the planet
60,000 cost of one ionizer

all new airlines will get 2 yrs waiver on the landing charges in Changi Int’l Airport.
But customer will need to pay $21 taxes which is what deter the AirAsia from setting base here.

Cost of mrt line per KM

79 K - Loop

83 K - NE line

121 K - Airport route

243 K - NEL built at a cost of 6.5 million after 6 years.
Each station is commission with arts installation worth 6.5 million in all.

Contrast this with the speed rail
Taiwan 345KM, NT 446 billion , US 13 billion = S$22.1 billion. = ave 64 million per KM
Gambling.

Singapore gambled away 172 million just last year 2002.
Singapore Pool collect 25% of this amt which is 43 million.

Thailand

Planning to legalize the profession.
100,000 prostitute

30 baht health insurance for the poor

Oct 2003

Singapore GDP $159 billion
US GDP US$11 trillion
Chi

Singapore Consumer demand 40% GDP
US consumer demand 70% GDP
China ??

China most riled by Koizumi Yasukuni’s visit

www.montejade-singapore.org

biopolis built at a cost of 500 million

value add per worker in chemical sector = $475,000
value add per worker in electronics industry - $133,000
value add per work in manufacturing = $110,000

Chemical account for ¼ of value add in mfg but employ just 5% of its workers.

Chemical industry can generate $1 million in value added from employing 1 worker
Mfg will req 7.5 worker to generate the same amount.

Eventgurus.com.sg adam khoo

Globalization

Top 20% own 86% GDP, 68% FDI, and 82% of the export market.

A donkey and an elephant cannot beyoked together to pull a plough, for they are not of the same size or strength. Therefore, globalization issues must always be discussed within context.

Mission hill golf course
US $120 m to buy 20 km2
US $267 m to develop
6th course designed by Annika Sorenstam

LTA 1st deficit since 1995

2000 yr 18M
2001 yr (17m)

23M write off for contactless smart card, 1kb, last for 7 yrs
each card cost $6

Since 1995, use about 10.7 b worth of grant from state

Depreciation inc by 17m to 137m
Salaries inc by 11m to 146m
Maintenance inc by 20m to 121m
Interest on bond inc by 19m to 77m
Gov grant inc by 62m to 213m

Surplus over the yrs 420.8m
Operating cost inc by 83m higher than prev yr.

Once upon a time there was a frog race. The goal was to reach the top of a high tower. And many gathered to see and support the frogs.
So the race began and everyone started to cheer.
However, some frogs didn't believe that it was possible to reach the top of the tower. In fact, some frogs didn't hear the cheers. All they heard was that they would never make it. And seeing that they were losing confidence in themselves, the spectators started to doubt as well.
Soon, one by one, the frogs started to quit the race...Except for one.
While the others admitted defeat, this frog kept on climbing. At the end, only the frog who persevered, the frog who made a tremendous effort, the frog who never paid attention to the doubts that affected everyone, reached the top of the tower.
Soon, all the frogs gathered to find out how he did it. One of them approached him to ask how he finished the race.
But the winning frog gave no reply.
He was deaf.
This story illustrates the importance of being deaf to negativity. Often, especially in selling, we hear so many doubts and a lot of excuses from others, even ourselves.

China GDP export 266 billion
40% or 100 billion goes to US.
US import account for about 25% of total Japanese export

These days, the US exports about $1 trillion worth of such goods each year (around 10-11% of GDP) and imports around $1.3 - 1.4 trillion. The result is a trade deficit of about $300-400 billion a year.
an undervalued fixed exchange rate like the Yuan --- pegged at 8.3 to the dollar --- can be spotted by the constant intervention of the Chinese government's equivalent of the US Treasury intervening daily to sell enough Yuan for dollars to prevent any upward formal revaluation of the Yuan/dollar rate. As we'll see, Beijing does this to the tune of selling about $300 million worth of Yuan daily to keep the rate fixed at 8.3 per dollar.

As for the bankrupt state banks and the parasitic state-owned enterprises, close to 100,000 in number still despite a steady paring the last six years from 200,000 in 1997 (mainly small- and medium-size enterprises, not the giants), they still employ 80 - 90 million workers; and even though they accounted for only 40% of China's industrial output in early 2002, they still gobbled up 80% of all the nation's scarce resources. Put differently, the private and community-owned firms produced 60% of all industrial output while using only 20% of total resources.

IT doesn't matter - HBR

1 drives 20 drives 1.1
us data - from 1990-2000..
breakdown of GDP - what's driving what
1 billion inc in US economy around biz value 0.6 percent of GDP -> 20 billion
thr productivity increase.. you need an infrastructure to deliver it--> that's the 1.1

if you can't differentiate yourself in this world, you will get commoditized instantaneously.- jeff immelt CEO GE.

Virtually the entire original human population of southern Asia was wiped out 74,000 years ago by the explosion of a mega-volcano at the current location of Lake Toba in Sumatra which caused a six-year “nuclear winter” and covered the entire Indian sub-continent in a layer of ash between one and three metres deep.

Singapore – 4 classes

Poor-poor – 10%
Rich-poor (asset rich, cash poor) – 80%
Poor-rich (asset poor, cash rich ) – minority
Rich-rich (wealthy) – 5%

posted by OttoKee # 10:54 PM

Nirvana - Singapore style

Sunday, September 26, 2004

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