Tamil New Year

Another Tamil New Year yesterday. I didn’t see celebrations here in Singapore. Which is strange seeing how people seem to instead go overboard with Ponggal here, which to me is completely irrelevant in Singapore as that festival celebrates harvest time. We certainly have no harvest to talk about.

A long time ago, every Tamil New Year would be spent with a visit to my grandparents’ house in Sembawang, when we were young. Well those good old days are gone.

Anyway since my mother wanted to only have vegetarian food yesterday, I bought a vegetarian lunch for her from Madras Woodlands, together with some sweet ponggal.

Thereafter it was lunch with my colleague Alina and her husband Matthew. It was at Kai Duck. I was initially worried that I will only be able to make lunch about 130pm. Instead I was there by 1230.

Lovely lunch. Spent most time chatting about the challenges facing Singapore and the job market and what can be done to alleviate the problem. The problems here are due to the high cost structure, primarily because of high rentals and salaries and of course now AI. The upcoming RTS link with Johor will only make things worse because goods and services are so much cheaper across the causeway, with the same levels of quality. We talked about the sectors which will be most impacted by the adoption of AI, which of course includes the legal sector. Not surprisingly, we couldn’t come up with any solutions but that didn’t stop us from enjoying the Peking duck.