A dose of reality.

Two articles in the Today paper today on the Israel bombarbment of Lebanon, and both vindicates the right of might. Military power is the rule of the game. The first report spoke about Lebanon pleading for mercy and the world leaders refused to step in to stop the carnage, and 'the New York Times revealed yesterday that this inaction was part of a deliberate strategy that the US and Israel have adopted. The two have concluded that the Lebanese authorities and army are powerless to control Hezbollah...' It was actually a collusion between the US and Israel against Lebanon and the Arab world, and the world cannot do anything about it. Power talks. The other article by an Arabic scholar, Ahmad Samih Khalidi, further revealed how pathetic the Arabs were, attempting to reason with the world and hoping that the world will see the views of the Arabs. It smacks of the infamous Ah Q mentality. It tried to explain that Israel felt the pain when it lost a couple of soldiers or a tank and fear that the Hezbollah and the Hamas are catching up. Which of course is bull. The Israeli and American strategy is simply to destroy whatever the Arab resistance are building every few years, to cripple them whenever they are starting to organise and take form. They will not allow any of these resistance group to be able to pose a threat. And this attack will be repeated every now and then, in Lebanon, Syria or other Arab states. Unless the selfish and helpless Arabs can get their acts together, form a united front backup by real military might, they can go on appealing and crying for help. And the rest of the muslim countries the world over can go to the streets of their home cities and throw stones at the embassies. So what, it will do no good to the plight of the Arabs in the Middle east. No one can help the Arabs unless they are prepared to stand up and help themselves. Too much of Allah is a waste of time. The gun is more powerful than Allah. The gun is real. Get real Arabs.

bak chor mee versus bak kut teh episode

First we have Bak Chor Mee stirring up a little crisis and turning into bad tasting brown soup. Now we have Bak Kut Teh being arrogant to a foreign dignitary. Looks like too much of either can make the head go spinning. Can't think clearly and bringing misfortune to oneself. How would this Bak Kut Teh episode affect his business and the reputation of Singapore as a food paradise? This Bak Kut Teh guy needs to get some training on marketing and certification as a Bak Kut Teh chef. It is not only whipping up a good bowl of Bak Kut Teh that counts. He must know the quality of the meat, the temperature, ingredients, how to wash bowls and also how to make his customers happy and keep coming back. What he has done is to chase away his most important customer who could have given him another boost as the most famous Bak Kut Teh in Singapore. Now his Bak Kut Teh shop is the most infamous. And the negative feedback may chase away all his foreign dignitaries for good. More training in marketing is needed. Send him for upgrading course.

is ngiam tong dow joking?

Ngaim Tong Dow commented that it is not right for Singapore and Singaporean companies to hire foreign talents to be CEOs. Any position but CEOs. CFOs. COOs, or whatever is ok. But CEO means hiring someone to drive our car and tell us where to go. It implies that we are lost, we do not know where to go. And we hire foreign talents to drive us around. He felt that this is running down on Singaporean talents and their pride. That they are second best to foreigners. Before he commented on this, I was harbouring the thought of having a foreign talent as our Prime Minister and run our country. All things being equal, I think they will be cheaper, value for money. Now, after so many years and so many FT jokers as CEOs, have we just woke up? Or is Ngaim joking? Or is Ngaim saying that our locals are better than FTs? A good example of this is the father and son team who have outdone all the FTs. Guess which father and son team? Wrong, I know what is in your mind. I am referring to the Wee Wee team and yes, the Li Li team as well. Oh, sorry, the latter team is from Hongkong.

myth 42

'Paying high salaries, but with a cap, is good' How can I call this a myth? The justification for such a policy of paying high salaries to public office holders is to prevent corruption at high places. Then why is this no good? Yes it is no good, but not because it does not prevent the ills of corruption. There is no corruption at high places. It is no good because it puts a cap on the real income of super talented individuals. It is very unfair to restrain what a supertalent can earn by articificially limiting it with a cap, by pegging it against some subjective numbers. And then we tell these talents that they are doing national service, and that they must sacrifice for the country. Now you see how unfair this policy is. And all the supertalents would have to apologise to their wives and kids that they could not afford the additional resort bungalows in Europe, US or Australia because there is a cap on what they could make in the private sector. Hopefully they don't fill too bad about being shortchanged. Or else they would not be doing their very best. Put it the other way, men of integrity and honesty will not be corrupted even if they are paid less. And if we pay them their true worth, their market value, they will be so motivated that they could move mountains. And it is only fair that they received their due rewards. Then when they have made their billions, one day they might woke up and said, what the shit do I need $50 billions for when $1 billlion they could not even finish using. And they might donate $30 billions to a trust to help the unfortunate. And we can have a few Warren Buffetts and Bill Gates among us! See, artificially capping the income of supertalents is bad. It is artificial and restrictive and unfair to the incumbent. It does not reward talents fully. It shortchanged the talents. It is against the philosophy of paying people their worth, their market value.

all quiet in cyber ghost town

after the brown incident, an eerie silence has fallen onto cyberspace. most of the forumers have disappeared together from all the forums. the postings were pathetically low. even my www.redbeanforum.com regulars have mostly disappeared. could you fellas help by contributing some posts over there. you only need to copy and paste your posts from here. i still can't figure out why you fellas find it more comfortable to post in a blog. i have to search high and low to retrieve your posts when it is further down and lost among the older threads. try posting at redbeanforum and find out how convenient it is. all the new posts are automatically thrown up at the beginning of page. cheers