ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

Recently, Singapore citizens who were born before before 31 Dec 1949 were accorded the status of Pioneer Generation by the Singapore government. This group of over-65 baby boomers received several perks and privileges such as on healthcare and transportation costs. According to the government, Singapore owes its success to their stoic, conservative and hardworking nature, their endurance of hardship, their determination to ensure that their children receive a good education and are inculcated with the right values. But now that they are old, we would think that they would be contented to retire and have a good rest. However: Yesterday, in the elevator, I met the lady who sells fresh chicken meat in the market. I asked her why every time I pass by, her stall is closed. She said she spent three weeks in the UK, with her son who has a Masters in Engineering from Imperial College on a government scholarship and is now working for a multinational corporation in London .She still wi sh...

CAN SINGAPORE’S LABOR PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVE MUCH FURTHER? Not a day passes without an exhortation from our government to increase productivity (especially labour productivity). So how is labour productivity usually measured? It is: Total Output /Total Man Hours Worked. Total Output of a country is its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is the Value Add of the economy without double counting outputs which are also inputs to another activity. The charts below show statistics on average daily wage cost (US$) and Labour Productivity in Manufacturing (US$) of ASEAN countries plus China  Chart 1 shows two types of column bars representing average daily wage cost and labour productivity both measured in US$. *Numbers taken from McKinsey Global Institute. This chart roughly shows that Wage Cost and Productivity have a very strong correlation. That is, higher productivity goes with higher wages and vice versa, though we are not saying whether it is the tail that wags the dog or dog t...

In Singapore, a plate of curry rice with various sides of meat and vegetables  is what ordinary workers commonly have for lunch or dinner. Thus, a standardized plate of curry rice can be a benchmark for consumer price inflation. I have been tracking the price of the same plate of curry rice for 50 years. This is the famed original Scissors Cut Curry Rice now at the corner of Jalan Besar and Kitchener Road. I first ate it in 1964, when it was at Garden Street, For 50 years I have been ordering the same combination of sides: breaded pork chop in black soya sauce, braised pork belly, fried egg, and cabbage every time I go to eat the curry rice. And every ten years ,in October I would record the price. Here is a c hart of the price of a plate of rice with the same four sides, over the last fifty years. If you take a simple average, which assumes a constant rate of change, the price increase is [(4.90-1.20)/1.20]/50=6.1 % per year. Which is above the normal rate of inflation...

You would almost certainly have heard of Charles Darwin, and his theory of evolution in his book On the Origin of Species. But it is likely that you have never heard of his equally distinguished grandfather Erasmus Darwin. Erasmus also believed in evolution of species by natural selection, and in his case he summed it all up in the poem below, that describes how Life began in the seas, and developed into “breathing realms of fin and feet and wing” [of fish, mammals and birds.] Organic life below the shoreless waves Was born and nurs’d in ocean’s pearly caves; First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass; These, successive generations bloom, New powers acquire and larger limbs assume; Whence countless groups of vegetation spring, And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.

The Real Economy vs The Paper Economy To know the state of the economy, look beyond stock market performance as measured by stock market Indices. The stock market is more a reflection of short term expectations and paper gains. It may go up and up, even in times of fundamentally weak economic activity. But demand for commodities that are required in economic activity, are a better indicator of the state of the economy.  In the charts below, you can see the prices of Coal, Copper and Oil dropping over the past year. Why are crude oil prices dropping despite the turmoil in the Middle East? It is because the U.S. new fracking technology is now able to extract oil and Gas from its extensive Shale rock formations and the U.S. now imports less oil, leaving a larger supply from Middle East producers to compete on the world market. Copper is a good indicator of modern economic activity as it is being used in the electronic and automotive industries, there is no public ...

IS THIS A GUITAR FORUM OR AN AUNT AGONY COLUMN? www.tdpri.com  is where the enthusiastic/passionate/fanatical fans (of which I confess I am one) of the Fender Telecaster guitar meet to discuss all manner of things about their object of love. It is the world’s largest forum on the Telecaster guitar with hundreds of posts every day on such esoteric topics as: three-saddle bridge or six-saddle bridge, the battle is over. The difference between a 53 Tele and a 54 Tele is more than  skin-deep, or Fret wire sizes for my 52 Butterscotch Blackguard. [I forgot what TDPRI stands for]. But some of the posts on TDPRI are hilarious, and read more like an Aunt Agony advice column for the lovelorn. Here are sample posts gleaned from TDPRI: 1. Is something wrong with my Tele or is it me? 2. Can anyone be a one-Tele man? (Not that I am having other thoughts) 3. After 20 years with a Les Paul, I dumped it for a Tele. No regrets. 4. Is modding (modifying) a Tele sacrilege? Urgent. Please help...

Mental Skills in Jazz Applied to Modern Life I play jazz not for the improvement in mental agility or psycho-motor coordination that it gives, but for the sheer enjoyment. But I have thought about what playing jazz requires our brain to do. And how these skills are in fact required for daily living in the modern world, which is characterized by a need to deal with the deluge of information we are constantly exposed to. We have to find ways to handle all this information and let it be the basis of decision-making.  Managing information includes classification into categories, forecasting possible scenarios, prioritizing, and optimization of time and resources and abstract pattern recognition. Having these skills is actually at the heart of all modern jobs that cannot be replaced by machines. The human skills listed below, and which in my opinion are what we practise when playing jazz, are what gives us the advantage over robots which are ever-increasing in their intellige...