Equatorial Musings

The other day, one of my ex-colleagues from MINDEF (where I had worked from 1996 to 2009) was in town. He's now living in New York working for a boutique fund and was back here for work and pleasure. I was told of his being in town by another ex-colleague, who was also my ex-uni mate. She was the one who arranged for the last-minute gathering. Anyway, Eric, Seow Peng and I met at the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel. We had a few drinks and reminisce about the good old days when we all worked in the Defence Policy Office (DPO). We had lots of fun, not least because we felt on the top of the world doing what we thought were the most important work in MINDEF, and possibly in Singapore. We were Defence Policy Officers, and our work was crucial in ensuring Singapore's various harmonious bilateral and multilateral defence relations. Truth be told, while there were hard times, there were also good times. Like when we indulged in hilarious banterings and teasings, from word play to del...

I know that detractors of blogging find bloggers self-absorbed. Who really wants to know how they feel about anything and everything. It's enough that we live in an era where most people are concerned only about their own feelings and thoughts. There's no need to turn to the Internet to find more of such people that you already meet every day of your lives. So here I am talking about my new fan. It's not so much that I got a new fan that's interesting to would-be readers. It's also not the fact that the new fan is a tower fan of the same make as the last one. Rather, it's the fact that the company in question, Europace , makes nice-looking fans but somehow fails to follow through by manufacturing equally decent remote controllers. The one that came with my new tower fan looks cheap and clumsy, and the cover feels like it's gonna give way any time. Of course, my issue with the remote controller is minor next to larger world issues, such as global warming, ...

I've watched the show "Inception" twice, and recently bought the DVD so that I can relive the cinematic experience and Christopher Nolan's brilliance. For those who didn't catch the movie, and you should have, it's a show about planting thoughts (or in this case 1 thought) in people's minds. In the movie, Leonardo di Caprio's character was asked by Ken Watanabe's character to go into his competitor's son's mind to get him to break up the business empire his dying father will soon leave him. To cut to the chase, the story involves putting the subject into a dream state where di Caprio's character and his accomplices can interact with the former in his/her dreams. In this case, there's a dream in a dream in a dream, i.e., 3 levels of dreams. So it's rather complicated, but if you're paying attention, you should've no problems following the plot. Of course, there are various theories on whether there's more t...

I'm not sure if everyone knows about this, but it's about what the US Feds is doing to kick-start the American economy. For those who know, yes again. In case you would like to know what it really means, here's a hilarious version . Suffice to say, it's tantamount to printing money at the end of the day, with all the negative implications that come with it. If you recall your basic economics, more money means lower interest rate. This makes it easier for companies to borrow and less attractive for consumers to save. All in, it's meant to keep everyone spending more so that the economy continues to be buoyant. While the first round of QE had done wonders, the questions is whether resorting to it again spells trouble. As we all know, too much of a good thing is never good for you. And QE is not even unequivocably good, so go figure.

Last Sunday, I woke up at the ungodly hour of 5.30 am. And the reason was I had to drive down to Suntec City, park my car and get ready for a 10 km run. Yup, you guessed it. I was one of the thousands of participants at the Singapore Bay Run. For sacrificing sleep and sleeping early on a Saturday night, I get to be one of those to run across the Marina Bay. For those who read my earlier posts, you would know that I like to run (as well as read and reminisce). In recent years, my running has been intermittent at best. Before my personal crisis, I had run a lot more. In fact, I used to run up to 5 times a week. At one point, I lost so much weight people asked if I was sick. But I digress. Truth be told, I love running. But this was not always the case. It was something that grew on me. When I was young, I tried running but didn't get very far, both distance and determination wise. But after I persevered and continued running, I was able to run longer. And I started enjoying it so ...

Last Sunday, I was driving along Choa Chu Kang North 7 ( CCKN 7) after taking a look at Barang Barang's pre -renovation sale at its Sungei Kadut showroom. For those who know of this high-end furnishing chain, it was recently in financial woes and has been sold off to its more mainstream competitor, Novena Furnishing. Anyways, I had just passed Regent Grove, a condominium near the corner of CCKN 7, and saw that a car had stopped by the side of the road to alight a passenger. I immediately applied the brakes and my car stopped half a car's length before the front car. But alas, the car behind me obviously was not paying attention. Because it slammed into the back of my Ford Focus about 4 seconds after I stopped my car. My car, of course, hit the back of the car in front. As neither my friend and I were aware that there was a car behind us, the impact caught us off-guard and we suffered whiplash consequently. Not that the effect was immediate though. I thought I was fine ...

I recently came into possession of a new passport courtesy of ICA . It was during the fateful week when the agency was closed to walk-in applicants. I was permitted access because I had applied online the week before and was given the much-coveted pink slip inviting me to collect my new pass to the ports of the world. In a way, my new passport signified a new start to my life. The old one was peppered with the immigration stamps of various countries I had visited with my then wife. They ranged from neighbouring countries like Indonesia and Malaysia to more far-flung ones like the UK and Maldives. The stamps represented bits and pieces of my life, albeit the better ones, as they are recollections of holiday trips past and gone. Looking at them now, however, forces uncomfortable questions into my mind as to what the hell had happened along the way. But it's futile to torture one's mind with questions that cannot be answered in retrospect simply because we don't have the benef...