Some of these writer's opinions are universally relevant

My ruminations are in red.

EXCERPTS from WSJ REVIEW, 7 June 2014.

LIBERTY MARCHES ON

Twenty-five years after Tiananmen Square and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama finds that liberal democracy still has not rivals on the world stage. The big challenge for todays elected government: decay.

When observing broad historical trends, it is important not to get carried away by short-term developments. The hallmark of a durable political system is its long-term sustainability, not its performance in any given decade.

Let's consider, to begin with, how dramatically economic and political systems have changed over the last two generations. On the economic front, the world economy saw a massive increase in output, roughly quadrupling between the early 1970s and the financial crisis of 2007-08. Though the crisis was a large setback, levels of prosperity throughout the world have increased massively and on all continents. This has come about because the world has been knit together in a liberal system of trade and investment. Even in communist countries such as China and Vietnam, market rules and competition dominate.

Huge changes have taken place in the political sphere as well. In 1974, according to the Stanford University democracy expert Larry Diamond, there were only about 35 electoral democracies, which represented something less than 30% of the world's countries. By 2013, that number had expanded to about 120, or more than 60% of the total. The year 1989 marked only a sudden acceleration of a broader trend that the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington labeled the "third wave" of democratization, a wave that had begun with the transitions in southern Europe and Latin America some 15 years earlier and would later spread to sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

The emergence of a market-based global economic order and the spread of democracy are clearly linked. Democracy has always rested on a broad middle class, and the ranks of prosperous, property-holding citizens have ballooned everywhere in the past generation. Wealthier, better-educated populations are typically much more demanding of their governments—and because they pay taxes, they feel entitled to hold public officials accountable. Many of the world's most stubborn bastions of authoritarianism are oil-rich states such as Russia, Venezuela or the regimes in the Persian Gulf, where the "resource curse," as it has been called, gives the government enormous revenues from a source other than the people themselves.

"He who pays the piper calls the tune" is an over simplification, but there is something to it. 

You only have to look at how politicians make promises (some much exaggerated and untruthful) in countries where they have to win relatively open and free elections. 

And you'd be surprised when dealing with government employees (e.g. in USA) how helpful they try to be - unlike in 'newly developed countries' and many in Asia (I have not experienced bureaucracy in South America or Africa nor some parts of the European continent).

Even granting the ability of oil-rich autocrats to resist change, we have since 2005 witnessed what Dr. Diamond calls a global "democratic recession." According to Freedom House, which publishes widely used measures of political and civil liberties, there has been a decline in both the number and the quality of democracies (integrity of elections, freedom of the press, etc.) over the past eight consecutive years.

But let's put this democratic recession in perspective: While we may worry about authoritarian trends in Russia, Thailand or Nicaragua, all of these countries were unambiguous dictatorships in the 1970s. Despite those thrilling revolutionary days in Cairo's Tahrir Square in 2011, the Arab Spring doesn't look like it will yield a real democracy anywhere but the country where it started, Tunisia. Still, it is likely to mean more responsive Arab politics over the long haul. Expectations that this would happen quickly were extremely unrealistic. We forget that following the revolutions of 1848—Europe's "Springtime of Peoples"—democracy took another 70 years to consolidate. 

In the realm of ideas, moreover, liberal democracy still doesn't have any real competitors. Vladimir Putin's Russia and the ayatollahs' Iran pay homage to democratic ideals even as they trample them in practice. Why else bother to hold sham referendums on "self-determination" in eastern Ukraine? Some radicals in the Middle East may dream of restoring an Islamist caliphate, but this isn't the choice of the vast majority of people living in Muslim countries. The only system out there that would appear to be at all competitive with liberal democracy is the so-called "China model," which mixes authoritarian government with a partially market-based economy and a high level of technocratic and technological competence.

Yet if asked to bet whether, 50 years from now, the U.S. and Europe would look more like China politically or vice versa, I would pick the latter without hesitation. There are many reasons to think that the China model isn't sustainable. The system's legitimacy and the party's ongoing rule rest on continued high levels of growth, which simply won't be forthcoming as China seeks to make the transition from a middle-income country to a high-income one.

Even countries whose governments are legitimately elected face economic transitions and uncertainty as their economies adjust in anticipation or in response to changing circumstances. Sustaining growth and income, year on year, becomes increasingly challenging.

China has accumulated huge hidden liabilities by poisoning its soil and air, and while the government remains more responsive than most authoritarian systems, the country's growing middle class likely won't accept the current system of corrupt paternalism when times get tough. China no longer projects a universalistic ideal beyond its own borders, as it did in the revolutionary days of Mao. With its rising levels of inequality and the massive advantages enjoyed by the politically connected, the "Chinese dream" represents nothing more than a route for a relative few to get rich quickly.

This danger is not only China's. There are 'pork barrel' politics and examples of 'crony capitalism' in the Western democracies too.

None of this means, however, that we can rest content with democracy's performance over the past couple of decades. My end-of-history hypothesis was never intended to be deterministic or a simple prediction of liberal democracy's inevitable triumph around the world. Democracies survive and succeed only because people are willing to fight for the rule of law, human rights and political accountability. Such societies depend on leadership, organizational ability and sheer good luck.

While there is no accounting for loads of good luck (or bad luck) the rule of law, human rights and political accountability are vital. Stagnating leadership and lack of organizational experience more than offset brilliant academic minds especially in an environment of denial.

 

The biggest single problem in societies aspiring to be democratic has been their failure to provide the substance of what people want from government: personal security, shared economic growth and the basic public services (especially education, health care and infrastructure) that are needed to achieve individual opportunity. Proponents of democracy focus, for understandable reasons, on limiting the powers of tyrannical or predatory states. But they don't spend as much time thinking about how to govern effectively. They are, in Woodrow Wilson's phrase, more interested in "controlling than in energizing government."

Individual opportunity is key, even if only a hope that exists in one's mind. Extinguish or suppress aspiration and you snuff out any spark of enthusiasm or desire to excel - for what would be the point of making the effort?

 

This was the failure of the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which toppled Viktor Yanukovych for the first time. The leaders who came to power through those protests—Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko—wasted their energy on internal squabbling and shady deals. Had an effective democratic administration come to power, cleaning up corruption in Kiev and making the state's institutions more trustworthy, the government might have established its legitimacy across Ukraine, including the Russian-speaking east, long before Mr. Putin was strong enough to interfere. Instead, the democratic forces discredited themselves and paved the way for Mr. Yanukovych's return in 2010, thus setting the stage for the tense, bloody standoff of recent months. 

This is the threat used on people everywhere and most of it is true; people unaccustomed to self-government or live in countries that have only known one type of rule have to go through trials and hardship if and when governments change. 

However an effective and efficient public administration would ameliorate the suffering and minimise the chaos; would middle and senior public servants would abandon their offices en masse? They would be forsaking their salaries and benefits and give up chances to rise faster in a time of opportunity.

So it's a matter of voting in clean hands who might make learning mistakes or keeping old hands who certainly would know where the dirt is and might have contributed to its accretion.

India has been held back by a similar gap in performance when compared with authoritarian China. It is very impressive that India has held together as a democracy since its founding in 1947. But Indian democracy, like sausage-making, doesn't look very appealing on closer inspection. The system is rife with corruption and patronage; 34% of the winners of India's recent elections have criminal indictments pending against them, according to India's Association for Democratic Reforms, including serious charges like murder, kidnapping and sexual assault. 

The rule of law exists in India, but it is so slow and ineffective that many plaintiffs die before their cases come to trial. The Indian Supreme Court has a backlog of more than 60,000 cases, according to the Hindustan Times. Compared with autocratic China, the world's largest democracy has been completely hamstrung in its ability to provide modern infrastructure or basic services such as clean water, electricity or basic education to its population. 

In some Indian states, 50% of schoolteachers fail to show up for work, according to the economist and activist Jean Drèze. Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist with a troubling past of tolerating anti-Muslim violence, has just been elected prime minister by an impressive majority in the hope that he will somehow cut through all the blather of routine Indian politics and actually get something done. 

We often read or hear about the necessity of the rule of law. Laws are made by man and are changed or interpreted by man. Look no further than the USA to see how fame, money and influence can make a difference in the way justice is served.

It's always an uphill effort to take on a government in their own courts. In some countries it is futile.

Americans, more than other people, often fail to understand the need for effective government, focusing instead on the constraint of authority. In 2003, the George W. Bush administration seemed to believe that democratic government and a market-oriented economy would spontaneously emerge in Iraq once the U.S. had eliminated Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. It didn't understand that these arise from the interaction of complex institutions—political parties, courts, property rights, shared national identity—that have evolved in developed democracies over many decades, even centuries. 

In this day and age it IS possible for major changes happen without total disruption; human beings are adaptable or how could we have survived for so long? How long it takes depends on the new rulers, the public administration and myriad other factors, but it is not impossible.

The inability to govern effectively extends, unfortunately, to the U.S. itself. Our Madisonian Constitution, deliberately designed to prevent tyranny by multiplying checks and balances at all levels of government, has become a vetocracy. In the polarized—indeed poisonous—political atmosphere of today's Washington, the government has proved unable to move either forward or backward effectively.

 

Contrary to the hysterics on either side, the U.S. faces a very serious long-term fiscal problem that is nonetheless solvable through sensible political compromises. But Congress hasn't passed a budget, according to its own rules, in several years, and last fall, the GOP shut down the entire government because it couldn't agree on paying for past debts. Though the U.S. economy remains a source of miraculous innovation, American government is hardly a source of inspiration around the world at the present moment.

While the American president seems to blow hot and cold on issues and would rather move his position than follow up on threats, present day American government has its admirers.

It's the way in which elections are conducted and Americans elect their President which is in need of repair and improvement.

It's fiscal clout and economy - as long as the financial world and all forms of commerce transact in US Dollars and Americans continue to be conditioned to spend - is both a firewall and a hammer.

Not many other countries can live like America, no matter what a feckless government it may have. There's always the consolation that like so many things in life, this too will come to pass!

Twenty-five years later, the most serious threat to the end-of-history hypothesis isn't that there is a higher, better model out there that will someday supersede liberal democracy; neither Islamist theocracy nor Chinese capitalism cuts it. Once societies get on the up escalator of industrialization, their social structure begins to change in ways that increase demands for political participation. If political elites accommodate these demands, we arrive at some version of democracy.

But 'closed shops' make it much more difficult for new leaders to come to the fore. Use of the carrot and the stick: making life unpleasant for new politicians combined with sweet offers to attract newcomers to the ruling elite does work. Question is - for how long?

The question is whether all countries will inevitably get on that escalator. The problem is the intertwining of politics and economics. Economic growth requires certain minimal institutions such as enforceable contracts and reliable public services before it will take off, but those basic institutions are hard to create in situations of extreme poverty and political division. Historically, societies broke out of this "trap" through accidents of history, in which bad things (like war) often created good things (like modern governments). It is not clear, however, that the stars will necessarily align for everyone.

A second problem that I did not address 25 years ago is that of political decay, which constitutes a down escalator. All institutions can decay over the long run. They are often rigid and conservative; rules responding to the needs of one historical period aren't necessarily the right ones when external conditions change.

Whether it's decay or perpetuating mediocrity, such political inbreeding is unhealthy in the long run. Unless, of course, citizens choose to keep their governments. In which case, they deserve what they get.

Moreover, modern institutions designed to be impersonal are often captured by powerful political actors over time. The natural human tendency to reward family and friends operates in all political systems, causing liberties to deteriorate into privileges. This is no less true in a democracy (look at the current U.S. tax code) than in an authoritarian system. In these circumstances, the rich tend to get richer not just because of higher returns to capital, as the French economist Thomas Piketty has argued, but because they have superior access to the political system and can use their connections to promote their interests.

As for technological progress, it is fickle in distributing its benefits. Innovations such as information technology spread power because they make information cheap and accessible, but they also undermine low-skill jobs and threaten the existence of a broad middle class. 

One can see this in the USA today.

No one living in an established democracy should be complacent about its survival. But despite the short-term ebb and flow of world politics, the power of the democratic ideal remains immense. We see it in the mass protests that continue to erupt unexpectedly from Tunis to Kiev to Istanbul, where ordinary people demand governments that recognize their equal dignity as human beings. We also see it in the millions of poor people desperate to move each year from places like Guatemala City or Karachi to Los Angeles or London. 

Yet immigrants (legal and illegal) flock to the USA. As well as to any country that can offer them the promise of a better life - better jobs, higher income, quality of life.

Does this mean that such countries do not have to 'liberalise'? Time will tell.

Even as we raise questions about how soon everyone will get there, we should have no doubt as to what kind of society lies at the end of History.

Mr. Fukuyama is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the author of "Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy," which will be published on Oct. 1 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

The Singapore Spiral. This time it is the bankers' mindset

I have just got off the phone with a lady from the OCBC call centre.

Before writing this, I visited the BOO-N-BOUQUET blog (http://boo-n-bouquet.blogspot.sg/) to catch up on the latest before emailing it about my lousy experience with OCBC (NOT the fault of the lady at the call centre but of the bank’s boffins).

It’s ironical that the latest blog posts there have been about troubles with DBS' inflexibility and non-acceptance of property as an asset. And a complaint about HSBC.

A timely coincidence because OCBC has given me a severe pain in the butt!

Tonight I went to do my usual, regular transfer to cover outgoings for the next few months - especially as we are going to be out of town.

Lo and behold, I could not effect the transfer of funds simply because OCBC now ONLY offers FAST transfers - at a much lower transaction limit.

Instead of adding the FAST transfer facility as an additional option, OCBC has replaced the previous transfer option with FAST but LESSER transfer!

So what’s one to do?

OCBC suggests splitting the transfer amounts - which necessitates spending more time and effort to make the transfer than before!

Another alternative the call centre lady gave me was to make the transfer using the recurring or future dated facility. I had to inform here that when I went to the page for managing payees, I was faced with two options - DELETE payee or ADD payee.

And when I clicked on managing recurring or future transfers, it said I had none registered!

In the last few years OCBC has made cosmetic changes, essentially to the presentation of information.

But now they have fiddled with what was not broken and, in the process, broken it.

I thought online banking was for the consumer’s convenience, but how convenient is it to make multiple FAST transfers instead of one ‘normal’ transfer?

The thought passed through my mind to change banks, but if HSBC and DBS are as muddle-headed as OCBC what are the choices? It would seem that the odds are stacked against meeting a bank that does basic banking well in Singapore!

And to think that today’s newspaper proudly proclaimed that Singapore students are tops at problem solving!

Are we declining faster than I feared?

Whither SICC?

Having read the past week's newspaper reports and the government's press releases on the topic of re-acquiring land from some golf clubs in Singapore - generally as their leases run out - I ruminated on what this might mean.

The golf club that I have a connection with is the Singapore Island Country Club (SICC) which began life as as two distinct golf clubs - one the exclusive domain of the colonials and, the other golf club, the preserve of the locals.

Both my maternal and paternal grandfathers were among the founding members of the local golf club, the Royal Island Club - or Island Club as it was more commonly referred to.

As a child I spent many happy hours there, sometimes waiting for my paternal grandfather while he finished his round at the 19th hole (to which children were not allowed), so that I could drive home with him.

In those days we were not laden with homework and tuition was not yet a regular part of our daily routine. Instead we spent a healthy amount of time amusing ourselves outdoors at home or at the club's swimming pool. Game Boys, smartphones and other gadgets hadn't been invented yet. Later, when the club built a bowling alley Saturdays were spent bowling in the Junior League.

When I came of age and was eligible to take up membership, I was faced with a dilemma - keep a horse or join the club. I chose to forgo the country club life for a horse, not imagining that one day I would take up golf.

So it was decades later that I returned - to a different club in a different era. A much bigger club in size, number of members and activities. And much more complex.

Gone was the friendly, 'clubby' atmosphere when you knew most of the other members and they knew you. Rules and (petty) regulations plastered and filled up all the space on noticeboards.

Whether intended or not the club of today is the consequence of the 'arranged' marriage of the two clubs that now form SICC and the decision to make memberships freely transferable.

SICC has 7800 members and 18,000 'users' (spouses, children of members). An unprecedented number for a golf or even a country club. 

I found a Wikipedia entry about country clubs and their social implications in Western society:
Country clubs are founded upon the concept of private membership and exclusion of the general public. Country clubs aim to bring people with similar socioeconomic backgrounds together and were never intended to be agencies of social integration.

However in this day and age when many social barriers have fallen or been taken down and there have been great upheavals in both society and the distribution of wealth, not all country clubs are exclusive enclaves of like-minded people from similar backgrounds.

And so it is with SICC.

Furthermore, the club appears to have been marking time with no clear purpose as to what to do when it's leases come up. But now the government has set a deadline - February 2015.

We will lose one 18-hole course (out of four) - or more. And give up some buildings and land.

It would appear (from a recent circular) that the President and General Committee are leaning towards keeping the location where most money has been spent.

Among the ideas they put forward: making the two 18-hole golf courses and the pocket-size 9-hole into five 9-hole courses. 

Personally, I feel that this is going to be much more complex and difficult than it seems. 

As a guiding principle, courses composed two or more full size 9-hole courses had a new 9-holes designed and added. Or were conceived, designed and built to function as two, three or even more separate yet complementary 9-hole courses.

We now say that two courses, separately conceived and designed to operate independently, should be merged and then divided into three 9-hole courses.

And although the Old and New courses now start and end where it is possible to cross over, the better option would be to start off with a clean sheet.

I'm sure there will be objections to closing one or both, but our courses are by no means used to capacity. And we will still have one usable location and two courses for use in the meantime.

Besides one does not move entire clubs and golf courses overnight so the next several years should be spent phasing out and phasing in.

While the Bukit location is slightly smaller, it does contain valuable freehold land. If we gave that up or to be more precise, sold it, would we be adequately compensated? 

To those who are inclined to spend lavishly on buildings and facilities, please keep in mind that all they no longer belong to the club once the land they sit on are handed back.

Besides what sets a club above another is the staff and the service. No doubt, they can get poached - but not if they are happy, properly remunerated and have reasons to remain loyal. HR is often relegated to the back burner and yet this portfolio is vital for now and our future plans.

The white elephant clubhouse that has been suggested we keep is a liability for a club which already has separate clubhouses for swimming and other activities - it's too big for a golf clubhouse and while we have thousands of members, we are not in the F and B business - especially when there are so many other choices for diners.

(We have three imposing clubhouse buildings at the Island location, in excess to our needs. Now, we have to maintain all three at Island and two at Bukit.)

That clubhouse would be better suited to being used as public amenity -  for golf outings and as a MICE extension of Singapore's convention and exhibition business. That's where MBGC would be the fit.

For SICC, keeping it would be throwing good money after bad.

Here is an opportunity to revive SICC as a proper club and we are in danger of messing it up by taking the expedient route, or short view.

We could get world class golf course architects and equally renowned clubhouse architects to see what we have an come up with options - now, that would be money well spent.  

Gary Player and Arnold Palmer have done some good work in Asia - their designs sympathetic to the geography and environment - and have been around for a long time.

Let's not repeat past mistakes.

Keppel Club could continue to exist as a golf club if it had the other 18-hole course and a clubhouse - for which they could compensate SICC. Or Keppel could be 'folded' into Island with MBGC in some other way.

But all this is for the President and GC to ponder - and hopefully provide solutions.

History is not necessarily a predictor of the future, but I hope that the President, GC and members do not forget some 'events' in our not too distant history:

The $100 million ‘white elephant’ Clubhouse at Island, surely a masterpiece of folly.

The starters’ huts at Island which cost over $100,000.

The purchase of 50% more golf carts than needed; everyone dismissed this by saying, “the Club can afford it”. They missed the point entirely.

Were they ‘honest mistakes’, ineptitude or was there much more than meets the eye? No one seemed to care; they were far more interested in who used the invitations to the Masters at Augusta National.

At some point a former general manager was given a golden handshake; his successor, specially recruited from Thailand was presented as a fait accompli, his recruitment and appointment fast-tracked.

Unfortunately, he had to be fired. A subsequent GC re-employed the man with the golden handshake. And then asked him to resign! This is now in the courts.

Throughout all this, the club has more or less run on its own momentum. Staff keep their heads well down and get on with their day-to-day jobs, for better or worse.

If any public company with the financial reserves and resources as SICC were run the same way, the shareholders would be screaming blue murder. 

To exacerbate matters, there are close to 100 members on the GC and sub-committees. Imagine the same public company with 100 shareholders involved in the day-to-day operations of different divisions.

Unfortunately the partially thought out experiment in autonomy at SICC has not worked - but for the government to remove all controls now will be a sure fire recipe for disaster.

Just look at members' clubs in Singapore  - how many stand out for excellence?

(Many have been or are still embroiled in internal squabbles. That should tell us something.)

One of the few exceptions seems to be Sentosa and for a spell they had a GM from Hong Kong. Downie, before he joined Sentosa, was an employee of the Clearwater Bay Golf Club. And he's just been enticed to return to CWB.

Someone said the best clubs in the world are run by dictators.

Jokes aside, maybe we need one to get us out of this situation.

And let's not forget: what is to be done about our huge number of members?

But let's start the land issues on the right track first.

How Time Flies!

My last post to this blog was in December 2012 ! Not that I have run out of things to say but there weren't many opportunities to sit down and organise my thoughts.

We sold our house in Ponte Vedra but started to regret it when we returned to pack up. So we ended up with another one - but a fraction the size. It was just the beginning of lots of activity and some agony - I needed to tailor it to our way of life and so ended up with having to deal with renovations.

I must have forgotten what we'd been through building our house in the first place and then renovating it several years later. Sometimes the mind conveniently buries past experiences especially unpleasant ones!

Or is it hope eternal that spurs one on?

Anyway it was all worth it, Lin and I are delighted with our new house; I had to drag him away to come back to Hong Kong and Singapore.

After all this, my Construction and Trades scorecard would read:  HK number 1, while old fashioned N-E Florida would be number 2 and ever-growing Singapore  number 3 (think of cutting edge architects and designers but third world workers).

It's a thought - in Ponte Vedra we are in a community of less than 600 families and yet several of our residents have written books.

In comparison, I can't say that I know of any published authors in our condominium complex in Hong Kong which has about 1000 families. A journalist who was given a drugged milk shake by a woman who bludgeoned her husband to death is the closest to a writer that I know of!

And, in Singapore, I can only claim to know or know of only a handful among them a past Prime Minister who has written a few books, a young man who writes books for children, a woman who wrote about her father, a renowned educator and a cousin who wrote about my great grandfather (to be precise she lives in Johor Bahru, Malaysia).

In Florida we are in a golfing community, with our own golf course. In Hong Kong and Singapore we are members of a golf club.

In an ideal world, for life to be replete, I'd have the Hong Kong Golf Club with the immaculate golf course we enjoy in Florida (not to demean either but to say that my perfect golf club would be a combination of the two). The golf club in Singapore is like a vast public facility (it boasts over 7000 members and double that number of users) with the atmosphere and environment to match.

Some Americans despair of President Obama and wish their economy would pick up. Some Hong Kongers distrust and dislike Chief Executive CY Leung and grudgingly put up with the influx of mainland Chinese. Some Singaporeans are no longer enamoured of the PAP government  and are unhappy about the rapid increase in population, mainly due to immigration.

I sympathise with all of the above! On the other hand Obama and Leung will not be at the helm for much longer.

To be fair, look around America. Where would it be if not for immigrants and immigrant workers, even today. Or should I say more so today. Singapore is in the same boat - we need people in almost all walks of life for businesses to run and families to cope.

Sometimes I think of life in the western world and how people cope with work, children and their homes. Well in the west there are house husbands whose wives are the main breadwinners, there are women to give up their careers for their families. And, significantly, there is infrastructure and 'software' in place to facilitate caring for young children while parent(s) are at work.

In much the same way that there are senior communities, home care, public and private initiatives for older people so that they can live and operate as they age. These are lacking in Asia.


While there are many good things about Singapore, I look forward to returning as much as I looked forward to returning to boarding school after the holidays!

Perhaps it is the attitude of those in power; it is telling that a well known Singaporean recently wrote: "..... American doormen who would look me in the eyes and treat an ambassador like me as an equal, and not act in a submissive manner like any Asian doorman would."

Not all Asian doormen are particularly submissive and as a matter of fact it depends on who is coming through the door; it's just that more Asian and particularly Singaporean VIPs (and those who consider themselves VIPs) expect servility and "insist on feudal-type privileges" (here I have borrowed his words and taken them out of their context to fit mine).

It's not beyond some to say,"do you know who I am?" and name drop to try and get their way.

Americans may be the polar opposite (and sometimes stridently so), but then they do not have to suffer employers, club committee members and self-important people who wield the rod.

The same writer went on to say. "The good news for our world is that this American egalitarian spirit is gradually infecting other societies, including Asian societies, and therefore making them less feudal." Perhaps when the Singapore Girl is allowed to become less of a doormat for demanding travellers!

When I was growing up we were told that we were 'the rugged society', we were the exemplars for the rest of Southeast Asia. Our government was never bested by any opponent, inside or out.

Somewhere along the line we slipped from our place as Number One. Maybe that's what bugs me most.

We don't lead and we don't want to follow. So we came late with more environmentally friendly taxis (HK had LPG-fuelled taxis years before Singapore introduced CNG taxis).

Public minibuses in HK are equipped with seat belts, Singapore's yet to make them mandatory in school buses.

Singapore reversed a decision to take their old London cabs off the road because this would have diminished transportation for the disabled.

Hong Kong has a small fleet of new taxis with tailgate lifts for wheelchairs AND a tiny fleet of all-electric taxis.

Nowadays, it seems we are better at talking the talk than walking the walk.

NO KIDDING: Squeezing Boobs Can Stop Breast Cancer

medical science
Dec 19, 2012 11:00 PM     2,267 14


Squeezing Boobs Can Stop Breast Cancer

 GIZMODO: Casey Chan
If you need another excuse to show some love to the mammaries, scientists have found that squeezing breasts can actually prevent malignant breast cells from triggering cancer. Yes, squeezing. Guys and gals, do your part in stopping cancer, please.

Gautham Venugopalan, a lead member on the research team from the University of California in Berkeley, says that experiments have shown that applying physical pressure to the cells can guide them back to a normal growth pattern, as opposed to just letting it follow cancerous growth. Specifically:

"People have known for centuries that physical force can influence our bodies... When we lift weights our muscles get bigger. The force of gravity is essential to keeping our bones strong. Here we show that physical force can play a role in the growth—and reversion—of cancer cells."
The experiment involved growing malignant cells within silicone and squeezing the silicone during the first stages of cell growth. Over time, those malignant cells started to grow normally. Venugopalan says that, those malignant cells just need "the right cues to guide them back to a healthy growth pattern". Squeezing them are those right cues. So, folks. Let's squeeze more. [Karramba Production/Shutterstock]