“Just be very grateful it wasn’t Malaysia”

Me, on the hand? Extremely disappointed. So when Kevin Rudd visited New Zealand, the press pack had a lovely bio on Helen Clark (who a New Zealander tried to convince me once, had a husband):

Apparently prepared three years ago and intended only for private use inside the Australian government, the frank and unflattering portrait of Miss Clark labels her views “generally left wing, with foreign policy perspectives forged during the Vietnam War”.

It adds: “Clark is renowned for her managerial skills, the discipline she demands from those around her and her tight control of all things Labour undertakes under her leadership.

“She does not trust those outside a small circle in Labour and her chief of staff, Heather Simpson, is known as the second most powerful person in NZ.”

Anyone care to speculate what the Aussie Foreign Ministry internal portrait might be for Abdullah Ahmad Badawi?

Clarification

Based on my last post:

1) My regret with choosing SMU was that it wasn’t the best decision I could have made at that time. If it were the best decision I could have made (instead of one that violated my gut feelings), I would feel a different form of crappiness.

2) One or two have noted that my dream college is a liberal arts college, while my failsafe is an extremely British system – thus SMU, being American-ish, was the safer bet. Not really: I don’t like liberal arts because it is American or its methods, but because of the philosophy of the system itself: that university ought not to be some sort of job training program. So UOL general degrees (including subjects like Economics, Government, etc.) would have been a better fit.

3) As for the difficulty of UOL external degrees, well, my plan was to do the first year just in case I can’t get into a college of choice. If I couldn’t, and if I found UOL external too difficult for me, I would have transferred to another program – like a British twinning program.

P.S. Based on 2), this is why I think Singapore’s growing efforts to build Asia’s first liberal arts college will fail as much as SMU failed at being Asia’s Wharton. With present plans to start the college off NUS, it’s a dire feeling.

P.P.S. One of my possibly unachievable dreams is to build a liberal arts college in Southeast Asia (preferably Malaysia or Singapore, or other English-speaking countries here like Brunei or the Philippines). Southeast Asians deserve to have a liberal arts option that doesn’t cost an upwards of US$40,000 in tuition, room and board annually.

P.P.P.S. I was thinking of Langkawi. Being duty-free, it seems extremely ideal a place to build a university *smirk*.

Of regrets

I have very few regrets in life – I tend not to bemoan decisions I have made that may not have made sense with the benefit of foresight, but was the best decision I could have made when I made it. Going into Science Stream in Form 4, which reversed by string of straight-A’s (I still scored A’s in SPM for my humanities papers), was the best decision I could have made after Form 3 as I haven’t ruled out engineering then. Going into Form 6, which culminates in one of the toughest pre-university examinations (to keep non-Bumiputras like me out of public universities), was essentially my only viable option at that time.

The next stage of my life, though, I have deep regrets. Moving to Singapore and coming to SMU didn’t make sense based on what I knew about myself and what I’m capable of two years ago. The reason why I chose SMU was simply because at that time, it was one of the only two universities that chose me (Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Samarahan was the other one). But before SMU accepted me, my plans was to redo STPM, retake SAT I, and do SAT II.

The failsafe was University of London external program, which, while difficult, draws more on my strengths in comparison with SMU. But I knew I would have done well in STPM – before I can do well in exams, I must know the subject before I can learn the exam (which placed me at a bit of a disadvantage in this part of the world, I know). The thing is, going to a very new school (first batch of Form Sixers, FTW), and changing streams midway, I never actually did learn the subject matter until the last month or so before the exams.

And still, I did pretty good in comparison with the single digit percentages I use to get earlier in Form 6 (my trial results for Statistics, for example, was 18% if I remember correctly, and I scored an A- in that paper in STPM a month later). Now, given the benefit of learning the exam for an entire year, I stood the chance of doing pretty good. Similarly for my SAT I, which, while I took during a violent bout of diarrhoea, still did me well enough to get into SMU, one of Southeast Asia’s most selective schools, in spite of the dearth of co-curricular activities and dismal exam grades.

Most of the things I hate about SMU are things I knew about it before I enrolled – in fact, the months leading up to matriculation, I have a severe bout of cold feet*. One of the key things about SMU is that I have to work in Singapore for three years after, limiting my options considerably to just one city. In other words, making this bad decision really bad is its long punishment period (don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind working in Singapore – but I don’t like being limited to Singapore).

SMU was the safe option, so to speak, but it wasn’t my best option. Other than the friends I’ve made in SMU and me dabbling into debating (which wouldn’t have happened if I did the external program), it didn’t really turn out to be one of those happy mistakes. SMU was one of the few occasions I played safe against my better judgment, and perhaps the main reason why I’ve stopped playing safe. With what I knew two years ago, my original, pre-SMU acceptance plans was the better bet.

* On the other hand, almost all of the things I like about SMU are things I didn’t know prior to enrollment, which also didn’t help with the regret, really.

So it’s National Day

In Singapore, that is. My main hope is that I won’t be subjected to “Shine for Singapore” on a daily basis while riding busses.

Based on the music video, it’s a romantic song too. I bet SDU has something to do with that.

Spot the Foreigners!

Ah, to be a foreign talent.

The convenient scapegoat

The member for Rembau, Khairy Jamaluddin, brought into the fuel subsidy forum the specter of our “unhealthy dependency” on foreign labour, with some agreement from Tony Pua and Nik Nazmi. Apparently, foreign labour depresses wages. Yeah, sure – no foreign labour: higher wages. Which also means, higher factors of production. And then higher prices.

And consider immigrant-saturated economies: Singapore have much higher wages for both low-skilled labour (100,000 Johoreans cross the border daily not just for the pure joy of passing through the Causeway) and professional jobs than Malaysia. And it is far easier to immigrate to Singapore than Malaysia (in fact, as a Malayan, it is far easier for me to migrate to Singapore compared to Sabah or Sarawak).

UAE, hardly a city-state, also have significantly higher wages across the board as well, as does to the lesser extent other Gulf states. Also, moving away from a migrant workforce (beyond making the problem of illegal immigration far worse) will also force economic sectors to move away from labour-intensive industries. Our traditional edge in rubber and palm oil, which is doing us pretty good these days, would end. Hopes of surpassing Singapore, presently the world’s busiest port, in container traffic in the future would be dashed: PSA would have the advantage of foreign labour and lax immigration law, Westport, Northport, PTP, etc. will stand little chance.

If anything, slashing taxes (like our sky-high, by ASEAN standards, corporate taxes) will do a lot to raise wages in Malaysia. Removal of heavy government intervention, in terms of fixing prices, for example, will help wages go up to. A revamp of the education system (easier done if the government just takes a back seat, via vouchers, ala Sweden) will help productivity and thus wages. In other words, depressed wages in Malaysia without the commensurate purchasing power is largely due to the overwhelming size of the government in the economy.

Quite clearly, there are other factors, as pointed out by Tony Pua. There is no foreign competition in law (Pua’s example), yet fresh graduates entering the Bar have significantly lower wages than their counterparts in Singapore (where it is far easier for foreigners to move in and practice). Sure, foreign labour does keep wages down. But they are, for the most part, a good thing: they keep the cost of living down and make our firm more competitive (and no, Khairy, if a Malaysian company does better internationally, we benefit more than Dhaka, Bangladesh).

The stupidity of production subsidies

Earlier today at the MSLS 08 forum on fuel subsidies, I asked a question on the effect on our fuel subsidies in keeping Singaporean food prices low. Tony Pua (DAP, MP – Petaling Jaya Utara) misconstrued the question and Nik Nazmi (PKR, ADUN – Seri Setia) didn’t address it, but Khairy Jamaluddin (UMNO, MP – Rembau) did addressed the question.

The gist of it is because transportation is subsidized in Malaysia, the subsidies move to Singapore in the form of lower prices there (in fact, in part due to heavy subsidies in Malaysia, prices in Singapore are low by first-world standards). Its the same way how all forms of production subsidies work: if a Singaporean buys a Proton, part of the price tag is being subsidized by the venerable Malaysian taxpayer.

In this case, it is particularly stupid: the reason why the government maintains (and probably will increase) subsidies for transport operators isn’t to protect them, rather, to protect consumers. It would be significantly more efficient to just give checks to the poor and middle class to cope with cost of living.

Oh by the way, a little nugget of knowledge I learned today from a Bank Negara intern: despite my lower-middle class dispositions, I’m actually in the top-4% of Malaysia in terms of household income. And Malaysia has the highest Gini coefficient in Southeast Asia: higher than the usual suspects like Indonesia and the Philippines. Scary.

Funny Gaffe

Was at the Malaysian Student Leaders Summit. Highlights:

The Prime Minister, Dato’ Seri Ahmad Abdul Badawi, didn’t know the topic of his speech. Instead, he gave a long, 40-minute rambling speech Malaysiakini charitably described as, “off-the-cuff address to the students on a wide range of topics”. It was pointed out by a brave chap during Q&A.

Much like the PM, only without the benefit of Q&A, the Higher Education Minister Dato’ Seri Khalid Nordin similarly like the sound of his own voice. Key points of his speech: what is leadership? Ground shattering discoveries were revealed, such as leadership involves *gasp* responsibilities.

The Education Minister, Dato’ Seri Hishamuddin Tun Hussein, was a breath of fresh air. His speech was interesting and short (and notably, keris-free), and he didn’t seem to avoid answering most of the question. Favourite answer, to the question on why there is a bumper crop of straight A’s during election year, “Well, that didn’t really helped us in the last election”.

Dato’ Seri Hishamuddin’s ability to answer questions didn’t seem shared by panelists of other forums. I posed a question in the forum on national unity to Royal Professor Dr Ungku Aziz, on the need of a single, national language (I cited Switzerland), and why Malay ought to be that single, national language when it is seen as the language of the Malays, not a neutral language.

The professor in fact only prescription for national unity is the ability to converse in one language. Most, if not all, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish speak English yet there is a glaring lack of national (or in this case, erm, inter-national?) unity in the United Kingdom.

The MC, Sarah Chian (spelling?) is extremely fluent in both English and Malay but seems confused when to use either (such as English to wrap up a predominantly-Malay speech and vice-versa).