www.Go To The Mountain - Musings of a Potential Guru

Pray, for there are calamities everywhere! Every morning when you read your newspapers there are more gloom and doom. Singapore is supposed to have several great years ahead including 2008 but we cannot be sheltered being an open and export oriented economy. Not having a hinterland like Hong Kong has in China does not help. We are in uncharted territory. What we are seeing now is unprecedented. The train has gone off the rails! American capitalism has failed big time and Singapore is in a technical recession. Confidence has been completely eroded, fear has taken over, markets are irrational and the American consumers have stop spending surely to be followed by the Europeans but then American consumerism is driving the world economy worth some USD 8.5 trillion for 300 million people as compared to China's USD 1 trillion for 1.3 billion people and India's USD 600 billion for 1 billion people. Some people even predicted that America's sole superpower supremacy will...

There were reports that suggested that a man's vocabulary consists of not more than 7,000 words a day while a woman's is about 24,000 words. A typical guy who has an average day in the office may have used up half of his allocation or natural disposition at the end of each day. If he has a horrid day with many meetings thrown in, he could have possibly exhausted himself completely by lunch time. By the time he got home, it is possible that not a single word could come out of his mouth even by coaxing.Telling him about your new hairdo, asking him whether you look fat in that dress will probably draw a mild utterance of acknowledgement from him if you are lucky. Meanwhile, the lady may have just consumed some 7,000 words for the day and left with another 17,000 unfinished business to let go. This is not to say who is right or wrong but to keep remembering the nature of things and that you can still keep things in perspective and everything lovey dovey for one anothe...

My condolence to the family of the late JBJ. He has always championed for the workers and their rights. He came across as a humble, simple and sincere man who truly believe in his conviction. How many times has he fallen and bounced back and continued with dogged determination. I have seen him on some occasions during lunch selling The Hammer and on even more occasions during election rallies. I am sure many of us admired him for his courage, determination, selflessness and conviction. The very fact that he was awesome to me was that no matter what, he has never ran away from Singapore. He stood his ground. A true son of Singapore! But Singaporeans lead a charmed life for his style to make an impact especially on rights and the freedom of speech in particular his more confrontational style but history will remember him for his contribution.

Melamine tainted milk from China made many Chinese children sick and even those products not made there were not spared since they were supplied from the same source. Some brand names got hurt in the due process. It will surely take sometime for the Chinese to realise short term gains are not to be had over the long run and cover ups can only cause more damage. Of course they are to be blamed but then China is made up of 1.3 billion people. They will always have more problems and more profound ones than others. Other than Indonesia, China is probably the country with the second largest population of Muslims. If one per cent is gay, it is already more than the entire population of Singapore - gays, lesbians, foreigners all included. So their problems are always magnified. Yes, they have major shortcomings and need to change and come on the main stream in world standard. But then it is not just the Chinese that is the problem. There have been food scares everywhere including Japan, one w...