Category: Personal Reflections

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.

Surprisingly we managed another coffee session at Morning Grind this morning. I am surprised it happened because Haq doesn’t come in much anymore and with him now starting his own firm, meeting up in Marina One will become rarer.

Anyway glad we managed it and I took a picture for posterity sake. Something to remember hopefully in the years ahead!

I met up with Prasoon for another chat session yesterday afternoon. At his favourite place, by the poolside at ShangriLa.

It was such a warm day and I did wish I wasn’t seated outside but he seems to enjoy that place.

We talked about Singapore, India, the US and Iran. Good to hear another viewpoint on world affairs. His views on how Iran has come out of this is interesting but not sure whether that is how it will play out in the end.but it is clear to all that Iran has come out of this stronger and the US looks like an idiot with every other country in the world, except Israel, pissed at them for having starting something that is having serious consequences.