Category: Rants

心境篇 – “拿信”

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“拿信” – 在公司同事之间指拿花红的通知书。这和 “拿大信封” – 指被裁员 – 是有天渊之别的。在这打工打了八年，”拿信” 的日子通常都兴高采烈的，没有像今天这样如此百感交集、五味杂陈。

今年的花红是提早宣布了。原因不是公司赚了大钱，而是因为公司被收购了。也因如此，将在收购后离职的首席执行官 (CEO) 宣布提早把今年的花红发给我们，其中原因是不要在被收购后让买主拒绝发花红给我们。虽然其出发点肯定是为了自己的利益，但和把雷曼兄弟弄到破产的那个天杀的狗杂种相比，这个 CEO 还算有点人性，对大伙儿也基本上可以说是仁至义尽了!

的确，在如此的经济环境之下还能拿花红是很不错的。但也可能是我们在这间公司的最后一次了。明年三月后买主将开始把我们并入其机构中，但是话已经放到前头 – 他们将把焦点放在欧洲，特别是其国内的业务。加上买主到现在都没有公布对我们几间分布在亚洲的分公司 (包括新加坡) 的计划蓝图，大家心里都是很明白 – 凶多吉少和时日无多了。很有可能最迟明年的三月随时随地就会 “拿大信封”。

我在另一间公司任职的友人的老板说得很对: 你们能保住工作就是你们今年最好的花红了!

就算没有先知大能的人都知道，明年失业的人数肯定增加，而且就业机会将相对的减少。僧多粥少… 加上自己又不年轻了，前景实在是不太乐观。如果让我有得选择，我的选择会是：只要还能保住工作，我情愿在经济没好转前没有花红。

毕竟，那比失业强多了。

Comics:

Recommended Reads:
Cobalt Paladin: Diary of an Entrepreneur – Corporate Junk #14

Random Discourse

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I have never understood why they called the current economic fubar: Financial Tsunami [金融海啸].

By doing so, it gives people the impression that this is a natural disaster – or an act of God – we can do nothing about to avoid. Yet, Paul Krugman saw this coming, perhaps as far back as 2003.

It is my opinion that the mechanical characteristics of the Earth and economics are two very different animals. In short, it is harder to predict an earthquake compared to financial / economic problems. Unlike a tsunami, this financial fxxk up could have been averted had someone actually listened to Krugman, realised the magnitude of the problem and started doing something back then. Sadly, all the while the people who can do something about it were just happy making their money and claiming that the last thing the economy needed is more government gahmen and repeatedly insist that the vaunted ‘free market’ will regulate itself and things will always turn out alright.

Now, tell me which seismologist tells you that you don’t have to worry about the fault lines and impose special regulations about structural safety because the plates would rub against themselves and then everything will be alright after that?

Simply put, by calling this crisis a tsunami, the people who are in the position to avert this fiasco can now shirk from their responsibilities and put the blame on some power they have no control over. But is that really so?

Anyway, most countries by now realised there will be no quick fix to this mess, nor will there be a turn-around in the short term. There also won’t be a white knight in shining armor loaded with cash to bail everyone out, even though everyone was expecting China to fit into that role in the beginning.

In fact, it is pretty obvious gahmens around the world are now trying to spend themselves out of the recession either by massive infrastructure building projects, or by driving domestic consumer demand. Taiwan is a fine example of the latter.

With an export-based economy without any sizable domestic demand, we are caught between a rock an a hard place. Even if the Singapore gahmen is going to spend in infrastructure, how much of that will trickle down to Singaporeans when most construction-related jobs are filled by foreign labour anyway?

It appeared to me globalisation and the restructuring of our economy had made us even more vulnerable to the current economic crisis [1]. We are perhaps the first in the region to declare ourselves in recession! I won’t be surprise that this maybe Singapore’s worst economic downturn in 50 years, and the most painful one the X-Generation – now in their 30s – will have to bear. Whether they can pull out of it is a question I shudder to ask.

Furthermore, the current Tali-PAP leadership lea-duhsip does not inspire any confidence at all. Take for e.g. the flip-flop over the guarantee of bank deposits. One moment they were saying it is not necessary, and the next moment they decided to do so because Hong Kong has done it. I mean, would they not have considered the fact that as long as someone does it, it will affect the competitiveness and so we might as well just do it in the first place even though there is no lack of confidence in our banking system?

Perhaps they were just attempting to avoid panic, but it makes one wonder whether they even have a grasp of the magnitude of this problem at all!

Comics:


Taken from Scott Adam’s Blog

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Random Thoughts of a Free Thinker: A Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities (proposed)

Daily Discourse – Madoff Scam

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An early list of those who are thought to have lost out in Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50bn scam.

Fairfield Greenwich Group – $7.5bn (company statement)
Kingate Management – $3.5bn (Bloomberg)
Banco Santander – $3.1bn direct and indirect exposure (company statement)
Tremont Group – $3.3bn (Bloomberg)
Bank Medici – $2.2bn (company statement)
Ascot Partners LLC – $1.8bn (The Wall Street Journal)
Access International Advisors – $1.4bn (company statement)
Fortis – $1.4bn (company statement)
HSBC – $1bn (Financial Times)
Benbassat & Cie – $935m (Le Temps)
Union Bancaire Privee – $850m (Le Temps)
Royal Bank of Scotland – $594m (company statement)
Natixis – $533m in indirect exposure (company statement)
BNP Paribas – $468m (company statement)
BBVA – $404m (Reuters)
Fix Asset Management – $400m (company statement)
Man Group – $360m (company statement)
Reichmuth & Co – $330m (firm letter to clients)
Nomura Holdings – $302m (company statement)
Maxam Capital Management – $280m (The Wall Street Journal)
EIM Group – $230m (Le Temps)
UniCredit – $100m (company statement)

Societe Generale and UBS – confirmed insignificant exposure.

Deutsche Bank AG, Dresdner Bank AG & Commerzbank AG – declined to comment on the matter.

Amidst all that bad news of failing financial institutions, and news of mergers and acquistions, now this. Is there no end to the bad news surrounding the finance industry?

Is this a wake up call to everyone, that all that wealth is nothing but an illusion, nothing more than just numbers – a figure printed on a piece of paper and that it will get wiped out just like that? Just where will our money be safe?

50 billion (50,000,000,000) U.S. dollars. That’s roughly 73,800,000,000 Singapore dollars. And you know whenever I look at these staggering amounts, the pay of the Tali-PAP mini$ter$ is really ‘peanuts’. Just how the hell did he pull it off? And it’s not a new idea or some really ingenious scheme. It’s something that has been done before – a Ponzi Scheme – which is nothing more than a fraudulent investment scheme paying investors from money paid in by other investors rather than real profits.

It makes one wonder, just how and why it took so long for anyone to find out what this guy has done to bring him to justice? Did no one audit his books? Is it because there wasn’t enough regulation, or because the regulators were sleeping on their jobs?

Similarly, I also need to ask of the risk management people of Bear Sterns, Lehman Lamer brothers, AIG and the likes… You mean you shitheads never realized that the companies you are working for were over-exposed? Just what the hell have you fxxkers all been doing? Ahh.. I know. Just taking your pay and fat bonus while getting yourself drunk and jerked-off at a bordello near Wall Street, right?

As for this Madoff guy… even sentencing him to death would have been letting him off too lightly. There’s only one death he deserved, and that is DEATH BY UMGAWAH

But of course, no humans (nor animals) should be abused to perform the execution. I personally think the Japanese should specifically design a machine for this purpose but the Germans will manufacture it. On top of that, I would like the honor to throw the switch of this thing during the execution.

Moment of the year:


Shoes thrown at George ‘Warmonger’ Bush during a press conference in Iraq.

Recommended Reads:
Nocturne: Defence of the Faith*
Nocturne: Indiscriminate Incrimination*
Cobalt Paladin: Diary of an Entrepreneur – Another “Duh” Moment


Warning: * denotes blog contains some graphical details which might be considered ‘Not Safe For Work’ [NSFW] and self-righteous moralists please refrain from clicking.

History Trivial:
講到慈禧之過，隨口算來包括導致甲午戰敗，撲滅戊戌變法，用義和團引來八國聯軍等等，似乎真有點罄竹難書；但若論其功，則重用漢臣，開辦洋務運動，奠立中國近代化工業基礎，造就同治中興氣象，以新式教育取代科舉，禁止婦女纏足等，倒也頗有可書之處。
而慈禧的家人除了襲「承恩公」的一個虛爵之外，並無他人能干涉朝政，在封建皇權時代，尤屬難得。

Daily Discourse – Discrimination

“Seems you are ok with discrimination as long as you are not the target.”

This is the allegation leveled against me in a comment to my previous post. And I am really sick of such comments.

For starters, let’s talk about discrimination. These are several types of discrimination which I know of:

  1. racial – e.g. against the African Americans back in the U.S. in the 60s, the Jews in Nazi Germany and the Chinese in the early 20th century;

  2. gender – e.g. females denied the right to vote, glass ceiling for female employees in organisations, jobs and promotion given in priority to males, or expecting sexual favors from a female employee;

  3. caste – e.g. the untouchables in India;

  4. age – e.g. rejecting a job applicant solely because of his age;

  5. disability – e.g. refusal to render to a person a medical aid because of his disability;

  6. religion – e.g. refusal to hire a person because of his religious beliefs;

  7. language – e.g. to disgrace the people speaking a certain dialect, such as those from Ryukyu Islands in early 20th Century Japan; and

  8. reverse – in my opinion, a fine example would be the Woman’s Charter of Singapore, which originally was used to protect the disadvantaged (i.e. lower educated, unemployed) women – usually home-makers – in the early days of post-colonial Singapore from abusive husbands. Sadly, it has become more of a bane to the modern man today.

Gender, age, disability, language and religion are also usually seen as a part of employment discrimination. That is why these days consultants advices interviewers never to ask questions related to them to avoid getting the company sued by the interviewee.


However, there is also another kind of discrimination – perceived discrimination. And it reminds me of an ex-colleague, who is in the opinion that our head of department looks down on him. It doesn’t matter that the real issue was the attitude and the lack of interest he displays towards his work. In the end he deliberately not do the things which our boss would consider him a good worker and a team player, and that goes onward to reinforce the boss continual dislike of him and his working attitude.

And so when I looked at the allegation leveled against me, I asked myself if there is any real discrimination in place against homosexual people, or is it all perceived as such. Are homosexuals in Singapore denied the right to vote? Are they denied the use of certain public services like health care or the buses? Are they getting thrown out of restaurants? Or are they denied employment even when they are more than qualified for the job?

Fortunately, I haven’t heard of such blatant acts of discrimination in Singapore. But the first thing that come to mind is Section 377A of the Penal Code, which I believe was necessary to protect the populace from certain sexual predators. However, before anyone screams about me drawing comparisons between male homosexuals and sexual predators, don’t put words in my mouth and consider this analogy: A prostitute may dress scantily, but is everyone who dress scantily a prostitute?

Then, there is also the ‘302’ classification and the straight downgrade of homosexuals to PES C in the army. I was reminded of this by fellow blogger Michael Cheng [aka Botak Cheng]. Personally, I have heard about incidents where those who are allegedly classified as such were bullied in camp by fellow soldiers. I am not sure if those classified as such are upset, but I do not see nor really understand the reason to the segregation. If homosexuals do not oppose those duties, then put them on duty like the rest of the men, until they do something against military regulations.

Anyway, parallel is continually being drawn in the U.S. between the homosexual community with that of the movement against discrimination of African American in the 1960s. But a quick check with a dozen of my friends who happens to be online in Windows Live Messenger showed that most cannot name any discrimination against homosexual here in Singapore. In fact, only 2 out of the dozen people I asked pointed me to this link to get myself duly informed.

Now, while I may oppose them, I have no issues with the homosexual community’s efforts to deal with the items listed on the Wiki page. But what has that got anything to do with DBS tie-in with FOTF? It was pretty obvious to me that it is nothing more than the fight against FOTF U.S. spilling over to FOTF Singapore. Has this ‘victory’ done anything to improve the situation of the homosexual community here in Singapore?

I won’t be surprised that in the near future, there is this opinion that all of these action groups are nothing more than small pompous groups presuming to speak for a larger community. In fact, I am in the opinion that the homosexual community by and large did not even give these ‘loud mouths’ the authority to speak on their behalf, nor are they very interested in the agenda.

It maybe possible these groups will raise the profile of those who claims to speak for the community, but it is doubtful it would have any real effects for the plight of the community or bring about any positive action. In fact, I am not even surprised if it actually galvanises the opposition.

To put it in the words of my friend, “Some people do nothing until they are called the enemy.”

Comics:

Recommended Reads:
Cobalt Paladin: Diary of an Entrepreneur – Money Saving Tip #2
Cobalt Paladin: Diary of an Entrepreneur -Signs of our times #4
Endoh’s Dungeon: Do you represent me… really?
Isaiahc: Seven Things to Love About WordPress 2.7

Daily Discourse – DBS & FOTF

I read with a little annoyance the following news [see below]:

Online campaign leads to rethink at DBS
Siow Li Sen
Fri, Dec 05, 2008
The Business Times

DBS Bank has removed all references to Focus On The Family (FOTF) in its advertising, after its credit card promotion supporting the evangelical Christian organisation provoked some angry reactions.

Since the bank’s Nov 13 credit card promotion where DBS said that it would donate money to FOTF, ‘a charity dedicated to helping children and families thrive’, members of the gay and lesbian community have called for a boycott of the bank.

FOTF in Singapore is an affiliate of a US-based organisation of the same name founded in 1977 by evangelical Christian James Dobson who campaigns against gay rights.

Last month, FOTF in the US retrenched some 200 staff after it spent US$600,000 to defeat marriage equality in California. Mr Dobson has also railed against US President-elect Barack Obama, who has countered that Mr Dobson ‘makes things up’.

DBS spokeswoman Karen Ngui said that it was never the intention of the bank to alienate any particular group. ‘DBS supports children and learning in Asia . . . it’s the cause that we are supporting and not FOTF, and or what it stands for,’ she said.

She added that DBS believes in diversity and inclusion.

‘We have since removed all references to FOTF in our advertising . . . however, we still support the cause . . . and thus will be contributing a small amount to their New Learning Centre for children with learning disabilities, due to be opened in March 2009.’

The bank’s earlier move had sparked an online campaign. Jean Chong, a gay activist with People Like Us, said that to date, 1,063 people, including non-gays, had signed up with a Facebook group attacking the bank’s support for an FOTF cause.

While some gay activists concede that DBS may not have known about the anti-gay agenda of FOTF, they felt that it still should not give to the charity because the donation could indirectly benefit its cause.

‘It is my view that unfortunately, DBS did not realise that FOTF has a lot of baggage. It is also unclear how by funding one part of an organisation’s activities, how much you also indirectly help another of its activities because money is fungible,’ said Alex Au, People Like Us gay activist.

Ms Ngui has said that its credit card team checked on FOTF and proceeded as they are endorsed by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports and National Council of Social Service (NCSS). ‘Going forward, the bank will conduct more extensive background checks,’ she said.

Why does it annoy me? First of all, it apparently doesn’t matter what the objective of the campaign was. It doesn’t matter FOTF is supporting a children and learning project. All that mattered to some group of people is this: FOTF was anti-homosexual.

By the same way they attempt public opinion against DBS’ association with FOTP, I wondered whether they are even aware that it also can used to ‘show’ homosexuals are anti-community? I am quite amused to see how they shot themselves in the foot, by going against a pro-community action.

Now that this has worked to cow DBS, I won’t be surprise that very soon, churches and the Christian community will have a hard time to work with secular organizations for community projects and activities, because such projects and activities are going to get boycott by ‘many in the [homosexual] community who have expressed outrage over’ the association.

In fact, I won’t be surprised that one day, when there’s a Christian bleeding to death – with a crucifix hanging obviously around his neck – homosexuals will just walk by and let him die, and would justify it because the dying man is anti-homosexual. After all, why aid a guy who is well, with the anti-homosexual groups? It doesn’t matter that it is my belief that most Christians would render aid to a homosexual in need.

Where, is such senseless reverse discrimination, going to lead us?

As a Christian, I can perfectly leave homosexuals alone and let them do whatever they want behind close doors, and even ignore what I see in public. As to how I personally felt about it, the leaders of the Church have already made their statement clear and I do not need to repeat it here. My stand has always been this: God is the ultimate moral judge and I do not pretend to speak His Judgement.

Beyond that, I would even champion for universal suffrage, health care, job opportunities for them if I see any discrimination in any of those areas in spite of my faith in Jesus Christ. But I will not stand for any form of reverse discrimination against my community as a matter of faith and differing views on morality.

And according to what I have read, Focus on the Family (FOTF) is also a voluntary welfare organisation (VWO) endorsed by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports. So, shouldn’t the ministry, and by extension the government gahmen of the Republic of Singapore, be boycotted by the homosexual community as well?

So, all homosexuals should quit their jobs in the civil service now because our gahmen is an evil organisation promoting an anti-gay agenda! If not, take what you already have and keep it, and stop agitating for more.

Enough, is enough already.

Comics:

Recommended Reads:
Cobalt Paladin: Diary of an Entrepreneur – Money Saving Tip #1
Endoh: Boycott DBS for being anti-family?


Addendum: Comment section for this post has been closed. Further comments in other parts of this blog on this issue will be indiscriminately deleted.

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