Writing Reviews

Steve Jobs

2011-12-21T12:19:00.000+08:00

This is an extemely fascinating biography of one of the icons of the 20th and 21st centuries. Yes, his life straddled 2 millienia, and he obtained fame in both. Last century, he, with Steve Wozniak, founded Apple Computers, which went on to become wildly successful. In his "Second Coming" towards the end of the last century into the 21st, he reinvented Apple as a company of mobile products which paved the way for Apple to become the most valuable company on earth in this new millenium. Steven Jobs has always viewed Apple as a products company. And his product design philosophy is that it must be simple, beautify and closed. Because of this strategy, and the creative people he goaded to produce of their best eventually created the most beautiful products on planet earth - think iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and before that, the wildly successful Apple ][. Steve Jobs, however, never considered the Apple ][ as his product. That would be the Macintosh computer, which though it introduced many innovative technologies (the graphical user interface, the mouse) flopped as a product.

Yes, Steve Jobs was not perfect even though he demanded perfection in whatever he built. Some people who worked on the original Macintosh computer burnt out working with/for him, as the chronicler, Walter Isaacson, related in the biography of Jobs, simply titled "Steve Jobs". Isaacson is brutally frank about Mr Jobs in this book. Fortunately, Jobs left him to write whatever he thought he should, and Isaacson did just that, warts and all. It is a very fascinating account. I grew up looking envious at his Apple machines while I bought and used the more affordable IBM-compatible PCs, and wondered about the man. But he was a very private person although he did behave in ways that people either loved him or hated him. Some loved him and then hated him, but strangely never the other way around. Those are the kinds of emotions that one has to go through with him, his wife not excepted.

Jobs was charming, selfish, and spoilt. His exacting ways resulted in highly innovative products that has made fanatics of Apple products the world over. That said, Jobs never always produced the things that became successful. And not all the things that he produced succeeded. Ultimately, his genius was to surround himself with highly creative people, such as John Lasseter of Pixar and Jonathan Ive of Apple, to work his magic through them. All the rest were bozos to him.

Unfortunately he was so driven that he failed to heed warnings about his health. Some thought that his health was permanently damaged by him running 2 very successful companies - Apple and Pixar - at the same time. But I suppose he wouldn't have had it any other way. He was not a person who listened to others easily. Unfortunately, his strict dieting habits, acquired since young, also contributed to his failing body.

Brilliant as he was, he had to battle the emotional hurt he suffered all his life from the knowledge that he was an abandoned child. One wished he had been able to overcome it, but he never did. This is perhaps the saddest part of an otherwise eventful and creative life. He had done it all. No regrets. RIP.

P.S. I still don't own any Apple product.

Why and wherefore

2011-08-22T08:08:00.000+08:00

Singapore's President SR Nathan will be leaving office in 10 days' time. His last day as President is the 31st of August 2011. He has served the longest of all the Presidents Singapore has had - 12 unbroken years (well there was the matter of his re-election 6 years ago, but he was returned un-opposed). His Presidency has, by all measures, been a successful one. Of course, there are detractors, people who think that his actions (or in-actions) as President has lowered his standing among all previous Presidents. But these, in my opinion, are not the majority view. During his presidency, Mr Nathan has written a short book on his time as a Seaman's Welfare Officer in the 1950s. He had graduated from the University of Malaya. He wrote that the reason why he got the job was because he had written about Seamans in Singapore. The post was a new one and in the first few years, Mr Nathan shared the responsibilities with fellow civil servant, Mr Goh Sin Tub. Gradually he defined his own work, which was to help one and all Singapore seafarers with their problems, which ranged from lodging, meals, unemployment to unfair treatment by their employers. He has spent a fair amount of time describing the social situation of Singapore seafarers, and occasionally about foreign seafarers stuck in Singapore, and the challenges and hardships they faced.

Mr Nathan gives some anecdotes of seamen and their families that he had helped, and described how these same people have risen in their social standing in life. This is an easy-to-read book, and absorbing in its contents, if only because it describes real situations and real people. I used to live in the Singapore Naval Base, and as a youth, have had neighbours who sailed the seas for a living. While many had fathers around every day, like mine, these others will be gone a considerable length of time. They are sailing the seas, I am told. I even wrote an essay in Primary school about my ambition - to be a sailor - without quite realizing the harsh and hard life of a sailor - people that had often to turn to others, like Mr Nathan, for help.

Why the title of the book "Why am I here?" I thought it wasn't such as great title at first. I mean, all of us would ask that question of ourselves. A book that focuses only on a few years of one's life hardly qualifies for a biography. But as it turns out, that question helped to define Mr Nathan's years of service, not only as a Seaman's Welfare Officer, but also as an Ambassador, and ultimately, the President of Singapore. Read this book to find out how exactly he learnt to ask that question.

The Quagmire

2011-07-16T09:58:00.001+08:00

Bob Woodward's name, in my mind, is synonymous with Nixon and Watergate. He is a chronicler of US government and US Presidents ever since his book, "All the President's Men", documented the Watergate affair. Since then, he has written about the Presidencies of Clinton, Bush Snr and Bush Jnr and most recent about President Obama. Of course President Obama's term in office is hardly over. Woodward's book, "Obama's Wars" is about the wars that the President has had to fight in 2008-2009. Specifically these wars refer to the left-over conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. More specifically, it is about Afghanistan and Pakistan. The book describes in detail the involvement of the many people around Obama, whose jobs were to figure out how to get the US out of the Afghanistan quagmire. The main players in the White House, besides Obama himself, includes the Secretary of State, Mrs Hiilary Clinton, VP Joe Biden and White House staffers such as Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod. The National Security Council (NSC) consisting of General James Jones, Admiral Mullen and their deputies formed another "division" in the war deliberations. The US Department of Defense is represented by the able and just retired Robert Gates, and his field commanders Generals McKiernan, McChrystal, and Petraeus formed a formidable 3rd division. On the opposing side, are President Hamid Kazai of Afghanistan, and President Zardari of Pakistan. The reasons for all these wars, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, remained largely a black box in the narrative.

Quite beyond these names are the accounts of the almost day-to-day issues that swirled around the conduct of the Afghanistan war during the years 2008-2009. Indeed the account rarely mentions the year, just the day and the month as events moved along. This is a fascinating study, if nothing else, into the workings of the US government White House at the very highest levels. Woodward writes it as it as he sees it - the various actors, their actions, concerns and fears, and the often swaying discussions on the Afghan war. The narrative draws out the often conflicting strategies of the military and the government towards a common objective. This "common objective" itself was deliberated over quite extensively, as described in the book.

Its a long and detailed narrative. One cannot help but feel what Woodward thought about certain people, such as Biden, whom he describes as being long-winded and and tended to be unfocused during the many strategy review meetings described in the book. General Petraeus was quoted as saying the "vice president tended to get lost in his own verbiage...". One gets the impression that Joe Biden wasn't a very lucid thinker. But he had been asked from the beginning by Obama to play the devil's advocate, be the "contrarian". This book is full of such personal observations, some of which may not be complimentary. So if you want to know a bit more about what people thought about other people in this book, and process by which Obama ordered a surge and set a timeframe for the eventual pullout of American troops from Afghanistan, this book would satisfy that curiosity.

The Big Short

2011-06-04T08:18:00.002+08:00

The name "Michael Lewis" is always a draw when it comes to 'storybooks' about the finance industry, particularly the bond markets. I first read him in 'Liar's Poker', perhaps his most famous, and hilarious, book on the goings on in the now defunct Saloman Brothers. Since then Mr Lewis has gone on to write more books, the latest of which is "The Big Short", which is billed as a true story. Unlike many books on the Financial Crisis that plagued the world in the 2007-2008 period, Lewis writes intimately about the people caught up in the maelstrom. He is a good story teller, which is why his books are popular. "The Big Short" tells the stories of several protagonists - investors and small time fund managers, who placed bets against the prevailing sentiment that the sub-prime mortgage market would never crash. Their stories were about a search for information, for clarification, for understanding the behaviour of the markets that had basically malfunctioned. That is the polite way of putting it. In fact, as our protagonists were to discover, the entire financial system had gone to the dogs. Nobody in the big Wall Street Investment Banks (including Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, and yes, Lehman Brothers) cared that what they were doing, selling 'crappy bonds' to unsuspecting investors, was anything but ethical. The abuse of trust and the greed has been documented widely since then.

In the telling of the stories of individuals' search for truth about the innovative investment products coming out of Wall Street, Lewis points the finger straight at the ratings agencies, Standard & Poor and Moody's, for facilitating the widespread fraud that culminated in the eventual collapse of such names as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, with hallowed institutions such as AIG and Citigroup needing vast infusion of cash from the US government to stay afloat. All these are the stuff of legends now.

The Big Short relates how a few investors, would be fund managers, decided that the sub-prime mortgage market, which spawned the now notorious CDOs (Collaterised Debt Obligations), was bound to fail one day, when people start to default on their mortgage loans which they could not afford in the first place. When this would happen in a Wall Street flushed with CDOs was the great unknown. By conventional wisdom, mortgage repayments carried little risk of defaulting, so any investment product based on these mortgages would also carry little risk. And the ratings agencies gave them their stamp of approval, without understanding the complexity of the CDOs.

True enough, our protagonists were proven correct at the end, which netted them not a small sum of money. The book can be heavy going at some points as Lewis tries to explain the more technical aspects of investments in bonds. He readily admits that the subject is not simple, and this perhaps has taken the enjoyment out of reading Lewis this time around. Perseverance is needed, but at the end of it, it is still a good story.

Crisis upon crisis

2011-04-10T06:11:00.003+08:00

Intentionally or not, I have been picking up books on the financial crisis of 2008. First there was "Fool's Gold", a largely US-centric account on Investment banks, such as JP Morgan, "The Crunch" which is a British-centric account around Norther Rock. And then there is that all-rounded discussion by Prof Paul Krugman in "The Return of Depression Economics", where his analysis of the financial crisis spanned the times and the globe, from the Latin American crises in the 1980s to Mexico in the 1980s and 90s, and forward to the Asian financial crisis in 1997, arriving at the most recent crisis in 2008. Such a broad survey linking common and originating factors illustrates the truth of Solomon's wisdom, that there is no new thing under the Sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). His is a unique account among a sea of books that have already been written on the same subject.

The latest I have read is Fintan O'Toole's "Ship of Fools", which, if nothing, is a damning account of the Celtic-Tiger years in Ireland. (The term, "Celtic-Tiger" is taken from the term, 'Asian Tiger' referring to Singapore, Hong Kong, S Korea and Taiwan that experience rapid economic growth and development between 1960 and 1990). Though Ireland also experienced rapid economic growth towards the end of the 1990s and into the first decade of the new century, the account in this book focuses, quite unflatteringly, on the almost pervasive corruption and incompetence of the powers that be in the very highest of government and society (read: bankers, and property developers).

My prior impression of Ireland is that illustrated by the Irish-American Frank McCourt's in his award-winning book, "Angela's Ashes". The book was depressing reading because it described an Ireland that was poor and hopeless. So much so that, as Mr O'Toole pointed out in his book, one of the things that characterized the Irish people is emigration - away from Ireland, for good.

For almost a decade, Ireland seemed to have gotten itself out of its depressing cycle of civil conflict, poverty and depression. Electronic giants such as Intel, Motorola, and Apple made a bee-line for Ireland to set up a significant presence. Ireland's economic growth became the stuff of legends and impressive case studies in management literature.

But the statistics have lied. And while the industries are real, lured to the island through generous tax incentives, the over-priced properties that came up in those years were a mirage. The account does not attempt to hide Mr O'Toole's contempt for the character and integrity, or more precisely, a lack of these qualities in people like Bertie Ahern, erstwhile PM of Ireland in the Celtic-Tiger years and his fellow government ministers. Names have been named in the book, and it doesn't need to be repeated here. I have no personal interest in what happens in Ireland, but it is incredible that a country can fall into such a state at all in the first place. Were there no opposing voices to right the wrongs? Is Parliament sleeping all those years? Is the media dead? Are there no regulators? Sadly, according to Mr O'Toole, all of these parties are either intentionally ignorant or complicit in the 'crime'. The rest of the good people, I suppose, have simply left for greener pastures across the seas.

There is a lesson in this for countries with mal-functioning democracies, and of countries which believe only in one-party rule.

A disturbing book.

Against the odds

2011-03-31T15:47:00.008+08:00

Some say "Manners maketh the man". Others say "Looks maketh the man". But there is yet a third - "Trials maketh the man". Of course in this day and age, the word 'man' includes woman. And this is the subject of the book "Innovate! How great companies get started in terrible times", written by Thomas A. Meyer.

Meyer makes the point that, as the saying goes, 'in tough times, the tough gets going". In his narrative in this book, he documents how some well-known and enduring companies were actually borne during economic recessions. His narrative goes as far back as 1797 and continues right up to 2008, where the phenomenon described in his book continues. The companies that were borned of adversity are exceptional companies, and the people who founded them are exceptional people - like Thomas A. Edison, Walt Disney, Milton Hershey, Robert W. Johnson, and Mary Kay, right up to Steve Jobs. Meyer believes that much can be learnt from the experiences of these entrepreneurs. He has helpfully organised the book according to the qualities demonstrated by these people who would not give up easily - qualities such as perseverance (Edison), Pain (Walt Disney), Intuition (Steve Jobs), Simplicity (Robert Johnson), Failure (Hershey), Faith (Mary Kay), Insignificance (Lonnie Johnson of Hasbro), Greed (AIG), Integrity (George Foreman) and of course, Luck (William Procter and James Gamble).

Each narrative is short and simple but effective. He states the lessons to be learnt through a narrative of the underlying story that validates the point. For example he illustrates the power of starting from the bottom with the example of how Robert W. Johnson Jr, the son of one of the founders of Johnson & Johnson, chose to begin his career in his father's company by first working as a mill-hand in its factories. 10 years were to pass before he assumed control of the company as its CEO. Meyer showed how asking for help can move a person's passion forward after a series of failures in the example of Milton S. Hershey, the creator of the Hershey empire. And as they say, this book is chock full of similar examples and lessons.

It is a great book to learn how not to give up when everything seem to work against you.

Bank Bust

2011-03-23T18:33:00.003+08:00

By now, many books have been published on the 2008 Financial Crisis that engulfed almost the entire civilized world. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman has written about it in "The Return of Depression Economics". Gillian Tett's "Fool's Gold" is another, and Alex Brummer's "The Crunch" is yet another. First published in 2008 and updated in 2009, "The 'Crunch" focuses on the failure of Northern Rock and the crisis that it precipitated for the British financial system. This British-centric focus is different from the many books already written on the financial crisis of 2008, which are more centred on Wall Street and the US. And if this is missing from your mental history of this most momentous event up till now of the 21st century, then you can read it up here. This book does go into details on the people whose actions unwittingly caused the near meltdown of the financial situation in Britain, and this is not referring just to Adam Applegarth, the rogue CEO of Northern Rock who single-handedly almost brought Britain's financial system to its knees. Of course the problem really originated in the US through the uncontrolled sub-prime lending by banks and the subsequent investments in these toxic assets the world over.

This book takes a look into the triumvirate of the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury. An invention of Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, it worked well enough in regulating and managing the financial flows and investments in Britain, which was centred on London. Indeed London succeeded in becoming a major financial centre in the world. While this worked well in good times, it failed to hold up when crisis hit. During the meltdown, these 3 parties descended into a finger-pointing stance, impeding the institution of necessary policies and actions quickly to overcome the run on Northern Rock and shoring up the rest of the banking system. This book makes for fascinating reading, and the chapter on the Central Bankers, which relates the life of key people such as Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve, Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank, and how each approached the financial crisis makes for absorbing reading.

In the end, hindsight is always perfect, and Brummer concludes the narrative by deconstructing the whole episode from various angles to draw 'painful lesson' from it. A good read.

A Doctor and a Gentleman

2011-03-16T15:28:00.001+08:00

There has been a rash of books published by Singaporeans on Singapore in the last few years. Mr Lee Kuan Yew published his memoirs some time back, and the latest on him, which has stirred up not a bit of controversy, is actually out of stock in many bookstores due to overwhelming demand. Then there is the tome written by some former Straits Times journalist on the history of the PAP. Even President S.R. Nathan has weighed in with an account of his time with seamen. A month ago, I picked up another book, a thinner and more 'manageable' book, also on Singapore, but on a subject, or more precisely, on a Malayan Singaporean. Why a Malayan Singaporean? Because he lived till 1954, well before Singapore obtained self-government in 1959 and eventually independence in 1965. But Dr Charles Joseph Pemberton Paglar was, in his lifetime, very much a Singapore native, and the book "Dr Paglar: Everyman's Hero" by Rex Shelley (with Chen Fen) recounts the life and times of this hero of Singapore. Dr Paglar was a Eurasian, the offspring of an illicit relation between an Indian women and a British planter by the name of Pemberton. And as offsprings of illicit relations went at that time, he was sent away (abandoned is perhaps a better word here) to a convent in Penang (Malaysia) in which he grew up.

He was eventually adopted by Alexander Paglar and his wife, both of whom were Catholics and Eurasians. Dr Paglar migrated to Singapore in 1910, while still a young man, to further his education. He eventually won a Queens scholarship to study medicine in Britain. Dr Paglar later returned to Singapore and set up his medical practice. He got married, and became friends with the lowly and the royalty - specifically the Sultan of Johor, who made him his personal physician. The Second World War, while disruptive, did not change his routine - he still practiced medicine although medicine was hard to come by, for which he turned to the Japanese conquerors. Therein lies the controversy of his 'collusion' with the enemy. But the book attempts to explain his rationale for working with the Japanese, which was for the good of his own people and the poor and defenseless.

After the war, he turned to helping rebuild Singapore society, and in particular sports. He was very generous with his money and time. The Singapore Badminton Halls still stands as a testimony to his effort, amongst many other facilities. Alas his life in politics proved short-lived. He was elected to the Legislative council in 1951 but died in 1954.

This is a simple book. It doesn't dwell into great detail. For example, Dr Paglar was married 4 times, but the circumstances and reasons for his first divorce are hardly mentioned, and the narrative is also silent on his other marital relationships beyond a single sentence that hinted that he had a weakness for women. But otherwise, the book does introduce you to the man and his times in a short read. The other plus about this book is that it is filled with pages and pages of photographs, some of which show society in a now long forgotten era in Singapore's history.

Looking Back

2011-02-07T13:54:00.007+08:00

Many Singaporean's are expecting the General Elections to be held this year. The elections to choose the President of Singapore will be held in August, so the question is whether the GE is before or after that date. Whenever that date will be will be decided by the sitting government, but it appears that Opposition parties are gearing up for this once in a 4-year event to choose the next government. Most expect the siting government to be re-elected. The only question is how many seats will fall to the Opposition, and if a GRC or more will be captured.

A signal event that took place in the last month is the gazetting of the erstwhile community blog, The Online Citizen. Over the years, its has evolved into a sort of Opposition platform, with lots of dissenting views and, in some cases, quite vitriol comments directed at government policies and actions, and personalities. And to do so seems fashionable, as it has always been, and is taken as a badge of the thinking person.

I disagree with some government policies, but there are other policies I agree with. I do not want to hurl any criticism at MM (Minister-Mentor) Lee Kuan Yew. When all is said and done, he, together with his collaborators has lifted Singapore from a third world backwater, neglected by the British for as long as they had been around, to a first world country, so much so that foreigners are making a beeline for its shores. One may point to the dirty politics that he may have played, about muzzling dissent, throwing people into jail for long periods of time using the ISA (Internal Security Act), etc., But it is often conveniently forgotten that he himself was played out several times in the formative years of the PAP when it shared its bed with the Chinese socialist/communists. Then it was either you or me, and anyone with any sense would want to be the one that emerges the victor. Politics, as the PAP continues to emphasize, is not about charity, but might and perhaps, right.

Whether you agree with me or not is of course up to you. But before you jump to any conclusion, it is best if you found out more about how the PAP developed. And for this, I would recommend that you read "Men in White - The Untold Story of Singapore's Ruling Political Party". This is written by a number of journalists. Though they were once employees of the Strait Times, which, though not always so, tended to be sympathetic to the government's cause, they have, in my opinion, been fairly objective in their account of the birth and development of the most dominant, if not the only dominant political party on this island state. But it was never always so, and the account narrates how the PAP nearly disintegrated. Many say that MM Lee had been vicious and vindictive. But these same people never bother to look at the other side of the fence. If they did, they would find others just as "dirty", if not more dangerous, than the MM.

My father voted for the PAP in every election. The workers unions where we grew up came around to harass him because he would not join their cause. They were fighting Lee Kuan Yew. My father believed in hard work, they believe in agitation. He believe in the PAP, and we, his descendants, are enjoying the fruits of that belief in the PAP government.

We must do justice to ourselves to read both sides of the story and then make up our minds instead of parroting others to gain acceptance in a certain circle of opinion makers so as not to appear as 'running dogs' of the government.

Internet Log

2010-12-25T10:14:00.001+08:00

The Internet is certainly the greatest invention in the last century. It is certainly no hyperbole to state that in this century, the 21st, it has already changed people's lives, and the way businesses are conducted. Many accounts of the invention and development of this marvelous platform starts from the early 1990s, when the World Wide Web really became popular. Many mention, rightly, that ARPANET is the precursor and that the US military was one of the main sponsors in its development. But who were the people behind its development? What were their dreams and intentions? How did they envision technology in the future? These are answered in Johnny Ryan's book, "A History of the Internet and the Digital Future". More than this, Mr Ryan goes on to discuss recent phenomenons such as social networking via the internet.

The first part of the book begins with a discussion of the need for a distributed network by the military as far back as the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Cold War was on. Russia and the US were pointing their nuclear missiles at each other. This need, to ensure survival in a MAD world, gained importance, which eventually resulted in the creation of RAND, a think tank formed to advise the US armed forces. It was here that Paul Baran proposed that messages could be transmitted via small "packets" of information rather than the conventional end-to-end transmission method. This single idea, which was also proposed by Donald Davies, underpins and drives the entire internet today. A detailed account is given of the people who developed on this idea, people you may not have heard of unless you are in the scientific community.

In transitioning from these early days to the www of the 1990s, Mr Ryan also recounts the developments that took place in Universities and hobbyist communities that resulted in technologies such as BITNET, FidoNet and for a time, the very popular Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) . This part of the book will be interesting to people who missed out on this transitional phase in the use of communications technologies leading up to the ubiquitous e-mail systems today.

These, really, are the interesting parts of the book.

Mr Ryan goes on, in the second part of the book, to discuss the development of the World Wide Web, stressing a common underlying approach that brought it so much success - the centrifugal/community/social dimensions. The book concludes with Ryan's discussion of the future of the internet, including its use in the political/social arena (e.g. Obama's very successful use of the Internet to reach out to the electorate, and how US candidates for the Presidency have managed to use the medium to gather monetary contributions for the expensive campaigns that characterizes bids for US political office). Topics and issues on Web 2.0 are also discussed. These issues have been covered in numerous books but Ryan has brought the account up to date.

This is a "can't put down book" once you start.

Intel Inside China

2010-10-07T06:28:00.011+08:00

Perhaps to some people, China has now developed into a 7-tonne gorilla, able to push its weight around the world at will. Witness how China is 'buying up Greece'. Certainly China has come a long way since opening up to the world in 1978. Many businesses have rushed into this new 'gold-rush' town, and in the process go themselves burnt or bankrupted. I personally know of one which nearly went under due to its venture in China. Yet there are those which tread carefully and came out the better for it. One of these in Intel.

In "Embedded - Intel in China: The Inside Story", Intel China's once-CEO of 12 years standing, Mr Tan Wee Theng, recounts the careful approach Intel took to establish itself in China. This is not a detailed account of the business operations in China, but a broad sketch of the journey that Intel took going into China. The narrative starts with an explanation of why China was important to Intel, and the gradual establishment of sales offices and the marketing and branding campaigns that followed.

Having tested the waters, more developments followed with the establishment of R&D facilities, and eventually the building of Test and Assembly factories in Shanghai and Chengdu. Intel China's ventures culminated with the building of a wafer fabrication plant in Dalian, China, which is situated in the Northeastern part of the country.

This book highlights the key people who played a significant part in the development of Intel in China. And these people were not just the sales and marketing people, but also people with skills that Intel reckoned were important in doing business in China, including an organisational and cross-cultural specialist who helped to 'integrate Intel's values with the local culture'. This book contains personal reflections of many of the key players mentioned in the book - a feature that makes the narrative that much more interesting.

China is still a very structured society, and this carries over into the business and government arena. There remains specific protocols that one has to observe, such as those that deals with seniority. But one important point that Mr Tan made is to give weight to lower level officials because some of them are likely to rise to the highest levels of government one day.

The author covers issues of 'guanxi', corporate social responsibility, intellectual property and the east-west integration issue, amongst others, but from first hand experience - Intel China's experience. While it may not all be applicable to every company that wants to do business in China - remember that Intel itself is a giant in every sense of the word - the various lessons that are drawn provide good points of reference to one and all. Certainly, students of International Business should read this book.

Lion of the Nation

2010-10-03T07:29:00.002+08:00

Even as I write this review, I received news of the death of Mr Lee Kuan Yew's wife, Mdm Kwa Geok Choo. But what does that have to do with the book, "The Singapore Lion", on the life of Singapore's long-time Foreign Minister, Mr Sinnathamby Rajaratnam? Everything, I suppose, because Mr Lee became a significant part of Mr Rajaratnam's life, and through Mr Lee, Mrs Lee would also have figured greatly too. I am only speculating though because that second part of Mr Rajaratnam's story has yet to be told in Irene Ng's biography of Mr Rajaratnam.

"The Singapore Lion" chronicles the life of one of the founding fathers of modern Singapore, tracing his life from his beginnings growing up in Seremban to the time when Singapore attained merger with Malaya to form Malaysia. Mr Rajaratnam was a Ceylonese Tamil, whose family migrated to Malaysia to escape the poverty of his homeland. His father eventually made well in Seremban, which enabled Mr Rajaratnam to proceed to study Law in London. This book begins with an account of his growing up in Seremban and about the hard life of the rubber tappers which his father supervised. So Mr Rajaratnam has known days of want and observed the lot of the poor. It describes him as a quiet and sensitive person totally devoted to books. He loved books, and he devoured them like a Lion (though this is not why the book is so titled). This is perhaps the single unchanging aspect of Mr Rajaratnam throughout his life. Indeed, it would contribute towards his single ability to weave words into power language in his struggle to build a Singapore according to his ideals.

The book gives much space to his life in London, and especially his interaction with people who believed passionately in communism. The Left Book Club was to be the main vehicle for him to wade into the world of Leftism, where he formed friendships with people of like mind. His own passion about social consciousness in life and society, and his beginning to write on the same eventually led him to abandon his studies in Law, dashing the hopes of his father. As events would have it, the Germans began to bomb London during the Second World War and Mr Rajaratnam, who was not able to make his way back to Malaya, stayed in London, dodging bombs and trying to eck out a living for himself and his Hungarian wife, Piroska.

The second major part of Mr Rajaratnam's life is recounted in his days as a journalist, first with the Singapore Standard and later, the Straits Times. By now, he had begun to agitate for the abolition of British colonial rule. The book describes in great detail his life as a journalist, perhaps because the author, also a journalist, shares with Mr Rajaratnam the love for the word and world of journalism.

A third phase of Mr Rajaratnam's life began when he formed a close association with Mr Lee Kuan Yew in the shared objective of getting rid of the colonial government, and working for an independent Malaya. Mr Rajaratnam had always believed that independence had to mean the integration of Singapore into the then Malaya to form a Malaysian Malaysia, void of racial segregation or any special consideration for one race over another. The idea of equality, regardless of race, language or religion, was his creed, which he fought so valiantly for. Mr Rajaratnam eventually gave up his career as a journalist to become a politician, finding common cause with people like Mr Lee Kuan Yew, and yet able to work with erstwhile communists such as Lim Chin Siong. The book describes Mr Rajaratnam's mighty and valiant hands with words, and how he would make use of his powerful pen (actually his typewriter) to challenge, debunk and defend his ideals and those of the PAP, like a fearless and fearsome Lion, the Singapore Lion.

The book is written in a sympathetic manner, where Mr Rajaratnam failings, if there are any, are explained in the context of the times, the difficulties and challenges. This is not surprisingly as the author has known Mr Rajaratnam both at the professional level and a personal level. Nevertheless, the treatment of his life is both sensitive and factual. It is obvious that much research has gone into the writing of this book.

The Qings

2010-08-25T06:16:00.003+08:00

History is a pet subject of mine, and non more so than about the country of my origin - China. No, I wasn't born there because my parents/grandparents migrated to Singapore in the middle of the last century. And I haven't really found out from either of these 2 parties why exactly they quit China. Perhaps it had something to do with the chaotic situation in China that characterized, so I am given the impression from popular history, much of the the latter part of the Qing dynasty into the Nationalist period after the fall of the Empire. This book doesn't cover all the ground I am interested in, but it does give me a sense of how China 'progressed' towards revolution and thus the birth of modern China.

Mr William Rowe has written a scholarly yet highly readable account of the Qing Empire, from the fall of the Ming dynasty to the 'golden era' of the Qings under its 3 most illustrious and effective Emperors, Qianlong, Yongzhen and Kangxi. Rowe writes extensively about Chinese society under these emperors - the imperial examination system inherited from the previous dynasty and its effect on social stratification, politics, customs and practices. Rowe also covers the period of the 19th century on the arrival and intrusion of the Europeans and Japanese people onto China's soil and highlighting the opening of trade with the 'outside world'. An unfortunate by-product of an otherwise beneficial trade relation resulted in the Opium Wars, and the Taiping rebellion owed its origins to people who embraced, though later, distorted the Christian religion that was brought to its shores by western foreigners such the British and the French. A heart-wrenching (from a Chinese perspective) account of how these foreigners, including Japan, 'bullied' China into ceding precious land and monetary reparations highlighted the overall weakness of the Qing emperors in the latter part of the 19th century.

I am no historian, and I do not know if Mr Rowe's account is revisionist or otherwise. He does cite accounts from earlier sources to evaluate what happened and how, with the hindsight of a 21st century knowledge, long held beliefs about Chinese history during the Qing period could be mistaken. For example, he shows that China expanded its territories significantly under the Qing empire, subjugating much of the foreign tribes and nationalities in North-eastern China (for which China is now paying a price), its annexation of the island of Taiwan, and its tributary control over the Korean Peninsula. Mr Rowe also makes that point that the Qing emperors largely devolved the governance of its far-flung domain to appointed governor-generals working with a hierarchy of local literati-gentry-merchants over the span of its history. This perhaps made its dynastic rule much more manageable from the center. And he does make the point the were it not for the Empress Dowager Cixi and her group of followers, China would have been more unstable in the twilight of its empire.

Finally, Rowe discussed the role of the various people who contributed, either more or less, to the brewing revolutions that eventually toppled the Qing empire in 1911. He quite frankly portrays Sun Yat Sen as a bungling revolutionary and, at best, a representative, though largely symbolic figure, in the overall toppling of the Qing empire and the establishment of the Nationalist government. He makes the point, more than once, that Sun was faraway in Denver, USA, when the revolution in Wuchang succeeded.

This is an absorbing account and will no doubt engage even the non-historian.

Harry's Bar

2010-06-24T09:37:00.005+08:00

I haven't raced through a book as quickly as this one. No, I didn't just skim over it. I pretty much read it cover to cover. You just must appreciate the tight narrative of the book "The Story of Harry's" by current owner, Mr Mohan Mulani. It is concise yet it has managed to bring out the story of home-grown (i.e. Singapore) jazz bar complete with a narrative of its founding by Mr Jim Gelpi, a Louisiana native expatriate in Singapore, the author's involvement, first as a customer, then an investor and ultimately its sole owner. All of which makes for fascinating reading. The author has even slipped in a chapter on his life before Harry's. This account is to lead up to why and how he eventually ended up giving up much of his original business ventures into developing the Harry's business and brand. After all, by his own admission, he is not familiar with the restaurant and bar business, being more experience and having made his fortune in the trading business (consumer electronics products) and in property and real estate investments. The author draws out an important lesson from the failure of this early part of his business ventures, which is to be honest and to honour one's obligations in business.

Against this backdrop, Mr Mulani then narrates the development of Harry's Bar, which is located in Boat Quay. It is still there. He also writes about the key people whom he relied on in the early years to run the business, and the people who regularly came by after a hard day's work in the central business district just a stone's throw away from its Bar on the banks of the Singapore River, including the infamous Nick Leeson who wrecked Barrings. Just as interestingly he has included brief narratives of the many jazz musicians who have played at Harry's over the years. The book is interspersed with pertinent photographs throughout the book that lends intimacy to the stories. The book even has a discussion of the origin and and development of the Harry's well-known business logo.

Within this fascinating story, Mr Mulani has weaved in material one would expect to find only in business books - building up the Harry's chain of bars and restaurants, brand making while expanding the business, and a look into future ventures. There is even a chapter distilling the business wisdom that he had spent a lifetime learning.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a quick but good read. Along the way, you would pick up a gem or two regarding starting and growing a business. But above all, you will get a glimpse into one of the iconic brands in the F&B industry in Singapore.

p.s. If you buy the book, you can claim a free bottle of Harry's Premium Lager upon presentation of the book. Now that's what I call good value for money. This offer is good till April 2011.

Being Just

2010-04-14T18:06:00.002+08:00

I confess, I haven't read a book on such a topic for a long long time. I used to read these category of books when I was much younger, when I had much less commitments, a teenager looking for meaning and devouring ideas that people have taken the time and trouble to pen. Perhaps I was a bit tired of the business and technology and politics/history books that has been my staple for the last 10 to 15 years. So as I nibbled at the book, I was tentative about completing it. Well, the material caught on and I eventually completed the book. This is perhaps a measure of its quality.

In Justice, Michael Sandel discusses the subject of, well, Justice, what doing the right thing means for people past and present. He starts with the Utilitarians, probably best represented by Jeremy Bantam, where the 'right thing' is determined by the weight of alternatives, that that which gives the greatest happiness is the 'right thing'. For example, it is just to tax people and forcibly spread the wealth in a society so that the greatest number attains happiness. The Libertarians differ. Is it not obvious that forcing someone to do something against his will, or on pain of penalty, unjust? They insist that inequality is a fact of life. Whether you are rich or poor, and whether you rise above your poverty, or stay poor, all things being equal, is a matter of personal choice. Thus the libertarians advocate minimal interference from the powers that be in the affairs of men so that freedom prevails. These 2 fundamental philosophies underlie issues of justice and freedom.

Sandel goes on to discuss Immanuel Kant's views on freedom and and introduces morality into the picture. Kant is not easy to understand. I read about him many years ago, and even heard people quote him in public talks, but I have never understood him. Sandel has been able to shed light on Kant's philosophy in this book so I now understand him better. Sandel argues that whether one accepts a particular position on justice, morality and freedom, one cannot ignore one's own context. So the contexts of affirmative action, abortion and the common good, are discussed. Aristotle's thinking on morality and freedom is introduced as a counter-weight against Kant and John Rawl's position. Aristotle insists that one's objectives as opposed to an abstract, in the case of Kant and Rawls, is probably just as important, if not more so, in the final analysis on issues of justice, morality and freedom.

New New Things

2010-04-04T05:56:00.000+08:00

Chock Full of stories - this is the main impression that you are left with after reading half of the book, Upstarts, by Donna Fenn. This book is about the stories of young entrepreneurs in America, how they saw a need, worked out a solution either on their own, or with friends, or with the social crowd (crowd sourcing), typically on the Internet Forums, and became profitable, some wildly so. So if you are looking for examples and case studies on entrepreneurship, particularly of the younger set, this is a good resource. All the examples in this book are about young entrepreneurs in the US, and their business varied from technology startups to publishing. Ms Fenn has helpfully categorized them into Extreme Collaborators, Technology Mavens, Game Changers, Market Insiders, Brand Builders, Social Capitalists, Workplace Renegades, and Morph Masters. Each chapter in the book discusses these categories of enterpreneurs and cites many examples of actual startup businesses, which Ms Fenn dubs 'Upstarts'.

The many examples are fascinating and each provides a lesson or two about starting a business. However, at about the half way marked (of the book), you can't help feeling a bit tired. The stories, while still interesting, get a bit formulaic. So this is probably a book not for reading cover to cover, but a rich resource of case studies and analyses of the many ways and paths and types of ideas and endeavors that can become springboards for successful businesses. Of course Ms Fenn warns what not all businesses succeed, that probably more companies fail than succeed, but the stories of those that failed is just as important as those that succeed. Keep it for a ready reference source.

Fool's Gold

2010-03-31T09:54:00.006+08:00

The worst of the storm seems to have passed, so it is time that people looked back to learn some lessons from the greatest financial meltdown in recent times. Fortunately we have the lessons of the Great Depression 80 years ago to thank. Had it not been for the lessons of that Depression, America would not have put in place certain policies that would prop up the banks and keep capital flowing. They got flak for it, but as it turned out, the US government inadvertently profited from their massive spending of public money as it returned ownership of many banks it acquired a year ago at huge profit.

But why did the meltdown happen in the first place? I suppose this has been written about, dissected, argued in the press, books, TV, the World Wide Web, and any media that is available today. But for me, nothing beats sitting down with a book to learn about the background and history of this financial crisis. One of these is a book written by Gillian Tett - Fool's Gold, in which she recounts how 'unrestrained greed corrupted a dream, shattered global markets and unleashed a catastrophe'. Yes the financial crisis has its roots in investment banks looking for ways to minimise the risks on the loans that they advance to businesses, like the securitization of mortgage loans. They came up with the idea of aggregating such debt and selling them to the consumer, you and I, and enticing us with high interest returns. Bank interest rates has been depressed for a long time now, since the days of ex-Federal Reserve Chairman, Mr Alan Greenspan, so any investment that gave returns of more than 1% is attractive. Of course, the typical interest earned on these debt instruments was considerable higher.

Debt securitization is an accepted and valid method of spreading risks, and according to Ms Tett, that was what some finance whiz in JP Morgan, led by Peter Hancock, did. They created BISTRO - Broad Index Secured Trust Offering, which later, much to Hancock's original team at JP Morgan's concern, morphed in the synthetic collateralized debt obligation, or CDO for short. And so the train of financial engineering and innovation was sparked, but eventually turned for the worst as people threw risks to the wind to reap obscene amounts of money. Risks didn't matter so long as people were willing to buys these CDOs, until some people could no longer continue paying for their houses (they weren't credit worthy to start off with) and the whole deck of CDO cards began to crumble and the shockwave reverberated throughout the globe. Of course this is a highly summarised account of what happened. Much more was happening behind the scenes and this book tries to give an account of these goings on, to explain how the world got into such a financial mess.

As fascinating read indeed.

Burmese History

2009-10-14T14:32:00.006+08:00

Burma (now more commonly known as Myanmar) has been in the news lately because of Ms Aung San Suu Kyi. In fact, it has been on the world's radar ever since Ms Suu Kyi stood for and won the elections back in 1990. Unfortunately, that victory was taken from her by the erstwhile military rulers and she has been in house arrest ever since.

What kind of country is Burma anyway? Why, when its close neighbour and ally, China, has shaken off the shackles of communism, does its military rulers remain intransigent over the handing of power back to the people? So my curiousity was pricked when I chance across a book with the title, "The River of Lost Footsteps - A personal history of Burma". It was a paperback with 388 pages, something that I thought I could sink my teeth into in the limited time that my busy schedule afforded. I was wrong, it took longer than what I had expected to finish it, if only because the content of this book provides some much information through a broad sweep of history of and around Burma since the time of the Sakiyan Prince Abhiraja. 'Around' because the history of Burma cannot be told without mention of India and China, its neighbours to the West and Northeast. In fact, the author, Mr Thant Myint-U, brings in the Thai, the French and the British nations into the narrative because they, at one time or another, shaped and influence the development of Burma.

The book narrates the Burmese Kings, their conquests and their rise, and their eventual demise, to be replaced by another strongman, not unlike the history of most other kingdoms, such as China. The French came in the 1700s, and in the 1800s was displaced by the British colonisers. Burma relationship with China on its Northeast and Thailand on its eastern borders are also covered in this book. All these make for fascinating reading. But the book is not only about ancient history. It covers the period right up to the 1990s where the narrative involves General Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, U Nu its first post independence PM, and even the author's maternal grandfather, U Thant - the Secretary General of the UN in the 1960s. General Ne Win, who started Burma's current militaristic rule has not been left out.

The breadth of the narrative is truly amazing and one would pick up nuggets of history as you read along, and begin to understand the psyche of the Burmese based on its long history. One of the things that struck me is the author's conclusion, based on its history, that political and economic sanctions against Burma will never work because it has been isolated for so long anyway. Rather, Burma needs to be engaged. Hopefully, such engagements will eventually draw the reclusive military regime, through its people, to became an active part of the world community.

The world seems to have begun to realise this.

The best that he could

2009-08-26T06:27:00.003+08:00

Reading a book brought back a lot of memories. Memories of a boyhood home. Fond memories indeed. What book has had that power? "Subhas Anandan - the best I could" is a semi-autobiographic account of Singapore's best known criminal lawyer, Mr Subhas Anandan. This book covers his early life and the criminal cases he has dealt with over his long legal career. What's so interesting in this account? Well, Mr Anandan writes in a simple yet engaging style, shorn of any legalese that might deter anybody except fellow lawyers. Yet this is not what drew me to the book in the first place. After all, the author devotes half of the book recounting cases he has handled - cases that have, in their time, received wide public coverage through the local print and broadcast media.

The reason I picked up the book was because someone else who had read the book told me that he is a Naval Base boy. And so I found out through this book that he lived in the Naval Base workers' quarters, like I did. His father worked for the British, like my father did. And he went to Naval Base school, like where I did. One might wonder why I never realise these earlier, given our shared history. Perhaps it is because because he preceded me by a generation - he had already qualified as a lawyer when I was just in primary school. Or perhaps we only know it now that he has written this book, which was published only at the end of last year, 2008. Whatever the reason, his account of his experiences, places, things and people brought me back to the place - Naval Base - as memories came flooding back. In this sense, I enjoyed the book, but I was wrong about the second part of the book, where he recounts some of the more famous criminal cases he was involved in. Yes, I have read about the cases in the public media, some in great detail, but his account gives the 'inside track' on these cases. They are more personal accounts as he wrote about the criminals themselves, and their motives and drew pithy lessons from each of the cases.

My mother used to say that if nothing, lawyers do one bad thing - they defend criminals. How can one act on behalf of a person who has done wrong, who has cheated, who has maimed and worse, who has killed somebody else? Mr Anandan appears to have addressed these doubts in the pages of this book. And he has more. His experiences in jail, his encounters with fellow lawyers Francis Seow, JB Jeyeratnam, David Marshall, and even the famous playwright, John Mortimer, are absorbing reads. Truly, when you pick up this book, you wouldn't want to put it down until you reach the last page.

To Find a Page

2009-08-10T17:03:00.004+08:00

No one knows how many websites there are in the world today. Some estimates have been attempted in the past. According to a CNN article, dated 1st November 2006, there were 100 million websites with "domain names and content on them". Another research reported 11.5 billion pages as of January 2005 whereas Yahoo reported that it had 19.2 billion documents in its directories in the same year. In February 2007, the Netcraft Web Server Survey reportedly found 108,810,358 distinct websites. The Internet Domain Survey conducted in Jan 2008 reported 541,677,360 host sites that had responded to a ping. If nothing, these numbers, surveys and research tell us that nobody knows exactly how big the world wide web is, let alone the Internet. The exact number is really not that important, except perhaps to those who need to set the million dollar question in "Who wants to be a millionaire" or to trivia buffs. What really is important is whether people who surf the world wide web (www) can find a particular website in the quickest possible time. From the earliest days, Search Engines and Directories, such as Alta Vista, Yahoo, Lycos, etc., were invented to do just that - help people navigate the www to find a particular website. Search engines have become more sophisticated over time. They have become automated. Most search engines today don't so much rely on humans to do the categorizing and listings. Search Engines like Google's employ search bots to crawl the internet and do the indexing of websites, including positioning and ranking the websites it finds, based on some algorithms known only to the Search Engine provider.

But the broad rules that these algorithms implement have been known for quite some time now, which is why many firms can promise to optimize a website such that it appears at the top of search engine result pages. For example, modern Search Engines look at the descriptive title tag, which appears on the upper left border of most internet browsers. It used to give weight to the texts in the meta tags, until some unethical SEO firms abused this by stuffing the meta tags with keywords that were irrelevant to the subject of the website. The process of ensuring that a web page is listed in the first search results page is called Search Engine Optimization (SOE). It is big business in the web for some time now and have grown in tandem with the increasing importance of Search Engines such as Google in web marketing. Shari Thurow has written on this subject again in her book, "Search Engine Visibility" (New Riders Publishing, 2008, 2nd Edition), in which she discusses the subject of SEO and offers many practical examples and methods of optimizing websites to ensure visibility on the search engine's results pages.

She points out that there are 3 major components of search optimization - text component, link component and popularity components and proceeds to discuss, in detail, why these 3 components are so important to SEO and how one might go about implementing these. Along the way, she debunks a few 'urban legends' that are a hold-over from the earlier days of SEO. Shari does not offer any magic bullet. She makes the point that SEO can be hard work, beginning with keyword research. But she also shows how to Yahoo Search Marketing, Google adWords and Microsoft adCenter, amongst others, to determine common keywords used by searchers for a product or service and structure them into the website to optimize the page's visibility in search engines. She also discusses links, which are often embedded in graphics, and how search engines indexes these for searching purposes. Website popularity has to do with external links. While not within the entire control of the website designer, Shari offers practical advice on how to build such externals links through appropriate Web Directory links, reciprocal links, and most importantly, through good original content.

So what's so different about this book compared to the hundreds of them already published? I am afraid I can't compare with other books because this is the only book I have read cover to cover on the subject of SEO so far. But a few things impress me about Shari's book. First, she comes across as sincere, practical and honest about the subject. She doesn't guarantee anything because in SEO, nothing can really be guaranteed. I tend to agree with her. People come up with the rules (the 'algorithm') to place a web page in a particular position. These same people can change these rules tomorrow.

Second, she strikes me as having the experience that makes her discussion and recommendation on the subject credible. She cites examples of one or two of cases where SEO has gone wrong and how they had to be fixed. And she provides checklists of things to ask and steps to take in order to arrive at a desire outcome.

Third, she is clear about what are important, what are secondary and what are useless in SEO, so that users spend time on the really important things that will truly make a difference in putting their sites on top of a search engine result.

Fourth, and probably most important of all, she promotes an ethical approach to SEO. We are all familiar with e-mail spam. Shari points out that many dubious SEO providers engage in Search Engine spam - techniques and methods that seek to put a website up the search result rankings by exploiting the behaviour of the search engines. These include setting up artificial link farms, cloaking, doorway and gateway pages, free-for-all (FFA) websites as well as keyword stuffing and stacking, amongst others. She points out that some of these may have worked in the past, but that search engine providers such as Google have responded to these instances of abuse by changing their algorithms to, for example, give less priority to keywords in meta-tags - a technique much touted in the past to gain visibility in search results. Shari devotes an entire section in the book discussing the dos and don'ts of SEO, which is important for, as Shari points out, abusing Search Engines can lead to the website being blacklisted.

This an excellent book if you want to learn how to promote your website on Search Engines effectively and ethically. It is also an eye-opener on the design of Search Engines today and what are important and what are peripheral in any consideration of Search Engine behaviour. I recommend this book highly.

Blog log

2009-08-09T06:14:00.001+08:00

I have been blogging since 24 July 2005. Not a long time and certainly not the longest time. Blogs, as a genre, started appearing as early as 1998/1999. At that time, I thought little about it. I thought it was nothing more than a platform for a person's personal diary. I was more interested in constructing the next big web site then.

But simple things have a way of taking on a life of its own, blogs included. By the time I started blogging in 2005, there were already millions penning their thoughts, their lives and their rants on platforms such as Blogger.com, Movable Type, LifeJournal and Wordpress. Today, I am still blogging, though not at the rate I used to. But I am still keenly interested in the ever changing blogging technologies out there. So when I came across the reasonably thin book (its 207 pages long), "What no one ever tells you about Blogging and Podcasting" by Ted Demopoulos, I was intrigued.

The book is organised into 101 bite-sized chapters of no more than 2 pages long. Each chapter focuses on a particular topic or tip, some of which are familiar while others are new - even to one who has blogged for that last 4 years. It is a book that you can get through very quickly. You skim those chapters which you are familiar with, and dwell on those chapters which has more to say to you. I have tried to read some books on blogging and gave up 2 chapters into these books as I found them heavy going. Those books are probably suitable for those doing research on blogging. This book, on the other hand, is for those who want to do it and get on with it. The good thing about the book is it covers podcasting and, to a lesser extent, videocasting. I am not familiar with Podcasting, so that was were I spent more time on the book. But I have found new things to learn in the chapters on blogging too.

The 101 chapters cover a wide range of topics on blogging and podcasting, from the basics to the use of blogging/podcasting in business, making money (or not), promoting your blogs and extracting statistics on how your blog is performing - quite a plateful, I must say, but easy to read and get through. My only minor complaint is that it has some typo in the texts, which lowered my perception of the quality of the book. I wouldn't go out to buy it (sorry), but if you can find it in the library, or if your friend already has it, it is probably worth a read. However, to each his own. Maybe it should sit in your library, for that instance when you want to find out what more you can do with your blog.

Black Coffee

2009-07-06T06:32:00.002+08:00

Black Gold - something you'd associate with oil at the first instance. But Antony Wild has used the same phrase, aptly it appears, to point to coffee as black gold. At first, it is not obvious, because coffee, and indeed most other cash crops, hasn't always yielded obscene riches to people who grow them. The prices of coffee goes up and down according to worldwide market supply and demand. Mr Wild suggests other reasons, particularly, for the low prices of coffee.

As a coffee trader of more than 10 years (he took over the family business) and a sometime historian of the same, Mr Wild would be qualified to write about coffee's origins (in Ethiopia) and development as a beverage. In this book, "Black Gold - A Dark History of Coffee", he traces the beginnings of coffee and the development of the beverage derived from the coffee beans among the Arabs since the 1200s. Much of the information will be new to the average reader, given the esoteric nature of the subject. One would normally read of the rise and fall of civilizations rather than the development of a humble bean. Yet Wild's narrative encompasses both - of how people, cultures and conflicts interacted with this cash crop in the transmission and clash of civilizations. As expected, Wild discusses the various strains of coffee beans and offers his take on the relative value of each strain, the principal locations where they are found, and its propagation, particularly into the new world of Central and South America. Along with this narrative, Wild injects a lot of social and political commentary. He spent no small part of the book discussing Napoleon Bonaparte's exile on the island of St Helena and the coffee that probably converted him into a regular coffee drinker where once he advocated chicory, a coffee substitute, for his European empire.

Coffee appears to have spread globally through the slave trade, from Africa to Europe, and to Central and South America, perpetrated by the Spanish, Portuguese, European and British colonialists, both to the East and West Indies via their Navies, and in the case of the British, via the East India Company. Wild is highly critical of the use of slaves and slave labour for the propagation of the beverage. His commentary on the evils of the oppressive ways of the colonialists can be uncomfortable reading for some who have been brought up on generous doses of the adventure and heroism of these voyages of discoveries in the 14th to 18th centuries. He continues to lambast the neo-colonialists, sans slavery, in the 20th century, who did no better in its use of low cost labour and low coffee prices to reap huge profits for itself. Starbucks is mentioned as one example of how big corporations reap their great profits at the expense of the pittance that people who actually farm the coffee beans receive. Wild also discussed the coffee industry in Central and South America before turning his attention to Vietnam and Timor in the East.

This book discusses coffee - the beans, the roasting techniques, such as espresso, and, in Wild's opinion, the quality and desirability of each type of coffee. But it also discusses the darker part of the development of coffee by commenting on the people and their means of propagating and profiting from the bean. The former was enlightening, but the latter can make for uncomfortable reading at times.

Tweet Now

2009-05-30T17:17:00.006+08:00

Twitter is the rage nowadays, and as usual, I am late to the game. Yeah, an early adopter I am not, and still a lagard with the newest new thing on the internet. Well, Twitter isn't all that new, really. It has been around for more than 2 years. At one point, it was teetering on collapse, with a lot of bad user feedback on its responsiveness, or lack of it. Today, it still has issues, although it is being overlooked by many because of the sheer popularity of the platform.

So what do I do whenever a new popular thing comes along? I pick up a book to read all about it. In this case, I read to learn how to promote my blog by expanding my community of readers. When I came across the book, "Twitter Power - How to dominate your market One Tweet at a Time", by Joel Comm, I borrowed it and read it from cover to cover. In the process, I fast-forwarded my grasp of Twitter, which was great because in these internet days, speed is of the essence. You just don't have the time to figure out the great stuff all on your own. You need somebody who is been there, done that, and then some, to kickstart you.

Well, this book has certainly kicked me with lots of ideas and I am off to a running start. Yep, I am on twitter.com/epilogosing now, although I must admit that I have, till now, a grand total of 1 tweet to my account. That's because I am encountering problems with getting the background changed. And, I discovered, Twitter actually has an unresolved bug here. But hey, I expect these problems to be ironed out in time. Only I hope it doesn't take too long.

But back to the book. What I like about it is that you get a lot of tips on how to do a lot more with 140 words or less. Joel discusses how he, and other Twitterers, have used Twitter to promote their products, and their blogs online. One of the most useful tip for me was how to and why to change the background. Joel also goes into some length discussing branding issues and how one should go about doing it. His common refrain? Marketing yourselve and your business through Twitter will take time, he says, so one has to be patient. That's pretty disappointing advice to anyone who wants to make his million before he is 30, but to me, it makes sense. His point is that this platform should be treated with respect, that you can't keep throwing marketing messages at twitterers ad nauseam. Instead of winning a following, which is key in Twitter, you'd hemorrhage followers.

There's a ton of interesting tools that are out there in Twitter-verse to fill in the gaps that Twitter, by its very nature, has. For example, how do you schedule a twitter message, how do display pictures with your tweets, how to keep track of popular tweets...? Joel ends the book discussing some obligatory legal stuff so you don't get into trouble. This is standard fare, so you can skip this chapter, really. Joel can be ponderous, but on the whole, its an easy book to read with lots of things to pick up.

Profit with people

2009-05-02T16:50:00.006+08:00

Sam Wyly? Never heard of him. Is he related to that famed Warner Brothers cartoon character, Wily E. Coyote? Well, yes, if you consider that both live in Texas. But no, because the first is immensely rich while Wily continues to pursue the Road Runner and gets its head smashed in a desert rock.

Sam Wyly, as I only recently read about, is a serial entrepreneur who started businesses such as University Computing, Sterling Software and took over the running of Bonanza Steakhouse, amongst many successful commercial ventures. The first I have never read about, but I know the second and third businesses. He was a millionaire by the time he was 30 years old. Today, he is 70 something and a billionaire. Now why did he fall under my reading radar all these years, when even his compatriot and friend, Ross Perot, is so much more well known, though not necessarily more wealthy? I really don't know. But I am glad I made his acquaintance through his autobiographical book, "1,000 Dollars and an Idea". I would normally not pick up any book that boasts about getting rich or how to do so. Not that I don't want to but I am realistic. Let's just say it isn't in my genes to become one - financially rich, i.e., though Mr Wyly might disagree. It was those technology companies mentioned in the jacket of the book that interested me.

The book recounts Mr Wyly's rags to riches story, of how he exploited, legally of course, opportunities that came along to enable him to build companies that made lots of money. And doing so with hardly enough money of his own in the bank. Would-be entrepreneurs could learn a thing or two on how he did it. He is a person of his times, when computers (NOT personal computers) were becoming important. Is it any surprise that he cut his teeth with Tom Watson Sr and Jr while working as a salesman in IBM? His story is a fascinating one, as he recounts how he started companies, built them, then sold them, acquired others, sometimes through leveraged buyouts, and accumulated wealth in the process. Of course, he did lose money along the way, lots of it, and he failed to realise some of his ideas, or dreams, but he is sanguine about it. One has to be patient and it will pan out. They did, most of the time, i.e.

One of the things that I took away from this account is the importance of people in your lives, and how it is important to identify them, trust them, get them to work for you, nurture them and share the rewards with them. That is probably one of the keys to his success. The other is the lesson of creative destruction - to know when to quit, when to exit a business. Many hold on to their babies, see them grow up and old, and die.

Not so Mr Wyly's approach. He does not seem to be sentimental about any company he has formed. Instead, he is sentimental about the people who took the journey with him forming these companies. As it turned out, he was right many times and profited from those decisions, some in the nick of time. Some would say he has a good sense of timing. Others would say it is just dumb luck. Whichever way, he made his fortune with an eye for opportunity and, shall I say, a lot of daring.

Debunking Enterpreneurship

2009-04-01T09:12:00.009+08:00

The world is in recession right now, deeper than any since the Great Depression of the 1930s, so every conceivable media is reporting. Unemployment has hit record highs, with many people thrown out on the streets because they can no longer pay their mortgages. Many in the US are living no differently from those in 3rd world countries, who call a tent, or a 'house' built from 5 wooden planks stringed loosely together their home. It is heartwrenching, but what can these people do? They can probably do one of three things:

Live on government (or any charitable) dole
Do odd-jobs (if any are available, i.e.)
Start their own business

Starting their own business looks like the best way to 'get up and going' and not wallow in self-pity. And that is really what happens in a recession, or at least when jobs are few and far between. Statistics from the past have shown that this is what the unemployed do. But statistics have also shown that most such businesses (if not all) are bound to fail. Don't ask me, ask Prof Scott Shane, a professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at the Weatherheard School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. He has written the book, "The Illusion of Entrepreneurship", in which he debunks popular myths about Entrepreneurship.

And what are some of these myths?

The US isn't one of the most entrepreneurial countries in the world. Countries such as Peru and Uganda are more entrepreneurial (page 28)
Most entrepreneurs don't select the most profitable industries, but instead pick industries with highest firm failure rates (page 38)
Psychological factors account for very little of the difference between enterpreneurs and other people...(page 61)
...The typical start-up is very ordinary, not-very-innovative, home-based business that starts and stays tiny (page 76)

Prof Shane goes on to list a total of 67 such 'busted myths and key realities' in this book. And he does not do so with bald assertions, as many who write management books do. In all instances, he appeals to authoritative statistics and studies collected and conducted in the past. The book has 33 pages of notes citing references and authorities. It certainly corrected many perceptions that I have held before. For example, that getting an education will help, not hinder, one's performance as an entrepreneur (myth #50 - page123). The adage to study hard and get a good education continues to hold true. Another important point he made was that public policy towards enterpreneurship (and by extension, schools teaching entrepreneurship) should not blindly support any and all types of start-ups. He asks a question towards the end of the book:

Between a high school dropout entrepreneur who starts a personal cleaning business and a former Microsoft employee of 15 years of experience with an MBA starting an internet company, which is more likely to succeed?

The answer may or may not surprise you, but this question goes to the heart of message of this book - that most enterpreneur fail, but there are some with particular characteristics that will do well. Read the book to find out.

KFC in China

2008-12-18T14:55:00.010+08:00

Years ago, as part of a Masters degree course, I read the book, "The Burger King" by Jim McLamore, about the founding and development of the Burger King QSR (Quick Service Restaurant, more popularly known as Fast Food Restaurants) chain store. It was a fascinating story, by any accounts. So a few weeks ago, when I came across the brand new book, "KFC in China", I just had to pick it up to read, if only to compare the experiences of these two giants of the QSR industry. Strangely though I have never picked up the numerous similar books on MacDonalds, arguably the most successful of these QSRs. But there was another thing about this KFC book that drew my attention: China. This promised to be a fresh and potentially unusual and different account of a QSR's development, outside of its domicile. I wasn't disappointed.

"KFC in China" is written by Mr Warren K Liu, Vice President of Business Development at Tricon Greater China until the early 2000s. Tricon was a spin-off of PepsiCo and focused on the food business. KFC, Taco-Bell and Pizza Hut are the better known brands under its wings. In this book, Liu traces the start of KFC in China, in 1987, through the enterprise of the "Taiwan Gang" - seasoned veterans in KFC Taiwan. Surprisingly, they preceded MacDonalds in this venture. In quick succession, he relates the development of the KFC restaurant business in China, going over issues of staffing, business strategy, partnerships with the local Chinese and its government and touching somewhat on issues of corruption.

This book also goes into detail about how KFC in China developed its 'DNA' through the siting of its HQ in Shanghai (rather than Hong Kong, which MacDonalds did), relating its product and marketing strategies, supply chain issues as it expanded, first along the coastal regions of China and subsequently westward into more remote parts of China. As with MacDonalds, KFC also acquired real estate as it established new restaurants. Along the way, Liu makes comparisons with the way the KFC has done things and the (different) way that MacDonald's has approached its business in China. It suggests that KFC's approach is one that suited China more than MacDonalds'. The book then goes on to discuss how the operations in KFC were established, the localization and globablisation issues and headquarter support. It ends with an analysis of the model, Liu suggests, that has brought success to KFC in China - Leadership with Chinese characteristics - and the inevitable speculation of what lies ahead. Liu also suggests and provides an analysis using KFC China's experience how certain modes of operations (e.g. decentralisation, centralisation) suited different stages of development in a Business.

This book can be as dry as any Business Management book on an academic's shelf. One gets the impression that Liu wants to avoid singling out real people for mention in his book. Very often, he leaves out the identity of the person, even though that person, in his account, has contributed significantly to the business. For example, Liu mentions a person who has contributed tremendously to KFC China's development with Joint Venture partners, but declines to identify him by name. This makes the account almost impersonal and gives the feeling that one is reading either an academic theses or a textbook, or both. He did make an exception towards the end of the book when he described in greater detail the work of Sam Su, the head of Tricon Greater China, as well as Roger and Elaine - husband and wife to each other - but working in the same department to illustrate how Sam, and KFC China, dealt with issues of close relatives working together.

Yes, in spite of the general absence of personal references and 'inside' stories, I have enjoyed reading the book. This is because Liu writes in a succinct style, allowing him to cover a wide range of topics in a relatively thin 200-page paperback book. What I especially liked was his summary of the book towards the end. For someone who may have taken a 'start-stop' route while reading the book. it does bring together rather nicely, a reminder of what has been covered.

A Life Apart

2008-11-21T14:37:00.020+08:00

Participation in the virtual world has taken increasing pace in the last few years. Originally, these worlds belong to the geeky, such as those that live on Ultima Online, etc. But now, with virtual worlds offered by a slew of them - Electronic Arts (The Sims Online - TSO), Linden Labs (Second Life), Blizzard Entertainment (World of Warcraft), Nintendo (the cartoonish but no less absorbing Maple Story) and probably the latest by Google (Lively.com), one is spoilt for choice. And not all are geeky any more.

For example, TSO is about as geeky as a tomato. It hosts communities of people who would replicate their lifes on planet earth, from the owning of homes to going out to parties to having sex - any kind of sex. Why am I not surprised? Because morals are almost non-existent in these virtual worlds. God didn't create them, man did. And who wants to talk religion when you are having fun? So it wouldn't take long before a curious Avatar - a virtual person in the virtual world with a real life in the real world - would start reporting about virtual worlds instead of just living in it. One Peter Ludlow, erstwhile a University Professor, started the Herald in the world of TSO, taking on the Avatar identity of Urizenus. He would eventually migrate to Second Life, a virtual environment that offered more capabilities and features.

The Second Life Herald chronicles his experience in these virtual worlds through the Herald. The account starts with life on TSO. As the Avatar, Uri, he roams TSO and reports on the various activities going on - such as virtual governments and the griefers and gangs that these governments have to deal with. As he encounters iconic characters that populate TSO, he discusses his encounters with them. The book also has a chapter or two on the sex scene in TSO, which makes for fascinating reading. The Herald is a 'tell-them-as-it-is' online virtual journal in TSO. So there were sometimes un-complimentary things that came out of it, things that can offend. Perhaps the biggest mistake that Urizenus made was to question the fairness of the masters of TSO - EA (Electronic Arts) - over issues of justice. What if someone in the virtual world has a valid grievance - for example - some other virtual character inflicting an injustice on another? Should the creators of the virtual world not intervene to restore justice? Urizenus' argument is that avatars, voluntary and willing participants in the virtual world though they may be, may have invested so much emotion and money into the virtual world that stopping play in virtual worlds was not a viable option at all. Therefore there must exist a set of rules that are consistently enforced to protect players. Often times, the powers that be - the creators and controllers of the games - can be biased and unfair. And he makes the same observation about life on Second Life, which he joined after he got kicked out (erased) from TSO.

Truth be told, I am not a fan of virtual worlds. The first time I entered the virtual world of Google's Lively.com, I was flipped and thrown to the floor when all I wanted to do was just say 'Hello' to the Avatar who flipped me. No, I am not a whimp, just that I cannot find the time that these virtual worlds demand of my (other) time in the real world. Not so the young. They are taking to virtual worlds like fish to water, unable and unwilling to tear themselves away from the computer which they spend hours on end. This book explains why this is so. Coming from a person that inhabits these worlds and reports on it since the early 2000s, you would be convinced that there is much truth in what he says.

But don't let me report everything. Read the book.

I am Muslim

2008-06-10T16:12:00.012+08:00

I can identify with many of the contexts that Ms Dina Zaman wrote about - the Malays, their practices, their culture and their taboos. I could also identify with the practising Malay Muslim for I made many Malay Muslim friends while studying through the Singapore school system. These, and more, are recorded in this somewhat autobiographical account of the author's life in Malaysia and her encounters as a journalist.

Although a Muslim herself, she never stops to question the many contradictions that runs through the lives and loves of the Malay/Muslims that she encounters in the course of her work, which includes investigative journalism. It makes for amusing reading. But the book is quite uneven and slightly disjointed - a 'theme' does not run through it, and perhaps it is to be expected. The book, I am Muslim, is after all, a collection of Ms Zaman's writing for the news media over a period of time. You can think of it as a collection of blog entries - bite-size chunks of reminisces, opinions and sometimes very irreverent remarks. A search of the Internet showed that the author did start a blog, but abandoned it all too soon. So this is perhaps the only published collections of her writings available to the reading public as of today. You need a paid subscription to Malaysiakini to access her other work.

This book really comes alive from the section "Sex within Islam". No, don't get me wrong. I am not a sex pervert nor a closet reader of Playboy magazine. I do not have suppressed sexual fantasies nor am I a serial stalker. I just enjoyed the way that Ms Zaman wrote this section on taboo subjects in Islam - like sex (yes, in some puritanical sections of the Muslim/Muslim community, sex is a dirty word). The Malay tudung is probably the least sensual of clothes on planet earth today. I remember reading somewhere that a woman's hair is her crowning glory - something that really literally can make heads turn. Yet some Muslims believe in covering it up. Well, to each their own. She also writes about homosexuality and romance (not that these necessarily go together) within the Muslim community and how, as in most societies, it is still very much 'under the hood'. But she had the opportunity of encountering people of these various orientation and interests and I am glad she was brave enough to write about them. In the process, she has enlightened me.

Not that I agree with her at all, I often find her expression of bewilderment, well, bewildering. It appears that Islam does not have the answers to the tough questions she dares to ask, even after consulting her religious mentors. But she is adamant in keeping the faith - a very large leap of the faith indeed. After this section on sex, the book pretty much reverts to the form before. It gets disjointed again, peppered with anecdotes of one sort or another, and it would take all of my will to finish the book. You can tell that I am not too keen on gossip. Its just that a meandering book just cannot hold me for long. It is a wonder that it has sat on my reading shelf for so long. Time to return it to the library.

eBay Redux

2008-04-22T15:18:00.009+08:00

eBay has been around since before the heady dot.com days. With Yahoo, it is probably one of the more well-known survivors of the dot-com boom days. eBay has grown leaps and bounds over the years, facilitating ordinary people like you and me in selling off some of our not-so-prized collections and also in buying hard-to-come-by stuff that is either out of production/print or has found its end-of-life with someone else. Indeed, eBay has grown from just a place to auction stuff to a place to set up an online store selling brand new first-hand products. Much has been written about the portal, about how to use it, about how to make more money through it, about it, and all. So I was intrigue to find the brand new book, "Tricks of the eBay Business Masters" on a library shelf. What has Michael Miller, the author, to tell us that we do not already know from the many books already written on the subject?

Well, the title does give an indication. This book collates the wisdom of people (the masters) who have made use of the eBay portal to run successful businesses. Michael doesn't so much preach as he shows how actual businesses have thrived on certain best-eBay-practices. In several 'eBay Business Profiles' (Case Studies), he describes how actual businesses evolved to an online eBay store that complemented their brick-and-mortar operations to businesses that exist solely on the eBay. Words of wisdom from these successes are concisely documented, which will be of much interest to people who already have an eBay business going, but would like to do better, or for aspiring e-Bayers looking to start selling instead of merely trading.

The part I find most interesting is the discussion of various free tools, such as eBay Marketplace Research, eBay Pulse, etc, provided by eBay and others that will help analyse search trends and understand past auction patterns and behaviour. These tools probably can make a difference between dead stores and profitable stores.

While this book has a 'recipe look' about it, it is recipe worth reading. As this book is quite new (published in 2008), the formula in the recipe has been updated to give the reader something new to learn out of the 101 tips and tricks listed.

I recommend this book highly.

By the way, if you haven't heard the eBay song, you simply must. Its so infectious. It should be nominated for an Emmy. And there are several incarnations of it. Enjoy!

Teacher Man

2008-04-01T13:34:00.013+08:00

Frank McCourt is not easy to read. I 'suffered' through his Angela's Ashes more than a decade ago and never returned to him until this year when, on the advice of a wise man, took up his third book, Teacher Man.

I remember trudging through Angela's Ashes because the story, his story, was so depressing. The book recounts McCourt's growing up in Limerick, Ireland and the psychological scars he acquired through the many downs he encountered. He was to mention these again in Teacher Man to similar feelings of depression. In Teacher Man, he added depressing accounts of his start in the teaching profession, of how the schools he started with had students who had no great interest in studying. And McCourt was depressingly frank - he wrote that he didn't know what to do with these students, or how to teach them. It would have been uplifting if he had written of how he faced the odds in the classroom and overcame them. But he didn't overcome the odds, it just got too tiresome. He eventually left for another school - a community college, where the students were older and more mature and probably more willing to learn. It didn't last either because he only had a Master's degree. The school could only offer him a position if he had planned on getting a PhD. So he returned to a teaching position in a Vocational School, but this lasted only 5 months before he was 'forced out'.

When I started out with the book, I wasn't expecting so much 'failure' in the book. I had expected this to be an inspirational book, but for 2/3 of the book, it was not to be found - even in his recounting of his attempt at a PhD in Trinity College, Dublin. But he does keep the narrative interesting by describing some of his students and their antics, and related some of this to his early days in New York, after he came over from Ireland. To me, the narrative starts to sparkle when he join his last school, Stuyvescent High School. before he retired. It is here that he came into his own as an innovative and effective teacher of creative writing. It is not surprising that he eventually put pen to paper himself and produced his autobiographical trilogy - the award-winning Angela's Ashes, Tis! and Teacher Man.

In this book, and his earlier one (I have not read Tis! though), he brings a depressing honesty to his narrative, calling a dog a dog, and not fudging at his failings. At least, that is my impression. And he does have some gems in the book on what teaching is about, and how he developed as a teacher. This is a very interesting book (although somewhat dated), but if you consider teaching an evergreen profession, then you can do nothing better than read his account of teaching and learning. Just for forewarned - you need to be patient to be inspired here.

Postscript:

Frank McCourt Dies at 78

Frank McCourt Dies - other news sources

Outlaws of the Marsh

2007-11-19T09:20:00.003+08:00

Every great civilization has them. The English have the Shakespearean plays - tragedies, histories and comedies. Today, these are studied in schools and form the basis for attaining competency in English Literature. This is true not only in the Bard's native land, but also in many of Great Britain's former colonies, especially those that have made English an important part of the national language competency. Singapore is one of these.

The Chinese have their own literary classics. The most popular and widely read are the four great classical novels: Three Kingdoms, A Dream of Red Mansions, Journey to the West and Outlaws of the Marsh. Every child in a Chinese household would likely have heard of or read, by age 10, about the naughty monkey that is Sun Wu Kong in Journey to the West and Wu Song the tiger killer in Outlaws of the Marsh. These classics have in turn been made into movies, such is the popularity of the material contained in them.

However, how many Chinese outside of China can claim to have read any or all of these 4 classics in their entirety in the original language? I haven't, and probably never will. So I am doing the next best thing - read these in their entirety in the English translations. I have completed Three Kingdoms, and have just completed the 3-volume Outlaws of the Marsh. That's 2 down, 2 to go. But more about the Outlaws of the Marsh.

This novel was written in the 13th century AD during the Ming Dynasty by Shi Nai'an and Luo Guan Zhong (who also wrote Three Kingdoms). A complete translation in the English language by Sidney Shapiro is available as a 3 or 4-volume set (depending on the specific edition). It is this translation that I spent the last month or so reading. The story revolves around a growing group of bandits who took residence in Liangshan Marsh, an inaccessible, water-bound mountain that became the scourge of the Song Emperor and his corrupt officials for more than 3 years.

The story tells of how various people - weapons instructors, military officials including Generals, and even a clerk, came to take refuge in Liangshan Marsh. Throughout the first part of the epic, the recurrent theme revolves around how people were forced to commit crimes against corrupt officials, which eventually drove them to take refuge in the Marsh. Some were tricked into joining the bandits in Liangshan Marsh. Yet others, mainly Generals defeated in battle by the bandits, joined the bandits because they couldn't face their corrupt civilian masters. The characters and circumstances in this classic are varied enough to provide hours of suspense as the stories unfold. Some plots were predictable. An example is how Song Jiang, the eventual leader of the Liangshan bandits, made it a habit to recruit people who his bandit brothers defeated in battle. It didn't always sit well with his brother bandits who had expended much energy defeating them, but, as the novel suggests, it was destined that the full complement of bandits reach 108. Song Jiang must claim credit for attracting good, skillful and intelligent men AND women into banditry.

But of course, these bandits made it a point of robbing only the rich. They left the poor and needy alone. In fact, they often provided for them. They were the Robin Hoods of China. Incredibly both stories -of the bandits of Liangshan Marsh and the robbers of Sherwood Forest, were written between the 11th and 13th Century AD, barely two hundred years apart. However, there is probably more blood and gore in the Chinese novel - something that I wasn't too comfortable with. One of its most violent protagonists, the Black Whirlwind Li Kui, killed without blinking an eye (as the Chinese would say). Of the 108 bandits, he was probably its most effective when it came to killing people - both the good and the bad. This quality, however, was put to great effect in some of the more difficult battles that Song Jiang's outlaw army had to fight.

In the end, many of these 108 outlaws were to die under various, and might I say, honourable, circumstances. Don't jump to last the volume to find out about this. It is best to start from the beginning and let the story unfold gradually. This novel will give you hours of suspense.

Three Kingdoms

2007-09-17T07:08:00.006+08:00

It took me about 2 months, interrupted by living and working, to finish the 3-volume unabridged translation of this Chinese classic by Moss Roberts. This is an excellent translation. In particular the Chinese poems and verses that litter the entire book have been rendered very well in English. Being a Chinese, I could sense the Chinese 'flavour' and spirit in these translations. Besides the main text, Moss Roberts, who is a Professor of Chinese at New York University, has included substantial footnotes and a scholarly essay on the "Three Kingdoms" book, discussing its origins, its history and development as well as the many versions of "Three Kingdoms".

But on to the "Three Kingdoms". This is a part history, part novel of the period of Chinese history between AD 190 to 280. The novel begins with the corruptive influence of the Eunuchs at the Han Court, which would bring the Han Dynasty to an end. It begins with the 'blood-bonding' of the 3 main characters of the book at the Peach Garden - Liu Bei, Zhang Fei and Guan Yu (referred to in the book as Lord Guan).

The country was eventually divided into 3 Kingdoms. The first was formed by Cao Cao, who founded the Kingdom of Wei in the North through the usurpation of the Han Empire. Cao Cao never became Emperor, though. His son, Cao Pi was its first emperor.

The second was formed by Sun Jian's descendents - Sun Ce and then Sun Quan. They occupied the Southlands, which eventually became the Kingdom of Wu. The third Kingdom was founded by Liu Bei (aka Liu Xuande) who occupied the Western Riverlands and formed the Kingdom of Shu. The story's progress from the weakening of the Han court to the formation of the Kingdoms took a long time in the novel's narrative as the author, Luo Guan Zhong, fleshed out the characters and events of the times. The stories are gripping, especially when Zhuge Liang appeared in the story. Surprisingly for such as major character in the story and in Chinese folklore and history, he didn't appear till the second third of the novel.

Only when Zhuge Liang, or more often referred to as Kongming in the novel, appear did the fortunes of the virtuous Liu Bei improve. It is exciting to read of the many strategies employed by Kongming in winning almost every battle that he fought with Cao Cao, Sun Quan and Sima Yi. The only one that he lost - at Jieting - was due to insubordination rather than poor strategy. While characters like Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Kongming were real historical figures, the novel does give them, especially Kongming, supernatural powers to predict future events and control nature's elements of wind and water. It even has the dead Lord Guan, a fictional character in the novel, appear as a Ghost to help his second son, Guan Xing, win a battle.

The novel contains enough betrayal and deception, war, masterful strategies, human weaknesses and heroism, and characters who are larger-than-life to keep one enthralled throughout the entire narrative. It used to be that such characters as Zhuge Liang, Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Zhang Fei and Guan Yu appeared in stories on radio quite often. I remember my father listening to stories on the radio about these characters during his lunch break from work back in the late 1960s. But I could never really understand nor place them within a specific context or a historical time period, until now.

After reading this book, I understand better when people refer to these heroes and villains. Perhaps the only thing I didn't quite like about the stories was the constant narratives of wars and battles. It seems that Politicians and Generals in those days did nothing but fight each other either in self-defence, expand the empire or regain it. The only creative things that came out of the stories were the inventions of the Martial Lord Kongming. Even then, these brilliant inventions were for war.

This cycle of war never really ended even when the Kingdoms were eventually reunited. Dynastic China continued to cycle through a string of emperors, strong in the beginning, weakening at the end to be swallowed up by another, which would then form the next dynasty. Brilliant as Kongming was, he used his fertile and creative mind to restore and sustain a failed dynasty - the Han. Liu Bei's son, Liu Shan, who was put into Kongming's protective care, and for which he staged so many battles, was eventually to degenerate into a women-and-wine-loving emperor, hardly worthy of the loyalty and dedication of one of China's most brilliant military strategist.

This is a really good book, especially if you need a translated version.

Old Chinese Classics

2007-09-16T05:08:00.000+08:00

I am an ethnic Chinese but has been schooled in English all my life. My mother-tongue is Chinese and I learnt Chinese as a second language. Though I take tremendous pleasure in reading, I have never thought of reading Chinese language books as pleasurable. The reason is that I would be plodding along and skipping words and thus, meaning, because I may not recognise the Chinese characters and phrases. This handicap has restricted my access to the many Chinese language books that are published and its Chinese social, cultural and historical thought. As a Chinese, that was and remains a great loss. So imagine my delight, as I was passing through Beijing Capital Airport to find full English translations of the Chinese classics "Three Kingdoms", "Outlaws of the Marsh", "A Dream of Red Mansions" and others being sold. Actually, I shouldn't be surprised as, after all, the bookstore is in Beijing Airport, which catered to the travelers' interests in China and the Chinese.

You might be surprised at my 'discovery' for surely, such books are available in metropolitan Singapore, especially where roughly 70% of its inhabitants are ethnic Chinese? But truth be told, I have never been able to find a full translation of these books in the more popular bookstores, not even Popular Bookstore - a bookstore that began its business selling Chinese language books. The best there was were books written in the graphic style (think comics), and thus were abridged versions. I suppose if one looked hard enough, one would find them sold in some obscure bookshop. Strangely, I never looked up the public libraries. In any case, I bought the "Three Kingdoms" for RMB130, which is roughly S$26. This particular translation came in three volume hardbacks. I also put my money down on the 3-volume hardback "Outlaws of the Marsh" at a similar price. It was really a bargain. Considering that the same "Three Kingdom" books cost US$40, before shipping, on Amazon.com, it was a steal. So when you next in Beijing Capital Airport, be sure to drop by the bookshop (sorry, I did no notice its name) for these invaluable translations of the Chinese classics at bargain prices.

But why buy anyway? Because the stories in these books are gripping...

A Mitsubishi Lifer

2006-11-26T13:16:00.000+08:00

Once in a while, you'd come across a book which you couldn't place your finger on, which genre it belonged to, why such a book was ever written in the first place, and what the publisher was thinking of in terms of making money out of publishing it. Well, "The Blue-eyed Salaryman" is just such as book. It is a story about a westerner (an Irish, actually) who spent his earlier years travelling the world over and yet ended up as a paid employee - a salaryman - in one of Japan's largest conglomerates. Yet, the author is not recounting any significant achievement worthy of an inspiring lesson, or about an unusually unique life that would make people sit up.

Yes, he is unusual in that he was the first westerner to reach the manager-class in a Japanese MNC - Mitsubishi to be precise - in Japan, not in a branch of the conglomerate located in Europe or America. He gained his PhD in Japan, joined Mitsubishi under local terms, married a Japanese and, last recounted, is raising his family in Osaka, Japan. Not something inspiringly distinct that you would want to spend time reading about it at first thought. Yet, I was almost glued to the book because of the stories of the ordinariness that life in a Japanese MNC could be, the different characters in the form of his colleagues (all Japanese, of course), an attempt to get him match-made and the ultimate uncertainty that permanent employment in a Japanese firm would bring. Such things sometimes make for engrossing reading. In that sense this book is unusual. The book is written with much wit by Niall Murtagh, erstwhile Mitsubishi lifer and PhD in Artificial Intelligence. The former is what this book is about, not the AI part.

Interesting and enjoyable.

Googling for gold

2006-09-28T06:00:00.000+08:00

While most of us know Google as THE Internet Search company, it is no less THE advertisement services driven company. Most users who have an internet presence, whether as a company or a personal web page such as a weblog (blog), already place Google's context sensitive ads into their web pages. This is a free affiliate program that anybody with a decent web page can apply for and obtain relatively easily. Money is generated for the web page owner through metrics such as CPM (cost per thousand) and CPC (Cost per Click). Many are just happy that the dollars and cents are trickling into their affiliate accounts with Google to bother too much about these metrics.

Are there any other means of earning money besides ads with Google? Do you know the inner workings of your Adsense membership programme and how to maximise your earnings? How about profitting from Adult sites? These, and many other less well known facts of Google advertising is explored in the the book, "Google Advertising Tools" by Harold Davis. The book is divided into 4 parts. The first 2 parts delves into how the Google uses the internet surfing habits of people to generate advertising eye-balls, which leads to part 2 on the details of Google's Adsense programme and how to maximise the amount of money you make.

Parts 3 and 4 focuses on how advertisers can maximise eye-balls through Google's AdWord programme and its related API (Application Programming Interface).

I suspect that Adsense users would not be that interested in AdWords and vice versa. But therein lies the attraction, or the bain, of this book - it is good for people who are more interested in making more money advertising or for people who want to drive business to their web sites through effective and customized ad placements. One doesn't have to read this book cover to cover before coming away with a few useful tips either way although I suspect that both parties would have preferred if their interest (making money advertising or advertising to make money) enjoyed greater coverage. As it is, both areas receive fairly even coverage.

One thing I learnt is that your website's Google Pagerank will increase the more other websites' webpages (and that include blogs) link to your website. So the next time you find other pages linking to your website or blogs (even deep-linking ones), be happy. That only means that someone values your content. This comes at the expense of bandwidth, of course, but then, that's why you publish, isn't it? On the other hand, if you have got Google adsense code, it can only be a good thing, right?

As always, O'Reilly titles are worth the time and money spent.

Living and leaving Singapore

2006-09-24T07:29:00.000+08:00

Neil Humphreys is very well-known among the Singapore newspaper reading public. For the last few years, he has been entertaining and informing Today readers through his regular columns. I must say that I am a fan of his, having been tickled often by his observation and experiences of life in Singapore. However, he has just left for Australia's Geelong to start the next phase of his life with his wife though, thankfully, he still writes the weekly column for Today. And why not. The internet has made communications so much more convenient. The only thing that the internet cannot do is to give a person a feel of life in a certain place while being in another. Neil certainly will not be able to write about Singapore as often and as intimately as he used to. But he has left behind for Singaporeans, and the wider expatriate community in Singapore, and perhaps the world, a book about his travels and observations in the oft neglected parts of this tiny island of Singapore.

In his inimitable way, "Final Notes from a Great Island - A Farewell to Singapore" relates his journeys and discoveries into places such as Lim Chu Kang where all sorts of farms, such as organic farms, goat farms, frog farms, etc., still exists in this otherwise highly urbanised island. Locals as well as expatriates should give Orchard Road a miss on weekends and public holidays for these farms, if nothing else, as a therapy against the hustle and bustle of city living. In the same vein, Neil writes about his Singapore Challenge of 'circum-navigating' Singapore's lush rainforests of reservoirs and nature reserve smack in the middle of the island. Indeed, as he notes, this is the green lung of the island. If quaintness is what you are looking for, then follow him through Queenstown, the Chua Chu Kang cemeteries and Haw Par Villa Park. If for titillation, then Geylang is a, ahem, must-go.

Personally, I was delighted that Neil visited Sembawang and wrote about the many places that I am familiar with, including Sembawang Park and the Jetty at the end of it. It brought back a lot of memories of my childhood. But I do have a gripe with his history. Neil mentioned the Terror Club as originating from the Americans. While the Terror Club near Admiralty Road East is now the domain of the American military personnel, the name originated from his countrymen during the time Singapore was its impregnable fortress and the Naval Base its home. 'Terror' was a wholly British invention. My dad used to work in the Naval Base in the 1950s and 1960s for the British, and he would often mention 'tear-lah', which is the Cantonese transliteration of 'Terror', in his conversations with mother. I didn't understand who or what he was referring to until much later. I have some links in my singaporelifetimes blog which document all these.

Notwithstanding this slight historical inaccuracy, Neil has done Singapore a favour with his book. I only discovered that he had written two other books, "Notes from an even smaller island" and "Scribbles from the same Island" on the same subject earlier, and they are probably well worth reading too.

In the name of Leonardo Da Vinci

2006-05-19T21:22:00.000+08:00

First, there was Leonardo DiCaprio's name which brought to mind his more famous(?) namesake, Leonardo Da Vinci. I wouldn't be surprised that with the rise of DiCaprio's star a few years back (especialling in the tragi-epic 'Titanic') many babies have since been named Leonardo something. Well, we are not done with the Leonardo name. Three years back, Leonardo Da Vinci was again in the press, this time in the form of a novel with the unlikely title of The Da Vinci Code. Fast forward three years yesterday, Leonardo's name has come up again in a movie of the same name based on the same book starring mega-movie star Tom Hanks. This movie is helmed by non other the award winning Director, Ron Howard.

It was perhaps good for Leonardo Da Vinci that the recent revival of his name, particularly in the second instance, highlighted some of the works that he is best known for - the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper (of Christ). A whole new generation of people, both the young and the old today, are now more aware of these renaissance painters and inventors, including Issac Newton. Newton, or at least his grave in Westminster Abbey, was also featured in Dan Brown's novel of the same name. The latest reports suggest that this novel has sold 50 million copies.

However, the movie based on this novel has received mixed reactions at it premier in Cannes as well as in the press.

This is not unexpected because the book on which it is based made several very controversial claims: that Jesus did not die on the cross but married Mary Magdalene and had a child through her, that Judas conspired in the events leading up to his 'supposed' crucifixion (Mel Gibson would have been shocked with this claim, given his very passionate Passion of Christmovie, which he played with such conviction), that Emperor Constantine determined the canons of the Bible as we know it today (and in the process, excluded the Gnostic Gospels in the greatest conspiracy not only of our times but in all history), that St Peter was jealous of Mary Magdalene's relationship with Jesus, which explained why the Roman Catholic Church wanted to suppress and has suppressed all materials relating to Jesus and Mary Magdalene, giving opportunity to the fictional Leigh Teabing saying "history has been written by the 'winners'" in the Da Vinci Code story. This same phrase was repeated in a story on the Da Vinci Code by National Geographic, without attribution.

To me, these and other claims made in the guise of a novel are unsubstantiated, bald assertions, which unfortunately, many view as fact. Given the power of movies to sway the unsuspecting public, the insidious content in this book must be rebutted robustly, even if after 3 years. Fortunately, many historians and theologians, including the mass media such as Discovery Channel, have stepped up to the plate to fulfill this task. You can find them in books as well as on the internet.

Innovation in Asia

2006-05-02T12:12:00.000+08:00

I should have written this book. No, no, I don't mean that this is badly written nor its material substandard. On the contrary, this is a marvellous book that grew out of MBA classes taught by the author at INSEAD's Singapore campus. Students in these classes typically consists of captains of industry, CEOs, Senior Executives and other influential people not only from Singapore, but throughout the Asian region. What I mean is that I wished I had this book around when I was doing my Masters Degree a couple of years ago. It would have been a tremendous source of reference for me as I was researching small and medium sized companies in Singapore then.

This book, "Inspire to Innovate" by Arnoud De Meyer and Sam Garg is chock-full of case studies from around the Asian region, in countries such as Singapore, Thailand, the Phillippines, Taiwan, India, etc. This breadth of business experience in the innovative process recounted in this book in itself is worth more than the paper it is printed on. The authors not only relate their stories, but also apply these experiences within the context of the innovation process and its management. While innovation and management processes, principles and practices are not new - many authors have already written extensively on it - what is refreshing in this book is its focus on small and medium sized businesses, with the odd addition of Samsung and the National Library Board which is a Singapore Statutory Board. So such obscure companies as Smart, Tiger Motors, Hindustan Lever, e-Chaupal, Li & Fung, Patkol, Aapico Hitech and other more well known companies such as Dilmah Tea, NIIT of India, Shin Satellite, etc. are used to illustrate how innovation can be realised in the Asian context. The authors also attempts to draw the differences between the Asian environment and the more often studied developed country environments to show how the commonly accepted innovation management practices need to diverge to be effective in the Asian context.

This is a truly unique book, and should be on the shelve of every executive in Asia who are thinking of how to introduce innovation into its organisation.

Innovating at Fedex

2006-03-08T11:24:00.000+08:00

Whenever Innovation is mentioned, 3M, Dell, Xerox and Federal Express (Fedex) are often mentioned in the same breadth. These are some of the most successful and admired companies in the world. So when I chanced upon the book, "Fedex Delivers - How the world's leading shipping company keeps innovating and outperforming the competition", it seemed 'passe' to me. So what would another new book (this book was first published just last year - 2005) say about Fedex that has not already been widely recounted, discussed, analysed and dissected in countless learned articles already? But I am always interested in a good story, even if the story is already familiar. I am glad I picked up the book, because the author, Madan Mirla, has given a new 'spin' on the topic of innovation, if only because he is a Fedex insider telling the story of innovation from 'first-hand'.

Of course, some parts of the book read like many management type books, discussing the 'n' ways of achieving your goals, etc., but Mirla has interspersed many of the principles he espouses with examples from Fedex's history. This in itself is worth the read. In the course of reading this book, I jotted down some points that I found interesting:

International growth (Internationlisation) is important. Fedex grew from a company managing the overnight delivery of US Federal government cheques (that's where its name originated) to a worldwide shipping company;

Innovation can be a very simple act but it can have hugely significant impact on the organisation;

Innovation can fail, and if its lessons are learnt well, it can grow the employee and the company;

Employees are important, and they need to grow within the organisation, especialliy knowledge workers. Turnover is costly and reduces the company's capacity to innovate. In an age where outsourcing and contracting is becoming popular, this point is worth noting;

Related to the above, a organisation must become a learning organisation;

Employees can be encouraged to innovate through Permission Statements - a very interesting management innovation in itself;

A work-life balance is important in the innovation process. Given that people work from 8 to 8 nowadays, its a point worth noting again;

Innovation often comes from unexpected sources and through the combination of diverse knowledge and disciplines. Therefore, a broadbased, cooperative approach is important in the innovation process.

Some of these principles may already be familiar to you. No matter. The Fedex examples cited will give new perspectives to them. I have profited much from this book. I think you will too.

March of Computers

2006-02-03T06:48:00.000+08:00

Technology has been moving at a fast, some might say a breathtaking, pace. Compared to the period before World War II, inventions and innovations in Technology has been varied but many of them have been brought together to give us the modern electronic computers. I say varied because today's computers are a combination of vision, enterprise, mechanical engineering, electrical/electronic genius, physics, psychology, military designs and ambitions, business and consumerism. How did so many factors bring about the evolution of the modern computer? What were the driving forces and how were the technological challenges overcomed? Who invented the internet (certainly not Al Gore) and why was the PDA invented? What of the modern smartphones which can almost double-up as computers?

Swedin and Ferro answers many of these questions in their book "Computers - The Life Story of a Technology". This book offers a broad sweep of the history of computers, from prehistoric times till today. They offer a chronology of the key developments from 35,000 BC onwards! Obviously, such a wide scope will mean that their narrative can only be brief on each event that they describe. For example, the story of Intel only got 6 pages of narrative, 9 if you count incidental references, and the account of the development of the Internet did't start until page 118 of this 166 page book. The book is largely chronological although towards the latter half of the book, it tended to jump back and forth, if only because many related technologies saw significant developments at about the same time.

If you are looking for a detailed and comprehensive history, this is not the right book, but if you want a broad sweep, then this book is a good starting point to explore more deeply the key events in the development of the computer. For example, your interest may be piqued enough about the story of the CRAY supercomputer to want to pick up a book devoted to it, or about Xerox's PARC, or about Intel, or about IBM and their development of their very successful System/360, or even about more remote stories about how Eckert and Mauchly built the world's first commercial computer, the UNIVAC, and how their ideas were essentially taken from that of John Atanasoff (now that's a name you rarely come across). There are many stories in this book about people who agonised over the problems of the day, and how they went about solving those problems. Indeed, without their genius and preseverance, the story of computers would be a very different one today.

This is, in some sections, an engrossing book and it will not take too long to finish it. But there is enough in this book that you will come away learning something new.

Harry Potter and the rest of history

2006-01-18T21:15:00.000+08:00

There is nobody who doesn't know (that's a double negative) who Harry Potter is now, unless the person is an illiterate or is one who cannot afford or have no access to a public library. I know this describes a large swath of planet earth, but this is another issue.

I am not reviewing the excellent Harry Potter books here. They need no introduction nor recommendation from me. They just sell on the strength of word of mouth. Perhaps because of its runaway success, or because of its subject (wizardry), many people, particularly those on the extreme of the Christian Right, have come out strongly against these stories because of the inherent lifestyle that it promotes - sorcery and witchcraft (actually, more like wizardcraft). There are those who even burnt the books publicly to demonstrate what they think of the stories.

Well, there are, of course, others who go to the other extreme and view Harry Potter as the Divine incarnate. One such book is "God, the Devil and Harry Potter" by John Killinger. Killinger is a liberal Christian whose defence of the Potter novel (against the extreme conservative Christian Right) has, in my view, swung to the other extreme, so much so that he seems to hold the Potter novels as the exact parallel to the Bible. He probably would have named the Potter novels "The Harry Potter version of the Holy Bible", if he could. In his book, Killinger draws many parallels between the events described in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone" with the account of Jesus' birth and upbringing. For example, Harry Potter's humble abode under the staircase of the Dursleys' house is compared to Jesus' own humble beginnings. Jesus' birth was accompanied by the threat of Herod's murderous intentions, just as Potter's was from Voldemort's attempt to kill him (resulting in that 'lightning' scar on Potter's forehead). Killinger even points out that Potter was eventually to be grouped under Gryffindor house, which has the lion as its symbol. Coincidentally (or by design) the symbol of the ancient Israeli tribe of Judah, through which Jesus descended, is also a lion. Actually Singapore is also known as the Lion City, but no, perhaps its too small, insignificant or Asian to merit any attention. Of course, the other reason is that the boy Jesus never came here.

So far, it has been bearable, but Killinger stretches it when he continues to draw these parallels against extra-Biblical sources. The Bible is silent on Jesus' life up to his 30'th birthday. While we do have records of Jesus' childhood and youth, such as his family fleeing to Egypt with him to avoid Herod and the boy Jesus accompanying his parents to the temple (Gospel of Luke 2:39-52), virtually nothing else is recorded in the Bible about his youth. So Killinger turns to extra-biblical sources such as the Coptic Gospel of Thomas and the apocryphal book of James to draw further parallels about Jesus' early life with that of Harry Potter's in the Dursley's household. These books are not as authoritative as the Bible, and certainly have not undergone as great a scrutiny for factual accuracy as the Bible has been subject to over the last 2000 years. Along the way, he also mentioned that Jesus once went to England with Joseph of Arimathea, which explained how the Holy Grail, which was the cup that Jesus used at the last supper, eventually ended up in Glastonbury, in Somerset, England.

Enough is enough. The Bible and the record of Jesus' life is turning into fiction, if you agree with Killinger's thesis and his fantasies. Here, fact has turned into fantasy, as much as Harry Potter's book is fantasy. At least Rowling does not hide that fact! The sad thing is that the Bishop of the United Methodist Church commends the book to its would-be readers!

I do not recommend this book to readers as a good book. But of course readers might want to find out for themselves the art of turning fact into fiction. If this is what interests you, then there is no better book than this.

Benign Superpower?

2006-01-03T06:48:00.000+08:00

Ever since the demise of the Soviet Union (USSR), political and military tensions in the world has been reduced significantly. There is now just one superpower - the United States of America. It is one power that is reluctant to make use of its military and political might to dominate other countries. Historically, it has never been a colonizing nation, except perhaps in the Philippines. The era of the Cold War is over, and a new World Order of a freer and more peaceful world is the dividend of the victory of capitalism over communism. Even China today is communist in name only. Many of its leaders have imbibed American ideals and scholarship through their years studying in the US and are adapting what they learnt in reshaping the Chinese nation and economy. By all measures, they are succeeding.

Unfortunately, while the part about the Cold War's demise, communism and China are true today, the sanguine vision of the New World Order has not panned out the way the sole superpower first envisioned or the world hoped for. Chief among the events that changed this is the 9/11 incident. Today, America is more guarded (fortress comes to mine when I look at the US Embassy in Singapore) and it has sent its troops to invade other countries (Iraq and Afghanistan), although not for reasons of domination but liberation. A new enemy in place of communism has arisen, that of terrorism, which is led by extreme elements of one of the greatest religions today - Islam.

How did these develop? Why did 9/11 happen? Why did Europe (except Great Britain) disagree so much with the US over the Iraq invasion? Why are many terrorists typically of Pakistan, Malaysian, Indonesia and Arabic descent? What is wrong with American leaderhip today?

In his book, "Beyond the Age of Innocence", Mr Kishore Mahbubani attempts to address these and other issues that have become the staple of world affairs in the last 15 years, but mainly occurring in the last 5 years. Mr Mahbubani is well positioned to discuss these issues. He was Singapore's Ambassador to the U.N. for 2 terms and is now the Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. Of Pakistani descent, he grew up in Singapore but has spent many years in the US. Thus he has first hand experience and encounters with the many topics that he seeks to address in this book. As a fellow Singaporean, I can appreciate some of the arguments that Mr Mahbubani advances, and the position he is coming from. Some have argued that he is not stating anything new, and that may very well be true. But I think this book has succeeded in bringing together many strands of the underlying issues and forces that has shaped the world today.

One may disagree with him on his wide ranging analyses and propositions, but one cannot fault his earnestness in trying to help a friend (the US) to see the world through an outsider's eyes and thereby convince them to be more circumspect in matters of foreign policy, economic policy and social policy decision-making. He makes the point time and again that the world is a global village where decisions by the US often affects, for better or worse, the livelihood of peoples half a world away. Being a sole superpower is a heavy burden, not least of which many of the world's ills can be traced back to the innocuous decisions made by that superpower. Mr Mahbubani argues that leadership of the highest caliber is expected of America, that it comes with being a superpower, but more so because it comes from a nation that historically, has crafted policy and acted in a benign fashion - a nation that has no stomach for colonizing and domination of other peoples and nations. (Exceptions can be identified though, as Mr M also points out in this book).

This is an absorbing book and the reader will come away enlightened on many of the underlying issues, causes and effects of what is happening in the world today. The time spent on the book is well worth it, whether, at the end, you agree with him or not.

Resurrecting rice in Cambodia

2005-12-27T05:39:00.000+08:00

I haven't written a book review for quite some time now. That's not because I haven't been reading. On the contrary, there are just too many book demanding my attention. The latest book I completed is about an agriculture project that was started in Cambodia in 1986 by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which is based in Los Banos, Philippines. I first came across IRRI and its work through my Development Economics textbook while in University. Here, I am being re-acquainted with its work in Cambodia.

The political upheavals in the last 30 years has reduced the nation of Cambodia to one of the poorest countries in the world. Its people also suffered greatly under the regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, glimpses of which can be seen through the movie, "The Killing Fields", which stars Sam Waterston and Dr Haing Nor. The atrocities of the Pol Pot regime on its own people is shown in gut-wrenching scenes, particularly the thousands of buried skulls that were uncovered - hinting at the vast killings that occured during that time. It is in this context that the IRRI was invited by the re-constituted government of the Peoples Republic of Kampuchea to repair and rehabilitate its rural economy - particularly of rice production.

In the "The Burning of the Rice - a Cambodian Success Story", Donald Puckridge recounts the story of how the IRRI, through the Cambodia-IRRI-Australia project (CIAP), helped rural rice farmers improve their rice production methods and consequently increased their yields significantly through research, innovation within the local context, and more importantly, through training the locals so that they can become self-sufficient and self-supporting in the long run.

This book is filled with personal anecdotes of the experiences of the mainly Australian and Indian expatriate staff, as well as the locals who worked closely with them through the almost 16 years of the CIAP's existence. It is a story filled with the realities of subsistence farming, of the need to break the cycle of poverty, and how research into new farming methods and rice varieties, as well as training made the difference. After reading this book, I have renewed respect for the Australians, who were the ones on the ground to do the training and drive the changes. This was in spite of the dangers involved in living in a Cambodia that continued to be rocked by violence and political upheaval, such as the coup carried out by the Hun Sen government in 1997 (after they lost the elections to FUNCIPEC). Puckridge also dwells into social and historical issues of the Cambodian peoples today, and how they have been affected by the times they spent under the repressive regimes of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. There is a story behind the picture on the book cover.

For a long time, news reports on Cambodia, and indeed, Vietnam, focused on the political conflicts, humans rights and maneuverings that did not find favour with the western world, which was largely represented by the US. The one dimensional perception has hidden many of the social and economic work that was going on to resurrect the Cambodian people's livelihood. In this respect, Australia not only contributed manpower and expertise, they also gave money to fund the work of CIAP, and through it, enabled many Cambodian farmers to improve their agricultural endeavors and its research expertise.

I now understand Cambodia a bit better and look forward to the day that I can visit the country as an observer to witness the changes that has occurred over the last 20 years - changes brought about not so much by the political situation, but more through the economic and social resilience of its peoples.

For more, see:
The Yielding Fields
AusAID and Cambodia
International Rice Research Institute

Copyright or wrong?

2005-11-06T08:15:00.000+08:00

Copying and copyright is an issue that is dogging more and more people because almost everybody in this internet age has become a website designer (yes, even 11 and 12 year olds can design websites nowadays) or a content creator (such as bloggers).

I once had a student who did a website for a commercial firm. This firm subsequently received a lawyer's letter demanding payment of penalty (I think the figure of S$5000 was mentioned) for using one of their maps in one of the WebPages. I don't remember if there was any takedown order. Apparently the copyright holder wanted money more than just their rights, or are these one and the same? I heard of similar cases by WOM and in the press and marveled that this company was doing a side business going around town suing everybody in sight who may have violated their copyrights. I don't quite agree with these predatory tactics. In many cases, as in my student's (he sounded anxious when he first called me to discuss the issue), the act was done without intent to deprive the copyright holder of its revenue, but the copyright holder thought otherwi$e.

When is it right to copy a work? How much of it can be copied. To whom does that work belong, and for how long? These, and many more issues are explored and discussed in John Gantz and Jack Rochester's (G&R) book, "Pirates of the Digital Millennium". This is a highly readable book, compared to others, which tend to be couched too much in legalese that an average reader would get lost in or fall asleep on.

It covers a short history on piracy and the copyright law. It showed me (I am not legally trained) that copyright or the right to copy has not always been, and need not always be the same in different times and different places. Copying is a very natural human activity, anyway. Before the advent of the printing presses, monks were copying valuable tomes of works from other monastaries for their monasteries. Copyright then was never an issue. Meiji Japan had copied the French and Germans in their education systems, as well as US technologies before and after World War II, profiting greatly from them, although this same activity led to the untold suffering of many in the war.

G&R also explored the various parties involved in any intellectual property dispute and looks in detail at one such party - Microsoft. The point made was that much work goes into producing a product, whether it is software or music or movies, and much of these involve a creative and innovative process – typically long and usually expensive. Piracy denies these producers of their rewards (or at least recoup their investments). For smaller players, piracy can drive them out of business. The implication is that piracy is anathema to creativity and innovation. A country will find itself much poorer if it did not have sufficient laws to protect its productive endeavors, as the case of Ghana illustrated. Some nations, especially the US, have swung decisively in recent years, to the side of the producers, culminating in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. In the authors' opinion, this act is flawed as it favoured the producers too much. For example, an innocent child was accused of sharing a Harry Potter video over the internet when in fact, the child had only done a one-page book report on that video. There remains the possibility of abuse by the producers that can scare the living daylights out of everybody through this Act.

The authors conclude their discussion with the economic argument for piracy (with Lester Thurow weighing in here) and the issue of ethics (what you should or should not do argument shorn of pragmatic considerations). They suggest certain actions that both the consumer and producer can take in the future to reduce (not possible to eliminate) instances of piracy.

It’s a good book. Go read.

The dirt in words

2005-10-23T11:12:00.001+08:00

Two weeks ago, with some time on my hands, I sat down to watch an old movie. "Glengary Glen Ross" is an award winning movie made in 1992. It had a stellar cast of Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey, amongst others. Adapted from a stage play, this movie has riveting dialogue and a whodunnit. Absolutely seat-of-the-pants.

What lingered most in my mind was how the part played by Alec Baldwin rallied his team of salesman. In that 10-minute scene, I have never heard that much foul language used - ever. What's more, it came from just one person - Blake (played by Baldwin) - who was basically conducting a monologue. The f**k word was used so often, and with some many different layers of meaning and usage that I am dumbstruck by the versatility of this one word. I doubt that that scene can ever be censored because the word is so integral to the entire 10 minute performance.

Foul language, whether we like it or not, is part of our everyday speech. So much so that Ruth Wajnryb has written a book, "Language most foul" about the use of this register, or language instance, in the world today. This book is not for those who cannot stand the sight of foul words (I am not sure about the audio/sound or vocal part) - the work f**k appears in the book with such regularity and frequency that the book would have been labelled profane and dirty if that is the sole measure of the book. It would never pass muster on the list of desirable books and blogger will surely have it flagged.

But before you jump to any conclusion, the book is actually a scholarly (yes, you didn't read that wrongly) tome on foul language. In it, Wajnryb surveys a lists of commonly used foul words such as the evergreen f**k and sh*t, amongst others, and spends considerable effort in tracing their origins and describing their usage over time. Wajnryb makes the point that, because of how frequently they are used today for virtually every part of life that these words have lost their foulness in certain contexts. So, for example, f**k is used as part of the integrated adjective "inf**kingcredible" to add emphasis rather than profanity to the word "incredible". Nevertheless, such words continue to be used in contexts that are offensive to some, if not all, people.

If you think you are up to the language, its a good read. But make sure you don't leave the book lying around for your young son or daughter to pick up. Otherwise, you may end up in hot soup with your wife/husband/mother/father, whichever it is.

Brace yourself for the book with the most foul language I have ever come across. It puts many of the most 'dirty' books to shame.

Availability Note: Unusually, this book is not listed in Amazon.com The closest title (by the same author) is "Expletive Deleted : A Good Look at Bad Language". From Amazon's review of this book, I would say that it is the American imprint of this Australian author's original book. This original is available online at Dymocks Booksellers.

Orwell's Burma

2005-10-19T04:56:00.000+08:00

I am planning my vacation, but I cannot decide where to go this December. I am spoilt for choice, except when it comes to Myanmar. There is only one tour agent advertising one tour package to Myanmar. I briefly considered that package, but put it aside quickly. What is it about Myanmar that makes it desirable on the one hand and undesirable on the other, as a tour destination, I wonder?

Perhaps part of the answer lies in the book "Secret Histories - Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop" by Emma Larkin. This book is not a just a mere travelogue. It is this and more. Ms Larkin writes about her experiences traveling through Burma, the old colonial era name of what is Myanmar today, with reference to George Orwell's times and tales there in the mid-1920s. This is an interesting angle to base a book on, but as events in modern Myanmar would have it, Ms Larkin shows how prophetic Orwell is through his now very famous books, Burmese Days, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eight-four. George Orwell, or Eric Blair, his real name, worked in Burma for 5 years as an officer of the Imperial Police Force.

Through her recent travels around Myanmar, Ms Larkin shows how closely its politics and society today mirrors those described in these three books of Orwell's. Though not strictly communist, Myanmar society today is a closed one. Although it pretends to be socialist in leanings, it is in fact authoritarian and dictatorial, much like what the society depicted in Animal Farm turned out to be. The people of Myanmar do not have political freedoms, as demonstrated by the muzzling of its most outspoken daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi. There is no freedom to write and publish. Many who dared are today locked up in one of Myanmar's most overcrowded prison - Insein Prison. A native explained that they cannot speak or write about what is going on in Burma. People who do so disappeared, as happened to a most repected and prolific local historian, much like people in the fictional Nineteen Eighty-four. The education system has become so poor that there are all of 40 candidates for a Ph.D every year - Phoney Doctorates as they are more popularly known.

This book is filled with anecdotes about life in Myanmar and its ordinary people. The author has travelled from Mandalay to Delta, Rangoon, Moulmein and Katha to the places the Orwell once lived and worked to bring us a book full of sketches of its people's experiences, fears, jokes and, yes, laughter, if only of the bitter sort, that permeates life in Orwell's Burma today.

40 years of dictatorial rule has reduced Myanmar to a basket case, needing to import basic necessities such as rice to feed its people. This depressing list of deprivation includes those in knowledge and basic freedoms. If you have read any or all of those Orwell books, you will get a pretty good idea of what Myanmar is today. This is certainly a unique book written from a unique angle about a people which the world has almost forgotten.

It doesn't really matter if you haven't read any of Orwell's books, the stories are human enough for you to relate to immediately. Having a good background in Orwell's works gives you the icing on the cake, so to speak.

So should I visit Myanmar these holidays? Yes, if only to experience first hand what Larkin has written about, but certainly not if the family is coming along.

Ramp-up your brain season

2005-10-18T08:08:00.000+08:00

This is examinations season in Singapore's. Its a country where the education environment is highly competitive, to say the least. The exams to be conducted in the next two weeks are also end of year exams, which, for some, will determine the next stage of their young lives, depending on how they perform. For the senior primary school students, their die have already been cast. Their PSLE (promotional examinations) have just ended. For the next three days, their papers will be marked and graded in this nationwide exercise.

Stressful times indeed, for students as well as parents.

Going by anecdotal evidence alone, the informal education market is huge. It seems like every student has a privately engaged tutor besides the school teachers they already have. And the private tutor's job is not for education, it is for drilling and making sure that students keep to their books, and their past exam exercises in order that they can score the best grade possible. You see, both parents have to work to earn a living in Singapore. So like many things in Singapore, and the world, outsourcing is the rule of the day.

But according to Pyschology Today (PT), there is one other source of help - the right food. In the article, A Taste of Genius in PT's July/August 2005 issue, Lauren Aaronson sets forth the good that some types of food can bring to the brain. Some of these may already be familiar to you, being the stuff of urban legend and mother's tales for some time now. First off, oatmeal works its magic through fibre, glucose, nutrients and acids of which it has in abundance, supercharging your brains in the process. Glucose-sweetened lemonade can also "boost recall of events, words, movements, drawings and faces, among other things, with effects lasting long enough to get you through a two-hour exam". Besides food, exercise is also just as important as it "improves the delivery of oxygen to your heart...", which in turn "pumps up your brain", and we are not talking about carcinogens here...

There are lots more tips on the beneficial effects of various types of food for the brain. It is perhaps timely reading in this examinations-laden season.

Nelson - his life and tradition, Part 1

2005-10-15T07:32:00.000+08:00

The name Nelson - Horatio Nelson, is easily and unambiguously recognizable as the great British Admiral and victor of Trafalgar. It is amazing that he is still remembered, given that he lived more than 200 years ago, but then, he was, and I believe still is, hailed as Britain's greatest Naval hero.

Nelson's fame and exploits are well documented, but this is the first time I have read a full biography of the Naval hero. "Nelson - A dream of glory, 1758 - 1797", by John Sugden, is obviously a well researched tome. It weighs in at 794 pages, with a further 112 pages of notes and citations. My only complaint is that the book is so very heavy that bringing it around with me wherever I go was a non-starter. But don't let this scare you off. Although a scholarly work, it is highly readable.

In relating the subject of his book, Sugden looks at both the man's strength and weaknesses, neither glossing over one nor lingering over the other. Nelson's strength was in his competence, bravery and conscientiousness. Above all, according to Sugden, he was a driven man - a quality that allowed him, no, constrained him, to reach ever higher levels of achievements and fame in a Navy that he loved so much.

Nelson's leadership comes out very strongly in this biography. His was a lead-from-the-front type of leadership - a style that won him many faithful followers and many battles over the years, but also resulted in him losing his right arm and right eye before 1797 was out. One other quality in Nelson that students of leadership should take note of, is that he looks after the well-being of his subordinates and took every available opportunity to try to elevate the deserving ones.

What are the weaknesses of this hero of Trafalgar and Britain's greatest Naval Commander? Proneness to flattery, boastfulness and self-advertisement are cited as examples. His neglect of his wife is another. But having read the book, considering the times he lived in, and the betrayals he encountered, he can perhaps be forgiven for all except the last.

I have gained a new perspective on the history and traditions of the Royal Navy that goes back so many years. Though never a sailor nor a British, I once lived among the Royal Navy based in Singapore. I remember how children, including myself, ran across my school field to gawk at the helicopter that ferried the Admiral to and from his house just across from my school in the Naval Base. The Admiralty House, as it used to be called, and continues to be called, is still there, albeit used for a different purpose today. My school grounds, on the other hand, have disappeared.

Reading this book is time well spent, and this is only part 1 of of the narrative of Nelson's life. Sugden is following up with part 2, which dwells on Nelson's greatest victory yet - Trafalgar.

Non-profit Innovation

2005-10-11T06:13:00.000+08:00

Some not a very long time ago, Singapore was rocked by a scandal in one of its most successful charity organization. The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) had broken new ground (at least for this part of the world) through its innovative methods of raising cash for its cause. It became the richest charity in Singapore, with reserves in excess of S$200 million.

Unfortunately, in the process of becoming successful, it engaged in certain practices which, while not illegal, were questionable from the standpoint of a charity. This has been covered in one of my other blogs.

At the end of the day, its really about good corporate governance - how a charity manages and uses money in the cause for which it was given in the first place. Now, another charity is in trouble - the Singapore Assocication for the Visually Handicapped (SAVH). It has had its annual grant of $1.4 million taken away after problems at the SAVH became public

While good corporate governance, especially in charities which do not readily face 'market discipline', is important, it can also be a bane because it stifles innovation in these organizations. And innovation is important in the Voluntary Sector. In fact, the very existence of a particular non-government organization (NGO), charity, institution of public character (IPG), or whatever name it goes by, is a result of an innovation in itself. This point is made by Storey, et al. in their book, "Managers of Innovation - Insight into making innovation happen" (2005). NGOs takes on a life of their own in order to "fulfil unmet social needs" and the way its does so tends to be something new and unique. Storey looked at 2 NGOs in the chapter on the Voluntary sector - Oxfam and the less well know Age Concern which is based in the UK. His analysis of the situation in Age Concern is particularly interesting because the twin forces of strict governance / control and innovation spiritedness are often incompatible. But in NGOs, you cannot do without both, as the NKF and SAVH cases have shown. How Oxfam and Age Concern faced this issue and resolved it makes for interesting reading.

Now that Singapore's National Council of Social Services (NCSS) is in corporate governance gear, one wonders if it may snuff out the innovative spirit of the erstwhile voluntary organisations, and even stop new ones from forming. Time will tell.

Beyond charity, Storey, et al., in the same book, have written other case studies of organizations in the Telecoms sector (GPT of GEC and Nortel), the Engineered Manufactured Goods sector (HP and GDA of GEC) as well as about the Creative workers in Zeneca, a pharmaceutical company and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). This covers quite a broad spectrum of industries and organizations. In other words, there's something in this book for everyone who is interested in the subject of innovation and how it is managed in different businesses and contexts . These case studies are also fairly recent - the book was published only this year (2005).

For the serious student of Innovation, this is a must read.

The Golden Cinema in Black and White

2005-09-28T04:56:00.000+08:00

Believe it or not, there was a movie cinema in the British Naval Base in Singapore in the 1950s to early '70s (this, and the rest of the workers' quarters were demolished in the 1980s). It was quite a sizeable cinema hall and it has screened a mix of movies, from Indian (not Red Indians) movies to the English blockbusters.

As a very young boy then, I often only heard of the shows that were screened there, the most famous of which was Dracula. The name, Christopher Lee, has stuck in my mind ever since. The other show that generated much excitement and talk was The Ten Commandments with Charleton Heston in the lead role. But I never once stepped into that cinema hall, much less watched any of these blockbusters because my mother believed that movie watching has a negative influence. The closest I ever got to seeing the movies were the full-coloured printed flyers that were distributed around the Base advertising the upcoming movie. I did, however, catch the occasional Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies that were screened in the open air across the road from where I lived then. These screenings were free of charge, courtesy of the British Empire. So long as you can find a place on the grass land to sit down, you're set for Tarzan.

I also often wandered outside this sole cinema hall in the day time. This cinema hall was located at the end of a street named Jalan Kedai. It could get very silent during the day where no movies are screened because everyone who has the means to catch a movie is busy making a living. The silence of the place is eerie, especially when a swamp (ever heard of the Swamp Thing?) is about 50 metres away.

Today, that cinema hall and all its surroundings, including the swamp is gone. The movies that used to play there is but a memory. Indeed, movie going has been around for more than a hundred years. The black and whites, the silent movies, the talkies and the musical are the stuff of legend today. Fortunately, they have been preserved by movie studios and are screened from time to time for film buffs and serious movie historians. There are many books that document the lives and times. One of the most recent that I came across is the picture-book "In the Picture - Production Stills from the TCM Archives". TCM stands for Turner Classic Movies. Once again, through these stills, I was re-acquainted with Tarzan and Johnny Weissmuller with Jane - er, Maureen O'Sullivan, that is. This 159-page book has a full-sized picture in almost every page, showing movie stills from the silent era such as Buster Keaton's The Cameraman, Lilian Gish's The Scarlett Letter to those talkies starring Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Johnny Weissmuller (pages 36 and 55), Greta Garbo, etc. etc. right up to Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson in Giant. There are just too many to list here. The actor I missed most in these pages was Charlie Chaplin. I wonder why its not in this book? The TCM website does have Charlie Chaplin's The Kid (1921) and Modern Times (1936).

One interesting nugget I picked up in this book is how erstwhile silent movie actors can fail to make the transition from silent movies to talkies. Their movie careers were adversely affected by it - the victims yet again of technology. A case in point - in silent movie actor, John Gilbert's first talkie, His Glorius Night (1929), audiences just could not match his actual light natural baritone voice with the high pitch voice that they imagined him to have after watching 5 years of Gilbert's silent movies. That movie flopped and Gilbert's star wanned. On the other hand, Greta Garbo's first talkie, Anna Christie (1930) was successful and propelled her towards greater stardom. This nugget is from page 19 of the book.

Lots of interesting tales and 'old' pictures in this book. Have a look.

Skoda going places

2005-09-17T13:57:00.000+08:00

I have a confession - I don't know how to drive a car. In car-crazy Singapore, where I live today, that's a anachronism. I have my reasons for this state of affairs, reasons that might surprise you if you knew, but let's just leave it at that. This doesn't stop me from being an observer of cars, which reminds me of an Eastern European make called Skoda. When it first debuted in Singapore, it was very very cheap, compared to the rest of the competition. It was also very very, lets say, flimsy. It looked like an undercarriage which just happens to have a body covering of tin metal. It reminded me when Honda first came out with sub-compact cars that ran on motorcycle-sounding type engines that could seat two Asian-sized passengers - a third or fourth if they could squeeze into the back seat. It was said that the car's body was so flimsy that the car will be crushed completely, like paper, in an accident. Japanese cars have made quantum leaps in terms of power and design of their cars since.

Well, back to Skoda. It looks like it has also grown up since the first time I saw a Skoda about 15-20 years ago - at least in Europe. Strategy+Business has a case study article on this in its current Fall 2005 edition. The entire article is available online here. Prior to reading this interesting article, I didn't know that Skoda has had a long and illustrious history. It is now owned by Germany's Volkswagen, and under its management, it has emerged from its communist days to become a world challenger in car design and performance. It is so successful that its parent, Volkswagen, felt threatened by its designs. How did this happen? Read the article and find out.

P.S. You need to register with S+B, but the registraton is free of charge.

Ships that Cunard sailed

2005-09-07T07:33:00.000+08:00

As a young boy, I was given an assignment to write on the topic "My ambition". I was then in primary school (that's elementary school in some other parts of the world). Without much hesitation, I penned a short essay on being a sailor when I grew up. There was much to commend about this ambition.

First, you get to see the whole world. I was at an age where you long to see something outside of your home and school. Second, sailing evoked adventure, and that's what every boy likes, especially when he has been fed on story books such as R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island, Enid Blyton's Famous Five and Alfred Hitchcock's tales of adolescent mystery and suspense. And did it help that I was staying in the British Naval Base (Dockyard) in Singapore at that time? Watching large man-of-wars was within walking distance from where I lived.

But that's the world of fantasy. Fast forward to Cunard - a name that brings to mind large large ships that sailed across the Atlantic, and occasionally, the world. What's more, you also hear that these ships are luxurious and probably only the rich and famous can afford to sail in them. At that time, I had yet to hear of the Titanic. I wasn't rich nor famous and therefore never stepped onto a Cunard. I could only read about them.

Cunard is still very much around, and it has been so for the last 165 years. Recalling my adolescence, and still not yet rich nor famous, I picked up the book "Cunard - A Photographic History" by Janette McCutcheon to re-live its glory years. This is a table-coffee book of 96 pages. Something light to hold in your hands while you sip your coffee. It is full of pictures to dazzle your eyes and bring back memories of bygone years. Its an easy read too, although the narrative seems a bit halting, but this is to be expected. The pictures are, after all, the main attractions. The narrative informs the reader about the history and significance of each picture in the book and about the social and historical context. Every page is filled with photographs of the various Cunard ships from the time when Samuel Cunard first built his Royal Mail ships that, by the way, also carried passengers. Divided roughly into three parts, the book traces the history of the company from its founding to the First World War, the years between the world wars and period after the Second World War till the present.

At the end of it, you get an appreciation not only of Cunard's history, but also of how circumstances and inventions of the day can affect the prosperity or survival of a company. For example, after World War II, Air travel by Jet became popular and that took away Cunard's ertswhile business of ferrying passengers across the Altantic. It eventually had to focus on the Cruise Liner business, for which it is best known today, at least for the holidaying crowd. However, you will want to read about its shipping business from the early days, and look at the marvellous ships it once used to own, including its Carpathia, which picked up 705 passengers from the sinking Titanic in 1912 and the Lusitania, Mauretania and the Aquitania - the fastest and biggest ships of its days.

Best free journal on the web

2005-09-04T20:52:00.000+08:00

Strategy+Business" (s+b) is a quarterly print journal/magazine from Booz Allen Hamilton. Its a great magazine targeted at business leaders, academics, and anyone else interested in what is happening in the world of business today, and possibly what will happen tomorrow. The content is varied and, best of all, its freely available on the World Wide Web. Unlike its rival, The McKinsey Quarterly (MQ), all content that are in print is available without charge on the internet at the same time that the print edition is out.

MQ used to offer all its content for free on the web too, but switched to providing premium content for a fee. Some content remains free, but you feel crippled when you can't pursue an interesting topic that is featured because the content is considered premium. I used to refer to MQ quite a lot when I was pursuing my Masters degree in Technology Management a couple of years ago. Needless to say, it was then free of charge on the web.

In any case, s+b is just as good and its still free on the web. You can also get it to send you e-mail updates as and when a new issue is available. You won't miss an issue like that.

Highly recommended.

T-shirts economics

2005-08-25T05:04:00.000+08:00

Here's a good book to sink your teeth into. Published in 2005, "The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy" is an unlikely sounding text on International Economics, but that's what it is, and more. Its about international trade, politics, history and even travel, weaved around the theme of the economics involved in the global textile and apparel trade over three hundred years!

In developing the narrative, the author, Dr Pietra Rivoli of the Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, first traces the beginnings and development of the cotton industry in the US and England. In particular, she englightens us on the reasons for the longevity of the cotton industry in the US and how, even today, the industry that grew from this basic commodity - apparel and textile - still has a strong, albeit wanning, presence in the US. In weaving together a masterful account of the history, politics and economics related to this essential industry, Dr Rivoli has managed to entertain with wry observations and personal anecdotes garnered from her travels to research and write this book.

My favourite part of the book is where she describes how technology, research and development has extended the dominance of the cotton industry in the US through 200 years. Now, one would expect that a country or any organisation would lose its competitive advantage in a product, service or skill after two or at most, three generations, but for 200 years? Amazing!

Written in non-intimidating language with little trade jargon, its an easy read. Yet its full of insight spanning a whole gamut of topics and disciplines. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

You have to read it too.

Its available at Amazon.com for about US$19. The price will vary depending on whether you are getting first-hand or not. But then again, this book is quite recent.

Blogging crap

2005-08-24T05:37:00.000+08:00

Blogging is writing about yourself, your experiences, your life. Some have adapted blogging to venture on writing on highly specific areas and have thus created wonderful resources on blogs. But I must say that I agree with one commentor to this blog that a lot of the blogs you find in Blogger.com (and perhaps most other purpose-built blogging portal) is just crap.

Some, after securing a good blogger address, write nothing worthy of that address. For example, see http://writer.blogspot.com. (sorry Mr Bray). Some write garbage, and worse, repeat that garbage over several days' blogs - and they write nothing else. Its the worst form of bad writing - 'spamming' their own blogs.

I ask, "Why bother in the first place?" You can't invite people to view your blog because you'd die of embarrassment, you can't publicise your blog because you'd be viewed as vacuous, you can't even make a cent out of it because Google Adsense has more sense than to let you have their codes.

So why do people do it? I really cannot figure it out. I can only guess.

Maybe having a blog, whatever that blog has or does, is not important. The satisfaction lies in the fact that you have a blog address.

Maybe other priorities in life have distracted you from your blogging ambitions.

Maybe you are suffering from writers' block, and its been blocked for the last 3 years!

Maybe you are just not interested anymore, but don't want to delete your blog, or cannot be bothered to, or don't know how to(?)

Maybe one day, the blogger may resume the activity. I don't begrudge such ambitions, but either start writing something or release those blog addresses!

Purpose of this blog

2005-08-23T21:34:00.000+08:00

My tastes in the written word are rather eclectic as much as my interests are wide. I have always loved reading - anything that I can lay my hands on. But you get selective over time, because you know that you cannot possibly read everything that has ever been written and printed.

Of late, my interests are in technology, management, information systems, e-business/e-commerce development economics, history, some politics, Christian literature, retail management, etc. Some of these areas interest me because they contribute to my rice-bowl (i.e. my professional interests), others because I have had an abiding interest in them - something of a hobby that helps me de-stress and know something more about the world that we live in at the same time.

Whichever the case, I read a lot. Because I have access to very current books and writings, I thought I might share my views about them in this blog. Of course, older books are just as important, but I suspect much has already been written about them anyway. Another reason for this blog is personal - often, I have forgotten what I have read over the years. Since I spend a lot of time reading, its a big part of my life that is missing in my memory. When you get older, you become more concerned about remembering. Nostalgia increasingly becomes an important part of life.