Why GIC and Temasek investing in the SAME Company ?

It is reported that both GIC and Temasek have invested in Xiaomi.  Why is both our sovereign wealth funds investing in the same company ?  Should not they target different companies instead ?  It is not common sense not to put all our eggs in one basket ?

We have seen what happened to the likes of Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and BlackBerry - all once upon a time 'giant' in the mobile phone scene.  They have become dwarfs now.  Xiaomi may be the next future 'dwarf'.

GIC and Temasek past investment records have many ugly spots.  They got burnt by different companies.  So now they want to share the same black spot ?  

M1 cheapest data plan in town

M1 is having a promotion. Not sure how long it will last.

1GB (1000MB) going for $10 (no contract) with 30 days expiry (it used to be $20).

Now SingTel data plan (no contract with 30 days expiry) sure looks very expensive as $10 can get you only 200MB, $15 for 500MB and $20 for 1 GB.

Besides Singtel rate is 0.27 cents per KB, while M1 is 0.20 cents per KB.

Those who are without contract can consider switching telco or having a 2nd SIM card for surfing the internal.  

Even for those with contract, it is worth getting a 2nd SIM card as we know exceeding the data usage specify in data plan is expensive.

Those who use smart phone mainly for surfing should not sign up for contract plan as the data is more expensive. Exceeding the data specify can be heavy on the pocket.  Besides unused data cannot be carry forward to the next month.

For data plan without contract, unused data can be carry forward to next month as long as we purchase the data before expiry date. There is no way you can exceed the data as you will be cut off. So no shocking surprise.

SingTel contract plan with monthly data expiry, the disadvantage is obvious as :
SuperLite $27.90 for a miserable 100MB
Lite $39.90 for 2GB
Value $59.90 for 3 GB

M1 even without promotion offers 3GB for $30 with 50 days expiry.  There is no contract binding and unused data can carry forward to the next 50 days with data purchase top up.


Note :
Do not underestimate the 0.20 cent per KB (1000KB = 1MB). It can work out to a lot if you overshot your specified data plan under contract. For example on average a video eats up 10 MB.
So it will cost you 0.2 x 10 x1000 divide by 100 to change to $ = $20 to watch a video !

So even what looks like a insignificant difference of 0.07 cents between SingTel and M1 would translate to $7 more for every 10MB.  Those familiar with data usage will know that 10MB is really very little and can be used up within minutes or watching a short video clip.

For SingTel the pay-per-use rate is even higher at 0.54 cent per KB. Likely this is the rate they charge you when you overshot your contract data play. Then watching a video on your smart phone will cost you $54!

Under The Vast Sky

HK protestors use songs with meaningful lyrics to boost 

their moral. This song, Under The Vast Sky is the most

sang on the streets of HK this year. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIeTcFgdd_4

It is written by HK rock band Beyond in 1990s. It has

meaningful lyric and the melody is soothing.

Roy and friends tried to introduce song during 2 of

their CPF protest, but without much success. Could

it be because the song were not familiar to the

audience, many of which are elderly?  Perhaps the

song is not by local song writer, unlike HK which uses

their own song. 

But then I understand that HK did use the Les Miserable

song "Do You Hear The People Sing" with more success

than our local protestors.

Wonder what is the reason - S'porens protestors not

musically incline or too shy to sing in public ? 

Great Food at E'spuma Lab

Read about this food eatery, E'spuma Lab situated at PoMo Mall, Selegie Road which uses cooking techniques normally found in high-end dinning.  The chef, Teo Y S decided to use it in his eatery which layout is similar to fast food chain, but the food is serve to us.

So we get to taste potato espuma and sous vide eggs, both cooked to perfection.  Espuma is Spanish for foam.  The culinary technic is to produce it with a siphon and nitrous oxide adding taste and texture to it.

The quality of food is good, the price is affordable and the portion is reasonable considering the high quality food and price.

This is one place I will be visiting on a regular basis.  So far, I have tried their Sous Vide Egg with Sauteed Mushrooms ($3.80), Fish and chips ($6.80) and Fragrant Curry Chicken with Creamy Potato Espuma ($6.80).

I love their Curry Chicken with Potato Espuma best.  The chicken is tasty and the potato espuma is something new to me and I really like its taste which compliment the curry chicken well.

Recommended to go for their set as it comes with a tasty soup and a drink. The set meal is ($8++)

Bourne's Swan Lake

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake is the opening performance for this year da:ns festival (dance festival).

It is ending today. For those who miss it, it is a great pity as the performance is superly entertaining. This is the first time it is in S'pore though it was first staged in London in 1995.

Bourne's Swan Lake uses altered Tchaikovsky's score and the swans are all male dancers. Their appearance and dance movement are riveting. Its story line bears little resemblance to the traditional Swan Lake ballet, with totally different characters and dances.  Though basically still ballet in nature, it is humorously entertaining with injection of disco and jazz blended in so well.

This is one show that I will definitely watch again and again whenever it returns to S'pore.

When I saw the last scene in movie Billy Elliot, I was curious as to how come the Swan Lake ballet has male swans. I have not heard of Matthew Bourne then. I was so impressed by the last scene which showed the male 'swan' doing a beautifully executed leap into the air.

Here is the link to the clip :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5BSyJ_vlHo

Haze vs Warships

The number of hot spots in Indonesia are in the region of 200 to 400.  The yearly haze will be back, it is just a matter of time that the wind will blow our way.  How bad it will be depends on the political will of Indonesia and her affected neighbours.  Most of the time from past experience it is more noise from all sides than concrete action.

So is our nation lungs more important or nation pride ? When the haze hit us, more than 5 million lungs are at stake. Not forgetting that of tourists which number more than 1 million per month, plus all the fauna and flora on this little red dot, I would think our govt should give more priority to the haze issue now before it hit us.  Making noise after we are hit is too little too late.

Yes, our pride is bruised by our neighbour insensitivity in naming their warships. But then LKY placed flowers on the terrorists grave.  At least the Japanese political leaders pay respect to their own citizens whom commit war crimes. But here we have our own political leader paying respect to terrorists from other country who killed our citizens. So what to make of it ?

Besides, our PAP leaders love to say "let's move on" when they make mistakes.  What are they going to do now ? Force Indonesia into a corner with economical sanction ?  If they want to do such thing, I rather they implement it because of the haze to save all our lungs. 

S'pore would be viewed as a 'hero' as we save not only our lungs but that of other affected countries, plus those lungs belonging to ordinary citizens in Indonesia.  Take tough action where it matters and have the grace to accept apology.  Make the right political move to benefit the citizens.

Bruise pride does not kill us, but those minute haze particles which could be inhaled can cause cancer. And we have been inhaling it for decades due to our incompetent govt.

Indonesia naming of their war ships

This whole incident just show that diplomatic relationship is better than all the billions of dollar PAP spent buying the latest war 'toys'. Indonesia don't give a shit to all those planes, submarine.....etc our govt bought. These super expensive war 'toys' are just show off pieces with no deterrent power.

Diplomatic relationship is less costly and more effective. But our arrogant govt is very poor at it. When they open their mouth - eg LKY and the current batch of paper generals - they only know how to insult our neighbours. PAP high and mighty attitude is a disservice to our nation.

Our govt under PAP is only good at bullying her own citizens. Their are just meek sheep when confronted by our neighbours. Look at the haze incident and you get the picture of how much weight their words have on our neighbour, Indonesia. 

Bamboo reinforcement for concrete

In the future bamboo may be replacing steel bar for reinforcement of concrete slabs/columns.  Bamboo has many advantages over steel as not only it does not corrode, it is lighter and highly sustainable material.  Bamboo continues to grow after it is cut.  Steel requires a huge amount of energy to produce, while bamboo leaves little carbon footprint and thus environmentally friendly.

It is not a new idea as in 1960s, US had experimental with bamboo as reinforcement due to it good tensile strength. However they failed as they used split bamboo which absorbed moisture and resulted in concrete cracking due to its swelling. When there was water lost, de-bonding happened between the bamboo and concrete.  That caused the structure to collapse.

The new approach is to extract the fibres from the bamboo and treat them so that they are water-proof. The project is being undertaken in a laboratory in Singapore. So if they are successful in commercializing bamboo reinforcement bars, our construction industry will likely be the first to benefit from the new technology.

PA's Headquarter is formal Victoria School

Formal Victoria School at Tyrwhitt Rd is now PA's Headquarter (HQ) with a new address - 9 King George's Ave. Perhaps the new address is because King George sound grand compare to Tyrwhitt, after all it is PA's HQ. It is a known fact that PA is link intimately with PAP. Its current chairman is PM, Lee (son). Their past 2 chairmen were our formal ex-PMs, Lee (daddy) and Goh.

The architecture reminds me of that of our National Museum, with the new building connected to the original one at the 2nd story by link way. The 2-story old school building is linked to the new 5-story one in similar way.

My 1st impression is it smells of insecticide - all the way from the building boundary to inside the building.  The place has lots of greenery, interior plants and landscape gardens.  This explains the generous spray of insecticide, to prevent any PAP 'big shot' gracing the HQ from being bitten. There are many folks attending PA organized activities and it would be embarrassing news should they get dengue from association with PA.  It is unthinkable that PA's HQ become another dengue cluster, just after the recent announcement that Orchard Rd - the popular shopping belt for tourists, has been infested by dengue mosquitoes. Matters not if human health is impaired by inhalation of poisonous insecticide and the killing off all other harmless insects, even if there is no mosquitoes around.

The new PA's HQ is tastefully landscaped.  This is a contrast to the formal Victoria School which was a gloomy dimmed building. The old school used to house the all boys secondary and mixed gender Pre-U students in one building.  After Victoria school moved to Marine Parade, it separated into 2 schools - Victoria Secondary and Victoria JC.

The old building was later used by some other educational institutions (Christ Church Sec School..?) for many years before being taken over by PA.  Hope the old school building would be preserved as part of our heritage for its architecture.  But then we never know, as the site is in prime location and with its large field, it is worth a lot of money should PA sells it for private housing development.  Perhaps this could be the reason PA 'invested' in it ?  Wonder how much PA paid for the site.

1st upgrade of SMRT trains' motors since 1987 !

There is an article in The Edge magazine which highlights that Toshiba has secured a contract from SMRT to upgrade the drive systems of their 66 six-car C151 trains to PMSM (permanent magnet synchronous motors).

According to the article, it will be the 1st upgrade to the drive systems since the trains entered service in 1987.  Wow - that is 26 years long!  Wonder if the train services have not been breaking down so often in recent years, would SMRT plan for the upgrade ?

The impression we have of SMRT is that they will run their trains' parts and infrastructure to ground before spending money on upgrade.  Hopefully they have learned their lesson of saving pennies on maintenance and paying pounds in fine to the govt for public service disruptions.

We can look forward to quieter train ride in the near future as PMSM reduces heat generation, so there is no need for cooling fan or radiators, thus generating less noise. These new motors also consume 30% less energy. SMRT will have cost saving to off set their increasing operating expenditure due to bad management under their ex CEO and even under the current bunch of ex-army officers.

SMRT looks set to become a second career opening for army personals. What relevant engineering experience does army personals have in train operation ? Perhaps they can take over when times are good. In trouble time - likely they are just white elephants. The ex-CEO (with retail experience) who took over in good time, has run SMRT to its current pathetic state. So what chance does the current bunch of ex-army officers have in reinstating SMRT to its formal glory ?

As our govt is so supportive of foreign talents, SMRT should have gotten their key management team from train transport operators of Japan, Taiwan or HK instead of from our local army. It may help to resolve our escalating train woes.

kikkoman

I have visited another soy sauce factory before, but it did not leave an impression on me.
I was pleasantly surprise how systematic and well run Kikkoman soy sauce factory is. Kikkoman has factories in many countries - in Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, US and NZ.

Those of you who have bought sushi would have noticed that the little packet of soy sauce they used is normally from kikkoman.

Its history dated back to over 300 years ago in Noda, Japan. The factory in S'pore is established in 1984. It is able to churn out 13 thousand kilolitres of sauce per year. It produces other types of sauce such as teriyaki, those for sashimi and sushi....

Kikkoman uses top grade soy bean and wheat (other manufacturers may not include wheat in their process). Even the salt is sea salt. Their secret is their proprietary micro-organism used in the fermentation process. It takes at least 6 months to produce a bottle of soy sauce due to the fermentation process.

The manufacturing process :
- The wheat and soy beans are mixed and given heat treatment.
- Fermentation micro-organisms are then added to form the Koji culturing.
- Salt and water are added to Koji to form Moromi mash which is left to ferment for 6 months. 
- The matured mash is pressed to extract raw soy sauce which is then heated.
(the pressed cake is sold as animal feed to farms in S'pore and Malaysia)
- The refined soy sauce is send for laboratory testing.
- It is then pasteurized before bottling.


The factory hygiene, safety and quality control process are faultless. What a contrast to the 1st soy sauce factory I visited. Think I will switch to using kikkoman sauces after this.

Ms Aung San Suu Kyi

Ms Aung is here only for a few days and she can see what S'pore really is, which PM and his daddy could not.  Ms Aung has said that : her country should not seek to recreate S'pore's policies and institutions. 

Here we have an honest truth from a great political figure.  S'pore policies and institutions have always been praised sky high by PAP (nothing new as they loved to praise themselves) and other country leaders who wanted to be polite and 'politically correct' when visiting S'pore.

We can see a visionary leader in Ms Aung when she said, "That make me think..what is the purpose of a workforce...of work..of material wealth ? Is that the ultimate aim of human beings, is that what we all want ? In a sense, I want to probe more into successes of S'pore and to find out what we can achieve beyond that."

Ms Aung acknowledged that material achievement is necessary to a certain extent to enable us to be free from want.  However, there are many intangible things which material achievement could not provide -  love, loyalty and spirituality...so many things that helped us survive that had little to do with material achievement.  She summed up that S'pore could learn from Myanmar a more relaxed way of life, warmer and closer family relationships.

Ms Aung has shown what confident leadership is.  Our PM is sorely lacking in this aspect. He refrained from taking live questions from reporters when visiting overseas. Even in his home ground, he avoids live forum but prefers recorded questions of 'ask the PM'. He needs to filter the questions and have prepared answers before he appeared in the TV forum last night.

If foreign talent can be bought with money, which PM and his gang think so, then we should get Ms Aung to replace our PM.  But we know Ms Aung could never be bought with all the diamonds and gold in the world.  PM and his cabinet of ministers should have a lesson of integrity from Ms Aung, as they need to be paid handsomely to serve their country without corruption in mind.

On leadership

It is said that sage like Lao Zi And Zhuang Zi endorsed 'invisible' leadership - that is leadership through facilitation.

Unfortunately, we the citizens in Singapore have never enjoyed such leadership under PAP governance for close to 5 decades. It is always force top down with plenty of interference and control into private lives of citizens (such as how many children we should have). We do not even have control over our finances as the govt locks up our saving in CPF and dictates when, what and how we use our money.

A quotation from "A Victor's Reflections" by Michael C Tang :

The worst is the one despised by the people
The third best is the one feared by the people
The second best is the one praised by the people
The best government does not make its presence felt.

The leadership we have today belongs to the 1st category - despised by citizens. Our ministers need to be paid handsomely for doing not much, in order not to be corrupt.  It used to be the 2nd category - feared by the people under our first PM.

Looks like they are getting from bad to worst in recent years.

Cook A Pot Of Curry

The local comedy play Cook A Pot Of Curry by Wild Rice is very good. It is now running at LaSalle College of the Arts. Tickets are sold at Sistic.

The play is based on local news and issues that touch our S'poreans' hearts. They are spiced up with comedy.  There are even some familiar songs rewritten with funny lyrics (one of them by Mr Brown).

There is a dance based on the song Stand Up for S'pore.  The dance will have you laughing hard as it is so funny when they integrated dance movement from various countries.

The play started with the scene related to the conflict between an Indian family and their PRC neighbour with the mediator seated in between the 2 families. Sound familiar, right ?  Many of the comical issues will ring a bell with the audiences as they are recent events, like the Population White Paper, crowded trains.....etc.

Do not miss it as it is very good way to de-stress.

Core Business in the 'Rot'

Seems like many big companies like SPH, SMRT and SBS are struggling with their core business profit margin, while their divestment business is becoming more profitable.

SPH property investment is reaping handsome profit so much so they are thinking of spinning it off as a REIT.

SMRT retail business is booming. SBS outdoor advertising/rental is very profitable too.

SBS outdoor advertising/rental employed only 70 staff but contributed $36.5 M (EBITDA) to their coffer in 2012. Their bus service employing 6,821 staff generated only $40.2M (EBITDA). This is despite a average daily ridership of over 2 million and revenue of $600.9 M.

We have seen SMRT getting into hot soup due to their greed and focus on inflating the company profitability at commuters expense. Their ex-CEO had been so focus on expanding the retail sector arm that she forgotten that SMRT core business is about running the train.

Will the same fate happen to SPH and SBS ?

Note : a coincident that all these companies start with the letter 'S'

'Lifestyle'

Things under 'Lifestyle' category cost much more. Once upon a time, bakery shops in heartland sold - bread. I recalled a red bean bun costing about 30 cents. Then came BreadTalk which sells 'Lifestyle' bread, -costing double.  Sadly, 'lifestyle' bread has penetrated to all HDB heartland bakeries. We have no choice but to consume lifestyle products and pay more if we still want to eat bread.

This is the same for pets.  Back during my Pre-U days (which is termed JC now) a rabbit cost $6. During my working days, it cost about $35 and a white mice $3.  Now, a pedigree rabbit in HDB pet shop costs about $200. They no longer sell mice but pedigree hamsters.  May be there is no pedigree mice, so it is not profitable to sell them. Only pedigree animals are sold nowadays in pet shops all over the island....be it a hamster, guinea pig, rabbit......cat and dog.

In the past, those who wanted 'lifestyle' pet will go for Chinchilla, pedigree dog and cat.  But society has changed, every thing is about 'brand'. This extend even to pets - they must carry a 'name' behind them to inflate profit margin for the seller and boost the ego of the buyer.

There are parents who do not blink an eye to get a $4000 pure breed pup for their kids.  Then when the doggie is naughty, they 'give it away'.  SPCA is loaded with abandon pedigree pets due to change in social value for the worst. To some, a pet is just a form of entertaining toy to be discarded when they are tired of it.

S'pore - just one big construction site

There was this joke years ago when S'pore was 'blooming' - that we were a 'City of Cranes'. Cranes -being construction cranes.

Now S'pore is in a frenzy state of construction activities due to years of poor planning with regards to housing and transport infrastructure. These 2 important items are not able to cope with the high influx of immigrants. With the PAP's crazy insistent to house 7 million - S'pore has become just on big construction site. Every where you go, you will see HDB flats and condo being built. Then, there is so much digging all over the island for the Downtown MRT lines.

Even once upon a time peaceful estate like Pasir Ris, is not spare from heavy construction activities. Everywhere you go is road division, pedestrian division, barricades all over....sigh!

It is very humid and warm recently - with so much dust from construction activities. Besides, the air quality is again hit by fire 'hot spots' (agriculture crops clearing by burning) from Indonesia. One gets 'sticky' all over easily when outdoor.

The occasional rain, which used to bring relief in previous years, does not help nowadays. In fact, it becomes even more humid after the rain.

Irritating standard answers from CPF Board

Phone call enquiry to CPF Board is out of the question, unless one has plenty of time to spare and very patient. Their line is perpetually 'hot'. After listening to tons of options and make the necessary selections, you will be told you are the 8th in the queue (normally some large number) - a very long wait indeed.

Writing to them also test one's patient, as CPF just like any other typical govt organisations - loves to give standard answer to any enquiry, including general ones.

As our govt CPF policies are so complicated, most elderly folks are easier fooled by them. For example, the recent govt medisave top up announcement. My aunt in her 80s phoned my mum to express her delight that the govt is topping up her medisave a/c. But to my understanding, she is not cover by medishield (my aunt is a homemaker all her life).  The recent govt top-up to medisave is meant to offset the increase in medishield premium. Thus, she will not get the top up.

I decided to email to CPF to ask them if my aunt who has only medisave a/c but no medishield coverage, is  eligible for the top up.

Though expected, I still find it irritating that they reply with standard answer, which likely they copy and paste all the time. Their reply is : 

To enable us to assist you further, please provide us with your

aunt's NRIC/CPF Account number.

We would be pleased to assist if you require further

clarification. For more information on CPF, please

visit our website at www.cpf.gov.sg or call us on
1800-227 1188 from Mondays to Fridays, 8am-5.30pm.

Can't they just answer a simple 'yes' or 'no', without asking

for unnecessary details and wasting public's time. 

Talk about productivity. This is a clear cut example of how

unproductive they are. 

Latest Update : After another round of correspondent with CPF-

it is confirm that those with NO Medishield a/c will not

receive any govt top-up to their CPF a/c 

Ask The Minister

Channel News Asia (CNA) runs a new program on "Ask The Minister", whereby each week, a minister will be invited to the program to interact with audience over the internet (both audio + visual) to discuss on the policy under his/her ministry.

This week it was Mr Heng from the Ministry of Education. At the end of the program, as a round off, he was asked what is the one thing he would want to fix within these 2 years.  Sigh! He gave a l-o-n-g winded answer without answering the question. Looks like he is clueless how to go about 'righting' and improving the education system in S'pore.

So there he goes - saying that he want to help every students to succeed...blah...blah. He wants to help every educator to succeed.....blah...blah.... But exactly what does he need to do (fix) in order to help students and educators to succeed ?? We are left clueless.

Likely some enlightened bloggers could provide the answer though they are not head of education ministry nor paid an obscene salary to think through the problem. Actually Mr Heng does not even need to think, as he has so many 'capable' staff under him to do the job of thinking for him. Perhaps this could be the reason he is clueless on what he needs to do, as he is awaiting feedback from his staff.

Mr Heng is another typical PAP minister - talks a lot without substance. Currently, most PAP ministers are pretending learning to listen to public feedback, though they still go off tangent when answering critical questions which make them uncomfortable. Or they would use their infamous strategy of asking back - "What do you think?"  instead of providing an answer.

Instant Noddles - S'pore Laksa flavour

Channel News Asia (CNA) ran a series based on instant noodles.  Each week, it zoomed in on the instant noodles 'culture'  in different country in Asia. I caught some of the episodes featuring Thailand, Japan, Korea and Singapore. Missed the one on Hong Kong. 

The common feature is that in most countries, it started off as providing affordable food for the masses. In fact in Japan and Korea, it was food for many during the years after the second World War.  Later on it become part of the food culture of that country, blending in with the local test. So in Korea, their instant noodles are mostly spicy with kimchi  favour.

It is an interesting program as there are so many 'nuance' regarding instant noodles in order to capture the taste of the targeted market. Besides flavour, another important factor is the noddles' texture - how chewy it is. In some countries, the folks prefer them chewy, in others, they like it more 'soft'.

In recent years, instant noodles have gone 'upmarket' as they are sold in eatery and even restaurants.  It is a surprise even to owners of eateries that the instant noodles item on their menu sells like hot cake. Profit margin is handsome.

I learned that Singapore has our unique instant noodles flavour which is not available in other countries. It is the Laksa Singapura Flavour under Koka brand. Seems Koka made a number of break throughs as they spent heavily on research. For example, Koka noodles need only 2 minutes cooking instead of the conventional 3 minutes required. Then their noodles do not use MSG - which is great and not easy to achieve. To make healthier noodles (without MSG, oil..) is hard as the taste must not be compromised.

I enjoy instant noodles as they are easy to cook. So far my experience with instant noodles is that they don't taste like the real thing. Mushroom flavour has no mushroom taste, chicken flavour taste similar to the mushroom ones, prawn ones...etc. The differences I find between different brand of noodles are the texture and cooking time.  I switched between a few brands, but have never tried Koka before. So after watching the program on CNA, I went out to buy their Laksa flavour.

What a surprise, it really taste like LAKSA ! 

I think I will stick with Koka in the future.  I will be getting their other flavours to see if they taste distinctly different from one another.  They boost of some other other unique noodles which are healthier and make from ingredients which other brands don't carry.

So if you enjoy instant noodles, support local brand and go for Koka to satisfy your taste bud.