Look Carefully

Google Analytics confirms again that nobody in the world (except me) reads my blog :)

This is a happy event, one in a series of happy events for me.

It is wet, I am not going to visit a park, I am not going to do anything - and you can't make me :P

I feel good now, in an immature sort of way.

I am reading some lessons that I downloaded from the ASX site.
Yes, I am an investor geek, I have been reading and studying this for over a year, I am moving into virtual trading to practice and to try out some theories that I have, and I have set up some watch lists to see if some other theories hold up and to check if the 'established' set of truths do in fact stack up against the data because so often these 'theories' are laid down by academics with no real life experience (and you can take that in either of two ways) and don't actually work in the real world.

And I saw this:
"Now if you look carefully something significant has happened."

This is in 'Shares_Course_10.pdf' describing a trend changing from uptrend to downtrend.

But I read it as this:
So, if you didn't look carefully then nothing significant would have happened, and all of these financial woes going on right now are because people just like you keep looking carefully - don't you? Don't deny it! If you all stopped looking at the numbers then everything would be perfectly fine!

Heh, heh, word games are such fun.


There are some things that have been going around in my head for a while and I would like to see if I can get some of them out and into print without losing context or depth.

I did a lot of reading and surfing on Singapore in the year prior to coming here.
In browsing I came across terms like 'SPG' and 'Ang Mo' a lot and at first misunderstood them, then came to understand that lots of people misunderstand, and misuse, them. I came across lots of commentary on girls and boys stuff with heaps of racial overtones leaning one way or the other.

For examples; it seemed so assumed and totally believed by all blogs I read that pretty young girls were throwing themselves at any white guy they could find, and white women were left all alone and no Asian guy could ever get a white girlfriend and no pale Chinese girl would ever be seen dead with a 'black Indian', and so on and so forth.

Well, this is my observation after being here for a very little while:

One; no pretty young Asian girls have thrown themselves at me at all.

Two; discounting the obvious tourist couples then whilst I haven't seen a lot of white women around about half of them, i.e. several of those that I have seen, have been with Asian guys. Almost as many as I have seen of Euro guys with Asian girls.

Three; I have also seen several very pale skinned Chinese girls with very dark skinned Indian guys.

So I am going to go out on a limb here and say that it would appear to me that Singaporeans are more open-minded then they give themselves credit for.

Um, point one doesn't fit into this theory at all, it is just on its own, much like me...

I have to say that this is very different from the impressions that I gathered when I previously stayed here in four/five star hotels and kept myself to 'touristy' sort of places. This time I am living on the edge of Little India in a tiny apartment and shopping and eating with the locals.


There is something else that has been preying on my mind, well, a few things.

I used to have this impression of SG that armed police patrolled the streets ready to shoot anyone smoking in public, and what a great concept! Sadly it is not true - people *do* smoke in public, and it is just as annoying as it is anywhere else! Why should these selfish unclean gangsters be allowed to subject innocent citizens to their lethal pollution? They are assaulting others, they are reducing the lifespan of passers by, they are trying to kill the rest of us purely to fulfil their own corrupt needs.

(I am getting really sick of this Asus laptops keyboard skipping letters on me!)

So, people are smoking in public and blogspots italics are not working today and are forcing me to use '*'.

This next one is rather delicate. I know that SG has less than two generations of working with this democracy thing, whereas I come from a culture with over two millennia of democratic evolution behind us, so there are bound to be lots of little issues where I will just automatically assume something because it is contained in all of that unwritten / unspoken social programming that I received as I grew (which is to say that it is part of my mimetic heritage, as distinct from my genetic heritage). One of those things is about not using (or, as I would say, "misusing") public funds for private political aggrandisement, yet I see this in SG, and have seen it on my previous visits as well.

I am assuming this is public money being (mis)used, since the banners concerned carry logos and reference to local government bodies.

You may think that wishing residents a happy religious festival is innocent enough. Not so! It is pure political advertising. And done (apparently) at public expense.

If this were done in any European or Anglo country then the person concerned would find themselves before a judge; they would have to pay back the public monies misappropriated, and whilst I don't think that they would be gaoled, they would be significantly fined, and they would also be expelled from parliament and, most likely, also from their political party. In short, their political career would be over.

And yet it seems to be the accepted norm in Singapore.

Not that I don't totally believe that SG has a much better record in this area than all of its immediate neighbours, and quite possibly any other Asian nation. But still, difficult as it is to reach, perfection is a goal that we all strive for.

To clarify this, in case you don't get it.
It is okay to fly a banner wishing residents a happy religious festival.
It is okay to fly a banner stating that a local government wishes residents a happy religious festival.
It is not okay to put your name and picture prominently on this banner.
That is crossing a line where it becomes personal.
You can do that at your own expense, you cannot (in most developed democracies) do that at public expense. If there is a local government logo on the banner then it will be inferred that it is funded by that body.

Now I don't know if this is legal or illegal in SG, I do know that is it illegal in European and Anglo nations, and I would say that it is inappropriate anywhere. I find that it diminishes my respect for the political processes here. Generally speaking I believe SG to be a very wisely run country, some reasons for which view I have given in previous blogs. This, rather minor, thing does upset me though.

On the positive side - nobody reads my blog, therefore I am not going to get into any sort of trouble for saying this. Like affecting my application for an entrepass.


So there it is; I am dividing my time between trying to get out early and do some sightseeing, and taking photos to load to my Flickr site (that you can't see because I have locked them all to friends and family only), exploring the suburbs around me and discovering what the shops are like and where I can eat vegetarian, staying in during the day and studying investing, playing Half Life 2 and Unreal 2 (and a couple of suduko games), and then going out again in the evening. All in all though I am getting bored, I want to go out all day long as I did when touristing, but hate the 'getting totally soaked with perspiration and having to take a change of shirt and a towel with me' thing.

I went out and ate at a food court by myself last night. Up to now one of the girls (i.e. Jaz, her sister, or her friends) have been treating me, so I had no idea of the costs. A huge plate of rice noodles, vegies, and gluten things cost me SGD $2.50! and another $2.50 for a papaya milkshake which I am not too sure I really liked that much. I'll try a banana one next, or mango if it is on offer.

I set my phone alarm for 5:30 because I want to get up and out early, and I go to bed around 10 or 11, but the neighbours keep me awake until after midnight, maybe 1-ish, so when the alarm goes I just want to keep sleeping and it's not until 9 or 10 that I have showered, dressed, and eaten. Too late to go out walking without ending up looking, and feeling, like an American tourist :(
Maybe if I got some music playing device and drowned the neighbours out? I could sleep to loud music, Heaven knows I have to sleep with a loud aircon, even if it isn't on it still gurgles loudly from the next aircon down the pipeline.

So the plan isn't working!
And I have ended up staying in today!
And reading up on investing, as you can see from where this blog entry started.
Which seems a good place to bring this to a close.