BEYOND SG

ASEAN-China Summit

1. No effort or expense was spared to make the Commemoration Summit of 15 years of ASEAN-China relations a successful ceremonial event. As one diplomat put it, China wanted it picture perfect. And it was. Nanning, the capital city of Guangxi Province, was ablaze with flowers. The gala performance in the evening was stunning. An ASEAN minister remarked that all the ballerinas were equally beautiful and even had the same tone of skin. Premier Wen Jiabao was impressive. At the end of every intervention by ASEAN leaders, he would give a short summary of a few sentences which would always capture the main points.

2. China has been methodical and comprehensive in its efforts to establish close strategic links with the countries of Southeast Asia. A few years ago, Premier Zhu Rongji told ASEAN Leaders that China wanted ASEAN to be a long-term friend and strategic partner without seeking for itself an exclusive position in Southeast Asia. Initially suspicious, ASEAN countries are now responding in a positive way. There is no doubt now that China's economic growth would benefit all of us. There is however concern that China may leave us behind if we don't move forward in a more determined way. China's peaceful re-emergence is therefore also a challenge to Southeast Asia. The question is whether we can summon enough political will to integrate ASEAN, combine our strengths and carve out a place in the sun for ourselves. When ASEAN Leaders meet in Cebu at the end of the year to decide on our collective future, the Nanning Summit will provide an important backdrop.

George Yeo

Why George Yeo blogs?

Dear gentle readers,

This is BeyondSG first podcast. It is an interview by Radio Singapore International (RSI) on Minister George Yeo's blogging activities.

If there is a higher traffic on podcast, BeyondSG will have more podcasts in the future. Enjoy.

Harold Fock

Download blogwatch_mr_george_yeo.mp3

Expansion of Panama Canal

1.    Yesterday, Panamanians voted overwhelmingly in favour of canal expansion.  This is a big thing.  The existing canal, through which passes 5% of global shipping, is limited to vessels carrying no more than 4000 containers.  The new canal will allow ships carrying 12,000 containers to pass through.  Work should start next year and complete in 2014, a hundred years after the canal was first opened in 1914.

2.    President Martin Torrijos made canal expansion his key mission.  It will greatly improve the future of 3 million Panamanians.  There are risks of course and many are doubtful about the economic viability.  In such situations, leadership is key.  What he and his ministers want to do is to make use of the canal traffic to turn Panama into a hub, especially for air and sea traffic.  They see Singapore as a ready model for themselves. They want PSA and other Singapore companies to operate there. The FTA we signed with Panama a few months ago was precisely to enhance our mutually-beneficial bilateral relationship.

3.    Panama is halfway around the world from Singapore.  But in a shrinking, inter-connected world, what happens there will have an impact on us and vice versa.  Canal expansion is good for international trade and good for Singapore.  The success of the referendum yesterday is a piece of good news.  I have just faxed letters of congratulations to friends there.

George Yeo

Biennale Singapore

1. I finally found a bit of time to visit some of the sites of the Biennale yesterday. Ephraim, who is a volunteer, has been marketing it to all of us at the Branch. The old Tanglin Camp brought back memories as it must for all Singapore men who have gone through NS. The old buildings provide wonderful spaces for artists to experiment. Some of the exhibits were powerful.

2. It was good to see the way the churches, temples and mosques opened their premises to artists. I visited the Kuan Yim Temple at Waterloo Street and the St Peter and Paul Church at Queen Street. At the Kuan Yim Temple, one artwork was a specially-woven carpet on which devotees prayed and threw fortune sticks. Outside the adoration room at the Peter and Paul Church, were two angels slowly breaking out of naphthalene cubes.

3. City Hall had a large collection. Some of the artists created exhibits which found poignant expression in the old courtrooms. A few were deliberately provocative. One questioned the arrest of the Marxist Catholic conspirators in 1987. I found the exhibit showing a meeting of small countries particularly funny because it resembled the truth. Every year at the UN General Assembly, I host a gathering of the Forum of Small States which, incidentally, make up almost half of the member-states of the UN. These are states with populations below 10 million.

4. The theme of the Bienalle is 'Belief'. Human beings have a deep need to believe in something but their beliefs can lead to great good or great evil. It is a subject rich for artistic expression. I hope this first Biennale is but the start of more to come.

George Yeo

Singapore's a vital part in Lonely Planet's beginnings

Last month, the backpacker couple founders of Lonely Planet, Maureen and Tony Wheeler,  were here in Singapore at Kinokuniya and Borders to launch their new story book about how Lonely Planet started.  I found them to be extremely nice, down-to-earth  people.

 

Most empires have modest beginnings, and little beknownest to most people and to most Singaporeans, Singapore was a vital part of the history of what has become a multi-million dollar global travel publishing empire today.

When they decided to write their second travel guidebook, they travelled up to Singapore and camped out at a very modest hotel along Jalan Besar called The Palace where they spent many weeks hand-writing the text and hand-drawing the maps on their tiny hotel room table.   When they finished the book and went out to find buyers, MPH gave them their first order of 1,000 copies, which they have very fond memories of till today.

One funny story in the book tells of the time when they were trying to think of a nice name for their new business --   Tony was singing a song "Space Captain," by Joe Cocker and Leon Russell, but he got the lyrics wrong and sang "..lonely planet" instead of "...lovely planet", and his wife pointed out the mistake to him.

So this was how the "Lonely Planet" brand name was invented - One of the world's most well-known and well-loved brands was the result of a complete mistake!  If he hadn't made that mistake, all of us might have been reading  "Lovely Planet" guidebooks instead -- A great story!

The Lonely Planet Story is a delightful book with a unique mix of autobiography, business history and travel stories.   It narrates Tony and Maureen Wheeler's personal story as well as the bumpy evolution of their travel guide business into the world's largest independent travel publishing company.   Above all, their memoir reveals the spirit of adventure that has made them, according to The New York Daily News, "the specialists in guiding weird folk to weird places."

David Lim
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PS: The book is published by Periplus and can be found in all the leading bookstores in Singapore.  I've bought and read it, but go get your own, coz I'm not lending my signed copy to anyone  ;-)

The Lonely Planet Story (publ. Periplus)

Description of book

The Sunni-Shi'i Divide

1. The growing Sunni-Shi'i divide is worrying and has repercussions on us in Singapore. When the Americans invaded Iraq to remove Saddam, they thought that Shiite Iraqis would be Arab first. After all, when Saddam invaded Iran in the 80's, many of his soldiers were Shiite. But the picture is not so clear now. For many years, Iran had provided refuge to Shiites fleeing from Saddam's oppression including senior Shi'i religious leaders. No one doubts that Iran today has significant influence in Iraq. As one Arab minister told me, the Americans have given the Iranians a card they did not have before.

2. The recent war in Lebanon was in fact between Israel on the one side and Syria and Iran on the other. Without the full backing of Syria and Iran, Hezbullah could not have become such a formidable force. Many Sunni Arab leaders, fearful of the growing Shiite influence, had quietly hoped that the Israelis would deal a crippling blow to Hezbullah. It was only after the Arab street reacted fiercely to the scenes of destruction in southern Beirut and southern Lebanon that their governments spoke up against Israel. With the ceasefire in place (for now) and the Arab street quiet again, Sunni Arab concern about growing Iranian influence in the Middle East is rising. As a result, the pattern of alliances in the region is changing.

3. In his book 'the Shia Revival', Vali Nasr writes about the dramatic shift in the historical balance of power between Sunnis and Shi'is. It is a book worth reading. As with all such shifts in the past, there will be a contest. With Iran determined to pursue nuclear technology (claiming that it is only for peaceful purposes), this particular contest will have fateful consequences not only for the Middle East but for the whole world. So much of global energy comes from that region.

George Yeo

"Thar's Gold in Them Thar Hills !"

"Thar's GOLD in them thar hills !" - This was the singularly most heard cry on the lips of the floods of immigrants who came from all over the world in a fevered, mad race to find untold and undiscovered wealth amidst the barren, sun-bleached Californian hills surrounding San Francisco Bay.

History had nicknamed these fortune hunters the "49ers", for 1849 was the year of the "Gold Rush" when 100,000 prospectors descended into San Francisco after gold was discovered in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Today, the spirit of these pioneers lives on in San Francisco's football team, who are called the "49ers".

The Technology Gold Rush of the 1990s and today is no different - Prospectors are still lured from distant corners of the world, but today, modern technology enables them to be transported there at supersonic speed, with in-flight service while watching the latest Pixar movie in air-conditioned comfort. 

Like their counterparts of more than a hundred and fifty years before, these high tech prospectors have packed their hopes and dreams and have come well-equipped - not with picks, shovels, or lanterns, but with armfuls of post-graduate degrees in computer science, electronics, engineering, and business.   Hungry for success, these 21st century entrepreneurs are the brightest brains and talents this planet produces and revel in nothing less that taking on the entire world.

Way back in 1849, prospecting for gold in the San Franciscan foothills was a pure numbers game - The more claims a prospector staked out, the greater the odds he had to "Strike it rich!" The trick was, of course, not to run out of money before finding the gold. Today, thousands of entrepreneurs and their financial backers, the venture capitalists, engage in the same gambit, but the game is coached in Silicon Valley-Venture Cap jargon.

The mythology of it all holds an irresistible and almost mystical allure for thousands of dreamers all across America and the world.    The mere mention of the word "start-up" in Silicon Valley conjures visions of huge global market potential, paving the fabled road to what could be untold fortunes for its founders.

For a  Valley start-up, discovering gold is equivalent to getting listed on the stock exchange or being bought by Google or Yahoo for a gazillion dollars. If your company goef for an Initial Public Offering (IPO), you have to write a document for your potential public investors explaining your business and its risks - this document is called a "prospectus".  The past casts long shadows into the present indeed.

Every year the US Immigration Department issues around 100,000 work visas. Curiously this is the same number of immigrant gold prospectors who came here exactly a century and a half ago. As they say, "History repeats itself".

Perhaps, history will refer to the high tech dream-seekers of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries as "the 99ers" and perhaps, they will also be remembered for their hopeful cry, "Thar's Internet Gold in them thar hills!"

David Lim

The Power of Methane

1. The universe is not short of energy. Every star radiates it in abundance. Part of the cosmic material is methane or CH4, which is the carbon atom, with its valency of 4, linked to 4 hydrogen atoms. When the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft reached Titan, the biggest moon of Saturn, about two years ago, it found a landscape which looked surrealistically like earth, with seas and land carved out by rivers. But it wasn't water. Saturn is very cold, way below minus 100 Celsius. It was liquid methane.

2. The earth itself has a lot of methane. The huge bubble of natural gas off Qatar is mostly methane. In the coming decades, natural gas will become more important as a fuel source. Down in the deep ocean beds, we find huge lakes. Lakes under water? Not of water but of methane hydrate. At high pressure, methane and water molecules combine lattice-like to create these lakes. A couple of years ago, I saw beautiful videos of them at Woodshole Oceanographic Institute at Cape Cod, Massachusetts taken by the deep sea vessel which took pictures of the Titanic. Ringing these lakes were teeming colonies of giant mussels feeding off the methane in complete darkness. Around deep sea vents on the ocean floor which release methane live all kinds of strange creatures like tubeworms which derive their energy from the bowels of the earth.

3. Scientists like Tom Gold, who wrote the fascinating book 'the Deep Hot Biosphere' believe that the earth is charged with methane which is constantly bubbling off to the surface. Trouble is: methane is a greenhouse gas. Whether as methane or as carbon dioxide which is produced when the methane is burned for energy, the release of carbon into the atmosphere aggravates global warming. No one knows how much of global warming is caused by human activity but there is no doubt that human activity worsens it.

4. Qatar has estimated reserves of 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. More and more will be found around the world, often not associated with oil. We don't lack energy. It is all a matter of economics and of preserving the environment which gives us life. Every organism survives by carefully economising on the energy it uses. We have to, too.

George Yeo

To Be Born at the Right Place and Time

SPEECH BY GEORGE YEO, MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
AT THE HARVARD CLUB OF SINGAPORE ANNUAL DINNER ON 12 OCT 2006 AT 7.45 PM

1. During the recent Non-Aligned Meeting in Havana and the UN General Assembly in New York, the war in Lebanon and the killings in Darfur were hot subjects. The problems of the Middle East and Africa are complicated and not easily solved. On one day in NY, I met ministers from the Gulf in the morning and members of the American Jewish Committee in the afternoon. Separately, both commented that Singapore was fortunate to be in a much better neighbourhood than theirs. Many Singaporeans are not aware that quite a few countries in the developing world hold Singapore up as a model of development for themselves.

2. We are lucky to be where we are. If Singapore were in the Middle East, we could not avoid being caught in the maelstrom. If we were located in Africa or Latin America, our lives would be much harder. At this time in history, Asia is not a bad place to be in and being in between China and India, without being too close to either, puts us in a good position.

3. One generation ago, our position was very different. The Cold War was still raging. In Indo-China, a terrible war was being fought. I remember as a secondary school student in the 60’s listening to the AM radio station of the US Army in South Vietnam. Cultural Revolution China was then in turmoil. Socialist India was stagnating. In Indonesia, rivers of blood flowed after Sukarno fell. There was little pride in being an Asian, whether as a Chinese, Indian or Malay. During my years as an undergraduate in England, Asians were often looked down upon.

4. While the big countries in Asia turned inwards to rediscover themselves after decolonisation, Singapore, together with South Korea, Taiwan and HK, stole a march forward by maintaining political stability and concentrating on economic development and exports. These were the four NIEs (newly industrialised economies) on the periphery of the Asian mainland. Singapore benefited from the institutions bequeathed to us by the British especially the rule of law, the protection of property and adherence to international standards, and by the US, Europe and Japan helping us and wanting us to succeed.

5. Eventually the growth spread into the Asian mainland. After a long time, China and India are finally re-emerging as two major poles in the world. With the end of the Cold War, an entire continent is now on the move. A great tide is flowing and we are fortunate to be in the middle of it.

6. This is an exciting period but also a challenging one. There are dangers as well as opportunities. If we do not steer our boat well, we can get into trouble. If we lose concentration, our boat can capsize.

7. Younger Singaporeans should be prepared for the adventure. On the whole, those under 40 years old, the post 65 generation, are well educated. Most would be competent in English and their mother tongue. If there is one deficiency, it is that life in Singapore is too sheltered. As one Singaporean told me at a reception in New York, many young Chinese and young Indians would think nothing of travelling long distances to study and work, from one province or state to another. They are forced to be independent early and take life with all its roughness, expecting little of government. But, even so, when Singaporeans do go overseas, they learn quickly, although sometimes by making mistakes.

8. For some older Singaporeans, however, this new world is not at all an easy ride. Many of those born during the baby-boom years from 1945 to 1965, who are now 40 to 60 years old, have only a primary or a partial secondary education. In a competitive globalised economy, their wages are being kept down by competition from other countries. When there is an economic downturn, they are the first to be retrenched and the last to be re-employed. Among some of them, there is a deep sense of economic insecurity with children still schooling and mortgages to be serviced. Without blunting the incentive to work, we must help those who fall into hard times for one reason or another. It could be bad health or just bad luck. This is very important. Whatever happens, we must maintain the solidarity in our society. When I was in Cuba, I gave a short speech that while Cuba and Singapore took very different paths to development from the beginning, we shared a common approach in one area, which is the full development of our human resources. There is no illiteracy in Cuba unlike other parts of Latin America. Basic healthcare is excellent and one of Cuba's major exports is doctors. I said, half in jest, but only half, that Singapore is socialist in three areas - health, education and housing. A senior minister responsible for the economy whom I called on surprised me when he said that he had read Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs with interest. However, until Cuba frees up its economy, its progress would be limited. We can’t afford to be like Cuba. We would harm ourselves by fighting globalisation. Our approach is not to protect jobs but to prepare Singaporeans well for global competition.

9. We must also never take our racial and religious harmony for granted. Take Pope Benedict's recent remarks on Islam as an example. This was not a controversy in some far-off place. It had immediate reverberations in Singapore. Happily, we have Catholic and Muslim leaders in Singapore who spoke up quickly to calm emotions. The key here is never to assume that what is acceptable to us is also acceptable to others. MICA did not ban the film 'the Da Vinci Code' because it was entertainment and not likely to inflame hatred. Some Christians were unhappy of course but that was to be expected. However, if an equivalent distortion of Islam were to be screened, the reaction would have been extreme. When I was MITA minister, we banned Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses while allowing 'the Last Temptation of Christ' because the Muslim reaction was entirely predictable.

10. Sometimes, as Singaporeans, we wonder whether we are better off being homogeneous. Perhaps life will then be simpler. Having to show sensitivity to others who are different from us is an effort and can be bothersome. But this is too simple a view. What we are in our deep make-up reflects our past and our future. It is only because we are diverse in our internal construction that we are able to occupy this particular niche in the global economy. If we are not multi-ethnic and multi-religious, we would not be able to establish good relations with our neighbours and with China, India, the Middle East and so many other countries in the world. Young Singaporeans enjoy an advantage precisely because we have this multi-channel capability built into us from an early age. It is in our soil, in the very air we breathe.

10. On the whole, we are not doing badly. We are succeeding in the restructuring of our economy. The present growth we are seeing reflects this. EDB continues to attract high-quality investments. Instead of competing head-on with China, India and other low-wage cost countries, we are developing in a complementary way to them, using their cheaper outputs to reduce our imput cost and adding value in areas where we continue to enjoy significant advantages.

11. Our most important strength is the basic attitude of our people. Let me highlight three important aspects of this basic attitude. The first is the insistence of good government. That is fundamental. Without a good, clean government, nothing else is possible. We have only to look all around us. There are thousands of islands in Southeast Asia. Why this particular barren rock called Singapore should flourish is because we operate a unique system which attracts people and money to our shores. That was why our ancestors came here. With good government, there is law and order, ethnic and religious harmony, and the protection of property, including intellectual property. Upon this, we have developed probably the most efficient logistic system in the world, moving goods, people, information and money.

12. The second aspect is a practical sense of reality, that if we don't work, we don't eat. That focuses the mind. Because of this, we have a culture of hard work and discipline. Knowing that no one owes us a living, families save and parents put great store by the education of their children. If we had reserves of oil and gas, or mountains of gold and silver, our mentality would naturally be very different. But we have none; and everyone knows that there is a limit to income redistribution. If we overtax members of any group, many will leave. All this keeps our domestic politics relatively simple and humdrum. It also undergirds our attitude towards National Service. If we do not protect what we have, it will be taken from us.

13. The third aspect of the basic attitude which serves us well is the outward orientation of Singaporeans. This is not only a matter of policy; it is expressed in our culture and in our daily lives. Singapore exists only because it is a useful part of a much larger global system over which we have no control. Our trade is more than three and a half times our GDP. Singaporeans routinely travel overseas for study, work and play. Large numbers of foreigners visit or live here. We have a culture which is highly mixed. A Singapore that is not outwardly-oriented cannot prosper. Our kids in primary school are now used to having foreigners as classmates. In the universities, in our research institutes, in the workplaces, in our theatres and orchestras, Singaporeans and foreigners work side by side as colleagues and friends. Naturally, some will also fall in love and produce offsprings. Four in ten marriages are now between Singaporeans and foreigners.

14. Should one day the pendulum of history swing the other way with countries closing their borders and tribal instincts becoming exclusive again, Singaporeans will find it hard to make a living. How can we survive in such a world? Our economy will grind to a halt and our social fabric will be torn apart. Many will emigrate and those who do will quickly take on other loyalties. We are not Switzerland. We don't have the Swiss seven hundred years of history. For the forseeable future, however, globalisation is going to become more extensive, not less. And that is good for Singapore, provided we stay alert and respond quickly to changing sea and wind conditions.

15. Singapore society is now entering a creative phase. In many fields, our people are doing wonderful things, big and small. When recently I was in Panama, with which we signed a free trade agreement earlier this year, I found Singapore companies making inroads far away from home. Crimson Logic supplied the new computer system for the Canal. InterRoller provided a new baggage handling system for the airport. ST Aerospace has taken over a few hangars from the old US Air Force base and will turn it into a regional maintenance centre for civil airliners. In Brazil, Keppel Fels and Sembawang dominate the offshore oil platform industry. President Lula, when he launched his first election campaign, did it at one of our shipyards. Singapore companies can now be found on every continent doing different things. In Qatar which I have just visited with DPM Wong Kan Seng, the Singapore presence is growing. Even so, my good friend, the Finance Minister, complained that not enough Singapore companies were there. Everywhere our people are, they enjoy a reputation for competence and reliability. It is a reputation which we must jealously safeguard.

16. But it is what we are able to do here in Singapore that matters the most. This is the home base which nurtures the next generation. We have to keep improving and learn new tricks. No one is going to wait for us. For some Singaporeans, we might be moving too fast. For others, we are moving too slow. We have somehow to strike a balance and move at a speed which the great majority can accept. But we can’t afford to slow down. In the end, it is our domestic politics which determine the speed at which we move. Some stretching out of our income distribution is inevitable but we must continue to look after those at the bottom and ensure that no one is left behind. So long as we keep our good sense and don't take too many liberties with ourselves, the future is bright because the future of Asia is bright. All said, we are fortunate to be born at the right place and time.

George Yeo

Choose your own career

Recently, there was an article in Today's newspapers on the dashed dreams of graduates in the biotech industry. They found out, too late, that without a post graduate degree, it was indeed very tough to get a job in the biotech industry. Some graduates became tuition teachers and salesmen (absolutely respectable jobs) or whatever job that came along. There were also some (tragic) remarks that "they were only fit to wash the test tubes" as opposed to doing high-end research. This is my 2-cent take on career planning. NEVER EVER LET SOMEONE TELL YOU WHAT JOB IS COOL AND TRENDY. BE A COMPASS, NOT A WEATHERVANE.

A compass sticks to the same direction but a weathervane changes direction as the wind blows. Whenever I give talks to young people, especially students, this is perhaps the most important thing i have to share as an entrepreneur. Like all great movies, there are some backstories and flashback in my life to come to this simple conclusion.

1. My own Encounter of the Job Kind
When I was a much younger kid, someone decided that being a FUND MANAGER is COOL and IMPORTANT. So they started the Financial Analysis (FA) undergraduate program at NTU which modelled after the respectable Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA). I loved the programme so much that I even had a picture of Warren Buffet on my wall (that was before he was globally famous). My parents really got worried because in most young people's rooms, they had Japanese pop stars and Samantha Fox (the predecessor of Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Tata Young) instead of a smiling bespectacled old man. A few years later, the FA course was merged into a more generic business education programme because (in reality) there were not too many fund manager jobs out there. Additionally, a more generic business programme provides the graduates a wider range of skillsets which ultimately translates to a higher chance of getting the first job. It was a nice experiment that came and went.

All these did not matter to me. I love value investing before embarking on the programme. It did not matter to me if the employees are lining outside the university waiting to sign me up (believe me, so many people believe in this fantasy, it is mind-boggling). It did not matter Singapore was going to be financial centre hub or "financiopolis" (pun intended). I get turned on studying companies and the people who run them. Upon introspection, I was just plain lucky to study what I love. If you are truly passionate about a subject or a career, the external influence and opinions of others are irrelevant and should never influence your career decision. Be true; listen to your heart.

2. Scariest People on Earth
Let me also introduce the SCARIEST PEOPLE on planet Earth. They make horror movies look like bedtime stories. You have met them before in your life. In fact, you will meet them throughout your life. These are the Weathervane folks whose brains are more dead than the zombies and their only existence in life is to detect what is the latest "In thing" from the higher authority and ape obedience and worst, mimic passion. If "China and India" is hot, they will have a China story to tell, an Indian encounter to illuminate. If "entrepreneurism" is cool, they will have stories of their infant-preneurial activities (like how they trade pampas in the crib) and how they think out of the box. If dot.com is hot, they become VC and when it crashed, their first love has always been investment banking. Every word, every story and every decision is aligned to the "In Thing". Left to their own devices, they are basically harmless and are unattractive at parties. Smart and pretty women/men shun them like lepers, so given the law of Darwinian selection, they should die out eventually. But in the words of Carl Sagan, it takes Millions and Millions of years for that to happen, so don't count on it.

This is not the scary bit. The scary bit is when these people get to influence what your kids should study, what kind of career they should embark upon, what kind of mindset they should possess, what is cool and what is hot and YOU believe in them, then it truly becomes a horror movie. I have no problem being led astray by someone who has true conviction in his navigation but I consider it a sin to be influenced by a fake wannabe.

Your only defence - tune them out. If you can't see dead people, they can't bother you.

3. Don't feel bad. It is Global.
Computer gaming is hot. Wall Street loved computer gaming now. E3 is hot. Even Harvard organised a symposium on computer gaming industry. So the polytechnics and universities in UK quickly jumped on the gaming bandwagon and launched several computer game programming classes, they had brouchures featuring hip, cool, Keannu Reeves look alike doing programming, zip zap zoom powerpoints, PR video clips and such. To the horror of the graduates, there are NO JOBS waiting for them. In fact, most of the schools were not equipped to train them correctly and all the internship possibilities turned out to be just possibilities. This is a global phenonmenon, not just Singapore. Weathervanes are everywhere.

4. The danger of centralised planning.
Come on, we go to school and we learn that Communism fails because centralised planning is, by default, inefficient and free market forces are the best. The same apply to career planning, talent management (new buzzword here) and forecasting the hot industries etc. Most of the time, the top policy makers and think tanks folks are fairly accurate as they have tons of datapoints to look at. It is when the overzealous weathervanes who took over the implementation, especially at the talent building stage, that get you into trouble. To be fair, there is also no way they can predict accurately the hiring trend and the job prospects. Nobody owns a crystal ball.

5. Compass versus Weathervane. Weathervanes win sometimes.
In the usual feel-good movies, the compass heroes will triumph over the mindless, boss-carrying weathervanes. In real life, sometimes the bad guys win. When I was younger, I had a boss in the private sector. China and India were (still are) hot topics and an opportunity came up to make a trip to one of these countries. The company was bleeding. There is ABSOLUTELY nothing we can do in a country visit. The boss insisted that the trip must be made. The trip was amazingly fruitless and I made the worst decision as a subordinate:- I refused to file in my travel report (which will obviously be embellished to become a Columbus discovery trip). I refused to execute all the fake, mindless initiatives. There was only one outcome - I got rid of myself. i learnt an important fundamental lesson in business. If the money is not truly yours and your interest is not aligned to the survivability of the business, you will spend the money and do silly things. It was a humbling lesson for me too as I have hardly failed in my life before and being labelled an incompetent was something hard to swallow. So I re-grouped with my best pals and ran our own company. And it is the happiest decision I made in my life. Oh, I think the firm got rid of the Boss eventually but that is OPP - Other People's Problem. I forgive the Boss and in fact, without the Boss, I won't learn life's hard lessons and for that I thank him. And I lied about weathervanes winning. They don't.

6. So, what should I do as a young person? How do I become a compass?

a. Jumpstart your career by getting curious with the world. Do part-time jobs and test-run the industries. Scheme and scam your way to an internship or vacation job to see if you love or hate the industry.
b. Build a "Bull Shit Forece Shield" (BSFS) around you. Do not be enticed by fancy powerpoint or video clips and good looking models posing as successful future graduates. They are like pretty babes in a magic show - they are out to distract you.
c. Listen to your heart and mind. A simple test is to walk to the magazine section of the bookstore. The first few magazines you pick up is really your true interest in life. Ok, guys, FHM and MAXIM do not qualify.
d. Meet and interact with older people in the respective industry. Have a mentor. I am amazed people can sign up a three-year course and commit their parents' (and their own) money on a career path they know nothing much about. Ok, girls, do not look for older mentors on the Net. Talk to real and respectable folks!
e. Drop an anvil on the Weathervane. Help decimate them faster. Just kidding.

Harold Fock