CMIO

Uncategorized

I think one of the most important things Singapore will need to do in the coming years and decades is wean itself off the CMIO (Chinese-Malay-Indian-Other) framework. The CMIO framework may perhaps have been necessary in the post-war nation-building years (this is disputable), but it is increasingly irrelevant as we head towards SG100. We live […]

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2050

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I don’t believe that the CMIO framework will remain relevant. Singapore’s long term future has to involve welcoming the best and brightest from the region, and the world. There has to be something more compelling than “Singapore is safe and clean and you can make a lot of money” in order for Singapore to not […]

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conversation

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Saw this ad a while back and was thinking about how there was a Singapore Conversation years ago. What was that about? What did that end up leading to?

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Naysayers


sg mentality

Recently a bunch of professor types got together at a forum to admonish civil servants for not speaking up. “Singapore needs more naysayers,” they said. I can’t help but think of all the people who’ve spoken up over the years only to be told that they said the wrong thing. They get arrested, detained, searched, […]

February 27, 2017

pragmatism


Chenghu

“The pragmatism to which the national identity refers is one of purposive rational action, one of means-end calculation, one of technology and science. Citizens are admonished to identify with the economic success of the state which demonstrates that the correct policies have been applied. As these policies are not based on an explicitly stated ideology […]

February 3, 2017

Chee Soon Juan


politicians

I watched the video of CSJ’s family, and then his CCK rally speech. It’s really interesting to contrast the two. As a parent, Chee talks about being there for his kids, he talks about spending time together, they play music together, read, go for walks, go swimming. Lots of frugal fun. Very inspiring. Switch to […]

January 7, 2017

Bookmarks


interesting / recommendations

Wake up our ideas – a story about generational trauma. (Compare with Tash Aw’s A Stranger At The Table) Life advice from one redditporean to another (suicidal over low GPA) music what’s wrong with made in Singapore? “When you socially engineer a people to be digits in an economic machine, the creativity “muscle” in our psyche […]

December 31, 2016

Collection of notes


Uncategorized

HN HN discussion on PM Lee coding HN ‘Singapore is not right for sivers” HN singapore smart city – SG sociopolitical blogs SAF poison shrimp AMDK 1 2 SG futures how Singaporeans got rich Bilahari’s dealing with an ambiguous world FB creepy Singaporean guys singlish amos yee / pottymouthed teenagers, 1 2 donald low vs calvin […]

December 14, 2016

Curiosities


Uncategorized

How will Singapore cope with a terrorist attack? How can we mitigate the suspicion? How can Singapore remain competitive and relevant 50 years from now? What is the future of Parliament, and what sort of electoral reform should we be looking at? What are the backstories of successful businesses in Singapore, and why do we […]

December 7, 2016

History


Uncategorized

I think people get very passionate about Great Humans and find it hard to separate their emotional connection with what they have seen with the silent evidence of what they have not seen. At its heart, the great man fallacy is this– we do not know who would have risen to the occasion. Her biography […]

November 24, 2016