1/17/2014

Lucasfilm’s crazy gambit

When George Lucas decided to plant his Asia regional HQ in Singapore, many thought he was crazy, maybe just as crazy as Sheldon Adelson of Marina Bay Sands. In the latter, with so many strings attached against gambling and a govt of priests and priestesses, how could a casino make money here? And as for Lucasfilm, a country that is so uptight and hell bent on media control and so stifling for creativity, how could Lucasfilm make any headway with a population of proverbial nerds?
 

The success of Lucasfilm here with its signature seven storey complex called Sandcrawler speaks for itself. There is no lack of creativity, and real talents are allowed to shine in their fields of expertise. George Lucas has no regrets and full of praises on his new ship here.
 

This is the kind of industry that the govt should be encouraging, creative, innovative, high tech and high value add. Not those cheap and low cost set up with low tech, low skill, low talent, and those labour intensive cheap labour sweatshops found in some of the business and industrial parks here.
 

We have a good place, good environment and infrastructure for the world’s best companies to operate here. I won’t add good talents since our talents are called daft and need to be replaced by 3rd World talents.
 

We don’t have to sell ourselves cheap, like Geylang prostitutes, selling to 3rd World fake talents and low skilled and cheap labour intensive shops. We must know our real worth and market our facilities to quality companies around the world. We should not go for quantity and turn our island into another 3rd World slum.
 

Lucasfilm can provide the necessary pivot for us to move into higher gear and higher value add industries. We may failed to be the Silicon Valley, but we can be a digital media valley supporting the film industry. Let’s have more of such businesses here, let’s welcome them and not the scums and low value shops and waste our valuable land and to crowd our city with undesirables. We need to reinvent ourselves up the high tech world and get out from our reliance on cheap 3rd world factories and sweat shops. If not will may spiral downwards to become the next call centre in the region.

16 comments:

Virgo49 said...

The Indian nationals would filled the majority of the positions.

Anonymous said...

Hahahahaha. Maybe another "Changi Business Park" for Lucasfilm Asia regional HQ?

If Sinkies can lose out in IT and IT support, what makes you think they cannot lose out in digital media creativity, you tell me lah?

Anonymous said...

Doesn't matter Sinkies or foreign talents, as long as they are best creative and talented available, they can and will join Lucasfilm.

If Sinkies, although talented and creative, are not selected, it means there are better ones available lah. It's that simple.

And Lucasfilm will have the best of both worlds, good environment and infrastructure in Sinkieland and best talents from elsewhere most willing to come here.

There is no place even for talented Sinkies in their own land if they are not the best available.

Anonymous said...

"There is no place even for talented Sinkies in their own land if they are not the best available."
Anon 3:54 pm

Tiok. That's what will happen (or already happened?) to Sinkies when the best and strongest available Sinkie opposition party is not ready to be govt.

b said...

Lucasfilms chosed to base here due to the huge subsidy they received from the you know who. Most films companies these days are being used for smuggling money, weapons and drugs and sell sex.

Anonymous said...

I want a breakdown of Singaporean employees in Lucasfilm.
How many are family members of the PAP Millionaires?

Anonymous said...

Piss lah... u think lucasfilm r daft or with deep pockets like temasick or gic?

behind the scene, what was promised and subsidies offered to lure wayang here. Like many others behind.... will fucked off when freebies run out.

Knnccb... sob hsien loong... u a fucking jerk.

Anonymous said...

Decreed by a committee faceless men.

Anonymous said...

Can't produce your own George Lucas? No problem. Just buy one.

Veritas said...

If they do not quota employee, Indians will fill in majority of the position.

I give you an example.

There is a prestigious German company got most of their engineers replaced with Indians, in the most important RND division. Worse, EDB contribute to a lot of these these R&D funding.

That div Indian manager hate Singaporeans so much that he prefer to get tata consulting rather than to get Singaoporeans.

Excuses were given that Singaporeans do not want to do RND.

But PAP got to be blamed for that also. Over the years, with so many Indians here, wages got very low. Some of RND engineers went back to China. Some went back Korea. Now, mostly Indians.

I have my colleagues in Beijing, 3 years fresh grad drawing SGD2000 a year.

The fairy tale that no Singaporeans want to be engineer may be true now. But we should also say, no PRC want to be engineers in SG, no Korean want to be engineers in SG, no Taiwanese want to be engineer in SG, no Japs want to be engineer in SG.

I think caste system is inevitable.

Veritas said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Veritas said...

Also there is a French company call Germalto, the biggest smart card manufacturer in the world with a big presence here. This company has a system of rotating engineer to France.

Engineers want to go France, despite that they may be having less disposable income due to high income tax and rent.

That provoke an interesting question. Why?

France has more living space
France is more relax
France is less backstabbing
France has proper engineering culture

It is not wages alone that motivate employee. But PAP is screwing us with their shit policy.

We may even attract talent like France. Just do not flood us with so many people. Give us more green space. Reduce the power of manager (can be done by cutting FT policy to reduce access to workers)

LHL is really a fucker. Right now even with higher disposable wages, a lot of people would not want to stay here.

They are moving to France.

Personally I met a few FT PHD from NTU EEE. Many of them fuck NTU and vow there are taking up position overseas.

The PAP mindset that giving capital access to cheap workers will eventually screw us hard.

Veritas said...

Right now I am getting more and more convince that Lucas Film "cannot find" Singaporean Engineers.

The future of Singaporean engineering graduates may be to work as FT in China.

Recently I have seen offer in PRC that offer same if not higher salary for my job.

During my time, the PRC students in NTU are mostly 1st class honors. Right now the reputation of Singaporeans university is so bad that in engineering school, there are many PRC getting lousy results.

PAP want to attract talent by low salary. I think we are going to get a lot of omega Indians.

Eventually we will be looked down by PRC.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how much money taxpayers have to pay for this?

Anonymous said...

The highest pay in the world is not easy to sustain?

Slowly they need more sources and ways to collect revenues and indirect taxes?

The receiving end will be the commoners?

With their continuing rising wages all these years, after little oppositions?

They continue to introduces new measures to continue to collect more and more revenues to sustain their highest pay in the world?

COE, ERP, GST, Levies, etc recently the CPF locked up schemes for life, in future maybe more to come? What is the likely ways to collect more indirect taxes you can imagine?

Singaporean there is limit they can taxes, so more and more foreigners need to come to taxes them indirect and suppport their highest pay?

It is a sad thing for Singapore, unlike the first generation of leaders they are thrifty and they understand the commoners problems like the Nordic leaders?

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

The widespread belief that "Singapore lacks creativity" is a COMPLETE MYTH.

There is a veritable wellspring of creativity in Singapore, and there's a over whelming amount of empirical evidence to back up this claim.

All you have to do is connect to the "right" social networks.

Got networking skills?