Recently events has gotten me to think much about what it takes to be a leader; the skills, the qualities and more. Perhaps one of the reason stems from looking at how the SAF chooses her leaders through a myriad of cut-offs which I personally don’t find very useful in finding a leader amongst the crowd.

Let us first think about some famous good leaders. Starting from locally, a few names would come into my head, the cliche MM Lee Kuan Yew, our first elected President Ong Teng Cheong, to other historical names like Martin Luther King, Jr., Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Sun Yat-Sen.

What is one of the things that seems to be common amongst these great people? My answer would be charisma. Without doubt one of the key things a leader would need is charisma, for with it then can one persuade the crowd that what you try to achieve is the best for all. Another great leader(but not his policies) would be Hitler. If you ignore all the unethical policies as well as the horrifying war he started, Hitler was a great leader. He had the charisma, along with a good sense of the situation, he was able to move the Germans then to relight their sense of nationalism and get them to try to achieve a common goal, though this goal is one that should not be achieve through such deadly means. There were other ways to make Germany stronger, not through the ways he suggested. That I believe is the failure of Hitler as a person not his leadership capabilities. (The choosing of Hitler  by some secondary kids approximately 3 years ago during a camp caused a big hoo ha in the papers over what little history we kids these days know).

Yet I don’t always see this sense of charisma in my officers and specialists. Even now as trainees, the octs don’t all seem to elicit any strong desire in me to follow them.

A leader also needs to have good people management skills, organisational abilities, good EQ and sense of the surroundings and environment one’s in. But I seldom see this amongst our leaders in the SAF. Instead the warped logic which I first met in a teacher in JC is applied. The fitter you are the more you can do means a better leader you may be. But does one’s fitness really determine how well you can lead your men, even if it is a good very physically demanding? So the fittest strongest man we have should become the LG? Yet that seems not to be the case. Then why is it the case for the middle management?

Such senseless and misguided style of choosing leaders is perhaps why this organisation will never excel or really prove to me that it is more than just a facade that we put for the world to see.

-wonght
 With pride we lead or the lack thereof of the latter,

Our constitution states out specifically that no one is to be discriminated based on their race as well as faith. And our armed forces pledge yearly to defend his constitution though it seems to me that we aren’t doing as good a job as we would claim to have. The above is just one of the mini-dents to the argument that can be put forth by them that we do defend our constitution.

A simple demographics survey should be done in the SAF, SCDFand Police on the race compositions of the NSFs serving in the various services as well as the rank of those in service. That is if a formal survey will ever be done but on a more observational stand and simple extrapolation with good enough sampling methods we can hazard guesses which i believe anyone who has serve ns would know.

For example in the armour camps as well as my current ada camp there is absolutely no muslim fare. I.e. There’s no muslim in the entire camp nor is there halal food in canteen.

Well since no more free education for malays just highly subsidised education; then there shouldn’t be anything others can complain about the unfairness of that semibumiputra policy.

Though we claim not to play racial politics but yet in our GRCs we insist on specific racial mixes. Should it be natural to field such multi-racial teams? Shouldn’t it not be institutionalise?

Quite interesting our racial equality is not extremely equal with some of our country’s organisations tilting the playing field, perhaps doubting the loyalty of certain ethics groups implicitly. We claim to based ourselves on meritocracy but yet posting of personnels in SAF seems not to be the case with many other factors coming into play. Even if you are an officer, being malay mostly likely(or rather definitely) you will get posted into infantry. Why no armour? ADA? Or navy? Signals? All too sensitive a vocation to allow possible defectors?

Perhaps someone could show me why. And i’m pretty sure i’m not the only soul in Singapore questioning our racial equity in SAF(or the lack-thereof) as there has been a recent article in the Straits Times (after national day) commenting to be the leasted wanted child of singapore. Perhaps we need to get past the fear of being in  region full of malay/muslim-dominant countries, then we can fully have a level playing field.

-wonght
 Meritocracy the way to go, or is it also another policy digging its own grave?

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Somehow i can’t get the direct flv here.

It’s been long time since i last blog. Approximately 7 months or so. One reason’s was my A’s. The other my enlistment into the SAF.

While serving my NS, it got me thinking about myself or rather what makes anyone who they are. Many claim that the experiences that we have been through shaped us to who we are, the environment and upbringing we had. Whereas there are people who believe it is predominantly our genetic make up so which’s which. In an earlier post’s comments (Equality of sexes in Singapore), I had touch a little on this matter.

What I believe makes us us is a unique blend of both the inherent qualities from your genetic makeup as well as the environment which we immerse in.

Our genetic makeup creates a unique set of qualities within each of us. This unique set of qualities determines how we would react in various situations. {to be continued, draft version}

Last week in the forum (on Tuesday I believe), some Mr. Tan something something(a deluded fellow) wrote to the press complaining about how short 2 years is for those who fail their NAFA. Well let me enlighten that deluded man here. (based on st on-line forum the guy’s full name is Mr Tan Hau Teck, read his letter here).

Disclaimer: this is not an official press release by the SAF, do not quote the author. If this happens to break any unknown Penal Code or something please inform the author, who will take it down even if it violates the right of the author to freedom of speech.

The gist of the letter was we, i.e. youths of today, do not prepare ourselves for NS. Perhaps Mr. Tan should clarify what he meant by that. Should JCs and Polys have annual route marches? Pre-BCCT? Pre-Range? Or even maybe SOC? Then this Mr. Tan continues to rant about how we are having too many safety regulation(approx. 4 volumes thick). Thus we should not be adding anymore for the poor youths (the commanders actually) to read. Well a few little pointers for this Mr. Tan to note.

*Side note: A simple biograph of Mr. ex-regular Tan Hau Teck(formerly CPT I think). Presumably was an ex-OCS instructor at tango coy. He’s from fass,nus (perhaps a good reason not to go nus? such deluded alumuni). An avid forum writer on varied issue (has commented before on pay raise for civil service which I believe only the super scale pay is affected the most and little for those who slogged the most under time scale).

One 4 volumes of TSR. The TSR of SAF is said to be written in red ink, whereby each death leads to a realisation of a lack in certain safety aspects. So is it wrong to have those tsr? So we not train safely during peacetime. Many have asked me is this what you expect for war?(esp some of the brainwashed commanders) Well I would love to answer(but I can’t since I’m the second/third lowest life-form in SAF, the last being a rec and the second being an oct or something I think) is no but is this war time? We are not at war now, so is there a need to behave as if we are at war now? Should we therefore led our lives every day as if there’s war. Training for peacetime should be realistic but shouldn’t they still be safe? Perhaps we would kill more people in training than in actual warfare if we were to stick to the old school.

Another thing many like to say is now things are much better. I would love to ask: Singapore as a society has progressed far, so has her armed forces but is the rate of progress similar or are they disjointed? We are now at the 3G armed forces but sometimes I wonder whether the commanders are 2G or 3G.(but that’s for another time). I would ask that Mr. Tan who ask for comparision to old army training to ask himself: DO you walk to work or take a car/train? DO you flick a switch and turn on lights or light candles? DO you carry your waste to dispose off or flush the WC? Are we a civilised society or should we just remain as simple cavemans?

He also lay the claims that 4 volumes of training safet regulations is too much and so we should not add to them. So should we halt all research? Based on what he said we should just abandon all hopes of progress. Doctors already have a lot to study we should not give them anymore to learn. Scientist have too much to now, they should not conduct anymore research. Artists have too many paintings to study, no one should paint anymore. Pharmacist have too many drugs to prescribe, so GSK ad other companies hould just closed their R&D depts. So is it really a chore to read 4 volumes of TSRs? Students seemed to have had already more than just 4 volumes of stuff to read through in their lives for their studies, university texts surely are more than 4 volumes thick.

Then let me ask Mr. Tan if he himselves can actually remember all the important parts in the TSRs. I don’t think he can. And in addition to his deluded mentality, he seems to carry a lot of biasness. Is the OCT not a regular? Would he had not be physically fit for his training?

A quick peep in the forum comments demostrates that there seem to be a lot of fellow deluded singaporeans. This is really sad. It is even sadder that our media actually allow such a blatantly deluded letter to appear in our prestigious newspaper, being the paid english newspaper in singapore. Perhaps Today would be more reliable.

My last question to all those who actually blames the recruits for their own deaths by being unfit is this: Is war making neccesary? Should Singapore even have war making machineries?

The death of NSFs is a loss of talents in Singapore limited pool of talents. We should not take life so lightly as Mr. Tan seem to think we all do. Life should be lived to the fullest and not spent on redundant stuff like manning an armed forces for war which should nevr have. War has achieved much but at what cost. No matter how much the Iraq and Afghan war has helped the people there is the price worth it? Are there not better ways about it? Perhaps war is the biggest failing of humanity.

-wonght
One day war will unmake us all.

For me as a Singaporean i had thought that we had quite good equality amongst sexes but apparently according to a lastest list by World Economic Forum published in Times Magazine, we are ranked at number 77. The rankings are based on four factors, namely educational attainment, economic participation and opportunity, political empowerment and health and survival.

For someone living in this island state, the first, second and fourth should be something we score high in and maybe not the third. True that there some parts of of laws which is not entirely promoting gender equality but in Singapore women do get protected much better.

Well bu according to the Swiss based forum early we are lacking even behind countries like Israel(36), Vietnam(42), Thailand(52), Mongolia(62) and even China(73). Clearly we are far far behind though there are countries much much further down.

The full profile of Singapore gives us a score of 0.661. We score high (close to 1) in Health and Education, so-so on economy(0.6) and close to 0 on politics which is sort of reflective i guess seeing how male dominated our cabinet is.

Well it would seem that AWARE has plenty of stuff to do to level out the playing field for women in Singapore! For me i think that they are doing a good job and should keep it up!

-wonght
 Thanks to all the readers for my readership to peak yesterday to 113.

And that would be competitiveness. It struck me that our Singaporean society is breeding competitiveness in us while looking through my biology notes and doing chemistry MCQs. A weird moment to think about such thing but quite timely and related it is, which i shall highlight further on in this post.

Sidetrack: Been not posting anything much as i’ve been too distracted with various stuff to finish a complete post but 2 more are in the making so yar…

Humans by having to need to live in communities have heighten the need for competition. Such inherent need of competition can be generally seen in the animal kingdom, for the need to survive and propagate one’s species is in a sense why living things live. For us as humans, with intense competition due to even greater need to fight for scarce resources, this is pretty much obvious in various social construct ranging from our economies, markets and the Olympics. Competition is good as it spurs people on to achieve greater thins, and at times things which were initially thought to be unachievable. However in Singapore competition has been stretch to the fullest, close to its breaking, or maybe already past it.

Why are we as Singaporeans so competitive? Well personally i feel that such intense competitiveness is a result the delicate past which we as an natural-resource poor island country are left to fend for ourselves in the midst of such perilous conditions/situations.

We first gain self-rule from Britain to be merge eventually with Malaysia. The process for independence from the time of colonisation to Japanese occupation is a long and arduous one for our leaders. The bitterness from the surrender of the british and the japanese occupation had made our leaders realise that we are responsible for our own future. Eventually we broke off from Malaysia and became the Republic of Singapore, alone and lacking in resources. What we lack in natural resource we had to make up for it in strength of our people.

Why is our history so important? Because it shaped the general direction of our governmental policies as well as the mentality of society at large. The Asian Crisis, the SARS outbreak once again re-enforce that we must be a competitive country in order to survive in this harsh and brutal global village. (Even now one of our founding fathers LKY still hopes that we can merge with Malaysia)

How has the spirit of competitiveness been bred into us, you may ask. Well right from the tender age of 7 or even lower. We fight to get into prestigious primary school. We were made have extra supplementary classes. We try to get into the Gifted programme, to the extent of attending classes to get into the GEP. At 12 we pitted against one another to yet fight for that precious place in secondary school. At 14 we get streamed again. At 16 we fight our second major battle, the O levels. At 18 we try for A levels or 19 for our diplomas. If you happen to be unable to catch up too bad you dropped out and go to a ‘lesser’ institute of study. No matter what you then proceed to finally fight it out for a place in NUS/NTU/SMU. But wait there is again another class differentiation again. In general you are considered the best if you get into NUS, second rated if you go into NTU or SMU. Not totally accurate but that’s what the general public feel.

This is the life we are made to get used to from young. We fight for places, get tested over and over again, needing to prove ourselves; fighting for the first place in class or even level. But is all this healthy?

Well no, it is far too excessive. The need for being competitive has slowly erode away our altruistic nature. We refuse to help people who come to us for help for fear of them doing better than us. We compare our results, taking pride in being better than others. We bugged people to try and get them to ’share their brains’ and thus decreasing their edge over others. Is all this beneficial to anyone? Is this why we live? And what we live for?

Personally i’ve been at the receiving end of such unpleasantness and it has not always ended well. For one i hated my sec four class not the people in it but rather all the back stabbing going on almost everyday. Two of my friends have argued about who was been helped more by me. And at times people refuse to answer because they fear that others will do better than them. I must confess that i’m no angel and have lapsed into this competitiveness and act as i would like not to.

As much as i want to this overbearing need to be competitive is all around me, especially at this time now. As usual i get people asking me last minute questions. Not that i’m being unhelpful but why now? Is it because i’m free enough or the few willing people to share?

When i do fall prey to such selfish behaviour, i always wonder if i should have acted differently. Well i don’t have the answer to it. For me i don’t like people who are overly competitive. I’m never too comfortable with excessive competition but guess another round of competiveness will come again as i try to get a scholarship. Is this the way we want to spent our childhood?

-wonght
 Sighz this is pretty much commonplace no matter how you try to hide and run from the obsessiveness to be competitive

A famous author in Singapore Catherine Lim has launched a site. She is an insightful writer and she dare to cross some OB markers in her writing. Another good read would be the tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell. His Blink was good and i hoped to be inspired by his tipping point.

-wonght
Reading should never be considered secondary and be there only as a study tool. It is a joy of life which many have forsaken.

The theory of evolution credited to Darwin and Wallace (but predominantly Darwin) was the first ever proper theory of Biology. Before that biology status as a science was questionable. Also this was one of the milestone where Biology started to move from just descriptive to more prescriptive, for good or bad no one knows yet.

The main theory of evolution is based upon 5 observations and 3 inferences. I shall pick 1 inference and its 2 supporting observation for discussion here.

Firstly, animals(that includes us) tend to over-produce. Secondly, the population size remains relatively constant between generations. Only the fittest will survive(his is actually further based on the other inferences as well as observation but the key ones i’m using are these 2).

The advances of medical sciences has greatly improved the livelihood of people in general. This has done mainly 2 important things, decrease mortality rates of infants, teenagers, adults and so on, in addition as a result of the prior increased life expectancy.

What does this translate too? Well there is no more of a survival of the fittest in Mankind, rather whether you have access to the basic amenities, which happy to say most have maybe except in countries in South Africa. What does this means again? Our population is growing, and growing at a phenomenal rate which is beyond what is supportable by Mother Earth. We need 1.5 times the amount of land for each person, so anther half a earth is needed. What is even more worrying is our population is not going to stop growing anytime soon. In addition a latest report by UN points to humans as the cause of various environmental problems. It seems like we have defied the laws of evolution.

However this exponential growth is precisely the cause of some of the problems we have now. The shortage of oil due to rising affluence of consumers, the world food shortage like in wheat. Why? Because we no longer only have the fittest survive, with the right type of technology and support can maintain life for a long time.

The increased in life expectancy has also brought along it own slew of problems. The main ones are like dementia, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. These diseases reduced the quality of life, so is it always better to life longer. I think not, rather live to an appropiate age and in dignity. ignity should come bere sanctity of life.

It would seem that one thing Darwin overlook is what if the overproduction is not corrected; what if the population size changes a lot? I guess we are seeing it’s results on the species Homo Sapiens

-wonght
This other series will run concurrently with the MTOR. Here i would like to explore issues at hand through different perspectives.

Buddhism will be the first eastern religion i would discuss on my blog. Before i begin to delve more into the misty depths of Buddhism, there is a need to first explore eastern religions in general first.

Religions from the east, and sometimes middle eastern ones like Islam, tend to be more than just a simple religion. It is more of a loose collection of various groups following the philosophies related to the religion of choice. Philosophy as well as religion, in the east, is almost impossible to mechanically separate as discussing only one makes the discussion seem incomplete.

Many have firstly debated upon whether Buddhism is a religion or just a philosophy. Personally for me, i believe that it is both, though it’s grounds for a religion is not all that solid.

The first objection would be one brought out by the same muslim friend on the marital status of Jesus was Gautama Buddha himself told his followers that i am not god but rather an enlightened man. Well this statement is quite accurate as you can see from http://www.fundamentalbuddhism.com/who-was-buddha.html. However many of his less initiated believers take him to be as God. This is especially so in Eastern Buddhism. However i personally feel that anything that has a higher being of power should be considered a religion as well as the societal endowment of the status upon the belief, thus on the same premises, some of the ‘cults’ as so called by some orthodox religion can be called a religion. Well but that’s another topic for discussion.

In its most native form from India which is where Buddhism originated but not China where some people have so foolishly assumed, Buddhism can be consider a form of Hinduism but an unorthodox version. However as it spread to China and South East Asia, it changed as moved away from its Hinduism roots and blend together with the various school of thought mainly Confucian and Taoism schools of thought in China, which at times can be consider discrete religions too(depends on what you define to be as religion).

Diverse as it may be there are common points in the various applications. They are mainly revolving around the sutras either by Buddha or rather those brought back to China by Tripitaka(Tang Seng Zang). Also there exist other Buddhas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_28_Buddhas) and Bodhisattvas (e.g. Guan Yin) but Buddha when used generally refer to Gautama Buddha by the layman lacking more in depth knowledge of Buddhism. There is the 3 jewels; the 4 noble truths ;and the eightfold path. The ultimate goal is to achieve nirvana, or enlightenment.

The power of Buddhism beyond a religion cannot be underestimated. In the East Buddhism is more than just a religion it is a way of life. Even those of Buddhist upbringing who claim to be Christians in Singapore are still inevitably following certain Buddhist traditions as it is ingrained into them too much a part of their lives to discard it all totally. Another manifestation of the power of Buddhism is in the recent Myanmar/Burma uprising. The junta actually tolerated the riots for sometime for fear of riling the general population. Though there was a brutal suppression but it is somewhat slightly restrained as compared to the earlier more violent ones. This is in part due to the riot being led by the highly respected monks.

Two other powerful figures in Buddhism is the King of Thailand as well as the Dalai Lama(the living Buddha). The King is very well respected so much that the recent bloodless coup was not condemned by anyone. Also the Dalai Lama still remain as a beacon of hope for the people in his home country/state.

As you can see Buddhism like most of the other Eastern religion(to be discussed soon) is more than just a religion it is a philosophy, a way of life.

-wonght
 This post took so long in part due to the ongoing A levels