Category: Uncategorized

I woke up this morning to the news that the US will be imposing an additional 25% on imports from India with effect from 25 August. This is to penalize them for continuing to buy Russian oil and supporting the Russian economy thereby enabling Russia to continue its war on Ukraine.

This additional tariff will be on top of the 25% tariffs already announced.

This will be a huge blow to India. They supply, inter alia garments, pharmaceuticals and machinery to the US. Many foreign companies did set up factories in India to pivot from China in recent years and to take advantage of the huge “Manufacture in India” campaign initiated by the government. If the additional tariffs kick in, there is going to be a huge economic impact on India.

India has been complacent and incompetent in their trade talks with the US. Complacent because they assumed that there was a special relationship between Trump and Modi and therefore they will get off with minimal tariffs. Also they believed US needs India as a partner to counter China. Complacent because whilst other countries read the US correctly and carefully, Indian officials were caught with their pants down. I had many Indian friends telling me that the negotiations with the US were done and dusted as of 3 weeks ago with minimal tariffs and only needed Trump’s sign off. How wrong they were.

Well I guess it’s time for India to now wake up and start planning their next steps. Am sure Trump is using the threat of additional tariffs to put pressure on India a d other countries buying oil from Russia, such as China and Turkey to put pressure on Russia to end the war. We shall see.

Perhaps there is magic in the madness after all…

Tonight was the National Day Dinner at Bukit Panjang. A grand total of 106 tables.

Lots of good food, performances and singing of National Day songs. Everyone was in a celebratory mood to mark the 60th birthday of our country waving the Singapore flag.

And it’s wonderful to see all the young children performing and their parents so proudly watching them!

Jonathan called me over the weekend and suggested a catch up. I have not seen him in a while. He was training for his tae kwon do competition and then he was in Canada for quite a bit during the actual event. He won his competition and I was surprised that there was no mention of it in the media.

I suggested dinner at Empire Hotpot as it was closing this weekend. Jonathan wanted to order some meat as he was trying to put back his weight. Unfortunately they have stopped serving any barbeque meats. So we just ordered 3 dishes.

It was a good catch up but we didn’t spend much time there as he had reserved durians at Dempsey.

The durians at Dempsey were disappointing. Expensive and the quality was not quite there. I was shocked that they were charging $37 a kilo for rather mediocre durians. We both agreed that this was our last time eating durians there!

Whilst reading Einstein in Berlin I came across a very interesting fact.

Lenin and his political party created communist Russia. We also know that Hitler hated the communists, second only to the Jews.

However, Russia, like Germany, during the start of the First World War was a monarchy. And both were at war with each other. Germany desperately needed to end the war on the Eastern front with Russia so that it could concentrate all its forces on the Western front against Britain and France.

And so it was cultivating Russian dissidents who were in exile to agitate and create trouble for the Russia government. To this end, they cultivated Lenin, who was then in exile in Switzerland, and Trotsky and in 1917 sent then back to Russia with lots of gold, cash and resources to overthrow the government. This led to the October 1917 revolution and the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin took power and made Russia a communist country.

Truly incredible. Communist Russia came about because of Germany cultivating dissidents, including Lenin, to destabilize and overthrow the then government for its own selfish reasons. That giant then smashed Germany in the Second World War and occupied parts of Germany for a long period thereafter. And the giant created then by Germany still looms large.

This morning was the launch of this festival at the Causeway Point. An annual event to drive home the importance of continuous skills upgrading and providing residents with one on one career guidance.

There was also a launch of an AI assistant which will guide you on the courses to take depending on your interest. You key in your interest areas, answer a few questions such as whether you want the courses full time or part time etc and it identifies courses for you. It will even email you a list of these courses. This is very useful as I have always found the Skillsfuture website listing all their available courses much too unwieldy.

There was also the launch of an online job matching portal. This one had a feature of listing jobs within the North West district. Most of them being part time and with flexi working hours.

The launch was by Mayor Alex Yam and SMS Zaqy was the special guest.

Just had lunch here and the manager informed me that their last day of operation at Ngee Ann would be August 11.

The landlord wants to increase the rent and with the falling demand they have decided that it is no longer financially viable to continue.

They used to have 2 restaurants here in Ngee Ann. One shut down last year because the rental for that unit was also being increased. And now this unit is also going.

I have brought many people to eat here and the food has always been decent. Both the fine dining and the hot pot.

At this rate I wonder what will be left in Singapore. And even if any restaurants in Ngee Ann exist, how much would they need to charge to break even after satisfying the landlord?

I was invited to this event today at the St Francis Seminary at Punggol. This seminary was where the Pope stayed during his Singapore visit last year.

The event was a viewing of an exhibition commemorating the Pope’s visit to Singapore, followed by a dinner.

The event started at 530pm. I arrived there on time and I finished walking through the exhibits in about 10 minutes. The dinner was only scheduled to start at 730pm and so I decided to skip the dinner.

A very simple exhibition comprising about 5 rooms. Each room took up one phase of his visit. So there was one room on the state visit to Parliament House, one on the visit to CJC, one on the mass at the Stadium, one on his visit to St Francis home.

There were just about 3 to 4 photos in each room with a short write up on each of the phases.

That is a pity. They could have done a more extensive exhibition with many more photos and incorporated audio visual elements into the exhibition. The exhibition did seem too simplistic to me.

Today was the birthday lunch for FX. Although his birthday was in April, this was the only date that he could give us to have a meal.

In the end, we had lunch at his own house with very wonderful Indian food cooked by his cook, Pandian. It was really good. The vegetables (2 of them), sambar, chicken and mutton were all yummy.

Topped off with a delicious payasam and pappadam. We arrived there at 1230 and we were chatting till 1630. What a wonderful afternoon!

Last night was once again time for our regular dinner. This time it was hosted by Benson Puah. Our dinner was at Rempapa at Paya Lebar Quarter.

Just the 6 of us this time as Chelva could not make it.

As always, good company and we talked about so many different things. We were talking about whether we should do a short trip to KL. Let’s see if it happens..

The food was alright and I have never been a fan of Pernakan food anyway.

I am the host for the next dinner. Time to start thinking of a venue!

We left KL at 930 this morning. Took a short break at Pagoh and arrived in JB at about 115pm.

We had lunch at Restoran Pekin Sutera. A very classy looking place with lots of live seafood. We had fish maw soup, Peking duck, clay pot fish, wasabi prawn, tofu and vegetables. Very decent quality food and the total bill was RM 320.

There was a durian shop just outside the restaurant. We had one fruit. Supposedly a Tupai King. It was ok but I don’t think it was a genuine Tupai.

We came back via the Causeway. Just a slight jam. Back home by 4pm.

A very good short break. Perhaps too much food!