Funny Spoof on the Macbook Air

Taoism the Party Animal

I know that my family in the US wants to hear more about my personal life in Singapore instead of tidbits of my thoughts about the news. I am usually a pretty private person but this weekend I went clubbing. I thought it would be a very funny story to share.

I know, I know. I know the image that all of you have of me. I am the party animal, the life of the party. In contrary, I am quite the opposite. I am the biggest introvert that you will ever find. Like most introverts, I find it easier to share my thoughts down on paper, rather than expressing it verbally and so I guess in part, this blog is a bit therapeutic.

Anyways, on Friday night, due to work obligations, I had to go to a club. I already knew what to expect. So in addition to being an introvert, there is another little known fact about me. I can't hear crap in loud music. Trying to have a conversation to me in a club, is useless. I can't hear a word you are saying and so I will only smile and nod back at you. So Simple Girl is trusting enough to let me out to this club by myself. She already knew the above two facts about me and so knows that the chances of me striking up a conversation with a girl at a club would be like Walter Payton running for 1000 yards for the Rams next year.(by the way, Walter Payton is dead and he played for the Bears)

So after arriving about 10:30PM(early for Singapore clubbing standards) I was already looking for my opportunity to leave. I knew that I don't want to be the 1st person to say, "I have to leave" and so I have to stick it out for a few hours. I didn't think my time would be that long because, there were 3 married female co-workers that I thought would be wanting to leave by 11:30. By the time, 11:30 came around, CRAP!, our new VP of Sales showed up. That means it would be rude for use to leave now. I am stuck for at least another hour.

So what usually happens at a club, people will try to have conversations with me and since I can't hear a word that they are saying, the conversation becomes decidedly one way and so they will just move off to chat with the other co-workers. So I pretty much will always end up standing their shipping on my cocktail on my own. I am OK with this. One of the advantages of being an introvert is that I can just stand there and observe and be able to pass the time. Occasionally, I break up the monotony by going to the bathroom, but that's about it.

I lost track of time, but around 12:30 to 1AM, the VP finally left. Good, so I calculate, within 20 minutes after his departure, I will stealthily, depart myself. So I make my way closer to the exit, but still standing close to the group. Here is another inside scoop about me. I don't really dance. I pretty much "move slightly to music"

In the meantime, one of the sales guys has been starting up conversations with strange women all night and bringing them back to our area for chats. So here I am standing by myself, sipping on my cocktail and moving slightly to music, when I noticed that the latest girl that the sales guy brought back was staring at me like a psychopath. So here is another interesting phenomenon that I am still trying to get use to. After spending 32 years in the US, as the "Chinese Guy", I am actually considered cute in Asia. About 5 minutes, later, the Director of sales came up to me and said, that the Korean girl wanted to speak to me. I thought, OK, this is my opportunity to leave and so I agreed.

I go up to the Korean girl and say, "Hi" She says something back to me but I don't know what. I can make out that she is asking me some kind of question but I don't know what. So not only that I can't hear in clubs but to make things worse, she is speaking with a heavy Korean accent. I kept saying "What?" "I can't hear" "I don't understand" Than she kept on shouting louder and louder but to on avail. The only thing that she succeeded to do was to blow her breathe in my face. All I could smell was Kim Chi. Not just a bit of it, a LOT of KIM CHI! I was geting a bit sick from her breathe. I had enough and said goodbye to her. I said bye to the rest of the team and ran out of the club to the comforts of my own home.

Sports, Politics and Religion Don't Mix

As you guys probably know, I do have a soft spot for Tibet and so I haven't thought much about this protest against China.

I saw something today that has reminded me that I should follow this stance even if I am for the cause that that is being protested on.

The article is about Muslims in Malaysia. They have invited European Premier league power house to come to their country and play. For those of you in the US who does not understand. Football is huge in Asia. They are more fanatic about it than Football, baseball and basketball combined. So when the article said that they are asking Chelsea to come and play but please leave your two Israeli citizen's at how, I can only laugh and chuckle. One of these two just happens to be their head coach. I really hope that Chelsea responds by saying, "OK, we won't come"

Long Shorts or Short Pants

This blog is inspired by a conversation that Simple Girl and I had while having lunch Saturday. A young man jogged by wearing one of those really short 80's exercises shorts. I laughed and said that even I would not wear such short shorts anymore. Than about 5 minutes later an uncle came by wearing the latest style in shorts. It is very long, almost at the midway point between the ankles and the knee's



This is of a special concern to me. Since I do live in Singapore and it is very hot here. For the past 20 years, I have seen the length of shorts slowly creep further and further down. My question is where will they draw the line? Eventually, there must be a point, where they can't call them shorts and will be considered pants. I think shorts is going to become extinct. So here comes another dilemma one of form fitting function or one of sacrificing comfort for the sake of fashion. I know that most women has already made this consciences choice and has picked fashion, the proof of this is high heeled shoes, but for me an un-fashionable, logic minded guy, this is not an easy choice for me to make.



Do I walk down the street being scoffed at and be comfortable or be fashionable and sweat like a water buffalo?

French vs Chinese

In today's headline, I saw that now the French has decided to boycott Chinese made products.

I think that this is all very funny. It all started with the French making the Dali Lama a honorary French citizen. The Chinese was angry at this and they decided to boycott French made products. So in response the French now want to boycott Chinese Products.

So just think about this.

The Chinese will now have to do without French Champagne, Cognac, Escargots and Perfume.

The French will now have to go without Shoes, TV's, Computers, shorts, shirts, irons, blenders, routers, switches, stereos, car parts, toys, plastics, luggage, stamped metal parts,

Hmmm, I am wondering who is going to win this boycott battle.

Property Bubble in Singapore?

This may not be interesting for most of you in the US.

I saw this on the expat forum and thought that it was well thought out with sound reasoning.

We told clients and investors to sell all Singapore holdings (property, stocks and everything else) in June 2007. We determined that prices would never, ever be higher and were predicting a 15% drop in pricing by March 2008 and 25% drop by June 2008.

Rationale was simple and not rocket science.

#1. There was no demand for housing when the boom started.
The vacancy rates on existing housing were above New York, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo and other major urban market levels. A Singapore property boom made no sense at all.

#2. Singapore GDP...nice impressive numbers. But the growth was 99% construction related. There is no economic growth when the construction boom ends and those numbers are subtracted from the total.

#3. The existing luxury housing vacancy levels in Singapore were adequate to fill the needs of Singaporeans and any possible influx of new senior executives for the next 5 years. Thus, there was no demand for executive luxury housing in the market.

#4. Value for money on Singapore property for foreign investors is not good when compared to other projected growth economies. (several factors are weighed including psf, quality of workmanship, size of economy, projected growth of economy, lifestyle and culture of the market.)

#4. The targeted future population numbers of Singapore are pie in the sky and completely without substance. Singaporeans are not having kids and the demand for jobs in Singapore will be service led lower paying jobs to supply the planned tourism developments. Non of these new inhabitants will be buying or renting condo's, especially in the high-end. And tourists visit, they don't buy or rent.

#5. Singapore is not a supply/demand driven economy. It is a small, managed economy. Thus, the property development plans were lofty, risky, and not based on future real supply/demand realities.

#6. There is a lack of real, transparent, objective information available in the Singapore market about the Singapore market. This leads to investors belief in hype and speculation rather than economic principles.

#7. Global money supplies and markets are taking a beating and will continue to take a beating. The second call on the sub prime products happens this June so more big losses are expected. This will stall or even damage the Singapore economy.

We expect distress sales in the property market to start soon. The high-end rental market is non-existent and the higher % of all unit sales were high-end investment property, speculator driven.
These buyers need "wealthy" renters to subsidize the million dollar mortgages. Most locals cannot afford the rents the market is demanding.
Surveys of multinational companies and banks have indicated that there is no boat-load of expats with a big housing allowance arriving at the Singapore port anytime soon. The new owner is now stuck with 100% of a very expensive monthly mortgage.

Here is an example of one major high-end development I'm following to prove the point. These are some very telling numbers.
600+ units launched
20+ remaining at $2,000 per square foot via the developer.
100+ units previously sold are now for sale privately less than 7 months after launch for $1,300 to $1,600 per square foot.
The reason...no rental income.
That tells me that property owners are willing to admit that market prices are down 25%+ already. Unfortunately, even at a 25% discount, there are no buyers.

Existing Singapore residents are keeping the rental market buoyant due to the fact they sold their old places and are waiting for the prices to drop...OR...waiting for their new unit to be completed. These people are relatively small in overall numbers and definitely not going to rent high end luxury units. They are driving HDB, middle priced housing rents up right now. They are also demanding 12 month leases or even less if they can get it proving that they are waiting to move or sitting on the sidelines waiting for prices to drop.

The Singapore property market is massively oversupplied today and more units are on the way. This is not good. This is should be extremely troublesome to anyone who owns property anywhere in that market. The potential valuation losses in the property market could be enormous, especially at the high-end. Overall prices could sink well below SARS levels and this could happen within 6 months to a year.

The short lived property boom was very much like a pyramid scheme.
It was all hype and no substance.
The first guys in are now smoking big cigars.
The last guys in are now left holding the ashtray.

Miley Cyrus Who?

I don't know who Miley Cyrus is and normally, I would not click on the link but I just browsed on the headline.

"Teen Star Sensation Write's Memoirs"

I have never heard of Miley. Guess she is some kind of Disney star now. But she is 15! What kind of life have a 15 year old have? What kind of hardship have she endured?

I can see the chapters now.

Chapter 1.
My 1st Bike
Chapter 2.
I am only 4, why is my mother Sending me to these stupid auditions
Chapter 3.
My Life is Over. They did not cast me for The Parent Trap
Chapter 4.
Oh my God! My mom didn't give me a pony for my Birthday
Chapter 5
I am so cool, They let me in to all the cool bars in LA
Chapter 6
I got so drunk last night
Capter 7
Rehab
Chapter 8
I will be 16 nexy year, Am I over the hill?

Al Gore is Responsible for Your Chicken Rice Prices

No actually, this blog is not negative about Al Gore. But it does show you a cause and effect, This blog is more some of my ramblings. No coherent organized thought, just some thoughts to put down.

So how is Al Gore responsible for the high food price? It is related to the Green initiative. They are now turning a lot of crops that ordinarily would have gone to food to bio fuels. Bio Fuels does not release as much CO2 and so this friendlier to the environment. Another reason for high food prices is actually global warming. Global warming has changed weather patterns worldwide. Places that has lot's of rain gets none and places with no rain is now flooding. There has been an increase in crop failure this year because of this. Also related to all of this is the high price of oil. What we eat has to be sent from the farms to the processing plant, from the processing plant to the food factory, from the food factory to your super market(Singapore basa). All of this takes energy and fuel. So as the fuel prices goes up. the more farmers will want to turn their crops into bio-fuel. This is a vicious cycle.

I had earlier blogged about alternative energy. My solution was to have 1 million Chinese kids pedalling bikes to generate power. I admit, that this will be highly unlikely. Food is too expensive now. Those kids from China can EAT.

I do have a serious solution. Nuclear. Contrary to popular believe, Nuclear is very clean. It is a closed system and so nothing except for steam is released into the atmosphere. There has been two negative things about nuclear energy. Nobody wants a plant in their backyard for fear of a repeat of Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. The second thing is nuclear waste storage.

As for the 1st point, nuclear energy technology has improved significantly over the last 30 years. Yes, the US has not built a plant since the 70's. As for Chernobyl, it is old Soviet technology. In fact, Japan and France now get a major portion of their energy from Nuclear Power. Point 2 is a little more far fetched. Nobody wants to have the nuclear waste dumped in their backyard and so I say drop it off in Antarctica.

There. I have solved the world's problems. Now we have a limitless clean energy supply. The ozone will heal itself. Food prices will fall. We won't have to relay on radical Muslim countries for their oil. We will have peace and goodwill for all mankind. Now we will have time to ponder what really matters to people - Michael Jackson and Britney Spears

An Hungry Man Is an Angry Man

I saw a bit of news last night on CNN or BBC. Could not recall which one. I thought it was pretty interesting. As you know, we have been hit recently by high food prices. This has led to a lot of political uncertainty in many countries. I think people in the US(and also Singapore) don't really understand the extent of the impact on some 3rd world countries. The study shows that first world countries such as US and Singapore(yes Singapore) enjoy a very low rate of food expenditure as compared to income. As a countries wealth increases, they spend less and less percentage of their income on food and so they can have discretionary spending. (For me I call it "Calculated Waste" which equals to Ipods, cameras, TV's and cool stuff. For my Sister's, its called Macy's and for Simple girl, it is called Shoes) The US on the average spends only 12% of their income on food. On the other extreme, countries like Vietnam spends as much as 80% of their income on food. So when food prices go up in the US, it is one less night out at the movies or one less vacation this year. But in third world countries, when they are already spending 80% of their income on food, they just go hungry. Here is the data for "First World" countries and some of the top ten worst cities.


First World 17
China 54
Rest of World 40



Lagos, Nigeria 58
Calcutta, India 60
Istanbul, Turkey 60
Guangzhou, China 60
Bangalore, India 62
Dhaka, Bangladesh 63
Kinshasa, Zaire 63
Katowice, Poland 67
Lima, Peru 70
Ho Chi Minh City, 80
Vietnam
Median All Cities 35

Buzz Report on Facebook

I know sometimes, I can come off as not being a nice guy and not being approachable.(Works wonders when you don't want people sitting next to you on airplanes) It is a fine balance being a pessimistic person by nature and at the same time not scaring people away.

In today's Buzz report by Brian Cooley, he expresses my feelings about Facebook. I think it is a wonderful application. I now have links to old freinds that I would never have if it weren't for Facebook. For the negative part, I will let Brian do the talking and so I won't be the unapproachable bad guy.



http://www.cnettv.com/9742-1_53-50001890.html?tag=cnetfd.vid

On Second Thought, I Better Endorse Clinton

The Boss may not be the Boss anymore. He underestimated how powerful, the Clinton's really are.

Yesterday's headline. "Bruce Springsteen Endorses Obama"

Today's Headline. "E Street Band member Danny Federici die at 58"

Coincidence? I don't think so. I never knew the Clinton's were Italian.

Makes China and Russia look like they are playing in the minor leagues.

This sends a powerful message. Be careful who you endorse. You may get whacked.

My personal message to Mrs. Clinton

Dear God Mother.
Really, I planned to vote for you from day 1. Really! And your daughter is very beautiful. Don't whack me. Please! Whimper, Whimper.

The Boss is for Obama

It is almost over. The Boss today endorsed Obama for President.



This is the 1st crack in the Clinton's Camelot. The final nail in the coffin will be if Bono leaves the Clinton camp.

Ha! Now I Have an Excuse

A study just came out that says "Men Are More Forgetful Than Women"

So three thoughts.

1. I am going to shrink this article down to wallet size and print it out. I will carry it everywhere I go. So in the future, when I forget something and Simple Girl gets angry with me, I will just pull out this article and say "See, it is not my fault"

2. Really, I think this is a "no dah!" Come on, we all know this already. The scientist behind this study probably got a huge grant from the government to do this study. Of coarse men are more forgetful.

3. On another thought, I do think that there is a fallacy in this study. Since I think topic is very important. When asking a women, "What was I wearing on our 1st date", the women will have a photographic memory, while the guy will be clueless. But if you asked, who won the 1st Superbowl(the really important stuff) of coarse, real men would know. By the way the answer is the Green Bay Packers, led by Bart Starr.

Are You a Racist?

I saw this on Poplicks and I thought it was pretty cool. I am not sure if it means anything but I took longer when it came to a black person. See what your score is.

http://backhand.uchicago.edu/Center/ShooterEffect/